Booked for Christmas

by Lily Menon

  Sophie blinked, dispelling the thought. Wolfe was the enemy. Maybe he was being chivalrous right now, but he hated her books and, therefore, he hated her.

  As if reading her mind, he said, “Where were you taking these books, anyway? They weigh as much as a small elephant.”

  Was that a dig on her writing? That her prose was bloated or something? Stiffening her chin, Sophie replied, “For your information, there are people in this world who enjoy my work.”

  “Never said there weren’t,” Wolfe said easily, adjusting her in his arms. Then, frowning at her in disapproval again, “Your ears are red. Take my scarf.”

  “I don’t want your scarf. I’m fine.”

  “Just like your ankle’s fine?”

  They held each other’s gaze for a long moment, and something inside Sophie began to simmer and grow warmer. Her breathing upped just a notch, and suddenly, she was very aware of every place he was touching her—her thighs, her upper back, her arm. Although there were layers of fabric between them, her skin began to tingle. She cleared her throat and looked at his scarf, untangling it from around his neck to wrap it around hers. She pulled the border of the scarf up above her nose and ears, breathing in the scent of him: cloves and cinnamon and fresh mountain air. “Thanks,” she muttered, her voice muffled by the fabric. She was having a hard time meeting his eye.

  “Sure.” He was looking straight ahead now, too.

  What’s happening? The thought whizzed through Sophie’s mind before she could stop it, but she pushed it firmly out. Nothing was happening. And in any case, they were at the cabin.

  9

  Wolfe settled her gently on the sofa, pulling the blanket he’d folded and set on the back of the sofa over her legs. It was toasty in the cabin, and for the first time since she’d fallen, Sophie felt like she might de-thaw.

  “Thanks,” she said again, touched at this surprisingly nurturing side of Evan Wolfe, but he didn’t answer.

  Instead, he took off the snowshoes and sat on the coffee table, making it creak slightly in protest. Pulling one corner of the blanket back, Wolfe looked at her leg. Gingerly, he took her snow boots and socks off and studied her puffy ankle. “No bruising,” he said, prodding gently with his cool fingers. When Sophie sucked in a breath, he looked up at her. “I think you’ve just sprained it. I’ll get you an ice pack from the kitchen and a couple of Motrin.” He set her foot carefully back on the couch and covered it up with the blanket again.

  Sophie rested her head against the back of the couch. “Wow.”

  “What?”

  “You’re just being so…” She searched for the words and decided “unexpectedly nice” was probably a touch rude. “Should I be calling you Dr. Wolfe?”

  He smirked. “I did a year of medical school at OHSU before I realized life was too short to spend it studying under fluorescent lights. And before that, I took care of my little brother Jake. He was always getting himself into ridiculous situations that required medical care.” He took in her narrowed eyes. “Oh. Not that you’re ridiculous or that this situation was foolish in the least.”

  Sophie quirked her mouth at his sarcasm-coated apology. She didn’t think Wolfe was capable of having a normal conversation with her. “Mm hmm. How old is Jake?”

  “Nineteen—six years younger than me. Our parents got divorced when I was ten and he was four. With a single mom who worked twelve-hour shifts as an ICU nurse, I became the default caregiver.” He shrugged and began to take off his coat. Hanging it up on the quill-shaped coat hook, he added, “I didn’t mind it, surprisingly. Jake and I had a good time.” He smiled a little at some unspoken memory.

  “Jake’s lucky.” Sophie sat up, unwound Wolfe’s plaid scarf from around her neck, and unzipped her coat. Taking it off and setting both on the coffee table, she said, “I was an only child.”

  Wolfe took her coat and his scarf and hung those up, too. “That sounds lonely.”

  “Yeah, it was.” She adjusted her position on the sofa and winced at the sudden pain in her ankle. “But I’m closer to my parents because of it, I think.”

  Holding up his finger to indicate she should wait, Wolfe walked to the kitchen. A moment later, Sophie heard the sounds of water being poured and Motrin being shaken out of the bottle. Her gaze snagged on the mistletoe hanging from the archway leading into the kitchen and she thought of last night, when Wolfe and she had kissed. On the cheek, but still. It was the most action she’d had in a long time. She felt her pulse kick up at the memory of his hazel eyes, gazing into hers. At the way his cheek had felt against hers, rough and warm and solid.

