Snowed In by Sarah Title Page A

wrong.”
    â€œAre you suggesting I shouldn’t eat ice cream?”
    â€œHey, I’ve got no problem with ice cream,” he said, indicating the pint melting in his cart. “I have a problem with you feeling bad.”
    â€œYou don’t even know me.”
    â€œI know you’re gorgeous.”
    Maureen snorted.
    â€œOkay, almost a smile. Have a drink with me?” He took a step forward.
    Maureen felt somewhere in the back of her mind that she should step back. But he smelled good, like that crisp Irish soap she loved, so she didn’t.
    Instead, she matched his step forward.
    â€œGorgeous, huh?”
    â€œAbsolutely. I love this hair.” He fingered a blonde curl that had escaped her ponytail. “Your freckles are adorable.” He ran a finger over her cheeks. “Your lips,” he ran a thumb over her lower lip, and Maureen couldn’t take it anymore.
    She took that last step, closing the distance between them, and his mouth came down to meet hers. His lips were soft and warm, and she felt his fingers gently tickle her neck as she opened her mouth to let him in.
    All of her tension, all of her heartache rushed out of her the moment her tongue touched his. At first he was tentative, but she began to wrestle his mouth, fighting to get closer. His hands moved boldly down her back, pulling her hips until she slammed into him. She threw her arms around his neck and tilted her head so he could move deeper, deeper, exploring her with teeth and tongue. She lifted her foot onto the lip of the open freezer, tipping her knee out so she cradled his hips and the impressive bulge in his jeans. She clamped her fingers in his hair to get a hold on him because she thought she was melting away and she wasn’t ready for this to be over. This was nothing like kissing Dave. This man was a complete stranger and his kiss possessed her, bewitched her more thoroughly than Dave ever had. He wrapped his arms around her waist and lifted her off her feet so she was pressed against him, molded to solid muscle. He felt so strong and so sure.
    But a girl had to breathe. Reluctantly, she pulled back and he gently lowered her to the ground. She was glad to see he was as dazed and breathless as she was.
    â€œWhoa.”
    His simple exclamation, said on a swift exhale, hit her right in the gut. She had done that to him. She, disheveled and in sweatpants, had flummoxed a god.
    She looked up into those deep blue eyes, still dark with passion.
    And she smiled.
    â€œI guess I do have something to smile about.”
    And she turned and pushed her cart toward the produce aisle.
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    By the time Gavin’s body registered his brain’s message— Go after her, stupid! —she was gone. He abandoned his cart and ran—not quite like a madman, but close—but she wasn’t in produce, not in canned goods, not in the bread aisle. For Christ’s sake, the store wasn’t that big. But he’d lost her.
    The hottest kiss he had ever experienced in thirty years of kissing women, and he didn’t even know her frigging name.
    He went back to retrieve his cart, and stuck his head in the freezer for a few seconds, just for good measure.

Chapter 3
    Gavin groaned as he reached blindly for his cell phone. It couldn’t be past six in the morning—way too early for a phone call. If this was the new guy again, he was getting fired. Gavin had hired him a week ago based on his impeccable résumé, and so far his business sense had proven sound. His personality was another story. It wasn’t that Gavin didn’t enjoy nineties hair metal. He just did not enjoy it filtered through someone else’s headphones when he was trying to concentrate. His new employee knocked it off when Gavin asked him to, but it was too late. Gavin was singing Mötley Crüe all day.
    Where the hell had he left his phone? Ever since that hot kiss with the mystery woman in the grocery store, his