Page 40 of Christmas By The Book

“I told you, you didn’t need to get me a gift.”

“No, but I want to,” I replied. “All the diner food you can eat. On me.”

“Oh, that’s a dangerous proposition,” she warned me. “I can put away a lot of food, you know.”

“Then it’ll be the best Christmas gift I could have gotten you,” I tossed back at her.

She laughed. “You have no idea what you’re in for,” she warned me. “You’re going to have to do a whole new round of photographs and signings just to be able to afford it.”

“I can handle that,” I promised her, and the two of us headed down to the diner. I was surprised to see it was open on Christmas day, but it seemed like we weren’t the only ones who’d had the idea to come down here and make this our Christmas dinner spot. A few townsfolk were scattered around the booths, eating waffles and drinking coffee, while cheesy carols played through the slightly-tinny radio. It was perfect.

But, honestly, everything seemed perfect when I was with her. There was something about sharing her company like this that imbued everything with a sense of magic I wasn’t sure I had ever felt before. I’d had plenty of Christmases over the course of my life, obviously, but none of them had ever felt like this. The snow, the carols, the small town, it felt like I had stepped straight into a storybook.

But most of all, what made me feel that way was her. It was her presence, her company, knowing that she wouldn’t have rather been anywhere other than with me. I had spent so long running across the country, exploring new places, finding new starts wherever I could dig them up, but this was the first time I had truly felt as though it was worth slowing down and putting down some roots for a change.

“That was so good.” She sighed, as she leaned back from the table, a smile on her face.

“Not the most conventional Christmas dinner,” I remarked. “But it’s something.”

“Oh, I don’t think I could do an old-fashioned Christmas dinner,” she replied, shaking her head. “I’m a terrible cook.”

“So am I,” I admitted. “But maybe I could learn for next year. Cook us a real Christmas dinner.”

She beamed at me.

“And if it goes wrong, at least we know we have the diner to fall back on,” I added.

She laughed. “Yeah, exactly,” she agreed. “I guess we could give it a try.”

We walked home after lunch, hand-in-hand, admiring the Christmas lights that had been strung up around the town’s main street; they were drooping under the weight of all the snow, but they were just about holding up. Even though it was Christmas, and I had expected most people to be at home with their families, plenty of people were out in the street, enjoying the snow—making angels, throwing snowballs, kids passing by with sleds tucked under their arms.

We looped back around to her place, where Mia was waiting for us. The tree sparkled in the window as we approached, and she smiled as she eyed it.

“I still don’t know how I feel about cleaning it up,” she told me, as we stepped inside, dusting some of the light snowfall from our shoulders. “But I’ve got to admit, it looks really pretty.”

“Agreed,” I replied. “And I told you, I’ll be here when you need help picking up the pine needles. You’ve got my word on that.”

She turned to me, looping her arms around my shoulders and pulling in close to me. My hands rested on her hips, right where they belonged. Touching her was becoming more and more comfortable to me, as though this was what both of us had been waiting for, both of us, holding back on what we knew we needed, for fear of messing it up. But now we had come clean about the way we felt, about what we wanted, there was no reason for us to hide it any longer. No, we could finally be honest, and the weight off my shoulders as I looked into her eyes was everything to me.

“This has been the most amazing Christmas, Seth,” she murmured to me. “Thank you.”

“Same time next year?” I suggested, as I leaned down to plant a kiss against her smiling lips.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Jorja

“OH, MY GOODNESS, IT’S so good having someone around to do the heavy lifting!” Haley exclaimed with a wink as she emerged from the back with a coffee for both of us. She handed me the mug, and I took a long sip as I watched Seth unloading boxes from the back of the truck.

“Agreed,” I replied. And it didn’t hurt at all that our newest employee was such good eye candy on top of everything else.

It had been two weeks since that storm on Christmas eve, and Seth and I had been virtually inseparable ever since. I couldn’t get enough of his company, couldn’t get enough of how I felt when we were together. It was so new, so precious, but already felt so strong at the same time, like the two of us had just been waiting to find each other like this, and now we had, nothing would get in our way.

He had handed in his notice at the hardware store so he could start helping out with the bookshop full-time. It had been his suggestion, as I would never have pushed him to make a choice as big as that, and I didn’t want anything to get in the way of his new life here. But he insisted, said that he had always dreamed of working around books, not just being on the covers of them, and there was no way I was going to deny him the chance.

We had been doing some redecorating with the money that had come in from his hard work, and the place was looking as good as new—maybe even better. The windows had fresh frames on them, the paint had been touched up, the finish on the antique bookshelves re-painted; when Haley arrived back from her trip to see her family, her jaw dropped as she laid eyes on the place for the first time.

And it seemed like Seth’s little boost to my customer-base had carried over into the new year. Not that we were strapped for cash, after that amazing boom right before Christmas, but more people were coming in than ever before. Plenty of them to pick up the sequels and series of books that Seth was on the covers of. I wasn’t sure if they were actually reading them, or just collecting them for the novelty of having books featuring a model they actually knew, but it didn’t matter. As long as that money kept rolling in, I was just fine with that.