Christmas with a SEAL. Tawny Weber

the floor. Frankie got to her feet, tossing aside her apron since its weight only slowed down her pacing.

      What was she going to do?

      She glanced at the ornaments ready for packaging, each exactly the same except for the name and date etched and echoed in gemstones.

      Christmas was in a little more than a month.

      What was she going to do after that? Make Valentine’s ornaments? Fancy hangings to commemorate weddings and babies?

      Frankie shoved her fingers into her hair, tugging to relieve the pressure.

      How could any of that be considered creative? It couldn’t. It just couldn’t.

      What had gone wrong?

      After that night with Phillip, she’d felt the creative energy.

      She’d seen so many pieces in her head, uniquely beautiful, each one in her signature quirky style.

      After months of seeing nothing, it had been amazing. Like her birthday, five Christmases, graduation and incredible sex all rolled into one.

      Incredible sex...

      Heat washed over her, images flashing through her mind. Memories of Phillip, gloriously naked and poised over her body. Memories of that night, the orgasms—oh, the orgasms. So mind-blowing, so delicious.

      She took a deep breath, her thighs trembling. She closed her eyes as heat coiled inside her, low and tight. Colors, images, designs flashed. So close. So, so close.

      Maybe she could draw them. If she could get the images from her imagination onto paper, maybe—

      “Frankie, the mail is here.”

      Frankie bit back the curses that wanted to tumble off her lips. She’d been so close. It was like being caught reading a naughty magazine just when you got to the good part.

      But a girl didn’t snap at her grandma, no matter how delicious that good part might have been. Instead, Frankie plastered on her brightest smile and turned to the door.

      “Thanks, Nana,” she said, walking over to take the stack of envelopes. “I thought you were going to be at the seniors’ center this morning.”

      Looking a good ten years younger than her sixty-five, Josephine O’Brian stood a foot taller and a half foot wider than the granddaughter she’d raised since Frankie’s fourteenth birthday when a car accident had taken both Josephine’s daughter and son-in-law.

      “I was at the seniors’ center for a while. But with Millicent and Olivia both on another cruise, it wasn’t much fun.”

      “What about Deidre?” Frankie asked, referring to the fourth woman in her grandmother’s close-knit group of friends.

      “Off to her sister’s for a couple of weeks.”

      Nana frowned and started to tidy the studio. Frankie had given up asking her not to. Apparently, the housekeeping urge was too deeply ingrained to ignore.

      That, or she was bored. Nana was the only one of her friends not yet retired. While the others traveled and visited, she stayed faithful to her post at the Bankses’ house. Since the elder Bankses had died almost three years back, she’d started taking short trips, long weekends. A year ago, Frankie had tried to convince her to actually retire, but Nana refused, saying the estate still needed her.

      It was that loyalty, her devotion and her forty-plus years of service that had netted Josephine O’Brian a place in the Bankses’ will. As long as a Banks owned the estate and Mrs. O’Brian was the housekeeper, she could live rent-free in the housekeeper’s quarters at the back of the estate.

      Sometimes Frankie wondered if part of the reason Nana wouldn’t retire was because she had to look out for her flaky granddaughter.

      Guilt, misery and frustration settled in Frankie’s gut. Despite the failure of her business, Nana insisted that her granddaughter continue designing. Five months ago, Frankie had started looking for a real job, something that would provide a regular income. Her grandmother had pitched a fit to end all fits, giving Frankie a solid understanding of where she’d gotten her temper.