Page 35 of Mistletoe Face Off

She glares at me, but the corners of her lips are twitching as though she's trying hard to suppress a smile. She's enjoying this, just as much as I am.

And man, do I want to kiss her right now. So bad. Her and her witty feistiness and clever retorts. With her luscious lips and womanly curves. Oh, yeah. I want to kiss herbad.

But we've attracted a decent crowd of nosy onlookers, and kissing Holly right now would wreak the whole feud thing we’ve got going on.

But that does nothing to stop me wanting to.

“Oh, honey,” she begins, her head tilted to the side. “You're a man-child, which is the worst of both worlds. You've clearly got the impulse control of a toddler, ripping into your presents with no regard for the environment or even the clean up after, combined with the looks of an overgrown lumberjack.”

I bark out a laugh. That was funny! I style it out as sardonic. “How many lumberjacks do you know who can move the way I do on the ice?”

“None, but let's face it: lumberjacks do a real job.”

Next level, Holly. Next level!

I cross my arms over my chest. “Oh, yeah?”

She smiles sweetly at me. “Yeah.”

“Well, if you think playing hockey isn't a ‘real job’,” I say, using finger bunny ears. “What the heck are you doing at an ice arena, surrounded by the very people you don’t think do a ‘real job’?”

“That, Harrison Clarke, is a very good question.” She adjusts the strap of her purse over her shoulder. “Have a great evening, man-child,” she grinds out, and it's so realistic, I want to stand and applaud her, right here, right now.

She turns on her heel and storms off, collecting her coat and scarf from the rack by the door. She throws me one final scowl before she disappears from the room and I'm left here, my attraction for this feisty, witty, sexy woman only growing stronger with each passing moment.

I cannot wait for the next event, where we’ll get to do it all over again.

Chapter Eight

Holly

“Girl, you areeverywheretoday,” Selena says from behind her desk. “Well, you and your super hotfrenemie, Harrison Clarke.”

“He's not myfrenemie,” I protest as I place a takeout coffee on her desk, but it falls on deaf ears.

Selena has been scrolling through her phone since I arrived at the office this morning, sharing the headlines of all the storiesabout Harrison and me today. “Look at this one.” She turns her phone around and I readBlizzard’s Clarke Labeled Man-Child by Feisty Journalist.“Did you really call the Blizzard’s star defenseman a man-child?”

I sit down at my desk and take a sip of my own coffee. “Of course I did. He was acting like one, so I called it. You know me. I call a spade a spade.”

“Girl, that is brave. Isn’t he 6’5”? I think I’ve got new respect for you.”

“Thanks?”

“Did you really argue about how to unwrap Christmas presents with him? Isn’t that a little… irrelevant?”

I can’t argue with that. “Yup.”

She laughs. “This one saysYuletide Yelling Match: To Rip or Not to Rip?Stephen didn’t come up with a clever title like that.”

As promised, I called Stephen after last night’s argument so he could get the story about us out first. All I can say is I’d better get that promotion out of all this.

“It wasn’t a yelling match. More a disagreement about something totally not personal.”

“I think you crossed that line when you called the guy a man-child.”

“Yeah, maybe.” An image of his twitching lips and bright eyes enters my head. The way he looked at me sent a light, tickly feeling through my belly. “I got the feeling he enjoyed it.”

“He enjoyed being called a man-child? What kind of masochist is this guy? Don't tell me: a hockey pro masochist.”

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