Christmas in Lucky Harbor Read online

  “Excuse me?”

  Kali flipped her cute blond ponytail to the left and then the right, and when she’d satisfied herself that no one was looking or listening, she leaned close and whispered, “He paid me not to tell you.”

  Sandy already knew damn well who “he” was, but she asked anyway. “Who paid you not to tell me what?”

  “Well, not me exactly…” Kali swiveled her chair and pointed to the side counter, which was set up with three large money jars, each for a different charity, the Humane Society, the senior center, and disabled athletes.

  Each was full. Shocked, Sandy moved closer. “Oh my God.” Each jar had been crammed with money.

  “And those aren’t just one-dollar bills, either,” Kali said in an awed whisper. “Those are twenties. He said he’d have done it in hundreds, but the bank wasn’t prepared to give him that many hundreds on such short notice.”

  Sandy’s eyes narrowed as a bad feeling came over her. “He.”

  Kali smiled. “The cutest guy in the history of all cute guys.” From her desk, she pulled out last week’s People magazine and opened it to the Star Tracks page. There was Logan in full color in his racing gear, hot, sweaty, gorgeous… holding up a trophy and giving the grin that never failed to melt her panties.

  Oh, no. No, no, no, no… this was bad. “Logan,” she hissed through her teeth.

  “Yes!” Kali beamed at her. “Got it in one.”

  He was just trying to impress her with the charity jars, she told herself. That was all. And he had more money than God himself, so it wasn’t like he’d done that much.

  Except stay up all night and get the old Buick piece-of-shit towed away.

  Replace it with his BMW.

  Go to the bank and clean them out of twenties.

  And stuff the charity money jars full. “Kali, you have one thing to do today.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Find me a Santa.”

  Sandy was head deep in a mountain of paperwork at noon when sushi was delivered.

  From a little place in Seattle, her favorite.

  She eyed the small card that had come with it. She blew out a breath and opened it.

  Sandy,

  Enjoy.

  Love, Logan.

  Love? He wouldn’t know love if it bit him on his very fine ass. But then again, she admitted with a soft sigh, she wasn’t sure she would know love either. Mostly she preferred books or work over men, not that they were beating down her door.

  All she knew was that Logan was back in town—for how long she had no idea. She couldn’t imagine it would be more than a few days—and she couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep, couldn’t do anything but think of him.

  She eyed the sushi, and her mouth watered. Okay, maybe she could eat, just a little…

  Jax Cullen, town mayor and longtime friend, walked by her office and stopped, brows up. “You went out for sushi and didn’t ask me?”

  Jax was leanly muscled and broad shouldered and… well, gorgeous. They’d almost had a thing once, a very long time ago, but they’d settled for a friendship, a comfortable one. “I didn’t go out,” she said. “This was delivered.”

  “You have a secret admirer?”

  “Not so secret. Logan’s back in town.”

  Jax leaned against the doorway, settling in. “You going to admit to him that you’ve been pouting since he left?”

  “Hell, no,” Sandy said.

  “You going to admit to him that you’ve always wanted to stop being a small-town homebody and travel the world?”

  “Hell, no.”

  Jax shook his head. “Are you going to admit anything?”

  “Would you?”

  Jax smiled at that. “You suggesting I out-stubborn you?”

  “I’m not suggesting,” she said. “I’m flat out saying it.”

  “Yeah.” Jax nodded with a laugh. “Maybe. But I’ve changed my ways, and now I’ve got the woman I want in my bed every night. Change your ways, Sandy. He might surprise you.”

  She wasn’t ready to go there. “Don’t let the door hit you on your very fine ass,” she said.

  He laughed again and left, and Sandy spent the afternoon at her desk, with one ear glued for Kali’s footsteps to come down the hall and tell her that she’d located a Santa replacement.

  “Nothing,” Kali said at the end of the day.

  Sandy put her pen down. “Are you telling me that there’s not one man in this entire county willing to be Santa for the kids of Lucky Harbor?”

  Kali rolled her lips together. “Um. Yes. No. I mean, not exactly.”

  Sandy narrowed her eyes. “Then, what exactly?”

  Kali covered her face. “Okay, so there was something else he paid me to do.” She said “he” like he was the second coming. “He paid me not to find you a Santa.”

  This took a full moment to compute. “So… you didn’t make the calls.”

  Kali bit her lip. “He said—”

  “He who?” she asked, knowing damn well who.

  “Logan. The one in my People magazine.”

  “I know who he is, thank you.”

  “Right.” Kali giggled.

  Sandy worked on not completely losing her ever-loving mind. “So what was it?”

  “What was what?”

  “Why weren’t you supposed to find me a Santa?” Sandy asked with what she felt was remarkable calm, even though she wasn’t calm. Not even close to calm.

  “It’s a secret,” Kali said; then with a softly uttered apology, she whirled and ran off. “See you at the parade in an hour!” she yelled back.

  Sandy turned and stared at the costume in the corner chair. She was wearing her favorite emerald-green wraparound dress, but that was about to change. “Great. I’m going to be merry and fat for Christmas.”

  “I think we can do better than that.”

  With a startled gasp, Sandy whirled to find Logan lounging in her doorway, looking like he didn’t have a care in the world. “Logan.”

  His eyes heated. “You look like a Christmas treat. Good enough to eat.”

  She pointed at him. “No. No charming me, remember?”

  “You said no talking, touching, kissing.” He pushed off the doorjamb and stalked her across the office. “You didn’t say anything about charming.”

  Well, shit. She was in big trouble.

  Chapter 4

  Logan didn’t have to get any closer to Sandy to see that she was stressed, anxious, and exhausted. Poor baby needed some TLC, and he was just the man to give it to her.

  “This isn’t going to work,” Sandy told him, backing away as he advanced. When she nearly tripped over her own office chair, he put his hands on her hips to hold her steady. Surprised to find her quivering beneath his touch, he softened his hold. “Sandy,” he murmured softly while brushing a stray strand of hair from her cheek.

  “You can’t charm me.” She shook her head from side to side. “You can’t.” She fisted her hands in his shirt and glared up at him, her eyes huge and wide. “I don’t have time to be charmed, Logan!”

  “I know.” He ran his hands up and down her arms. “I know.”

  “I don’t know what kind of game you’re playing, but having Kali not get me a Santa… There are kids out there. Kids, Logan, and they came to see Santa. So no matter what the hell you think you’re doing here playing with me, I can’t have it, not now. You’re not what I need right now.”

  “I’m exactly what you need.”

  She stared up at him, then dropped her head to his chest with a little moan. Because he couldn’t help himself, he stroked a hand down her slim back and brushed his cheek along her hair, loving the scent of her, the feel of her against him. “I’ll prove it,” he said.

  “What?” She lifted her head and leveled him with her pretty eyes.

  He slid his fingers into her hair and stroked her cheekbone with his thumb. God, he’d missed the feel of her skin. The way she looked at him. How she challenged him at every tu