  She shook her head, trying to get her brain under control, when he walked back in with a bag of frozen peas that he set over her ankle. After handing her a glass of water and two Motrin, he propped her ankle up on a throw pillow. Sophie took the medicine, set the glass down, and settled back against the couch arm. “This is really nice of you.”

  Waving her off, he took a seat in the teal armchair he’d been sitting in the night before, when she’d done his tarot. “You were telling me about being an only child.”

  Sophie laughed.

  “What?”

  She shook her head, still smiling. “Talking about my childhood, you in that armchair, me on this couch … I’m getting major therapist vibes.”

  Grinning, Wolfe said in a really bad Freud accent, “Tell me your dreams.”

  Sophie chuckled. “Well, my biggest dream right now is to write a hundred books over the course of my career.” She gave him a defiant look, but he didn’t seem to pick up on her vibe.

  “You have eight books published and you do three or four books a year, right? And you’re, what, twenty-five? I’d say that’s definitely doable. You should keep a little countdown to one hundred.”

  She smiled a little. “My dad has one at my parents’ house in Nob Hill.”

  “They’re supportive of your career?”

  “Very.” Sophie picked up her water and took a thoughtful sip. “I wasn’t one of those people who was told a career in the arts was useless. Ever since they saw me show promise, my parents gave me every opportunity to succeed. I think that’s why my first book was accepted for publication when I was still in college. I always just took it for granted that this was what I’d do with my life.”

  “That’s really cool,” Wolfe said, settling back against the armchair. The teal velvet fabric made his eyes look bluish gray, like polished river rock. “I think my mom’s biggest disappointment in life is that I became an online book critic instead of something in a helping profession.”

  His phone beeped with a text message. Wolfe pulled it out of his pocket and checked the screen. A frown etched his brows as he looked up at Sophie. “Can I make a phone call in private?”

  “Sure, use my bedroom,” Sophie said, pointing.

  Without another word, Wolfe got up and strode from the room, his cell held tight in one fist.

  A moment later, she heard him talking to someone. Maybe she should’ve warned him that the walls of her cabin were extremely thin. Too late now.

  “I don’t understand,” Wolfe was saying, his voice low. “You broke up with me.” A pause. “So what’s changed over the past year?”

  There was a long silence. “In other words, you don’t want to be alone on Christmas.”

  Sophie listened with bated breath. What was going on?

  “I don’t know, Hannah. I need to think about it. No, you can’t come over. Because right now I’m stuck in a snowstorm in the middle of nowhere.” Another long pause. “Okay, I will. Bye.”

  Sophie immediately picked up her phone and began scrolling through her apps, just to make it look like she wasn’t listening. A full minute later, the hallway creaked with Wolfe’s footsteps. And then he was back in the living room, his phone still in his hand, his face dark and clouded with emotion.

  He stood in the middle of the room, looking lost for a moment. “Hey,” he said finally. “Are you hungry? I can rustle something
up for lunch.”

  Sophie shook her head. “It’s, um, only ten o’clock.”

  “Oh.” He pushed a hand through his dark hair, glanced down at his phone, and slipped it into his jeans pocket. “Right.”

  “Wolfe…” Sophie bit her lower lip and considered her next words. “Who’s Hannah?”

  His face went blank, every expression sliding off. “You heard.”

  “I did. I didn’t mean to eavesdrop. My walls are just really thin.”

  He heaved a sigh so deep, Sophie was afraid he’d huff and puff the cabin down. Wolfe sank back down on the armchair, his head dipped and his hands between his knees. “It’s okay. At least now I don’t have to pretend to be in a great mood the rest of the day.” He looked up at her after a moment. “Hannah’s my ex; she broke up with me last year. And just a few minutes ago, she texts me saying she’s rethinking everything and wants to get back together.”

  Sophie studied his expression, the torn look on his face. “Wow. Is that … a good thing?”

