A Christmas Date

by Camilla Isley

  “I won’t.”

  “Well, don’t have too much fun without me.” Blair opens the door and waltzes out of the apartment. “See yah.”

  I slam the door shut after her and lean against it. What the hell?

  Bitch.

  She made me want to smash everything in the house. I need to relax.

  The pizza boy said the wait would be well over an hour, so I might as well take a bath in the meantime. I go back to the bathroom, fill the tub to the brim with hot water, and happily empty half of Blair’s super expensive perfumed oils in it in petty revenge.

  When the doorbell rings a while later, I’ve just finished changing into one of my favorite cat PJs—about eighty percent of my PJs feature cats—and am much more relaxed.

  I push the speaker button on the buzzer. “I’m up on the fourth floor,” I inform the pizza boy.

  “I know,” a voice I recognize instantly says back.

  Diego! I hate the way my heartbeat immediately speeds up. What is he doing here?

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Expecting someone else?”

  “Yeah, pizza. What do you want?”

  “To talk.”

  “Now? What about a week ago, when I called you a thousand times and begged you to pick up the phone?”

  “I’m sorry. Can you please let me in and insult me in person?”

  No, because the moment I see his eyes, I know my brain will fry and logic will fail me. No, because I’ve just barely started feeling like a human again. And no, because this apartment is free of painful, Diego-related memories. Yeah, he lived with me for a while, but nothing cathartic or intimate happened while he was here, and I don’t want to make this place haunted, too. This is my safe haven.

  “Are you still there?” comes his voice from the buzzer.

  “Yeah. Listen, Diego, you slept with me and then ran away the next day without a word… That’s not… There isn’t a single thing you might say that will make me open this door.”

  “Err-hem.” He clears his throat. “I have a rescue kitten here that I was hoping to drop off with you. He’s sort of freezing his tiny tail off.”

  A cat bribe? A cat bribe?

  Bastard!

  But I can’t resist; cats are my kryptonite. Or maybe Diego is. So I buzz him in.

  I wait by the door, trying to steady my heartbeat, but my heart wants to jump out of my chest and run off to meet Diego down the hall. I compromise by opening the door and waiting for him propped against the threshold.

  Mr. Tall, Dark, and Smoldering Hot comes out of the elevator in all black—black hair, black jeans, black leather jacket—carrying a carton transporter box with a cat silhouette on the side and cute, cat-shaped holes for air.

  It might be the coldest time of the year, but I’m suddenly all hot and bothered. When did it become so hard to breathe? As Diego stops a few inches away from me, I find it almost impossible to inhale and exhale properly. The air between us seems charged with electricity, and I’m doing my best not to notice his clean and masculine scent mixed with the smell of night winds. And, damn me, the only thing I want to do right now is throw my arms around his neck and kiss those lips.

  Instead, I extend one arm toward the carton box, saying, “You can leave the kitten and go.”

  “No, I can’t,” he says seriously. “At the shelter, they said I should spend at least an hour with him before leaving him with someone else. They did the same with me before they let me take him.” He’s trying really hard to maintain a somber and contrite expression, but I can see the ghost of a smile dancing behind his eyes. Oh, I shouldn’t have looked him in the eyes. I could get lost in there, and I need to stay grounded now more than ever. “That way, he’ll have the time to adjust to his new home and owner,” Diego concludes.

  One hour.

  Can I survive that long?

  Without a word, I step aside and make room for him to enter the apartment.

  “Is your dog home?” he asks.

  “No, Chevron is staying at Richard’s for a while. He missed her over the Christmas break.”

  Diego nods and walks in, heading for the living room with a familiarity I don’t like. I watch him move the coffee table against the wall, freeing the rug in front of the couch, and set a bunch of pillows down with the same ease as if he were at his place. I hate that I let him so far into my world.

