Chloe Liese

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Copyright © 2021 by Chloe Liese

Published by Rakuten Kobo Inc. as Kobo Originals

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are a product of
the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons,
living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Cover illustration by Leni Kauffman

Cover Design by Monika Roe
Production by Bright Wing Media

All rights reserved. For information about permissions to reproduce this book address
Rakuten Kobo, 1-135 Liberty Street, Toronto, Ontario, M6K 1A7.

ISBN 9781774536780

Website: www.kobo.com/originals

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 Contents
Author’s Note
Playlist Note

CHAPTER 1

Playlist: “Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!” Ella Fitzgerald

CHAPTER 2
Playlist: “Greensleeves,” Mountain Man
CHAPTER 3

Playlist: “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch,” Lindsey Stirling,

Sabrina Carpenter
CHAPTER 4

Playlist: “Little Jack Frost, Get Lost,” Bing Crosby & Peggy Lee
CHAPTER 5

Playlist: “Happy Holidaze,” Dana Williams

CHAPTER 6

Playlist: “Winter Wonderland,” She & Him

CHAPTER 7

Playlist: “Santa Baby,” Haley Reinhart

CHAPTER 8

Playlist: “Mille Cherubini in Coro,” Andrew Bird

CHAPTER 9

Playlist: “Merry Christmas (I Don’t Want to Fight Tonight),” Alex

Lahey
CHAPTER 10
 Playlist: “Make Way for the Holidays,” Le Bon
CHAPTER 11

Playlist: “The Holidays with You,” Sara Watkins

CHAPTER 12

Playlist: “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” Birdy

CHAPTER 13

Playlist: “You and Me at Christmas,” Why Don’t We

CHAPTER 14

Playlist: “Under the Christmas Lights,” Gwen Stefani

EPILOGUE JONATHAN

Playlist: “Merry Christmas, Marry Me,” Crofts Family

Acknowledgements
About the Author
More by Chloe Liese

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 Author’s Note
*Includes spoilers*

This holiday romance is open door, meaning it portrays on-page,

consensual sexual intimacy. It also features characters with
human realities that I believe deserve to be seen more
prominently in romance through positive, authentic
representation—in this case, neurodivergence (specifically,
autism, which is my lived experience), the asexual spectrum
(specifically, demisexuality, which is also my lived experience),
and type 1 diabetes (which has been informed by a friend with
this condition). With the guidance of my own experience and
authenticity readers for this content, I hope I have given these
subjects the care and respect they deserve.
This book also includes mention of an ex who texts repeatedly
after being broken up with and who, in one scene, shows up
unannounced, surprising the heroine. He is reprimanded, and
after that, is off-page, out of her life for good. I know this is a
sensitive topic for some, so please take care.
Ultimately, I hope this romance brings you comfort and joy, a
story of two people finding their way toward being deeply known
and loved for all of who they are, which is, to me—in real life and
in fiction—the greatest gift we can receive.

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 Playlist Note
At the beginning of each chapter, a song and artist is provided as
an optional means of emotional connection to the story. It isn’t a
necessity—for some it may be a distraction or even inaccessible—
nor are the lyrics literally about the chapter. Listen before or
while you read for a soundtrack experience. If you enjoy playlists,
rather than searching for each song individually as you read, you
can directly access these songs on a Spotify Playlist by logging in
to your Spotify account and entering “The Mistletoe Motive” into
the search browser.

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 Chapter 1
Playlist: “Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!”
Ella Fitzgerald

