Darlene Gardner - Cole For Christmas

“I think that was snuggling,” Cole said just as quietly.

“Yep,” said Grandpa. “That was snuggling, all right.”

“Told you,” Cole said, his eyes grazing over her as though she were the sexiest woman this side of the North Pole. The room was suddenly so hot Anna felt as though she were standing inches from the fireplace when, in fact, it was fifteen feet away.

“You’re not helping,” she snapped at Cole.

This was much worse than she’d anticipated. She’d considered the possibility her family might jump to the conclusion that she and Cole were involved, but she hadn’t foreseen him acting like he was her boyfriend.

As Anna went to help her mother and sister, she wondered how she could convince her family that nothing was going on between her and Cole.

Especially because she was no longer sure that was true.

HIS STOMACH FULL after a traditional meatless dinner of Polish food with strange names like pierogi and kluski, Cole sat in the glow of a giant Christmas tree watching Anna ignore him.

She stood near a flaming fireplace animatedly talking to her much-rounder, chestnut-haired sister and her boyish brother-in-law, who had apple cheeks and fine, straight hair worn in a bowl cut. She didn’t seem to notice that the newlyweds were more engrossed in each other than the conversation.

His eyes drank in the curve of her figure in the red sweater dress she wore, the fall of her curly brown hair, the lovely line of her profile.

She laid a long-fingered, well-shaped hand on her sister’s arm, and he couldn’t stop from wondering how that hand would feel running over his skin.

Erotic, he thought. Especially if they were both naked.

As though sensing his stare, she looked directly at him. Still imagining her lush body bare, he smiled long and slow.

She didn’t return the smile, which was undoubtedly a good thing. If she didn’t encourage him, he wouldn’t do something stupid: Like make a play for her.

Still, he wanted to believe she kept looking his way because she couldn’t help herself. Instead, he had to face the possibility it had something to do with the miniature women perched on either side of him.

“So how long ago did you meet my daughter?” Rosemary Wesley, Anna’s mother, sat on the sofa so that her velour-clad body angled toward his. His ears rang. For someone so tiny, she had a monstrous voice box.

“I love how-we-met stories,” chimed in Grandma Ziemanski, patting her incongruous black hair into place. He’d already gathered from her own not-nearly-dulcet tones that she was Rosemary’s mother. “They’re so romantic.”

“No romantic story here,” Cole said. “I met Anna about a month ago when she interviewed me for the job at Skillington Ski.”

He left out the part about the owner of the business being his father, but then he always did. What other choice did he have when Arthur Skillington had asked him to keep their connection on the QT?

“Did she stammer when she asked you questions?” Grandma Ziemanski asked. “That’s a dead giveaway that she’s nervous.”

“Anna would never stammer. That was Julie and she doesn’t do it anymore.” Rosemary patted Cole on the hand. “So did you know right away you wanted to ask her out?”

Cole thought back to the icy looks that had put his initial attraction to Anna in deep freeze. She’d grilled him relentlessly about why he was pursuing an assistant position when he was qualified to be a marketing director.

He’d claimed to be aiming for her job because he couldn’t very well tell her the truth.

The part about him needing work while he was getting to know his father would have been fine. The part about him being a mole trying to figure out why profits were lagging wouldn’t have gone over as well.

Cole wanted to reveal his connection to Skillington Ski up front, but Arthur Skillington had talked him out of it. Arthur claimed Cole would be more likely to get to the heart of the problem if the other employees, whose jobs were at risk, weren’t on guard around him.

Mostly because he wanted to please a father he’d never known but already loved, Cole had gone along with the plan.

He hadn’t let dating Anna enter his mind, primarily because the wrong word from him could get her fired.

“Well, no, I can’t say I thought about asking her out right off the bat,” he said. “At first, she struck me as…cool.”

Grandma Ziemanski’s wrinkled hand flew to her chest. “You think Anna’s cruel?”

“Not cruel, Mom. Cool. And he doesn’t mean now. He meant then.” Rosemary leaned across him to get the point across to her mother. “Tell us what you think of Anna now, Cole.”

His gaze once again honed in on Anna. Although up to this point her marketing efforts hadn’t been enough to pull Skillington Ski out of its slump, at work she struck him as intelligent and competent.

But her mother was interested in his personal assessment. As he tried to form one, firelight danced over her. It infused her golden skin with warmth and made it seem as though her brown hair was spun through with red and gold highlights.

Grandpa Ziemanski snatched the Santa hat from her mop of brown curls and covered his own bald head. When Anna threw back her head and laughed, her face seemed to glow.

“I think she’s the most captivating woman I’ve ever seen,” Cole said under his breath.

“Captivating?” Rosemary nodded. “That’s a good word. Much less trite than beautiful.”

“You don’t think Anna’s beautiful?” Grandma Ziemanski asked.

Cole jerked his gaze from Anna to her grandmother. “Yes,” he refuted quickly. “Yes, of course I think she’s beautiful.”

“And captivating,” Rosemary added, sounding smug. She squeezed his arm. “I knew you felt that way about my daughter the minute I saw you.”

“How did you know, Rosie?” Grandma Ziemanski asked.

“The face,” Rosemary said. “There’s always something glowy around the eyes.”

Anna picked that moment to slant him another one of those disapproving looks. A shard of guilt speared through Cole.

She’d spent a good portion of the last few hours trying to make her family understand they weren’t dating, and here he was looking at her with “glowy” eyes and expounding on their non-existent romance.

It was a terrible way to repay her for the kindness of asking him to dinner with her warm, wonderful family.

“So when did you change your mind about Anna being cruel and decide you wanted to ask her out?” Grandma Ziemanski asked.

“He didn’t say cruel, Mom,” Rosemary cut in with an audible tsk. “He said cool.”

“Alright already. Then let me put it another way.” Grandma Ziemanski peered at him. “When did the cools turn into the hots?”

Cole was about to point out that he didn’t have the hots for his boss when he realized he needed to face facts.

A few hours ago, on the sidewalk in front of the house, a definite thaw had begun when he noticed she was nervous about introducing him to her family.

The notion of Anna being apprehensive about anything had thrown him, and he’d glimpsed a different, softer woman in those moments under the starlight.

After watching her talk and laugh with her family over dinner, he’d concluded that woman and not the cool, detached one who came to the office every day was the true Anna.

He tapped his chin with a knuckle while he thought about how to phrase his answer so that it was both truthful and non-inflammatory.

Yes, he was attracted to Anna. But, no, he couldn’t become involved with her.

“Anna asked you out first, didn’t she?” Rosemary asked when the moments lengthened without a response. “That’s what you don’t want to say?”