'Tis the Season to Get Lucky (Entangled Indulgence) by Heidi Rice Page A

Gully. You’re a good father. I can tell.”
    “Not that my ego needs constant stroking or anything,” he said with that charming air of self-deprecation, “but how can you tell?”
    “Because it’s clear you value the relationship, and you want to get it right.” She sighed. “You put her feelings, her needs first, whenever you can. That’s special.”
    And what made it all the more special was that his own father had done the opposite to him.
    He lifted up on his elbow, trailed his finger down her cheek. “So what’s your old man like? Not as much of a jerk as mine, I hope.”
    The tears stung a bit again, so she blinked. “I have no idea.”
    “You never met him?”
    She gripped his finger and kissed the tip, touched by his indignation, even if it wasn’t necessary. “I’m pretty sure my mum didn’t know who he was. She was a rock groupie, a free-love advocate long after it was fashionable, and every time I asked her who my dad was, she’d have a different answer.”
    “Bummer.”
    “You don’t know the half of it. She even told me once that Mick Jagger might be my father.”
    He chuckled. “Isn’t he old enough to be your granddad?”
    She laughed, too, the unhappiness not as painful as it had once been. “It gets worse. At the time, I didn’t know who Mick Jagger was. I was only ten. So I made the mistake of mentioning it to one of my friends. She told her mother. One thing led to another, and I ended up getting a detention from the headmistress for telling lies.”
    He cradled her cheek, brushed his thumb across her lip. “Your headmistress must have been blind. Couldn’t she see you’ve definitely got Mick’s lips?”
    “Oh, please!” She laughed—but something that had always been a dull ache around her heart didn’t ache as much tonight.
    He kissed her, chuckling with her as he fell back on the bed. She took his hand, the feeling of connection so intense it scared her a little. “The point is, even though I didn’t have a dad, I used to spend hours fantasizing about him, and if he had been anything like you, I would have been chuffed to bits.”
    “Chuffed, huh?” he said, obviously enjoying the word. He lifted their joined hands to his mouth, kissed the back of hers. Then rolled over and snuck his hand under the sheet. “That’s real sweet of you, Katherine. But given the extremely hot sex we just had, I’m thinking it’s also a bit kinky.”
    She laughed again, the memory of the hot sex making her cheeks flush. “Will you please stop!”
    He levered himself up, nibbling kisses along her collarbone, while his hand cupped a swollen breast. “No can do,” he said, his voice husky with arousal. “But I tell you what, I’ll let you call me Daddy this time.”
    She was still smiling when he sent her flying over the edge.

Chapter Nine
    “Hey, Sleepy, it’s time to wake up,” Ryder whispered, nobly resisting the urge to nibble on the tempting earlobe next to his lips, which was infused with the addictive scent of cinnamon.
    He sat back on the bed and gazed at Katherine’s face, soft and seductive in sleep despite the harsh fluorescent lights that had come on when the power was restored.
    He’d exhausted her. They’d exhausted each other. During a night that had held so many surprises, he’d been wide awake for the past hour—trying to figure out what to do. He didn’t want this to end here. That much was for sure.
    Last night, he’d discovered that beneath Katherine Braithwaite’s prim and proper English exterior was a smart, sensitive, and incredibly sexy woman he wanted to continue seeing. But he’d been puzzling over the practicalities while he got dressed and packed up the stuff from the night they’d spent together. And whatever way you looked at it, he couldn’t offer her anything other than a long-distance, half-assed relationship. Now that he knew what she’d dealt with as a child, from a mother who had been anything but reliable, and knowing how