Christmas at Holiday House - RaeAnne Thayne Page 0,10

she couldn’t help but smile at their cheerful, eager faces.

Of all the positions she’d held, paid or otherwise, since leaving college, this was by far her favorite. This was her second year teaching English in Thailand, which was definitely a record for her.

“Good morning,” she said. “Until class starts, your vocabulary is on the board. I want you to have a conversation with a partner using all the words listed there. We have fifteen minutes. Go.”

She walked through the classroom, correcting pronunciation and verb conjugation while her mind was busy thinking about what was happening right now at Holiday House.

Abby really had saved the day for her. While it would have been possible for Lucy to find a substitute to finish her classes until her Christmas break, it wouldn’t have reflected well on her. She liked this job and wanted to at least finish the school term in March, after she went home for the holidays.

A sudden longing for Silver Bells hit her hard, probably because she had been on the phone so much to her family and to Abby, who was now there. She could picture the town now, the picturesque downtown, the soaring mountains, the stately Victorian homes.

And José.

Her heartbeat quickened a little at the thought of him.

She had numerous pictures of José Navarro on her phone but did her best not to look at them obsessively every day. She didn’t need to look, anyway. She could picture him perfectly. The high cheekbones, his wavy dark hair that he sometimes let get a little too long, the thick-lashed brown eyes that could sparkle with laughter one moment and just as quickly become intense and passionate.

He had been Ethan’s good friend and trusted executive at Lancaster Hotels for years. She had been friends with him, too, but more casually, until about five years ago, when he was traveling for Ethan more as a troubleshooter and location scout.

Whenever he was anywhere close to where Lucy was working, they would meet up and spend a few days sightseeing.

It started when she was working with refugees in Albania. He had been traveling to a Lancaster property in nearby Greece, so it was a relatively easy thing for the two of them to meet up and travel the countryside for a few days.

After that, they began to email or message each other frequently until she now considered José among her closest friends and her strongest single connection to home outside of Winnie and Ethan.

Or at least he had been among her closest friends.

She thought it was only friendship. That’s what she had been telling herself, anyway. In retrospect, she could see she had been fooling herself, ignoring the growing attraction that seethed just under the surface of their friendship.

Three months ago, everything between them had changed.

José hadn’t traveled much for Ethan since his father died a few years earlier, but had made an exception to check on one of the company’s newest hotels, in the resort area of Koh Samui on the stunningly beautiful Gulf of Thailand.

Because it was a quick plane ride from her teaching gig, she had flown down to meet him and they had spent three days together after his business was done. They had snorkeled, hiked, even visited a secret Buddha garden hidden away in a jungle containing dozens of statues.

They had laughed together, talked together, shared dreams. And finally on their last night, José had walked her to her villa and shocked her by kissing her.

It was a kiss unlike anything she had ever known before and had rocked her to her soul.

Even now as she walked among her first-year students, listening to their sweet voices, when she closed her eyes she was immediately back in those lush tropical grounds at the Lancaster Koh Samui. She could smell the flowering jasmine, almost taste the sea air.

José had drawn away, those beautiful eyes blazing with emotions she wasn’t ready to see.

“I have feelings for you, Lucy. You have to know that. I love being your friend, but I want more.”

She should have smiled politely, wished him good-night and slipped into her villa. That’s what she would have done with every other man who might have expressed any serious kind of feelings for her. She couldn’t. Not with José.

She might have been a little bit tipsy. That still didn’t explain how she had wrapped her arms around him and kissed him, her body tight to his, aching inside for more. “Why did you wait until the last night to tell