Free Marry-Me Christmas by Shirley Jump

second? Samantha Barnett was an attractive woman. Curvaceous, friendly and she was surrounded by the perfume of cookies. Any man with a pulse would be enticed by her, as he had been—very much so—at dinner a little while ago. Mimi had never seemed so far away.
    Not that he and Mimi had what anyone would really call a relationship. They were more…convenience daters. When either of them needed someone to attend a function or to see a movie with, they picked up the phone. Days could go by before they talked to each other, the strings as loose as untied shoelaces. Mimi liked it that way, and so did Flynn.
    Samantha Barnett, who wore her small-town roots like a coat, was definitely not a convenience dater. He’d do best to keep his heart out of that particular cookie jar.
    Flynn cleared his throat, turned to his bag and unpacked his laptop, plugging the machine into the outlet on the wall and the telephone line into his modem. Sam gave him a phone number to dial and connect to her provider. He typed in all the information, then waited for the magic to happen.
    Nothing. No familiar musical tones of dialing. No screeching of the modem. No hiss of a telephone line. Just an error message.
    He tried again. A third time. Powered down the computer, powered it back up and tried connecting a fourth time.
    “No luck?” Sam asked.
    “Are you sure we’re not on Mars?”
    Sam laughed. “Pretty sure. Though there are days…” She tossed him a smile, while her hands kept busy dropping balls of chocolate chip cookie dough onto a baking sheet. “That remoteness, that disconnect from city life, is all part of the charm of Riverbend, though. And what draws those droves of tourists.”
    Flynn shot her a look of disdain. “All five of them? Not counting your temporary flood, of course.”
    “Actually, it’s pretty busy here in the summer. And you saw the lines outside the shop today. People from big cities really like the rural location, and the fact that we have lots of lakes nearby for boating and camping.”
    “The cityfolk roughing it, huh?”
    “Yep. Except we have running water here.” Again, another grin. He noticed that when she smiled, her green eyes sparkled with gold flecks. They were the color of the forest just after a storm, when the sun was beginning to peek through the clouds.
    Or maybe that was just the reflection from the overhead lights. Yeah, that was it.
    Flynn gave up on his computer and shut the laptop’s cover. He rose and crossed to Sam. Was it the light? Or was it her eyes? “Why do you live here?”
    She paused in making cookies, as if surprised by the question. The scent of vanilla wafted up from the dough. “I grew up here.”
    He took another step closer. Only because he still couldn’t decide what caused the gold flecks in her eyes. Mother Nature or sixty watts. He’d been intrigued all night, first in the restaurant and now, wondering, pondering…thinking almost nonstop about her. A bad sign in too many ways to count, but he told himself if he could just solve this mystery of her eyes, the thoughts would stop. “Okay, then why did you stay? You didn’t have to keep the business open. You could have closed it and moved on.”
    She opened her mouth, then shut it again, as if she had never considered this question before. “Joyful Creations has been in my family for three generations. My family was depending on me to keep it open.”
    Another step. Flynn inhaled, and he swore he could almost taste the air around Sam. It tasted like…
    Sugar cookies.
    “What did you say?” Sam said.
    Had he said that out loud? Damn. What the hell was wrong with him? He did not get emotionally involved with his interview subjects.
    He did not lose his focus.
    He did not forget the story. He went after it, whatever the cost.
    Flynn backed up three steps, returned to his laptop and flipped up the top. It took a few seconds for the hibernating screen to come back to life. Several long, agonizing seconds of silence