Czytaj książkę: «Kissed By Christmas»

Chapter 1

Hallie Roberts had never been so cold in her life.

Freezing wasn’t accurate.

Bone-cold wasn’t enough.

She was arctic-tundra cold. The kind of cold where jumping into a blazing-hot fire wouldn’t even be enough to thaw her out.

Her nose was ice. Her toes were so scrunched and frozen in her shoes that they threatened to break off and move back to Florida where they thought they belonged. She didn’t blame them—in a few weeks, she was planning to follow.

New York City in December was no joke, especially when it was experiencing a historic cold snap. There was snow on the ground. Mounds and mounds of graying snow and a brutally chilling wind that whipped through her thin but fashionable trench coat and caused her to break out in what seemed like a permanent case of gooseflesh. She hadn’t known that weather like this existed. Before she moved from Florida she’d had this romantic idea of winter. Of New York in winter. That it would be all snow-globe beautiful with crystal flakes that gently floated to the ground and made whatever they touched seem magical.

But there was nothing magical about the nor’easter that had covered the city in white. It kept her snowed in and prevented her from going home for Thanksgiving and seeing the family she so sorely missed. So instead of eating her mother’s delicious sweet potato pie and slow-cooked ham, and walking on the beach with her grandmother after the big meal, she sat in her apartment and ate General Tso’s chicken along with an entire pint of strawberry cheesecake ice cream. And instead of taking an extra day off to breathe in the fresh ocean air and let the sun warm her face, she was trudging through icy snow on her way to work to teach her tenth graders about the brilliance of James Baldwin.

What a way to start the Christmas season.

Even though her plans had been ruined she didn’t mind going back to work. Her job was the only thing she liked about New York since she had moved there nearly six months ago. She had been mugged, her brand-new iPhone stolen by a hipster with a full beard wearing an ironic T-shirt. Her car had been towed because she had no idea what alternate-side-of-the-street parking was all about. And she’d once gotten so hopelessly lost on the subway she had to call her cousin back in Florida to help her navigate her way back home because she was too embarrassed to ask for directions. She didn’t know anyone in the Big Apple, aside from the people she worked with. She never thought she would be lonely in a city of eight million, but she was. And the longer she stayed here, the more she longed for the sandy beaches and small-town feel of Hideaway Island.

But going back to Hideaway Island wouldn’t be easy for her. Back in Hideaway Island was a man who had broken their engagement the day after she had the final fitting for her dress. Back in Hideaway Island was a man who’d told her that he wasn’t really sure if he loved her enough to spend the rest of his life with her.

I’m just not sure you’re what I need.

I’m not sure if you’re good for me at this point in my life.

It was hard being away from her close-knit family for the past half year but it was harder for her living on that tiny island and running into him everywhere she went. They had been together for over five years this time, but they had first started to date in high school. Brent had been her prom date. Nearly every place in town held some sort of special meaning for them. The dock where they had their first kiss. The beach where he proposed to her. The yacht club they were supposed to have their reception in. Reminders of him slapped her in the face at every turn. She had heard about heartbreak, but she had never expected to feel like she had felt.

He had made promises. They had made plans. She had made sacrifices. She had spent the last ten years of her life thinking she was going to be his wife and when he abruptly ended things she knew she would never plan her life around a man again. So when the opportunity came up to teach at this prestigious charter school, she’d jumped on it. Teaching inner-city kids wasn’t always easy, but she genuinely enjoyed them.

Except for right that moment when she walked up to the school to see two of her brightest students in the middle of a heated argument.

“You are obviously too stupid to understand what he was saying!”

“Who are you calling stupid? You’re the one—”

“Ladies!” Hallie took a step toward them only to feel her foot slide across the sidewalk. It was like the world had slowed down, like she was having an out-of-body experience. Falling down in public was bad enough, but falling in front of a bunch of high schoolers was the stuff nightmares were made of.

