The Gingerbread Bakery (Dream Harbor, #5)(5)

He’d tried to forget Annie so many times, tried to purge her from his system, to replace her with other women. But it never worked. No one ever lived up to her memory, to the memory of that one perfect Christmas. A memory that he had been hoping had been blown way out of proportion over the years. But then he’d moved back here and found she was just as perfect as he’d remembered.

And it sucked.

It sucked that life hadn’t worn down some of her shine, that she was still just as enthusiastic and loving and hard-working as she always had been. She still threw her whole self into everything she did. She was still that beautiful, over-achiever he’d known all those years ago. And now he was stuck here, forced to admire her in all her Annie-ness, and just pretend like it wasn’t slowly killing him.

Jeanie and Logan practiced their kiss to the delight of the small crowd, who cheered loud enough to bring Mac back to the present moment. As the couples paired off to walk back down the aisle, he was of course paired with Annie. He offered his arm, and she took it begrudgingly.

‘You look beautiful,’ he whispered in her ear as they marched down the aisle.

‘Mac, don’t.’

‘Annie, I just…’

‘I said, don’t,’ she snapped. ‘I’m emotional enough about this wedding, and I really don’t need you messing with my head like you did after Hazel’s thirtieth.’

Mess with her head? Ha! It was his head that was a mess. He hadn’t stopped thinking about that night in over a year.

‘I wasn’t trying to mess with your head.’

They got to the end of the chairs and everyone else was drifting off to where the food had been set up along the wall. Archer had done the catering, and it smelled fantastic.

Annie turned to face Mac, her familiar glare burning into him.

‘Well, you did.’

The memory of that night was enough to kill him. They’d been so close. She’d been so close. Her face just a breath from his, her lips right there. She’d been warm and willing in his arms, and then she’d looked up at him and it had been as though every reason she hated him came crashing back into her. She’d run from the pub like Cinderella from the damn ball.

He’d obviously been deluding himself. They’d drunk too much that night and Annie had been emotional because her friends were settling down. Letting him get so close to her had been motivated by some kind of panicked desperation on her part. But still it had been nice while it lasted.

‘I’m sorry. It won’t happen again. But you do look beautiful. That’s just an objective fact,’ he said with a shrug.

Annie softened slightly, her scowl becoming less scowl-y, which was the best he could hope for these days.

‘So, are you bringing a date to the wedding?’ she asked, steering the conversation away from their messy past.

‘Nah, not this time.’

Annie’s eyebrows rose in surprise. ‘Really?’

Mac shrugged. ‘I guess I forgot to find one.’

Annie’s gentle laugh was a reward. ‘Yeah, me too.’

It was Mac’s turn to be surprised. Annie seemed to love parading new guys in front of him, although he supposed he was guilty of bringing a random date or two to things, just so he didn’t have to be alone in front of her.

They’d played a lot of stupid games over the years.

‘Maybe you’ll save me a dance,’ he said.

Annie’s laugh was bigger this time as she patted him on the shoulder. ‘Not a chance, Sullivan.’

She was still laughing as she walked past him to the buffet. Mac shook his head at his own stupidity.

Not a chance was right. It was probably time he got that through his thick skull.











Chapter Four





Then


Hours after she’d sold out of cookies at the Christmas market, Annie was still trying to figure out how she’d ended up sitting across from the captain of the lacrosse team, sipping cocoa and eating French fries on a random Thursday night, four weeks before Christmas. It was not something she’d ever expected to add to her agenda.

But here she was.

With Mac.

A boy she hadn’t spoken more than a few words to over the past year, most of which were just the page numbers he was supposed to have completed for class.

They’d been sitting in awkward silence since they ordered, probably because this whole thing was weird, and they had no business hanging out together. But Mac was right. There was no one else around and she was bored.

That was why she’d agreed to this bizarre meet-up. Boredom. Not because of some ill-placed crush she’d had on Macaulay Sullivan ever since ninth grade when he’d shot up about two feet and stopped being a dick to her friends. It definitely wasn’t that, because Annie was smarter than that. Despite her steady diet of teen movies from the last thirty years, she knew that in real life the hot, popular guy did not in fact have a thing for the type A girl. It just didn’t make sense.

As a rule, Annie didn’t date jocks, especially ones that were mean to her friends. She had nothing to say to them. She didn’t particularly care about how hard anyone could throw a little ball into a net, or hit a ball with a bat, or catch a ball and run, or really do anything at all with a ball. So, even though she found Mac pleasing to look at, she’d never considered him as dating material. And she was sure he felt the same about her. Because, again, this was not a teen movie.