Holiday Romance Collection - 6 Books Bundle (Erotic Romance - Holiday Romance) Read Free

blades bared in a tank top. It couldn’t be. It couldn’t. She stumbled from the doorway of the shop and out into the parking lot. The December heat brushed like breath against her face. She felt her legs trembling. The disbelief, the shock, the sheer astonishment moved through her like a tidal wave.
    It was him. It had to be him. The same thick black hair, worn longer now to brush the collar of his white dress shirt. His tall, bulky body, although with less muscle than the last time she’d seen him, and a new haunted quality around his eyes. The jeans and boots instead of slacks and loafers were new. But this was him. Jacob Holmes. Her husband. Another sob burst from her. How—?
    “Is this really you?”
    A familiar crooked grin eased across his face. “Who else could it be, Maeve baby?”
    She stumbled further into the parking lot and he met her there under the hot sun, cars flying past them on the street, the voices of people sitting at the bus stop nearby. Her hands trembled as she lifted them to touch his face. Oh, God! His warm skin felt like it was made for her touch. His soft hair, the strong column of his neck, the thick beat of his heart under the white shirt faintly damp with his sweat.
    And his smell. Oh, God, his smell! She felt the tears rushing down her face but did nothing to stop them. This was really Jacob. After nearly three years, he stood before her. She felt again the soul shattering grief when the agent had come to her door to tell her she’d never see her husband again. The blow of the wooden floors against her knees as she’d collapsed where she stood in the doorway, shaken by grief, unable to believe it but having no choice but to believe that Jacob was lost to her forever. And now he was here, whole and softly calling her name. She reached up to his face again. And slapped him. Hard.
    “You bastard!” she rasped.
    After a moment of brief surprise, he grinned again. “I missed you too, baby.”
    Maeve spun and turned away from him, her palm stinging from the blow. Her heart thumped madly in her chest as she shoved open the door of the shop. The bell jangled as she flew to the back of the store, into the workroom where she created her arrangements. Her work area, the counter that was an island in the center of the room otherwise surrounded by plants and flowers, was now bare except for a few snipped stalks from the yellow roses she’d sold to a new father earlier that morning. The room smelled like flowers, of roses and lilies, and daffodils, and hyacinths. It smelled so normal. But nothing was normal now. She pressed her palms to her hot cheeks.
    The bell to the store clattered. After a moment’s hesitation, the door to her workroom opened. Jacob stood in the doorway. He wore his working face. The face he used when he wasn’t sure what situation it was that he was confronting, cautious but blank. When he saw her, his body straightened, his face got even blanker. A thrill sparked inside her that she remembered something so simple, something so familiar about who he was. This man. Her husband.
    Maeve bit her lip to stifle another cry.
     
    “Maeve, baby.” His voice was that same low, husky baritone. Sexy even when he wasn’t trying to be. Her legs trembled. She turned away from him and leaned back against the counter.
    “I missed you,” he said.
    She clenched her back teeth, squeezed her eyes shut. “Did you miss me the whole three years you left me alone, or was it just this week or today when you showed up on my doorstep?” Her arms locked tight around her middle, holding her up, preventing her from falling apart. Jacob was here .
    She sensed him coming closer, the room filling even more with his large and impressive presence. Her skin prickled with the awareness of him. She knew without seeing him what he was going to do.
    “Don’t touch me,” she said, breathless and still disbelieving, the years of loss and grief battering her like the moment, the minute, the second they