Christmas in Lucky Harbor Read online

  “You, Sandy Jansen,” she told her reflection. “Are a sucker.”

  The biggest. And she had a broken heart to prove it. With a sigh, she reached around behind her to unzip the Santa costume, but the zipper wouldn’t budge. She tried again. And then again. “Really?” she said to the room in general, most specifically to her karma. “Are you kidding me?”

  Karma wasn’t listening. The zipper was stuck.

  “Dammit,” she said, and tried again to no avail. “Well, isn’t this just perfect.” With an eye roll, she snatched up her purse and her keys and headed out into the night, hoping a neighbor was still up. But if anyone so much as smiled at this I Love Lucy predicament, Sandy was going to smack them. “Christmas,” she muttered, but it wasn’t annoyance she felt so much as bone-deep sadness. Her family was back East. She didn’t have a date, and she felt… alone. It was a feeling that someone who’d grown up as the nerd, the bookworm in a family of charismatic, outgoing people, should be familiar with by now. Shaking her head at herself, she hurried out to her car, her heels clicking on the asphalt, and she realized how she must look in the Santa costume—with her heels.

  Santa in drag…

  Good thing she was all alone. Except she wasn’t.

  The lot was empty but for her rundown Toyota and another car, a convertible BMW.

  And leaning against her car as if he belonged there was the cool, sophisticated, gorgeous Logan Perrish, as if she’d conjured him out of her nightly fantasies. Except in her nightly fantasies, he returned her rambling but heartfelt e-mails…

  Clearly she was hallucinating. Because no way would karma be so cruel as to stick her in the Santa costume and then produce the man who’d crushed her.

  “Sandy?”

  At the low, almost unbearably familiar voice that she’d expected to never hear again, she dropped her keys. To give herself a desperately needed moment, she bent over, and her hat and wig fell off. What were the chances he’d believe she really was Santa?

  “Sandy.”

  Dammit! Oh, how she wished she could turn back time. Because then, when she’d gotten that sexy “hey, babe” voice mail message a few days after he’d left, she wouldn’t have then poured her heart out to him via e-mail.

  To which he’d never responded…

  She scooped up both the hat and the keys and hugged them to her padded belly as she straightened and shook her head wildly. Nope, not Sandy. No Sandy here—

  “It is. It’s you,” he murmured, and then laughed.

  Which settled it. He’d hurt her and laughed at her. She tended toward a mild-mannered and easygoing temperament, but this was too much for her. She was going to have to kill him.

  Chapter 2

  Logan pushed off of Sandy’s car and shook his head. He couldn’t believe it when, through the mist of the frosty night, came a very short, round Santa, wobbling through the lot toward Sandy’s car.

  In four-inch FMPs.

  It hadn’t been until Santa dropped the hat and wig that he realized he recognized that wavy mass of dark hair. Choking out a laugh, he took a step toward her. His smiled faded when she just stared at him. Her baby blues, usually so soft and warm, were putting out a chill to rival the December night air.

  Not exactly the welcome he’d envisioned. And he had envisioned. His fantasies had involved her throwing herself at him, and shortly thereafter divesting them both of all clothing.

  “Hey,” he said. “You okay?”

  “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  Hmm. That didn’t sound like she was gearing up to throw herself at him at all, much less anything indecent after that. Logan looked at her thoughtfully, rubbing his jaw. In his world, decisions were made in split seconds. Sandy had always made him want to slow down and enjoy. Take his time… It was to his shame that he hadn’t realized how much she meant to him until he left Lucky Harbor.

  He was going to have to leave again, but not until he’d made her his. Which apparently wasn’t going to be as easy as he’d thought. He took another step toward her, but her hand came up, eyes flashing, and she pointed at him. “No. Do not touch me.”

  They’d spent a week together, during which she’d spent a fair amount of time begging him to touch her. He’d loved touching her. In fact, he’d spent seven long nights doing just that… every inch.

  Logan wasn’t unsure of much. Of anything, really, not that he could think of. Things tended to go his way. Sure, there’d been a failure or two along the way, and disappointments, even heartbreak.

  But mostly things fell right into his lap. His mom had always told him it was because he was the last of seven kids, born early. He’d been in a rush to get ahead of the pack from the get-go, and that had never changed. Which is what made the sweet, warm Sandy Jansen so confusing. He’d wanted her, he’d had her, and that should have been the end of the story.

  Except that after their one-week, holy-shit-hot affair, he’d left Lucky Harbor, gone back to the racing world, and then proceeded to do nothing but think of her. He’d called her. What had he said? Hell, he couldn’t remember. Probably just “hey,” but she hadn’t returned the call. He’d had his manager send a round-trip ticket to his next race, but she hadn’t shown up.

  He could admit, he’d been surprised. Disconcerted.

  And utterly bewildered.

  People called him back. Women called him back. He’d busied himself with his season, telling himself it didn’t matter. There were other women, lots of them.

  But not a single one had attracted him. It’d been five months since he’d seen or heard from Sandy, and he should have been over it, but he wasn’t. So he’d come to see why…

  Sexy Claus was tugging at something behind her, and swearing the air blue. “Goddamn, stupid, shitty, crappy, piece-of-shit zipper…”

  “Do you kiss Mrs. Claus with that mouth?” he teased.

  She stopped wriggling and narrowed her eyes at him.

  Okay, so she wasn’t amused. He’d figured they’d be naked by now, sweaty and working their way toward round two.

  And three…

  “Need help?” he asked.

  “Not from you.”

  There was no one else in the parking lot. Across the street was the diner and the pier, and that lot was full. There was a group of Christmas carolers standing outside the diner, doing a rowdy rendition of “Jingle Bells.”

  Sandy yanked off the wire-rimmed glasses and began to look more like herself. Well, except for that red suit, which was making her look wider than she was tall.

  “And what are you even doing here?” she asked, but then, without waiting for an answer, she reached past him and unlocked her door, tossing in her purse, the Santa hat, and the wig. She tried to slide in behind the wheel, but she wouldn’t fit with her padded belly. “Cheese and rice!” she burst out, and with a deep sigh, dropped her head to the roof of her car and thunked it a few times.

  “You’re going to rattle something loose,” Logan said.

  She turned only her head and gave him an eat-shit-and-die look. “It’s been five months, Logan.”

  Right to the heart. That was Sandy. She knew no other way. Out of all the women he’d known—and there’d been quite a few—she was the most open, the most direct. The most hardheaded. It was a huge part of the attraction for him, how she kept her own mind and didn’t take any shit from him. He dropped the smile and got serious. “I told you I’d be back.”

  “Someday. You said you’d be back someday. You tell all the women that!”

  Well, he’d meant it when he’d said it. Okay, so maybe he hadn’t. Maybe it had been a line, but he’d changed. From the moment he’d left her, he’d changed. Not that she wanted to hear that from him right now. “It was a busy season, and I couldn’t get away. If you’d have come to see me, this would have been a lot easier.”

  “I didn’t want to be that girl.”

  “What girl?”

  She sighed. “The one who e-mails you her entire heart and then chases you around th