The foyer opened into a large living area where the family—her parents, aunt and uncle, sister and brother-in-law and grandparents—had congregated beside a tree strung with popcorn, shiny ornaments and colored lights.

Conversation had stopped, leaving only the crackle of the wood in the fireplace and the soft melody of the carols.

“This is Cole Mansfield, Mom. We work together,” Anna said, aware that, darn him, he still had hold of her arm. “Cole, this is my mother, Rosemary Wesley.”

Her family members emitted a collective hum which, darn them, sounded speculative. Her mother, a small woman with salt-and-pepper hair dressed in a red velour pantsuit, swept to the front of the room where Anna stood with Cole on the hardwood of the entrance-way.

Even though she was married to an obstetrician and lived in a posh part of town, her mother didn’t put on airs. She was who she was. A down-to-earth girl from a hardworking Polish family who’d married a prosperous man but had never forgotten her roots.

“My, my, aren’t you the hunky one,” she said in her too-loud voice as her gaze appreciatively scanned Cole from the thick, black hair on his head to the expensive-looking leather shoes that covered his toes.

Her mother had also never forgotten her family’s tendency toward bluntness, Anna mentally added with a silent groan.

“Thank you,” Cole said, smiling as though the greeting were perfectly normal.

“I should be thanking you,” her mother said, taking both of his hands in hers so that he had to release Anna’s elbow. Her mother’s eyes danced in her round, friendly face. “You don’t know how long we’ve been waiting for this.”

“For what?” Anna asked fearfully.

“You know what.” Her mother smiled more brightly than any light in the house. “I had high hopes that you’d finally give in and date Brad Perriman, but this is just as good. Maybe better.”

“What’s just as good?” Anna asked, not bothering to state that she had zero interest in Brad Perriman. Since her parents had tried to fix her up with him by inviting him to dinner, she’d already said so a half-dozen times.

“Him,” her mother said, indicating Cole with the sweep of her hand. “But Anna, you should have told us you were dating someone at work.”

“Oh, no.” Anna waved her right hand back and forth for emphasis. “We’re not dating. I’m Cole’s boss.” She nudged the solid thickness of Cole’s arm with an elbow. “Tell them you work for me, Cole.”

“That’s true,” he said, and Anna could breathe again. “Anna’s my boss.”

“Well, well, well. Who would have thought Anna would get involved in an office romance.” Aunt Miranda, her father’s svelte, self-assured sister, came forward on three-inch heels. Her frosted blond hair, combined with winter-white slacks and matching sweater, projected a cool, sophisticated image and made her appear younger than her forty years. “Not that we’re not thrilled to finally meet one of her men.”

“Anna has a man?” Grandma Ziemanski, who wasn’t any taller than Anna’s mother and had recently dyed her hair jet black, crossed the room to stand between the other two women and peered up at Cole. “He’s kind of big but he’s cute. Good going, Anna.”

“He’s not my man, Grandma,” Anna denied sharply.

“If he wasn’t your man, you wouldn’t have brought him home to meet us,” Grandma Ziemanski said brightly, then turned and issued a general invitation. “Hey, everybody, come meet Anna’s man.”

One by one, like the guests in a receiving line at a wedding, the rest of her family came forward. Her grandfather, uncle and brother-in-law shook Cole’s hand, her sister Julie gave him a friendly elbow squeeze and her father slapped him on the back.

If Cole had been her boyfriend, Anna could have tolerated the welcome. Except Cole wasn’t her boyfriend. He was the employee with designs on her job.

“Excuse me,” Anna said yet again. “Isn’t anybody paying attention? Cole and I are not dating.”

Her father, who was standing closest to them, winked at Cole. He was slender as a reed, with thinning blond hair and an open manner that endeared him to his patients. “That’s what she said about Larry Lipinski, and she dated him for six months.”

Anna turned to her father in surprise. “You knew I dated Larry?”

“Who’s Larry Lipinski?” Cole asked.

Somebody—Anna wasn’t sure who, considering most everybody was still congregated at the head of the room—jarred her, causing her to bump into Cole. His arm came around her shoulders, creating such a rush of heat to shoot through her that she was startled into staying where she was.

