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“I don’t have time to do much outside of work,” she says and I believe her. Being a cop is tough. It’s a lifestyle choice. “Aside from temping for you, I work part-time at a dental office as a receptionist.”
I watch her in the rearview mirror as she speaks, taking a mental note of her tells while she lies. She can't tell me the truth, but the more I know about how she lies, the more information I can get from her without her even knowing.
“What dentist? Is it around here? Mine just closed down and I need to find a new one,” I say, lying right back to her.
I watch her eyes dart back and forth as she scrambles to come up with an answer. “Dr. Denish. They’re actually about half an hour away. They’re a small practice, mostly preventative care. What about you?”
I try to hide the half smile that forms on my face as she quickly tries to turn the attention from her to me. It's clear that she hasn't been on the force very long. She isn’t a good enough liar, and some of the tactics she's using are common interview tactics. If I had to guess, she just graduated from the police academy and this undercover job is her big break. As long as she's helping me without even knowing, I will help her get that. We both want the same thing.
“I work a lot,” I tell her, which isn’t a lie. I’m sure she knows almost everything about me. Where I like to eat, where I take my clothes for dry cleaning, how many hours a day I work—you name it. “When I'm not working, I like to go out on my boat and spend some time on the lake.”
“That sounds lovely,” she says with a smile. There's a moment of silence between us while I focus on driving and she tries to think of things she can say without blowing her cover. “Why did you really promote me yesterday?” she eventually asks.
“What? You don’t think you’re qualified?” I reply, looking at her with a smile. She bites her lower lip as she meets my eyes before I turn to the road again.
“I was barely qualified to work for Paulie.” She laughs.
“You make it seem like I’m gonna have you engineering a rocket or something,” I say, making her laugh. It sounds sweet and melodic—all I want to hear. “To tell you the truth, I’m probably going to have you help me find Christmas decorations and put them up today. You’re probably overqualified for that.”
“Really?” She raises her brows at me. I turn to her and nod my head. It's the truth. I just needed to get her out of the office.
“My neighborhood has a light show every year and my lights are always lackluster.” I shrug my shoulders. “I never have the time to put on the grand displays the other people in my neighborhood do. That's going to change this year.”
We arrive at my house, and her eyes widen when she sees it. I lead her through the front door and give her a quick tour of everything. She comments on the decorations and marvels at how luxurious all of it is. Truth be told, every time we walk through a room, all I can think about is tearing her clothes off and tossing them on the ground. I avoid showing her my bedroom for that very reason.
I lead her into the living room where she takes a seat and waits while I retrieve the ancient boxes of holiday decorations I have in the basement. I bring them back down to her and both of us sit on the floor and start going through them.
“These are all so old,” she says, delicately removing ornaments from the newspaper protecting them in the box.
“A lot of these have been in my family for generations,” I tell her, picking up an old glass snowflake covered in silver frost. “Growing up, every year, my mom would buy one new ornament, but the tree would be decorated with all the old ones. It was like a museum of past Christmases.”
“We never did anything like that. I never really had any Christmas traditions growing up.” She looks down at the ornaments with a smile. “My father died before I was born and my mom had to work hard to provide for me. She refused to get any kind of assistance from the government, so she worked two jobs and hardly had time to spend with me. So Christmas was never a big deal.”
“That must have been hard growing up.”
“It was, but then, I got older and decided that I wanted Christmas.” She laughs, turning to me with a smile. “Every year, I decorate every corner of my apartment. If there’s a surface not covered in twinkling lights or tinsel, then I dropped the ball. When I have my own kids, I’m going to make the biggest fuss over the holidays too. Give them everything I didn’t have growing up.”
I smile at her, watching her eyes as she talks about something that makes her happy. The glint in her eyes fills my heart with warmth, and all I want to do is reach over and kiss her.
“What’s this?” she says, reaching into a box and pulling out an old plastic bundle of mistletoe tied together with a red bow.
I laugh and gently take it from her. She stares at me with a blank face for a moment. Without saying what it is, I hang it over our heads and she finally gets it. She nervously laughs, her skin flushing all the way to the tips of her ears. She bites her lower lip as if she's anticipating me to make a move.
I lean forward, grabbing her chin with my fingers and turning her face toward me. She smiles as I press my lips against hers.
8
DANIELLA
Iknow what a mistletoe looks like. I've seen all the Hallmark movies where there's the compulsory mistletoe kiss.
I only showed it to him because I wanted this. Getting close to Dominic is my job. It's what I'm there to do. Even though that's the case, I want to kiss him. I've never wanted to kiss anybody the way I want him.
At first, I think it's just going to be a peck. A quick kiss under the mistletoe, just because it's there and obligatory that we do it. But as soon as our lips touch, it's as if two magnets have connected.
The longing he’s felt for me is apparent in the way he holds my face. He pulls it toward him, gripping me tightly as if he’s afraid I’ll float away from him. I part my mouth to let his tongue in, and the taste of him makes me tingle. Something wet and warm rushes from between my legs.
Dominic pulls away from me, pressing his forehead against mine while he looks down at my chest. I moan as we part, wishing his lips were on mine again. I’m breathing heavily. My chest is rising and falling rapidly, and he’s transfixed on it.
