Mistletoe Daddy. Deb Kastner

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СКАЧАТЬ in his life, he might care more about how he looked. But that wasn’t the case right now—and it looked like it wouldn’t be for a good long while.

      He supposed he ought to be grateful to Vivian for bidding on him. After his last—and very public—painful breakup, most of the town’s single ladies were avoiding him like the plague, as evidenced by the auction today. He supposed he wasn’t really all that surprised no one else bid on him.

      Vivian hadn’t been back in Serendipity long enough to hear the latest rumors. She’d spent the last few years in Houston and wore Big City like a neon sign around her neck. He wasn’t sure getting picked up by a woman like her was going to do his reputation any good, but it couldn’t get any worse.

      He’d really hoped to be bid on by some little old lady who needed help with a few odd jobs. He’d also been more than a little concerned that an ex-girlfriend with a grudge might see this as an opportunity to repay him for real or imagined wrongs.

      He was the first to admit that his record with long-term relationships was less than stellar, and he knew it was his fault. He was just really, really not good at making things work in the dating department.

      But circumstances being what they were, he might as well see what Vivian wanted and be done with it—as long as it didn’t involve cutting his hair. Who knew? Maybe he could mend some of those torn fences with his reputation if folks in town saw that he treated Vivian right.

      Nick turned his attention to her, but he stood for a good five minutes while Vivian talked to her sister.

      And talked. And talked.

      His stomach growled, but he couldn’t do anything about it. This was a Bachelors and Baskets auction, with the winning bidders providing a picnic lunch for the men they’d won. Lunch wasn’t going to happen until Vivian led him to wherever she’d stashed her basket. He had to wait until she decided to grace him with her attention, which he guessed wasn’t going to happen soon, since her mind seemed to be on Alexis, the auction and anyone in speaking distance of her.

      Except for him.

      Vivian gave a new meaning to the words social butterfly, and she definitely had the gift of gab. With the possible exception of Jo Spencer, who owned Cup O’ Jo’s Café and was therefore the Queen of the Gossip Hive, Nick had never seen anybody flitter around as much as Vivian. Her high, tinkling giggle reminded Nick of a fairy in a cartoon.

      It was downright grating on his nerves and was practically curling the hair on his chest. Nick crossed his arms and grumbled under his breath, berating the entire chain of events that had led him to this particularly annoying set of circumstances.

      She was supposed to be feeding him. That was the deal. She had the picnic basket.

      Somewhere.

      If she ever got around to acknowledging him again, he might ask where it was. He didn’t mind eating alone and leaving her to her myriad conversations.

      “Hey, Viv,” Alexis called, nudging her sister’s shoulder. When Vivian turned, Alexis gestured toward Nick. “You need to feed your man. He looks ravenous over there.”

      Nick bristled. While he appreciated Alexis’s thoughtfulness, he was not Vivian’s man. Not in any way, shape or form.

      Except, unfortunately, that in a way he was. She’d bought him. With money. For a purpose as yet unknown to him. Unfortunately, she was very possibly expecting a date out of this. He knew perfectly well that many of the single ladies in the crowd were bidding on men for just such a reason. It was enough to make a single man shudder.

      “Oh, Nick, I am so sorry,” Viv apologized, laying a familiar hand on his forearm. “I completely forgot about you.”

      “Yeah. No kidding.” His arm trembled as he fought the urge to jerk it out of her reach.

      She’d forgotten about him? Ouch. He didn’t want to admit it, but her words stung his ego. Even if it was Vivian Grainger. Even if he shouldn’t really care whether she was thinking about him or not.

      She ignored his attitude, if she even noticed it, apparently choosing to take the high road and stay cheerful instead of descending into bickering. Typical of what he knew of Vivian Grainger—her glass was always, annoyingly, half-full.

      “I packed my basket with all kinds of goodies,” she informed him. “Turkey and Swiss sandwiches and BLTs. Potato chips, a couple of deli salads and one of Phoebe’s delicious cherry pies for dessert. I hope you like cherry.”

      Cherry happened to be his favorite. But as hungry as he was, he would have eaten it even if he didn’t care for it.

      “And I packed a special surprise.”

      In general, he didn’t like surprises—but this one sounded like it was something to eat. His mouth watered at the possibilities.

      “You’ll be happy to know that everything I’ve packed today is legitimately store-bought,” she continued, without letting him get a word in edgewise, were he inclined to do so.

      Which he wasn’t.

      “I know the whole point of this was to serve the best of Serendipity’s down-home country cooking, but trust me when I say you would definitely not want to eat my cooking. I can’t even boil soup.”

      “Water,” he corrected absently, wondering when, if ever, they were going to get around to actually eating the food she was yammering about.

      “What?” she asked, confused. She folded her arms over her stomach and swayed slightly, as if she was unsteady on her feet. Instinctively, he pressed a palm to the small of her back to support her.

      “Water,” he clarified. “The saying is, ‘You can’t boil water.’”

      “Oh.” She straightened her shoulders and waved him off, seeming to recover from the dizziness that had come over her moments before. “Whatever. But I do have bottled water.” She paused, giggling. “To drink. Not to boil.”

      He was having trouble following her train of thought, if there was one. Once again he thought of a butterfly, flittering from flower to flower.

      Only this particular flying insect was revved up on caffeine or something.

      “And your basket is—where?” he finally asked, hoping for a straight answer but not really expecting one.

      To his astonishment, she grabbed his hand and tugged him across the green.

      “We’re right in the middle.”

      Smack in the middle of the chaos. Now, why was he not surprised?

      “It’s not that I’ve never cooked before,” she said earnestly, as if she thought he really wanted to know, while spreading a fuzzy purple blanket on the plush green lawn and flopping down on it. She reached into her ribbon-and-plume-decorated picnic basket, which Nick thought resembled an exotic bird, and withdrew two sandwiches. Her gaze turned distant and her lips bowed into a frown. “It’s just that I’m not very good at it. Let’s just say the whole experiment was a failure.”

      She paused and her voice made a distressed hiccupping sound. In one blink of an eye her expression filled with deep sadness. Nick’s СКАЧАТЬ