Mission of Christmas Read Free

The “don’t be a shithead” look. “I’m shopping for my sister. And my mom. And my aunt. And Big Grandma.”
    “Really, gift cards work well. Just go to the bank and get them the damn Visa cards and be done with it.” I darted around a woman with a stroller loaded down with shopping bags. I think there was a baby in there somewhere. I swear I saw a foot.
    He took my hand and slid into a shop selling bath stuff—the smell hit me as soon as we walked in, and I couldn’t help feeling like I’d walked into a bathhouse. At least the store wasn’t totally over-packed like the common area. I let out a relieved sigh I wasn’t crammed shoulder to shoulder with other shoppers anymore.
    Inhaling a breath, Andrew grimaced. “I have no idea what to get.”
    “So who are we here for?”
    “Andrea.” His sister was a froo-froo gal if ever there was one. She got manicures, pedicures, the hair, the eyebrows—you name it, she got it pampered, plucked, painted, and foiled.
    The sooner we got what he needed, the sooner we could get out of here and I could go back to watching my non-holiday movie marathon.
    “So what scent does she like?”
    “Vanilla.”
    I glanced at him, a little freaked out at his immediate answer. “And why do you know that? I mean, there wasn’t even a pause in your response time.”
    “You’ve met my sister, right? She always smells like vanilla. I keep expecting her to pull a cookie out of her pocket.”
    I snorted. Now that I thought about it, he was right—I had thought once she used vanilla extract for perfume.
    It didn’t take us long to find vanilla. What bath store wouldn’t have a bazillion different kinds of vanilla scented lotions? We started looking through them, and I found one on the front shelf. It was a Spiced Vanilla—a special holiday scent.
    “What about this one?” I asked him, rubbing some of the lotion on my hand and sticking it in his face.
    I could feel his exhaled breath across my fingers as he took in the aroma. When he looked me in the eyes, my stomach dropped right out onto the floor. His eyes were dark—really dark, like totally heady and strong and masculine, and all my girly parts immediately squealed.
    I yanked my hand back. “It’s not a piece of candy.”
    A slip of a smile ran over his face. “Sorry. Yeah, I think that will work.”
    We picked up a couple bottles of the lotion, a bottle of the hand soap, and a bottle of the little essential oil stuff, all the same scent. When we took it to the front, the lady—who made the usual doe-eyes at Andrew—offered to wrap it for him in a special gift basket.
    He didn’t seem to notice her attention.
    I shook my head as we started to walk out. “You should have asked for her number.”
    “Why?”
    “She was all about you.”
    “I wasn’t interested in her.”
    I turned and looked at the gal as we headed back into the swarm of customers. “Why not? She’s cute. All perky and firm in the right places.”
    “I’ve had firm and perky. I’m more interested in soft and sullen now.”
    I snorted. If I didn’t know better, I might have thought he was talking about me.
    I snuck a glance at him. He wasn’t looking at me.
    Good.
    No need to screw up a good thing.
     
     
    We climbed back into his car, and he started pulling out of the parking lot.
    “Thank God,” I muttered. “I didn’t think I could take much more Christmas shopping.”
    “I’m not done,” he said, turning north out of the parking lot. Not south; that would take me back to my place.
    “What now?” I muttered, sipping on my now-cold coffee.
    “Gotta stop at Barnes and Noble.”
    I let out a sigh. At least that place I could somewhat handle. I was a reader, and there was this new series I wanted to pick up.
    And they had coffee.
    “What did you need at Barnes?” I asked, watching the traffic. The sideways snow hadn’t stuck to the road, thank goodness. Instead everything was just wet this morning.
    Which was good. No frozen roads.