Hallie heard someone scream. Maybe it was her. She wasn’t sure because she hit the ground hard, her head bouncing on the sidewalk, and then everything went black. She wasn’t sure how long she was out or if she had died and gone to heaven, because when she woke up again the most beautiful man in the world was standing over her.

* * *

“How was your Thanksgiving, man?” Asa Andersen’s partner, Miguel, asked him as they headed back to their station at the end of a long shift.

“Quiet. My sister went to her in-laws’ this year so my parents and I went out to a diner.”

“A diner!”

“Yeah.” Asa grinned. “My father usually does the cooking but he’s recovering from the flu and no one wants to eat my mother’s food. Trust me, the diner’s Thanksgiving special was a thousand times better than anything my mom would have produced.”

“Your mom can’t cook,” Miguel said, moaning as if it were tragic. “I feel for you. You should have come to my house. We have the roasted pork, along with the fried turkey. My grandmother and tías made hundreds of tamales. The pumpkin-pie flan wasn’t such a big hit, but my mother’s chocolate cake more than made up for it.”

“That sounds amazing.” Asa couldn’t remember the last time they’d had a big holiday meal with aunts and uncles and extended family. Most years it had just been his parents and his sister at the holidays, but since Virginia got married she split her time between her and her husband’s family. They saw less of each other now than they ever had and even though he knew that was how things happened, it didn’t sit with him too well. It felt like something had been missing.

“My mother sent you a plate,” Miguel went on. “And by plate I mean the twelve pounds of food she packed in a huge brown paper bag.”

“Your mother is sweet.” All of the Gonzaleses were. Sometimes Asa envied his partner. Miguel always had a big, warm family to go to after the end of a long, hard shift.

“My mother wants to hook you up with my little sister but—”

“You stay away from my little sister,” Asa finished for him, laughing. “I’m not going anywhere near Arianna, trust me.” Arianna was cute, but Asa had been working with Miguel since he joined the FDNY as a rescue paramedic. They were an elite squad of highly trained paramedics that worked alongside the firemen and administered medical care in dangerous, unstable conditions. The last thing he needed was Miguel pissed at him if things didn’t work out. Their job was too dangerous for personal feelings to get in the way of the work. “I think you tell everyone to stay away from your little sister. You won’t be happy unless she decides to join a convent.”

“She’ll be married to God. A man can’t ask for a better brother-in-law.”

“Mine is pretty cool,” Asa said as a call came in from dispatch. “I get box seats to any baseball game in the country.”

“If you were a legendary shortstop, I would let you date my sister.” Miguel picked up the radio. “We’re in the area, dispatch. We’ll respond.” He looked at Asa. “Slip and fall on some black ice. It shouldn’t take long.”

Asa hit the lights and they drove the two blocks to the scene. Eighty percent of their calls were typical paramedic calls that he rarely thought about when they were done. It was that other twenty percent that stayed with him. An innocent person getting struck by violence, a car accident that left the vehicle and the people inside of it unrecognizable. Last week Asa had gone through another one of those events that he just couldn’t get off his mind.

They had responded to a catastrophic crane collapse last week that had made New York City look like a war zone. Some people didn’t make it. Death was an unfortunate part of the job. He should be used to it by now but last week the loss had hit him harder than usual. Maybe it was the time of the year and knowing that a man wouldn’t be with his family during the holidays. Maybe it was the fact that he felt that his time with his family was growing shorter and shorter.

The longer he did this job, the more important his family became to him.

They pulled up at the scene in front of Wheatly Academy to see a horde of worried teenagers surrounding a woman on the ground.

“Clear a path, guys,” he ordered as they rolled the gurney toward her. “We’re here to help her.” He took in the woman’s appearance and noticed two things. The first was that she definitely wasn’t dressed for winter in her brown high-heeled boots and her thin trench coat. The second was that she looked incredibly familiar. But he couldn’t place her at the moment. “Does anyone know her name?” he asked the kids.

