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He’s deliciously enormous, like a big sexy teddy bear, with a cat tattoo on his neck that gives him a bad boy edge my inner good girl can’t resist.
Truly. I can’t resist him. At all.
Which is why I ghosted him. I had to. I never would have had the internal fortitude to say “No, I can’t date you,” like I meant it if Bear and I were in the same room.
Even a phone call felt dangerous.
I can’t trust myself with this man. When I’m with him, I forget all my rules and my very good reasons for remaining single. As long as I’m a single career girl, I’ll never make the same mistake my mother made, the one that left her wondering “what if I’d chosen another path” for so long.
So long, there was no way her daughter could miss the fact that sometimes her mom didn’t seem happy to be a mom…
“Dipsy?” Bear’s green eyes meet mine, widening slightly in recognition before narrowing in a way that makes me feel like prey.
Very small, very itchy prey, with nowhere to run…
Chapter Two
Bear Hanson
A man whose Christmas wish just
came true…with a side of butt scratching.
* * *
There she is.
Dipsy.
Like I conjured her with my thoughts.
When the man at security said he’d seen a woman dressed as an elf running this way with a suitcase like mine, I never imagined it might be someone I knew, let alone the only woman I haven’t been able to get out of my head for the past three months.
This is fate. Destiny. It has to be.
What other explanation is there? I always fly out of Chicago, not St. Louis, but a meeting with a potential sponsor and two flight delays have me flying out a day late from an unfamiliar airport.
Fate clearly had plans for our paths to cross.
So why does she look so…less than thrilled to see me?
“I’m sorry,” she blurts out with a rush of breath.
“For what?” I ask, wishing I could go to her without having to wrestle with the crutches tucked into the scooter’s back storage area along with her suitcase. I just want to hold her, to gather her against me and promise we can get past whatever it is that made her ghost me.
But thanks to the idiot mobsters who kidnapped my cat over Thanksgiving and the broken kneecap I sustained getting away from them, simple things are no longer simple.
Which may be for the best right now.
Dipsy doesn’t look like she wants a hug.
She looks like she wants to make a run for it.
“I’m not mad,” I assure her, hoping that will ease her anxiety, but it only seems to make things worse.
She brings two fingers to rub between her brows. “Are you sure about that? My goofball stray cat knocked up your pure-bred Persian.”
I shrug. “Doesn’t bother me at all. I told you that. I even offered you pick of the litter. Didn’t you get my message?”
“I got it.” She bites her lip. “I just didn’t think you meant it.”
“I don’t say things I don’t mean.”
She mutters something I can’t quite make out, but before I can ask her to repeat herself, she pushes on, “And Clyde is so small. I worried she might not make it through the delivery without complications. Then I heard she’d been catnapped right around the time she was supposed to give birth…” She shakes her head, sending her red hair swishing around her shoulders, making my fingers itch to thread through the silky soft strands. “I was positive you must hate me and Hambone.”
My forehead furrows. “Why?”
“For putting Clyde in even greater danger than she would have been if she were just missing and not in the middle of bringing new life into the world.”
“I don’t hate anyone,” I assure her. “And Clyde and the kittens are all home safe with the cat sitter and doing great.” I smile. “There are five of them. Three that look like Clyde, one that’s all gray, and one ginger like Hambone, but fluffier.”
Her expression softens. “Aw. I bet he’s adorable.”
“She,” I correct, my smile widening. “I made sure to ask the vet before they were named this time. Didn’t want to confuse people all over again.”
“I think it’s cool that you have a girl cat named Clyde. It gives her layers.” Dipsy clears her throat. “So…a suitcase full of Reindeer jerky?”
“Gifts. For friends. Orphans’ Christmas gets bigger every year. We’re meeting up in Los Angeles.” I glance toward the snow streaking past the windows and add, “Or, we were. We’ll have to see how quickly the storm clears.”
Her lips turn down. “That’s sad. I mean, it’s great that you have each other, but also sad. My parents drive me crazy, but I can’t imagine the holidays without them.”
“Yeah, but a lot of my friends don’t know what they’re missing,” I murmur, thinking about that night at the cat convention, when Dipsy crawled into my lap and kissed me until the room spun, making me very aware of what I’d been missing. “I’m just grateful that I had a lot of good times with my family before Mom and Dad passed and my brothers moved so far away.”
