Page 28 of Santa Baby

Her lips were warm, full, and soft as they met mine in a gentle kiss. A first kiss. A real one. This wasn’t part of the scheme and the truth hit me like a ton of bricks. I pulled away with an apology on the tip of my tongue, but her eyes opened, heavy and slightly dazed as she looked up at me.

“Mason—”

“Fia, I’m sorry.”

She roughly pulled me in again, clasping my face between her freezing cold hands and kissing me like I’d never been kissed before. I wasn’t sure I believed in sparks flying. I wasn’t sure if I believed in soul mates, or love at first sight, but whatever I felt toward Fia made all of those things seem possible. Whatever this was, it was fireworks. It was hot and all consuming.

I pulled her closer, tilting my head to the side as she let out a breathy sigh around my lips. I slid my tongue along her lower lip and she opened her mouth for me, inviting me in, and I lost myself in her.

I forgot I needed to breathe. I forgot we were in public, in Central Park. I forgot that this was fake, a ruse, a show to get into my family’s good graces again, and that in a matter of weeks this would be over.

All I felt was her.

She broke from the kiss and looked into my eyes, slightly shocked. “Was that real?”

“Yeah.” My voice sounded like someone took a rake over my vocal chords. I caressed her face, my heart hammering in my chest. “I don’t think we should have done that.”

“I know,” she whispered, sliding her hand over mine to keep it there as she leaned into my touch and closed her eyes for a moment.

Reality crashed into me hard enough to take my breath away. Fia wasn’t my long-time girlfriend. We didn’t have an apartment together overlooking Central Park. I wouldn’t be taking her home to the rooms we shared. I shouldn’t be thinking about what it would actually be like getting down on one knee in the snow, watching her face brighten in the glow of Christmas lights as I opened a ring box and asked her to be with me for the rest of our lives, not just until New Year’s Day.

Fia wasn’t mine.

She was Colin’s little sister. This was supposed to be fake, but that kiss sure wasn’t.

“You’re freezing. I need to take you home now,” I bit out, rasping the words as conflicting feelings swirled through my body.

She nodded but her gaze dipped to my lips again. It was almost my undoing. I would have thrown caution to the wind and kissed her again. I would have picked her up and carried her back to her apartment, laying her down on her bed and claiming her as my own had she kissed me a second time.

In the end, I did walk her home. She kept her hand tucked in the crook of my arm as we wove through the icy, brightly lit streets of the Upper East Side until we came to the older building with a bodega beneath it. In the soft flash of the bodega’s open sign, she turned to me, her hand on the door of the building’s residents’ entrance.

“Do you want a cup of coffee?”

It was almost midnight, but who was I kidding? I wasn’t going to be sleeping tonight anyway. “Yeah, I do.”

She opened the door and motioned for me to follow her inside.

13

FIA

The first thing Mason said when he walked into my apartment was a strangled, “Whoa.”

My cheeks went a little pink as I shrugged out of my jacket, watching him walk into the snug studio. His eyes were glued like a moth to the Christmas lights strung across the ceiling as his gaze swept the room. He stepped toward the Christmas tree in the corner by the window, a multicolored plastic contraption I’d pulled out of the trash two years ago and fixed up.

“One day I’ll have a real tree,” I said, hanging my coat over one of the chairs at my two-seater dining-room table. “But not this year. It’s a lot of work getting a tree up all of those stairs.”

He looked back up at the ceiling, then along the walls, where my renter friendly, funky floral wallpaper was set aglow with more lights. “Be sure to put your electric bill on my credit card, okay?”

I pursed my lips around a smile as he moved toward the tree to closely examine the hodge-podge of ornaments I’d picked up at the Christmas markets and thrift stores over the years. “I know it’s a lot⁠—”

“I like it. It’s very you.”

Very me. How long had we known each other now? Three, four weeks? Had he really been paying attention to my little quirks close enough to not be surprised by the little glass ornaments in the shape of bulldogs wearing a variety of Christmas sweaters?

I needed something to do with my hands. I turned to the kitchen and quickly lit my favorite mulled-spice candle and started the coffee pot, occasionally glancing at Mason as he explored my place.

I heard a creak and turned to find him closely inspecting the rickety, narrow stairs leading up to my loft. “These are not up to code,” he murmured, running his fingers over the loose railing. “You don’t really sleep up there, do you?”