Mistletoe's For Kissing Under, part 1

Welcome to our second holiday series romance. When Noah returns to town, Paige, once Noah's babysitter, can't believe how he's grown up...Pam Lawrence does a great job delivering this delightful story

‘Ms Turner, someone's asking for you.’

Jenni, the Saturday girl, hovered in the doorway of my office, before whispering, ‘You need to get out here – he's gorgeous!’

‘It's Paige, Jenni – you don’t need to make me feel any older! Did this gorgeous creature give a name?’ At four o'clock on a Saturday afternoon, he wasn’t likely to be trying to sell me anything, but I’d been wrong before.

‘No, just asked if you were around, and could I get you if you were. You'll thank me when you see him.’ She leered, miming fanning her face with her fingers.

I shooed her out and glanced at my laptop ruefully. I set Saturday afternoons aside for writing, and I’d been holed up in the office for three whole hours, trying – and failing – to nail down the outline of my latest book.

I was considering a fresh direction, having completely bored myself rigid with wolf shifter pack romances. I mean, how many times can the alpha possessively growl “Mine!” before you start thinking, “you‘re welcome to her, love”?

As I live on the Isle of Wight, I’d been toying with a mermen/mermaid themed series set locally, under the pen name of Lorelai Tempest. And that’s as far as I’d gotten. Except for the three words I had managed that afternoon: “Rock Pool Romance.”

Closing the laptop none too gently, I followed Jenni out into the shop, breathing in the welcoming aroma of hot chocolate mixed with the scent of the Christmassy flower arrangement over by the drinks station.

It was late afternoon on the first Saturday in advent. The shop was looking its prettiest after Jenni and I had spent all morning draping soft white fairy lights everywhere, and tucking sprigs of pine and fir between the displays of my favourite novels. Homemade iced cookies filled a festive plate next to the hot chocolate fixings, and reaching out a hand to snaffle one was a tall, athletic-looking guy in very well-filled black jeans, CAT boots and a navy peacoat, standing with his back to me.

His walnut brown hair was shoulder length, all casually rumpled and curly, like he couldn’t be bothered to comb it when he'd crawled out of bed after epic morning sex with his catwalk model/astrophysicist girlfriend. . . I reined my romance writer’s imagination in firmly, concentrating hard in order to keep myself from reaching out and running my fingers through that gloriously untamed mane.

Once I had metaphorically hauled my lower jaw back up off the floor and wiped the drool off my chin, I cleared my throat to attract his attention. He snatched his hand back guiltily from the cookies, turning to face me with a huge grin on his – as promised, absolutely freakin’ gorgeous – face. There was something maddeningly familiar about the delicious melty chocolate eyes peeping at me from under his artfully-slightly-too-long fringe, but it wasn’t until he spoke that I knew how I knew him.

‘Hey, hold-the-front-Paige. Long time no see!’ His voice, deeper than I remembered, a little raspy and altogether way too sexy, wrapped around me, before he bounded towards me and engulfed me in a thoroughly satisfying hug.

‘Noah? Noah Sanders? What are you doing here?’ Noah, the boy next door I used to babysit until his dad got a job up north and the family moved away, was standing in my shop hugging me. And he was very much all grown up now. Gone was the skinny beanpole, all uncoordinated elbows and knees. Noah had grown into a fine figure of a man! Disentangling myself reluctantly, I took a step back.