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“No, really, I can tell that you’ve got a knack for it,” I insist.
“Yeah? You a designer or something?” she drawls, and I let out a self-conscious laugh.
“Or something, I guess. I actually came to Boston tobecomea designer. I make clothes for plus-sized women, or I will someday. For now, I’m looking out for that right window, or door… you know how it is.”
As I explain, my hands unconsciously skim my generous hips under the table. When I smile up at Maggie, she has this faraway look in her eyes. I’m boring her.
Feeling like an idiot for babbling, I decide to move on with the matter at hand. “I’ll just have the mac ‘n’ cheese, please,” I opt, spying an older woman two tables down staring into a murky bowl of soup with a frown on her face.Is that how sour I look too?
“Mac ‘n’ cheese, it is.” Maggie flicks her unwritten-in notepad closed and turns to leave.
“Hot cocoa, too, if you have it. Extra marshmallows,” I call after her, and she signals she heard me with a hand above her head as she walks off toward the kitchen.
I close my eyes, thinking of my home in Oakwood falls. The crisp mountain air, and the quiet of the small-town lifestyle. Right now, Mom’s roast chicken and potatoes—smothered in gravy—would be sitting uncomfortably in my stomach since I would have eaten way too much of it. But still, I’d say yes when Dad offered me a cup of hot cocoa that he makes the old-fashioned way on the stove. Heck, I’d even take gran’s Jell-O surprise about now. I’m so homesick that I’d choke down that terrible lime Jell-O and pineapple concoction—the surprise is a handful of pecan nuts that gran stuffs in the middle—and swear it was the best thing I’ve ever tasted. Why? Because it would feel like home.Dear Santa, please give me a sign that Christmas isn’t entirely ruined.
No sooner than the thought enters my mind, the brush of an arm past mine startles my eyes back open. “Mac ‘n’ cheese,” Maggie says as she slides a bowl of unappetizing goop in front of me. “I’ll be back with your coffee in a minute.”
“Oh, uh…thanks?” I pick up my spoon and poke at the glutinous mass before registering what she just said. “It was a hot cocoa,” I call out before she gets too far, feeling sure I’m getting coffee whether I like it or not. “Guess that’s the answer to my Santa wish then…”
Pushing my bowl to the side, I pull out my cell and open the Kindle app, hoping something Holiday-themed will distract me from the surrounding dreariness. When the bell above the door to the diner chimes, I don’t even bother to look, preferring to keep my eyes focused on the story about a girl who needs a fake boyfriend for a holiday cruise. I’m just getting to the part where she meets her would-be boyfriend for coffee when a deep, masculine voice startles me.
“Not quite the Christmas feast you were expecting, is it?”
Blinking, I hit the power button on my cell and look up. And up. And up. I have to crane my neck because the sexy voice belongs to a very tall, dark-haired man who, mind you, is smoking hot and looking directly at me, an intimate smile on his handsome, bearded face.
“Me?” I can’t help but look around just to make sure there isn’t another girl, cuter girl, sitting beside me.This guy can’t possibly be approaching me?
His blue eyes crinkle at the sides. “Yeah. You.”
“Um… As good as can be expected, I guess.” I try to laugh off the disgusting food and his unusual interest, but it comes out as a weird guffaw.
“I’ve lived in this area for years, and I think this is the first time I’ve ever come inside this place,” he says, shrugging out of his leather jacket before he gestures to the empty seat across from me. “May I?”
“Knock yourself out,” I say, my stomach igniting with butterflies as I watch the muscles in his broad chest flex with his movement as he drops his jacket then slides into the booth to face me.
I’m grinning like an idiot.
This kind of thing doesn’t happen to me very often. Actually, menneverapproach me.Except for a few weeks back when I was Christmas shopping, a cute young guy chased me out of the store, calling my name. I thought he must have been desperate to ask me out, but then it turned out he only wanted me because I forgot my credit card at the register.Whoops!So embarrassing.
The sexy stranger tilts his head and studies me as I fidget with nerves. “Expecting company?”
I bite my lip, my heart thump-thumping with anticipation. “No, I’m allalone.” I smile in a way I imagine being very coy before it suddenly falters when I realize how pathetic that just sounded. Not to mention the fact he could be a serial killer, and I’m playing right into his trap.Yikes!
“Alone, huh? Is it the storm or a choice that’s keeping you solitary this Christmas eve?”
“The storm. My flight back home was canceled. What about you?”
“My date ditched me. Where were you flying home to?”
“Oakwood Falls. Wait, your date ditched you?” I ask incredulously. I find it hard to believe that someone would ditchthisman. He’s sex on legs and so easy to talk to, I’d probably give him my Wi-Fi password if he asked me for it.
“She did.” I watch in fascination as his mouth widens in a purely masculine grin. My eyes stay glued to his lips before I belatedly realize he canseeme staring at him. How embarrassing!
Be cool, Sophia.
“That’s a shame. How long have you been, uh, together?”
He chuckles, and I wonder why that question is so funny. “All my life?” My eyes go wide before he elaborates. “My sister. She’s in town and we’d made plans, but she ditched me to meet up with an old friend instead.”
