Christmas Star (Contemporary, Romance) Read Online Free

home?”
    Starr shook droplets of water from her hair. “Give me a minute to change clothes and unwind. It’s time for another heart-to-heart with my little charmer, and I need to rehearse my speech.”
    The portly Englishman nodded. “Mrs. Blevins remarked last night that you deserve sainthood, taking on that pistol.”
    Starr stepped into the vacant elevator and laughed. “SeLi does keep me on my toes.” As she pushed the third-floor button, her attention was drawn to a man hurrying toward the glass door.
    She stared at his black cowboy hat, then let her gaze roam down his lean body to a pair of highly polished, square-toed black boots. For no explainable reason, her pulse quickened. She was vaguely disappointed when the elevator door slid shut, blocking him from view.
    It was the dark hair curled slightly over the collar of his black leather sports coat, she decided. She was a sucker for men with that slightly disheveled look. Did the stranger also have a mustache? She wasn’t positive about that, but for sure the part of his face not shadowed by the hat was tanned a healthy bronze. She envied him the tan. All she’d seen in San Francisco for weeks now was fog and rain.
    Her reverie ended when the elevator bumped to a stop. It wasn’t like her to get carried away about a man—a cowboy yet. But cowboy-types were oddities in the city. Idle curiosity—that was all it’d been. Even so, as she dug out her key, Starr wasted a moment wondering why he was here. Just needed directions? Or was he visiting someone in the building?
    Or maybe, she mused, letting herself into the apartment, he was a millionaire come to rent the penthouse. As far as she knew, it was the only vacancy in the building. A damned expensive place, too.
    As she hung her coat to dry, her more immediate problems edged out her speculations about a man she never expected to see again. Proceeding into the bedroom, she kicked off her shoes, removed her suit and unbuttoned her blouse. Pausing, she mulled over how best to start the discussion with her daughter.
    Starr had thought SeLi understood that she no longer needed to steal. Recently, though, she’d had to let SeLi know she couldn’t have everything her heart desired. But why on earth would she take another girl’s purse when she had two of her own?
    Someone pounded on Starr’s door. Standing there in her slip, she suffered a moment’s panic at the thought of company catching her half-undressed. Then, just as quickly, she relaxed. SeLi was forever losing or misplacing her keys.
    The hammering grew louder.
    “All right, hold your horses, young lady!” Starr yelled. “I’m coming.” She snatched her silk robe off a hook and raced toward the door. Lord, where had the time gone? She wasn’t half-prepared. SeLi had a way of closing out the world when she didn’t want to talk, and Starr wasn’t looking forward to weaving her way through the girl’s defenses.
    Out of breath, one arm still groping for a sleeve, Starr muttered a few impatient words as she yanked open the door. An unfinished epithet died, a small “Oh” on her lips, to escape a moment later in a soundless scream as the dark-haired stranger she’d glimpsed downstairs pushed his way in and slammed the door.
    “Who are you? What do you want?”
    She scrambled into her robe, her hands shaking. In all her life no one had ever looked at her with such loathing. Stunned, she somehow found the courage to take command. One hand clutching the robe over her breasts, she pointed the other imperiously toward the door.
    “Get out,” she ordered, her voice not quite as strong as she’d like. “Leave this instant or I’ll call the police.”
    One corner of his mouth lifted in a smirk.
    Starr made a dash for the phone in her living room.
    For an unbridled moment Barclay McLeod savored the full beauty of the woman he’d come to buy out of his brother’s life. That she was even more exquisite up close than she’d been at a distance didn’t