Free Someday Soon by Debbie Macomber

attention keen.
    He said her name a second time.
    She swung around and blinked incredibly large eyes at him. “Cain? How’d you get there?” She made it sound as if they’d somehow become separated during a Sunday school picnic.
    He bounced a snowball from one gloved hand to the other. “You certainly had me fooled,” he said, smiling gleefully. “And all along I thought you a sweet and gentle soul.”
    “But I am.” Once more she fluttered her long lashes at him.
    “Who would have guessed a woman so beautiful would possess such a wide streak of malice?”
    “You shouldn’t have complained.”
    “Complained?” He lightly pitched the compacted snowball in the air, catching it with one hand.
    “About the Christmas tree,” she said. He noticed the way she was edging away from the tree and guessed she was planning to make a run for it.
    “I never said a word,” he countered.
    “Maybe not out loud, but you were mumbling anumber of times, and what you didn’t mumble you were thinking.”
    He laughed, because she’d read him so accurately.
    She pitched one last snowball at him, then turned and ran like a jackrabbit, ricocheting from one tree to the next and yelling at the top of her lungs.
    The snowball missed him completely. He dropped the one he was holding and took out in a dead run after her. Her agility and speed amazed him, but she was no match for him. He reached her within seconds and grabbed her about the waist.
    Laughing, they both went down in the snow. She lay sprawled atop him, but he quickly reversed their positions, pinning her beneath him. Her eyes had never been more clear. They sparkled with laughter and life. Her chest heaved as she smiled up at him.
    “You deserve to have your face washed with snow,” he told her, holding her hands above her head. “And I’m just the man to do it.”
    “I’m so sorry,” she said in a totally unconvincing lie. “I don’t know what came over me. You were cutting down the tree and muttering when all at once this voice inside me said you needed to be brought down a peg or two.”
    With his free hand, Cain lifted a paw full of snow and held it above her face. “If you’re planning to talk me out of washing your face, you’d better come up with something more convincing than that.”
    Laughing, she squirmed beneath him in a useless effort to escape. “It’ll never happen again,” she promised, then made the mistake of snickering.
    “Until next time, you mean,” he told her sarcastically. She squirmed again, buckling under him. He sincerelydoubted that she knew the effect her movements had on him. Even through several layers of clothes, he could feel her body rubbing against his. His reaction to her was strong and immediate.
    “Cain,” she pleaded.
    “You owe me,” he said, his eyes holding hers.
    Linette went still, her chest heaving, her eyes laughing. All at once the amusement drained out of her, and she gazed up at him and asked, “Wouldn’t a kiss do just as well?”

5
    Louis St. Cyr wasn’t going home for Christmas. A visit on New Year’s didn’t appeal to him, either. Why should he rush to the loving arms of his family? In Bayamon, the small Caribbean island his father ruled, he was known as “Sonny” or “Junior.” He was tired of fitting into the background of his father’s ambitions. Tired of living his life to suit his family.
    In France he was his own man, and he didn’t need his mother’s pampering or his father’s tedious advice. He didn’t need the hassles that went along with being the son of a wealthy landowner turned politician.
    His mother had pleaded with him to reconsider, and his father, the great and mighty leader, had threatened to cut off his hefty allowance. But Daddy wouldn’t, and Louis knew it.
    After all, it was his father who’d insisted he attend the University of Paris at the Sorbonne, his own alma mater.And to think that in the beginning, Louis had balked. He’d wanted to attend Harvard