  I shut the door and join him. He’s seated on one side of the rug and has placed the carton box, still sealed, in the center. From a plastic bag, he unloads a series of different items: a soft blanket that he spreads over the rug, a plastic box that he fills with litter, a bowl in which he empties a small bag of dry cat food, and finally another bowl that he lifts toward me.

  “Can you fill this with water?” he asks.

  I make a quick dash to the kitchen, fill the bowl, and carefully place it next to the food. With nothing else left to do, I sit on the opposite side of the rug—as far from Diego as the reduced square footage of New York living space allows.

  Diego turns the carrier box toward me, placing his hand on the latch. “Ready?” he asks.

  I nod.

  “A word of warning.” The grin he’s been suppressing since stepping on my landing finally appears in a half-smile. “He’s very cute.”

  I scowl at him and wait for him to open the box. As soon as he does, two tiny, half-white paws step into the light, followed by the cutest furry face I’ve ever seen. The kitten is a brown-gray tabby, but with a streak of auburn fur that covers his nose and spreads in a small inverted triangle between his eyes. His paws and underbelly are white.

  If my heart wasn’t melted before, it is now. Like with Diego, my first instinct is to take the mini cat into my arms and hug the little furball to my chest.

  The urge must be written all over my face, because Diego warns me, “Let him come to you.”

  We watch patiently as the kitten walks out on the blanket and sniffs the surrounding air.

  “Hello, you,” I say.

  I’m already in love.

  “Mew,” he meows in response.

  The kitty follows his sense of smell to the food bowl, eats a little, drinks, and then he climbs over my left knee to land in my lap, purring. Oh, he’s a cuddler. I can’t resist any longer; I plunge my hands into his soft fur and give him a full-body scratch. The kitty seems to appreciate the contact, because he starts making muffins on my leg, then curls into a tiny ball and goes to sleep.

  “Seems like you two are a good fit,” Diego says.

  I look up, startled. For a moment I’d forgotten he was here.

  The smile he’d been trying to hide before is now wide and warm and… heart-shattering, unfortunately for me.

  “I’m in no way mollified,” I tell him.

  The grin now turns foxy. “Of course you aren’t.”

  “So.” I pause for effect. “What are you doing here?”

  Before he can answer, the buzzer goes off again.

  “It’s the pizza,” I say. “Do you mind getting that?”

  I don’t want to disturb the cat.

  Diego gets up and comes back two minutes later carrying a family-sized pizza box.

  He places the box in front of me and eyes it suspiciously. “Are you sure you’re not expecting company?”

  “No,” I reply, and to justify the disproportionate pizza, I add, “I thought I’d warm some for lunch tomorrow.”

  So not true. Left to myself, I would’ve scarfed down the whole thing tonight. I mean, single and alone on New Year’s Eve, a girl deserves her pizza.

  I open the box and, with the aid of a few paper napkins, bring the first slice to my mouth. Mmm, it’s delicious.

  Diego watches me, not making any attempt to touch the pizza, but with a clear longing in his eyes.

  “Did you have dinner?” I ask.

  He shakes his head.

  “Get the Cokes from the fridge”—I jer
k my chin backward toward the kitchen—“and you can have a slice or two.”

  We establish a sort of pizza-truce and eat dinner mostly in silence, but not without an extensive amount of non-verbal eye communication. Not a single serious word has been spoken, and yet I feel as if I’ve already lost. I’ve tried to lock my heart behind a steel cage, but between Diego and the kitten, all my defenses have melted.

  The pizza disappears alarmingly quickly, and once it’s gone there’s no more circling around the famous pink elephant in the room.

  I take one last sip of Coke, and say, “So?”

  “So.”

  “Why are you here? Why now?”

  “There’s a certain magic in the air tonight.”

  “And you just assumed I’d spend New Year’s Eve home alone.”

  Diego’s sexy-and-infuriating smirk makes another appearance. “I might’ve had a little tip-off.”

  I tilt my head questioningly.

  “Blair called,” he confesses. “She gave me a half-an-hour pep talk explaining all the reasons why I was being an idiot, and then told me that if I came to my senses, I’d find you here all alone and majorly pissed off that you weren’t invited to her friend’s party.”

