A Man for All Seasons. HEATHER MACALLISTER
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Praise for Heather MacAllister…
“Witty, romantic, sexy and fun…and Heather’s books aren’t bad, either.”
—New York Times bestselling author Christina Dodd
“Curling up with a Heather MacAllister romance is one of my favorite indulgences.”
—New York Times bestselling author Debbie Macomber
“For quirky fun and sexy wit, Heather MacAllister is my go-to author.”
—Award-winning author Amanda Stevens
“Clever, funny and with a completely satisfying ending, this is a must read.”
—RT Book Reviews on His Little Black Book
“Great humor and great sex abound.”
—RT Book Reviews on Undressed
“A one-sitting read for me. I got so caught up in this story that I really didn’t want it to end.”
—The Best Reviews on Male Call
“The plot was inspired, the dialogue was witty and the secondary characters were extraordinary.”
—Writers Unlimited on How to be the Perfect Girlfriend
Dear Reader,
I’ve always been fascinated by the twelve days of extravagant Christmas gifts given by someone’s true love in the carol. What was with all the poultry? Every year, there are articles about updating the gifts, but what I admire is the time and thought involved in giving presents for twelve days. You’ve really got to like somebody to go to that much trouble. I reversed things in A Man for All Seasons because Tyler discovers his childhood friend, Marlie, is his true love—but only after he gives her dates with twelve other men.
I hope you enjoy their story and Marlie’s dates based on the “Twelve Days of Christmas.”
Merry Christmas!
Heather MacAllister
www.HeatherMacAllister.com
A Man for All Seasons
Heather MacAllister
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Heather MacAllister lives near the Texas gulf coast where, in spite of the ten-month growing season and plenty of humidity, she can’t grow plants. She’s a former music teacher who married her high school sweetheart on the 4th of July—is it any surprise that their two sons turned out to be a couple of firecrackers? Heather has written more than forty romantic comedies, which have been translated into twenty-six languages and published in dozens of countries. She’s won a Romance Writers of America Golden Heart Award, RT Book Reviews awards for best Harlequin Romance and best Harlequin Temptation, and is a three-time RITA® Award finalist. When she’s not writing stories where life has its quirks, Heather collects vintage costume jewelry, loves fireworks displays, computers that behave and sons who answer their mother’s emails. You can visit her at www.HeatherMacAllister.com.
To Andy,
my man for all seasons
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
1
“SORRY, SORRY, SORRY!” Marlie Waters winced at her housemate’s grim expression.
Tyler stood in the doorway of her home office and jammed his arms into his shirt sleeves. He looked exactly like a man who’d been about to get laid and had been interrupted. Because he had been. By her. Not the laying, the interrupting.
“I was distracted.” Marlie gestured to her computer. “I was concentrating on the website and checking to make sure it looked the same in every browser and decided a snack sounded good and while I was thinking about code and something to eat, I wasn’t thinking about you and…” Your chest.
Her gaze danced ahead of his fingers as he did up his shirt.
“Axelle.” Tyler finished buttoning his shirt and glared at her, fists on his hips, his hair rumpled. A little smear of eye shadow gleamed on his cheek.
No doubt whatsoever about what he’d been doing on the big, brown, comfy sofa—and with whom—even though Marlie had raced back downstairs, eyes averted.
Awkward, yes, but more disconcerting was seeing her housemate as a desirable man through Axelle’s slate-shad-owed eyes instead of her own naked, puffy, over-worked ones. Intellectually, Marlie had known Tyler was a good-looking guy, the All-American, touch-football-on-the-weekends type, but emotionally, he’d never pushed her buttons. She’d disconnected those buttons, anyway. Maybe forever. Life was much less stressful without those buttons connected.
But now, here he stood in all his rumpled, sexy glory, and right in the middle of her apologetic explanation, her buttons decided to reconnect themselves just in time for Tyler to lean on them.
Lust sucker-punched her.
Marlie needed a moment. Ty was like a brother—okay, never a brother. More like a cousin. Her gaze skipped over his face, gritted jaw, and the rise and fall of his chest. A really distant cousin. By marriage.
A muscle worked in the cheek unadorned by Axelle’s eye shadow.
Tyler Burton, the son of longtime friends of her parents, her reluctant playmate on several joint family summer vacations, the sulking teen from their last, shared camping trip—that Tyler Burton—had grown into a manly man. One might say he was a hunk. Tyler inhaled deeply, his chest rising impressively before he exhaled in a whoosh. And that person would be Marlie.
How convenient that he was temporarily living with her and how incredibly remiss of her not to have taken advantage of that fact sometime in the past eighteen months.
Whoa. Marlie beat the lust back into long-term storage and summoned the memory of the skinny, surly Ty of her youth. “Axelle,” she repeated to ground herself. Axelle, Ty’s current girlfriend. And her client. In fact, Axelle’s website was the one Marlie’d been working on this evening. She didn’t think they’d appreciate the irony. “Anyway, I forgot you and Axelle were here when I came upstairs, and then I remembered and—”
“Screamed.”
“It was more of a yelp.”
The muscle twitched again.
“I’m sorry! I closed my eyes, I swear.” Unfortunately not before the image of a shirtless Ty and, oh, this was not good, her shirtless client, was burned into her retinas.
“You spoiled the mood.” Tyler tucked in his shirt and buckled his belt.
Marlie thought he’d been overdressed for a casual dinner at home, but Axelle’s idea of casual was more upscale than hers. Probably a French thing. “You can get it back. I’ll stay in my office for the rest of the night, I promise.