Page 71

“It usually isn’t. It’s usually worse.”

“Yes, the chili to prison pipeline is well documented.”

I got another laugh out of her before we got in our cars.

3

LAUREN

“YOU SAID YOU HAD a place to stay,” I said, looking at William as he got out of his black BMW. “This is Nicholas’s house.”

“This is my place to stay. He’s got a guest house in the back.” He took my duffel bag out of my hand and started walking. “Come on, it’s freezing.”

I slumped and followed him. I was too tired to argue.

He was right—I didn’t have it in me to drive an hour to a hotel. I’d opened and closed at Lykke and Loom today, then panic-driven three hours to Little Christmas thinking my friend was being drugged and forced into marriage. I’d eaten nothing but gingerbread and a handful of candy canes I’d left in my pocket from the gift-wrapping station at the boutique. I was hungry and crabby and full of more eggnog than I wanted to think about and William was correct—I wasn’t done trying to bring Noel home.

I didn’t like this situation, at all. I loved her, but she had lost her damn mind.

William opened the door without a key.

“You guys don’t lock the doors here?” I asked.

“Nah,” he said, holding it for me. “We just scatter marbles on the floor so intruders slip when they come in.”

I rolled my eyes. He was funny, in a dry sort of way.

He closed the door behind me and a golden retriever met us in the vestibule. I immediately brightened.

“Who’s this?” I asked, crouching to pet her.

“Daisy.”

He set my bag down, shrugged out of his jacket, and hung it on a hook. “I’m in the room on the left,” he said. “There’s one more on the other side. It has its own bathroom.”

I let go of the dog and took off my coat and boots and wandered around while he flicked on lights. The house was nice. Really nice. If the guest house looked like this, I couldn’t imagine what the big house looked like.

If Nicholas was this wealthy, maybe William sort of had a point about wanting the prenup. He was trying to protect his friend. But the thing is, he didn’t have to.

Noel didn’t have a mean or selfish bone in her body. Her last boyfriend cheated on her and instead of throwing his shit out onto the lawn and setting it on fire like I would have done, she washed it, folded it, and took it to his mom’s.

“You grew up here, then?” I asked, looking at an ornate Christmas tree someone had set up in the living room.

“I did,” he said from somewhere in the kitchen.

“So you come up a lot?”

“Not if I can help it.”

I lifted the toe of an empty red stocking over the fireplace and let it fall again. “Why?”

“Because half of the year it’s boring and the other half it’s hokey?” he said.

“Ha.” I came around to the kitchen.

“I don’t like Christmas,” he said, opening a cabinet.

“Why not? Did your dad break his neck coming down the chimney dressed as Santa?”