THE WORLD IS a snow globe. Thick, icy flakes swirl around me,
drifting from a silver tinsel sky. A frigid gust of wind stings my
cheeks and whips my clothes. It’s my morning walk to Bailey’s
Bookshop, where I am co-manager and resident holiday
enthusiast, and I’m kicking off the month of December like I have
for years: my mittened hands wrapped around a cup of
peppermint hot cocoa—chocolate drizzle, extra whip—while Ella
Fitzgerald’s smoky-sweet voice pours through my headphones.
Let it snow! Let it snow! Let it snow!
Wrangling open the door to the bookshop as the song ends
and Ella’s voice fades, I tug off my noise-cancelling headphones,
whose plush, winter-white faux fur makes them double as
earmuffs. Time to face reality: this wonderful life of holiday tunes,
picturesque snowfall, and running Bailey’s Bookshop would be a
dream come true, if it weren’t for one small thing…
My gaze lands on the familiar terrain of towering height, broad
shoulders, and starched, snowy cotton.
Okay. So he’s not exactly small.
 “Miss Di Natale.” The chill of my antagonist’s voice slips down
my spine like a waterdrop, fresh off an icicle.
I shut the door with my butt, then use my elbow to slide down
the bolt and lock us in, since we don’t open for another hour.
Clutching my hot cocoa and a canvas bag of homemade holiday
decorations for festive fortitude, I reply with false cheer, “Mr.
Frost.”
My aptly named nemesis glances meaningfully at the antique
wall-mounted clock, which sets his face in profile. Strong nose,
cheekbones that could shave ice, a cut-crystal jaw. One dark
eyebrow arches as he turns and his wintergreen eyes pin me in
place. “Good of you to join us…three minutes late.”
I hate him. He is the prickly holly leaf in the Fraser fir garland
of my life.
For twelve torturous months, I have endured co-managing the
city’s longest-standing independent bookstore with Jonathan
Frost, a true Scrooge of a man, and frankly I’d call it a miracle that
I’ve lasted this long without going off the deep end.
Holding his eyes, I take a long, wet slurp of my hot cocoa’s
whipped cream, then lick my lips, because it’ll get under his skin,
and after that “three minutes late” reprimand, it’s the least he
deserves.
His gaze snaps to my mouth. His jaw twitches. Then he spins
away.
“Let me guess.” His voice is gruff, his eyes on an unopened box
of new releases as he flicks up the retractable blade of a utility
knife and guts the box like a fish belly, with one clean rip down
the seam. “They messed up your overpriced chocolate milk.”
 My molars grind as I march across the storefront. “It’s hot
cocoa. And they forgot the peppermint. I can’t kick off the holiday
season without it.”
After I’ve passed him, he guts the next box with the fluid grace
of a cold-blooded killer. I watch him slide down the retractable
blade, set the knife perpendicular to the edge of the counter, then
wrench open the box in a graphic display of flexing muscles
beneath his shirt.
It’s a tragedy that such a lump-of-coal personality has a body
like that.
“Eyes up, Gabriella.”
“I’m watching that utility knife.”
“Sure you are.”
My cheeks heat. I set the holiday decorations on the counter
with the force of my annoyance and hear one crack. “Anyone who
knew how many slashers you read, Mr. Frost, would have their
eyes on the utility knife.”
“So she’s not only eyeing up my muscles but my private
bookstore purchases.”
“I—” An infuriated growl rolls out of me. But as I spin away
from him and freeze, my fury melts when I notice a plate of
delicate sugar cookies perched on the counter. Cut into shapes
that are an homage to every wintertime holiday, they sparkle with
diamond-bright sugar crystals. Bending for a closer look, I
breathe them in. Rich, buttery, sweet. I can already taste them
melting on my tongue. “Where did these come from?”
“One guess.” Jonathan hoists both boxes up on his shoulders,
making more distracting muscly things happen under his shirt.
 I turn back to face the mystery cookies, lest I get accused of
ogling his ass while he walks to the shelves dedicated to new
releases. Wracking my brain, I set down my hot cocoa, then shuck
off my mittens, scarf, and coat, and hang them on their usual
hook. I pluck one of the cookies from the plate, inspecting it. “The
Baileys?”
Jonathan sighs wearily.
“What? That’s a perfectly reasonable guess!”
The bookshop’s owners, Mr. and Mrs. Bailey, don’t come in
often, but they’re thoughtful and like grandparents to me. I’ve
worked for them for six years, first part-time while in college,
then the past two years, since graduating, as manager. They know
how much I love December, all things holiday, and of course,
sweets. I could see them having cookies delivered to the store for
us (they’re fond of Jonathan, too, for some baffling reason).
So, if they didn’t send the cookies, then who? There’s no one
else anymore, thanks to an extra-tight budget this year and the
fact that our only help, a part-time college student, quit last week.
Apparently, Clark found Jonathan’s and my dynamic “toxically
hostile.”
Kids these days. No stomach for conflict.
“Well, then, Mr. Frost.” I examine the cookie. “If not from the
Baileys, where did they come from?”
Jonathan tsks, lining up a perfectly even row of books. “‘One
guess,’ Gabriella, means ‘one guess.’”
Perplexed but enticed by the heavenly sugar-cookie aroma, I
almost take a bite. Then I pause. A lightbulb pings over my head.
Pointing the cookie his way, I level Jonathan with a suspicious
glare. “You.”
He pauses, the book he’s holding frozen in midair. Slowly, he
glances over his shoulder, and our gazes snag. His face is…
unreadable.
While people’s expressions aren’t easy for me to interpret, the
longer I know them, the better I’m able to observe patterns and
memorize their meaning. After twelve miserable months
observing the many subtle shifts in his chiseled-from-ice
features, I know more Jonathan Frost expressions than I care to
admit. This one is new.
Unsettled, I bite my bottom lip, a lick of pain to ground myself.
I watch his gaze lower to my mouth, his eyes darken.
All of a sudden, I’m roasting in my emerald-green sweater
dress. Is the heat cranked up?
“If you did bring these cookies…” I’m trying to regain the upper
hand, but my voice is oddly hoarse. “The question is…why?”
Jonathan’s gaze flicks up and meets mine. Another expression
I don’t recognize. It makes my belly tumble.
He opens his mouth, like he’s about to answer me, when a fist
bangs on the shop’s front door. Jonathan scowls in its direction
and barks, “Closed till ten!”
The room’s cooler now, and the clutch of whatever mind tricks
Jonathan was playing with his eyes has vanished. Sensible and
back in my skin, I drop the cookie like a hot potato, brush crumbs
from my hands, and stride toward the front door.
“Too scared to try one?” he drawls.
 He has to have brought them. He probably baked them from
scratch just so he could stick a laxative in the batter.
“The day I eat something you made will be a cold day in hell,
Mr. Frost. And just so you know, poisoning someone is a criminal
offense.”
He’s back at the shelves, lining up books with tidy precision. “If
it’s nonfatal, you only serve a few years.”
I trip into the door, yelling, “I knew it!”
“Honestly, Gabriella.” He rolls his eyes. “I read thrillers. Doesn’t
mean I want to be in one.”
“I’m still hiding the box cutters.”
As I’m about to unlock the door, I catch my reflection in its
pane of frosted glass. Between this morning’s windswept walk to
work and Jonathan’s mind games, I look like I walked through a
tornado: cheeks flushed as rosy as my lips; hazel eyes saucer-wide,
blinking frantically; my hair’s honey-brown, loose curls, which
usually sit at my shoulders, look electrified.
“Yeesh.” As I fuss with my hair and command my eyes to look
less deranged, a prickle of awareness dances up my neck.
Jonathan’s eyes lock with mine in the glass reflection. He throws
me another chilly arched eyebrow. I stick out my tongue.
“Real mature,” he says.
“Coming from the guy leaving some poor delivery person to
freeze on the sidewalk.”
Jonathan—shocker—is a hard-ass who won’t answer the door
until opening, but sometimes delivery people get turned around
and can’t find the alley entrance. I’m the sympathetic one who
helps them out.
 With a wrench of the bolt, I open the door to the sight of a
delivery person—their legs at least—staggering under the weight
of a bouquet that dwarfs their upper body.
A voice from behind it says, “Delivery for Miss Gabriella Di
Natale?”
I stare at it, slack-jawed. This is hundreds of dollars in flowers.
Crimson roses and velvet poinsettias, cheery sprigs of pine and
holly, snow-white lilies the size of dinner plates. Their cloying
scent hits my nose, and a vicious sneeze doubles me over.
A warm, house-sized torso reaches past me as another sneeze
wracks my body. Jonathan grips the tapered vase like it’s a twig
rather than thirty pounds of floral opulence and goes straight for
the note wedged inside. I’m equally curious to know who it’s from
—his guess is as good as mine.
“Um, but…” The delivery person finally peeks around the
bouquet. “This is for Miss Gabriella Di…” Their voice dies off in the
face of Jonathan’s arctic glare. “I need a signature.”
“Does she look like she can sign?” Jonathan jerks his head
toward me as I double over in another sneeze, then signs with a
flourish. “Gabriella, tell them I’m not stealing your flowers.”
“He’s not. It’s fine. Thank—ah-ah-ah-CHOO.”
“Happy holidays,” Jonathan says, as he shuts the door in their
face. “Last time I show up December first with a baked-good olive
branch. You accuse me of poisoning you with cookies, when your
boyfriend’s the one gifting you a biohazard.” He crosses the store
toward the back, systematically plucking each lily from the
bouquet. “Some fella you’ve got yourself.”
I double over in a sneeze that rattles my sinuses. “W-what?”
 “Knows you well enough to send a holiday-themed bouquet but
not well enough to make sure it’s low fragrance. Strong scents
make you sneeze and trigger your headaches.”
“He’s not—Wait. How do you know that?”
“Twelve months, Miss Di Natale.” Jonathan sets the bouquet on
the counter, whips open the back door to the alley, and flings a
hundred dollars’ worth of lilies into the dumpster like they’re
vermin.
“Twelve months what?” I ask.
After shutting the door, he strolls into the break room
kitchenette where we keep a coffee pot and mugs, along with a
cabinet of snacks whose shelves are divided down the middle by
boundary-defining tape, like we’re feuding countries and the
corner of a Triscuit box encroaching on enemy territory is cause
for war.
Jonathan flicks on the water at the sink and rolls up his
sleeves to his elbows, each fold of crisp, white cotton revealing two
new inches of corded muscles and a dusting of dark hair. I tell
myself to stop staring, but I can’t.
Besides my two best friends, who are also my roommates, the
only person I spend this much time with is Jonathan Icicle-Up-
His-Butt Frost, and I think it’s warping my brain—day in and day
out, eight eternal hours around him. Brushing elbows as we pass
each other in the store. Watching him grunt and flex all those
muscles as he opens boxes and stocks shelves. Catching his eyes
narrowed at me when I break the rules and plop on the floor with
a tiny customer, cracking open a book to read to them.
 Sometimes in those unspoken moments, things like this
happen. My mind wipes away fifty-two weeks of daily squabbles
and petty power battles and takes an inexplicable turn, like
fixating on his forearms, staring at his hands as they slip and rub
under the water. And then I start to think about other times arms
flex and hands get wet. I think about fingers curling, and now his
thumb’s circling a splotch of ink on his palm, and I’m thinking
about his thumb circling other things and—
“Twelve months.” His voice thunder-cracks through the air,
and I straighten like lightning just zapped my spine. “Fifty-two
weeks. Six days a week. Eight hours each day. Two thousand four
hundred and ninety-six hours.” Eyes on his task, he flicks off the
water, frees a paper towel from the stand with a vicious rip, then
dries his hands. “Believe it or not, I’ve picked up a few things
along the way.”
Steeling myself, I fold my arms across my chest. “I see. ‘Keep
your friends close, your enemies closer.’ Isn’t that the saying?”
Jonathan glances up and meets my eyes, his gaze speaking
some cryptic language that I don’t.
I hate that feeling. It’s old and familiar, and it never fails to
scrape open the scab of my social struggles. I’m a neurodivergent
girl in a neurotypical world, and my autistic brain doesn’t read
people the way Jonathan Tactical-Mastermind Frost’s does. It’s
one of the very first things that made me dislike him: I can feel his
cunning, his cold, calculating mind. He has what I don’t, he sees
what I can’t, and he wields those weapons ruthlessly. It’s exactly
why the Baileys hired him.
Because he’s everything I’m not.
 And in my worst moments, that makes me feel like I’m not
enough.
I wanted to be everything the Baileys needed when Mrs. Bailey
retired from managing and they promoted me. The Baileys
wanted that, too. They love me. They love how I love the bookshop.
And their bottom line would certainly be healthier with only one
manager in this day and age that’s swiftly killing independent
bookstores.
But after my first year solo, seeing I was drowning in the
deluge of managerial tasks, the Baileys sat me down over tea and
said it was too much to ask of one person—I deserved a co-
manager.
So Jonathan was hired, exactly one year ago today. Bursting
with holiday excitement, I walked in, only to see him chumming it
up with Mr. Bailey, a rosy pink in Mrs. Bailey’s cheeks as he said
something that made her smile. I’d been usurped. It hit me like a
snowball to the solar plexus.
He’s been here ever since, making the Baileys fall in love with
him, proving himself indispensable. He’s confident and coolly
efficient, and after a year under his influence, Bailey’s Bookshop
runs like a well-oiled machine.
Jonathan’s the brain of this place. I admit that.
But me? I’m the soul.
I’m the whimsical touches in the window display, the
thoughtful addition of plush armchairs tucked into cozy corners.
I’m the warm smile that welcomes you and the artful front display
table that draws you in. And Jonathan knows it. He knows that
without me, this place would be industrious but impersonal, tidy
but tedious.
In short: he needs me just as badly as I need him.
I realize that sounds like a great reason to join forces and set
aside differences. But since The Dreaded Chain Bookstore (also
known as Potter’s Pages) came into the neighborhood two years
ago and our profits took a hit, I know it’s only a matter of time
until the Baileys break the news that they can no longer afford
both of us. And like hell am I going to have surrendered my place,
to have allowed Jonathan Frost to become the dominant force that
makes the Baileys’ choice between us a no-brainer.
Meaning, that while our feud might have started out as a clash
of personalities, it’s now a duel to the death.
Er. Professional death, that is.
A drip of water from the faucet falls with a plink, wrenching
my mind from its meandering path.
I realize I’ve been staring at Jonathan.
And Jonathan’s been staring back.
Apparently, we’ve been doing this for some time, judging by
the way the world starts to blur and my eyes scream for me to
blink.
Jonathan, of course, because he’s made of some cryogenic
alien substance, looks entirely at ease as he leans in the doorway,
arms folded across his chest. He could do this all day. Blinking is
for the weak.
Unable to ignore my eyeballs’ plea for mercy, I spin toward the
massive floral arrangement and blink rapidly, barely choking
back a relieved whimper as I pivot the vase and inspect it. That’s
when I spot a small card wedged inside the blossoms. I’ve been so
frazzled by Jonathan, I forgot to look for the note explaining who
this is from.
My hand is halfway to the card when Jonathan says, “Wait.”
Frozen in place, I sense him behind me. Not so close that it’s
inappropriate or invasive, but close enough to feel his solid
warmth behind me, to breathe in his faint wintry-woods scent. I
hate that so many smells give me headaches, but Jonathan’s is
undeniably pleasurable.
Reaching past me, he tugs the poinsettia away from the plastic
clip holding the card. “Careful.”
I glance up and meet his eyes. They’re evergreen dark, his jaw
tight. Under the shop’s warm lights, I catch a glimmer of auburn
in the bittersweet-chocolate waves of his hair. “Careful of what?” I
ask.
“Poinsettia. They can cause a rash.”
I snort. “A rash.”
“A rash, Gabriella.” He juts his chin toward the note. “I told you,
I’m not the one you have to worry about. Your boyfriend sent your
sinuses’ worst nightmare and toxic plants.”
There it is again. My boyfriend.
Trey and I haven’t been together for six months, and even
before that, “together” was a generous term. I’m someone who
needs time to feel out my attraction, and while I was certainly
struck by Trey, the smiling, golden-haired guy who bought my hot
cocoa one morning at the coffee shop where I’d seen him
ordering his latte, I wasn’t sure how I felt about dating him. But
Trey was persistent, and soon he was buying my drink every
morning, texting me all day, sending a private car to wait outside
the bookshop after work, ready to whisk me his way so he could
wine and dine me.
Which, in retrospect, was a red flag. I’d communicated the
need for time to figure out how I felt. Trey only pursued me more
fervently. And for two months, I let the appealing routine of our
dinners out and conversations, being texted and checked in on,
dull the warning signals blaring in my brain. I reasoned with
myself, we’d turned out okay, hadn’t we? Sure, he’d pursued me a
little aggressively, but most people I knew didn’t need the time
that I did.
Being demisexual, I experience attraction less frequently and
differently than most others seem to. It takes me a while to know
whether I find someone attractive or desire them sexually, if I like
the scent of their skin or the feel of their hand touching mine or
the idea of being physically intimate. Any time I’ve experienced
that kind of desire, it’s come after I’ve bonded with that person,
established connection and familiarity. And that takes time to sort
out.
Trey simply didn’t understand that, and I clearly hadn’t done a
good enough job explaining myself. Or so I thought, back then.
Now I know better—that what I’d told him should have been
enough, that a good partner would have honored my boundaries,
not steamrolled right over them.
Jonathan picked up that I was seeing someone. Trey never
came by the shop, which made me a little sad since Bailey’s is my
pride and joy, but he said he was busy and worked on the other
side of town in finance, that the one morning he’d gotten a coffee
from my local haunt was because of a meeting with clients, but
now I made driving across town for coffee every morning entirely
worth it.
I’d get flowers—and yes, they always made me sneeze—with
sappy poem notes. He texted me and called enough for it to be
obvious there was someone in my life.
But it wasn’t until our summer sale, when I was running
around busily, that Jonathan realized who it was when he saw
Trey’s name come up on my phone.
I’d watched him point at my cell, then pin me with that arctic
glare. “Who’s that?”
“Not that it’s any of your business…” I’d snatched my phone off
the counter. “But it’s the guy I’ve been seeing.”
“That’s who you’re with,” he’d said, his voice hard and dripping
with disdain. “Trey Potter. Son and heir to Potter’s Pages, our
number-one competitor, who’s trying to buy us out.”
I remember my heart thundering in my ears, humiliation
flooding me as the world dropped beneath my feet. Trey had told
me he was related to the Potters but never that he was the owner’s
son, never said anything about a hoped-for buyout. Neither had
the Baileys, who by then confided in Jonathan much more than
me about the financial nuances of the business.
I stood under Jonathan Frost’s disapproving glare, reeling as
the pieces slipped into place—Trey’s questions about the
bookshop, about my relationship to the Baileys, his unwillingness
to show his face here, his request that we keep our relationship
private. Shocked, pride wounded, I lifted my chin defiantly and
used every ounce of willpower not to cry as I gave Jonathan the
silent treatment and stormed right by him.
That night, I confronted Trey and ended things with him. He’d
pleaded with me to believe he loved me, that while he’d been
tasked with “exploring a relationship with me for its strategic
possibilities”—which, after talking with my best friends, I decoded
to mean, “see if I could be romanced over to the Potters’ side and
persuaded to encourage the Baileys to sell”—he’d fallen for me in
the process.
I can’t live without you, he’d said. You can’t leave me. I’ll never get
over you.
Here’s the thing about reading romance: it’s taught me an
appreciation for a good grovel, but it’s also taught me to recognize
a toxic character when I see one. Trey, I realized, had toxic written
all over him.
Since then, I’ve considered setting the record straight with
Jonathan countless times, telling him he’d assumed the worst of
me that day when he had no idea what I did or didn’t know. That
while I hate how he told me, I’m grateful he dropped that bomb.
That because of his brutal honesty, I unearthed Trey’s true
motives, ended things with him, and told the Baileys exactly what
had happened to be sure they knew my loyalty was wholly to them
and this place.
But what stops me every time is this: discussing our personal
lives isn’t done in this battle for the bookshop, let alone
confessing vulnerable feelings. That would require lowering our
guard. In our never-ending battle for the upper hand, that’s a risk
I can’t take.
 In my most charitable moments toward Jonathan—and maybe
they’re also moments where I cared a tiny bit about his good
opinion of me—I’ve hoped he’d put two and two together. That
Jonathan would realize Trey was history, when months went on
and no buyout happened, when my relationship with the Baileys
remained warm and familial and there was no sign of my ex.
Clearly, that’s been too much to expect.
And now I know why. Jonathan Frost has only ever thought the
worst of me. And maybe, deep down, I already knew that. But now
that it’s glaringly obvious, right in my face, the perverse delight I’ll
derive in proving him wrong far outweighs the legitimate
vulnerability of what I’m about to admit. I can’t do it anymore,
can’t take it a second longer, letting him be so damn smug and
sure about exactly the kind of person he’s decided I am.
So, staring up at Jonathan, I tell him, “It’s definitely something
Trey would do. Except he hasn’t been my boyfriend since I broke
up with him six months ago. You were, in fact, the one who
enlightened me, Jonathan, but of course, you assumed I already
knew about the buyout, instead of considering that since you got
here, I’ve been shouldered out of important financial meetings,
and that I had no clue. Thanks to you, I realized Trey was with me
for my influence with the Baileys, hoping he could get me on his
side and persuade them to accept the Potters’ buyout offer.”
The sting of embarrassment over what I’ve just said is
swallowed up by glee as I watch color leech from Jonathan’s face.
His mouth parts. His hand drops from the flowers to the counter
with a stunned thunk. I’ve rendered Jonathan Frost speechless.
 Delighted, I flash him a satisfied smile. “Maybe it’s time to
switch to police procedurals, Mr. Frost. Your sleuthing skills are
slipping.”
On that triumphant note, I pirouette away from the counter
and sweep up my homemade decorations.
Time to make this place a winter wonderland.
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 Chapter 2
Playlist: “Greensleeves,” Mountain Man

EIGHT HOURS LATER, I’m greeted by twin shouts of “Welcome home!”

