Page 9 of Another Christmas from Hell

“Really? Then, tell me one thing that you do on your own,” Sean said, crossing his arms over his chest as he waited for an answer.

“I live alone,” Cayley pointed out.

“That doesn’t count,” Sean said with a sad shake of his head.

“Why doesn’t that count?”

“Besides the fact that you hate living alone?” Sean asked.

“Besides that,” Cayley said, shrugging it off as a given since it really wasn’t relevant to this conversation.

“You don’t like doing anything by yourself,” Sean said, matching her shrug with one of his own.

“That really cleared it up. Thank you,” Cayley said dryly.

“When’s the last time that you went to the movies by yourself?”

“There’s nothing good playing at the moment,” Cayley pointed out even as she tried to remember the last time that she went to the movies by herself and had to admit that it had been a while.

“Okay,” Sean said, nodding as though that was a given. “How about this? You grab breakfast from your aunt’s bakery every morning, eat every meal here at this diner, you won’t go shopping unless someone’s with you, refuse to work from home even though it would probably be safer given the fact that the building that you’re currently working in is being renovated, and if you can’t find someone to drag along, you don’t go anywhere.”

“That’s not true,” Cayley said, reaching up to rub the bridge of her nose even as she had to admit that it might be true.

“Really? Then tell me one thing that you do on your own,” Sean said with a smug look that was definitely going to land him in that snowbank.

“The grocery store,” Cayley said, dropping her hand away as she waited for him to admit that he was wrong.

“You made friends with everyone that works there so that you have someone to hang out with whenever you have to go shopping,” Sean said, sighing heavily as he muttered, “I don’t know why I put up with you.”

“You never gave me a choice, you psychotic bastard!” Cayley snapped.

“We both know that you could have gotten a restraining order,” Sean said, shrugging it off like it was no big deal.

“Because you’d respect a restraining order?” Cayley demanded, shaking her head in disbelief as she glared at the bastard driving her crazy.

“Not a chance in hell.”

CHAPTER5

“She’s waiting for you, big guy.”

“Go get her,” Craig said, shooting him a wink as Johnny slapped him on the back while Bryce contemplated throwing his brothers over the railing.

“This really is going to be the best Christmas ever,” Sean said with a heartfelt sigh while Bryce stood there, glaring at them.

“It really is,” Brian murmured in agreement as Bryce grabbed another broken board and tossed it down the shoot.

He really hated those bastards.

Sighing heavily, Bryce resigned himself to the long night ahead as he grabbed the shovel and started working on the piles of debris lining the wide second-floor walkway. He should take the rest of the winter off, maybe take a vacation or buy another property to flip, but…

There was too much shit to do, Bryce thought as he dumped another shovelful of horsehair plaster down the shoot and moved to scoop up more when movement below had him pausing to watch the small woman that should have left hours ago as she grabbed a stack of files off her desk and carried them over to the file cabinets that she’d talked Brian and Johnny into grabbing out of storage for her. What the hell was he going to do about her?

Nothing, Bryce thought, moving to shift his attention back to cleaning up this mess only to go still when she bent over and he-

Found himself biting back a groan when her jeans pulled tight over her generous ass. There was no denying that he liked what he saw. Always had. Even when she was a little girl, she’d been fucking adorable with a devious smile that used to drive his brother crazy. As she got older, it became harder to ignore the changes that turned her from an adorable little girl into an incredibly beautiful woman.

He’d be fucking lying if he said that he’d never thought about her and wondered just how good it would feel to-

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