Have Yourself a Naughty Little Santa Read Online Free Page B

was a physician’s assistant at the Urgent Care. His sister Jasmine taught at St. Anne’s, the small Catholic school in town. Her fraternal twin, Ezzy, owned and ran Esmeralda’s B&B, a high-end inn. If there was no town, there were no jobs, and then no family. No way!
    “Not the town per se,” he replied. “The way I hear it, a fat developer has made an offer to the town counsel to buy up a chunk of the property. They want to redevelop the area into another casino resort.”
    “Would that be bad?”
    “It would for those who love Evergreen the way it is. Bring in the casinos and resorts and we go commercial. We’d have to start locking our doors, Denny, and there’s no fun in that.”
    Denny nodded. As Ricco smiled and turned back to look at the road ahead, he was nearly run off the road by a swerving, out-of-control SUV. It slid past him; in his big side mirror he watched it dive-bomb into a snowbank, then farther down the steep embankment that ran along this part of the road.
    “Did you see that?” Denny asked, craning around to look behind them.
    Ricco nodded his head and started to slow down to maneuver the plow around. “Yeah, some crazy-ass urbanite who can’t read a road sign.”

Four
    K IM WAS FEELING PRETTY SMUG . S HE MIGHT NOT HAVE the face of a Victoria’s Secret model, but she had the tits, and then some. Cleavage and her room key had gone a long way toward getting an SUV with chains and directions out of town. She’d been more than lucky to not come across any of the large plows haunting 80—not until she’d blown past the Road Closed sign leading to Evergreen. The plow wasn’t going to chase her, though, and by the time they called CHP she’d be checked into her room at the B&B. She smiled, and when she readjusted her booted foot to the stiff accelerator pedal, it stuck. She punched it to unstick it, but instead she fish-tailed, then overcompensated. She screamed and went rigid, trying desperately to maneuver the steering wheel to right her fishtailing car. Her actions had the opposite effect, however; panic and dread seized her, and instead of pumping the brakes, she mistakenly hit the accelerator, losing complete control of her rental. The last thing she saw was the big steel snowplow barreling straight for her. Her life flashed before her, and her heart twisted as the last person she saw was Gran’s sweet, smiling face. Then. Blackness.
    • • •
    S HE WAS COLD . H ER HEAD HURT AND SHE HEARD A VOICE. A low, smooth voice calling to her to be still, to breathe slow and easy, and not to be afraid. Why was he telling her that? Kim groaned and raised her hand to her head. “No, no, precia , stay still,” the deep voice soothed.
    A sudden warmth filled her belly. That voice. She turned her head from where it rested on something hard. The steering wheel? Was she in her car? Her eyelids fluttered open; slowly she focused. Two deep, espresso-brown eyes with a hint of green striations in the irises stared back. The edges crinkled from what she knew must be a smile. Prince Charming had come to rescue her?
    “Hello, Cinderella,” he softly said; his warm breath frosted in the air between them. She just wanted to melt into his strong arms and let him carry her away, anywhere but the cold tangled mess that was…Kim squinted, then closed her eyes. Where was she?
    “Your car went off the road. You’re lucky we saw you, or you’d be an ice cube before long.”
    Slowly she opened her eyes. “Wha—?” She couldn’t speak. Her face suddenly felt stiff and frozen.
    “Stay still. You hit your head pretty hard. Your air bag failed to deploy. Let’s make sure everything is still working, starting with your toes. Wiggle them.”
    It took her a minute to get her brain to obey the command, but it did. She wiggled her cold toes in her fleece-lined Uggs. “’K, they wiggled,” she said.
    He leaned across her. Gently but firmly, he slid his hand up from her ankle to her knee, softly plying