as I shut the door behind me.
June and Eli, my best friends as well as roommates, are
stationed in their positions when our free evenings line up—Eli
on the sofa, waiting to share a weighted blanket, June, the solitary
ruler on her recliner throne. Throwing a marshmallow at the TV,
June boo-hisses as Michael Cain’s Ebenezer Scrooge walks on
screen. The holiday movie marathon has commenced.
“Food,” I mutter blearily, toeing off my boots. I tear away my
winter gear and leave it behind me in a soggy trail through the
foyer of our apartment.
“Soup’s hot,” Eli says.
“Good. I need to thaw.”
I wander into the kitchen and ladle myself a bowl of Eli’s
glorious chicken soup, fighting a pang of blindsiding melancholy.
June’s unwashed to-go coffee mugs litter the counter beside Eli’s
cookbooks. Eli laughs at the movie as June gives Scrooge a
colorful hand gesture. I shut my eyes and savor the moment,
locking it away in my memories, because I know this roommate
set-up won’t last forever.
 Since college, the three of us have lived together because it
allowed us to save money in an expensive city and afford a nicer
place than we could have otherwise rented on our own. But I
know what’s coming. Soon, Eli and his boyfriend, Luke, will get a
place together; June will finally move closer to the hospital
because she’s tired of the long commute.
And I’ll be solitary Gabriella, with her cat Gingerbread and her
floor-to-ceiling stacks of romance novels. Which isn’t a bad life,
it’s just…I’ll miss them, and I suck at adjusting to change, and the
truth is that while the holidays are my favorite time of year, it’s not
just because I love snow and peppermint-chocolate everything
and sugar cookies and celebratory traditions—it’s the people I
share this time of year with who make it mean everything to me.
It’s our holiday movie marathon and baking my family’s pizzelle
recipe alongside Eli’s sufganiyot. It’s the three of us taking our
annual stroll through the conservatory’s Winter Wonderland
display with boozy cider in our thermoses and June starting a
tipsy snowball fight on our walk home.
What if it’s our last holiday living together?
June catches me lost in my maudlin thoughts and frowns.
“Everything okay?”
“Yep.” I turn away so she can’t see me mope. “How was work,
you two?”
“Busy,” they both answer.
That’s about all I get from them when I ask about work, since
it’s client confidential. June’s an ICU nurse, and Eli’s a children’s
therapist.
“How about you?” June calls as I toast myself a piece of bread.
 “Exhausting,” I tell her, watching the opening of The Muppet
Christmas Carol on the TV. “I dealt with my own Scrooge all day.”
Jonathan was surlier than normal as I decorated the bookshop
and hummed along to my holiday playlist. While I decked the
halls with homemade glittering clay and papier mâché
snowflakes and dreidels, kinaras and Christmas trees, seven-star
piñatas and menorahs and fire and light solstice symbols, I
repeatedly caught him looking at me with that new, brow-
furrowed, cryptic expression. And when it was time for him to
leave—we alternate who stays until seven to close up—he stormed
out without even his usual surly “Goodnight.”
As I return to the living room, Eli whips back the blanket for
me on the sofa. I land with an ungainly flop and just manage not
to splash soup all over us.
“So you dealt with Mr. Scrooge,” he says, “and it’s the first of
December. Meaning you decorated the bookstore today. That’ll
wear anyone out. How you do that by yourself is beyond me. You
should hire some people to help.”
“There’s no money for that, El.”
“That jerk she works with could help her,” June mutters into
her soup.
“Hah.” I snort. “He’d never. Jonathan’s such a grinch.”
Pausing the movie, Eli says diplomatically, “Maybe the holidays
are difficult for him.”
June and I level him with a hard glare.
He lifts his free hand in surrender. “I’m just saying, for all sorts
of valid reasons, not everyone loves the holidays.”
 “What’s not to love? I work hard to include and represent all
the winter holidays, to make sure anyone who visits Bailey’s feels
welcome and seen.”
Eli settles the weighted blanket onto my lap. “And you do that
beautifully. But following your logic, if we truly welcome
everyone’s celebration of the season, that includes welcoming
even those who don’t find it so celebratory.”
I wrinkle my nose. “I don’t like when you make sense.”
“Would you leave your therapist hat in the office and stop
being so compassionate?” June stretches out of her recliner and
yanks the remote from his lap. “It’s going to rub off on me.”
“Yeah, El.” I nudge him playfully with my foot. “Whose side are
you on anyway? May I remind you that working with Jonathan
Frost has shaved years off my life? That I’ve developed acid reflux
since he came to the store?”
“Okay,” June says, “the nurse in me must point out that your
acid reflux would be way better controlled if you weren’t a
certified chocoholic. And if your diet wasn’t ninety percent
tomatoes.”
“I’m half-Italian! These things cannot be helped.”
June plops back into her recliner with the remote on a
contented sigh. “Dietary choices aside, the guy is still a dick, and
he certainly hasn’t helped your GERD.”
“Can I ask something?” Eli says.
“Fine,” I grumble. “But make it quick. I want to watch Muppets
dressed in Victorian clothes and forget about reality.”
“Does Jonathan know you’re on the spectrum?”
I fidget and stir my soup. “No.”
 “But the Baileys do,” he says.
“Yes.”
“Your point?” June asks, leveling him with one of her sharp,
intimidating looks.
“What I’m getting at is, with the Baileys, Gabby, you’re your
authentic self, right?”
I nod.
“And not that I think you need to label yourself with folks to be
your authentic self,” he continues, “but I’m wondering if there’s a
reason the Baileys know and Jonathan doesn’t. Are you your
authentic self with him?”
I avoid Eli’s eyes, staring into my soup as steam wafts off its
surface. “I don’t know. Mostly? I don’t hide my sensory stuff, and I
don’t pretend to be anything other than who I am…”
“But,” Eli says gently.
“But I haven’t explained my social struggles, anything I’d
convey when trying to form a friendship or relationship with
someone, because…well, I had no plans on being friends or
anything else with him.”
“Why not?” Eli asks.
“He’s just always been so…intimidating and arrogant and...”
And you’ve had a chip on your shoulder since the day you met
him, the angel on my shoulder chides, when you saw him as the
human embodiment of every aptitude that makes you feel inadequate.
The devil on my other side says nothing—just maneuvers her
pitchfork, revealing an extendable handle that makes it long
enough to poke the angel off my shoulder and send her into a
screaming freefall.
 I think I’m coming unhinged.
“Gabby?” Eli’s voice snaps me out of my angel-devil dilemma. “I
understand your logic, and you know I’ll always respect your
decision on this. That said, do you see how it might be better
between you two if he knew the things he does that confuse you
and make communication difficult and push your buttons?”
“But then…” I swallow nervously, licking my lips. “But then he’d
know my soft spot. And I wouldn’t know his.”
The devil on my shoulder nods in agreement.
“Or he might follow suit and show you his soft spot, too,” Eli
counters. “And then you’d have shared vulnerability together. You
might even become friends.”
June gives him another sharp look. Some sort of neurotypical
eye conversation happens.
“Hey.” I snap my fingers. “Stop talking around me.”
“Eli reads too many romance novels,” June says.
I frown between them. I read and sell romance novels for a
living and I’m not making the connection. “Huh?”
“I just wonder if he likes you,” Eli says, carefully. “But because
he doesn’t know how you tick, he’s blown it to hell so far in
showing you he cares.”
I stare at him, stunned. A bubble of silence swells in the room
until I burst it with laughter. I laugh so hard, my sides hurt and
there are tears streaming down my face. “Oh God. That’s good.”
Eli’s not laughing. “I’m serious.”
“I’m unimpressed,” June says. “Even if he does ‘like’ her, being
a dick is an ass-backwards, misogynistically regressive way of
showing it.”
 “There’s no chance,” I tell them. “Especially considering that,
up until today, he clearly thought I was still dating the enemy.”
“But you broke up with Trey as soon as you found out who he
really was,” Eli says.
June blinks at me in confusion. “So why did the asshole think
you two were still dating?”
“I wasn’t giving him a relationship report, and while I thought
it was pretty obvious Trey was out of the picture, I guess Jonathan
assumed we were still together and that I’d just become more
discreet about it.”
Eli scooches closer on the sofa. “Okay, but how did he learn
that you broke up?”
I stare longingly at the movie, paused on screen. “Are we ever
going to see a ghost scare the shit out of Michael Cain?”
“After you clear this up,” Eli says.
Sighing, I set down my soup and flop back on the sofa. “Trey
sent a grotesquely expensive holiday bouquet to the shop this
morning with a note that said, and I quote, ‘All I want for
Christmas is you.’”
“Ewww.” June grimaces. “What a creep. How many different
numbers of his have you blocked?”
“Five. Thought I made myself pretty clear. So this bouquet
came,” I tell them, “Jonathan saw the note, and then he gave me
shit about my boyfriend not being considerate enough to order a
low-fragrance bouquet. That’s when I told him I didn’t have a
boyfriend anymore.”
Eli sits back, stroking his jaw. “And how did Jonathan respond
to that?”
 I stretch toward June’s recliner and hit play on the remote in
her hand. “He turned the color of slushy street snow after a long
day of traffic and gaped like a broken nutcracker. It was delightful.”
June’s eyes widen. Eli flashes her a slow, smug smile, but I
hardly notice.
“Now can we please watch The Muppet Christmas Carol?” I ask
them, propping my feet on Eli’s lap. “I need at least one Scrooge in
my life to get what’s coming to him.”

After the movie, I shower, then change into my favorite

snowflake-print pajamas. Hair wrapped in a T-shirt to dry my
curls and humming “Greensleeves,” I waltz into my bedroom.
Gingerbread, my orange tabby cat, snoozes, draped like a starfish
on my bouncy ball chair. I pluck her off before I sit in her place,
then settle her on my lap.
Smiling at the sound and feel of her rumbling purr as she
settles back to sleep, I power on my laptop and bring the screen to
life.
A photo of June, Eli, and me, huddled close, fills the screen. Eli
grins, auburn ringlets falling over his eyes, which are squinted
shut because the man can’t help but blink when his picture is
taken. Glossy chin-length black hair, crinkled nose, wide smile,
June has her arms hooked around our necks, temple to temple
with Eli, smooshing my curls to my head as I kiss her cheek. Snow
dusts our heads like confectioner’s sugar, the conservatory’s
Winter Wonderland display a tapestry of intricate twinkling lights
behind us.
Looking at the photo, I’m overwhelmed with gratitude—for
loving parents who are good people, friends who are the siblings I
never had, a faithful feline pet, a city that feels like home, a job
that I love run by people I love even more. I have so much to be
thankful for. And if my only true burden in this life—even if he is a
very large, surly burden—is Jonathan Frost, I guess I can deal with
that.
“Hey.”
I spin around to face June standing on the threshold of my
room.
“You okay?” she asks. “I know we got a little intense back there
about the work nemesis situation. I’m just protective of you. And
Eli’s a hopeless romantic.”
“I know.” I smile. “I love you both for it. I’m fine. Just tired.”
She nods. “All right. Don’t stay up too late talking to Mr.
Reddit.”
I roll my eyes. “Yes, Mom.”
Eli and June have admitted they don’t quite understand why I
talk daily with someone I’ve never met, whose real name I don’t
know, whose personal life I don’t know much about either, except
that—smallest of worlds—we’ve figured out we live in the same
city.
I could try to explain my relationship with Mr. Reddit, as June
and Eli named him, but I’m protective of how great talking to him
makes me feel. Behind the safety of a screen, I’m my most
sophisticated self—articulate, witty, sharp. Mr. Reddit hasn’t seen
me struggle to read his facial expressions or observed how often I
wear my noise-cancelling headphones or learned how anxious I
get when life veers off my routine. And listen, I love myself for
who I am, every part of me, the parts that fit easily in this world
and the parts that don’t, but it’s a whole other thing to ask
someone else to love me for all of those parts, too.
I don’t show Mr. Reddit those parts that don’t fit so well, and in
doing so, I don’t risk him rejecting them, either.
That’s the truth of why I don’t tell June and Eli more. I know
how they’d see it. Eli would encourage me to embrace
vulnerability. June would say the person who deserves me will be
wild about all of me, otherwise they can fuck the fuck off.
And my friends would be right. But it’s easy for them to say.
They don’t understand what pursuing friendship and romance is
like for me, how being autistic and demisexual means not just the
exposure of myself, like it is for anyone when they meet people
and try to forge a connection, but weighing when and how to trust
someone with the truth of who I am, a truth that’s not always been
met with understanding or acceptance or kindness.
So I’ve kept Mr. Reddit to myself since we met, a little over a
year ago on a bookish Reddit thread that got real heated when a
guy started mansplaining George Orwell’s 1984, and another
someone—that would be me—patiently, logically explained how
wrong he was.
It went south fast. The guy started calling me nasty names.
And then in came What_The_Charles_Dickens like a total
badass, cutting him off at the rhetorical knees. I mean, I didn’t
need a Reddit knight in shining armor, but I wasn’t opposed to
one. And thus began our online bookish friendship.
By unspoken agreement, What_The_Charles_Dickens, aka Mr.
Reddit, and I talk only in the evenings on a chat platform,
Telegram, that requires you to register with your phone number
but allows you to show only your username. Knowing my
propensity to hyper-focus, bordering on obsess, I’ve purposefully
not downloaded the Telegram app on my phone, meaning I can
only chat with him when I’m home on my computer.
Each night, after catching up with June and/or Eli, depending
on their work schedules, then dinner and a shower, I settle in at
my desk, Gingerbread on my lap, and wind down the day talking
with Mr. Reddit. I’m a creature of habit, and he’s become a vital
part of my routine. That’s why when I turn back to the screen and
open up my Telegram desktop chat, my heart sinks. There’s no
new message.
It’s rare that Mr. Reddit doesn’t leave a message for me. Since
we started talking, it’s happened twice, and both times he later
explained he’d been sick and unable to write.
I take a deep breath, try to exhale my disappointment, and
scroll through yesterday evening’s chat between formerly
What_The_Charles_Dickens, who switched his username to Mr.
Reddit since I slipped about it being my roommate’s nickname for
him, and MargaretCATwood, or as Mr. Reddit dubbed me, MCAT,
because I can’t help myself. I start with his message that was
waiting for me when I sat down last night.

MR. REDDIT: Can we talk about how Marianne Dashwood needs some
deep-breathing exercises?
 MCAT: She’s a hopeless romantic. She’s supposed to come across as a little
dramatic.

He’s reading Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility, because I gave

him hell for only having read Pride and Prejudice.

MR. REDDIT: A *little* dramatic? “It is not time or opportunity that is to

determine intimacy; it is disposition alone. Seven years would be insufficient
to make some people acquainted with each other, and seven days are more
than enough for others.” Seriously? Seven days “to determine intimacy”?
With that sage wisdom guiding her romantic life, not gonna lie, I’m guessing
Marianne falls for a jerk.

MCAT: I mean, yes, she falls for a guy who turns out to be a cad. But it’s
not all on her! He sweeps her off her feet and conveniently neglects to tell
her he’s broke and needs to marry an heiress, which Marianne definitely
isn’t. She gets her heart broken, so be nice to her.

MR. REDDIT: SPOILERS!

MCAT: Oh come on, she’s the hopeless romantic in the novel. You knew
Austen was going to crush her soul.

MR. REDDIT: SPOILERS, CATWOOD.

MCAT: I’m sorry!

MR. REDDIT: Sure you are.

MCAT: I am! I didn’t think I was in spoiler territory. I thought it was

obvious.

MR. REDDIT: It’s anything but obvious! I’m reading a romance, expecting
the guy she’s falling for to be a keeper, not a heartbreaker.

Even though I’m rereading it, I gasp again. Gingerbread blinks

up at me sleepily and rolls onto her back. Rubbing her tummy, I
sigh dramatically and shake my head. “Don’t worry, Gingerbread,
I showed him the error of his ways.”
 MCAT: Mr. Reddit. Austen’s stories are often romantic, but they’re not
exactly romances in the modern sense. They’re novels of manners first and
foremost.

MR. REDDIT: Wow. I thought Austen was one of the earliest and most
influential romance novelists.

MCAT: Well her work’s been romanticized by popular culture, made into
movies that emphasize the romantic aspects. And Pride and Prejudice is
absolutely swoony as hell, I can’t argue with that. Her other novels have
some incredibly romantic storylines and moments, too. She’s just…not
necessarily a romance novelist in the full sense of the genre. Much as I
adore Austen, there’s so much more to romance, and I wish more people
knew that.

MR. REDDIT: I wish I’d known, too. Because foolishly I was expecting a
HAPPILY EVER AFTER.

MCAT: Well, at least you know *that* criteria for romance—the HEA.

MR. REDDIT: I know we talk about a lot of different books, but I get the
feeling romance is your favorite genre. Am I right?

MCAT: Definitely. It’s all I can read lately—well, besides buddy-rereading

Austen with you.

Once upon a time I read a variety of fiction, but the past few
months, it’s only been romance. After dueling with Jonathan Bah-
Humbug Frost all day, I need assholes to get their comeuppance
and happy endings only. I also sell a ton of romance at the
bookstore. I’m passionate about getting people to challenge those
uncharitable stereotypes about the genre and give it a try. I was
prepared for Mr. Reddit to display some of those prejudices, too.
But he didn’t.
A smile warms my face as I read his response. Last night, it
made me light up like the family Christmas tree after Dad’s
thrown every single light on that sucker that he can. And tonight,
it makes me glow all over again.

