by Maisey Yates
“Evil.”
“I want your help planning a party, not burying a body.”
“Depending on the circumstances, I’m a better bet for body burial than I am for decorations and cheer.”
She rolled her eyes and just sat there, looking at once soft and formidable, as she tended to. She took a bite of her burger, chewing thoughtfully. He couldn’t help but follow the motion of her lips as she did. There was no question that she was beautiful. She always had been. Bright red hair, green eyes, a perfect smattering of freckles across her small, upturned nose. And her lips. Full, pink. Yeah, she was pretty. She was also about a million years younger than he was, and several teaspoons of sugar sweeter.
Okay, she was only four years younger, but it might as well have been a lifetime.
She took another bite and his gaze dropped, yet again, to her lips, forcing an unwelcome memory into his mind.
Another night, about nine years ago, when he’d been fixated on her lips. She’d been crying then. It had been her eighteenth birthday and her parents had arranged to visit her at Dan and Margie’s, but they hadn’t come. He’d put his arm around her and pulled her in for a hug, then the air between them had changed. Crackled with electricity.
And he’d pulled away like he’d been burned. Holly Fulton had enough bad things in her life without having him too. That had been true then, and it was true now. No matter how pretty she was.
“They worry about you, you know,” she said.
“Why?”
“Because.” She picked up a French fry and waved it around. “You’re a boat-dwelling weirdo.”
“And?”
“Maybe you could show them that you’re...well-adjusted? Doing fine? Participating in normal, human type things?”
“You’re using Dan and Margie’s emotional distress at my possibly sad life against me?”
She scrunched up her face. “When you put it like that it sounds... unsavory.”
He picked up a French fry and stuffed the whole thing into his mouth. “It is unsavory. It’s downright small. Low. Frankly, I’m surprised at you. For someone who looks so sweet, you’re ruthless.”
He could tell that she was very uncomfortable with being called ruthless. It was also the furthest thing from the truth. Still, he couldn’t help but goad her a little bit. Seeing as she was roping him into planning a Christmas party, and attending said Christmas party, both of which sounded about as appealing as getting a root canal while also receiving a vasectomy without anesthetic.
“Oh, cry me a river, Ryan. I’m strong-arming you into taking part in Christmas cheer and I will likely force-feed you gingerbread. It’s for your own good.”
“Like cod liver oil, flu shots and any book Oprah recommends.”
“A Christmas party is comparable to none of those.”
“Maybe not for you.”
“I promise not to get any joy on you. You don’t even have to like it.”
Saying yes to Holly really was the best idea. She wasn’t wrong. His involvement in this would make Dan and Margie less likely to think that he was turning into a seafaring hermit. He was a seafaring hermit, but as long as they saw him as something different, they might not worry so much.
He owed them way more than worry.
“Okay, Holly, you have a deal. I’ll help you plan your Christmas party. But I don’t have to like it.”
She brightened. “Oh, I expect you to hate it.”
“You seem awfully happy about that idea.”
“The more you hate something, the better I know it is. Since you seem to dislike the sorts of things normal people find extremely enjoyable.”
“What exactly are you going to enlist me for?”
She bit her lip, and he did his best not to watch as she worried her teeth over the delicate surface. “Putting up decorations. Helping me procure a tree. Tasting pies. You can taste my pies.”
He felt like he’d just taken a straight shot of whiskey, a trail of fire burning down his throat and settling straight in his gut. It happened so fast he could do nothing to stop it, could do nothing to reason out the fact that she was talking about literal pie, and that even if she wasn’t, it was Holly, and not some random chick in a bar.
He could try to blame it on the fact that, for a bachelor, the promise of fresh baked goods was a turn-on all on its own. But he knew it was more than that.
Holly looked placid and pleased with herself and definitely not like she had any idea she had conjured up an image of him eating her pie. So to speak.
He cleared his throat. “All that, huh? Are you trying to kill me?”
She stood, taking the paper that her cheeseburger had been wrapped in and wadding it up into a ball. “No. But if you die, don’t die before Christmas. Because I need your help.”
“It might be Christmas that kills me.”
She laughed, turning on her heel, her red hair swirling around her. Even her hair was merry and bright. “Joy to the world the Lord is come...” she sang, off-key and too loud, all the way out of his cabin.
As soon as she disappeared from view, he let out a breath he hadn’t been aware he was holding. Two weeks with all that Holly was going to be a whole lot of enforced happiness.
But he was hardly going to let Holly do this on her own, and have it get back to Dan, Margie and Elizabeth that he’d refused to help plan a Christmas party in their honor.
He was not that big of a dick. Well, maybe he was, but he didn’t want them thinking that.
And as long as he didn’t think about Holly’s euphemistic pie again, everything would be fine.
CHAPTER THREE
SHE’D TEXTED RYAN a little over an hour ago and he still hadn’t responded. Fortunately, she’d gotten quite a bit of work done sitting in The Grind, the local coffee house. She also drank too much coffee and ate too many biscottis, but really, what was too many biscottis? Cassie Caldwell, the owner of the shop and baker extraordinaire, had made cranberry, white chocolate, and gingerbread in honor of the season, so, really, Holly had been obligated to sample them all.
