The Best Thing Read online

  The Best Thing

  By Jaci Burton

  A year ago, Tori let her guard down and Brody Kent slipped right in, planting one hot, unforgettable kiss on her in a dark corner at the company Christmas party. Though the kiss surpassed her wildest dreams, she can't let it happen again. She loves Brody, but he's got a reputation for loving and leaving. She'll have to keep her heart--and her libido--in check.

  Brody can't get the time of day from Tori--ever since that impulsive kiss, she's avoided him with the same brutal efficiency she uses to manage his family's construction company office. The company can't afford to lose her, and Brody's come to realize that he can't live without her. But how can he convince Tori that he's a changed man?

  It just might take a Christmas miracle.

  31,000 words

  Dear Reader, I love the month of December when it comes to releases at Carina Press. This is our third year of publishing our special holiday collections, and I'm fortunate to be the one to edit the collections. It's become our tradition to do three separate anthologies and this year we chose to do contemporary romance, science-fiction romance and erotic contemporary romance collections.

  Each of these three collections is amazing in its own right (not that I'm biased or anything), showcasing the talent of the contributing authors. In our contemporary romance collection, Romancing the Holiday, Jaci Burton wraps up her Kent Brothers trilogy with the story fans have been waiting for: it's finally time to see Brody and Tori's combustible attraction on page and cheer them to their happily-ever-after in The Best Thing. We'll Be Home for Christmas by HelenKay Dimon returns readers to Holloway, West Virginia, as she gives us Spence's story. Lila is more than a match for the delicious Spence and sparks fly when they go toe-to-toe. Last, but certainly not least, is newcomer to the collection, Christi Barth, with her delightful friends-to-lovers novella Ask Her at Christmas. And if you haven't already checked out Christi's full-length novel, Planning for Love, now's a great time to treat yourself to this funny, emotional, captivating book.

  Heating up the pages, and I do mean heating up, are the three novellas in Red Hot Holiday, the erotic contemporary romance collection. If you're looking for stories that are going to make what goes on under the mistletoe even more interesting, you'll want to read this collection. I Need You for Christmas by Leah Braemel features a strong-willed, career-driven Mountie--and the sculptor who molds her to his will in the bedroom. In Wish List by K.A. Mitchell, Jonah discovers his lover, Evan, may be the one who can deliver the BDSM wishes on Jonah's naughty list. And Anne Calhoun brings to the collection a stunningly powerful erotic romance that's both deeply erotic and deeply emotional, with Breath on Embers.

  A Galactic Holiday is the third of our holiday collections, showcasing three science-fiction romance novellas with incredible world building and incredible characters. In How the Glitch Saved Christmas, author Stacy Gail takes us to our future, with bod-mods, enhancements, tech, artificial intelligence...and a growing love between two rival detectives investigating the case of the...appearing gifts. Traveling off world, Anna Hackett's Winter Fusion delivers a story that's also of two rivals. Rival negotiators Brinn and Savan must come to an agreement on behalf of their respective planets during the cold of Yule, and amidst the danger of a force that wants to stop their negotiations. Galileo's Holiday by Sasha Summers takes us into deep space. Riley's tugger has just been destroyed, but will she still have reason to be thankful as her relationship with Leo gives her a future to look forward to?

  In addition to these nine incredible holiday novellas, four fantastic novels release in December, each one the first book in a new seriesfrom the respective authors. For fans of Regency romance, Wendy Soliman kicks off her Forster series with Compromising the Marquess, in which the enterprising heroine supports her family by writing for a scandal sheet, placing her on a collision course with a marquess. In her steampunk romance The League of Illusion: Legacy, Vivi Anna begins a dangerous journey for three brothers. Each will find love while two brothers battle deception, jealousy and ruthless rivals to find and rescue the third.

  Fan favorite Dana Marie Bell's new series, The Nephilim, begins with All for You. He's not just the guy next door, he's the angel next door. And it's just become his job to protect her--while trying not to fall in love, or into bed.

