Mateo met her gaze, his own lit with humor but also challenge. “You sure?”
“Oh yeah.” She shrugged off her purse and computer bag. Mateo put them on his patio table and turned back to her. “You should know, there’s no rules. First one to call ‘tío’ gets a cease-fire and a loss.”
He looked a little worried for her. Cute. She turned to her team. “Let’s do this.”
It was mayhem. It was chaos. It was rough-and-tumble. Snowballs flew so hard and fast that it was a constant, unrelenting battle, and Charlotte loved every second of it.
A snowball took her beanie right off her head. When she looked up, Mateo stood there with a wicked mischievous unrepentant grin.
She mirrored his expression and quickly formed a snowball. Ducking his next hit, she came up and threw, and nailed him right between the eyes.
He wavered, but didn’t go down, so she launched herself at him, and then they were in free fall. Mateo landed flat on his back, cushioning her as she followed him down.
“Say it,” she said, laughingly holding him down, knowing that if he wanted to, he could easily have flung her off him. “Say it,” she said again, their noses nearly touching.
His hands went to her hips, his mouth curved, but definitely not saying a word.
“Say it, say it, say it,” her team of Morenos began to chant.
Charlotte wiggled a bit, realizing she was getting cold as the snow had slowly seeped into her clothing. Mateo’s hands tightened on her hips to hold her still, and suddenly his eyes had gone from amused to hot.
She stared down at him, time suddenly stopping as she gulped.
“Tío,” he said huskily.
She cocked a hand around her ear, smiling as she said, “Excuse me? I didn’t catch that.”
His eyes narrowed playfully. “Why, Dr. Dixon, I forgot how viciously competitive you were.”
“Never have tried to hide it.” She smiled and hoisted another handful of snow threateningly. “Say it, Moreno.” Amongst the cheers, he rolled her to her back, came over on top of her, and dropped a kiss to the tip of her icy nose. “Our next round is a one-on-one,” he said for her ears only, and then rose, hauling her to her feet as well.
After that comment, she felt her knees wobbling, so he held on to her for an extra second. “Yeah?” he asked.
She drew a deep breath. “Yeah.”
LEVI WAS AT his dad’s desk, ostensibly working while also playing that kiss with Jane on repeat. Good thing he could multitask. He was putting together a PowerPoint presentation to explain all the shocking accounting discrepancies to his family in an orderly fashion. And to hopefully mitigate their panic while he was at it. He’d also come up with a few possible solutions for the now-struggling store, not to mention a list of the evidence needed to put Cal away. The thought gave him a pang for Peyton, who deserved better from her dad, but they’d deal with how to tell her when the time came.
The problem was the mitigation of panic. Cal had managed to get his hands on a lot of the Cutler money, enough to put them under if the store didn’t bring in a lot of money quickly.
And the high revenue season—the holidays—was behind them. Knowing that, Levi planned to present the info in a way that they could stomach.
Or so he hoped.
Making it worse, Cal had gone off the grid. With some time and the right resources, Levi felt confident they’d be able to find him and haul his ass back to Tahoe to face his crimes. But one thing at a time.
Jasper padded into the room and gave a soft woo woo. Translation: he was hungry.
“You’re always hungry,” Levi said.