Meet Me Under The Mistletoe (O'Rourke Family 5) Read Online Free Page A

so it must be the idea of marrying again that had him feeling grief or guilt or another of the thousand emotions a widower must feel.
    Not that it mattered. She just wanted to help Jeremy.
    Right?
    But as Shannon gathered up the crumpled napkins and put the dirty glasses in the sink, she couldn’t shake the melancholy that had overtaken her. It was painfully obvious she was attracted to old-fashioned men, no matter what she’d told herself about wanting a modern guy with modern attitudes. And Alex McKenzie made her nerve endings stand at attention more than any man she’d met in recent memory.
    It doesn’t matter one way or the other, she told herself. Men usually were drawn to the same kind of woman, and from the little she’d learned about Alex’s dead wife, she wasn’t the least bit like her.
    “I’m going back to work,” Shannon told Kane a few days later. Her brother and his wife, Beth, had come to theirmother’s house for a visit and she’d joined them, more on edge than ever. Not that seeing her brother had helped. Kane’s blissfully happy marriage was another reminder of how alone she felt.
    “I don’t think so.”
    “Kane, I want—”
    “You’ve been stressed out, you need to relax,” Kane interrupted. He finished diapering his daughter and lifted the baby to his shoulder. Robin looked even tinier against his broad chest, and something inside Shannon ached with renewed force. It was yet another reminder of everything she wanted, and couldn’t seem to get.
    “I’m fine.”
    “You can’t spend your entire life working,” Kane pointed out. His advice would have sounded reasonable except that before he’d gotten married he used to work more hours than she’d ever thought of putting into the company.
    Shannon’s mother patted her arm. “That’s right, darlin’.” Her Irish accent lilted, never quite lost despite the years she’d spent away from her native land.
    “I’m fine. It’s being on a forced vacation that’s driving me crazy.”
    That, and thinking about the McKenzies.
    She’d realized that Alex’s bedroom was on the other side of the wall from hers, and that knowledge was keeping her awake nights. The walls were too well insulated to hear his bed creak, but she heard other faint sounds and couldn’t help wondering about certain things.
    Innocent things.
    Such as…did he sleep nude at night?
    Yeah, that was innocent.
    Perfectly innocent.
    It had been awhile since she’d thought about a man that way. Her last relationship had turned into such a disaster that she’d become frozen. Now she was thawing, and it was just her luck that a guaranteed heartbreak was the reason.
    “You’re still on vacation,” Kane said calmly. He rubbed the baby’s back and smiled at Shannon’s frustrated expression.
    “You can’t be so arbitrary just because I’m your sister.”
    “I’d do the same for any executive with signs of burn-out. You’re still getting paid, so what’s the big deal?”
    “I am not burned-out.”
    “Then what’s wrong?”
    Shannon swallowed.
    After their father had died, she’d decided she would be the tough one, the one who teased and laughed and smiled when she didn’t feel like smiling. If she had trouble at school, she braved things out. If her heart got broken, she turned it into a joke—just so long as nobody found her crying in bed and upsetting her family. Over the years she’d perfected a breezy veneer that made everyone think she was impervious to the usual hurts and disappointments. She was an expert on putting on a good face; now was the time to prove it.
    “Nothing is wrong,” Shannon said, waving her hand. “It’s the holiday season and people slack off. I must have gone overboard trying to keep my staff geared up for any problems that might happen.”
    Kane nodded, his gaze searching her face. He didn’t seem entirely convinced, though he appeared less concerned than before. “All right. But I promised everyone they’d have another