“Nobody you need worry about, considering that hold you have on my daughter.” Her father gave Cole another wink, making Anna wish the pair of them would rise up the chimney, like St. Nick. “She never brought Larry home to meet us.”

Considering Larry had lied to her about everything from where he’d gone to college to how many miles he’d logged on his daily run, that wasn’t surprising. But she didn’t have time to get into that now.

“But—” Anna began again.

“Let me take your coats,” her mother said, practically peeling Anna out of hers. Anna felt a little less warm, but not much. Cole shrugged out of his overcoat, revealing his tree-dotted tie. He squeezed it, and a riff from “O, Christmas Tree” sang out.

Grandpa Ziemanski, connoisseur of all things corny, rumbled with laughter. His most prominent feature was his shaven head, but Anna noticed he was the only man in the room that Cole didn’t dwarf. Grandpa, however, lacked Cole’s muscular build. But not many men who didn’t make their living playing professional football were as muscle bound as Cole.

“I like him, Anna,” her grandfather said heartily.

“But he’s not—”

Grandpa didn’t let her finish. “What’s that in your hand?” He reached out and took the Bobblehead Santa doll from her, pressing the button at its back.

“Hee, hee, hee,” said the Santa doll, his head bobbing crazily. Grandpa mashed the button again, and the doll said, “And I bet you were expecting me to say ho, ho, ho.”

Grandpa erupted into more joyous laughter, which was so infectious that Anna couldn’t help but chime in. She glanced at Cole to share the moment. Cheerful, masculine rumbles seemed to come from the very center of his being and his blue eyes crinkled behind his professor glasses.

“You’ve got a great family, Anna,” he told her. He reached out and hugged her to him with one long arm, tucking her head under his chin. In light of the laughter and the fact that it was, after all, Christmas Eve, the gesture seemed perfectly natural.

Until her mother called from the entrance to the dining room in her resounding voice.

“Come help Julie and me get out the food, Anna. There’ll be enough time for snuggling with your man later.”

“We’re not snuggling,” she denied, shooting out of Cole’s embrace so quickly that she stumbled and he had to steady her. She sent him a pleading look and ordered in a low, resolute voice. “Tell them we weren’t snuggling.”

“I think that was snuggling,” Cole said just as quietly.

“Yep,” said Grandpa. “That was snuggling, all right.”

“Told you,” Cole said, his eyes grazing over her as though she were the sexiest woman this side of the North Pole. The room was suddenly so hot Anna felt as though she were standing inches from the fireplace when, in fact, it was fifteen feet away.

“You’re not helping,” she snapped at Cole.

This was much worse than she’d anticipated. She’d considered the possibility her family might jump to the conclusion that she and Cole were involved, but she hadn’t foreseen him acting like he was her boyfriend.

As Anna went to help her mother and sister, she wondered how she could convince her family that nothing was going on between her and Cole.

Especially because she was no longer sure that was true.

HIS STOMACH FULL after a traditional meatless dinner of Polish food with strange names like pierogi and kluski, Cole sat in the glow of a giant Christmas tree watching Anna ignore him.

She stood near a flaming fireplace animatedly talking to her much-rounder, chestnut-haired sister and her boyish brother-in-law, who had apple cheeks and fine, straight hair worn in a bowl cut. She didn’t seem to notice that the newlyweds were more engrossed in each other than the conversation.

His eyes drank in the curve of her figure in the red sweater dress she wore, the fall of her curly brown hair, the lovely line of her profile.

She laid a long-fingered, well-shaped hand on her sister’s arm, and he couldn’t stop from wondering how that hand would feel running over his skin.

Erotic, he thought. Especially if they were both naked.

As though sensing his stare, she looked directly at him. Still imagining her lush body bare, he smiled long and slow.

She didn’t return the smile, which was undoubtedly a good thing. If she didn’t encourage him, he wouldn’t do something stupid: Like make a play for her.

Still, he wanted to believe she kept looking his way because she couldn’t help herself. Instead, he had to face the possibility it had something to do with the miniature women perched on either side of him.

“So how long ago did you meet my daughter?” Rosemary Wesley, Anna’s mother, sat on the sofa so that her velour-clad body angled toward his. His ears rang. For someone so tiny, she had a monstrous voice box.

