All I Want For Christmas Is You - Penelope Ward Page 0,60

allow my eyes to slide down the length of his body like I wanted to.

But, it was inevitable.

The man was hot as fuck.

He was tall, way taller—by at least a foot—than my five-foot-three. He was bigger around, too.

Where I had curves, he had lean hardness.

Where I had fat, he had nothing but muscle.

And the uniform he was wearing only added to his sexiness.

I had a thing for cops.

I’d dated three in my life.

None seriously or anything. A couple of months each.

But none of them had been as drop-dead gorgeous as the man currently grinning at me.

He moved forward, pressing his body close to mine, and then stepped onto the toilet paper with his booted foot.

His big, booted foot.

Like, way bigger than my size sevens.

Just as quickly as his body touched mine, he was away from me, and the toilet paper was no longer clinging to my foot.

He’d taken a step back, closer to the counter, when a screaming man hustled into the room.

And his eyes were aimed on Brielle.

“You bitch!” the man yelled, shoulder-checking me on the way to get into Brielle’s face.

Brielle flinched and backed away, her back hitting the counter where she’d been standing next to me watching me struggle.

Before the man could get into Brielle’s face, however, Saint had him by the arm and he was hauling him backward.

The barista behind the counter, a young man in his early twenties who’d grudgingly served Brielle despite her nastiness to him, watched in interest.

The only two other people in the room, a mother and daughter, stood up from their table.

“Whoa,” Saint said as he took hold of the man’s arm and pushed him backward so that he wasn’t crowding either Brielle or me too closely.

“Get the fuck out of my face, moron,” Brielle snapped. “Why are you even here?”

“Why am I here?” he growled. “I’m here because you set me up with someone that has goddamn Ebola! Now I’m in quarantine, or supposed to be, for the next three weeks! And if I have to be there, so the fuck do you!”

Saint let go of his arm as if he had, well, Ebola.

“Ladies, gentlemen,” a guy wearing a yellow decontamination suit said. “You’ll have to come with me.”

The man sneered at Brielle. “This is all your fucking fault. Would it have fucking killed you to go out on a date with me? You had to send me on a fake date?”

I had no clue what was going on, but I wasn’t sure that I was going to like it.

• • •

“What do you mean?” I asked, looking at the man in front of me with alarm.

“You’ve been exposed,” the man from the Center for Disease Control, Jace Levine, said.

I looked over at Saint to see him staring at Jace with alarm.

“But it’s Christmas!” the mother with the young daughter said. “We won’t be out of here until Christmas!”

Well, it was December first, actually. But still, she was right.

“I’m sorry, ma’am,” Jace apologized as he looked at her, then at all of us. “But this isn’t really something that I’m able to control. You have to be quarantined to prevent the spread of this virus. And here, we can watch all of you to make sure that you’re doing what you should be doing.”

In all, there were eight of us that were ‘exposed.’

Saint and me, Brielle, the mother and daughter duo, Misha and Tisha. The man that exposed us all, Martin, the barista, Tate, and the security guard that had been guarding the hospital entrance, Darrel.

“You’ll all be put into rooms,” he said. “After today, you will no longer have contact with anybody but your roommate.”

I prayed hard that I wouldn’t be stuck with Brielle. For the love of God, I’d kill her.

“Do we get to keep our electronic devices? Do we get to go home and get our things?” Brielle asked.

“You have what you have on you,” Jace said, “for now. We’ll be bringing you all provisions. Changes of clothes. Toiletries. Things of that nature.”

“What about tampons?” I asked. “I’m gonna need those today.”

Jace looked taken aback for a long moment, then nodded. “Medical supplies as needed, yes. I’ll get you those things today.”

All of this was said from behind his protective equipment.

He was sweating badly, and he looked like he’d rather be anywhere but here.

So did all of us, now that I thought about it.

“Who are we pairing up with?” Tate asked.

“You two.” He pointed at Tate and Darrel. “You two.” He pointed at Misha and Tisha. “You