“I’m so glad it was you,” I whisper, throwing my arms around his neck and holding him tight. “I wanted it so badly to be you.”
He drinks me in, and a tender smile lifts his mouth. “Look at you.”
I peer down at my ugly Christmas sweater with its obnoxious twinkling lights, just waiting for me to flip the hidden switch that’ll make it sing. “Brutal, right?”
“Beautiful,” he whispers, hands caressing my waist, drawing me close. “The most beautiful. Here.” He bends and kisses my temple. “Here.” Over my heart. “And here.” Then his lips brush mine.
My mouth parts as he wraps me tighter in his arms. This kiss is quiet and gentle, but it doesn’t stay that way for long. Before we know it, Jonathan’s walking me back until we bump against a wall. I’m starting to tear off his jacket, dragging away mine.
“Wait,” he says, even though it sounds like the last thing he wants to say, especially when I slide my hand up his hard thigh, toward where I see clear evidence that he’s hurting as badly as I am. “Slow down. Gabriella.” God, that voice, deep and commanding, it’s just how he sounded in my filthy-aristocrat, sheet-twisting, hours-of-lovemaking, fantasies. It makes me wild.
“I need you,” I tell him.
“God, Gabby.” He draws me closer, and his hands slip down my ass, to my thighs, lifting me up and hiking my legs around his waist. “I need you, too.”
“So…about that date?” I tell him. “How about we relocate it? Somewhere with a bed. And no one who needs a damn thing from us. For days.”
“My place,” he says. “No roommates. No interruptions.”
I kiss him hard and deep, then slip slowly down his body. “Your place.” I take a step back.
“Hey.” He frowns. “Where are you going? We have a date.”
“I just need…a quick stop at my place? Fifteen minutes?”
“Fifteen minutes!” he yells like I’ve told him fifteen years.
“Just to grab a few essentials. Hint: I won’t be packing underwear.”
His eyes darken. He starts stalking toward me. “I’ll drive you. It’ll go faster.”
A coy smile slips out. “I said fifteen minutes, Frost, and I meant it.”
I screech with laughter as he bends and throws me over his shoulder, gently swatting my butt. “Fine. Just be ready to make up for lost time.”
“Holy shit.” By the sounds of it, June drops her eyeliner pen. “Scrooge is Mr. Reddit? Jonathan Frost?”
“It’s the stuff of fiction,” I tell her, packing the world’s most chaotic sleepover bag. My own pillow. Fuzzy socks. Zero underwear. Lots of sweaters. Romance novels. Thin mint cookies. “And yet it’s my reality. I’m never going to stop pinching myself.”
“You’re gonna bang each other’s lights out, aren’t you?”
“For days.” I plop on my bed beside Gingerbread and feed her a handful of treats. “Don’t miss me too much,” I tell her. “And don’t worry, I’ll bring Jonathan by soon so you can meet him.”
Gingerbread purrs like an engine missing its muffler, and while it’s probably because I gave her three times more treats than normal, I’m choosing to believe that it’s her excitement about getting to meet the man waiting not-so-patiently downstairs in his SUV.
“Gabby?” June’s voice wafts from the Jack and Jill bathroom connecting our bedrooms.
“Yeah?”
“What are the chances? Have you wrapped your head around that?”
Glancing toward the window facing the street and Jonathan’s car below, I picture him—dark hair, stern features, wintergreen eyes, that soft, warm smile only for me.
“Terrifyingly slim,” I tell her. “I’m the luckiest person in the world.”
Easing off the bed, I throw my bag over my shoulder. It feels like Christmas morning all over again.
June catches me in the mirror, observing my dazed smile, the hearts dancing in my eyes. “Wow,” she says. “You’re a goner.”
I smile even wider. “Yeah.”
“Well, he just better deserve you,” she mutters, back at her eyeliner.
“Considering he built out an online store with enough projected profits that Bailey’s will be safe indefinitely, and he did it all for me—”
“Goddammit.” A streak of kohl black eyeliner marks her temple. June tosses the pen aside and spins to face me, tears in her eyes. “No more of this mushy stuff. It’s messing up my cat-eye. Why must you torture me with heartfelt, makeup-wrecking drivel?”