Gifts of Fortune by Barbara Boswell & Jennifer Greene & Jackie Merritt

Author:Barbara Boswell & Jennifer Greene & Jackie Merritt [Boswell, Barbara & Greene, Jennifer & Merritt, Jackie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780373484386
Amazon: 0373484380
Publisher: Silhouette
Published: 2001-11-02T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 4

Leaving Spritz in the week between Christmas and New Year’s was sacrilege. Heresy. More forbidden than any mortal sin Jessa had ever heard of. Maybe in a big department store, a buyer’s job wasn’t affected by the holiday madhouse of sales and returns, but in an independent like Spritz, every employee chipped in or was considered a low-down dog.

Jessa had only felt free to ask about taking off early because she never did. Everyone in the store knew she regularly came through when anyone wanted extra time off and Marina, her boss and mentor, immediately gave her permission to leave. Even so, she felt guilty as a thief for sneaking out when the store was swarming with customers…just not so guilty that she changed her mind.

It was important for her to get to the Christmas House before Sebastian did. The reason she wanted to arrive first was the same reason she’d streaked her blond hair with a bit of green—the same green that matched her holiday-green ankle-length dress. The boots, the eye makeup, the perfume were all, as Jessa saw it, weapons.

When a girl needed defenses, a girl needed defenses.

At three-fifty-five, she was pacing in front of the great room window when she saw Sebastian’s truck pull in the drive. One glance at his face through the windshield, and her pulse kicked like a pent-up bronco.

It was a good thing, she mentally snarled to herself, that no one could fall in love this fast, because otherwise Sebastian might have presented a serious problem. Thankfully her mother had taught her—painfully and irrevocably—about what kind of woman risked it all for a tug of hormones. There was no way Jessa would ever choose that road. She remembered her growing up years too well. The bottles. The laughter of strangers in the middle of the night. The morning she’d wakened up to find no one there—no mom, no fake uncles, no nothing. She’d been sixteen. Thirteen bucks in the house, all of it hers. Her mom hadn’t left a dime. Or fresh milk.

Jessa tapped her boot, watching Sebastian eye her sacred yellow Cabriolet and then hike toward the door. Typically, he looked like he was fresh from a weeklong mountain climb—hair so long it brushed his collar, worn boots that put a lope in his stride, chin getting a disreputable stubble, jeans so old they hugged his long, muscular thighs. Okay, so you’re cute, buster. You think I care? You think…

Abruptly she frowned. Her gaze had pounced on him so fast that initially she missed noticing that he wasn’t alone. Now, though, the look of the teenage girl who slammed the truck door and stomped after Sebastian made Jessa pause. Possibly there was a reason he was wearing a scowl bigger than Hurricane Arthur on his brow. It was difficult to classify the package he’d brought with him, but in a glance Jessa’s first thought was that the girl was a true female hooligan. She was maybe sixteen. Hacked-off red hair had been painted with blue and yellow.

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