Heidi Rice - On the First Night of Christmas...

Dodging through the crowd, she drew level and rapped on the passenger window. ‘Hey, Ebenezer.’

The tinted glass slid down with an electric hum. She blinked, the zing tingling back to life as a man peered out from the shadows on the driver’s side. Dark hair swept back from a broodingly handsome face accented by a strong jaw and hollow, raw-boned cheeks. She felt the odd jolt of recognition as the scent of new leather wafted out of the car. Did she know him?

‘What’s the problem?’ he demanded.

Clammy water dripped down inside Cassie’s boots and kick-started her tongue—and her indignation.

‘You’re the problem. Look what you did to me.’ She held up her arms to show him the extent of the damage, ruthlessly silencing the zing. He might have a striking face, but his manners sucked.

He swore softly. ‘Are you sure that was me?’

The blare of a car horn had Cassie glancing at the lights. Green. ‘Of course, I’m sure.’

The horn blared again. Longer and angrier this time.

‘I can’t stop here.’ He straightened back into the shadows and Cassie saw his hand grasp the gear shift.

No way, pal. You are not driving off and leaving me in a puddle on the pavement.

Yanking the heavy door open, she launched herself into the passenger seat.

‘Hey!’ he said as she slammed the door behind her. ‘What the hell do you—?’

‘Just drive, Sir Galahad.’ She pinned him with her best disgusted look. ‘We can discuss your crummy behaviour when you find somewhere to stop.’

His dark brows drew down, the piercing emerald of his irises glittering with annoyance.

‘Fine.’ He slapped up the indicator, shifted into First. ‘But don’t drip on the upholstery. This is a rental.’

The car purred to life, and a blast of heat wrapped around Cassie, engulfing her in the subtle aroma of man and leather—and wet velvet. Her heart careered into her throat as the flicker of Selfridges’ fairy lights disappeared from her peripheral vision—and the surge of adrenaline that had propelled her into the car smacked head first into her survival instinct.

She was sitting in a complete stranger’s car being driven to who knew where—which probably rated a perfect ten on the ‘too stupid to live’ scale.

‘Actually, forget it.’ She grasped the door handle.

The driver pulled to a stop at a loading bay. ‘So it wasn’t me after all.’

Cassie’s fingers stilled on the handle at the accusatory tone and her common sense dissolved in a haze of outrage. ‘It was definitely you.’ She glared at him over the gear shift. ‘Don’t you know it’s Christmas? Show a bit of respect for the season and stop being such a jerk.’

Typical. When Cassie Fitzgerald is on the hunt for a candy man, what does she get? A candy man with a crappy attitude.

Jacob Ryan cranked up the handbrake, slung his arm over the steering wheel and stared at the furious pixie in his passenger seat whose wide violet eyes were shooting daggers at him.

How the hell did I end up with Santa’s insane little helper in my car?

As if it weren’t bad enough that Helen had manoeuvred him into accepting an invitation to her ‘little soirée’ tonight, now he had a mad woman in his rented Mercedes. A mad woman who was dripping all over the custom-finished leather upholstery.

He’d never been a fan of the season to be jolly, but this was getting ridiculous.

The sight of the filthy splatter on her coat, though, had the tiniest prickle of guilt surfacing. The car had hit a rut in the road.

Hoisting his butt off the seat, he tugged his wallet out of his back pocket. Okay, maybe he had been the culprit. He’d been so aggravated by Helen’s petulant demands, he hadn’t been paying attention.

‘How much?’ he asked. A hundred ought to cover it.

Her full Cupid’s bow mouth flattened into a grim line and the daggers sharpened. ‘I don’t want your money,’ she announced. ‘That’s not what this is about.’

Yeah, right.

He counted five crisp twenty-pound notes out of his wallet and presented them to her. ‘Here you go. Merry Christmas.’

She gave the money a cursory glance, and the line of her lips twisted into a sneer. ‘I told you. I don’t want your money, Ebenezer.’

The sarcastic name grated, but then she tightened her arms under her breasts, and his gaze dipped—distracted by the creamy flesh exposed by the wide V in the lapels of her coat.

Hell, is she naked under that thing?

The wayward thought came out of nowhere, and sent a blast of heat somewhere he definitely didn’t need it.

‘What I want is an apology,’ she demanded.

He tore his eyes away from her breasts. ‘Huh?’

‘An apology? You do know what that is, right?’ she said, as if he had an IQ in single figures.

He shook his head, struggling to stem the immature fantasy. Of course she wasn’t naked under the coat. Not unless she was a lap dancer. And he doubted that. Given her big doe eyes and the helping of Christmas whimsy she’d dealt him, the picture of her getting sweaty tenners folded into a G-string didn’t fit, despite that eye-popping cleavage.

He stuffed the money back into the wallet and dumped it on the dash.

‘I apologise,’ he said curtly, deciding to humour her.

He didn’t usually bother with apologies. Especially to women. Because he’d discovered from experience they didn’t count for much. But these were extenuating circumstances. He needed to get her out of the car before that glimpse of cleavage melted the rest of his brain cells and he did something really daft. Like hitting on a crazy lady.

‘That’s it? That’s the best you can do?’ She twisted in her seat—all the better to glare at him, he suspected—but the movement made her breasts press against the confines of her coat and threaten to spill out. His mouth went dry.

‘I’m going to have to spend an hour on the tube,’ she ranted. ‘Then get hypothermia walking across the park. And you can’t come up with a better—’

‘Look, Pollyanna,’ he interrupted, the heat tying his gut in knots as he breathed in a lungful of her scent. Cinnamon and cloves and orange. ‘I’ve offered you money and you don’t want it,’ he ranted right back when she remained silent. ‘I apologised and you don’t want that, either. Short of sawing off my right arm and gift-wrapping it I don’t know what else I’m supposed to do to make amends.’

Her mouth closed and her delicately arched eyebrows launched up her forehead into the soft brown curls that haloed around her head.

That had certainly shut her up. Although he wasn’t quite sure what he’d said that had put the shell-shocked look on her face. The unusual colour of her eyes had darkened to a vivid turquoise and all the pigment had leached out of her cheeks.

She covered her mouth with her fingers. ‘Jace the Ace.’

The words were muffled, but distinctive enough to make him tense. ‘How do you know my name?’ he asked, although no one had called him by that particular nickname for fourteen years. Not since he’d been kicked out of school when he was seventeen. The minute the thought registered, another more disturbing one hit him—and the insistent throbbing in his groin increased.

Damn it. That had to be it. What other explanation was there for his instant response to her?

She hadn’t replied, so he forced himself to ask the obvious next question.

‘Have I slept with you?’

He doesn’t remember me. Thank you, God.

Cassie tried to speak, but her tongue was too numb to form coherent words. Not all that surprising given that the punch of recognition had hit her squarely in the solar plexus and expelled all the air from her lungs. She shook her head. ‘No,’ she whispered.