Page 69 of The Best Christmas Choir Ever

“No! Why?”

He shrugged. “New management.”

“Those shakes were amazing. So thick you had to eat them with a spoon until they melted a little.”

He followed her into the kitchen, and they dished out burgers and chunky fries.

“They were amazing.” Julian popped a fry into his mouth. “But they have a new line of smoothies now. Sometimes things change for the better.”

Charlie coated her fries in malt vinegar and ketchup.

Julian eyeballed the concoction warily. “And sometimes they change for the worse. But I’ll have to take you for a smoothie sometime.”

Charlie’s heart skipped. Sometime. “I’d like that,” she said without knowing when sometime might be.

Julian grinned down at her. They ate standing in the kitchen, leaning up against the counter, dripping ketchup down their fingers.

“So, Doris kept the choir rehearsing for another hour after you left,” Julian said. “And Warren brought some of the other nurses by the music room to have a listen.”

“What’d they think?” Charlie asked.

“Standing ovation. Obviously. I really do think that adding ‘Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer’ into the mashup was the right call.”

A smile tugged at her mouth. The choir had had a long debate about that one.

“You might even call it inspired,” Julian continued.

Charlie rolled her eyes. “I wouldn’t go that far.”

Julian scoffed. “Don’t knock my epic contribution.”

“I do think there is something inherently funny about a choir of septuagenarians performing that song,” Charlie admitted.

“Right! Sometimes I’m brilliant.”

“Mm-hmm.” Charlie ate the last few bites of her burger. “This was really good. Thank you. And thank you for coming to check on me.”

“You’re really okay? I know you said you weren’t sure if you could do this choir thing but—”

“It was just such a shock earlier,” she said.

“Right.” He released a long breath like he’d been holding it since that moment. “As long as you’re not making any rash decisions.”

Rash decisions? No. Though there were decisions to make. Later, she told herself. When he wasn’t bringing her dinner and looking at her with that dimpled smile. When the thought of his embrace wasn’t so intoxicating. “I don’t think it dawned on me how much the residents were starting to mean to me,” she said. “So the news about Frank hit harder than I expected.”

“You light up when you look at them,” Julian said. “That’s not a bad thing.”

“You haven’t heard anything else about Frank?” Charlie asked, trying not to dwell on his words.

“No updates yet. But sometimes no news is good news.”

“Sometimes it is,” she said, trying not to think about Tom. Because sometimes no news just meant the bad news had yet to break.

Julian cleaned up his plate and cleared his throat. “I should get going.”

“You don’t have to go,” she said, catching his hand. With Julian here, she could ignore her inbox for a little while longer. She didn’t need to read any contracts or make decisions about staying or going. Not right now. She could simply stand here while he smiled at her in a way that made her heart beat out of her chest. “You could stay,” she offered, stroking her hand around the back of his neck.

“I could,” he whispered.