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He smiles and it makes my entire body tingle and my heart race. I take a bite out of my hot-chocolate-infused sugar cookie and wow—I’m in heaven.
“Is it working?” he asks, that smile growing by the second as he drinks me in with those warm eyes. They’re a shade darker than my hot chocolate, but their effect on me is on a different level.
“Whoareyou?” I ask.
Although I mean it rhetorically, he answers it anyway.
“I told you. I’m Nick. I built this cabin. Lived in it for the past month. And even though I intended to live in it alone a little while longer, I don’t mind sharing. ’Tis the season, after all.”
I narrow my eyes.
“Was that sarcasm?”
His smile falters for a moment but then he recovers. “Maybe,” he says, his allure dwindling by the second.
He might have the appearance of a god, but there’s one flaw I won’t abide by: Christmas hating. I might be jumping to conclusions, but my intuition is rarely wrong when it comes to Christmas.
“What are your feelings about Christmas?” I ask, cutting to the chase. Might as well get this over with because I’m not sure I’ll be able to share a cabin with someone who hates my favorite holiday.
Wait, am I considering sharing a cabin with someone I don’t know? Someone the size of a full-grown grizzly bear? Resembles one too?
Maybe…
“It’s complicated,” he says as his jaw tenses.
“How can it be complicated?”
But as soon as the words come out, I want to take them back. And when I see Nick’s smile falter, I feel awful. I’m being judgmental with someone I don’t know anything about. Someone who gifted me hot chocolate and sugar cookies to boot. He can’t be that bad, right?
I can’t turn him away. It’s the season to be merry, and I refuse to be a Grinch, even though he has a tendency to mock my favorite holiday.
“Sorry,” I say before he has a chance to respond. “You don’t have to answer that.”
There’s that smile again. “I don’t mind.”
Nick strokes his beard as he looks at me, heat flooding through me as a silence lingers between us. It’s as thick and solid as his muscles. And every second that passes feels like an eternity as my stomach twists into ropy knots.
It’s strange how anxious he makes me feel, but not in a bad way. It’s a different kind of nervous energy. Anticipation? I’m not sure.
“I guess the shiny veneer of Christmas has worn away for me over the years. Doesn’t feel like it used to. Hasn’t in many years.”
He runs a hand through his thick, wavy hair—the color of roasted chestnuts and much longer than I’m used to seeing on a man. But I’m beginning to realize that Nick’s not like most of the men. There’s something wild about him. Rough and rugged. The way he talks and moves is different.
It’s strange how fast I’m warming up to him.
“Give me a week, and I’ll have you belting Mariah Carey along with me.”
He laughs. A deep, rumbling laugh that makes my heart beat a little fast and my knees wobble. And when our eyes meet again, I have to brace myself on the doorframe. If looks could scorch, he better watch out where that gaze lands because it could set this cabin on fire.
“That’d be a Christmas miracle for sure,” he rasps. “But I’m more interested in the fact that you’ve come around to sharing this cabin.”
I swallow. “I guess I have.”
“I’ll be sure to stay away from your eggnog though. I don’t want to spend Christmas clutching a toilet.”
“You know about that?”
“As I said, I work with Juliet.”
