Read Online Colton's Christmas Baby by Karen Whiddon - Free Book Online Page A

We’ve got plenty of single women. You could hook up with any one of them, if you’d just make the effort.”
    As if it was that simple. What Wes conveniently forgot to mention is that if any single woman in Honey Creek dated him, a Colton, she’d expect a lot more than a simple sexual relationship. Assuming she could look past the been-in-prison thing.
    â€œI told you, I don’t want anything complicated. I just want sex.”
    â€œGood luck with that.”
    â€œThen I guess I’ll keep driving up to Billings.”
    â€œOr try harder to meet someone here in town. Maybe you should talk to Maisie.”
    â€œSurely you jest.” Damien shot his brother an incredulous look. “I can’t ask my sister to help me find a bed partner.”
    â€œTrue. Though you could ask her to help you get a few dates, you know. It’s all in the way you put it. Since we were meeting for lunch today, I invited her to meet us here. She said something about you taking her Christmas shopping.”
    Damien groaned. “She’s been hounding me about that.”
    â€œThen I guess now would be a good time to get started.”
    â€œWhat about you?” Damien leaned forward. “Maybe you should take her shopping. How much of your holiday shopping have you gotten done?”
    As Wes was about to speak again, his fiancée, Lily Masterson, rushed up and interrupted, leaning in to give him a long, lingering and very public kiss.
    Wes shot Damien a look that plainly said, Speaking of sex… Damn his hide. He might find this funny, but to Damien, it was no laughing matter. All he could do was clench his teeth and try to appear pleasant. “Hi Lily.”
    Her bright smile faltered a notch. “Hey, Damien.”
    Moving over so she could sit next to him, Wes draped his arm around Lily’s slender shoulders before turning back to Damien. “Sorry. You were saying?”
    Damien wanted to roll his eyes. Wes knew good and well he couldn’t talk about this in front of Lily. Instead, he flashed her a quick smile. “Are you prepared for Christmas?”
    As he’d suspected it would, the question sent her on a roll, listing what she’d bought and what she still needed to find and for whom.
    Letting a clearly entranced Wes hang on to her every word, Damien tuned her out and slowly finished his beer. It was plain he wasn’t going to get any help from his brother. He’d simply have to continue to find a woman on his own.
    Again he thought of Eve Kelley and the kisses they’d shared. Just thinking of her heated his blood.
    He wanted her. Though he claimed to be looking for a woman, any woman, right now only Eve Kelley would do.

Chapter 5
    W atching through the window of Salon Allegra as the first snow flurries fluttered to the ground, Eve wiped a stray tear from her eye. Four months pregnant and already her hormones made her want to weep at the most inauspicious moments.
    The approaching holidays made her feel even worse. She was alone and lonely, and because Honey Creek was such a small town, everyone knew. Most of the other women her age had families, some even had grandchildren. Most of them, especially the ones who hadn’t been cheerleaders in high school, were either secretly glad about her situation or openly pitied her. On the edge of forty and still single! The shame!
    Oddly enough, Eve herself hadn’t really minded until the big four-oh had started to loom closer. She’d still had a sort of misguided faith that eventually the right man would come along. Which might explain why she’d beenso eager to believe Massimo, with his honeyed promises and sensuous embrace.
    Her mother, Bonnie Gene, kept bugging her to join the quilting group she’d started, refusing to let the minor fact that Eve had no interest in quilting deter her. Worse, despite her mom’s promise, she knew she would continue to constantly network among her friends and in