“What about my brothers’ place?”
We own a penthouse on Fifth Avenue, right across Central Park. The living and dining rooms are bigger than the ones in our brownstone. They could host all the holidays, but of course, none of the other three would offer when it’s time to organize the next gathering.
“I wouldn’t mind bringing the food to them,” I say as I’m peeling the yams. “Or hiring a cook.”
I look at our kitchen table and sigh. Next Thanksgiving, I’m putting my foot down. We’re not doing it here.
“The pub down the street is more comfortable than your brothers’ penthouse,” she huffs, giving me a side glance.
“Seriously, Hunt,” she continues. “One of these days Hazel and I are going to take out the gaming furniture and decorate it like it’s supposed to be. Like a home, for adults. How can they possibly live like that?”
I shrug. “We got used to it.”
After my parents died, my second eldest brother Scott, tried to bring a new normal into our lives. He remodeled my room, so I wouldn’t need to go out at all. He tried to create an entire game room in the living areas for Fitz. I guess cooking for him twice a year, so he can have the family experience he hasn’t had since our parents died, is nothing compared to everything that he’s done for us.
I really wish he could find happiness, the same way that Willow and I did.
“No, no, no,” she says with annoyance. “What happened to let’s meet at five?”
“What’s going on?” I start peeling faster.
“Hazel just texted me. They’re almost here,” Willow announces.
“Who?” I ask hoping the word they includes my brothers because I’ll put them to work.
The four of us can get this dinner done in less time than my wife who is still learning to cook.
“Hazel, Gramps, Luna, and your brothers,” she answers, placing the cheesecake in the oven. “Twenty minutes and then we should put it in the fridge.”
I put the peeler and yam down, and take it into my arms. “How long do we have?”
She shoots me a mischievous smile. “Not long enough, but that’s not why I’m complaining. I had a plan.”
“A plan?” I furrow a brow.
“Yes, I had it all worked out. We would play the couple who are celebrating their second Thanksgiving together,” she tells me.
“But we are a couple,” I remind her.
We haven’t played this game since last year when I met her, and we pretended to be newly wedded in their honeymoon.
“Yes, but this couple is different. She’s about to give him some news.”
“What kind of news?” I hold my breath.
She releases my neck and pulls out a rectangle box from the apron’s pocket.
My eyes widen when I see the white stick inside and there’s a digital window that says one word, pregnant.
“We are?” I ask, confirming what I’m reading.
“Yes,” she confirms locking her gaze to mine.
“Thank you,” I whisper, setting the box aside and caressing her belly. “Hey, there. Welcome to the world. I can’t wait to meet you.”
“Are you happy?” she whispers.
I grin and nod reassuringly, knowing that she needs me to reassure her that I love her and I would no matter what.
“I love you, Willow Beesley-Everhart,” I say, inching closer, I press my forehead to hers. My hands rest on her lower back. “You make me happy every day.”
Her lips part and she sighs. “I’m so in love with you, Hunt. Thank you for believing in me—for always loving me.”
I kiss her. It’s slow, deep, and passionate.
Every day, I’m thankful for my wife. Having her around is sort of a miracle. We were two lost souls who found each other one day. Together, we learned how to fit in. She couldn’t have said it better last year, falling in love is an art.
* * *
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Standalones
My One Despair
Knight of Wands
My One Regret
Found
Fervent
Flawed
Finding My Reason
* * *
Chaotic Love Duet
Begin with You
Back to You
* * *
Unexpected Series
Uncharted
Uncut
Undefeated
Unlike Any Other
Jingling His Bells
Amelia Wilde
* * *
This is not how I expected Christmas caroling to go.
For one thing, my best friend Sammy, who guilted me into showing up for our friend-group Christmas caroling, isn’t even here.
For another, nobody is.
I don’t know what happened. All I know is that it took forty-five minutes by train to get to the designated meet-up point and now I’m standing on some poor unsuspecting family’s front porch in what is, without a single doubt, the worst snowstorm of the year. Maybe the last five years. The snow was already falling in enormous sheets when I bundled myself up in my most jaunty scarf and debated cancelling.
But I can’t cancel. I can’t let Sammy down again. She’ll kill me. She swore it on her mother when she called me this morning. Holly, if you flake on this, I swear on my mother I will kill you.
She meant it affectionately—she always does—but I sensed in the air that this is a critical crossroads in our friendship. Look, it’s not that I try to cancel plans with her. It’s just that I’m buried under mountains of manuscripts in the slush pile at the little publishing company where I work, and not all of them are half bad. I have a real time management problem. I’m only supposed to skim the first few pages but I never do. Those stories have their way with me, and then before you know it it’s six o’clock and the office is empty and I have thirty-seven texts from Sammy wondering why the hell I didn’t show up for happy hour.
So you can see why I wasn’t going to disappoint her again.