MR. REDDIT: Alright, then CATwood. Tell me what to read.

MCAT: Seriously? You’ll read a romance novel?

MR. REDDIT: I will. Where should I start?

I scroll through the list of recommendations I gave him (I may

or may not have gotten a little carried away and listed my very
favorites in order, but I’m a bookseller—recommending books is
my joy!). When I get to the end of our chat, with Mr. Reddit’s usual
Sleep tight, MCAT, I bite my lip and war with myself. My fingers hover
over the keys, aching to type what I’ve debated writing so many
times the past few months, since my mind started wondering,
What if?
What if my online friendship with Mr. Reddit became a real-
life friendship? And then, what if, one day, it became something
more? That hope—for the possibility of more with him—has crept
up on me gradually since I broke up with Trey.
Knowing how I work, it hasn’t been entirely surprising, after a
year of talking daily with Mr. Reddit and growing so close, that
some nights, when the rare wave of longing washed over me, it’s
been the thought of him that got me off—the warmth that I
imagined filling his voice, the thoughtfulness guiding his every
question and curiosity about my answers.
Each time it happens, I feel a little more ready to ask him: Do
you think we should meet?
But as I stare at my screen, my courage fails me, especially in
light of his silence tonight. What if he only wants to be my friend?
What if I’d ruin this good, safe, comforting connection we have by
asking to explore our potential to become more?
So in the end, I don’t type what I want. I don’t dare risk
confessing what Marianne does—that poor, hopeless romantic:
“If I could but know his heart, everything would become easy.”
OceanofPDF.com
 Chapter 3
Playlist: “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch,” Lindsey
Stirling, Sabrina Carpenter

ON MY WALK to work, I manifest a positive attitude. Today is going to

be better. Even though I tossed and turned, worried about Mr.
Reddit and why he hadn’t messaged, and then, when I turned to a
historical romance audiobook like usual to mellow me out until
sleep kicked in, I had the disturbing experience of reading a book
whose hero was a dead-ringer for Jonathan Frost.
As I listened from the heroine’s perspective, my imagination
refused to conjure anyone but him—this grumpy, no-smiles jerk
of a hero who smelled like wintry-forests Jonathan and sounded
like gruff, surly Jonathan and looked like broad, muscly Jonathan.
Even worse, while still listening to my romance audiobook, I
finally fell asleep. That’s when my dreams took over.
Caught in a weird limbo of a Regency England romance novel
filtering through my headphones and the wicked work of my
subconscious, I was a feisty bluestocking hiding from the crushed
ballroom in her family’s library with a penny dreadful. Jonathan
was the serious, broody, duke whose radically favorable views on
industrialization scandalized the other gentry, even though their
agricultural wealth was fast dying, so he came slinking into that
same library I was hiding in to escape his intransigent
aristocratic peers and find himself a bracing pour of my father’s
finest single-malt whiskey.
But instead he found me. And asked what I was reading.
Which, hello, with me, that’s how you hop in the fast lane on the
expressway to friendship: talk to me about books. One thing led to
another. Banter was bantered. Bluestocking Gabby was playful
rather than pissy. Ducal Jonathan was curious as opposed to
cantankerous. Instead of our dynamic’s real life hostility, we were
combustible.
Off came cravat and corset, petticoats and placket, and then it
was his big, strong body heavy over mine, his stern mouth
whispering filthy things in my ear as he made me writhe and gasp
beneath him. It was so vivid, a fire roaring, soft abandoned clothes
beneath my back, as he filled me, touched me, coaxing me
expertly to pleasure, like he’d mapped every inch of me and knew
exactly how to drive me wild—
A horn blares, wrenching me from my thoughts. I’ve walked
into the middle of oncoming traffic, which has a green light.
“Watch where you’re going!” a cab driver yells.
Thankfully their voice and interspersed honking is muffled by
my noise-cancelling headphone earmuffs. Loud sounds like that
hurt my brain. I lift my hand in apology and hurry across the
street. “Sorry!”
Speeding up, I hustle along the sidewalk. I’m running late
again because I woke up so flustered from my dream, so turned
on I could barely put my clothes on right. Then I walked out the
door without my bag before I realized I hadn’t put on my boots.
I’m a mess.
And I’m having a crisis. Because this isn’t how attraction works
for me—I desire people I feel close to, connected with. Who I like.
I don’t like Jonathan.
But is liking really what you need? the devil on my shoulder
whispers. Or is it closeness? A bond? You are bonded with him, aren’t
you?
More like trapped, the angel on my other side reminds me.
Tangled. Ensnared. These are not good things.
The angel’s right, but the devil’s not wrong either. Jonathan
and I are bonded. Yes, it’s a twisty bond, united in our love of the
bookstore but divided by how to manage it, opposite personalities
who can’t stand each other yet in many ways know each other
inside out, but that doesn’t make it any less of a bond. And, God,
the sheer absurd amount of time we’ve spent together, just the
two of us in the bookshop, bickering and provoking each other.
How many hours did Jonathan say it was? Over two thousand?
That’s a lot. Too much. It’s clearly getting to me, tricking my
body into fantasizing about the last thing I should want from
someone who I cannot stand.
There’s a reason you’re fantasizing about him, the devil whispers.
Don’t you want to figure that out?
The angel tsks primly, shaking her head. She used to fantasize
about Mr. Reddit. That’s who she’s supposed to fantasize about—
“Argh!” I throw up my hands and stomp down the sidewalk. I
don’t have time for these angel-devil debates. I don’t even have
time to get myself a peppermint hot cocoa. Which means my
routine is off, I’m hungry and sugar-deprived, and I’m sorely
lacking in seasonal beverage goodness.
Just as my mood is really heading south, my headphones start
to play a jazzy version of “Sleigh Ride” sung by Ella Fitzgerald (of
course), and I can’t help but smile just a little, the sudden
happiness the music brings reminding me how I started this walk
to work: committed to staying positive. So I pep-talk myself as I
wrap up my walk to the store. Today is going to be better! Work is
going to be great! The bookshop is decorated beautifully for the
holidays; I have a whole month of fun, festive activities to draw
crowds, sell books, and spread cheer. And no traumatically sexual
dream about Jonathan Frost in skin-tight breeches is going to
bring me down.
Opening the door to the bookshop, which is unlocked like it
always is because Jonathan’s always there first, I feel a surge of joy
as I drink in the space.
Polished, glowing wood floors and columns, built-in
bookshelves, every gorgeous beam curved along the vaulted
ceilings. Row after colorful row of book spines filling shelves and
stacked on wood tables, a treasure chest of bookish gems. The gas
fireplace dances with cheery flames beneath the mantel, which I
decorated with oversized jewel-tone ornaments, glittering fake
snow, and soft pine boughs. All across the ceiling hang my
homemade sparkling papier mâché and clay baked decorations
that honor the winter holidays, swirls of white, gold, and silver
ribbon threaded among them and reflecting the morning light
like sunrise mirrored on a frozen pond.
 The sight before me, the comforting smell of books mingling
with fresh-cut evergreens, wraps me in a blanket of festive bliss.
Which is why it hurts all the worse when I’m hit with a one-
two punch of recognition and dread. It’s not Jonathan Frost and
his arctic glare greeting me, reminding me I’m three minutes late.
It’s the Baileys, smiling warmly. The owners. Who are rarely here,
and never first thing in the morning.
“Morning, dear!” Mrs. Bailey calls from the far end of the store.
Mr. Bailey strolls my way on a soft smile and waves me in.
“Come in, Gabby.”
He’s wearing a cheery matching plaid bow tie and suspenders
that coordinate with Mrs. Bailey’s skirt. They’re so precious, it
makes a lump form in my throat. These people matter to me—
their store and this job matter to me. And something’s wrong. I
know it.
Rounding the large central display table, Mrs. Bailey wraps me
in a hug. “Happy holidays, dear! The store looks gorgeous…” She
pulls back, examining me as I try to smile back at her. “What’s the
matter?”
“That’s what I want to know.”
Her smile falters a little. “Oh, Gabby, don’t worry. It’s just a little
business chat. Everything will be fine.”
Mr. Bailey rubs his forehead and mutters to himself, “Just a
little business chat.”
“Relax, George. Don’t get your suspenders in a twist.” Mrs.
Bailey pats him gently on the arm, then turns back to me. “Gabby,
go ahead and get unbundled there, then let’s have a seat around
the table in the back room. Jonathan just called and said he’ll be
here in a minute.”
“He’s expecting you?” My voice comes out a squeak.
Mrs. Bailey settles into a chair at one end of the table and
frowns up at me. “I told Jonathan about the meeting last week
when I stopped by shortly before he closed up. He said he’d pass
along the information to you. Didn’t he?”
Some other bosses might use modern methods of
communication like email or text messaging, or hell, even a call,
but the Baileys are blatant technophobes. They don’t even have
cell phones. I learn things from them in person, or I don’t learn
them at all. Jonathan’s aware of this. It drives him up the wall.
Apparently, not so much that he doesn’t mind using it to his
advantage, though.
Wow. I knew he was a jerk, but this is a new low.
While a tiny part of me is actually relieved I haven’t had this
hanging over my head for a week, seeing as my anxiety thrives in
the soil of unknowns and I’d have spent the past seven days giving
myself an ulcer, applying for unemployment, and pointlessly
rearranging the bookshelves, I’m still overwhelmingly angry.
Because Jonathan doesn’t know that he spared me a week of
anxiety.
He doesn’t know that, ideally, I’d have found out, say, a day in
advance, given myself twenty-four hours to catastrophize and
brace myself for the worst. He wasn’t trying to protect me from my
mind’s talent for obsessive worrying. No, he kept this meeting
from me so he’d have the upper hand. And I’m not letting that
happen. Which means, I’m not telling the Baileys that no,
Jonathan did not apprise me of this meeting, when it would
amount to confessing I’m totally unprepared.
“Ohhhh,” I lie, unwinding my scarf, then shrugging off my coat.
“That meeting. Of course. I just got my days switched around.”
Mrs. Bailey seems to buy it. “Understandable. I get so turned
around this time of year. There’s too much going on!”
Smiling tightly, I glance up at the clock. Jonathan’s now ten
minutes late. He’s never late. “So…where is Jonathan?”
“Here.”
I jump a foot in the air and clutch my chest over my pounding
heart. I try to keep my gaze down, but I can’t seem to stop it from
trailing up his body. My cheeks heat. After that steamy romance-
audiobook-turned-dream last night, I can barely look at him.
Except I kind of can’t stop looking at him.
His dark wavy hair is windblown. His pale green eyes glitter
like frost-kissed pines. A splash of pink warms his sharp
cheekbones, stung by the cold air, and he’s holding a to-go
beverage carrier. Someone so evil should not be this hot. I can’t
believe I had a sex dream about him. I want to bleach the memory
from my brain.
“Gabriella.”
My eyes snap up and meet his. “What?”
He arches an eyebrow. “Could I get by?”
“Oh! Right.” I debate tripping him as payback for the meeting
sabotage but think better of doing that in front of the Baileys.
Instead, I step back and lean against the counter so he can enter
the break room kitchenette, my mind spinning with possibilities
of how I can make him suffer later.
 Jonathan walks past me, the scent of peppermint and
chocolate wafting from one of the cups he’s holding. That asshole.
He got me my drink. He probably put arsenic in it.
My gaze follows him as he sets the hot beverages on the table
and exchanges morning greetings with the Baileys. As Mrs. Bailey
eases each cup from the carrier, Jonathan turns and shrugs off his
coat. The wintry-woods scent of his body hits me, jarring new
memories from my twisted dream last night—strong hands
gripping my waist, flipping me over, lifting my hips until I’m on
my knees. A rough palm sliding up my back, fingers curling
around my hair, smoothing it from my face. Lips trailing down my
spine, my ass, lower, then lower—
I scrunch my eyes shut and grip the counter, steadying myself
against the heat flooding my body.
“All right, Gabriella?” Jonathan’s voice is rougher this morning,
how I imagine it is right when he wakes up.
Not that I’ve imagined that in any great detail—what that body
of his looks like in morning sunlight, winter-white bedsheets
pooled low around his hips. That shape of his severe mouth
softened in a sleepy smile. His bare chest expanding when he
stretches pleasurably and groans awake.
Nope. Never thought about that. Definitely not thinking about
it now that I know what a conniving, sabotaging son of a—
“Gabriella.”
My eyes snap open and meet his, a fresh wave of lust cresting
inside me. This is so unfair. Here I am, about to have A Very
Serious Business Meeting with my bosses and professional
nemesis who I had a white-hot, unresolved (if you know what I’m
saying) dream about. I’m unprepared and flustered and horny,
and here’s Jonathan with hot beverages for everyone, cool as a
fucking cucumber.
I should be repulsed, but instead my breasts are tender and
there’s a deep warm ache between my legs. He should look like a
lump of grumpy coal, with that stern expression, his ink-black
sweater, and charcoal trousers, but instead Jonathan Frost looks
like sex and smoke and a starless night sky.
I hate him for it.
“What do you want?” I hiss.
He tips his head, scanning my face. “I asked if you’re all right.”
Like he cares. It’s all part of his act in front of the Baileys.
I tip my chin and throw back my shoulders. “Why wouldn’t I
be?”
His eyes search mine. I stare right back.
“Ready to start?” Mrs. Bailey calls.
Jonathan blinks, then turns her way. “Absolutely.”
“Yep!” It comes out thin and pinched. I clear my throat,
pressing a cool hand to my cheek as I follow Jonathan to the table.
Just before I can reach for the chair in front of me, Jonathan’s
hand closes around it and drags it out. Clearly another part of his
gentlemanly act for the Baileys. I glare and beam him a telepathic
warning: I see right through you.
Jonathan arches an eyebrow. The corner of his mouth tips in
wry amusement as he beams back a nonchalant Sure you do.
On a huff, I sit. He slides my chair forward. And then he rounds
the table, lowering himself to the seat across from me.
 Mrs. Bailey slides a cup my way. “This should put a smile on
your lovely face, my dear.”
“Ah, great. Thanks.” I pop off the lid, then breathe in. I’m deeply
sensitive to smell, and I know exactly what my perfect peppermint
hot cocoa smells like—double shots of peppermint, two-percent
milk, extra whip, and chocolate drizzle.
This is it.
How does Jonathan know exactly how I drink it? And why
don’t I smell rat poison? Does cyanide have an odor?
For a moment, everything’s quiet. Mr. Bailey sips an
uncomplicated latte. Mrs. Bailey sips hers, too, though her cup
reeks of cinnamon and nutmeg. They both look at me expectantly.
Right. I’ve been given something. Politeness is called for.
Worse, gratitude.
If it’s not the poison in my drink, it’s what I’m about to do that’s
going to kill me, but I swallow my pride, bare a grimacing smile,
and say between clenched teeth, “Thank you, Jonathan, for my
peppermint hot cocoa.”
He lifts the lid on his black coffee, then meets my gaze, arching
an eyebrow as he takes a long, slow drink. His tongue darts out as
he licks a fleck of coffee from his bottom lip. My thighs pin
together beneath the table.
“You’re welcome, Gabriella.”
An electric zing arcs through the air, as if the universe was
about as prepared for a civil exchange between us as it is for
nuclear fusion. Jonathan’s mouth tips, the faintest lift at the
corner, like he’s read my mind and found this moment just as
ironically amusing.
 “So.” Mrs. Bailey wraps her hands around her cup. “Thank you
for gathering. What do you want first—the good news or the bad?”
“Bad,” Jonathan tells her, as I say, “Good.”
Mr. Bailey scrubs his face and sighs.
“Fine,” I mutter, before taking a long swig of perfect
peppermint hot cocoa to console myself. I’m too desperate for
sugar to worry if it’s about to kill me. “Just lower the boom.”
“Take it away, dear,” Mrs. Bailey tells her husband.
Mr. Bailey gives her a disgruntled look, then says, “As we
expected, the arrival of a Potter’s Pages to the neighborhood two
years ago has undeniably led to decreased profits. Their
competitive pricing and massive inventory was bad enough, but
their online store, particularly e-books…it’s become impossible to
compete with.”
Jonathan’s gaze snaps between the Baileys with a kind of laser-
focused intensity that I have no idea what to make of. What am I
missing?
Silence stretches between the four of us, and I take the
moment to examine Jonathan for some clue as to what’s going on.
Hands folded on the table like a boardroom executive, back
straight, ink-black cashmere sweater clinging to his broad
shoulders and chest like it was poured over him, he looks straight
out of those 500-page fantasy romances that I devour, like the
villain who turns out to be the hero. Except this is reality—here,
the villain’s the villain.
“Historically,” Jonathan says, breaking the silence, “Bailey’s
hasn’t tried to compete with a chain bookstore strategy. We’ve
focused on providing a curated, boutique in-person experience
because we have a different target demographic and customer
base than Potter’s Pages. Are you saying…” he glances my way, then
back to them, “that you’d consider altering that approach?”
“I’m open to it,” Mrs. Bailey says carefully, meeting her
husband’s eye. Mr. Bailey nods in agreement. “Bottom line is, we
need more customers and more sales to offset what we’ve lost to
Potter’s. If not, we’ll have to take a long, hard look at the
bookshop’s future and whether we open our doors again after the
new year.”
My world tips sideways. I clutch my cup so hard, I expect hot
cocoa to geyser up to the ceiling.
“We’ll have to get creative,” she continues, “about how we
broaden our reach, and we need record high sales this month.
And, of course, we’ll make some more cuts in expenses.”
Getting creative? That’s my wheelhouse. My mind whirs with
possibilities. A big sale right before we close, live music, holiday
crafts, pastries, hot beverages. Might get a bit messy, but that’s
what all-purpose cleaner is for. Maybe a book club would draw
some new customers? I’m not great at group settings, but if it’s
only once a month and everyone buys the book from us, it could
be worth it.
Of course, just when my ideas are really picking up steam,
Jonathan crushes them like a number-crunching piano fallen
from the sky.
“Due respect,” he says, a deep furrow in his brow, “there are no
expenses left to cut. The past year, I’ve made sure we’re as lean as
possible, trimmed our overhead every place I could. Outside of
management, we’re down to one part-time employee—well, we
were, until he quit, and now it’s just—”
“Us,” I say faintly.
My heart plummets. When it comes to cutting expenses, all
that’s left to cut is…one of us. My worst nightmare just came true.
Mrs. Bailey sighs and sips her spiced latte. “That’s the bad
news. During an already stressful, demanding time of year, we’re
tasking you with even more so the place can stay open for years to
come, Potter’s Pages be damned.”
“And…the good news?” I ask weakly.
“The good news…” Mrs. Bailey smiles between us. “I have every
faith your efforts will be a success.”
OceanofPDF.com
 Chapter 4
Playlist: “Little Jack Frost, Get Lost,” Bing
Crosby & Peggy Lee