  And this month we're thrilled to introduce debut author Alison Packard with her debut contemporary romance title, Love in the Afternoon. When I grabbed Alison's book from the slush pile to put on my eReader for the weekend, I had no idea I was in for such an amazing story. Though I'm not one to watch soap operas, Alison sucked me into the world of soaps and made me fall in love with Kayla and Sean. Soap opera stars, maybe, but characters you root for, relate to and want to turn the pages faster for so you can see them fall in love, definitely. If you're a fan of Shannon Stacey, Victoria Dahl and Jill Shalvis, be sure to give this new author a try.

  I hope you find time to pamper yourself during the crazy holiday season. And if that pampering takes the form of a great Carina Press December release, even better!

  We love to hear from readers, and you can email us your thoughts, comments and questions to [email protected]. You can also interact with Carina Press staff and authors on our blog, Twitter stream and Facebook fan page.

  Happy reading!

  ~Angela James

  Executive Editor, Carina Press www.carinapress.com

  www.twitter.com/carinapress

  www.facebook.com/carinapress

  Dedication

  To Angie--Thanks so much for the opportunity

  to write this series. It's been so much fun.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  "You need to fix Tori. She's broken."

  Brody Kent frowned at his brother Wyatt. "What the hell are you talking about?"

  They had an early-morning meeting at Kent Construction Company, which meant their office manager, Tori Lewis, wasn't there. Which was why they were talking about her. Because normally Tori had acute hearing, and you couldn't whisper anything she couldn't hear.

  "I'm talking about what you did at the company Christmas party a year ago," Wyatt said, looking to their brother Ethan for confirmation.

  Ethan crossed his arms. "I didn't see it, but I heard about it. You know--that kiss. The one that screwed up Tori and made her hate you. And apparently us by proxy. For the past year we've been walking on friggin' eggshells around here."

  "More like walking on fire," Wyatt said. "And we're all getting burned because she's turned into a fire-breathing she-dragon. It's unpleasant, Brody. Fix it. Fix her. Make her not hate you anymore so things can be normal again."

  "She doesn't hate me," Brody defended, though it had seemed that way over the past year. Ever since that night at the Christmas party last year. They'd been having one of their usual arguments over--hell, he couldn't even remember what they'd been arguing about. The only thing he could remember about that night was how beautiful Tori had looked with her fiery red hair pulled up, pieces of it spilling down her neck. He really liked her neck--there was a sprinkling of freckles there that had always caught his attention.

  Oh, now he remembered. She'd accused him of staring at her
neck, and they'd argued about that. He was so damn tired of her always picking fights with him about the stupidest shit. And maybe he'd had a few beers and he'd wanted to shut her up, so he'd grabbed her, hauled her against him and had done what he'd wanted to do every time she opened her smart, sassy mouth--he'd kissed her.

  It had been an accident. Or maybe it hadn't been. But that accident had been a two-way street, because she'd kissed him back. For a full minute. With tongue.

  Until she'd taken a step back, and she'd run like her dress had suddenly fallen off, which it hadn't, because he would have definitely noticed if it had.

  She'd avoided him the rest of the night. Hell, the rest of the year. She hadn't even come to his family's house for Christmas that year, something she'd done ever since she'd joined Kent Construction four years ago.

  So maybe the guys were right, because ever since that night, things had been different. A lot different.

  Like she'd avoided eye contact. She'd gotten quiet, and Tori was never quiet. She was loud and brassy and kind of obnoxious in a lot of ways--all the things he liked about her. But it was a fun loud.

  That Tori was gone. The Tori of the past year did her job efficiently, as always, but it wasn't the same Tori they'd all grown to--

  Well, the one they'd gotten used to.

  And when she wasn't quiet, she was mean. Not fun and sarcastic, just downright bite-your-head-off mean.

