Mistletoe Magic

The smell of coffee drifted out of the lounge, and she hastened her pace. Fifteen minutes should be enough for a good, reviving cup. And then only an hour more, and she could be free of this place for a whole day. Thank God the management hadn’t jumped on the bandwagon with some other stores and decided to stay open on Christmas Day as well.

She was so intent on heading straight for the coffee maker that she collided with a thunk! into something solid. She stumbled, then glanced up as a pair of hands reached out to steady her.

A month and a half on the job had allowed her to recognize most of the other store employees by sight, so she knew she’d never seen him before. She was pretty sure she would have remembered if someone that good-looking was on the staff, even though she’d only been at the store since right before Thanksgiving and still didn’t know half of her co-workers’ names.

“You might want to slow down a bit,” the stranger said, but the crinkles around his hazel eyes told her he wasn’t too upset by the collision.

“Sorry,” she replied immediately. “Just trying to grab some coffee before I have to get back out on the floor.”

He laughed. “I should have known better than to get between a woman and her caffeine.”

At that moment, Celia heard an ostentatious throat-clearing, and she turned to see Alan, who worked in electronics, pointing upward toward the ceiling. “You two are both missing something.”

The man she’d bumped into looked puzzled, and Celia let her gaze follow Alan’s out-thrust finger. Uh-oh.

“Whose brilliant idea was that?” she asked. Seriously, as exhausted and frazzled as they all were by the onslaught of holiday shoppers, who had the time -- or energy -- to mess around with hanging up a sprig of mistletoe in the employee lounge, of all places?

Alan gave an innocent shrug. “I don’t know. But it’s bad luck to ignore it.”

“You made that up,” she snapped. Really, she wouldn’t put it past him. He was one of those guys who oozed an indefinable essence of sleaze. At least she’d never been asked to work in electronics, and so had managed to avoid him most of the time.

“No, it’s true,” the stranger put in. Hazel eyes laughed down at her. “I promise I won’t bite.”

Could this really be happening? Was this man actually expecting her to kiss him under the mistletoe?