Under the Mistletoe (8 page)

“Done,” Nick said without hesitation. “And maybe you weren’t always a part of her life, but you gave her life. A
great
life. And she’s made the most of it. She’s really amazing.”

Chloe sighed again.

Mia didn’t have breath left in her lungs to sigh. Pulling free of Chloe, she walked around the lattice, eyes only on Nick.

Some things take time
, Chloe had said. And that was true. It’d taken her seventeen years to get to meet her birth parents and find this great big family waiting to embrace her.

And six months to give her heart to Nick.

He’d come here for her. He’d picked her.

She walked right up to him and into his arms, which closed hard around her. “Mia,” he breathed into her hair, burying his face in her neck, inhaling deeply. Taking comfort, she realized. It wasn’t something he’d ever done before, actively sought comfort from her. She whispered his name and hugged him to her, aware that everyone had moved off to give them some privacy.

He pulled back enough to shove his hand into his pocket and come out with a small black box.

Her heart stopped. She pulled it open and stared down at the delicate white gold promise ring that was two ribbons woven together leading to a knot lined with tiny sapphires.

Her birthstone.

“It’s after midnight,” he said softly. “Merry Christmas.”

“We weren’t going to give each other a present,” she said just as softly, mirroring his words back to her from a few days ago as she ran a reverent finger over the beautiful ring.

“Then it’s just a present present,” he said, a smile in his voice. “A promise for the future. Our future.”

“Oh Nick,” she breathed, slipping the ring on, so happy she could scarcely contain herself. “I wasn’t sure you wanted a future.”

“I do, very much. I think about my life before you came into it, Mia. It sucked.” He met her gaze. “I need you. I want you to know that. I should have told you sooner, but I thought that made me weak. I was wrong about that. You’re the only thing I care about. You’re the only thing that matters to me. I turned down the job—”

“Nick,” she gasped. “No. You—”

“I took a different one, with the same company. Still restorative justice, but I’ll be staying within the state of New York.”

“But you wanted to travel.”

“Wanted. Past tense. I want to be with you, Mia. You’re it for me. You’re everything.” He paused and let his gaze touch her every feature. “You’re the best choice I ever made. You’re my only choice.”

She pressed her forehead to his, her words brushing against his lips. “I was just thinking the same thing about you.”

New York Times
bestselling author Jill Shalvis lives in a small town in the Sierras full of quirky characters. Any resemblance to the quirky characters in her books is, um, mostly coincidental. Look for Jill’s bestselling, award-winning books wherever romances are sold and visit her website for a complete book list and her daily blog detailing her city-girl-living-in-the-mountains adventures.

You can learn more at:

JillShalvis.com

Twitter @jillshalvis

Facebook.com/jillshalvis

Also by Jill Shalvis

Simply Irresistible

The Sweetest Thing

Heating Up the Kitchen
(cookbook)

Christmas in Lucky Harbor

Small Town Christmas
(anthology)

Head Over Heels

Lucky in Love

At Last

Forever and a Day

Everyone in town thinks Ali Winters is a thief. Her only shot at clearing her name is a police detective who’s as sexy as he is stern…

It Had to Be You

See the next page for a preview.

T
raffic was light, and Ali Winters took in the salty air, the beautiful day while she drove. She loved Lucky Harbor. She loved the warm feeling she got from just driving through town. Things stayed the same here, could be counted on here. She thought maybe it was that which drew her the most: the sense of stability, security, and safety.

Her three S’s…

As she drove, each storefront’s glass windows glinted in the bright sunlight like bursts of fire. At night, she knew strings of white lights would make the place look like something straight off of a postcard.

She parked and headed into the floral shop. The entire time she put in her shift, she worried about how light business was, wishing for the millionth time that Russell wasn’t so stubborn. She really felt like she had something to offer this shop, the very least of which would be a website. But Russell, like his sister Mindy before him, was a technophobe. Hell, even the books were still done by hand.

On her break, Ali used her phone to fill out as many online applications for apartments as she could find. By six o’clock, she was back at the beach house, hoping not to run into Teddy. She didn’t, which was good for his life expectancy. Even better, the front door key still worked.
Bonus.
She had a roof over her head for at least one more night.

In the kitchen, she tossed her keys into the little key bowl she’d set by the back door. Mostly this had been for Teddy, who’d constantly been searching for his keys or wallet. She’d found it endearing that he could run an entire city budget, but he couldn’t find his wallet or keys to save his life.

It didn’t feel so endearing now. Out of curiosity, she poked through the stuff there: a button, some change, and…two ticket stubs, dated a week ago for a show in Seattle.

A show she hadn’t gone to…

She stared down at the stubs, set them down, and walked away. Something else niggled at her as she headed into the master bedroom that she’d shared with Teddy, but she couldn’t place it.

And now that she was thinking about things, she realized that Teddy had been working 24/7 for weeks. And before that, he’d been sick and had slept in a spare bedroom. They hadn’t actually slept together in…she couldn’t even remember.

Which meant that Ali had been very late to her own breakup.

At this, her heart squeezed a little bit. Not in regret. She tried really hard not to do regrets. It wasn’t mourning, either, not for the loss of Teddy. She was just realizing that she’d loved the
idea
of what they’d had—two adults, having an adult relationship—more than the actual reality of it.