“WELL, THAT WAS GRIM,” I say through a smile, waving goodbye to the
Baileys.
Jonathan stands beside me, arms folded across his chest, as we
watch their cab pull out into snowy traffic. He says nothing, but I
see those gears turning in his head. As if he’s sensed me watching
him, his pale green eyes snap my way. He stares at me for a long
minute, softly falling snow and the slushy sound of tires rolling
down the road filling the silence between us, stoic and chilly as
ever.
How can he be so calm right now? Oh, that’s right. He saw this
meeting coming. Unlike me, he hasn’t had the occupational rug
pulled out from underneath him.
Finally free to carry out my revenge, I start with something
that’s guaranteed to piss him off. It has every other time I’ve done
it. Smiling up at Jonathan, I start to hum.
Little Jack Frost, get lost, get lost!
His eyes narrow. His jaw ticks. God, it’s satisfying.
“Too bad you don’t go by Jack,” I tell him, doing a little jazz
square before I repeat the refrain. “I mean come on. Jack Frost?
Does it get any better than that?”
Muttering to himself, he wrenches open the door and herds
me across the threshold.
I don’t like being corralled, but I’m not eager to stand out in
the cold any longer than I have to in only a knee-length rose-pink
sweater dress and no jacket. I dart inside, shivering as the store’s
heat envelops me. Then I turn to face Jonathan as he shuts the
door and locks it, a bitter reminder that I’m stuck here with him
in already strained professional circumstances that just took a
turn for the worse.
“You know what this means,” I tell him. “What the Baileys said.”
Strolling past me, he sweeps up a stack of holiday romances
that I set on the feature table and tucks them under his arm. “It
means this independent bookstore is on the brink of financial
collapse after years hemorrhaging money via outdated business
methods, a deplorably inefficient HVAC system, zero online
presence, and a flagrant disregard for competitive pricing.”
“Well, yeah, but that’s not what I meant.”
He stops and turns, cool wintergreen eyes landing on me.
“Then what did you mean, Gabriella?”
His sharp, condescending tone pops the lid off my pressure-
cooker anger. Fuming, I close the distance between us and wrench
the holiday romances from his grip, backtracking to the feature
table. “Like you don’t know what they were saying when they
talked about cutting expenses. Unless a financial miracle
happens, one of us isn’t making it to the new year.”
Jonathan sweeps up a stack of the wintertime paranormal
thriller that just came out and drops it on the feature table with a
thud, knocking over my holiday romances.
“Of course they’re saying that,” he snaps. “I’ve known that since
I started, Gabriella. I’ve been planning for it since day one.”
I angrily stack up the romances again, setting them in the
front and shoving his winter thriller toward the back. “How nice
for you, Jonathan. Some of us, however, have been too focused on
our daily duties at the bookshop to spend time calculating
professional sabotage.”
“Ah, right,” he says coolly. “Of course. I’m the hard-ass evil
capitalist who came in and cruelly made a business efficient,
while you’re the innocent victim of my ruthless machinations,
who never once wished me gone, whose love of books and whose
gorgeous smiles for dwindling customers was magically going to
keep things afloat.”
My hands turn to fists.
“I’ll admit this much,” he says, his voice cold and deceptively
soft. “I’m cerebral and strategic, Gabriella. I anticipated
everything said in today’s meeting. But spare us both the bullshit
that I’m the only one who’s had a less than forthright agenda
since the day I was hired.”
“Says the guy who kept this meeting from me!”
He shuts his eyes and grits his teeth. He knows he’s busted. “I
meant to tell you. I swear.”
“Oh yeah?” I fold my arms across my chest. “When?”
“Yesterday, but—” He clears his throat. “Yesterday threw me off,
and I forgot. I had every intention of telling you this morning, the
moment you got here. But then the Baileys—for the first time ever
and in the worst timing ever—got here early, and then I got
delayed because that damn coffee shop that makes your fancy
peppermint chocolate milk—”
“Hot cocoa!”
“Same thing! They messed up your order, so I had them make
it again, and when I got here, I was too late. I could see it as you
glared daggers at me. You’d already decided I left you in the dark
on purpose.”
“You’ve known for a week,” I fire back. “Why did you wait until
the last minute?”
He scrubs his face. “I guarantee you, Gabriella, if I explained
myself, you wouldn’t believe me.”
I glare up at him. “Got me all figured out, have you?”
“Like you aren’t just as guilty of that mindset?” He stares down
at me, jaw clenched. “You think you’ve got me all figured out, too.
And you can’t stand me for it.”
“I…resent you,” I admit, hating how my voice wavers.
He arches an eyebrow. “That much is clear.”
“You make me feel inadequate,” I tell him through the lump in
my throat. I blink away tears. “When they hired you, all I could
think was you’re here because I’m not good enough.”
His expression falters. He opens his mouth like he’s going to
say something, but he’s not fast enough. I’m on a roll.
“I’ll admit that I have, at times, been petulant about your
condescending, solitary reign of budget-cutting terror, Mr. Frost,
but I’ve spent enough of my life being looked down on and
dismissed, and I’m not doing that anymore. I have every right to
stick up for myself.”
 He looks stricken now, his eyes darting between mine. He
takes a step closer. I step back and bump into a table of books,
sending a stack cascading to the ground. “Gabriella—”
“I love this place. With my whole heart,” I whisper, the fire
inside me burning brighter. “And we have three and a half weeks
to save it.” Pushing off the table, I step into his space, until I’m
reminded that while I’m tall, Jonathan’s much taller. Our chests
brush. Our eyes meet. “Three and a half weeks until the shop
closes for the year. Barring a financial miracle, expense cuts will
come. One of us will have to leave Bailey’s.”
His eyes search mine for a charged, silent moment. “It’s that
simple?” he says.
“It’s that grim. You heard them. You know the numbers even
better than me.”
“I do.” Jonathan stares down at me, fierce, unblinking. “And I’m
not giving up that easily. I’m not walking away without fighting for
this, Gabriella.”
I glare up at him. “I anticipated that. So here’s how it’ll be
decided. Whoever sells the most books this month, that’s who gets
to stay.”
He’s silent for a long, tense moment. And when he speaks, his
voice is flat and cold. “That’s the only way you can see it.”
“I’ll concede raw book sales isn’t the most comprehensive
measure of managerial competency, but let’s face it, from here on
out, the winner will be leveraging what the other has brought to
the place. Without me, you’d have a bookstore frozen in 1988.
Thanks to years of my influence, you have a beautiful space to
welcome and sell to your customers, brimming with inviting,
personal touches; an accessible, intuitive layout by genre and
subgenre; and an entire calendar year of already-scheduled
events and book signings. Thanks to me.”
“And thanks to me,” he says, “you have an HVAC system that
isn’t singlehandedly melting the polar ice caps, costing a small
nation’s GDP in a utility bill and driving customers away with its
inability to regulate temperature; a data-driven inventory
expansion strategized by key segment customers; oh, and of
course, that minor detail, a payment and bookkeeping system that
belongs in the twenty-first century.”
I sniff. “It wasn’t that bad.”
“The air-conditioning blew a fuse twice a week, the radiators
were a ticking time bomb, our inventory had no basis in
consumer analytics, and that ancient bronze abacus you called an
‘antique’ was both inefficient and the culprit for countless
mischarges.”
I gasp. “Gilda. I miss her.”
“Gilda.” He glances up at the ceiling, as if in a plea to God for
patience. “You were manually entering prices on a Victorian cash
register.”
“A gilded Victorian cash register. Gilda had character!”
“She caused an IRS audit!”
We glower at each other. Our faces are dangerously close. Shit,
he smells good. Like evergreens and winter air and woodsmoke. I
feel an embarrassing rush of heat stain my cheeks.
Jonathan’s gaze travels my face—my chin defiantly tipped up,
my tell-tale flush. His jaw ticks. His brow furrows. Silence
stretches, raw and taut, between us.
 “Well?” I ask, desperate for this to end, for space from him,
because I’m livid and I’m also unspeakably aroused. Everything I
fantasized last night, everything I’m feeling now—his heat, his
scent, the raw energy thrumming between us, makes me want to
wrap my legs around his waist and drag his mouth down to mine
until we hate-kiss so hard, we black out from lack of oxygen.
I shut my eyes, mentally cutting the cord between heavenly
Fantasy Jonathan and his hellish reality. “You’re in my personal
space.”
“You started it,” he points out.
I open my mouth. Then shut it. He’s right, I did. “Fine. Well, I’m
done with personal-space time now.”
He’s a foot away from me in one smooth step. “Better?”
“Much.” I push away from the table and dust myself off. “Now
what do you have to say about my terms, Mr. Frost?”
He folds his arms across his chest and stares down at me. “Just
book sales?”
“Just book sales,” I confirm.
Damn him and that condescending arched eyebrow. “You do
remember some of the best psychological thrillers in recent
memory came out this year or are about to be released.”
“Four words for you, Mr. Frost: children’s books and holiday
romances.”
“Technically, that’s five—”
I stomp my foot. “You know what I mean! Now answer me
already, do you accept these terms or not?”
Tense silence stretches between us, punctured only by the
wall-mounted clock ticking down the minutes left in this
miserable merry-go-round of our professional enmity.
Finally he says, “I accept them.”
“Excellent.” With a disingenuous smile, I slip by him and
return to my half-destroyed display of holiday romances.
“On one condition.”
Grinding my teeth, I glare at him over my shoulder. “What?”
Jonathan leans against one of the polished wood columns that
soars up to the store’s vaulted ceiling and watches me, ankles
crossed, hands in his pockets. “If it turns out the financial future
of the shop isn’t so dire after all, and both of us can stay on after
the new year, we form a truce.”
He pushes off the column, stalking my way until he picks up
one of my favorite Regency Era historical romances from the
table. His fingers drum across the winter-themed cover, then slip
it open to reveal the step-back—a scantily dressed couple
surrounded by snow, wrapped in an epic clinch.
I stare at them, the shirtless man gazing down at the woman
he holds with unbridled longing, his muscular arm clutching her
waist; the woman, leaning in, so pliant, eyes hazy, mouth parted.
They’re a four-and-a-quarter-by-almost-seven-inch ode to
sensuality.
“A truce?” I whisper.
Jonathan nods, letting the book cover drop shut. “We co-
manage…civilly.”
I snort a laugh. My laughter fades as I realize he looks dead
serious. “You think that’s honestly possible?”
“Financially? Not if things stay as they are, but there’s still time
for that to change. Interpersonally?” He fans open the book, this
time deep into the story. I wrap my hand around his and snap it
shut before he cracks the spine. “That remains to be seen.”
He peers down, where my hand clasps his, then back up, a
flash of something I can’t read in those cunning pale eyes beneath
thick, dark lashes. “I thought personal-space time was over,” he
says.
I wrench the book out of his hand. “It was. Until you were
about to damage merchandise.”
“I was going to buy it.”
“The hell you were. It’s a romance.”
He arches an eyebrow. “Ah, of course. You know everything
about me, including all my literary preferences. I don’t read
romance. I couldn’t possibly.”
Shit. Does he?
I glare at Jonathan as he turns back to the table and once again
slides his thrillers toward the front, hating him for making me
doubt myself. “Let me guess,” I tell him, popping a hip and giving
him a skeptical once-over. “Your ‘romance reading’ consists of
Pride and Prejudice, and you think Jane Austen was one of the
earliest and most influential romance novelists.”
He falters for a second, nearly dropping a book as he
straightens his thriller stacks into neat tiny towers. “I know
there’s more to the genre than that,” he mutters.
“Hm.” I glance down at the historical romance he was allegedly
going to buy that I’m now holding. “Maybe you do. This, Mr. Frost,
is at least a proper romance novel. In fact, it’s my all-time
favorite.”
 In uncharacteristic clumsiness, Jonathan fumbles the stack of
thrillers and sends them careening to the floor. His gaze snaps my
way, then to the book in my grasp.
“That’s your favorite?” he says, voice low and tight, pale eyes
boring into me.
“Yes,” I say, stretching out the word. “Why are you being
weird?”
He blinks away, then stares at the shelves full of historical
romances. “What are some others? Your favorites.”
It’s a command. Not a question.
I have no idea why he’s acting like this or why I’m about to
humor him, but the romance lover in me can’t stop herself. I cross
the space and stroll across the built in shelves containing
historical romances, tapping titles like Vanna White on Wheel of
Fortune. “This one. This one. This one. This one.” I slide my
fingertip sensually along the shelf. Jonathan’s swallow echoes
from ten feet behind me. “This one, too.”
I glance over my shoulder. The way Jonathan’s staring at me
is…terrifying.
I’m the gazelle, and he’s the lion. He’s unnaturally still,
unblinking. And it’s freakishly reminiscent of Fantasy Aristocrat
Jonathan who walked in, rocking the hell out of breeches and
Hessian boots, then shut the library door behind him with an
irrevocable, world-changing click.
Is nothing safe from him? Must he shoulder and trample his
way into every corner of my life? I stand, frozen, unnervingly
arrested by the intensity of his gaze, the way he’s looking at me
like he’s seen me right down the marrow of my bones.
 I feel naked.
“Are you done messing with me now?” I whisper.
As if my words have broken a spell, he blinks, and then, like a
big cat stalking through the grass, he closes the distance between
us. “That’s what you think I’m doing. Messing with you,” he says
quietly, eyes searching mine, a new, furious fire in his gaze. “Could
you think any less of me?”
My chin lifts. Every moment he’s snapped and condescended,
arrogantly corrected me and put me in my place, flashes through
my memory. “Why the hell would I think any better?”
Jonathan wraps his hand around mine as I hold the romance
novel, staring me down. “You’re not entirely wrong,” he admits. “I
can be cold and calculating, sometimes sharp and abrupt. But this
is the truth, whether you believe me or not: I care about the
Baileys, this bookshop…everything it’s given me.”
Jonathan plucks the book from my hand, turns, and stalks
away. “Even if,” I hear him mutter to himself, “it’s going to make
me lose my goddamn mind.”

