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Blame It On Christmas
Janice Maynard
All she wants for Christmas is him!After he broke her heart, Mazie Tarleton is definitely immune to the charms of J.B. Vaughan. Now she has him right where she wants him and it's payback time—until a moment of white-hot desire takes them both by surprise!
All she wants for Christmas...
is to make him beg!
After he broke her heart, Mazie Tarleton is definitely immune to the charms of J.B. Vaughan. Now she has him right where she wants him and it’s payback time—until a moment of white-hot desire takes them both by surprise! Suddenly, revenge is getting complicated. Maybe she can just say yes to a holiday fling...or is she already in way too deep?
USA TODAY bestselling author JANICE MAYNARD loved books and writing even as a child. After multiple rejections, she finally sold her first manuscript! Since then, she has written fifty-plus books and novellas. Janice lives in Tennessee with her husband, Charles. They love hiking, traveling and family time.
You can connect with Janice at
www.janicemaynard.com (http://www.janicemaynard.com)www.Twitter.com/janicemaynard (http://www.Twitter.com/janicemaynard)www.Facebook.com/janicemaynardreaderpage (https://www.facebook.com/JaniceMaynardReaderPage/) and www.Instagram.com/janicemaynard (http://www.Instagram.com/janicemaynard).
Also by Janice Maynard (#ua4061c73-9f49-5e7a-a9ca-9313ce16030a)
A Not-So-Innocent Seduction
Baby for Keeps
Christmas in the Billionaire’s Bed
Twins on the Way
Second Chance with the Billionaire
How to Sleep with the Boss
For Baby’s Sake
His Heir, Her Secret
On Temporary Terms
Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Blame It On Christmas
Janice Maynard
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
ISBN: 978-1-474-07700-2
BLAME IT ON CHRISTMAS
© 2018 Janice Maynard
Published in Great Britain 2018
by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF
All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.
By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.
® and ™ are trademarks owned and used by the trademark owner and/or its licensee. Trademarks marked with ® are registered with the United Kingdom Patent Office and/or the Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market and in other countries.
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
This book is for every guy or girl who has
found the courage to ask someone out
and then been shot down. It hurts.
But true love finds a way.
Contents
Cover (#uae0e7962-353e-5ac3-befd-e04ecd4992ea)
Back Cover Text (#u0377d585-4a0a-59af-892f-a9d4730e5d49)
About the Author (#u77062978-6c4e-549f-b440-5956ef2e50a0)
Booklist (#u7249eb6b-7c30-5304-8a8f-2a909dbdbb94)
Title Page (#u04f65b9e-dd32-569a-86e0-237c8fb94fdd)
Copyright (#u5bbb7987-ea3f-55e8-a061-69812fa73706)
Dedication (#uaf79dbd8-7a79-5a25-9397-816627fd376c)
One (#u8ba77f3e-1b91-50e5-95be-0a4e6b9899f1)
Two (#uc8345a54-fece-52b5-ad08-4a4bfa2b4158)
Three (#u351d6ddc-438e-5f0b-abdc-7bc2f58defc7)
Four (#u21908b87-373c-5c94-aa4c-d20736412c83)
Five (#u2be9b8f8-0d90-5042-b9dc-1d249597934a)
Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)
Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
One (#ua4061c73-9f49-5e7a-a9ca-9313ce16030a)
“The answer is no!”
Mazie Tarleton ended the call, wishing she had a good old-fashioned receiver she could slam down on a cradle. Cutting off a phone conversation with the tap of a red button wasn’t nearly as satisfying.
Behind her, Gina—her best friend and coworker—ate the last bite of her cinnamon crunch bagel and wiped cream cheese from her fingers. “Who’s got you all riled up?”
The two women were in Mazie’s office, a cramped space behind the elegant showroom that drew tourists and locals to All That Glitters, Mazie’s upscale jewelry store in Charleston’s historic business district.
Mazie dropped into a chair and scowled. “It’s J.B.’s real estate agent again. He’s making her badger me.”
