Page 20 of Snowed

THE CHRISTMAS CARD

When my ex got engaged pretty quickly after we broke up, I did something stupid… I made up a new boyfriend. How would anyone ever know? They wouldn’t. Unless my fake boyfriend showed up at my ex’s annual Christmas party…

CHAPTER 1

Joy

“When are you going to put yourself out of your misery and stop coming to this stupid party?” My best friend Isla grabbed a second champagne flute from the tray of a passing waiter and chugged half of it back. “Mmm… At least your ex buys the good stuff.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted Davis. His fiancée, Hailey, was snuggled close. Seeing them together caused a pang of…something in my chest, though I wasn’t sure what that something was anymore. I was long over my ex, for the most part. As I should be, considering it had been almost two years since we split up. But before that, I’d been the co-host of this annual Christmas party. Maybe what I felt was just jealousy—not so much about losing the man, but that Hailey didn’t have to kiss any more frogs to find her prince. Dating in New York was the absolute pits.

“We all work together, and I don’t want everyone at the office to think I’m still pining over Davis,” I explained.

Isla rolled her eyes. “Who gives a shit what people think?”

I smiled and bumped shoulders with my friend. “Certainly not you.”

Isla and I were complete opposites in that regard. I cared too much what others thought, and she cared too little. We both sipped champagne while looking over at Davis and his fiancée.

“He definitely has a type,” she murmured.

More than one person had mentioned that Hailey looked like me, though I didn’t see it—other than we both had chestnut hair and fair skin. Davis must’ve felt eyes on him, because he suddenly lifted his head from his conversation and looked over. He smiled and tilted his champagne flute in our direction.

I offered a genuine smile back. I didn’t have any hard feelings toward him. Our breakup had been mostly my fault. Davis and I had been a couple for almost three years, and he’d started pushing me to move in with him and get engaged. At the time, I hadn’t been sure I was ready. I now realized I had commitment issues, ones that had more to do with my dad cheating on my mom regularly and my high school boyfriend dying in a car accident than anything Davis had or hadn’t done. I’d always been nervous about getting too attached to people. So when Davis pushed, I pushed back—telling him I needed time to make sure he was the one before taking that next big step. Three months later, I was ready. But the night I’d planned to tell Davis, he’d told me he’d met someone—Hailey, his now-fiancée. She had just started working at the company we both worked for.

“Come on, let’s go over and say hello.” Isla linked arms with me and started us walking. “Then we can get the hell out of here and have some real fun at Evie’s Christmas party.”

“Okay. But we have to stay and mingle for at least a half hour so no one from work asks me why I disappeared so fast.”

Isla shook her head. “There you go again, caring about stupid shit.”

We’d made it halfway across the room when two men walked in and snagged my attention. One was a friend of Davis’s whom I vaguely recognized, but the taller guy was drop-dead gorgeous. Why did he look so familiar? I kept walking as I tried to place the face. When I did, I stopped in my tracks.

“Oh my God. Oh my God! Isla, we need to get out of here right now!”

“Why? What’s the matter?”

“He’s here! My fake boyfriend. He’s here!”

“What in God’s name are you talking about?”

“Do you remember the fake boyfriend I made up and told everyone at work about after Davis and I broke up? You know, because everyone kept coming up to me with sympathetic faces and asking if I was okay after Davis and Hailey got together?”

“Yeah, I remember. That’s another time you cared too much about what other people think. You gave the fake boyfriend a name, too, right?”

“Nolan.”

“Right. Nolan. But what do you mean he’s here? I thought you made him up.”

My heart pounded. “I used some random hot guy I came across online.”

“So? What’s the big deal?”

I closed my eyes. “This is so damn embarrassing. That’s why I never told you. But I did more than just tell my coworkers I was dating someone. Last December, I got a holiday card in the mail from Davis. It was also an engagement announcement. It had a picture of the happy couple standing under the mistletoe kissing, with Hailey’s hand held out to the camera, flaunting the giant rock on her finger—a rock that should’ve been mine!” I looked over at Isla, and she gave me the get-on-with-it eyes. “That night, I had a little too much to drink and decided to make my own holiday card. It was a joke. I found a photo of myself from my trip to Aruba and photoshopped in the hot guy I found online. But…” I chewed on my lip. “I wound up finishing the bottle of wine while I printed out the fake holiday card, and then…I walked to the mailbox at two in the morning and mailed it! I mailed it to Davis, Isla! The next day I went to the post office and tried to get them to give it back to me, but they wouldn’t.”

Isla’s eyes bulged. “And that guy is here? The guy you photoshopped in?”

I nodded. “I’m pretty sure it’s him.”