OceanofPDF.com
 Chapter 5
Playlist: “Happy Holidaze,” Dana Williams

TODAY DID NOT, in fact, turn out to be better. I’m not holding out
much hope for tonight, either. After a tense eight hours spent
working alongside Jonathan, busting my ass to sell as many books
as possible, I come home to an empty apartment. Eli has evening
appointments, and June’s on night shift at the hospital.
I toast a piece of sourdough, slather it in butter, and inhale
every bite along with the bowl of tomato soup that I’ve heated up,
acid reflux be damned.
After that, it’s my shower, T-shirt hair wrap, and pajamas
routine. Gingerbread happily settled on my lap, I check my
computer. My heart does a giddy snow angel when I see there’s a
message from Mr. Reddit:
Hey, MCAT. Sorry I was MIA last night. I had a rough day at work and
decided to cool off with some exercise. It ran later than I’d planned, then I
came home and crashed.
I make a sympathetic noise and type, I’m sorry work was rough. But
no worries about not messaging—work was shitty for me, too, so I came home,

zoned out with a Christmas movie, then went to bed.

Where you had an elaborate sex dream about an aristocratic

Jonathan Frost, the devil on my shoulder whispers. A very long,
lurid sex dream.
 The angel on my other side tuts disapprovingly.
Sorry to hear that, he types. Does work get more stressful around the

holidays? If I remember correctly, it’s a busy time of year for you.

My belly swoops. He remembered. It is. I love this time of year, so

it’s fun but also exhausting. Once it’s December, I come home at night and

pretty much collapse until we close for the holidays.

And after we close for the holidays this year, I’ll have outsold
Jonathan Frost and claimed the bookstore for myself again.
Glorious victory will be mine!
I let out a villainous cackle and do a spin on my bouncy chair
that sends Gingerbread leaping off on a disgruntled meow. When
I hear the speakers chime with a new message, I stop my
rotations and face the screen.
Don’t go too hard, all right? I want you around for the long run. Can’t talk

shit on Willoughby all by myself.

My heart swan dives off a snow bank and lands in a pillow of
powdery glee. I smile so hard, my cheeks hurt. And then I
impulsively type something so fucking horrifying, I screech as
soon as I hit send: Maybe some time we could meet up and talk shit on
Willoughby in person.
“No. NO!” I’m about to click delete to unsend the message, but
the read receipt pops up. Oh God. He’s seen it. I screech again and
slide off my chair to the floor, flailing as I yell, “Why? WHY did I
just do that?”
It’s this hellacious day’s fault. First the naughty dream, then
Jonathan bringing me hot cocoa that weirdly wasn’t poisoned, the
dire bookshop business news, our intense showdown after the
Baileys left. My wires are crossed. I’ve finally cracked.
 The speaker chimes again with a new message. Scrambling up
from the floor, I read what he wrote: You really want to meet in person?
You’re not just saying that out of some sad obligation to the guy who’s
messaged you every night since you met online?

Damn good question, Mr. Reddit. Do I want to meet him? Yes.

But I’m also terrified to meet him. Because then he’ll know all of
me. And he could decide that’s not enough or that it’s way too
much.
But I’ll never know if I don’t take the risk, will I? What are we
going to do, Telegram chat for the next sixty years and never leave
the friend zone?
Straightening on my bouncy ball chair, I yank myself closer to
the desk and take a deep breath for courage. My hands are
shaking as I type. I want to meet you. And I don’t feel obligated. Do you?
It says he’s typing. I bite my lip so hard, it bleeds.
MCAT. Not to freak you out, but I’ve wanted to meet you for months.

Obligated is the last word I’d use. I just didn’t want to come off as a creep.
I blink at the screen, stunned. Mr. Reddit,
What_The_Charles_Dickens, has wanted to meet me for months.
Is he…into me? Is this meeting as friends? Potential romantic
partners? Friends with potential for romance?
I squint at the screen, repeating the words, examining them. I
can’t tell. This is why I need Eli and June. They used to tease me
about it in college when we were new friends and navigating the
dating scene, but they’ve since learned I’m truly clueless when
someone is romantically interested in me. Maybe it’s because
attraction doesn’t work that way for me or maybe it’s because I
don’t easily perceive people’s intent and social cues. If someone
smiles warmly and talks to me, I assume they’re friendly and have
something they think I’ll enjoy talking with them about. That’s it.
June and Eli have to clue me in when someone’s putting on the
moves.
I’d give anything for their insight right now, but neither of
them are here, and even if they were, I’m not sure I’d be ready to
confess how invested I am in Mr. Reddit and meeting him in
person.
It’s moments like this that I wish I’d met him yesterday.
Months ago. And I’m about to propose we rip off the Band Aid and
meet ASAP…but then I think about what a risk meeting up will be.
It could be great. It could be disastrous. And if it’s a disaster, I’m
going to be crushed.
I can’t chance that right now. Not with what’s going on at work.
I need to put all my energy into kickass sales, securing my job,
and saving Bailey’s Bookshop.
With a big mopey frown on my face, I type, So, please believe me. I
really do want to meet, and I wish we could meet soon, but I think it’ll be best

to wait until I’m on holiday break. Is that okay?

Of course, he writes. It’s best for me as well.

Work intense for you, too? I type.
It’s…complex. It’s a bit of an uphill battle right now. I work for people who I

think the world of but who are deeply resistant to a plan I’ve drawn up to fully

modernize their sales approach. I’ve spent nearly a year building this out. I
have a solid rationale and the numbers to back it up. It will save their business.

But they’re wary of it.

I’m a little surprised he’s been so forthcoming about work,

since we don’t generally share personal details, but I’m not
complaining. It’s…sort of lovely, hearing more about him, learning
how he’s navigating this professional challenge.
Technophobic traditionalists? I venture, smiling as I think of the

Baileys.
Unfortunately, he writes back. I know why they want to keep things the
way they are, what they’re afraid of losing if they embrace my idea, but they’re

going to fold in the first quarter, otherwise. They don’t stand a chance without

this.

I sigh sadly, thinking of the bookshop and Mrs. Bailey’s

warning that we might not open our doors after New Year’s. Do you
think they’ll listen?

I hope so. Not just because it’s sound business, but because I care about
the people there and what they believe in. They’re very different from me, all

heart and nostalgia and being a part of the neighborhood. When I started off

working on this plan, I saw it as a business challenge, a puzzle to solve. But

somewhere along the way, it changed—I wanted to fight to save the place for

them, because they mattered to me. And then I realized I’d started fighting to

save it for me, because it mattered to me, too.

My heart squeezes. I type, It sounds like you really love them—where

you work and who you work with.

You see it that way? his response chimes immediately. As love?

I do. Just because you’re loving them differently than they love doesn’t
make it any less loving. My mom says there are countless kinds of love, and

love enough for everyone. That love is an infinite resource whose expressions

are just as innumerable.

He doesn’t respond for a minute. Then, Very few people would

recognize how I operate as love.

Thus, I type, your deep connection with Fitzwilliam Darcy.

 LOL. Except without the “wet shirt after diving in the lake” to redeem me.

I laugh. That’s only in the movie anyway! Darcy’s more than lovable as he

is in the book, at least by the end, and that’s the point of a good character arc—
he grows. He learns to admit his mistakes, as does Lizzie. Two people, who

couldn’t have hated each other more at the outset while battling inconvenient

desire, ultimately choose humility and forgiveness.

he writes. It’s like you love Austen or something, MCAT.

Beautifully said,
I smile, self-consciousness heating my cheeks. I mean, she’s the
quintessential voice of romance.

Am I ever going to live that down?!

I’m just teasing you. Merciless teasing has become a reflex for me. A skill

I’ve developed at my job.

Sounds like a highly professional environment, he writes. What are your

coworkers like?
I only have one. And he’s just as bad as me.

How so? he writes.

I hesitate, because generally we keep away from personal
specifics, but he opened up about his work, and this tension with
Jonathan is painfully bottled up inside me. Even if I twist the cork
just a little, release the tiniest bit of pressure, I think I’ll feel
better. We’re not friendly the rest of the year, but December is our worst
month. He can’t stand the holidays. I adore them. It takes our antagonism to a

whole new level.

There’s no response for a minute. Then he finally writes, Have I

ruined my chances if I admit I’m not very festive myself?

I breathe out slowly, weathering my first disappointment as

the daydreams that I’ve indulged—Mr. Reddit and me window
shopping, admiring the Winter Wonderland show at the
conservatory as snow falls around us, skating at the downtown
rink, hand in hand—dissolve. But he has every right not to be
festive. Like Eli said, for some people, the holidays just don’t feel
celebratory, and that’s valid.
He said that so you’d consider showing Jonathan some
compassion, the angel on my shoulder reminds me. How’s that
going for you?
The devil on my other side reaches for the extendable handle
of her pitchfork while the angel’s wings pop out this time,
prepared for an attack and ready for flight.
Have I ruined my chances? I mull over those words. Do they
mean what I think they mean?
I force myself to be brave and type, Of course not. Though, what kind
of “chances” are you talking about?

There’s a pause for a moment, then he’s typing.

I want to be your friend, MCAT, not just online but in person—that goes

without saying. And when I talk to you, all I can think is I want a hell of a lot
more, too, but I’ve tried to stop myself from going there. There are a hundred

things you might not like about me in real life. I haven’t wanted to get my

hopes up. I’m still afraid to.

I’ve been thinking that way, too, I admit, relieved that he’s felt how I
have. Worried you won’t like me once you see how different the real me can be
from the online version.

The chat’s silent, no typing alerts, no cheery chimes. He’s

thinking. We both are.
So…this might sound extreme, he types, maybe a bit harsh, but hear me

out—what if we stop talking until we meet? Give ourselves some time to reset
our expectations, to separate the people we’ve been behind these screens from

the people we’ll meet in real life?

