Barbara Daly - A Long Hot Christmas

“Is not,” Hope said at once.

“Is, too.” He nodded. “All these years you’ve been working at Palmer Pipe you’ve been substituting pipe for penises.”

She half rose, reached behind her and grabbed up a pillow. “I have not!” She raised the pillow over her head.

“Hey, don’t yell at me. I’m not the one with pipe envy.” Sam rolled smoothly off the bed just as she slammed the pillow into the spot where he’d been lying.

At the doorway to the bathroom, in all his naked masculine glory, not at all shy the morning after, he turned to give her a wicked smile. “Don’t move,” he said. “I’m going to brush my teeth and get fresh supplies, and then I’m coming back to relieve your need for pipe. Forever.”

Barbara Daly lives and writes in New York City. She loves it most of all during the holiday season, when the lights, the department store windows and the first snow of winter falling on the shoppers as they struggle down the crowded streets add to the festive feeling. What better setting for a love story?

She is a newcomer to feng shui, but is rapidly putting mirrors in strategic places and flutes on the beams and is convinced it’s going to change the life she shares with her husband and Cairn terrier.

She once had a cat like the one in this book—and suspects she might not live through a second one.

A Long Hot Christmas is just the first of three books featuring the Sumner sisters. Don’t miss Barbara’s special Duets #69, You Call This Romance!? and Are you for Real?, coming to bookstores in February.

Books by Barbara Daly

HARLEQUIN DUETS

13—GREAT GENES!

34—NEVER SAY NEVER!

A Long Hot Christmas

Barbara Daly

www.millsandboon.co.uk

For Helen Daly, my mother-in-law, best friend and lifelong card partner. I love you for loaning me your son—and for letting me win once in a while.

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

HOPE SUMNER’S sisters were ganging up on her again.

“I was thinking a cat,” she informed them. “I do not need a man.”

“Just to go places with,” Faith said.

“An escort, nothing more than that,” Charity said.

“Because the holidays are coming up,” Faith added.

Hope rued the day she’d taught them to make a conference call. With Faith in Los Angeles and Charity in Chicago, for a time they’d had no choice but to attack her separately. One-on-one, she was invincible. Against the two of them, she had to fight for her life. Or in this case, her lifestyle.

And what was wrong with her lifestyle? Nothing. She loved living in New York. She was a successful career woman who could afford elegant clothes, when she managed to find time to shop, luxurious vacations, if she ever found time to take a vacation, and an apartment with a fabulous view—where she rarely was, nor was she at the moment.

“Lana says he’s a very nice man,” Faith persisted.

“Lana? The punk-rock movie star? Lana dates leather jackets on motorcycles. You told me so yourself.”

“That’s how she met him,” Faith said as though this made everything clear. “Her latest leather jacket is actually a software genius. The Shark defended him against the big software company.”

“The Shark?”

“His real name’s Sam Sharkey,” Charity supplied helpfully. “They just call him The Shark.”

“Oh. Did he win?”

“Well, of course,” Faith went on. “And while they waited for the judge’s decision, they got to talking, and Shark said he was sick of being the ‘available bachelor’ on everybody’s list, but he’s nowhere even close to wanting to get married, not until he makes partner at his law firm.”

“Anyway,” Charity interrupted, “Lana’s leather jacket told Lana and Lana said, ‘He sounds like Faith’s sister Hope, and she’s in New York, and The Shark’s in New York,’ and one thing led to another.”

That’s how bad it was. Her own sisters were shopping her around to lawyers who represented leather jackets accused of software plagiarism. The cat was sounding better every minute. A calico with pretty markings. Or maybe something with long, soft hair she could run her fingers through.

She liked her life. She loved her work. All she wanted was to be the first female, and at twenty-eight, the youngest person, ever to make vice president at Palmer. Then she’d be ready to enter the next phase of her life, which would include love and happiness, a man with thick, silky hair she could run her fingers through…

She’d been quiet too long. They might assume she was thinking it over, which she certainly wasn’t. “Hey,” she said in a “let’s negotiate” tone, “I really appreciate what you’re trying to do for me, but a man to take to parties isn’t what I need to get me out of this little slump I’m in.”

Her gaze darted to her monitor. She swiftly dragged a black seven onto a red eight, smiling when the elusive ace of diamonds appeared from beneath the seven. It was after nine at night. She was still at the office. She’d come to a stopping place at eight, unable to move forward effectively without input from colleagues who’d already left.

Even her nemesis, whom she privately referred to as St. Paul the Perfect, had gone home to his lovely wife and children. She knew he had, because he’d poked his head through the door to see if she was still there, and when he saw she was, had been forced to make up an elaborate excuse for his early departure. Some nonsense about rehearsal for the church pageant in which his tiny son had the lead role—Baby Jesus—and his daughter was head angel.

No reason for her not to go home, yet here she sat, playing solitaire.

She’d drag the ace later. “What I think,” she went on, “is get a cat and cozy up the apartment a little bit. Sheila’s sending me this decorator she says everybody’s raving about. Her name’s Yu Wing.”

Tiny shrieks came at her from the receiver. “You’re using a decorator Sheila recommended?” Charity squealed.

Being orphaned in early childhood had made Hope and her sisters unusually close. Even now, strung out from one coast to the other, they got together often, monitored each other’s activities and knew each other’s friends. Sometimes this was a good thing, sometimes not. “Yes a decorator Sheila recommended,” Hope said, feeling defensive. “She uses feng shui. Sheila swears that she…”

“Sheila’s insane,” Faith declared.

“Lana isn’t?”

There was a short silence before Charity said, “The last time I saw Lana I thought she’d matured considerably.”

“Love has made all the difference,” Faith said in her dreamy voice. Faith had always been a dreamer. She was thirty now, and Hope thought it was about time she found a man whose feet were firmly planted on this earth. Now that might make a difference.

“As it does for so many people,” Charity said. Whatever Charity’s tone indicated, it was not dreaminess. The youngest sister and the family beauty, she had a brain like a Pentium chip. She was twenty-six, and so far she hadn’t found a man—lover or employer—who was able to see past her pretty face, although Hope could hardly blame the male population for that particular weakness.

“Just because love makes some people happy…”