Read It's in His Kiss Holiday Romance Collection for Free Online Page A

hometown and she was having a massive problem leaving it.
    But he couldn’t bring himself to say the words out loud.
    For several years now, he’d been lonely. More lonely than he liked to admit, and when Rosie said she’d travel with him, follow him wherever he went, it was like the sky opened up and the warm sun finally shone down on him.
    To think this beautiful, smart, incredible woman had agreed to come along on his crazy adventures was more than he could have hoped for.
    But now, he had to face it. Something was terribly wrong.
    * * *
    That night, as the three women sat at the end of the bar in the virtually empty room, while Max busied himself in the kitchen, Rose tried to tell Daisy and Jasmine that she was leaving, but the place was so empty she couldn’t bring herself to drop more bad news on her friends. She figured the downturn was all her fault, especially considering that Jasmine had spent the previous weekend with Jake, and assumed the two of them were now very much in love. “I’ve lost count of the orgasms, and have lost track of the multitude of ways in which he made love to me,” she said while sipping a dirty martini.
    Daisy was just about to leave to get dressed for a date with William, the guy the crystal had lit on. But honestly, she didn’t look very happy about the night to come. In fact, she looked downright morose. “We’re all doing everything we can to make this thing work, but for some reason, that crystal looks almost clear. It worries me that we’re almost out of time.”
    “I don’t get it,” Rose said, thinking it was probably due to her hesitation about leaving with Max. But she couldn’t admit her failure to the girls. Not yet, anyway.
    “Maybe this date with William will help. He seems like a nice guy,” Daisy said.
    “You don’t sound very enthusiastic about your date.” Jasmine said.
    Daisy smiled, and took a sip from her martini. “I’m enthusiastic, kind of. I better go. Would one of you please tell Max I’m leaving? William’s picking me up at my house in an hour.”
    She slipped off the bar stool, gave her friends a hug and left. The clicking of her heels echoing on the wooden floor … the very empty wooden floor.
    “I’ll fetch Max,” Rose told Jasmine and walked around the bar to her kitchen.
    When she walked through the swinging door and smelled her pasta sauce wafting up from the simmering pot on the gas burner, and saw her two line chefs plating her beautiful entrées, it suddenly occurred to her that no matter how much she loved Max, no matter how much she had always loved Max, a bigger part of her soul was filled with her passion to cook. Now that she finally had the ability to create whatever she wanted in her own kitchen, she simply couldn’t give it up.
    Max stood in front of the prep table chopping onions. She walked over to him, took a deep breath, and slowly let it out.
    “I can’t go,” she blurted out as she donned a white apron. “And we need you out front at the bar. Daisy left for her date.”
    “Wait. What did you say?”
    “We need you behind the bar. Daisy left.”
    He finished squirting out chocolate-raspberry sauce around Rose’s house specialty cheesecake, carefully placed the raspberries and chocolate swirls along the top of the creamy delight and slid it on the end of the pickup table for the waiter.
    He walked in closer to Rose. “No. I mean about that first part. That you can’t go.”
    Rose shuffled her feet, and stared up at him, not truly believing she could say the words. “I can’t go with you to France. I can’t leave my kitchen and my friends. They,” she waved an arm, “this means too much to me.”
    He blinked a couple times and she could see the moisture building in his eyes. “Rose, you’re not—”
    But Jasmine burst in, interrupting him. “Max, we have three customers out front, and I have no idea how to make a Star Martini.”
    He turned to her. “I’ll be right there.”
    “I’ll stall