My stomach drops. I think about how much I’ll miss talking to

him, how empty my evenings will feel. But, as I mull it over, what
he says makes a lot of sense. If we take time away from each other,
it’ll be a fresh start. A chance to meet each other with a blank
slate. And I can use this time to focus solely on work and kicking
Jonathan Frost’s ass at sales. As much as it bums me out, I think
Mr. Reddit’s on to something.
I think that’s smart, I type. Pulling Gingerbread tight into my
arms to console myself, I earn her sleepy, half-awake meow. It’ll be

weird not talking.

It will, he writes. I’ll miss it.
Me, too. But it’ll be worth it in the end. Like Marianne’s heartbreak.

SPOILERS, CATWOOD!

I snort a laugh, happy for a reason to smile rather than feel

sad.
Another message from him pops up on a chime. I’ll message soon
with some ideas about where to meet and when, and you can tell me what
sounds good. Does that work?

That’s perfect, I type.

Good. Take care of yourself, MCAT. And sleep well.

Spoiler alert: I don’t sleep well at all.

OceanofPDF.com
 Chapter 6
Playlist: “Winter Wonderland,” She & Him

I FEEL LIKEthe walking dead. I’ve barely slept in a week. Because

every night, I’m scared to pick up a romance novel—audio or
otherwise—to read myself to sleep and risk another erotic
aristocrat dream starring Jonathan Frost. And then I lay in bed,
staring at the ceiling for hours, because when I deviate from my
bedtime routine, my sleep is shit.
Too bad. I can’t cave. No romance novels by night, no salacious
duke and bluestocking fantasies starring Jonathan Frost and
yours truly. Not only because I don’t want to fantasize about
Jonathan Frost, but because it’s not smart to, either, when I’m
doing everything I can to take that sucker down as well as
counting down the days until I meet Mr. Reddit, the man who used
to star in my dreams, until Jonathan Jerkface Frost shouldered
his way in like a pushy, decadently sexual, cunnilingus-obsessed
lover who—
Stop it, brain! Stop!
I’m losing it. I’m sleep-deprived and suffering, missing Mr.
Reddit, and furious with Mr. Frost. I’ve spent the first week of our
bargain busting my butt at work while running on fumes, and I
don’t even have the most sales to show for it.
 Jonathan was right, that thriller flew off the shelves. And not
just that title—he’s been selling all kinds of slashers like hotcakes.
So much for holiday cheer. Who buys violent novels portraying
the worst human impulses in the time of year dedicated to peace
on earth and goodwill toward all?
I can’t dwell on it or I get really angry.
I have to focus on the positive. Yes, I’m behind on sleep and on
sales, and no, I did not see such an ass-whooping coming this past
week, but this suffering won’t last forever. One exhausting week
down, only two more to go. And today I have Eli, who’s going to get
me back on track with my sales.
“Have I told you you’re a lifesaver, Elijah?”
“A time or twenty,” he says, shouldering open the coffee shop
door and holding it for me. We shiver as we step outside,
clutching our hot to-go cups against the frigid outside air. “And
I’m inclined to agree with you, considering I already came in and
read Hanukkah books just a few weeks ago. Speaking of, you’ve
been thin on the details about story time today. What’s the plan?”
I sip my hot cocoa and avoid his eyes. “Oh, a little bit of this. A
little bit of that…”
Eli slows to a stop on the sidewalk. “Gabriella Sofia Di Natale,
what have you done?”
“I might have advertised that our guest reader is a well-loved
local child therapist, and that his book, Color My Feelings, was a
featured title today in the bookstore, and that perhaps, possibly,
he’d sign purchased copies, and sugar cookies are involved—don’t
worry I have baby wipes, but that’s why I made you bring a change
of clothes, just in case—I’m sorry, I know I’m the worst friend
ever.” I gasp for air after spewing that in one long guilt-soaked
exhale.
Eli stares at me. “You’re foisting on me not only sugared-up
children, but parents who think I’m a walking free therapeutic
consult on my day off.”
“I promise Jonathan will kick out anyone who’s a jerk. After I
make them apologize and buy three copies of your book. Zero
tolerance for assholery.”
Eli glares at me.
I stick out my bottom lip and give him big sad puppy eyes. “I’m
sorry, okay? I’m desperate.”
Sighing, he hooks arms with me and resumes our walk down
the sidewalk. “I forgive you, but only if you return the favor.”
“Anything,” I tell him, foolishly.
He smiles at me, batting long auburn eyelashes, “Come with
me to Luke’s hockey game tonight.”
“Tonight?” I whine. “It’ll be so late. And so cold.”
“You love the cold.”
“I love the snow,” I correct him.
Eli lifts an eyebrow. “Did you forget the part where you sold me
out to boost your sales, then promised to make it up to me?”
“Uh. Maybe?”
“Gabby. I need moral support. Luke’s been so bummed that I
can never make any of his games, but I’ve been secretly relieved
work gets in the way, because I don’t know anything about hockey.
I need you to teach me the basics so I don’t make an ass of myself.”
“El, he doesn’t expect you to do a post-game breakdown.”
 “I know, but I want him to feel like he can talk to me about it
and I’ll understand why it was a good game or it wasn’t, why he
played well or struggled. I want to get it.”
I wiggle my eyebrows as we stop outside the bookshop. “Wow.
This is serious. Elijah Goldberg wants to learn a sport for his
boyfriend.”
“Exactly,” he says, opening the door, then gently shoving me
past it. “So come with me tonight and you’re forgiven for
everything I’m about to endure. I’ll drive. You’ll DJ a sick holiday
playlist for the ride. I’ll buy you hot cocoa with extra
marshmallows. You’ll explain the game to me. It’s a plan.”
“If I can stay awake through the game,” I grumble.
“Like that would matter,” he says. “You could explain it in your
sleep.”
“You try having a dad who’s in the Hockey Hall of Fame and see
if you come out unscathed. I mutter Stanley Cup stats when I’m in
REM. Do you understand how disturbing that is?”
“Woah—” Eli wraps his hand around my arm, bringing us to a
stop. “Is that him?”
I glance toward the back of the store, where Jonathan stands,
facing away and restocking a fresh batch of mysteries he sold out
of yesterday. Except this time, he’s placing them on the shelves
right at eye level.
“That motherfucker,” I hiss, storming toward him and
dragging Eli with me. “He moved my small-town Alaskan
romance!”
“So that is him,” Eli whispers. “Holy shit, Gabby.”
“Shut up. Don’t even say it.”
 “He’s so hot.”
I throw Eli a death glare. “What would Luke say?”
“Luke would say I have eyeballs. I said he’s hot, not that I want
to bang him.”
“Good. Because I’ll be doing the banging—of his head into a
wall,” I mutter.
Hearing us, Jonathan glances over his shoulder, eyes
narrowing at Eli before they snap back my way. “Miss Di Natale.”
“You moved my romances.”
He arches a dark eyebrow. “It’s fine. I’ll introduce myself.”
Extending a hand toward Eli, he says, “Jonathan Frost.”
“Elijah Goldberg.” Eli smiles up at Jonathan, a definite twinkle
in his eye. I step on his toe, making him wince. “Damn, Gabby.”
“Ah, so she’s this angelic with everyone,” Jonathan says.
Eli laughs. I scowl. Jonathan smirks. If I had magical powers,
I’d send the garland-strewn candelabra overhead crashing down
on him.
“So, Gabriella,” Jonathan says, “I didn’t know this was Bring
Your Friend to Work Day.”
“It isn’t. It’s Bring Your Roommate-the-pediatric-therapist-
and-published-children’s-author-for-a-story-time-and-
marathon-book-signing Day,” I tell him on a wide, triumphant
smile.
“Roommate,” Jonathan repeats. His jaw does that aggravated
ticking thing. He’s white-knuckling the mysteries he clutches in
both hands.
Eli wraps an arm around my waist and smiles over at me.
“We’re best friends, too. Since she was a lowly freshman who
made a pass at my fine senior ass.”
“Did not! Saying I couldn’t find the library was not a pickup
line!”
Eli grins. “I like my version better.” He turns back to Jonathan.
“I showed her where the library was, we hit it off, and since her
sophomore year, we’ve lived together.”
Jonathan blinks. “Lived together. You. Her.”
“With June, too,” Eli says blithely, “who was two years below me,
one above Gabby. June and I had a pre-rec together, then June hit
it off with Gabby when I introduced them while we were studying
at the library. I’m the glue who made the three of us roommates,
when they were still in undergrad and I stuck around for my
master’s.”
Something shifts in Jonathan’s expression. “Ah. I see.”
Eli tips his head. “This probably sounds weird, but…you look
familiar.”
Jonathan stares at him for a minute. “Yeah, come to think of it,
you do, too.”
“No kids, right?”
“God, no,” Jonathan says. “Not yet, at least.”
I try and fail utterly to picture Jonathan possessing a single
affectionate bone in his body. “You know children need things like
warmth and smiles and conversation that exceeds bone-dry
sarcasm, right, Frost?”
Jonathan gives me a withering glare.
“Maybe we go to the same gym?” Eli says warmly, trying to
smooth things over.
 Jonathan glances his way. “Yeah, maybe that’s it. I’m a member
at the place down on…”
Leaving those two to their irritating little bonding session, I
extract myself from Eli’s grip and head for the break room to hang
up my coat. Their conversation continues without me, and by the
time I come back, they look thick as thieves, unwrapping the
holiday cookie plates that I ordered for story time since I was too
exhausted to bake, bonding over sugar’s detrimental effect on the
body.
I clear my throat loudly. Their eyes meet mine.
Tapping my wristwatch, I arch one eyebrow, a perfect imitation
of Jonathan. His mouth quirks at the corner before he covers it
with his hand and clears his throat. “It’s like looking in a mirror,”
he says.
I stick out my tongue.
“Now that I don’t do.”
Ignoring Jonathan, I turn toward my former-best-friend-
turned-traitor and tell him, “Thirty minutes until showtime,
Elijah.”
My phone starts buzzing in my dress pocket as Eli and
Jonathan go back to chitchatting. In fact, I realize belatedly it’s
been buzzing for a while. Extracting it, I feel my shoulders lift
toward my neck. Another message from a number I don’t
recognize. But I know who it is.
Did you get the flowers?
I want to talk.
Please, Gabby. It’s been six months. Can’t you give me another
chance?
 “What is it?” Eli says, watching me white-knuckle my phone.
I shake my head, blocking the number, then slipping my
phone back into my dress. “Nothing. Now you’ll excuse me. I need
a word with Mr. Frost.”
Marching past Jonathan, I flick a finger toward the back room.
Jonathan grumbles something under his breath, then follows me.
When I reach the archway leading to the kitchenette, I stop
and spin, facing him. His eyes snap up from my ass. He has the
grace to look a little abashed, and there’s a blush darkening his
cheeks.
“You done?” I ask.
His eyes dart away. “I didn’t mean—” He clears his throat,
tugging at his collar. “You have tinsel on your…”
“Ah.” I feel behind me and there it is, a nice strip of silver tinsel
clinging to my butt. I yank it off and clear my throat, too. “Right.
Well. Back to business. I need your help with story time and the
book signing afterward.”
He arches an eyebrow and leans a shoulder against the
archway, arms across his chest. “My help for an event that’s going
to disproportionately boost your sales.” He clucks his tongue. “No
dice, Di Natale.”
“Jonathan.” I step closer, lowering my voice. “Please. I need
someone to keep the mob in check. Parents can be entitled
shitheads.”
He leans in and says, “I know. Which is why I don’t bother with
them.”
A growl rolls out of me. “I promised Eli you’d make sure
anyone who’s out of line gets the boot.”
 “And that’s my fault?” Jonathan glances down and extracts his
phone from his pocket as it makes a repeated ding.
“Jonathan, can’t that wait?”
“You’re quite the hypocrite, Gabriella, given you just checked
your phone a moment ago.” He frowns at his screen, wiping his
forehead with his free hand. I notice his face is damp, like he’s
sweating. His hand is shaking a little.
For just a moment, my empathy wins out over my annoyance.
“Are you okay?”
“Fine,” he snaps, pocketing his phone, then strolling past me
toward his coat hook.
I gape as I spin and follow his path. “We were in the middle of
a conversation.”
“Conversation’s over.” He unhooks his messenger bag, which
holds the laptop he’s always tapping on whenever customers
aren’t around. It has a screen shield so I can’t see shit. Trust me,
I’ve tried. Bag on his shoulder, he storms into the bookkeeping
room and shuts the door behind him with a thud.
Stunned, I clench my teeth and stare up at the ceiling. Irony of
ironies, we were standing under mistletoe.
“Gabriella!” Eli calls.
“What?” I hustle back to the main room and the sight of Eli,
snowflake-shaped cookie in hand, seated in the wingback chair I
positioned right by the gas fireplace, a giant pile of Color Your
Feelings beside him.
“Sweet Lord,” he says, equal parts horror and reverence as he
takes in how many copies await his signature. “That’s a lot.”
 Smiling, I offer him a handful of thin black Sharpies. “Get
ready to autograph, Mr. Goldberg.”
He glances out the storefront window at the growing line
outside and mutters, “I hope they go into triple overtime tonight.”
“Knowing my luck, Eli, they will.”

Despite my grumbling about this late-night hockey game, I can’t

help but smile as we enter and get our first glimpse of the rink. I
love the atmosphere—the scrape and shoosh of blades on ice, the
cold, dry air filling my lungs.
A wave of happiness washes over me as I lift my phone, snap a
photo, then send it to my parents.

ME: Why does every hockey rink have that same magical feel?

My phone buzzes immediately.

MOM: The feeling of freezing your ass off while breathing in the smell of
sweaty bodies and ripe hockey gear?

DAD: You mean the feeling of being pleasantly chilled while admiring
gorgeous specimens of perspiring athletic glory?

DAD: Your mother just snorted at that. I’m offended.

MOM: I’ll make it up to you later.

I shudder. They’re 100 percent sitting on opposite ends of the

couch, playing footsie while they do this.
 ME: Stop flirting in the family text. It’s gross.

MOM: I’m done, promise.

DAD: Who’s playing, kiddo?

ME: Eli’s boyfriend. He’s in the local competitive league.

DAD: Those guys are pretty skilled. Should be fun to watch. What made
you want to go?

ME: Eli. He did me a solid for work so I’m returning the favor with a hockey
tutorial.