  His lips tightened into a thin, hard line. “She cheated on me and then dumped me, so I’m thinking not.”

  Sophie winced. “Ouch.”

  “Yep. But I guess the other guy’s out of the picture now.” He blew out a breath.

  “So … you’re still considering it? Taking her back, I mean.” When he frowned at her, she explained, “On the phone, you didn’t tell her no outright. So I’m guessing there’s a small part of you that’s wondering, what if?”

  He studied her for a long moment and then shrugged, looking away. “I guess. I don’t know.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Wolfe looked at her again, lines around his mouth. “I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”

  “Sure.” Sophie smoothed the blanket over her thighs. Just let it go, Soph. But she couldn’t. When she saw someone in pain, she had to commiserate, to at least try to reach out and connect. “It’s just … I know what that feels like. Being cheated on and dumped, I mean.”

  Wolfe blinked, apparently thrown off-kilter by this confession. “You do?”

  She didn’t know what that inflection was about, but Sophie shrugged. “My ex-boyfriend Brock cheated on me, too. We were together for eight months, and one day he told me he was going to work—he was a librarian. Turned out he spent the day in bed with his other girlfriend.”

  Wolfe blew out a breath. “You know, you really don’t expect that from librarians.”

  Sophie sat up straighter, ignoring the twinge in her ankle at the movement. “Right? Like, that job’s supposed to be sacred. You’re not supposed to cheat when you’re a librarian.”

  Wolfe snorted. “Hannah’s a mortician.”

  Sophie made a face. “Ugh. They should never have sex.”

  Wolfe smiled a little, his expression more relaxed than it had been in the past five minutes. “Thanks,” he said, after a moment. “This actually weirdly helps.”

  Sophie waved a hand. “Any time I can help someone by talking about my own horrendous romantic failures, I’m all over it.”

  Wolfe looked at her. “Failures? As in, plural?”

  “Oh, yeah. You name it, it’s happened to me. I’ve had three serious boyfriends in the last three years. The first one, Ryan? Things were apparently going too well for him. He said we were too young to be this in love and he broke up with me.”

  Wolfe made a face. “Does that even make sense?”

  Sophie shrugged. “I guess it did to him. And then there was Brock, and we know how that ended. The third one was Fitz, who’d been in love with his ex-girlfriend the whole time we were dating. He broke up with me over text—while we were sleeping in my bed. We dated almost a year.”

  “Damn.” Wolfe shook his head. “I’m sorry. That really sucks.”

  “Yeah, it did. But it’s great fodder for the books.”

  Wolfe cocked his head. “I’m surprised with that amount of heartbreak that you don’t write, I don’t know, sad literary fiction instead of love stories.”

  Sophie leaned back against the fluffy couch arm and sighed. “Ah, but the best part of life is being in love. Having someone look at you like you’re the answer to the question they’ve been asking all their lives. I don’t regret a single second I spent with any of them. Those happy moments? That’s what I’m chasing in my stories. I believe in the magic of love.”

  Wolfe’s skeptical eyebrow was back. “I don’t know. True love and happily-ever-after just seem so farfetched. Like a fairy tale rather than anything you should actually plan on.”

  Sophie narrowed her eyes at him. “That’s very cynical for a therapist, Dr. Wolfe.”

  He half smiled at her joke, but his words were serious. “Is it? Or is it realistic?”

  Sophie’s phone rang, interrupting their conversation. She was surprised by the spark of irritation she felt at the interruption; she was actually enjoying her conversation with Wolfe. Things between them felt … different, somehow. Like falling down and hurting herself had brought out a protective, nurturing side to Wolfe she hadn’t even suspected was there, let alone expected to uncover.

  Feeling a little discombobulated, Sophie grabbed her phone off the coffee table to see Gina was video-calling. She slid to answer. “Gina, hi!”

  Gina’s smiling, red-cheeked face stared back at her. “Hi yourself! You doing okay with the storm?”

  Sophie made a face. “I was actually going to call you about that. I’m so sorry, but I don’t think I can get the books to you today.”

