Page 115 of Mistletoe All the Way

“Yes, yes I am,” she says with a smoky purr in her voice that winds me up even more.

Everything she does gets me going.

I peel down her pants and run a hand across her ass, groaning as I palm her soft flesh. She shudders and that and her little trembles and sighs are kerosene on the fire burning inside me.

After I fish out a condom and roll it on, I do something I never expected I’d do.

I slide inside the woman I want in a Christmas market of all places. But the location of this stolen moment isn’t the unexpected part. Nor are her moans, her trembles, or her soft, sexy sounds as I fill her. The part that shocks me the most, as I rock my hips against her beautiful body, as I tell her to hold on tight, is that I’m beginning to enjoy Christmas more than I ever expected.

Thanks to her.

Well, it doesn’t hurt that I’m simply having a wonderful Christmastime inside Eloise.

37 THE WHOLE THING

Noah

Name one good thing about keeping the final challenge secret till tomorrow morning?”

With gravel still in my voice, I pose the question to Eloise mere seconds after Rusty and I wake up beside her early in the morning, the sun peeking through the windows, my dog thumping his tail against the covers.

Stretching in bed, eyes still closed, she murmurs, “We don’t have to plan for Mr. Holiday.”

“Exactly.”

“We can spend the day doing nothing.”

I blink like there’s no way I can handle that, but then I tug her close, sniffing her hair. “First time for everything.”

After I walk Rusty as the sun rises and feed Alexander, who seems to tolerate the dog well enough judging by how he ignores him, I slide back into bed with Eloise and spend some of the morning doing my favorite things. Feeding her and fucking her.

As the clock ticks past nine thirty, a nagging worry digs into my chest though. We’re getting dressed, post-shower, ready to waste the day away, but as I pull on a shirt, I say, “I still need to figure out what’s up with my cousin.”

Eloise loops her hair into a messy bun, a line digging into her forehead as she stops in the doorway of the bedroom. “Your grandfather won’t believe you if you just tell him where we saw him? The pictures in the barn? The tack shop? The permits office?”

I sigh, shaking my head. “He’s not me. He’d assume the best, laugh it off, and offer me a hot cocoa.”

She seems to give that some thought as she buttons up a forest-green cardigan. “We could do some digging around city hall today if you want?”

“We could,” I say, dragging a hand across my beard. I lean against the wall in her bedroom next to a shelf of books. The history of musicals, a couple books about art heists, and then paperbacks in pink, red, and soft blue with titles like Someone Else’s Ring, Anything for You, and Happy-Ish. But there aren’t any answers on the shelf.

I turn back to Eloise, trying to find a solution in her eyes.

Then it hits me—Mr. Holiday.

She pitched me on the Mr. Holiday contest for a chance to prove she’s right for a job. And yes, I want to win for her. For the chance it could give her. But winning the contest isn’t enough to prove I’m the man to run the farm.

Beating my cousin isn’t the only way either.

The better way is to do what she did—the work.

Grabbing my phone, I click on the farm’s online schedule, then meet Eloise’s eyes. “Have you ever driven a sleigh?”

“You’re a natural,” I tell her at the end of the day as she hangs up the reins on a hook in the barn.

“I’ll be sure to add sleigh driver to my résumé.”

“And I have the pics to prove it,” I say, waggling my phone, since I snagged a few shots of her in the driver’s seat as Pepper pulled Trish and Rudy for their annual sleigh ride, and the ladies cheered on Eloise.