Shipped and Handled

By Claude Dancourt

Dawn Cunningham craves winter the way other women crave chocolate. She longs for the crisp days on the slopes and the exhilarating rush of downhills runs. Once winter settles in, she’ll have her job as a ski instructor back. In the meantime, she’s stuck in a horrid brown uniform, delivering packages and letters.

On the bright side, her current delivery brings her to the town's newest—and definitely hottest—resident, Brendan Petry. The catch? She’s bringing him lingerie he mail-ordered, probably for his girlfriend. At least she’ll have a closer look at her fantasy man.

Brendan never faced a Vermont winter, but if every snowstorm fetches the delicious Dawn Cunningham to his doorstep, he’s more than ready for the cold season. But if she believes he will settle for only one night, she’d better think again.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Evernight Publishing
• Release date: Feb 5, 2016
• ISBN: 9781772337129

Claude Dancourt

Canadian with a passion for words and applied science. Star Wars' & Twitter fanatic. Still looking to build a time machine. Love pop rock, Ceylan tea, and Hazelnuts flavored coffee. Housing one plant and a cat with an attitude. Addicted to Doctor Who, Supernatural, and The Big Band Theory. Go Habs!

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Published by Evernight Publishing ® at Smashwords

www.evernightpublishing.com

Copyright© 2016 Claude Dancourt

ISBN: 978-1-77233-712-9

Cover Artist: Jay Aheer

Editor: Katelyn Uplinger

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

WARNING: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be used or reproduced electronically or in print without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, and places are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

DEDICATION

For Lorelei

SHIPPED AND HANDLED

Romance on the Go TM

Claude Dancourt

Copyright © 2016

Chapter One

Dawn tugged at her shirt, glaring at her image in the rearview mirror of the truck. Whatever Brown could do, it certainly did not include making its delivery drivers look good. The UPS® uniform was horrible, period. Even Cindy Crawford would not have pulled it off had she tried.

She sighed. At least the job paid enough for her to wait until winter kicked in, and the Silver Peak Resort opened. She couldn't wait for snow, and the pristine slopes she would be among the first to break. She missed the adrenaline rush of downhill, and the excitement of her pupils when they got all the way up with the carpet lift without falling.

Just a little more patience, Dawn. Another week, or two, and you’ll be back on the slopes. In the meantime—hello, ugly garb.

With one last shrug, she walked to the back of the delivery truck to gather up her last charge of the day. The elegant VS logo on the sender’s label added insult to injury. Not only did she have to meet the hot new resident of Applefirth, Vermont, in that forsaken color, but she was to deliver Victoria’s Secret niceties. Life was unfair.

In any case, now you know he has a girlfriend, she chastised herself out loud. Why would he order something like this otherwise? So no more dwelling on what ifs.

What ifs had kept her awake all too often since she first caught sight of the man loading a battered-up truck outside the hardware store. She pictured the tall stranger at the time. He was lifting sixty-pound bags as another would an ice cream cone. Any woman would have stopped to admire how his body filled his jeans, the bulge of arms bared by pushed-up sleeves, that rough, male line of his jaw up