Read Kissing Under The Mistletoe: The Sullivans (Contemporary Romance) for Free Online

mother—” She paused and tried not to betray the emotion
that always came over her when she spoke of her mother, but she
could already hear the little bit of an Italian accent that always
slipped into her voice when she spoke of home and her childhood.
“She always longed for more children, but her prayers weren’t
answered.”
    “Yes, they were.” His eyes were gentle as he
said, “She had you.”
    It took Mary a few seconds to push away the
emotion his simple words evoked. “Do you have any sisters?”
    “Nope, three brothers.” Her eyes widened at
the thought of all that testosterone in one family as he asked,
“Why do you ask?”
    “Because if you had had sisters, you would
have known that headstrong young girls and their mothers are rarely
a conflict-free combination.” Feeling that she’d already said too
much, and knowing she should change the subject before her emotions
got the best of her, she asked, “Did you and your brothers grow up
here?”
    “Born and raised. I went to college locally,
too, and haven’t really had much time to travel.”
    “That’s another great thing about San
Francisco,” she said, pausing in her extremely enthusiastic bites
of pie, “between Chinatown, Japantown, the French Quarter, the
Mission and North Beach, it’s like having the world at your
fingertips. The people, the traditions, and especially the food.”
He was so easy to talk to that she realized she’d gotten off track
again. “What about your family? Are they all close by?”
    “I wish. My oldest brother is up in Seattle
with his wife and toddler. Another brother has a house in San
Francisco but he is usually in a skyscraper overseas concluding
another major business deal. My youngest brother is probably locked
in his studio back east painting a masterpiece, and my parents are
happily wintering in Florida.”
    It amazed her how their conversation was so
effortless and yet so totally full of sparks.
    “What do you do?”
    “I’m an engineer. I’ve been working on a
product I invented for most of the past decade.”
    Sexy and smart. Now
that was a wonderful combination in a man, she thought as she took
another bite of pie and ice cream. A cherry popped on her tongue,
and the combination of sweet and creamy, warm and cool sent a soft
moan of pleasure falling from her lips.
    “You were right,” she said after she’d
swallowed. “This is amazing cherry pie.”
    Jack’s dark eyes were intense as they held
hers and he agreed, “Amazing,” though he’d hardly eaten any pie at
all yet.
    “Help Me,” the hit single from Joni Mitchell,
was playing from a portable radio set up in a corner of the diner.
And with Mary’s heart pounding hard for a man she barely knew but
already wanted so badly to know better, she felt as if Joni were
singing about her.
    Because after only fifteen minutes with Jack,
Mary could tell that she was already falling too fast…with hopes
about the future and worries about the past circling inside her
mind and heart at the same time.
    What if she didn’t let those worries imprison
her this time? What if she trusted her instincts, the same way she
had when she was a nineteen-year-old girl? And what if, for the
very first time in a long, long while, she let herself believe that
true love might actually be possible?
    “A decade is a long time to work on one
thing,” she said softly. “You must have incredible focus.”
    “When I’m passionate about something and want
it bad enough, I always make sure I get it.”
    Her breath caught in her throat at the
pulsing sensuality behind his statement. An impulse to lean close
and kiss him wound through her, and she might have given in to it
had she not noticed out of the corner of her eye that some of the
other diners were pointing at her.
    Mary wanted her first kiss with Jack to be
special. So instead of a kiss, she simply leaned slightly forward
to try to get closer to him across the bright yellow Formica table
and said, “Tell me