Free All She Wants for Christmas by Jaci Burton Page A

the past couple days building snowmen in the yard, complete with black button eyes, tattered scarves, carrot noses and red gumdrops for the mouths. It had stayed cold enough that Mr. and Mrs. Snowpeople were still standing, which thrilled Zoey even more and thankfully had given her something to do so she hadn’t bugged him nonstop about when Christmas was.
    The only drawback to this extravaganza was that Riley would be singing.
    Not that there was anything wrong with her singing. It was just that he’d been kind of avoiding her since two nights ago in the car when he’d totally lost his mind and climbed all over her. Fortunately she’d been busy wrapping up all her biography stuff since then and he hadn’t run into her.
    Today was supposed to be her last event, a filmed thing where she would sing a medley of Christmas songs from her last holiday CD. Everyone from town would be there, Riley would sing after the parade, and then she and her entire crew would pack up and go, along with all the media.
    So really, what had been the point of refiring the past between them, except to remind him that the two of them were worlds apart and he still couldn’t have her?
    He didn’t deserve to have her.
    Besides, there was Zoey to think about. Her life was here in Deer Lake where his family was. Where Zoey’s family was. Riley’s life was somewhere else, probably always on the road on that big tour bus of hers.
    And even though he’d driven home the long way to get his riotous libido under control that night, and he’d been thinking about Riley nonstop ever since, especially about that hot interlude in the car and how it had felt to remap her body with his hands, it was pointless.
    She was going her way soon, and he was staying here.
    With his daughter.
    So despite wanting to call her the next day, or go over to the bed and breakfast to see her, he hadn’t. Because his life was reality, not fantasy.
    And since Riley had left, the icy cold hand of reality had firmly clenched him in its grip.
    “Daddy, I want to go ice skating.”
    He looked down at his adorable daughter who looked like a puffy pink marshmallow in her pink coat, pink hat and pink mittens. He’d done her hair in pigtail braids this morning and she’d insisted on puffy pink bands to hold them. She even wore pink boots.
    The girl liked her some pink.
    “We’ll go ice skating later. The parade’s about to start. You don’t want to miss it, do you?”
    Her eyes got big and wide. “Oh. No. Let’s go, Daddy.”
    She tugged on his hand and dragged him toward the center island of town where the parade ended. They were lucky and found a bench to sit on, a perfect viewing area for the parade. They were joined shortly by his mom and dad and brothers.
    “It’s cold as a well digger’s—”
    “Brody,” his mother warned, casting her glance to Zoey.
    “Shovel,” Brody finished with a tweak of Zoey’s nose.
    Zoey giggled.
    Wyatt shoved his hands in his pockets, turned up the collar of his coat and looked about as happy to be there as he would be if he was having a root canal.
    But missing the annual town Christmas event would somehow be a direct insult to their mother, and even Wyatt wouldn’t do that, no matter how much he hated the world these days.
    When you lived in a small town, parades weren’t exactly like the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade in New York City. They didn’t go on for hours. You had the cops because they could run their sirens and all the kids liked that. And the fire department, too. Then there were the middle school and high school bands, a few local clubs like Rotary and Knights of Columbus, some private organizations and businesses who put some holiday floats together, and that was pretty much it.
    And then came Santa on his big float at the end, waving from on top of his makeshift chimney. Dave Bowman was doing a fine job as Santa this year, and Ethan suspected Dave’s rosy cheeks were due to the shot or two of whiskey Ethan had