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Mateo laughed, and they got back to casual conversation that luckily didn’t stray toward such stressful topics as Lucy Ansari.

It was a good night, but even after Grayson had gone home, he couldn’t stop recollecting the way his heart had pounded at the mention of her name.

Almost like he was a schoolboy with a crush—which felt more dangerous than being at war with her.

Luckily, the truce was holding, and they made it through most of December without any catastrophes—except for the number of times he thought about kissing her, which was a truly disastrous count. He looked at the photo of them as his phone background numerous times a day, and each time his heart felt warm.

He wanted desperately to be Lucy’s friend, and the truce gave him that opportunity. It turned out he didn’t mind that she was basically the devil incarnate so long as she was nice to him on occasion, which was pretty pitiful levels of yearning, but he didn’t give a fuck because every time she directed her smile at him, he swore he gained another year on his life.

There was a high chance he was being an absolute idiot about it, of course. In his twenties, Grayson had readily given his heart to girls who didn’t want it or simply did not want him. It happened about half a dozen times before he was twenty-five, at which point he stopped trying relationships and just had casual hookups, nothing more.

But now he was feeling that old excitement again, the feeling of—lord help him—a crush.

On Christmas Eve, Grayson arrived at the store with Charles before Lucy had come in, and he watched the door, waiting for the sight of her car pulling in. As soon as he saw her, he rushed to make her toast the way she liked, with an obscene amount of butter, and a cup of tea to go along with it, both perfectly prepared and ready right as she walked in.

“Good morning,” he said, setting her breakfast out on the counter. She lit up. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail, so he could see every feature of her face clearly: Her cheeks were flushed pink from the cold, her mouth coated with red lipstick.

“Good morning!” Her hands were full, with a flurry of things floating around her, but with a twirl of her fingers, something drifted out toward him: a warm cranberry scone. It smelled and looked divine. Being nice to each other had its perks.

It also helped with managing the store during the holiday rush. Luckily, it was almost over now; today was the last big day before the store closed tomorrow for Christmas.

As Grayson ate his scone and made himself a cup of tea, he went to the office and checked the online orders on the new computer, printing them out so Lucy could prep and package them. In the past month, he’d hired someone to make them a website and set up a system so people could place online orders and Crawley Books could ship them out. Thus far, it was working splendidly.

Lucy and Charles had been skeptical at first, which was rich coming from Charles, who used to work for a hedge fund in Manhattan. It was as if after retiring from there, he did a complete one-eighty with how completely unreliant on technology the store was.

Thankfully, Grayson convinced him, and it was working out well. This way they were able to sell not only to the local population, but to anyone. They received extra revenue from their online orders, and even Lucy looked impressed, which he would be lying if he said he wasn’t pleased by.

Lucy was in charge of uploading to social media and, for some reason, insisted on using him in videos—but he liked the ones with her better. If he were some random bloke on the internet and he saw a video of a little bookstore with her as the cute manager, he’d place an order every day just to get her attention.

Along with the website, Grayson had also digitized the accounting, which took forever, but he’d finally completely cleared out the office. Things were already running more smoothly.

Being in a truce was obviously quite good for them all, especially Charles, who was in great spirits, which aided his recovery. He still used his cane but was less reliant on it, his movements stronger than they had been a month ago.

Grayson was finally, finally finding his footing. He wanted things to be as good as they had been when his parents were alive, which of course, they couldn’t be, but if he got to a good place with Charles, then they might just be close.

He liked Long Island and this small town and the bookstore. Even though he had spent most of his life in Ireland, it had never really felt like home. Nothing had felt like home since he was exiled from this place—but now that he’d returned, it was so easy to sink back into it all, this weather, this taste, these sights.

The charm was especially undeniable today, on Christmas Eve, with the sky a clean parchment white, storefronts strung up with lights and wreaths and big red bows. None of the employees at Crawley Books celebrated the holiday, but the jolly cheer was still a wonderful sight to see, especially when coupled with the hot chocolate Lucy had been making for the past ten days.

He was addicted to it and had asked her for the recipe on more than a dozen occasions.

“You must tell me!” he begged, but Lucy only gave him a catlike smile.

“I will not!” she said, giggling to herself. “Only I have control of the goods.”

“Like a drug dealer.”

“Precisely!”

“So I am to be entirely dependent on you?”

“Yes. Remember my importance!”

Grayson left the office and went to look for Lucy now, hoping for a cup of hot chocolate, but she was nowhere to be found in the store. She had just been setting up the sweets in the display shelves of the front counter—sticky toffee puddings, cranberry cakes, snowman cookies, and gingerbread houses—but he couldn’t find her anywhere.

He looked all over the store, which was decorated to an obscene degree. There was a massive Christmas tree with wrapped gifts, a plethora of string lights flashing red and green, huge plastic candy canes, little stuffed elves on bookshelves, hanging mistletoe, and snow globes across the fireplace mantel, from which hung stockings with each of their names on them, as well as the names of Charles’s friends from his game-night group.

“Lucy!” Grayson called. “Luce?”