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Just as Bridget had thought. A kiss under fake mistletoe couldn’t possibly be real. But maybe it would look real when the article was printed. Arms folded over her chest, she watched as Gil fussed on the sidelines, and the stylist made some last-minute adjustments to the fit of Mara’s sweater. The painstaking rigmarole began again.
At last Harry said he had a few shots he didn’t hate, and Jonas moved out of Mara’s clutches, looking relieved.
“That wasn’t as much fun as I thought it would be,” he murmured out of the side of his mouth to Bridget.
Serves you right, she wanted to say.
“Can I take this off?” he asked Gil.
“Of course,” the art director said indulgently. “But stick around. We could use you in the background.”
Jonas looked a little chagrined.
The assistants began heaping up colorfully wrapped presents under Gil’s direction. Bridget figured out that Mara was supposed to open one or two, or at least tug on a ribbon like she was going to, because there was nothing at all inside the boxes.
Gil clapped a hand to his forehead. “Oh no. We forgot the tree!”
The assistants looked at each other. Bridget doubted that any of them knew what to do next.
“We need a symmetrical pine about six feet tall—I think I saw one on the village green.” Gil’s voice was agitated and there was a gleam in his eye. “No one will miss it if we—”
Bridget stepped forward to intervene. “That tree belongs to the town. The Girl Scouts planted it. Besides, you can’t just go around cutting trees when and where you feel like it.”
The art director directed a scornful look at her. “Do you have a better solution?”
“Yes,” Bridget said quickly. “Make our own. I could cut one out of extra-long green paper—I have some—and stick a big yellow star on the top. It’ll look like a kid did it. Bold but charming.”
Gil pondered that for a moment. “I like it,” he said at last.
Bridget half-expected him to snap his fingers and yell “Cut!” at her. But he didn’t.
“I’ll get the paper.” She went over to her work area for scissors and found the extra-long paper she’d been saving for no particular reason, letting it unroll on her worktable and weighting the corners with smooth stones that Molly had gathered from the creek last summer. Bridget quickly sketched the outline of a simple Christmas tree, and began to cut it out, trying not to think about what she was doing. She really did want it to look like a kid had cut it out.
Creativity was all about just letting things happen, she thought. Her scissors moved as swiftly as her pencil had, until a cut-out section curled up again and got in her way. Jonas’s big, strong hand smoothed out the curl and he left it there, resting lightly on the paper. Bridget glanced up, right into his eyes.
There it was … that warmth that melted her. With just one look he could take her back to a time when she had been a lot more innocent—a time when she only wanted to be in his arms, forever. It was odd how remembering it didn’t hurt. Bridget’s jealousy of Mara, her irritation with the ridiculous business of modeling and at the annoying invasion of her shop, vanished at that moment.
“Wait a minute,” Gil said, coming over to the worktable and breaking the spell. “This could be a great shot. Mara and Jonas really didn’t click, but these two do. Do you see what I’m saying, Harry?”
The photographer came over and framed Jonas and Bridget in his viewfinder, studying them intently. “Yeah. I do.”
“I’m thinking … a young couple, first Christmas, having fun. … What are you thinking?”
“Same thing,” Harry said. “Get a sweater on her, somebody. We have to finish today so we can get out to the Pomfret farm tomorrow.”
Gil snapped his fingers for the stylist, who selected a lightweight knit that matched Bridget’s eyes. She raised her arms to allow it to be slipped on her, just catching Jonas’s appreciative downward look at her breasts. The stylist chose a cream-colored cable knit for him.
In less than two minutes, Bridget was powdered, blushed, lipglossed, and mascara’ed, and her hair was fluffed.
“Look at you,” Gil said. “An all-American girl if ever there was one. With a couple of adorable teeny-tiny freckles.” Bridget hoped that description would make Mara mad. Of course, she lacked Mara’s glamorous cheekbones, but she had two perfect freckles she hadn’t even known she possessed.
Gil pretended he had a pair of scissors in his hand. “Snip, snip. Go back to what you were doing, you two. Harry can work around you, that’s not a problem.”
Blushing for real under her light makeup, Bridget got back to cutting out the paper tree. Harry’s camera clicked softly and repeatedly. Occasionally he asked one or both of them to lift up their chin or look at each other or whatever he thought made the pose look right. Jonas didn’t say a word. He seemed almost embarrassed, as if they had been caught doing something naughty.
“Now for the star,” Gil prompted. An assistant got the tall tree off the table and affixed it to the wall with hidden gobs of duct tape. “You can take turns putting it on the tree. We’ll see which pose looks best.”
Bridget cut out a star from yellow paper and handed it to Jonas. “You first,” she said under her breath.
