Julie Kistler - More Naughty Than Nice

Stevie froze at the image. Tumbling out of bed… Owen Dasher half-naked amidst tangled sheets, extending a hand to reel her back in. Heat suffused her cheeks.

“No… I just need to get dressed.” She pulled the skimpy robe tighter around her.

“I see.” But his eyes were glued on her hair now.

“Is there a reason you’re staring?”

“No…it’s just that—” He moved closer, winding a few tendrils around his fingers.

Stevie held her breath. Her breasts rose and fell against the cool silk, her nipples peaking in the chilly room. She knew he wanted to kiss her, wanted to slip his hands inside her robe.

But instead he said, “It’s very strange. Your hair seems to be, uh, bent….”

Bent? Batting his hand away, she glanced in the nearby mirror. Oh, hell.

Just when Stevie thought she was operating with confidence and pizzazz, he pointed out she had Hee Haw hair. And she was back to square one.

She was past that stage, wasn’t she? Stephanie no more!

With a determined air, Stevie turned to Owen and fluffed her hair. “Let me tell you how much fun it is being…blissfully single.”

Dear Reader,

There’s just something about Christmas. When the snow starts to fall, when you start to hear the carols and see the lights and the trees…and in Chicago, when the Marshall Field’s department store unveils its magical windows, there’s romance in the air right along with the snowflakes.

I hope you’ll enjoy my look at life and love in Chicago during the holidays as much as I enjoyed dreaming it up. I admit it—I was totally smitten with the idea of an irresistible force like Stevie Bliss, author of a sizzling book about using men for a romp or two while never giving your heart, smacking right up against an immovable object like Owen Dasher, a reporter who thinks she’s a total hottie and a total fake. Any other time of the year, Stevie might have been able to resist Owen’s devastating charms, to stay true to her “Blissfully Single” principles. But there’s just something about Christmas….

I hope you’ll pull up your comfiest chair, sit back with a cup of cocoa and enjoy this naughty little ride through the holidays!

Merry Christmas!

Julie Kistler

HARLEQUIN TEMPTATION

808—JUST A LITTLE FLING

HARLEQUIN DUETS

19—CALLING MR. RIGHT

30—IN BED WITH THE WILD ONE

73—STAND-IN BRIDE

THE SISTER SWITCH

More Naughty Than Nice

Julie Kistler

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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Dedicated to Scott, my best Christmas present ever.

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Epilogue

ONE WEEK BEFORE CHRISTMAS. Santa on his way. And Stephanie Blanton already knew what she was going to find in her stocking. A big, fat nothing.

“Gonna find out who’s naughty and nice. Yeah, right,” she said in an aggrieved tone. “I have always been so nice. And what did it get me?”

No promotion. Not even a hint of a boyfriend or husband with whom to spend the holidays. Sitting in a crummy, noisy, smoke-filled bar a lousy week before Christmas. And if all that weren’t bad enough, there were these nasty red and green lights dangling over the table, giving her a terrible headache.

“It’s all about expectations,” her best friend Anna put in. “We expect too much from men.”

Stephanie nodded, doing her best to look wise, which wasn’t easy when she’d just slurped down three or four big ol’ cosmopolitans. They were cheery and red, and she and Anna had ordered them to feel more Christmasy. Maybe if their drinks had been carried in by a gorgeous man wearing nothing but a sprig of mistletoe. Maybe then she’d feel more festive.

Or maybe not.

“Men,” she muttered. “Who needs ’em?”

“Y’see, Steph, when Findlay called you into his office, you thought he would ask you to the Christmas party.” Anna hiccuped loudly, but it didn’t stop her lecture. “And that’s where you went wrong. Because guys like Mr. Findlay don’t ask out girls like us. We’re too boring, too dull, too nicey-nicey, too—”

“No, no. That’s not right.” Stephanie sat up straighter on her bar stool, almost falling off but catching herself just in time.

“Which part?”

“I didn’t expect Findlay to ask me to the party.” She shook her head to clear away the cosmopolitan fog. Concentrate, Stephanie. “Okay, Anna, I know you were angling for a date to the office party. But I never…”

Anna sent her a cynical look.

“Okay, so maybe, maybe I had a tiny, little, baby-size kernel of hope that Findlay would ask me,” she said, waving a hand, trying to forget the whole misty fantasy she’d spun for herself, all about gorgeous Mr. Findlay, who everyone knew was being promoted out of the cosmetics group, which meant he would no longer be her direct supervisor and therefore could ask her out with carefree abandon.

And what better time than Christmas? Mistletoe, snowflakes, picking out a tree together, eggnog by candlelight…

It just begged for a relationship. Somehow, in her heart of hearts, she had clung to this myth, this fairy tale, that the reason her boss was calling her into his office was to ask her to accompany him not just to the office party, but home next week to meet Mom and Pop Findlay for Christmas dinner. Something right out of It’s a Wonderful Life.

But the fantasy was gone. Banished. No more. Shaking her head, she finished, “I knew that was way out of the realm of possibility. What I expected—”

“Wait, wait, I know!” Her friend’s eyes widened and she actually giggled, which was not something Anna did very often. “You thought he would knock everything off his desk and then make mad, passionate love to you right then and there, on his desk.”

That sobered her up. “On his desk? Eeeeuww.”

“That’s not it, huh?”

“No way. I have a little more self-respect than that.” Stephanie tightened the holly-flecked scrunchie on her plain brown ponytail, forcing herself to return to her senses. It wasn’t hot sex she’d wanted from Mr. Findlay. No, it was love and affection and companionship, someone to look at her and think she was special and beautiful, worthy of spending his holidays with. All the things that now felt shabby and stupid. Thank goodness she’d never said any of it out loud. Then she might have to jump off a bridge. This way she just had to drown herself in cosmopolitans.

“What I expected,” she explained, “was for him to offer me the promotion to head of the cosmetics group. Because I deserve it. I know it and he knows it.”

“I know it, too,” Anna offered loyally.

Stephanie shook her head. “But, hon, if it wasn’t going to be me, it should’ve been you. You deserve it, too. I’m pretty good when it comes to having a finger on the pulse of our demographic. You, you’re even better.”