“I love how-we-met stories,” chimed in Grandma Ziemanski, patting her incongruous black hair into place. He’d already gathered from her own not-nearly-dulcet tones that she was Rosemary’s mother. “They’re so romantic.”

“No romantic story here,” Cole said. “I met Anna about a month ago when she interviewed me for the job at Skillington Ski.”

He left out the part about the owner of the business being his father, but then he always did. What other choice did he have when Arthur Skillington had asked him to keep their connection on the QT?

“Did she stammer when she asked you questions?” Grandma Ziemanski asked. “That’s a dead giveaway that she’s nervous.”

“Anna would never stammer. That was Julie and she doesn’t do it anymore.” Rosemary patted Cole on the hand. “So did you know right away you wanted to ask her out?”

Cole thought back to the icy looks that had put his initial attraction to Anna in deep freeze. She’d grilled him relentlessly about why he was pursuing an assistant position when he was qualified to be a marketing director.

He’d claimed to be aiming for her job because he couldn’t very well tell her the truth.

The part about him needing work while he was getting to know his father would have been fine. The part about him being a mole trying to figure out why profits were lagging wouldn’t have gone over as well.

Cole wanted to reveal his connection to Skillington Ski up front, but Arthur Skillington had talked him out of it. Arthur claimed Cole would be more likely to get to the heart of the problem if the other employees, whose jobs were at risk, weren’t on guard around him.

Mostly because he wanted to please a father he’d never known but already loved, Cole had gone along with the plan.

He hadn’t let dating Anna enter his mind, primarily because the wrong word from him could get her fired.

“Well, no, I can’t say I thought about asking her out right off the bat,” he said. “At first, she struck me as…cool.”

Grandma Ziemanski’s wrinkled hand flew to her chest. “You think Anna’s cruel?”

“Not cruel, Mom. Cool. And he doesn’t mean now. He meant then.” Rosemary leaned across him to get the point across to her mother. “Tell us what you think of Anna now, Cole.”

His gaze once again honed in on Anna. Although up to this point her marketing efforts hadn’t been enough to pull Skillington Ski out of its slump, at work she struck him as intelligent and competent.

But her mother was interested in his personal assessment. As he tried to form one, firelight danced over her. It infused her golden skin with warmth and made it seem as though her brown hair was spun through with red and gold highlights.

Grandpa Ziemanski snatched the Santa hat from her mop of brown curls and covered his own bald head. When Anna threw back her head and laughed, her face seemed to glow.

“I think she’s the most captivating woman I’ve ever seen,” Cole said under his breath.

“Captivating?” Rosemary nodded. “That’s a good word. Much less trite than beautiful.”

“You don’t think Anna’s beautiful?” Grandma Ziemanski asked.

Cole jerked his gaze from Anna to her grandmother. “Yes,” he refuted quickly. “Yes, of course I think she’s beautiful.”

“And captivating,” Rosemary added, sounding smug. She squeezed his arm. “I knew you felt that way about my daughter the minute I saw you.”

“How did you know, Rosie?” Grandma Ziemanski asked.

“The face,” Rosemary said. “There’s always something glowy around the eyes.”

Anna picked that moment to slant him another one of those disapproving looks. A shard of guilt speared through Cole.

She’d spent a good portion of the last few hours trying to make her family understand they weren’t dating, and here he was looking at her with “glowy” eyes and expounding on their non-existent romance.

It was a terrible way to repay her for the kindness of asking him to dinner with her warm, wonderful family.

“So when did you change your mind about Anna being cruel and decide you wanted to ask her out?” Grandma Ziemanski asked.

“He didn’t say cruel, Mom,” Rosemary cut in with an audible tsk. “He said cool.”

“Alright already. Then let me put it another way.” Grandma Ziemanski peered at him. “When did the cools turn into the hots?”

Cole was about to point out that he didn’t have the hots for his boss when he realized he needed to face facts.

A few hours ago, on the sidewalk in front of the house, a definite thaw had begun when he noticed she was nervous about introducing him to her family.

The notion of Anna being apprehensive about anything had thrown him, and he’d glimpsed a different, softer woman in those moments under the starlight.

After watching her talk and laugh with her family over dinner, he’d concluded that woman and not the cool, detached one who came to the office every day was the true Anna.

