Free Not Another New Year’s by Christie Ridgway Page A

twist for the girl now facing him down. “I never wanted a child,” the beauteous but dissipated Maureen was quoted as saying. “Her father insisted, though, and then we were both disappointed that the baby was a girl.”
    Stupid-shit people. Both of them. If Troy ruled the world, parenting would be strictly licensed and heavily regulated.
    He reached out to grab Desirée’s upper arms and pluck her from the tumble of broken glass around her feet. She gasped in surprise, squirming in his hold. The silky ends of her dark hair waved across the top of his hands, and prickles rose along his skin, tickling everywhere.
    He dumped her a few feet away and then rubbed a hand over his shaven head. “Are you hurt?” he ground out, sounding meaner than he meant to.
    Her wide-eyed gaze dropped from his face to her arms, bared by this tiny, distracting, diabolical T-shirt she was wearing. It was yellow, thin as a handkerchief, and lopped off across her belly button, leaving inches of golden skin between the hem and the waistband of her low-riding scarlet jeans.
    “I’ll let you know if I have bruises tomorrow,” she said.
    Aghast, he took a quick step forward. “Did I—” He stopped, noticing her too innocent look. “I was talking about the broken glass, as you very well know,” he said. “Were you cut?”
    She shook her head, not even bothering to glance down at her feet, clad in turquoise suede boots, with heels higher than a Manhattan skyscraper. “I’m fine.”
    But she wasn’t. For months she’d been hangingaround town, making life hell for his little brother and Tanner’s friend Finn. Finn called her the “Mad Gift Giver” because she kept trying to come up with appropriate thank-yous for the way the other man had saved her father’s life. She’d yet to find a way to pay back Tanner for the havoc she’d wreaked on his.
    “You’re nuts,” he told her, remembering what Tanner had said a few minutes ago. “Thinking my brother would even for a minute consider marrying you.”
    Her expression didn’t change. A beat passed, and then she shrugged. “It was just an idea.”
    “An idea for what?” he threw out. “What the hell goes on inside your bratty, puny brain?”
    That seemed to pierce her cool hide. “Magna cum laude.” Her eyes glittered as she tapped her chest.
    Her tits were maybe the best he’d ever seen. Round, and her bra must have been flimsy because he could see her hard little nipples poking against the fabric of her shirt. He swung his gaze back to her face, hoping she hadn’t noticed what he’d been noticing.
    “That’s graduated with high honors,” she said, her lip curling in a sneer.
    “Semper fidelis,” he shot back. “That’s Marine talk for I can kick your butt into Monday.”
    Her sneer made way for a smile. “Troy, it is Monday.”
    He wanted to strangle her. Embrace her. Kill her. Kiss her. From the moment they’d met through every moment since, she’d gotten on his very last nerve…and somehow still wrapped his libido around her dainty little finger.
    Even now he could feel that pooling heaviness in his groin, and it only made him angrier.
    It was time someone taught her a lesson. She couldn’t go around making messes in other people’s lives and expect that a gift, a smile, or a marriage proposal, for God-frickin’-sake, would make up for it. He jerked his thumb toward the dozens of glasses now turned into thousands of shards. “Well, Ms. Magna Cum Laude, what are you prepared to do about that?”
    Her smile fell away. She stepped toward him and put her hand on his arm. “I am sorry. It was an accident.”
    His muscle hardened beneath her soft touch. This close, he could smell her too, and it was sandalwood and some other exotic spice. A mysterious scent, and for a moment Desirée reminded him of the women he’d glimpsed in Afghanistan, almost completely hidden except through the latticed screens of their voluminous robes.
    But she wasn’t camouflaging any of