  That sneaky bitch.

  I can’t help but smile. Oh, she got me good this time.

  “Care to repeat them?” I ask.

  “What?”

  “All the reasons why you’ve been an idiot.”

  “No,” he says. “You go first.”

  “Me?” My mouth dangles open. “If this is your way to apologize—”

  “I’ve always been honest with you. You’ve been the one keeping secrets. Paul first, then your sister…”

  I want to get up and shove him out of my house, but the kitten is forcing me to stay put and talk. “You already know everything there is to know.”

  “Did you really run after Paul only to make him go back to Julia?” Diego asks.

  “Yes. Why else would I go after him?”

  “I thought you wanted to break them off for good.”

  “What? What kind of horrible person would do that?”

  “The same kind who would hire a guy she’s mapped to her sister’s every fantasy to play her fake boyfriend.”

  Touché.

  “I’m not an angel; so what? I just wanted to annoy Julia a little.”

  Diego shakes his head. “And look how well it ended the last time she just wanted to annoy you a little. She made you miserable for two years.”

  “Well, she’s not perfect, either. Anyway, my relationship with my sister has nothing to do with us. You left me,” I accuse him.

  He shifts his butt on the rug so that he’s now sitting next to me, both our backs leaning against the couch. Diego takes my hand into his and starts drawing small circles on my palm with his thumb. “I’m sorry,” he says.

  “It’s not enough.” I try to get my hand back, but he keeps it imprisoned in his. “What if Blair hadn’t called you? Would you still be here?”

  “Maybe.” He lowers his gaze. “I received the casting calls for the Super Bowl ads this morning. I didn’t think you’d keep your word on those. Made me feel like shit that you’d still be kind to me after the way I left.”

  Truth is, I’d set up the castings before Christmas and completely forgotten about them. If I’d remembered, I might’ve had a petty fit at the office today and deleted his name from the call list.

  “I usually keep my promises.” I play the saint. “But a casting call is no better than a call from my best friend. Will somebody have to call you every time we argue, otherwise you’ll disappear off the face of the Earth?” He smiles at that, driving me mad. “Why are you smiling now?”

  “Because if we’re going to argue in the future, it means we’re going to be together…”

  I force myself to look him in the eye. “If that’s what you wanted, why disappear? I get you might’ve been mad at first, but why not return any of my texts or calls?”

  “I’ve misread a situation once before,” he says, his gaze open and sincere. “Only that time, I trusted a woman who told me her feelings for her ex were dead, until they weren’t. So when I saw you wanting to run after Paul so bad you couldn’t spare ten minutes to talk to me first, it all came back in a rush. I thought, fool me once don’t fool me twice. So, rather than having to hear you tell me you’d realized you were still in love with Paul, I ran away. Stupid, right?”

  “Very stupid,” I agree, and wait for a little more groveling.

  “But since I’ve left, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you.” As he says this, he gently cups my face and turns it toward him. Diego’s hands are too warm, his eyes too green, and his mouth too close. “And I don’t care if you picked me off a catalog based on your sister’s preferences,” he continues. “I’m just glad someone in your family has decent taste; otherwise, I would never have met you.”

  I remove his hands from my face—too distracting—and lower them to our legs without letting go.

  “And you realized all of this today?”

  “No, today’s just the day I realized how much of an idiot I’ve been… And after Blair’s call…”

  “You decided to adopt a cat and bribe me with him?”

  “The cat strategy seems to have worked pretty well.” He smiles down at the little cutie. “Have you picked a name yet?”

  I stare at the tiny streak of auburn fur on the kitten’s face. “Cinnamon. I want to call him Cinnamon.”

  “I like it.”

  Diego squeezes my hand, making me look back up at him.

  “So, what happens now?” I ask.

  “This is the part where you forgive me and give me another chance.” He scrunches up his face in a cute, irresistible, pleading expression.