We were supposed to meet at a little convenient store on the edge of the neighborhood, which looks…kind of ritzy, to be honest. I can’t see much of it with the snow whipping its little ice shards into my eyes, but in order to get to the first house on what I suppose is the route I had to walk through an open wrought-iron gate.
And walk I did. Right on up to the wide porch and the red front door. My fingers are already cold inside my new mittens from Target, but here goes nothing. At least I can say I went caroling, even if Sammy and the rest of our friends are nowhere in sight.
God, it’s frigid. A deep, bone-chilling cold that honestly makes me want to curl up in a little ball right on this porch while I wait for…whoever lives here to answer. I’m expecting a couple. Maybe a set of kids. I don’t know. Someone. Anyone. Maybe they’ll be able to point me in the direction of my friends, who should have been here.
I wasn’t even late.
All that effort…
The handle turns, the door swings open, and I ready myself, opening the red binder and flipping to the first page. It doesn’t strike me until I’ve opened my mouth, until I’ve already started to sing, that I could skip the caroling and make less of a fool of myself, but it’s too late.
It’s way too late.
“O, holy night, the stars are brightly shining…” My voice cracks a little on shining and I clear my throat, blinking through the stabbing snow to see the lyrics on the page. “It is the night of our dear savior’s…”
“What the hell are you doing?”
The voice in the doorway is not a kindly old woman. It’s not a child filled with the wonder of the Christmas spirit. I raise my eyes from the binder and face…
…the most gorgeous man I’ve ever seen.
And he does not look happy.
“I’m caroling.” I clear my throat again and soldier on, the heat rushing to my face. This guy deserves
at least one song for his trouble. “…birth. Long lay the world in sin and error pining, ‘til he appeared, and the…”
“You’re serious.” He looks down at me, dark eyes flashing.
“Yes.” My teeth are starting to chatter. “I’m caroling. I couldn’t bail on Sammy one more time, and—”
He holds up a hand. “You know there’s a blizzard on, right?”
The cold reaches in through my jacket, all the way to my bones, and it aches there. A curl of snow whips through the exposed fringes of my hair underneath my hat. “I’ve…gathered that. But I’m looking for my friends. They were supposed to meet me here, so I wanted to ask if you if you’d already seen them.”
The shivering is moving from my jaw to the rest of my entire body.
“Nobody’s been here.” He’s incredulous. “Only a group of idiots would be out in this weather.”
“Well, at least I’m not a group,” I joke, but the words are garbled from the chattering. “I’ll just finish the song and be on my way.” Sammy is never going to believe this.
“For god’s sake.” He’s so hot. He is so hot. “You’re not finishing any song. Come inside.”
* * *
I don’t know what this girl’s deal is, and part of me doesn’t care. Part of my soul is dead. Oh, does that sound too dramatic? It shouldn’t, because a single Christmas caroler had the balls to force me off the couch in the middle of New York's worst snowstorm in twenty years. I thought I could count on this storm for a little solitude. I was wrong.
But there’s another part of me that’s…intrigued.
There’s a story here. There’s a definite story. Maybe the story is that she’s looking for money, or a ride home, or…something. But at least part of that story is that she’s beautiful.
And crazy.
But also beautiful.
At least, she has beautiful lips, pink and gorgeously formed.
Also, she is terrible at singing.
It’s the worst rendition of O Holy Night I’ve ever heard. But her whole body is shuddering with the cold, and it’s seeping into my house, and against my better judgement I beckon her in.
“Come on,” I tell her, stepping back. “It’s cold as balls out there.”
“Are you—sure?” It takes her several tries to get the word sure out.
“Yes, I’m sure. This is—” I want to say that she looks pathetic, but she looks…not pathetic. She looks good. “Come in and tell me what the hell you’re doing.”
“O—okay.” She steps inside and I press the door shut behind her with a definitive click. “You’re not a s-s-s-serial killer, are you?”
I look around at the house. It’s my parents’ house, actually, until they transfer the title, but they’re not here. They haven’t lived here for months. Still, they have a woman named Ana come in once a week, and she arranged their usual over-the-top Christmas decorating like she always does.
The old me would have made a joke about there being only one way to find out or some such other bullshit, but the new me is still shaking off the last of the bone-tired feeling that came with having a vicious flu. It was probably set off when my fiancée broke up with me before heading to Rome on a holiday vacation with her man on the side.
Yeah.
Merry fucking Christmas.
“No. I’m not a serial killer. But I’m wondering if you’re a little off the hinges.”
She draws herself up to her full height. “I am not. I told you—I’m just trying to do a little caroling.”
“By yourself? What kind of person goes caroling by themselves?” I angle myself toward the coat closet. “Look, if it’s money you need…”
“I don’t need money, okay? I’m telling you the truth. I was supposed to meet my friends for caroling, only they didn’t show up. Or—they left without me. I’m trying to find them. My plan is to go house-to-house until—”
“I’m telling you—there is nobody else out in this neighborhood. Do you think I could miss a group of people singing off-key on my front porch?”