An eggnog latte had also been a must in the spirit of the season.
Cassie was expecting her first child any day now with her husband Jake, and Holly felt that meant her work needed to be doubly honored, considering.
Holly looked out the window at the encroaching darkness. The shop windows outside were lit up, full Christmas displays adding warmth to the chilly evening.
She looked down at her phone, which was still dark, the inactivity beginning to stress her out. She was starting to wonder if Ryan had only agreed to help her with the party to get her off his boat last night, and now that he had routed her out of his domain, he had no reason to play along.
She looked morosely at her phone, which was still resolutely not receiving a return text.
Ryan should be off the water by now. Which meant he was just ignoring her.
She frowned and took another sip of her latte. She could do this without him. She planned parties for a living, after all. So what if he’d been the person she should have been able to count on most to want to give back to the Traverses? So what if she was busy? Where Margie and Dan were concerned, nothing was too difficult.
And if she just wanted to spend a little bit of time with Ryan because it reminded her of Christmases past, well, she would just have to get over it. Because it didn’t matter. And anyway, he was a lot meaner now than he used to be. She hardly even liked him. She just liked the way he filled out a sweater, that was all. An entirely different thing than liking his personality.
The door to The Grind opened and she turned to look, her breath catching and becoming a lump in her throat when she realized it was Ryan.
He was a bit more cleaned up than he’d been last night. No beanie, his dark hair pushe
d off his forehead as though he’d been running his fingers through it. He was wearing a black wool coat and tan corduroy pants, a tight, gray T-shirt conforming to his hard torso.
At least, she was assuming it was hard. It looked hard. She’d never actually touched his stomach, or his chest, though she had thought about it. In fact, she was thinking about it now.
Smiling, she waved from her position at the table and got nothing more than an arched brow and one corner of his lips turned slightly upward in return. He walked to the counter and she sat there, watching, taking a moment to get an eyeful of his physique.
Then she realized the long-distance ogling was probably a little bit weird and stood, leaving her laptop sitting on the table and making her way across the coffee shop to the counter. One of the many perks of living in a small town was that she didn’t have to worry about leaving her things unattended to stand next to the man she should see as nothing more than a surrogate older brother so that she wasn’t leering at him from across the room.
“You came,” she said.
“Yeah.”
“I wasn’t sure if you would. Seeing as you didn’t return my text.”
He lifted a shoulder. “I didn’t tell you I wasn’t coming.”
Just then, Cassie came out from the kitchen, brushing her hands on a flour-covered apron over her rounded stomach. “Hi,” she said, by way of greeting to them both. “More biscotti, Holly?”
Ryan shot her a look that clearly asked How many did you eat? Holly ignored him.
“No, thanks,” she told Cassie. “I think I ate enough for it to count as lunch, dinner, and dessert.”
“Nothing wrong with that,” Cassie replied cheerfully.
“I’ll have a biscotti,” Ryan said.
“What kind would you like?”
“Whichever is your favorite, and a large black coffee.”
Cassie smiled. “You got it. Go ahead and have a seat.”
Ryan actually smiled back, and Holly was so stunned for a moment she forgot to breathe.
He started to walk back toward her table, and she followed. “So,” she said, “you are capable of basic friendliness.”
“Yes,” he said. “I can also use silverware and operate basic machinery.”
“It’s just that you don’t smile very much these days. At least not at me.”
He lifted a brow. “Did you ever think maybe it’s because you’re a pain in the ass?”
She thinned her lips into a flat line and shot him her most evil look. “How would I have time to stop and notice? You’re so busy being a pain in mine.”
“What did I do to you? I was just on my boat, minding my own business. You came in with cheeseburgers and dire commentary on my living situation and general countenance. Face it, Holly, you aren’t very nice to me.”
A wave of irritation and guilt washed over her, leaving her saturated in both. He wasn’t wrong. She was a little bit critical of his life choices. The most recent example being the comments she’d made about his boat. But honestly, she just thought he deserved better and should get better. So sue her. Still. She felt a little bit bad. She cleared her throat and offered a conciliatory smile. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t mock you.”
He leaned back in his chair, a lopsided smile on his face. “Oh, by all means, mock me. If you were to stop mocking me, I would start to feel like I was your emotional charity case. That’s worse than being tormented.”
“I’m not tormenting you.”
“You’re tormenting me with Christmas. My headstone will read death by figgy pudding.”
“I’m not going to feed you figgy pudding. I don’t even know what it is.”
“Okay, so if we aren’t going to have traditional British desserts, what exactly are we doing?”
She lifted her shoulder, suddenly feeling a little bit shy for some reason. This meant a lot to her and even discussing just how emotionally tied into this she was felt revealing. She’d spent her first Christmas with the Traverses when she was thirteen, and every Christmas thereafter. As the holiday season had started approaching this year, the thought of missing out had filled her with anxiety.
