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He paused and pressed his lips together like he had never considered it. “I wouldn’t like it.” Dawning washed over his face. “I’ll ask her to get a hotel.”
I almost said I didn’t want to cause any problems because I felt guilty for getting my way and causing Jonah angst, but then I checked the guilt thermometer and it said my feelings were one hundred degrees of valid. “Thank you,” I said instead, even though it was difficult for me.
“Thank you for being honest with me.” He leaned over the table and motioned with his finger that I should do the same. “I think you missed some chocolate on your lips. I better help you with that.”
I leaned in too, not quite meeting him. “Make sure you get it all.”
“I’ve got you covered.” He closed the gap and pressed his lips against mine for a few soul-stirring seconds. He still had the gift of making butterflies take flight in my stomach. He rested his hand on my cheek when his lips glided off mine. He peered into my eyes. “Will you be my girlfriend?”
Wow. It was getting real. We’d never had a title before. But he did just kick his ex-wife out for me. And was he ever charming. Dr. Morales’s voice rang in my head, telling me to be honest about my feelings. The truth was I did want to be Jonah’s girlfriend. Did it scare me? To death. But . . . “I guess it’s a start.”
His eyes widened. “I thought you were going to say no.”
“I didn’t say yes,” I teased.
“Please say yes.”
“Yes.”Chapter Twenty-Two“I can’t believe you’re Facebook official.” Grandma dipped her brush into the pink paint.
“I can’t believe you’re on Facebook.” I admired Grandma’s handiwork from across her kitchen table. She was helping me fulfill the secret Christmas wish I’d overheard Whitney tell Tabitha two weeks ago.
Whitney was determined not to believe in Santa Claus. She had done the research, googled a thousand articles that told her all that she needed to know. Santa Claus was a big fat fake that parents used as a tool to make their children behave during the holidays. But on the off chance the jolly man was real, she wished for a doll that looked like her and was dressed in a pink frilly dress complete with petticoats.
Surprise, surprise, she’d never had a doll before. When I’d asked Jonah why, he said Eliza felt that it bred unhealthy stereotypes. Whitney wasn’t even allowed to have a career girl Barbie. Well, that was about to change. Jonah and I had searched high and low the last couple of weeks for a doll meeting Whitney’s requirements. We came up emptyhanded, which was why Grandma and I were furiously working late into the night on the twenty-third of December.
Grandma filled in the doll’s rosy cheeks with the pink. “I have to keep up with the times, and apparently you. Kinsley helped me create an account after she told me Jonah had announced to the world you were in a relationship. Something you failed to mention.” She flashed me a wry grin.
I rolled my eyes before focusing back on sewing the tiny pearl buttons on the back of the doll’s dress I had sewn with Grandma’s help. “I wasn’t trying to keep anything from anybody. I figured it was obvious.”
Jonah, Whitney, and I were pretty much inseparable. Unless I was working on secret Christmas projects, working, or going to therapy, we were together. But Jonah had thrown me for a loop when, a couple days ago, he made us Facebook official. That was so nine years ago. I didn’t know people even did that anymore. But I didn’t begrudge him the opportunity to announce it to the world. After all, I had made the man wait over nine years to say we were a couple. It was quite the shock, though, when I started getting dozens of notifications from people I had forgotten I was even “friends” with, all congratulating me. I wasn’t a huge social media person unless I was posting on the studio’s page. I mean, my personal profile picture was of Goldie. Maybe now that I wasn’t wearing holey sweaters or baggy jeans every day, I should update that.
“I’m happy to see things are going so well for you,” Grandma commented. “How are you feeling about his parents and his ex-wife coming in tomorrow?”
Ugh. I had been dreading it since Jonah and I had talked a couple of weeks ago about my feelings regarding Eliza staying with him. When he’d dropped me off that night, he threw in that his parents had decided to come for Christmas too. The same parents who didn’t like me but loved their ex-daughter-in-law. They loved her so much, they’d decided to stay at the same hotel as her and not with Jonah. That seemed wrong somehow. I had asked Jonah how Eliza felt about getting a hotel and he said she understood. I asked if that meant she was okay with it, and all he would say was she understood.