He tapped his chin with a knuckle while he thought about how to phrase his answer so that it was both truthful and non-inflammatory.

Yes, he was attracted to Anna. But, no, he couldn’t become involved with her.

“Anna asked you out first, didn’t she?” Rosemary asked when the moments lengthened without a response. “That’s what you don’t want to say?”

“No,” Cole said quickly, then thought of the invitation to dinner. “I mean yes, but—”

“That Anna has always been too straightforward for her own good,” Rosemary said. “Did you know she told Brad Perriman right there in the living room in front of all of us that she didn’t want to date him? Not that he accepted that. But in this case, I suppose we should be thankful.”

“Look, I should confess something here,” Cole began before the women could jump to any more conclusions.

“I already know,” Rosemary said. “Don’t you think I noticed the way she’s been glaring at you?”

“What do you know?” Grandma Ziemanski asked her daughter.

“That Anna made Cole here promise to tell us he was only a friend.”

“That’s true,” Cole said. “But—”

Rosemary patted him on the hand.

“Don’t worry about it,” she interrupted. “We knew Anna wasn’t telling the truth about you not being her boyfriend as soon as we saw you.”

WHAT WAS COLE telling her mother and grandmother?

Anna tried to convey with a long, penetrating look that he needed to be careful of what he said.

The main reason she didn’t bring home men was that the Ziemanski women seemed to think she needed a husband. Anna wasn’t against marriage but she’d yet to have a truly successful relationship.

Before unleashing her family on a man, she needed to be sure she not only loved him but trusted him. The way she’d never trust a man who panted after her job.

She’d had Cole in her sights long enough to notice that teeth were flashing on either side of him. Didn’t he realize things weren’t going well if her mother and grandmother were smiling?

She’d have to head over there and set things straight but not until Julie and Drew, her sister’s husband of three months, understood the situation. She turned back to them.

“So now you see why I couldn’t leave Cole all alone in the office on Christmas Eve, right?” she asked.

Julie giggled, prompting Anna to notice that Drew was nuzzling a spot below her sister’s ear. She frowned.

“Are you two even listening to me?”

“Listening?” Julie looked at her blankly, then seemed to register what she’d asked. “Oh, yes, listening. Of course we were listening. Weren’t we, Drew?”

He peeled his lips off her sister’s neck and nodded sheepishly, like she’d caught him with his hand in the cookie jar. “Yes. Cole in the office. You asking him to dinner.”

“Only because I felt sorry for him,” Anna emphasized. “End of story.”

“Would you get me another glass of wine, sweetie?” Julie asked her husband, reaching up on tiptoes to give him a lingering kiss on the mouth.

When he was gone, she rolled her hazel eyes at Anna. “Would you give it up already, Anna? Don’t you think we can all tell something’s going on between you and Mr. Hunk?”

“My own sister,” Anna said through clenched teeth, “and you don’t believe me either.”

“That’s because you’ve cried wolf once too often.”

“If you remember, a wolf does show up in that fairy tale and eats the shepherd boy’s sheep,” Anna pointed out with heat.

“Wolves don’t look at women the way Cole has been looking at you,” Julie said, then bit her lip. “Hey, maybe they do.” Her face creased into a wide smile. “Lucky you.”

How dare he? Anna thought as she mentally reviewed the looks Cole had been giving her. Her sister was right. They did have a wolfish quality.

“Excuse me,” she said to Julie and headed straight for Cole.

He was watching her again. Watching her and—she could hardly believe his nerve—smiling.

But not an innocent smile. His teeth weren’t visible, his lips had a sensuous curve and his eyes roamed over her with barely concealed appreciation.

Anybody who intercepted that look would probably conclude that he could hardly wait to get her alone, she thought as she stomped toward him.

“Where you going in such a rush?” Her father stepped in front of her so she had to stop or careen into him. He was in a conversational group that included her Aunt Miranda and Uncle Peter. “I, for one, would like to hear more about Cole.”

“I’m all ears, too,” Aunt Miranda said. She slanted a cool look at her stockbroker husband. “I think we could all take a break from Peter speculating about which stores in the retail sector are providing the best investment opportunities.”

