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      Christmas Kisses—$1.00

      Jonathan Sinclair smiled at the provocative banner wafting in the December breeze. The sign, attached to two trees, floated over a booth wreathed in holly and cedar boughs. The occasion appeared to be an old-fashioned bazaar in the school yard.

      He stopped at a red light and used the opportunity to assess the group waiting to buy a kiss. The line was long. He couldn’t see the woman from this angle, but the guys were young—some of them teenagers, he guessed, in line on a dare from their friends, most likely—while the rest were probably in their twenties, maybe thirties.

      All single, he assumed. They didn’t have the look of men who were shackled to shrews, which, from his observations of life, were what women became once they got a man to the altar.

      Or even before, as his own experience proved.

      A shudder ran clear down to his toes as he remembered his close call in this very town. He’d been eighteen when the girl next door, who’d been twenty, had tried to trap him into marriage with the oldest trick in the book. Few people had believed he’d been innocent as he’d claimed.

      It had been a learning experience. He went on the alert when women came on to him in too friendly a manner, and he suspected ulterior motives behind their smiles.

      The light changed. He waited with resigned patience for the crowd to amble past the lined crosswalk. When the street was clear, he turned the corner.

      Everyone in the county was in town for the festivities, it seemed. He grimaced at his poor timing and looked for a parking space near the feed-and-seed store. The fertilizer he’d ordered last week was in. All he wanted was to pick it up and get back to the ranch.

      The ranch. Three hundred acres of pines and pasture, two hundred head of cattle and a commercial plant nursery.

      He’d never expected to inherit the place although he’d loved it as a kid. He’d lit out on his own right after high school, off to see the world. His parents had been upset, but they hadn’t tried to stop him. They’d understood his restlessness.

      Sorrow momentarily overshadowed the bright day. They’d died last spring in a flash flood, a known hazard in Texas. He still couldn’t believe they were gone. Life was short.…

      He directed his thoughts to the present. He intended to revive the successful ranch operation his grandfather had run. Once the place was booming again, he’d sell the whole works, make some money and head out for parts unknown.

      That was what he was good at—fixing up a rundown enterprise and selling it at a profit, then moving on. He’d learned to do that well in the years he’d been on his own and had made a good-size fortune by speculating in floundering companies. Of course he’d lost a bundle, too.

      He spotted a parking space and whipped into it before the guy in the fancy car who was also eyeing the spot could beat him to it. With a triumphant grin of one-upmanship, Jon leapt to the ground from the pickup.

      The breeze, straight off the Gulf of Mexico, gave him a damp caress. He’d been living in the far west where spit dried before it hit the ground. Here, thirty miles up Highway 12 from Beaumont, Texas, the air was humid year-round. It took a while to get used to that again.

      Laughter from the cowboys lined up for the kisses caught his attention. He paused and glanced over the bed of the pickup to see what was going on…and stopped dead still. Then he simply stared at the woman who stood in the booth.

      She was the loveliest, sexiest creature he’d ever seen.

      Her hair was black—pure raven black. The sun glinted off it with no hints of red or blond in the deep waves that cascaded over her shoulders. It invited a man to sink his hands into it, to tangle his fingers in the long, shiny strands…to use it to hold her while he dropped kisses all over her mouth.

      Her smile was radiant, her lips full and luscious. She wore a rosy-red lipstick, but he was willing to bet the color in her cheeks was natural.

      It was her eyes that made her irresistible. They were blue with a touch of gray and maybe violet. He couldn’t tell for sure from this distance. Her