Page 33 of Mistletoe All the Way

I roll my eyes as I crunch across the hard-packed snow—remnants from a snowfall a few days ago. “I’ll get it.”

“Aww, that’d be so sweet. I never learned how to untie things.”

“But I bet you can kill me with a Krav Maga move where you impale me with a tree.”

She taps her pretty chin. “I appreciate your faith in me, but the pacifist in me is going to have to say no to that.”

“Guess I dodged that Christmas bullet,” I say, but before I untie the tree, a question nags at my brain.

“What am I supposed to do with this when I go back to Evergreen Falls? It’ll die. I doubt you like dead trees,” I point out. Since—ha—I’ve finally caught her on a technicality. I’ve so won this round.

But Eloise waves a mittened hand and says, “Don’t you worry about that. I already made arrangements with Sailor. She’ll take it and put it at the rescue clinic. Another tree will make it even cheerier for their holiday adoptions.”

Foiled. Again.

“Remind me to never underestimate you.”

“I don’t think you need that reminder,” she says with the kind of smile I bet she serves when she lays down triple word scores in Scrabble. The victorious kind.

I untie the tree, slide it off the roof, and toss it over my shoulder.

She whistles. “Oh, I really hope the Mr. Holiday competition has a tree-carrying event,” she says, following me as I haul the tree across my yard and up the steps to my cabin.

“Sounds like the only thing I’d actually want to do in the competition,” I say.

“I’d pay good money to watch a strapping man carry a tree—especially since I can do it myself,” she says.

And my brain latches on to that one word. “Strapping, eh?”

“Did your ears perk up there?” she asks as we reach the front door.

I should know better. I really should know better than to maybe, possibly flirt with somebody who hardly even likes me. Someone I’m teamed up with. Someone who’s—I cringe at the thought—my publicist. And yet, I say, “We already established that you wanted my number, sweetheart. The fact that you’re enjoying the show just confirms my suspicions.”

“Keep telling yourself that, Ho, Ho, Huckleberry,” she says as I set the tree down on the porch and open the door for her.

She’s relentless. But I can’t resist.

“I’ll regret asking, but why am I Ho, Ho, Huckleberry?”

“Because that’s what I’m going to do—transform you into my Christmas cowboy,” she says as she steps into my home.

I grab the tree and haul it inside, then lean it up against a wall in the corner. Rusty wanders over to sniff it as I say, “Do me a favor—don’t call me Ho, Ho, Huckleberry ever again.”

As she peels off her mittens, she smiles impishly. “We’ll see.”

“You do know I’m not a cowboy, right?”

She shakes her head, adamant. “You have horses. You carried hay. You live in a cabin alone.”

She peers at the row of hooks hanging by the door. My Stetson hangs on one of them. She taps the rim of it.

“You’re not just cosplaying one.”

“Have it your way, Eloise,” I say as Rusty trots over to my guest now that the tree inspection’s done.

She bends to say hi to the dog. “Where are the horses?” she asks, like a kid on her birthday. “Can we visit them?”

I point to the sliding glass doors that lead to the deck. “Max and Agatha are all the way at the edge of the property.”