“It was more than mere speculation. It was expert analysis,” Peter said, stroking his neatly cropped beard and visibly bristling. “Wonder if Cole plays the market.”

Cole. If she heard that name one more time, Anna thought she might scream.

“I really wouldn’t know,” Anna said. “Like I’ve been telling you, I hardly know him at all.”

“Don’t you two talk to each other?” her aunt asked before taking a long sip from her glass of white wine.

“Hardly,” Anna said. “If you’d been listening to me, you’d know that—”

“I say we get Cole over here so we can all become better acquainted,” her father interrupted before beckoning to Cole. “Hey, Cole, the Ziemanski women have had you long enough. Come talk to us Wesleys.”

Anna watched as Cole slanted regretful looks at first her mother and then her grandmother, as though he’d actually enjoyed talking to them. He walked up to their group and took a position next to her instead of between her father and uncle, invading her personal space.

She’d never thought of herself as small but her head didn’t reach much higher than his extremely broad shoulders. No wonder she imagined she could feel his body heat through the thick jersey knit of her dress. With his height and muscular build, he had quite a lot of body. She inched away.

“It’s Tom, Peter and Miranda, right?” he said to her father, uncle and aunt. They nodded in unison, obviously pleased he remembered their names.

“Anna tells us you two haven’t been spending your time together talking,” her aunt said, arching a suggestive eyebrow at Cole. Cole, in turn, shot Anna a speculative look.

“I did not say that!” Anna refuted, feeling her face heat.

“It’s okay, Anna,” her aunt continued. “We’re all adults here.”

“Must you always say such outrageous things, Miranda?” her husband asked testily. “Anna is Tom’s daughter.”

Her aunt waved a dismissive hand. “Come now, Peter. I’m sure my brother realizes Anna’s not an innocent little girl. She is nearly thirty years old.”

“I’m twenty-seven,” Anna said. “And I didn’t—”

“So, Cole,” her father interrupted smoothly. “Seems to me I heard your family was from California.”

Cole nodded. “San Diego.”

“Is it a big family like ours?”

“I’m not as lucky as Anna,” Cole said, moving the hand on her back in a caressing motion. Anna would have shifted away if it hadn’t felt so good. “Growing up, it was just me and my parents. Their families were spread all over the country so we didn’t see them much.”

“Then you’re an only child?” her father asked.

“I’m my mother’s only child.” His hand was on her shoulder now, kneading gently. She nearly closed her eyes with pleasure as he rubbed away her tension. “My father has two stepdaughters from his second marriage but I didn’t meet them until recently.”

“Does your father live in San Diego, too?” Aunt Miranda asked.

He hesitated before answering. “No.”

It took Anna a few moments to figure out Cole didn’t intend to elaborate. In the month he’d worked at Skillington, Anna hadn’t asked him a single personal question. But now a dozen crowded her brain.

“Where does he live?” she pressed.

Again, he took his time answering. “Not far from here.”

Interesting, Anna thought. “Is that why you moved to the Pittsburgh area? To be closer to your father?”

“I moved here to take the job at Skillington Ski,” he said, which made her remember why she shouldn’t let him touch her with such familiarity: he was after her job.

“If your father’s in town, why did Anna say you didn’t have anywhere else to go tonight?” Uncle Peter asked, frowning.

“My father and his wife are vacationing,” Cole said. “My stepsisters live in Texas, and my mother and her husband are in the Bahamas on a cruise.”

“So that left you ripe for Anna’s picking,” Aunt Miranda observed, looking pointedly from one to the other.

“Miranda,” Peter said in a warning voice.

“Get with the times, Peter,” Aunt Miranda said. “Women pick up men all the time. It’s a perfectly acceptable dating practice.”

Anna ignored the delicious sensations Cole’s gentle massage was causing and figured she’d better distance herself from him, both physically and verbally.

“I didn’t pick him up,” Anna said, stepping away from him. “I asked him to dinner.”

“Am I glad she did.” Cole reached over to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear. “I can’t think of anyplace I’d rather be.”

The tenderness in his touch was reflected on his face, which was quite a feat considering it was made up of hard angles and planes. Not that there wasn’t a certain softness around his mouth, which was really quite beautiful when you examined it closely.

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