  "If she doesn't hate you, she sure doesn't like you," Wyatt said. "Things are tense now. I don't like it tense. Nobody does. And you must have your head up your ass not to notice what's going on."

  Brody preferred denial to actually figuring out how to deal with Tori.

  "The only place my head is right now is on these bids. Can we get back to work?"

  Ethan pulled up a chair. "Are you going to fix Tori?"

  He didn't want to talk about Tori, or think about Tori. He wanted to think about work, which was uncomplicated and not difficult and definitely not emotional or a woman. Or pissed at him. "There's nothing wrong with her."

  "There is. Even Mom and Dad have noticed and keep asking me what's bothering her. She doesn't come over to visit and hasn't been to any of the family functions. They keep asking what they did to make her angry." Wyatt gave him a pained expression. "And Calliope tells me about all the conversations she has with Tori, since they're best friends. Though Tori isn't really talking about you. All Calliope tells me is that Tori is unhappy. I have to hear all the time about how unhappy she is, and isn't there something I can do to make this better. Come on, man, give me a break here."

  Brody wasn't going to fall into this trap. It wasn't his fault Tori treated him like a pariah. It had been just a kiss, for God's sake. Nothing life-altering, even if the kiss had been everything he'd expected it to be. And more.

  "What are we, a bunch of women here? How about those bids?" Brody gave both his brothers a stern look, and they finally dropped it and got back to work.

  At least until Tori swept in two hours later wearing her normal skintight jeans, sweater and boots, her shocking red hair a riotous mess on top of her head.

  She always looked good. More than good. Sexy without trying to be sexy. And she smelled good, like something exotic he wanted to taste, but he didn't know what it was. Not that he noticed or fantasized about her or anything.

  What he did notice was the mood went from joking and friendly to instantly arctic. And dead quiet.

  "Morning, Tori," Ethan said.

  "Morning, Ethan." She set her bag down, went to the coffee pot and grabbed a cup before settling in at the conference room table, giving their spread-out mess a glacial once-over. "You started without me."

  "We had bids to go over," Wyatt said.

  Tori fixed them all with a cold stare. At least she gave Ethan and Wyatt a stare while glossing over the top of Brody's head. "And what? I'm suddenly too stupid to sit through a bid meeting?"

  "Nobody said you were stupid," Wyatt said. "We're all due out on jobsites this morning so we wanted to discuss the bids before we headed out."

  "Which didn't really answer my question, did it?" Tori said. "Who do you think is going to be submitting these bids?"

  "Maybe we thought you might want to sleep in instead of attending a meeting at five-thirty in the morning."

  She gave Brody the most cursory of glances before opening her laptop. "Maybe you should do less thinking and let me do my damn job."

  Wyatt and Ethan gave him the Kent eat-shit-and-die look.

  Okay, so maybe she was broken. She'd always had a smart mouth, but she'd been fun, had joked around with them, teased them.

  This Tori wasn't fun anymore.

  So maybe it was time he did something about that.

  He didn't know exactly what that "something" was going to be, but he'd figure it out.

  *

  Midway into the day, Tori acknowledged she had turned into a raging bitch over the past several months. She'd nearly bitten Ethan's head off this morning, had snarled at Wyatt and, as usual, pretended Brody didn't exist.

  She sighed and packaged up the bid Ethan would deliver on a potential new building on the west side of their small town, then started to work on the numbers for Wyatt's project. Business was flush at Kent Brothers' Construction, all the guys were busy, and her job as office manager was secure. She should be happy.

  Instead, she'd been decidedly unhappy for almost a year now, ever since Brody had kissed her at the last company Christmas party. Everything had changed then, because that silent dance they'd done around each other for years, and all the look-but-don't-touch fantasies she'd had about him had become a definite reality.

