Read Online The Twelve Nights of Christmas by Sarah Morgan - Free Book Online Page A

was never going to happen.
    She was a big, fat disappointment.
    Lost in the nightmare of the moment, she gasped in shock as strong hands closed over her shoulders and Rio flipped her onto her back.
    â€˜Stop crying!’ He sounded exasperated. ‘You’ll make your eyes red and that could ruin everything.’
    â€˜Ruin what? Just go away. Stop mocking me.’
    Astonishment lit his dark eyes. ‘When have I ever mocked you?’
    â€˜You said you’d never seen anyone who l-looked like me,’ Evie hiccupped, ‘and I think it’s horribly mean of you to poke fun of me, even if it is partly my fault we’re in this mess. We’re not all supermodels and wearing supermodel labels doesn’t change that. I can push my feet into designer shoes just like Kate Moss but that doesn’t give me Kate Moss’s legs.’
    â€˜Which is a good thing,’ he drawled, ‘because Kate would find it extremely hard to strut her stuff on the runway if you had her legs. For the record, I wasn’t mocking you. I was complimenting you.’
    Evie, who had never been complimented on her looks in her life before, looked at him through eyelashes welded together with tears. ‘Pardon?’
    His jaw tensed. ‘I find you attractive. Why the hell do you think I kissed you in the first place?’
    â€˜Because you have an abnormal sex drive and you can’t resist anyone naked?’
    â€˜I have a healthy sex drive.’ His dark gaze was unmistakablysexual. ‘I definitely don’t kiss women who try and pick me up. That’s a first for me.’
    â€˜I wasn’t trying to pick you up—’ Still struggling to accept the unlikely fact that he actually did find her attractive, Evie sat up. ‘You don’t think I’m too tall?’
    â€˜Too tall for what?’ That silky tone turned her insides into a quivering mass.
    â€˜For…a woman.’ Evie licked her lips. ‘I make most men feel small and insignificant. They usually don’t want to stand next to me. But I guess you’re pretty tall yourself.’
    â€˜Six four,’ he breathed, his eyes scanning the length of her legs. ‘And I’ve never had a problem with a woman’s height.’
    That was because he was unlikely to meet a woman taller than him, Evie thought weakly. ‘Most people think I’m a freak.’
    Without giving her a chance to argue, he scooped her off the bed and dumped her on her feet in front of the mirror. ‘Look at yourself. Tell me what you see.’
    Evie closed her eyes. ‘I don’t see anything.’
    â€˜Look!’
    Evie flinched and opened one eye cautiously. ‘Evie the elephant,’ she said immediately and his brows met in an impatient frown.
    â€˜If that title is a throwback to your childhood, then you’d better let it go now. You’re stunning and that gives us a major problem.’
    Stunning?
    Evie, who couldn’t even for a single moment think why being considered stunning would present a major problem to anyone, looked at him dizzily. ‘Even if that was true, which it isn’t, I don’t see how that could be a problem. How can being stunning be a problem? People judge by appearances. I’ve never been a member of the “oh, it’s such a bore to be beautiful” camp.’
    â€˜It’s a problem because you need to look wholesome.’
    Evie was about to say that she’d been trying to escape from the ‘wholesome’ image for most of her life, when he took her hair in his hands and twisted it, assessing the effect with narrowed eyes. ‘You have good skin.’
    â€˜And freckles.’
    â€˜Freckles are good. They suggest a healthy outdoor life. Wholesome.’
    Why did he keep saying wholesome?
    â€˜I’m not with you—’
    â€˜Unfortunately, you are with me and that is why we have a problem.’
    â€˜We wouldn’t have a