She considers this. “If it was windy enough.” Then a little glance toward the front staircase. “Or if your girlfriend…” Oh, jesus, she’s being so smooth. She’s trying to play this so cool. Her cheeks aren’t just red from the cold, are they? No.
“I don’t have a girlfriend,” I say gruffly.
“I don’t believe that for a second.”
What am I doing? Why did I invite her in here?
Another shiver wracks her body and it tugs at something in my chest. Oh. That’s why. Maybe my heart isn’t dead after all.
“What’s your name?”
She blinks up at me, the ice on her eyelashes melting. “Holly. Here’s the proof.” Holly tips a little red binder into my hand. It’s full of neatly printed pages in plastic sleeves. O Holy Night is first up.
“Anyone could print one of these books.” I hand it back to her. “But that’s beside the point.”
“What’s the point, then?”
I take another deep breath and for the first time get a lungful of her scent, bright and cold and soft. “The point is, what are you doing out here? What are you doing at my house? It’s a death trap out there. At least tell me you didn’t drive.”
Holly frowns, those pink lips unbearably perfect. “I took the train.”
She’s got to be kidding me. “The station is half a mile from here. You walked?”
“Listen, Mr.—”
“Adam.”
“Adam.” My name rolls off her tongue and heats up the entire entryway. “I am looking for my best friend Sammy. She told me to be here, so I made it. I’ve cancelled enough plans with her already.” She says this last bit almost under her breath.
“Nobody else came, sweetheart. They bailed on you.”
“She would never.”
“Look around.” I motion out the window of the door to the street beyond. “There’s nobody and nothing out there. No traffic. No people. It’s the worst night for caroling probably ever.”
“Yeah,” she says with a little sigh, then seems to steel herself. “I’d better get going.”
* * *
Adam looks at me like I’ve stepped out of a time warp. “There’s no way.”
“No way what?” I’m already adjusting my scarf, tugging my hat down, and preparing to face the bitter wind.
“There’s no way I can let you go back out there.”
“Let me?” I lift my chin. “I’m an independent woman, and I go wherever I want to go. That includes—”
Just then, the power flickers. The wind howls outside this big, beautiful house, and Adam—tall, handsome, furious Adam—crosses his arms over his chest. “Let me call you a cab. People would think I really was a serial killer if I let you go walking in this.”
“I got here, didn’t I?”
“You’re still shivering.”
The fact of him noticing this, his eyes running over me, head to toe, is enough to warm me from the inside out.
“It’ll get—it’ll be fine.”
He shakes his head, and I’m struck by how nonchalant he is. “Have a seat in the living room. I’m calling a car.”
“You can’t.” A little note of panic crests in my voice, which I hate. “A cab ride from here to my place would be—it would cost a lot.” It would cost a lot and I don’t have a lot of extra cash. I went a little over budget on Christmas presents. Then again, I can hear my mother’s voice in the back of my head—it won’t do anyone any good if you’re dead in a ditch somewhere. Not that I have much chance of landing in a ditch in this ritzy neighborhood. There were some sketchier blocks on the way here from the train station, but no ditches.
He narrows his eyes. “Don’t worry about it.”
Then he saunters off into the kitchen, leaving me standing there in this magnificent entryway.
There’s an open doorway to the left, and through it I can see what looks like a living room out of a magazine. It’s all cream furniture and ho
liday throws and, in the center, a crackling fireplace.
I’m like a moth to…well, the flame. Before I can stop myself I’ve kicked off my boots and padded across the thick carpet to the fire, which is so cheery it almost makes me want to sing some more carols. I’m warmed through in what feels like no time at all, and then I realize—
He’s not back yet.
Can it really be taking that long to call a cab?
There’s a second doorway at the back of the living room, and I move my newly warmed self toward it with caution. I don’t want to scare him if he’s deep in conversation.
When I get to the doorway, I see that he is.
He’s leaning against the counter with one hand, his white t-shirt riding up a little bit over the waistband of his pants. And something about the way he’s using the counter for balance that way…
Something happened to this guy.
I come into the kitchen behind him at the exact moment he says, “Four hours? That’s more than a little ridiculous, don’t you think?” He leans toward the hand on the counter and gives a little sigh. “No, you’re not the first place I’ve called. Find this number if any of your guys is free early, will you? Thanks.”
He hangs up the phone with a heavier sigh.
“You know, I can just…see myself out.”
Adam turns on his heel to face me.
He’s tired.
He looks, actually, exhausted.
“Are you okay?”
“Me?” He raises his eyebrows. “You’re the one out wandering in a terrible blizzard and you’re wondering if I’m okay?”
“I’m wondering if you need some soup.”
It sounds so stupid, coming from my mouth. But I do wonder it.
“Soup.”
“Yeah. Soup. You know. Chicken noodle.” I mime dipping a spoon into a bowl of soup. “I could make you some.”
“Let’s recap. You came here by yourself to carol, and now you’re offering to cook me dinner?”