A deep, biting anxiety that she hadn’t experienced in years. A sense of invisibility. Of the world, and all the people in it, passing her by as she faded into vapor. Starving for food, for physical affection.
She had been invisible in her house growing up. But never once in the Traverses’ house. It was always so full of laughter, happiness, and warmth. Margie had always kept a pot of spices on the stove, for no reason other than to make the house smell wonderful. She had a hug for everyone who came through the door, and questions about their day, about their lives.
In their house, for the first time, Holly had felt like she existed.
They had thrown the most wonderful Christmas party for the community every year since then. Except for this year. And...
And for some reason the idea of a Christmas without them sent her straight back to the place she’d been in before they’d become her surrogate family. So, she’d come up with the idea for the Christmas party. But she didn’t exactly want to get into all of that with Ryan.
She knew he had his own reasons for caring for Dan and Margie. She also knew he wouldn’t exactly want to spill his guts to her and have a heart-to-heart. They had too many of their own issues to take each other’s on.
“Margie always made such a wonderful dinner. She had the best decorations. The best games,” she said.
“If you’re remembering her games as being fun, I’m going to say you’re romanticizing a bit. What do you need from me besides the heavy lifting?”
“Well, I made a list of people who normally attend the party, a list of the food that I remember, and a few other details.” She pushed her notebook toward him. “Tell me if you think I’ve missed anything.”
“I remember alcoholic beverages and demolishing an entire tray of pigs in a blanket. But those are my memories of Margie’s parties—the later years. The white elephant gift exchanges I don’t have a lot of fondness for.”
“Are you going to be this intentionally unpleasant the entire time?”
He shrugged. “It’s kind of my thing.”
“Right. Well...why? I don’t get it, Ryan. I mean, I know life is hard,” she said, skating perilously close to subjects neither of them wanted to delve in to, “but we’ve come out of it pretty good. Don’t you want to enjoy that a little bit?”
“Do you know what I enjoy? Freedom. The freedom to walk around frowning and stomping if I want. To go out onto the ocean for as long as I want. I don’t have to answer to anyone. And I don’t have to suffer anyone’s wrath. Hell, at this point if my old man tried to raise a fist to me? I could just kick his ass.”
Holly looked down into her empty coffee cup. She’d suspected as much about Ryan’s past. About his father. But they’d never talked about it. He said it now lightly, like it didn’t matter. But she knew it did.
“I don’t have to perform anymore,” he continued. “So, I don’t. I spent twelve years walking on eggshells, and then a few more until I was sure I wouldn’t get sent back. I like not doing it.”
She studied his face and evaluated the lines around his mouth, his eyes, across his forehead, differently than she had before. Lines he’d won the right to after he’d gotten out from under his father’s thumb.
“I was just invisible,” she said, feeling the need to trade with him now. He’d shared with her, and she got the feeling he hadn’t really meant to. She wanted to level the field. “So nobody cared what I did.”
They’d cared once. Before it had all faded away. Before her mother had realized her little red-headed daughter wouldn’t keep her husband from sleeping with other women or disappearing for days at a time. Before she’d realized Holly wasn’t a Band-Aid.
> Before Holly had betrayed her in the worst way possible.
She looked up and caught Ryan’s eye and her heart stopped for a moment. His expression was intense, focused. “I can see you just fine,” he said, his voice rough.
She wanted to touch him. Wanted to do something to extend the connection between them. She wanted—
Just then, Cassie came over and set Ryan’s coffee and biscotti on the table before quickly walking away, obviously not wanting to interrupt their conversation.
Ryan picked up the biscotti first, and the moment of tension between them was gone. “I called Margie a couple of hours ago.”
“About?”
“Arrangements for picking her and Dan up at the airport. And to ask her a favor.”
She pushed the plate that had once held her biscotti back, then pulled it forward, looking for something, anything to do with her nervous energy. “What kind of favor?”
“Not a huge one. But you wanted this party to be a tribute to a Margie Travers party, and...when I think of her parties, I think of the village. The little snowy village she put on the mantels. And her garlands, with the shiny ribbon and the little berries in them.”
Holly nodded. “Me too.”
“So I asked her if she minded if I went and borrowed some of her decorations. She said it was fine, and she didn’t even give me the third degree, though I have a feeling she’s decided I want to impress a woman, even though I would never use Christmas decorations to impress a woman.”
Holly wrinkled her nose, not particularly wanting to imagine what Ryan did with women. Ever. “What would you use?” She couldn’t hold back the question. Apparently, something inside her was masochistic.
“My boat.”
“No way.”
“Women like my boat.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Not me.”
“I guess that’s why you didn’t make a pass at me when you came aboard yesterday.”
Her whole face felt hot and she looked down, desperate for a focal point that wasn’t his face. “Among the many other reasons. Anyway, thank you for talking to Margie, but I can use the decorations I have. I don’t have a key to their house. And I would feel funny about going in by myself.”