  Gina’s smile morphed into immediate concern. “Oh, no! Are you okay?”

  “I am … well, I tried to snowshoe it out to you. You know how the road up to the cabin gets completely snowed under. And, um, I ended up falling and spraining my ankle.”

  “What?? Sophie, you didn’t have to do that! Do you need me to send an ambulance?”

  “Ah, no.” Sophie’s eyes darted over to Wolfe, who was watching her. Her cheeks flushing at the memory of him carrying her back home, she turned back to Gina. “I have a house guest who was able to help me. But I feel awful for the people on your list.”

  Gina waved a hand, the image moving with the movement. “Don’t worry about that, sweetie. We’ll make it work, okay?”

  “Yeah, but you said thirty people had signed up. And now they won’t have the books under their tree.” Just saying it out loud like that made Sophie want to cry.

  “Hey, don’t worry about it. Maybe we can get it to them for New Year’s or Valentine’s Day or something. You just worry about healing that ankle, you hear me?”

  Suddenly, Wolfe was walking up to Sophie. She looked at him in confusion. “I’ll take the books down,” he said, already moving to get his coat.

  “What? How?”

  “Snowshoe.” He gave her a grin. “I’m something of a snowshoe champion, as you saw.”

  “What’s going on?” Gina asked, frowning.

  “Um…” Sophie looked back at the screen. “My houseguest—Wolfe—he says he’ll bring the books down to you.”

  Gina’s squeal could probably be heard in a five-mile radius. “Oh my god, really?”

  Wolfe came around so Gina could see him. “Really.” He smiled. “People need their literature, am I right?”

  Had Wolfe just called her books literature? Sophie studied him in incredulity, waiting for the hysterical laughter that was sure to follow, but he was looking at Gina. He really meant it, then. That knowledge was like a warm, glowing ember in her chest.

  Gina clasped her hand to her cheek. “You have no idea! One of Sophie’s Starlit Grove fans is in her seventies and has no family visiting this Christmas. And another just finished yet another round of chemo. These people—they rely on her books to keep their spirits up, you know?”

  Wolfe met Sophie’s eye, but she couldn’t tell what he was thinking. Then, looking back at Gina, he said, “I’ll be there soon.”

  Sophie hurried up and said goodbye to Gina and then shook her head at Wolfe. “You don’t
have to do this, Wolfe. It’s my thing, this charity.”

  He studied her for a beat. “You didn’t tell me you were taking the books to charity.”

  Sophie shrugged. “Didn’t seem important.”

  Wolfe began to strap on the snowshoes. “Well, I think it’s cool.”

  “Still. This is a pretty big thing you’re volunteering to do.”

  He brushed her concern aside as he stood. “It’ll give me time to think about Hannah and clear my head a bit.”

  Right. Hannah. His ex-girlfriend who wanted to come back into his life. For a moment, Sophie had forgotten about her. She looked down at the blanket on her lap. “Oh, yeah, sure. Well, um, thanks. I really appreciate it.” She looked up at him. “Hey, you should text me when you get there. Just so I know you made it and all.”

  Wolfe grinned as he slung the bag of books over his shoulder. “Worried I’m going to twist my ankle and make you carry me back?”

  Sophie snorted as Wolfe pulled out his cell and handed it to her so she could put in her number. “Sorry to have to tell you this, but you’d be getting dragged back. It wouldn’t be a very pleasant experience.” She handed his phone back.

  Pocketing it, he started for the back door. “Well then, I better stay upright. I’ll see you in a bit.”

  Sophie found herself looking after him long after he’d left.

  10

  Wolfe didn’t come back until close to dinnertime that night.

  At noon, she got a text from him saying he’d gotten to WAMA safely. At one, he said he was staying to help Gina and the other volunteers load boxes into the van. The snowplow had been through their area, and the volunteers were ready to drive the presents to residents. And at three thirty, he said Gina was insisting on feeding him, so he’d be a little while longer getting back.

  Sophie had also gotten a concurrent text from Gina saying, I LOVE HIM!!!! WHERE DID YOU FIND HIM??? To which Sophie had replied, He sort of found me, actually??