  “I still don’t know if I can trust you not to run away at the first difficulty. We were only together for two days, and when you left I was so crushed… I don’t think I could survive you leaving again.”

  One of his hands sneaks back up to my neck, his fingers caressing the sensitive skin just behind my ear. “I won’t leave you again. I promise I’ll face every fight like a man, without running.”

  I frown. “You expect many fights?”

  The foxy grin is back. “If you keep on being so bossy, I don’t see how we won’t.”

  “I’m not bossy—”

  “Yes, you are. You’re bossy, and stubborn, and impossible to deal with sometimes. But you’re also beautiful, and kind, and smart, and that’s why I love you so much.”

  My heart stops. “You what?”

  “I love you, Nikki,” he repeats, and my name on his lips sounds like the softest caress. “And I think you love me, too.”

  “Really? How do you know that?”

  He bends forward to whisper in my ear. “From the way you call my name when we make love.”

  The last ounce of resistance I had evaporates. Tears streak down my cheeks, but I can’t stop smiling. “Diego, I…”

  “Yes, just like that,” he breathes down my neck.

  “I…” I’m too choked to speak.

  “Shh.” He massages my shoulders to soothe me. “It’s okay.”

  Diego pulls back to look me in the eyes for the longest time. Then he leans forward and kisses me.

  As our lips touch, an explosion of cheery noises and sounds invades the apartment from outside, above, and below.

  And so, at the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Eve, my happily ever after becomes true.

  Note from the Author

  Dear Reader,

  I hope you enjoyed A Christmas Date. If this is the first book in the First Comes Love series you’ve read, you can go back to Book 1, Love Connection, to learn how Richard ended up being a single British bachelor in New York, and then Book 2, I Have Never, to laugh out loud as he and Blair fall in love, with the added bonus of meeting Chevron as an adorable puppy.

&nbs
p; The next book in the series, To the Stars and Back, will feature six-times-in-a-row Sexiest Man Alive and Hollywood superstar Christian Slade as he struggles to find a girl who’s not after him just for his fame. You might remember him as Richard’s famous friend from I Have Never. I can’t wait to get started on this new novel, set in sunny Los Angeles. California, here we come!

  Now, I have to ask you a favor. If you loved my story, please leave a review on Amazon, Goodreads, or wherever you like to post reviews (your blog, your Facebook wall, your bedroom wall, in a text to your best friend…) Reviews are the best gift you can give to an author, and word of mouth is the most powerful means of book discovery.

  If you’re craving more romance, you can turn the page for a sneak peek from Let’s Be Just Friends, the first book in my new adult college romance series Just Friends, which is absolutely FREE to download at all retailers. This series is slightly different from my romantic comedies—the characters are younger, and a little more prone to drama. As a disclaimer, I want to let you know that Book 1 has some cheating in it, in case it’s a reading pet peeve of yours. I know many readers dislike stories with affairs, and me writing one isn’t in any way an indication that I support any kind of cheating. I just think that betrayal is a sad reality of some relationships and, writing about love and romance, I wanted to challenge myself with a story with a bit of a darker side, exploring my characters’ flaws more in-depth.

  I hope I haven’t bored you too much with my babbling… Thank you for your constant support!

  Camilla, x

  PS. Did you notice my little Easter Egg from A Sudden Crush?

  Sneak Peek – Let’s Be Just Friends

  One

  Rose

  Something woke Rose with a start. She tried to pinpoint the source of the noise, but it stopped before she could. A quick peek at the alarm clock sitting in silence on her bedside table told Rose it was only 9:00 a.m. Good. At least two more hours to sleep.

  The noise started again just as Rose was beginning to drift off. Already half-awake, she managed to identify the sound clearly this time. It was Tyler’s phone ringing in the distance. But, where? Not in the adjoining room where Rose assumed he was sleeping. No, the sound seemed to be coming from farther away, somewhere on the lower floor of Tyler’s townhouse.