Read Online Christmas in Transylvania by Sandra Hill - Free Book Online Page B

handed them out at the mall. But, oh, she was developing a taste for peppermint kisses.
    Just then, the sound of clapping crept into her dazed senses.
    Karl drew away from her and blinked. He was as testosterone buzzed as she was in hormone-­humming mode. She could see it in his silvery blue eyes.
    The two of them turned as one to look at the crowded hall, where everywhere was clapping at the spectacle they had just put on. Faith felt her face heat with embarrassment. What had come over her?
    She saw at a glance that Karl was blushing, too.
    The only one not clapping was Vikar, who tossed his hands out in surrender, and said, “You might as well come down. The cat’s out of the bag now.”
    â€œWhat cat, Poppa?” Nora asked.
    â€œWhat bag, Poppa?” Gunnar asked. “Oooh, did Santa bring us a kitty?”
    â€œSanta doesn’t come until Christmas Eve, silly. Poppa must mean Regina’s cat,” Nora told her brother.
    Karl stood and helped Faith to her feet. “I suppose you expect me to apologize for that kiss,” he said.
    She shook her head. “I’m the one who kissed you.”
    He arched his brows as if that was debatable. “It’s been forty-­two years since I’ve kissed a woman,” he told her then, “and that kiss was hot damn well worth the wait.”
    Wow! For a man of few words, he sure knew how to charm the pants off a girl. And she meant that literally. More importantly, the cold hard knot that had been lodged deep inside her melted some more.
    He winked at her then.
    The melting turned into a puddle.
    And Faith remembered that there was another part to her Christmas fantasy, and Karl had just fulfilled it.
    Love took seed in her heart and began to bloom. It didn’t matter that she’d just left another man. It didn’t matter that she hardly knew Karl. It didn’t matter that she might be pregnant. It didn’t matter that she looked like a skinny, beat-­up, bag lady, and Karl was a hot hunk. It didn’t matter that she was clearly older than he was. It didn’t matter that she would be here only a short while.
    For now, she was in love. Head over heels, love at almost first sight, with the added bonus that it was Christmastime. The lyrics of that sexy Mariah Carey song, “All I Want For Christmas Is You,” suddenly came on the sound system.
    And she thought, Oh, yeah!

 
    Chapter Six
    Was it love, or was it lust? Did it matter? . . .
    K ARL WAS FALLING in love.
    It might have been forty-­eight years since he’d first had a crush on Sally Taylor, when they’d both been sophomores at Albert Einstein High School outside Duluth, Minnesota. It had been another three years before they’d gotten married, and they’d had three years of wedded bliss, so to speak, only one of them together, before he got drafted, and then he’d died in Vietnam at age twenty-­two. Now, he remained a perpetual twenty-­two as a vangel while Sally had gone on to age in normal fashion. She’d died a few years back of cancer. He’d never once stepped out on her, before or since her death, even though he’d never seen her again in all those years. Mike’s orders. She’d never remarried, either.
    But this was no crush he felt for Faith. Somehow, he’d managed to skip all the steps from first attraction to slam-­dunk, I-­am-­a-­dead-­duck, putty-­in-­this-­woman’s-­hands. He wasn’t sure when or how it had happened. Probably when he’d stopped for one too many coffees at the diner where she worked. Or when he’d seen her battered face at her trailer. Or when she insisted that she did not take charity and would be out of his hair . . . not that he had much . . . once she was stronger.
    And here was the worst part. When Vikar, and Trond, and Ivak, and Wrath had found what they called their lifemates, they said there was a