  She thought all her feelings had been one-sided, that she could simply adore him from afar and be content with that. And then they'd been in the middle of an argument and he'd kept staring at her mouth and suddenly his lips had been on hers and it had been all whoa--so incredibly amazing her world had turned upside down in the space of a heartbeat.

  His body had gone flush against hers, his hand had dove into her hair and his mouth--oh his mouth--had been everything she thought it would be--and more.

  Which was the worst thing that could ever happen, because she loved her job, adored his family, and getting involved with Brody Kent, who never met a girl he couldn't date, sleep with and summarily dump, would be nothing short of the end of her security. There was no way she'd ever become a Brody Kent statistic, no way she'd jeopardize this job she held so dear or her relationship with the Kent family--the only family she knew.

  The problem was, that kiss still burned on her lips all these months later, the feel of his rock-hard body pressing against hers still lingered in her thoughts and her nightly fantasies, and she absolutely hated Brody for crossing that line and making her want him even more now than she did before.

  When the door to the office opened, she prayed it was either Wyatt or Ethan.

  It wasn't. Brody came in. From the first day she'd hired on at Kent Construction--hell, even before that since she'd known the Kents in high school--she'd had a massive, soul-searing crush on Brody. He didn't know it, of course. No one did. It had been a secret she'd been keeping for over ten years, and one she'd intended to take to her grave.

  Brody looked around, as horrified to find them alone as she was. "The others aren't back yet?"

  She shook her head and firmly planted her gaze somewhere in the middle of the spreadsheets on her laptop.

  "Oh. Uh, I need to grab my blueprints for the Handy Market job."

  She didn't look up. "Not stopping you."

  He made a wide berth around her desk as he headed to the other end of the office.

  She hated this tension between them. Before, they'd had easy banter. He teased her mercilessly and she shot him down with cruel barbs. It had been fun--usually the high point of her day.

  Now it was just miserable. She felt him behind her and she closed her eyes, wishing things between them could go back to the way they used to be.
/>   Before the kiss that had changed everything. Before she'd erected this wall of protection.

  "Tori."

  She tensed. "Yeah."

  "Turn around."

  She swiveled in her chair to face him. "What?"

  "Let's talk."

  Uh-oh. "About what?"

  He leaned against his desk. "The Christmas party last year."

  "We're not talking about that. Ever." She turned her chair around.

  He came over to the front of her desk. "It's been ten months. Don't you think you should tell me why you're so pissed off at me about one little kiss?"

  He so didn't get it. Typical guy. "I'm not pissed off at you about that kiss. It didn't mean anything."

  "Bullshit. You've practically stopped talking to me. Everything changed after that night."

  Her stomach hurt. She needed to get out of here. She stood and grabbed her purse. "I'm hungry. I'm going to grab lunch. I'll be back in an hour."

  Instead of letting her by, he grasped her by the arms. But his voice was soft and low when he said, "Look at me."

  It had started like this the night of the party. They'd argued. She'd yelled at him and he'd grabbed her. And then their lips had met. She stared at those lips now, hers still tingling at the memory of his mouth coming down hard on hers, the way his tongue had invaded, the hot rush of pleasure that had made her legs tremble.

  Maybe she should have just gone with it, indulged in the desire that had burned so all-consuming for him all these years. But she couldn't. Not with so much on the line. She'd shoved him and run like hell.

  Just like now. She shoved him. "We're at work, Brody."

  He let her go. "I know where we are. But I've tried to talk to you. I've called you. I've texted you. You refuse to talk to me."

  She edged around him and headed for the door. "That's because there's nothing to talk about."

  "We kissed. And it changed everything between us."

  She had her hand on the doorknob, ready to walk out. "It changed nothing. Do you hear me? Nothing is changed. Everything stays the same."

  He cocked his head to the side and stared at her. "Tori, nothing ever stays the same. Sometimes things have to change. We all have to change."

  Not her life. She liked it the way it had been. Safe. Predictable. "I can't accept that. I have to have a certain order in my life, and you disrupted that."