Romancing the Holiday Read Online Free PDF Page A

rested her head against the steering wheel. She’d have to invest money to make money on the campground, and she didn’t have that much money left. Not enough to rebuild the structures and make them rentable while she struggled to create a viable business. And heaven help her if there were state or county codes and regulations for this sort of thing. She’d never pass an inspection.
    She knocked her forehead against the wheel again and sat up with a start when the horn beeped on the third thump. With any luck, that scared off whatever furry creatures were living nearby, waiting to pounce.
    A blast of frigid air smacked her in the face when she opened the door. Forcing her legs out of the car, she stood up and trudged the muddy path to the larger cabin off to the left of the others. This one had striped curtains and no obvious holes or rips in the roof. Uncle Ned had lived here up until a month ago. She hated to think about what critters might have taken up residence since. If anything slithered or bit or attacked she’d let out a scream that would bring the entire county running.
    Tires crunched on the unpaved ground behind her. She spun around in time to see a truck with the Thomas Nurseries logo take the last bend. Before she could find a weapon or bolt, and boy was she tempted to try a little woman-versus-woods thing all of a sudden, the vehicle rumbled to a stop. She thought it had wandered too far over and out of the parking lot and into the grass, but who could tell.
    The bigger problem was the driver. This wasn’t the cute young guy or the safe married one. Nope, since her luck had spun into horror territory and refused to budge from there, the driver was the lying sexy one who looked ridiculously good naked. Not that she remembered or anything.
    Showdown time .
    Spence, Austin, Ralph, Robin Hood or whatever the hell he was calling himself today jumped out of the truck and slammed the door behind him. He stalked toward her, his legs eating up the distance between them in long strides. He resembled his brother around the eyes and a little in the way they talked, but the most obvious similarity was in the confident way they moved, head up, broad shoulders back and a laserlike focus forward. It was as if they knew their place in the world and never doubted their judgment.
    She wondered what that level of assurance must feel like. Stephen had robbed her of that when he treated her like crap then dumped her before she could dump him. The moron. She wanted to blame him for everything but, really, her taste in men was atrocious. She had no idea when or how that happened. She’d had a happy childhood and what she thought was a solid marriage...until it wasn’t.
    She needed a class or something. Either that or a moratorium on men.
    “I’m not sure what to call you,” she said, hoping to knock Spence off guard before he reached for the upper hand.
    He stopped right in front of her. “That goes both ways, sweetheart.”
    “I have some ideas. Want to hear them?”
    He crossed his arms over his chest, making the move look like some sort of call to war. “Look, you made your point at the nursery with the whole ‘I don’t know you thing’ and thanks for doing that in front of my brother, by the way. It will be a decade before he lets that go.”
    That part made her smile, and heaven knew she didn’t have much to smile about at the moment, including the air whipping through her cheap winter jacket. She kept moving her feet to keep from freezing solid. “Maybe if I had known you had a brother I would have been more careful.”
    “We both pretended to be someone we weren’t back in that hotel.”
    Funny but she had felt more herself there than she had in years. “I used my real name. I just skipped the usual nickname.”
    His mouth twisted. He even let out something that sounded like a snort. “Technicality.”
    “The ‘t’ word you’re looking for is truth . Though I can see where you might not be familiar with