The Mistletoe Kisser - Lucy Score Page 0,42

experienced an actual one-night stand. Sure, he’d had offers—most memorably Kimara Leigh, a smart, sarcastic prelaw major with a minor in poetry. It had been the minor that scared him off. Well, technically, it had been his fifty questions about where she saw herself in five years and whether she would be comfortable with public school for any future children if she decided to have them that had scared her off.

He couldn’t help it. There were consequences to decisions. Condoms broke. Accidental babies were conceived. Being the practical, responsible guy he was, Ryan had made sure to only sleep with women with whom he felt he could successfully co-parent.

“Look, it’s not a marriage proposal. You make me laugh and you’re still pretty okay-looking even in stupid hats. Plus, you look like you could blow off some steam,” she said, eyeing his crotch.

If she didn’t stop looking at him like that, he would be in danger of forgetting all about the deodorant and llama spit and accidental babies.

“Think about it. Could be fun. I’m great at it, by the way,” she said, stretching her legs out. “It’s probably all the medical school.”

He swore under his breath and shifted in his seat. His hard-on throbbed painfully against the confines of the zipper. He needed to rethink the whole going commando thing. “While I appreciate the offer,” he said through gritted teeth, “if there is a God, I’ll be on a red-eye flight home tonight. Tomorrow at the latest.”

She shrugged. Casually. As if the invitation and his RSVP were of no consequence. He wasn’t sure what was going to explode first—his left eye or his penis.

“Well, if you are still here tonight, the invitation stands,” Sammy told him. “Take the left up there.”

13

If there was a God, Rainbow Berkowicz would be dining on chicken Alfredo. Ryan and his mysterious emergency would become her problem. And Sammy could grab one of Franklin’s amazeballs chicken parm breadstick sandwiches to go and pretend she’d never met Grumpy Ryan Sosa.

She’d offered up a logical win-win with no discernible downside, and he’d acted like she’d asked him to French kiss a rattlesnake. It was hard not to take that personally. Hard not to be supremely embarrassed.

She’d taken the man’s morning wood too seriously, attributing it to him actually being attracted to her, when in all likelihood, it had just been a biological response to someone with a vagina sitting on top of someone with a penis.

So she wasn’t five-foot-ten-inches tall with waist-length blonde hair.

So she wasn’t a dark-eyed beauty who looked like she had secrets that needed unlocking.

And yeah, maybe she was covered with llama spit and smelled like dairy cows. But it wasn’t like she’d insisted that he had to take his pants off right that second on the side of the road.

None of that meant that she wasn’t attractive “in her own way.”

However, he’d still turned her down without even considering the possibility. Ouch.

Villa Harvest was a pretty gold stucco building with fanciful trellis work on the exterior and a Tuscan-inspired patio for warm weather months. Inside, Blue Moon residents ignored carb counts and thoroughly enjoyed memorable dishes and friendly service.

“Can we go in there like this?” Ryan asked, looking down at his stained coat.

She pointed at the front door where two farmers kicked manure off their boots before strolling inside in their overalls and decades-old baseball caps. “I think we’ll be fine,” she said and climbed out of the SUV before he could say anything else. Or before she could punch him for saying anything else.

He jogged to catch up and reached around her to open the door.

“Thanks,” she said, plastering a phony smile on her face.

His eyes narrowed. “What’s wrong?” he demanded as they stepped into the small vestibule. Balmy heat blew down over them from the ceiling.

“Nothing,” she said, reaching for the inner door.

He stopped her with a hand on her shoulder, spinning her around. “That. That right there,” he said, drilling a finger into her shoulder, “is why women end up miserable in relationships.”

“What are you babbling about?” Okay, so she knew exactly what he was talking about.

“Something’s wrong. Some mysterious offense took place in the last five minutes, and when a well-meaning guy asks about it, you tell him, ‘Nothing.’”

“Mysterious offense?” her voice rose. He’d insulted her with a knee-jerk repulsion to her suggestion and then acted like it was a perfectly natural reaction. She was definitely going to punch him.

Fortunately for Ryan’s face, the interior door opened. “Hey, Doc. Hey,