Page 10 of The Christmas Competition

So, he definitely knew about my entry. I’d bet it had given him the idea for sabotage. Yes, sure enough, I found a photo of his entry on the page, posted a few hours after mine.

“Right!” I said, pressing my lips together as I got to my feet, marched to the front door, and pulled on my shoes. Not bothering with a coat, I yanked the door open, then realized that I was wearing odd shoes. “Who cares,” I muttered, and stomped out into the frigid night air. My breath puffed into clouds of angry condensation as I strode across the road, up his drive, and hammered on his front door with my fist.

When he didn’t immediately answer, heat flushed through my body. I bent to open the letter box and yell through it, “Don’t pretend that you can’t hear me, Kerr Murdoch!”

Footsteps sounded and some movement became apparent behind the small glass window in the door. It rushed open with a blast of warm air and then he was standing there, wearing a fitted black T-shirt that hugged his biceps and a pair of soft-​looking black and gray checked fleecy trousers. No socks. Why did his bare feet look sexy? Oh my God, woman. Pull yourself together.

I opened my mouth but the sound died in my throat because he was looking at me darkly, lips parted, as he raked his gaze down my figure and back up again. I couldn’t tell if he was taken aback by my odd shoes or wanted to murder me, or both. Even so, something about the look in his hooded, broody eyes, framed by the dark knit of his brow, made something flicker in my chest.

I tossed my hair over my shoulder in an effort to get my mojo back and his dark eyes widened, his throat bobbing. “What can I do for you, Nisa?” he asked, his voice even deeper than usual. And kind of scratchy. Perhaps he was coming down with a cold.

I took a brave step forward, pressing my index finger right in the middle of his chest for emphasis. His chest seemed to push back, making my finger tingle. I couldn’t help but notice the definition of his muscles.

Oh my goodness, why was he so solid? Was he wearing armor under there? The press of my finger stretched the material of his black tee tighter across his chest, accentuating the line of his pecs, and my eyes about stood out on stalks as I dropped my hand like I’d been burned.

“What can you do for me? I’ll tell you what you can do for me! You can—” I paused, unable for a moment to remember what I’d been about to say because the press of my finger to his chest had made his eyes change again. Like they were even darker than a moment before. Which was kind of impossible because Kerr had such dark, liquid-​brown irises that they were nearly as black as his pupils anyway. Though now that I thought about it, up close they did have some lighter, pretty flecks of coffee color at the center . . .

Stop thinking about how nice his eyes are!

I cleared my throat, acutely aware that I was losing face. “What you can do for me, Dr. Murdoch, is to stop sabotaging my entry to the Christmas lights competition with this pathetic display of one-​upmanship!”

He blinked hard and the unreadable look in his eyes was gone, replaced instead by a furrowed brow. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said in that annoyingly smooth, deep voice.

I dared a step closer, then regretted it when a lungful of his scent hit me. People who were my archnemesis had no business smelling that good. What even was that? Patchouli? I wasn’t even sure I knew what that was, but it seemed very Kerr.

Great. Now I was daydreaming about his scent as well as his eyes.

“What I’m talking about is that you came home earlier, saw my Christmas lights and then my entry into the competition on the town social media page, and decided to thwart my efforts by going back out again and buying your own lights in order to stop me from winning!”

His eyes widened. No doubt because he knew I’d got him.

He shook his head, gripping the doorframe with one hand and leaning forward. I fought, and failed, to keep my eyes off the flex of his biceps. “I did not go back out again to get the lights. They were already in my car boot because I bought them on the way back home from the animal shelter.”

I couldn’t stop myself from moving farther in too, but it was definitely to intimidate him and not to get an extra lungful of his scent. It resulted in us practically being nose to nose. “I don’t believe you.”

His jaw twitched. “You saw me opening my boot to get the boxes out, when you were standing there spying on me.”

I sucked in a breath. “How dare you! I do not spy on you.” Except for just now when I was spying on you through my living room window. “And anyway, I only saw you open the boot, not get anything out.”

Kerr’s eyes narrowed, then his gaze skated down to my mouth and he swallowed hard before abruptly shifting his eyes back up and straightening, taking himself away from our close proximity. “I got them out after you’d gone inside, and then I put them up. I had no idea you were planning to decorate too until I got home. And by then I’d already bought them.”

“Oh yeah?” I said, taking a step back onto the driveway and pointing up at his windowsills. “So how do you explain the fact that you copied my lights? Hmm?”

He took a step forward, then clearly thought better of coming out onto the frosty path in his bare feet. “It’s a coincidence, Nisa.” He shrugged. “We just have the same taste in Christmas lights.” A small smile seemed to tempt the corner of his mouth.

My blood simmered over, sending a hot wave rushing through my veins. “Oh I very greatly doubt that we have the same taste in anything, you cat murderer.”

There was a beat of silence where his expression turned as frosty as the street, killing off any remnant of that smile. “Not this again, Nisa.”

I clenched my fist at my side. “Not this again? Are you belittling the fact that you tried to murder my cat?”

Kerr pinched the bridge of his nose. “I’ve told you countless times, it wasn’t me who ran over Izzy.”

“And I’m supposed to believe that? After you’d made very thinly veiled threats toward her only the day before?”

He let out a sigh. “I didn’t threaten her. I merely asked that you try to train her to poop in your own garden instead of Aileen’s flower bed. And anyway, it wasn’t even me who—”

I shifted closer again, but Kerr stood his ground. “Don’t give me that. You also said that you were going to poison said flower bed to stop her going in there.”