Not to mention that apparently it hadn’t been an adult relationship at all since he’d been cheating on her.

Ali stripped down to her panties and bra before it occurred to her what was bothering her—and then she reversed her tracks and ran barefoot back to the large living room.

The house had come fully furnished, but Ted had always made the place his own thanks to the messy, disorganized way he had of leaving everything spread around. Running shoes hastily kicked off by the front door. Suit jacket slung over the back of the couch. Tie hanging askance from a lamp. His laptop, eReader, tablet, smartphone, and other toys had always been plugged into electrical outlets, and when they weren’t, the cords hung lifeless, waiting to be needed.

Not now. Now it was all gone, even his fancy, highfalutin microbrew from the fridge. Everything was gone, including her iPod.

How she’d missed that this morning, she had no idea, but facts were facts—Teddy had moved out on her like a thief in the night.

*  *  *

Lieutenant Detective Luke Hanover had been away from the San Francisco Police Department for exactly four hours of his three-week leave and already he’d lost his edge, walking into his grandma’s Lucky Harbor beach house to find a B&E perp standing in the kitchen.

She sure as hell was the prettiest petty thief he’d ever come across, at least from the back. Wearing nothing but a white lace bra and a tiny scrap of matching white lace panties, she was speaking angrily into a cell phone.

“You have some nerve, you— you
ratfink bastard
,” she snapped, waving her free hand for emphasis, her long, wildly wavy brown hair flying around her head as she moved.

And that wasn’t all that moved. She was a bombshell, all sweet, womanly curves, barely contained in her undies.

“I want you to know,” she went on furiously, still not seeing Luke, “there’s no way in hell I’m accepting your breakup message. You hear me, Teddy? I’m not accepting it because
I’m
breaking up with
you
. And while we’re at it, who even does that? Who breaks up with someone by text? I’ll tell you who, Teddy, a real jerk, that’s who— Hello?
Dammit!
” Pulling the phone from her ear, she stared at the screen and then punched a few keys before whipping it back up to her ear. “Your voice mail cut me off before I finished,” she said. “You having sex in your office while I was in the building? Totally cliché. But not telling me that you weren’t planning to re-sign the lease? That’s just rotten to the core, Teddy. And don’t bother calling me back on this. Oh, wait, that’s right, you don’t call—you
text
!” She punched the Off button on her phone and tossed it to the counter, hands on hips, steam coming out of her ears. Then she thunked her forehead against the refrigerator a few times before going stock-still, her head pressed to the cool steel door.

Had she knocked herself out?
Luke wondered.

“It’s just one bad day,” she whispered, still in the perfect position for him to pat her down for weapons.

Not that she was carrying—well, except for that lethal bod.

“Just one really rotten badass day,” she repeated softly, and Luke had to disagree.

“Not from where I’m standing,” he said.

Find out what happened when Mia Hutchinson

first arrived in Lucky Harbor…

The Sweetest Thing

See the next page for an excerpt.

Chapter 11

“Always tell the truth. It eliminates the need to remember anything.”

Tara Daniels

U
p until that moment, Ford’s plans for the day had included talking Tara into going out for a sail. And then burning off some excess energy.

With their naked bodies.

Yeah, that would have been right at the very top of the to-do list.

But that all changed with Mia looking at him through his own green gaze, her expression slightly challenging and yet braced for… hurt and rejection, he realized as something twisted hard in his chest.

How many years had he wondered about the baby that he and Tara had given up at birth?

Seventeen.

And how many years had he wondered if that baby would grow up happy and whole and smart and sharp and then… someday show up on his doorstep.

Christ, he couldn’t remember ever feeling nerves like this before. Not while facing forty-foot waves threatening to tear his boat apart. Not while standing on an Olympic podium accepting a medal in the name of his country. Not ever.

Tara hadn’t taken her eyes off Mia, and she was looking nervous too, her eyes misty. “You’re so beautiful,” she whispered.

Mia’s eyes cut to her, quiet and assessing. “I look like you.”

“Not as much as you look like…”

They both turned to Ford.

Having the woman he’d once loved with painful desperation, along with the daughter he’d dreamed about, both looking at him with varying degrees of emotion, was a punch in the solar plexus. Ford found he could scarcely breathe.

“Can I hug you?” Tara asked their daughter.

Mia gave a halting nod, but it was too late; they’d all seen the hesitation. Awkwardness settled over them all as Mia moved into Tara for a quick embrace. Ford was next, and he was surprised that with him Mia didn’t seem awkward at all. Anxious, even eager, but not reluctant, and as he wrapped his arms around this thin, beautiful teenager that was his—Christ,
his—
he closed his eyes and breathed her in. “How did you find us?”

Mia pulled back and shifted her weight nervously, although her voice never wavered. “I thought I’d tell you
after
I got hired.”

Bold. Ballsy. Probably she’d gotten a double whammy of both of those things from the gene pool, Ford thought.

“I only have seven weeks,” Mia said, and Tara’s hand went to her chest as if to keep her heart from leaping out.

Ford understood the panic. Hell, he felt it as his own. When Mia had been young, she’d had heart problems. A leaky valve that had required surgery. The only reason either Ford or Tara knew about it was because Tara’s mother had donated a very large chunk of money to the medical bills, taking a second mortgage on the inn to get it—something that had only been discovered after Phoebe had died.