Married to Krampus - Marina Simcoe Page 0,48

of hits.

Yanking out the towel stuffed into a pocket on the dummy, the Colonel wiped the sweat from his face and neck. As he turned, he saw me.

“Daisy?” He walked over to me, and I suddenly forgot how to breathe.

Up close, his presence was even more overwhelming, overloading all my senses. His hot, intoxicating scent wrapped around me like a caress. The sight of him—tall, broad, and strong—filled my vision. The fur on his belly was much shorter than on his arms and chest, making his granite abs appear as if they were covered in fine velvet.

I clenched my hands into fists at my sides, fighting the intense desire to reach out and stroke him.

“...something happened?”

I realized suddenly that the Colonel was talking to me while I ogled the hell out of him.

“Sorry...” I blinked, trying to remember what I came here for.

“Are you okay?” he asked with concern, making me feel dumb.

The tell-all blush instantly heated my cheeks.

“No... I mean yes. I’m fine.” I tore my gaze from his hips and abs with an effort, focusing it on the room behind him instead. “Sorry...um, Lievoa is here.”

“Lievoa? She never got back to me.” He tossed the towel back to the dummy.

“She forgot.” My gaze returned to him again, drawn to his body like a magnet. I stared at his wide chest covered in gray, wavy fur. “She has the time to take me shopping right now.”

“When will you be back?” He stepped closer. So close, the heat radiating from him brushed against my bare arms.

“Later this afternoon.” I knew I should take a step back, to keep the distance, but I stayed, stealing another moment of being this intimately close to him.

“Will she feed you lunch, then?” he asked as if I were a kid going to someone’s house for a playdate.

I couldn’t hold back a smile at the comparison.

“We’ll eat at the mall.”

“Omni,” the Colonel tossed over his shoulder to a drone hovering nearby. “Do you have a credit bracelet for Daisy?”

Another drone silently floated down the stairs with a wide, golden bangle grasped in one of its pincers.

“Buy whatever you want.” The Colonel clipped the bangle around my left wrist, letting his fingers linger on my arm for a few moments. “And be careful out there.”

“Thank you.”

“Take your tablet with you, call me right away if you need any help.”

I nodded with a warm feeling of gratitude spreading through me. It felt awfully nice to have someone like the Colonel just a call away, ready to rush to me if I needed help.

“YOU ABSOLUTELY SHOULD get this!” Lievoa straightened out the voluminous skirt of the chiffon cocktail dress I was trying on in her shop. “This pale-green color goes so well with your hair.”

“I’ve already spent a lot of the Colonel’s money,” I argued.

We’d shopped for over an hour in the spice market, talking to dozens of vendors. Each of them had some advice for the Earth girl who was into baking. I had taken a lot of notes and bought a bunch of stuff that we’d sent to Lievoa’s aircraft by mall drones.

“Why do you call him the Colonel?” she asked, unexpectedly. “Close family members normally refer to each other by their first names. And husband and wife are as close as it gets.”

“Oh. It’s...um, it’s an Earth thing,” I said quickly, frantically searching for another topic. “Can I see that scarf, please?”

Lievoa’s dress shop turned out to be a huge, multi-level store, with drones in every corner and live shopping assistants on every floor. Lievoa had talked me into trying on a few dresses. I couldn’t say no. The clothes were gorgeous, and I’d always loved playing dress-up. I’d had no intention of buying any, though.

“This one?” She tied a gold scarf around my head in leu of a headband. “It’s perfect! You have to get it, too. I’ll give you a family discount, of course, and don’t worry about spending Grevar’s money. What did he say when he gave you this credit bracelet?”

“Buy whatever you want.”

“See?” She shrugged casually. “This is a woman’s bangle, he obviously had it made specifically for you. It’s every man’s dream to have a wife he can dote on. Grevar will be glad you had fun and found something you liked. Just say ‘thank you’ to him when you wear your new clothes for the first time. It will make him happy.”

Except that I wasn’t the Colonel’s wife. Not in the true sense of that word. My parenting course