(How is it Sunday already?!)
Here’s a snippet from my new release The One You Can’t Keep: A Single Dad Holiday Romance. Stationed on a US Army base in Germany, high school teacher Klara is bracing herself for a parent-teacher conference with Cody Hendricks’ dad, when MSG Logan Hendricks walks into her classroom and completely shatters her composure.
***
I heave a sigh and switch on my electric kettle. If Cody’s dad is on time, I’ve got exactly ten minutes to enjoy a relaxing cup of tea before I put my teacher face back on.
Christmas break can’t come soon enough. My gift to myself will be two weeks of self-indulgent pampering—a spa day, a rom-com movie marathon, some relaxed shopping, and a traditional German Christmas Eve with my landlady Frau Zitterbart, AKA my adopted grandmother. Plus a ski trip in the Bavarian Alps the week after Christmas. It’s going to be pure heaven, or at least enough relaxing fun to ward off the woulda/coulda/shoulda holiday blues.
I pull up Cody’s grades on my computer in preparation for meeting his dad. Yikes! With the two assignments he didn’t turn in last week and the vocabulary quiz he bombed, he’s down to a forty-seven percent. His transfer grade from his high school in California was a solid B. Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face—or your dad’s face, in this case.
A loud rap on the open door pulls my focus from the bad news, and the man standing there sends my pulse galloping. Holy Christmas, this is Cody’s father?
I didn’t know BDUs could fit so well. This tall drink of yum makes camo look like Gucci. Sharp jaw, blade-straight nose, dark hair shaved regulation-close on the sides with just a hint of curl on top. His intense, steely-blue eyes pierce my calm façade, boring right to my long-neglected core and making me feel things I have no business feeling at work.
***
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