Total pages in book: 60
Estimated words: 59022 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 295(@200wpm)___ 236(@250wpm)___ 197(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 59022 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 295(@200wpm)___ 236(@250wpm)___ 197(@300wpm)
Woah.
The silence between us is heavy. I wasn’t expecting this response—especially from someone like him. True love? This guy—this gorgeous specimen of a man is talking about true love?
I capture his gaze thinking he’s joking.
No. He looks serious as hell.
We’ve gone from the fact he thinks he’s Santa’s descendant to true love talk. In my wildest imagination I’d never believe this would be the direction the conversation would head. This is one of those surreal moments. Maybe I’m being a little judgy, but I’ve never heard a man say anything like this before in my life.
“What’s with that look?” he asks curiously.
I hate that I wear my feelings on my face. I can’t hide anything!
“True love?” I finally say. “What does that have to do with me? This is just a one-night thing.”
Silence again.
And tension.
Major tension that you can cut with a knife. The energy shifts around us into something I don’t even understand as he captures my gaze with his enigmatic one.
“I don’t know what it has to do with you,” he answers quietly, eyes hooded.
I don’t know why, but I hate that answer. And then…
“At least, not yet.”
Boom.
My chest heaves and suddenly I’m nervous. Really nervous and something else… excited. Like the kind of excited when you know something wonderful is going to happen. Or when you’re about to get a gift. Kind of like how you felt as a child on Christmas Eve when you knew you were going to wake up to presents under the tree.
Slow down there, Charlie, I tell myself. You’ve gotten your hopes up before and you were plunged into the icy cold waters of disappointment.
Santa Claus? His descendent? True love?
This feels like a recipe for major disappointment, and maybe a visit with a psychologist.
“So what now?” I ask slowly, once I get a grip on my emotions.
Stetson has the audacity to give me a lazy smile before studying me some more. He looks amused—like my level of disbelief is crazy and everything he just told me is perfectly normal.
“You don’t believe me.”
For a second, I think about lying to him, but since he’s being so honest I might as well.
“No,” I shake my head sadly. “I don’t believe you.”
He folds his arms and watches me closely.
“What proof do you need?”
“Uh… I don’t know… maybe flying reindeer—which conveniently is not a possibility, or I don’t know seeing Santa’s village?” I shake my head at him. “Like a real workshop with elves and things?”
Like this could ever—
“I can’t deliver flying reindeer because as I said earlier, we use jets now.”
What the heck?
“Isn’t that convenient,” I nod like this is the most normal conversation in the world. I seriously still can’t even believe he responded to my flying reindeer comment.
He laughs.
“But I can deliver the village.”
It’s my turn to cock a brow.
“Really?” I lean back in my chair and cross my arms, studying him the way he’s studied me.
“Yes.”
“And where is said village?”
“Not far from here,” his voice has a bit of a challenge.
“Huh.”
“Would you like to see it?”
“Are you serious?”
“Quite.” He replies.
Santa’s village? No way. Now this I’d like to see.
“There’s nothing I’d like more,” I reply with a challenge.
This should be good.
“Then I’ll have Thomas bring your coat and some special gear to wear to prepare,” he says as he pulls out his cell phone and starts typing away.
“It’ll take us an hour to get there,” he tells me. “We’ll helicopter in.”
Of course we will.
“Sounds perfect,” I smile.
He returns my smile, his gaze all hooded and sexy and filled with promises of what’s to come, “oh, it will be.”
In an hour’s time I’ll know if he’s the most beautiful, tortured man I’ve ever met—or he’s honest to God, real life Santa Claus.
At this point, I don’t even know what I’m betting on.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
If I had placed a bet, I would have lost.
I really didn’t believe him.
I didn’t.
Swear on everything I hold dear. I thought this little journey was about appeasing him before sleeping together because that’s all I really thought about on the helicopter ride over.
Sleeping with him.
The incredible need to satiate this voracious appetite he lit needs a healthy fix. The kind of fix I haven’t had for quite some time now as Grace so candidly pointed out to me when I told her I was leaving with him.
“You should totally sleep with him on the helicopter,” she told me in a drunken stupor.
When I found her, she was quite inebriated and surrounded by a few of the hot dwarves or Santa aka Stetson’s helpers on the couch. Devon was off with Jayson meeting the rest of the reindeer, that should be interesting when Devon hears all their names. I can only imagine what the conversation is going to be like when we’re alone together again.
“I don’t think a helicopter can be part of the mile high club?” I pointed out the obvious. “It’s not possible.”