“You mean J.B. who wants to offer you a ridiculous amount of money for this building that’s falling down around our ears?”
“Whose side are you on anyway?” Mazie and Gina had met as freshmen at Savannah’s College of Art and Design. Gina was aware of Mazie’s long-standing feud with Charleston’s highly eligible and incredibly sexy billionaire businessman.
Gina flicked a crumb from her cashmere-covered bosom. “We have dry rot in the attic. A heating system that dates back to the Civil War. And do I need to mention that our hurricane policy rates are set to triple when the renewal is due? I know you Tarleton people are richer than God, but that doesn’t mean we should thumb our noses at a great offer.”
“If it were anybody but J.B.,” Mazie muttered, feeling the noose of inevitability tighten around her neck.
J.B. Jackson Beauregard Vaughan. The man she loved to hate. J.B. Vaughan had been on her personal hit list since she was sixteen years old. She loathed him. And she wanted to hurt him as much as he had hurt her.
“What did he ever do to you?” Gina asked. Her perplexed frown was understandable. J.B. Vaughan was the prototype for tall, dark and handsome. Cocky grin. Brilliant blue eyes. Strong features. And shoulders that were about a million miles wide.
“It’s complicated,” Mazie muttered, feeling her face heat. Even now, the memories were humiliating.
Mazie couldn’t remember a time when J.B. hadn’t been part of her life. Way back when, she had even loved him. As an almost-brother. But when her hormones started raging and she began seeing J.B. in a whole new light, a spring formal at her all-girls prep school had presented itself as the perfect opportunity to do some very grown-up experimentation.
Not sex. Oh, no. Not that. She was aware, even then, that J.B. was the kind of guy who knew things, and she wasn’t ready to go down that road.
She called him on a Wednesday afternoon in April. With her nerves humming and her stomach flopping, she blurted out her invitation.
J.B. had been oddly noncommittal. And then, barely four hours later, he had showed up on her doorstep.
Her father had been locked in his study with a nightcap. Both Jonathan and Hartley, her brothers, had been out on the town doing something or other.
Mazie had answered the front door.
Because she felt weird about inviting J.B. inside—though he’d been there a hundred times before—she stepped out onto the wide veranda and smiled at him tentatively.
“Hey, J.B.,” she said. “I didn’t expect to see you today.”
He leaned against a post, his posture the epitome of cool, high school masculinity. In a few weeks he would be eighteen. A legal adult. Her heart beat faster.
“I wanted to talk to you face-to-face,” he said. “It was nice of you to ask me to the dance.”
“Nice?”
It seemed an odd choice of words, especially coming from J.B.
He nodded. “I’m flattered.”
Her stomach curled defensively. “You didn’t actually give me an answer on the phone,” she said. Suddenly, her hands were ice, and she was shaking all over.
J.B. shifted from one foot to the other. “You’re a cute girl, Mazie. I’m glad you’re my friend.”
He really didn’t have to say anything else. She was smart and perceptive and able to read between the lines. But she’d be damned if she’d let him off so easily. “What are you trying to say, J.B.?”
Now a dark scowl erased some of his cocky charm, but none of his brooding sexuality. “Damn it, Mazie. I can’t go to that dance with you. You shouldn’t have asked me. You’re little more than a baby.”
Her heart shriveled. “I’m not a child,” she said quietly. “I’m only a year younger than you are.”
“Almost two.”
The real surprise was that he had kept track. Because of the way their birthdays fell on the calendar, he was right. She took three steps toward him. Inside, she was falling apart. But she wouldn’t let him see what he was doing to her self-esteem. “Don’t make excuses, J.B. If you won’t go out with me, please have the guts to say so.”
He cursed vehemently. With both hands, he scraped his slightly-too-long blue-black hair from his face. “You’re like a sister to me,” he said.
The words were muttered, barely audible. In fact, he spoke them in the direction of the floor. A less-convincing lie would have been hard to find. Why was he throwing up walls between them?
