Page 1 of Christmas in Paradise

Prologue

Hope

My Bible-training should have warned me that a trip to Paradise would involve forbidden fruit. But I’m still taken by surprise when, at the wrap party forAt Home with Georgia Rose,I’m tempted by the tasty bite at the dessert table.

He has dark hair, a slightly crooked nose that makes his face interesting, and a gaze that doesn’t shy away when I catch him looking at me. Worst of all, he’s got a don’t-care attitude radiating from every pore.

Thisis a problem.

Bad boys have always been my weakness.

Flynn Rider was my first love. I was ten. He was a cartoon. Our relationship was doomed from the beginning.

Patrick Verona fromTen Things I Hate About Yousoon followed, although I had a side thing going with Jess Mariano from Gilmore Girls. There were also a few dalliances with the likes of Tony Stark and the Beast. And I was, and always will be, firmly Team Edward.

The common thread connecting all my crushes—aside from the age gap and having to keep the unanimated ones a secret from Mom—is they don’t care what people think. They live by their own rules. They’re shameless, assertive, and irresistible.

They’re bad boys.

Which is all well and good, because they’re fictional.

It’s the real-life bad boys who are the actual problem. Because guess what? People have to live by rules. And maybe guys can get away with not caring what people think, but that doesn’t work the same way for the women who fall for them.

I know all of this, but my inclination for bad boys transcends fiction and has gotten me into trouble more times than I’ll confess to. I’ve sworn them off at least a dozen times, only to be taken in by a good smolder.

Until Charly.

For three years, I’ve stuck to my vow of no more bad boys.

But summertime and vacation go hand—in—hand, and I feel an irresistible urge to take a break from my vow, even knowing the combination of sun, heat, and the taste of freedom invites stupid decision making. Particularly when it comes to love.

When I find myself looking at the guy at the party as often as he looks at me, I decide it’s time to make a break for it. I wander away from the crowd celebrating the success of my stepsister Evie and her bestie Georgia’s show to the shore of Smuk Lake (pronounced smock, as Evie has reminded me a thousand times).

I tell myself I’m going to dip my feet in the water or watch the sun’s rays skim water-skipper-like across the blue water. But secretly, I might be hoping he’ll follow me.

Either way, when ten minutes later my bad boy appears with his simmering smile, I should be on high alert. And when the sand shifts under us as he sits next to me, Ishouldrecognize the moving earth as the warning sign it is.

“Hey.” He hands me a skinny glass bottle of Coke. “You look thirsty.”

I hesitate before shifting my gaze away from the strikingly blue lake to his brown eyes. From far away, they looked black. But up close, they remind me of the topaz ring my grandmother left to me. They shimmer between gold and walnut.

He assesses me like a chess player sizing up the competition. I can almost see the question scrolling through his brain: Will she be enough of a challenge to make the game worth playing?

I unwrap my arms from around my knees and lean forward to see what he’s got in his opposite hand.

“You didn’t think I’d want one of those?” I nod toward his Corona.

“Didn’t know if you were old enough.” In a total Jess Mariano move, his lip pulls at the corner, and my no-bad-boys resolve slips with the sand beneath my feet.

I challenge his teasing grin with a raise of my eyebrow.

“Not old enough for a beer, but not too young for you to hit on?”

With a loud laugh, he tips his head back. His full lips are wet from his drink and shimmer in the sun.

It’s been a minute—or a thousand—since I’ve been kissed. I meanreallykissed. And before I can stop the image from playing in my brain, I picture tracing a finger over his bottom lip, across the stubble on his chin, past the Adam’s apple, all the way down his neck.

And I don’t even know his name.

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