Page 13 of Her Christmas Wish

Several.

A yellow pad, blank, lay across the top of her skirted knees.

What the hell?

Were they going to negotiate, line by line, what they could and couldn’t do over the time he was on Ocean Breeze?

He leaned forward, his hands planted firmly on the chair arms. Ready to stand and let her know he’d find another place to stay.

“I think I have a pretty good understanding of what you’re facing here.” The voice, so not anything he’d ever heard from Sage, had him settling back in his chair as his gaze lifted straight to her eyes.

They were looking right at him.

But not as though she was seeing him—the guy he’d been to her.

She was treating him like a stranger.

Her tone had been kind. And completely, 100 percent impersonal.

Not at all confrontational.

Or...

Had she just saidhe? Whathewas facing?

Not them?

Was she trying to tell him that she knew he’d been thrown for a loop, seeing her again, but that she was completely unaffected?

Because of lipstick man?

As he continued to stare at her, she started talking again. Laying bare the atrocities that had imploded his life and consumed most every one of his waking thoughts over the past months. Stripping him, fact by fact, until he felt completely bare, raw, sitting there, alone with her, in her office.

He’d never, ever have pinned her as a cruel person.

But she’d done him one favor, at least.

He might be allegorically naked, but he no longer had even a hint of a hard-on.

The morning was one disaster after another. Not following the plan in any way.

Floundering in her huge fail, trying to stay afloat, she just continued to do what she knew—lawyering.

And making matters worse.

She was supposed to have offered coffee, which she’d planned to have already brewed, but she’d had a case of nerves, he’d come early and seeing him in that suit...seeing him in person...she’d lost all ability to think straight.

To remember the plan.

Instead of a kindhello, a politeit’s nice to see you, issued with a nonchalance that would show that the past didn’t matter to her—that she was long over it—she’d walked in silence and dropped her lipstick on his shoe.

In her office, hoping that the atmosphere would set her straight, she’d stood behind her desk having a hint of a panic attack.

Had forced herself to take deep, calming breaths while the silence strangled her.

Finished with her initial summary, she looked at the man she intended to help and saw...

A man she’d once loved so deeply—and been so devastated by—she’d sworn off getting that close to a partner ever again.