“Maybe you should take it off me,” she suggested.
“What about your sandwich?” He was already reaching for her, though.
“I’ll eat later.”
“Does that mean I get to eat you now?” Colton slipped the shirt from her shoulders, hoisted her naked body in his arms, and deposited her on the counter.
“You know what I’d love to do with you this weekend?”
“Stay in bed and have sex all day?”
“That too. I was thinking we should go to Vlad and Elena’s party.”
“You . . . you want me to go to that party with you?”
“Hell, yeah.”
Her heart did a triple axel. Going to a party together with their friends was couples shit. It was like announcing to the world that this thing between them wasn’t about business and never had been. Like announcing to herself that every time she chanted This isn’t a date in her head, she was lying to herself.
Worse, it would be like walking straight up to Liv and saying the words she most loved to hear: You were right. We’re good together.
It’s not that she didn’t know it before.
She did. And that’s what scared her.
He lifted the corner of his mouth in a knowing grin. “You know you want to say yes. Just say it.”
She said yes.
She never got back to the sandwich.
A Cold Winter’s Night
The house was quiet when Chelsea awoke.
Not the normal kind of quiet, but the kind where she knew instinctively that Simon wasn’t in the house. At some point over the past three days, she’d become accustomed to his presence in big and little ways—the sound his feet made on the stairs, the way he breathed when he was lost in a book, the way he looked at her when he thought she wasn’t aware.
The roads were supposed to reopen sometime today. There was no reason to stay.
The thought brought a dull thud to her chest.
She stared at the ceiling and tried to convince herself it was for the best that this thing was ending. But she couldn’t think of all the reasons that would have come so easily a few days ago.
Finally, she rose and headed for the bathroom to take a shower. Thank God the water still worked. But just before stripping out of her clothes, she heard something out back. She stood on tiptoe to peer out the high bathroom window . . . and gasped.
Simon stood at the edge of the property wrapping lights around a small pine tree. He was decorating a tree.
Chelsea grabbed her coat and threw on the old winter boots she’d found in her aunt’s bedroom closet. By the time she got outside, he was nearly done. At the sound of the back door, he paused and turned to look at her.
“What are you doing?”
“It’s Christmas Eve. I figured we should have a tree.”
“You got up pretty early.”
“I couldn’t sleep.”
“Why?”
He started toward her across the lawn, his feet shin-deep in the snow. His eyes never wavered from hers and sent her heart into a rapid pattern behind her breastbone. Simon stopped at the bottom of the porch steps and looked up at her with an expression that could have melted the ice.
“Because I want to spend Christmas with you,” he said.
“The tow truck is coming today.” It was officially the saddest sentence she’d ever said.
“Doesn’t mean we have to leave yet.”
Chelsea’s feet began to move toward him, drawn by a gravity she didn’t understand. She stopped on the lowest step, which brought her eye to eye with him. “You don’t want to leave?”
“I don’t want you to leave.”
She could barely hear her own voice over the pounding of her heart. “But you don’t even like me.”
His features pinched in remorse. “Is that what you think?”
“What else should I think?” Somehow, they’d inched closer to each other. Close enough that she could make out the mixture of hues in his growing beard. Reds and coppers and light browns.
“The truth is,” he said, reaching for her hand, “I’m falling for you.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“Is he messing with her just to get her to sell that house?”
Colton had no idea what Gretchen was talking about when she climbed into the front seat of his car Saturday night.
“Is who messing with who?” he said, starting the car.
“The book. A Cold Winter’s Night.”
“You’re still reading, huh?”
“I’m getting nervous. You’re sure this is going to turn out?”