“She’s our English teacher, Miss Roberts,” a girl told him. “Hallie is her first name, I think.”

“Yeah, it is,” a boy confirmed. “We remember it because we say that she’s like Halle Berry, but sweeter. Is she going to be okay? She hit her head, really hard.”

Asa knelt down to the unconscious woman and touched her cold cheek with the back of his hand. Brain injury was a common effect of a slip and fall. “Hallie?” He called her name and she opened her eyes, looking up at him, and it kind of jolted him. He knew in his gut he had seen this woman before. Seen that beautiful shade of brown skin, seen those large, almond-shaped deep brown eyes with what seemed like a million lashes look up at him.

“Am I dead?” Her voice was soft; there was wonder in it. “Are you an angel? Am I dead?”

“No.” He smiled at her. He didn’t usually find injured people cute, but this one was exceedingly so. “You slipped on the ice and hit your head. We’re going to take you to the hospital to get you checked out.”

“Miss, are you okay?” One of the girls asked as she stepped forward.

“No. I’m not.” She shut her eyes again. “I remember walking toward you because you and Tiana looked like you were about to engage in World War Three and that’s when I slipped.” Her voice was much stronger this time. “I blame you two for this fall and that means thirty years of detention for both of you.”

“Thirty years!”

“Yup. That’s how long I’ll be embarrassed about this. I’m not sure I’ll survive it.”

“But, Miss Roberts! We were just talking about that poem you assigned us last night. I think it’s about a boy wanting his mother’s approval. Liza thinks it’s about romantic love, but clearly she’s wrong and takes everything literally because that’s how basic she is.”

The other girl turned around so quickly Asa was surprised that she didn’t have whiplash. “Who are you calling basic?”

“Girls!” Those pretty brown eyes flew open again. “If you don’t stop arguing you’re both going to be feeling basic when I keep you after school for the next two weeks alphabetizing my book collection by genre. And if you don’t think it’s that many books, I will gladly go out and get more to keep you busy until prom season.”

The girls clamped their mouths shut.

“Well, the good news is that your teacher is lucid, kids,” Miguel said stepping forward so that he could stabilize her neck. “The bad news is, she going to be on a war path if you don’t give her some space.”

“Get to class,” she said as her eyes drifted shut briefly, before she opened one of them to survey the crowd. “I’ll know if you didn’t show up. I’ll be checking in, and your papers are still due at the end of the week. You will email them to me.”

“Really?” one of the boys asked.

“If you don’t believe me, you’ll find out what happens if they are late.”

The kids scattered. Asa would have, too. Her tone told everyone she wasn’t playing. He was surprised that someone who looked so adorable, with her doe eyes and head full of springy black curls, could get a bunch of high schoolers to obey without talking back. His retired military father would have admired that.

“Are they gone?” she asked, looking to Asa again. “My head hurts so much I’m not sure I can see straight.”

He nodded. “Ran out of here like they were on fire. Can you tell me what else hurts? Your neck, or back?”

“Just my head.” She grabbed his hand and buried it in her hair. “It hurts here.”

“That’s because you have an epic knot.”

“Darn, and I was planning to shave my head this week.”

He smiled down at her. “It’ll have to wait till after Christmas.”

“I don’t want them to worry.” She looked truly distressed then, and he could see the pain etched into her face. “I have to be tough with them or they’ll worry.”

“Your students?”

“Yes. They think they are grown, but they are still kids and they’ll worry about me. I love them, you know. They are the only reason I stay in this stupid, cold, icy city.”

“You’re a good teacher,” he told her.

“And you’re really hot,” she said to him. “I like the way your voice sounds. Gentle but strong. Are you sure you’re not some sort of jacked angel?”

“He’s not,” Miguel said. “But he gets that a lot.”

Asa shook his head, but he had to admit he was a little flattered. “We’re going to take you to the hospital now.”

“Okay. Stay with me, Mr. Hot Paramedic.”

“I will. I’m not going anywhere.”