Harlequin Holiday Collection - Four Classic Seasonal Novellas

“crew” and what her grandmother said about his “TV show” added up to a new explanation for Holly’s odd reaction to his arrival. They thought he was some kind of TV travel reporter.
    The slamming doors, the reluctant welcome—they’d had everything to do with a news story and nothing to do with him, his past, his relationship with Holly.
    Plus, hopefully, nothing to do with a diamond thief.
    “All right, I’ll take you around the house,” Holly mumbled, sounding anything but pleased. She cast a quick glance at her grandmother. “Do you think you’ll have everything taken care of in, say, an hour?”
    The old woman waved an unconcerned hand. “Oh, of course. Everything will be in perfect condition, especially that… tree. Not a hair—I mean, branch —out of place.”
    “Good.” Holly turned on her heel and left the room, shutting the door firmly the moment Zach joined her in the foyer. “Let’s get this over with.”
    “I think we need to talk….”
    She put a hand up, palm out. “No. I don’t want to talk about it. It was a stupid kiss and I’m sorry it happened.”
    Zach wasn’t. But he sensed she wouldn’t want to hear that.
    “I have to deal with you professionally, since the story on the inn is so important. Other than that, we have nothing to say to one another.”
    “You’re still angry at me for some crap that happened when we were kids?” He couldn’t believe it, especially because he hadn’t been as guilty as she’d thought.
    “Of course not. It’s history. You’re here to do a job and I’m here to convince you that this inn deserves a lot of attention. That’s it.”
    So she thought. Zach suddenly suspected that if Holly found out he was not doing the feature on the inn, she’d use that same cool tone to invite him to get the hell out of her life.
    Maybe that would be the smart thing to do. But there were two reasons he wasn’t going to. First, there could be a criminal out there who wanted something he thought Holly had.
    And second—he couldn’t walk away from her after that kiss.

Chapter Seven
    For the next hour, Holly led Zach around the Hollyberry Inn, critically eyeing every room, silently praying that he’d see past the few kinks to the jewel just waiting to be exposed to the world—before it was foreclosed on and put out of business.
    The importance of the story Zach was doing was the only thing that could have kept her focused on anything except his nearness—on the reality that she was, once again, alone with the guy who’d introduced her to all her most interesting body parts. If not for that, it would be much too easy to think of the wicked things they’d done during their steamy teenage nights. She and Zach had walked hand in hand toward the sexual cliff, all the way to the very precipice. Only when she’d refused to leap off it, Zach had gone out and had sex with the nearest willing bimbo.
    That memory helped keep her shoulders stiff and her mood aloof. Well, that and the knowledge that her elderly grandparents and her maid were downstairs trying to hide the body that had fallen out of the Christmas tree.
    “You’ve put a lot of work into this place. And it shows.”
    “Thanks.”
    “How long have you been running it as an inn?”
    Finally, they were getting down to it. “We opened for business three months ago after six months worth of construction and remodeling.”
    “So you’ve been back in Illinois for almost a year. I have to admit, Hol, that’s pretty surprising considering how eager you were to leave and run off to North Carolina.”
    He was the reason she’d left school so quickly and he damn well knew it. When she realized that she didn’t have much to stay for she’d made the decision to go live with her flighty mother rather than finish school with him. Not liking that he flustered her, she lifted a nervous hand to her hair, willing her fingers not to shake. “My grandfather was ill and couldn’t keep up with the place.” She did not add that the roof needed to be replaced and the foundation reinforced. Or that the only way she’d had to accomplish those things had been to take out a huge loan—which Holly had intended to pay back out of the profit once the inn got up and running.
    It was up. And it was running. Unfortunately, nobody seemed to realize it.
    But they will.
    “So is it just you, your grandparents and that…Reggie?”
    “And Manny, a part-time maintenance guy.”
    “Other than that, you’re out