Page 26 of The Mistletoe Kisser

The door opened, and he heard footsteps.

“Morning, sunshine,” she called chipperly in a volume several decibels too high.

Morning. Okay. At least he hadn’t lost an entire day to an over-thirty hangover. Yet.

“You know, in the rest of the world, ‘go away’ means the opposite of ‘come in,’” he groaned.

“Town Ordinance 17-06 of 1985 gives any Blue Mooner the right to enter the premises of another Blue Mooner if they are concerned that a crime or a crisis is in progress,” she announced.

“Great. So you just legalized breaking and entering.”

“Technically it’s just entering since the door wasn’t locked.”

“That’s not my fault,” he insisted. Though who he could blame it on wasn’t immediately clear either.

“No one locks their doors here,” she said, sounding amused.

“Why the hell not? What stops someone from walking into your house and stealing your shit?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe being a good person?”

“This place is so weird.” Ryan pulled the blanket tighter around his head and willed the world to stop spinning.

“Whoa there, tiger. I didn’t come here to get an eyeful of Grumpy Junior.”

“Grumpy Junior?” he rasped. The cold air from the open front door finally reached his unprotected southern hemisphere. Peering through one of the face-sized holes in the blanket, he realized he was completely naked from the waist down.Fuck.

He snatched the blanket off his head and hurled it over his lap. “What the hell happened last night? Or is it still last night?”

It was pitch black outside the farmhouse windows.

“It’s six a.m.”

Which made it his three a.m. Great.He’d just managed to combine jet lag with a hangover.

“Where are my pants?” he rasped. “Did you… did I… did we…”

She looked annoyingly pretty standing there in slim cargo pants, scarred boots. A flannel shirt tucked in under a down vest and a soft green scarf. Her hair was a riot of thick curls in a color that made him think of honey. She was holding two to-go cups of what smelled like coffee.

She rolled those blue, blue eyes. Lavender fields, he remembered.

“I didnottake advantage of you. You didnotsexually harass me. And we didnot,nor will weever, have sex,” she said.

He felt a rush of relief, then a vague dissatisfaction, which was almost immediately eclipsed by a wave of nausea.

“Why are you here?” he groaned, trying to work his way out of the recliner. He managed finally to climb unsteadily to his feet and wrapped the blanket around his waist like a holey sarong.

She plucked his pants off the singing bass fish mounted to the wall and handed them over. “You abandoned a sheep. Drank yourself stupid. Confessed to getting screwed over, losing your job and your way in life, briefly mentioned a fetlock emergency, then screamed and took your pants off. Surprised me with the whole commando thing, by the way. You seem like the kind of guy who not only wears underwear but irons them.”

He rubbed at his eyes, headache throbbing. That all sounded vaguely, blurrily familiar. Also, he was pretty sure she’d insulted him a few times along the way in her recap, but he was too tired, too sick to care.

The holey blanket slipped off his hips and pooled at his feet.

Sammy gave a strangled sound and turned around to face the front door.

“That was an accident,” he insisted in a dry-mouthed rasp. Bending over to pick up the blanket made his head feel like it was going to pop like an overinflated lawn ornament.

“I’m starting to have my doubts,” she said wryly.