Read Online A Bad Boy for Christmas by Kelly Hunter - Free Book Online Page A

how was your week?” Mia asked.
    “Good,” he said, as the others began reaching for newspaper in lieu of plates. He’d caught fish, showered, eaten and slept. And he’d dreamed of soft skin and shipwrecks and woken up hard and aching for relief. “Great. You?”
    “Three feathers, one skull and a treble clef. Busy busy.”
    “Must be quite a change from Melbourne.”
    “That it is. Coffee’s good though, from Silvio’s on the corner.”
    “Yes, it is.” He turned to Nash next, determined to be pleasant. “Find anything worth buying from the wreckers?”
    “Couple of old Fords I could find homes for. A 1959 custom Dodge convertible. Body’s bent but it’s all original. I’d like it but the old guy who owns the place won’t sell it outright. Said it comes with the yard.”
    “Wily old goat,” said Mia cheerfully. “I offered to repaint his business sign and everything.”
    “Could be he didn’t want mermaids on it,” Nash said dryly.
    “Yeah, but … ocean.” Mia waved a prawn-filled hand towards the boats and beyond.
    “Yeah, but cars .” Nash’s smile could light up a room when he deigned to actually use it. Cutter blinked.
    “Is that what I look like when I smile,” he asked Caleb beneath his breath.
    “Yep.”
    “No wonder I pull.”
    “You’re unbelievable,” his brother muttered.
    “No, I’m pretty . How come you never told me that?”
    “I thought you knew.”
    “No, I thought I was handsome, not pretty. There’s a difference.”
    Caleb’s smirk wasn’t encouraging. “Well maybe you can be the handsome one and he can be the pretty one.”
    “Now you’re just humoring me.”
    A second later a peeled prawn bounced off his forearm and landed on the newspaper in front of him. Only one place it could have come from, given the flight trajectory.
    “Why are you peeling prawns for me?” he asked Mia.
    “You put them in your mouth,” she said encouragingly. “It saves putting your foot in it.”
    “I could live with someone peeling prawns for me.” This from Caleb.
    “Couldn’t we all,” said Bree.
    “A toast,” his grandfather said suddenly. “To Jackson and Mia. Welcome to the family.”
    Everyone tapped out and drank.
    And then another peeled prawn landed in front of Cutter with a wet splat and he looked up to find an utterly angelic Mia reaching for another prawn to peel.
    He was losing the battle, the war, and quite possibly his mind, but he picked up the prawn, drowned it in seafood sauce and, with a smug glance in Caleb’s direction, he ate it.
    “Happy now?” asked Mia.
    Strangely enough, he was.
    *     *     *
    Two hours later Mia made her way to Nash’s car with a lazy sigh, her farewells behind her and an evening of small seaside town entertainment stretching out ahead of her. She had a belly full of seafood and salad and a heart that was equal shades light and dark. Light because Nash’s new family seemed determined to make room for him. Dark because her attraction to Cutter was growing.
    “I don’t know what to make of them,” Nash said as he strode alongside her.
    “They’re a nice family. Gemma’s nice too. You put your foot in it there, by the way. All without saying a word.”
    “It wasn’t intentional. You know that.”
    So she did. “I saw you talking to her afterwards.”
    “I apologized.”
    “Did it help?”
    “It helped me. The kids still think I’m going to belt them as soon as look at them.”
    “They don’t know you. Been there, done that, better safe than broken.” Mia reached the car and shrugged out of her shirt before tossing it on the seat. She had a top on underneath. Possibly not one Cutter would have approved of, but nonetheless, what he didn’t see wouldn’t annoy him. “What?” she said as Nash eyed her funny. “It’s got prawn splatter all over it.”
    “Why’d you even wear an over-shirt?”
    “Just trying to fit in.”
    “Mia, one of them was wearing black feathers in her hair and a corset