Page 92 of The Mistletoe Kisser

“None here,” she said, trying to watch his face out of the corner of her eye. “How about you?”

“One,” he said.

He reached for his coffee, sipped, then cleared his throat.Uh-oh.It was coming. The “thanks for last night, but I need to get on with my life” lecture. At least she got two orgasms and a hot breakfast out of the deal. At least he hadn’t just vanished. God, she was tired of “at leasts.”

“Sam. Last night… it made me see things from a different angle. Thank you for that.”

“That’s the sex hangover talking,” she assured him.

“Maybe. Or maybe it’s you.”

“Me?” she squeaked. Her stupid hope butterflies landed on her stomach lining, waiting to be crushed by the fly swatter of reality.

“What do you regret?” she asked, hating herself for needing the answer.

“That I wasted a whole night here without you.”

Hot. Damn.It was the most perfect sentence ever uttered to her before seven a.m. in her entire life.

Before she could form a sexy, flirtatious sentence, he was taking her mug, setting it on the table with a definitive click and kissing the hell out of her.

The kiss didn’t taste like a goodbye. It tasted like a good morning.

Touching was good.Definitely not weird, she decided as his tongue drove her just a little wild. Somehow she found herself on top of him, straddling him on the couch while the cat shot judgmental gazes in their direction.

The denim of his jeans felt rough against the inside of her thighs. But there was a prize beneath it. A long, rigid prize.

“Mmm. Wait,” Ryan said, pulling back. “We have things.”

“Lots of things,” she agreed, rolling her hips in a quest for the friction she was suddenly desperate for.

“Plans. To-do lists. Action items,” he murmured, sinking his teeth into her neck.

“We should definitely stop.”

“Definitely.”

Half an hour later,Sammy found herself on her back, partially under the coffee table. Her sweatshirt was stuck around her neck. She was missing a slipper.

Her legs were tangled up with one of Ryan’s limbs, where he sprawled on the floor next to her. His jeans hung over the back of the couch. His shirt was unaccounted for.

“If I’d have known that this would be the upside of some crooked small-town bank trying to screw over my uncle, I wouldn’t have complained so much about coming out here,” Ryan murmured into the fuzzy area rug.

She blinked. “Wait. What?”

“Rainbow Berkowicz.” He yawned. “She’s trying to collect on a loan that doesn’t exist by threatening Carson with foreclosure if he doesn’t make some kind of phony balloon payment.”

Forgetting where she was, Sammy sat up swiftly. Well, she tried. She smacked her forehead on the underside of the coffee table.

“Ow! Run that by me again?”

25

“Where are we going?” Ryan demanded, jumping into the passenger seat of Sammy’s SUV when she revved the engine. “I told you, I have Rainbow right where I want her.”

“You’d like to think that,” she said tersely. “But you don’t. Buckle up.”

She was mad. So mad she could feel her face heating up to 9,000 degrees. The diabolical underhandedness was unfathomable. “What exactly did Carson tell you when he called?” she asked, throwing the vehicle into reverse.