Page 44 of Holding Out For A Holiday Hero

Her hold tightened even more on the covers.

“Kissed every inch, too.”

He had. Oh, he had.

“I’ll be doing it again,” he vowed. “But we are more than sex. Understand that. You would never be a one-night stand for me.” His tone was suddenly flat. Serious. His grin had vanished.

“What am I?” True wanted to pull the question back as soon as it slipped from her mouth.

His phone rang again.

“Don’t you know?” Jake murmured.

She had no clue. Thus, the question.

Another demanding ring.

Her head dipped toward it. “You should get that.”

He reached for the phone. He spared a quick glance at the image on the screen before he swiped his finger over the phone’s surface and put it to his ear. “Perry, what do you have for me?”

True used that moment to escape. A fast and desperate retreat into the safety of the bathroom.

But his words chased her. That low, rumbling…Don’t you know?

No, she didn’t know what she was to him. She did know what he was coming to be to her.

Too much. Everything.

A man I could love.

Not just a boy that she dreamed about. A man who had become something very different and far more important.

And that just absolutely terrified her.

“The ex-husband isn’t in Atlanta,” Perry informed him. “I got some of your Atlanta contacts to nose around for us. The guy is on a holiday vacation. Supposed to be at some cabin up in Colorado until the new year.”

“I want that confirmed, and by confirmed—I want you talking to someone who has actually seen his ass in Colorado.” Jake wanted a visual on the ex.

“On it.” Excitement hummed in Perry’s voice. “This is a real case. A murder. And a kidnapping. Can you believe it?”

He could believe it, all right. “A woman is in danger, Perry. Try not to sound like you just opened the best Christmas present in the world, would you?”

“Sorry.” He didn’t sound sorry. He still sounded far too excited. “I’m still digging into the financials of the people at the museum. So far, nothing is turning up. But I won’t stop digging.”

“Good. Don’t.”

“And I’ll report to you as soon as I learn anything else.”

Jake’s eyes were on the closed bathroom door. She’d run from him. He didn’t like that. He liked even less that the woman had thought she was a one-night stand for him. So wrong.

She was his end game.

It was time for her to start realizing that fact.

I need to take True on a freaking date. He’d promised her ice skating. Instead, he’d fucked her all night long. Yeah, okay, fine, maybe he could get where she’d been worried that he was just interested in sex.

As soon as I stop the bastard after her, I will make every single one of True’s Christmas dreams come true. Just call him Santa Claus. After all, he did have the suit shoved in his laundry room.

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