Make-Believe Mistletoe by Gina Wilkins

Author:Gina Wilkins
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2011-08-26T04:00:00+00:00

The kitchen table seemed bigger somehow with only Banner and Lucy sitting at it. The room itself was notably quiet without the chatter of the departed guests.

Banner was intensely aware of the silence, and self- conscious about his ability to fill it with anything interesting. His ex-wife had expressed her doubts that he would ever develop conversational skills. She had told him once that talking to him had been like trying to carry on a conversation with a block of the wood he worked with.

That had been toward the end of their brief marriage, when she had criticized everything about him, from his lack of ambition to his disinterest in social activities to his thoughtlessness about her happiness. She had taken off not long afterward, and last he’d heard she’d found herself a dirt-track race car driver who liked to party when he wasn’t risking his neck at more than a hundred miles an hour. In other words, she had chosen someone who was exactly Banner’s opposite—the opposite of the settled, dependable security she had once claimed to want. From all accounts she was much happier now, and so was he, for that matter.

He didn’t want to make any more stupid mistakes that would result in anyone else being hurt—himself included.

Lucy seemed perfectly content to sip her tea and wait for him to speak when he was ready, which surprised him since she had claimed a tendency to babble when she was nervous. He supposed she wasn’t nervous now, which made him wonder why he was.

He racked his brain for something to say. “So, um, how’s your tea?”

She smiled over her cup. “It’s delicious, thank you.”

His gaze lingered on her moist, up-curved mouth. And his mind went blank again. Every time Lucy smiled at him, every time she licked a drop of tea from her lips or tossed back her cascade of soft red-gold curls, he went completely tongue-tied.

It was a condition that was familiar to him, since he had never been comfortable making small talk—which made him one lousy date, as he had been informed on a few memorable occasions. But it was even worse with Lucy, because with her—as with no one before her—he actually wanted to be witty and charming and interesting. It was precisely because he couldn’t be any of those things that he should be urging her to leave, to join the family that was waiting so impatiently to spend the rest of this Christmas day with her.

He was generally a selfish person, but not even he could feel right about keeping her from that loving family when he couldn’t even seem to carry on a conversation with her.

Seeming to sense that he was at a conversational loss, Lucy spoke up. He should have expected her to say something completely unexpected, and she did. “Let’s play a game.”

“A game?” he repeated somewhat blankly. “Like what?”

“Twenty questions. Only I’m making a few new rules.”

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