Eli takes me by the elbow when we start to ascend the stands,

while I focus on wrapping up with my parents. Just as he guides
us to our seats, I pocket my phone. “Sorry, got caught in the family
chat.”
“You’re fine.” Sitting beside me, he scours the rink and smiles
when he spots Luke. His smile becomes a grimace when Luke
checks a guy into the boards. “I can’t believe your dad did this.
He’s the biggest teddy bear, and hockey is such a…”
“Brutal game?” I shrug. “Yeah, it is.”
My dad, Nicholas Sokolov, is one of the greatest forwards to
ever play the game. On the rink, he was always pure, fiery hunger;
but off, he is and always has been the gentlest person I know.
When I first started watching him play, it was a shock to see that
scrappy man out on the ice.
Eli’s gaze tracks Luke as he says, “I suppose I shouldn’t be
surprised. Luke’s a teddy bear, too, and look at him.” Luke throws
his shoulder into the other team’s offense and wins the puck, then
skates toward the bench.
“Wait, why is Luke leaving already?” Eli asks.
“His shift is over.”
 “He was on the ice for sixty seconds!”
“Less than that. More like forty-five. It doesn’t sound like a long
time, but it’s tough. Hockey’s an anaerobic sport—you go as hard
as you can the whole time you’re on the ice, switch, catch your
breath, hydrate, then go back out there.”
“So he’s not being penalized,” Eli says.
“Nope. He’s doing exactly what he’s supposed to.”
Eli beams. “Good.”
Answering more of Eli’s questions, I explain icing and offsides
and why some hits are deemed fair and others aren’t. As the
players switch again, I notice the tallest guy of the bunch swing
his long legs over the boards, then shoot across the ice like he was
born to be there. A zing of awareness bolts down my spine.
Goosebumps dance over my skin.
There’s something familiar about him.
“That guy’s fast,” Eli says. “Number 12.”
I nod dazedly, trying to ignore my pounding heart as I tug back
on my headphones. I can feel a goal coming, and soon the horn
announcing it will blare at a volume my brain can’t handle.
My eyes track Number 12, riveted, curiosity clawing at me.
Who is he?
It’s difficult to get a sense of a player’s body when they’re in
their pads and gear, but there’s something so familiar about the
breadth of his shoulders, the long line of his legs, a lick of dark
hair curling up at the bottom of his helmet.
I stare at him as if simply looking long enough will solve the
riddle. I know him. I swear I do.
 For the next thirty seconds, Number 12 is all I think about, all I
see, lithe and lightning-fast on the ice, leading his side’s offensive
momentum, backtracking when his teammate loses the puck and
the other team’s defense sends it to their forwards. He’s there in a
flash, gaining possession, exploding in a fresh burst of speed
across the ice. Bearing down on the goalie, he fakes a slapshot,
cuts past the crease, then cheekily backhands it into the net, right
over the goalie’s shoulder.
The light blazes red, and my headphones dull the roaring
blare of the horn to a faint hum. Eli cheers, smiling as he pats my
thigh in his excitement.
Number 12 isn’t a hot-dogger. He simply lifts his chin to
acknowledge his teammates who swarm him. I don’t see his smile
behind that mouthguard, if he smiles at all. The crush of players
block my view, slapping his helmet and hugging him.
But I do see his eyes. Because they drift right up the stands and
land on me.
Wintergreen. Arctic cold.
I gasp.
“What?” Eli says, turning toward me. “What is it?”
Holy shit. Number 12 is Jonathan Frost.
OceanofPDF.com
 Chapter 7
Playlist: “Santa Baby,” Haley Reinhart

I shoot up from my seat.

“I HAVE TO GO.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I drove you.” Eli clasps my hand and tugs
me back down. I land with a flop. “What’s going on?”
“Th-th-that’s—” I gesticulate wildly toward the ice, where
Jonathan’s still staring up at me, a familiar frustrated notch in his
brow that I can feel even from this distance. “That’s Jonathan.”
“Jonathan who—ohhhhh.” Eli glances back toward the ice and
squints. “Wow, it is him! I knew he looked familiar. That must be
why. Maybe he’s a friend of Lukey’s.” Eli waves.
I slap his hand down. “Do not wave at him. He’s the enemy.
Nemesis. Antagonist. Provocateur.”
“Okay, Thesaurus.com, relax. You’re not at work. Think you can
set that aside right now? He’s on Luke’s team, and we want Luke to
win!”
I gape at Eli as he wedges his hot tea between his thighs, then
sets two fingers in his mouth and whistles loudly. “Woohoo!”
“This is the worst,” I mutter into my hot chocolate.
“Might as well make the best of it,” he says. “Because you
definitely owe me this whole game.”
“Elllliiiii,” I whine.
 He glances over at me sharply. “Two hours, Gabriella. I signed
books and read stories and held kids with sticky, sugar-cookie
fingers on my lap like freaking Santa Claus for two hours today.”
And Jonathan never showed his face, never helped. He stayed
holed up in the bookkeeping room, doing whatever covert shit he
does on his laptop, and left me to the whim of my own devices,
damn him. Thankfully, the parents were on their best behavior.
“Fair point,” I tell Eli. “But if I have to see Jonathan when this
game is over, don’t ask me to be nice.”
Eli rolls his eyes, turning back to the game. “And you call him
Scrooge.”

Begrudgingly, I have to admit the game is fun to watch, just like

Dad promised. At least, it’s fun, until Jonathan turns into the MVP.
After his first goal, the opposition ties it up right before the
first period ends. In the second period, Eli’s boyfriend, Luke, who’s
a defensemen, has an incredible breakaway with Jonathan and an
assist for Jonathan’s second goal. Then in the third period, the
other team ties it up, but with two minutes to spare, Jonathan
scores once more, which not only wins the game but makes for a
hat trick.
He’s going to be insufferable at work tomorrow.
I try hard not to pout like a five-year-old as we wait for Luke
after the game, but I’m struggling. Eli drove us, so I’m stuck until
he’s ready to go—a plan I was fine with before I knew I’d be
bumping into Jonathan Frost.
I really don’t know if I can take seeing him like this, after
kicking ass at my favorite sport, sweaty and showered and glowing
with pride, high on adrenaline and arrogant as hell.
In fact, I know I can’t.
The first of the players exits their locker room, and my heart
springboards from my chest to my throat. Spinning, I start for the
lobby doors. “I’m going to wait in the car.”
“You’ll need my keys,” Eli says, a little too pleased with himself.
“Seeing as it’s locked.”
I freeze, pivot, then freeze again. Shit. I’m too late.
Because strolling out of the locker room, shoulder to shoulder
with Luke, is Jonathan. His dark hair’s wet and wavier than
normal, a thick lock out of its normal tidy order brushing his
forehead. He glances up and air whooshes out of my lungs. His
cheeks are pink from exertion, and there’s a fiery glint in his pale
green eyes.
My legs wobble a little.
Eli grabs my elbow. “You okay?”
“Uh.”
“A certain someone isn’t making you weak at the knees, is he?”
Eli says out of the side of his mouth. I elbow him so hard, he
wheezes, “You need anger management classes.”
“I know. It’s his fault.” So many things are Jonathan’s fault. The
relentless heartburn I’ve developed in the past year, the ache in
my knuckles from my hands forming fists all day, the deplorable
dream that’s sabotaged my sleep. And now, he’s responsible for
every drop of liquid heat flooding my veins, pooling low and
aching-sweet between my legs.
It’s as if my libido—sometimes extinguished, other times a
faint, quiet flame coaxed to life in the air of connection—is now a
consuming wildfire, devouring every moment we’re together,
burning hotter and brighter. I can’t stand it.
Clearing my throat, I try to look dignified as I meet his eyes.
“Jonathan.”
“Gabriella.” His mouth tips up at the corner, a satisfied near-
grin that makes my stomach flip-flop. “An unexpected surprise.
This is a little much, though, don’t you think—following me to my
game? If you wanted to see me outside of work, a simple text
would have sufficed.”
“Ha-ha.” I set a hand on my stomach and tell it to stop doing
backflips as I jerk my head toward Eli giving Luke a
congratulatory kiss. “I was brought here against my will.”
Jonathan’s gaze dances over me. “Like what you saw?”
I roll my eyes. “You know your performance was impressive.”
His eyebrows lift. A blush blooms on his already flushed
cheeks. “Wow.”
“Don’t—” I point a finger at him. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
He lifts both hands innocently. “I just said ‘wow.’”
“I’m so glad you came,” Luke tells Eli.
“Me too.” Eli smiles up at him. “You were amazing.”
“Not as amazing as this guy,” Luke says, shoving Jonathan’s
shoulder playfully. Jonathan doesn’t budge. “He stepped it up
tonight. Putting on a show for someone, big guy?”
 For the first time, I see someone else earn that arctic glare. “I
played like I always play.”
“Uh-huh.” Turning my way, Luke offers me a fist to pound.
“Gabby. Thanks for coming.”
I glance away from Jonathan and smile up at Luke, who is
absurdly good looking. Dark skin, amber eyes, the kind of bone
structure that June covets and recreates with her daily contouring
makeup routine. “You did good, kid,” I tell him.
Luke flashes me a wide, bright smile. “Well, coming from you,
that’s something.”
“What’s that mean?” Jonathan says, glancing between us.
“Nothing.” I give Luke a look. I don’t throw around who my dad
is. People are fanatical about him. It’s a big part of why I go by my
mom’s maiden name. Sokolov is a fairly common Russian last
name, but in the States, and especially this hockey-obsessed town
where Dad spent the last five years of his career before retiring,
people immediately associate “Sokolov” with him.
Luke mouths sorry, then turns to Jonathan. “I forgot to make
introductions. My bad! Gabby, this is my good friend, Jonny. Jonny,
this is Gabby. She’s—”
“I know Gabriella,” Jonathan says, and there’s an odd edge to
his voice. “What I didn’t know was that Eli, your boyfriend, is
Elijah, her roommate.”
“Or that Luke’s friend, Jonny,” Eli says, “is Jonathan, her
coworker.” The four of us glance between each other.
“Wow,” Luke says. “This is weird. So, wait—oh shit.” His eyes
widen as he looks from me to Jonathan. “So she’s—”
 Luke doesn’t get to finish that sentence because Jonathan
drops his gear bag, hockey stick and all, right on Luke’s foot,
making him swear foully just as a group of kids walks by.
“Come on, man,” a player from their team calls, hands over
both sides of his kid’s head. “Little ears.”
“Sorry,” Luke mutters their way, hopping on one foot before he
says to Jonathan, “What the hell?”
Jonathan bends over, hikes up his gear bag again, then says
without any remorse, “Oops.”
Luke glares at Jonathan. Jonathan glares at Luke. Another
neurotypical eye conversation flies right over my head.
“Well,” Eli says, smiling brightly at everyone. “What a small
world!”
Glancing away from Jonathan, Luke says to us, “Ready to grab
some food?”
I deflate. It’s ten at night, and even with my day off yesterday,
after a week of shit sleep, I’m deliriously tired. I don’t want to go
out to eat. I want to go to bed. But I know Eli’s dying to be with
Luke. They’re both busy professionals and don’t see each other
nearly as much as they’d like. He’s been counting on this time.
“I’m wiped,” I admit. “Maybe you could drop me off at home on
your way?”
Eli bites his lip. “Luke wanted to hit the diner right down the
road here.”
“They have the best grilled cheese,” Luke says. “Oh, and
milkshakes. Just the thing for your sweet tooth.”
“Gabriella doesn’t like milkshakes,” Jonathan tells him, eyes on
me. “Just peppermint chocolate milk.”
 “Peppermint hot cocoa,” I remind him.
“Semantics,” Jonathan says, coming damn close to a proper
smile. “It’s definitely not milkshakes.”
It’s familiar territory, going back and forth like this, except
there’s none of the usual bite in our words. It feels lived in,
almost…friendly.
“I hate to say it,” I tell Luke and Eli, though my eyes oddly
refuse to leave Jonathan. “He’s right. I don’t like milkshakes. The
texture is not my thing. But I can still hang in there and come—”
“I’ll take you home,” Jonathan says.
Luke hesitates then asks, “You sure?”
Eli glances between us. “We don’t want to inconvenience
anyone—”
“It’s fine,” I announce, my eyes locked with Jonathan’s.
This is fine. It’s no big deal. In fact, it’s an excellent opportunity
to prove that this raging libido nonsense is just that—nonsense.
I’m going to ride in Jonathan Frost’s car for thirty minutes back to
the city, not melt into a horny puddle, and show us both how cool
as a cucumber I can be.
“There you have it,” Jonathan tells them. He sets a hand low on
my back, guiding me in front of him. I suck in a breath because,
holy shit, does that feel good—the heat of his touch seeping
through my coat. I lean into it just a little, like a cat curling up to
an affectionate hand. This is not boding well for the cool-as-a-
cucumber plan.
We’re hurtling past Luke and Eli.
“Uh, bye?” I glance over my shoulder and see the two of them,
all smiles, looking annoyingly pleased. “They’re such menaces,” I
mutter.
“Tell me about it.” Reaching past me and opening the lobby
door for us, Jonathan points his fob at a sturdy, unpretentious
black SUV that beeps twice obediently as he unlocks it.
When I get closer, I realize it’s not one of those low crossover
cars masquerading as an SUV. It’s a proper truck chassis, high up
and formidable. “Yeesh, it’s big.” As soon as it’s out of my mouth, I
realize how that sounds. I glance at Jonathan. “I swear I did not
mean for that to come out like innuendo.”
“Never even considered it.” Except Jonathan’s almost smiling
again, eyes down on the ground as he clears his throat.
Then he opens my door and offers me a hand. I stare at it in
confusion. He doesn’t like that.
“Christ, Gabby. I didn’t spit on my palm. It’s just a hand up.”
I’ve never heard him say my name, not the name everyone else
uses. I’m not sure how I feel about the fact that my skin’s
humming and my cheeks are warm, and the sound of my name on
his lips echoes in the snowy silence. Gabby.
Our eyes hold.
My fingertips inch closer to his outstretched hand.
I don’t know why I’m doing it. I don’t know how to stop.
“Why?” I ask softly.
Snow drifts from the sky, dusting Jonathan’s dark hair and his
midnight-black windbreaker. His throat works in a swallow, then
he says, “Because I want to.”
It’s hardly an answer, but apparently it’s answer enough for
me. Because somehow I find my fingertips brushing his, sliding
over calluses and rough skin, until our palms connect.
 Air seeps from my lungs. His grip is warm and solid as he
leverages me up, and just when I’m telling myself that no, this
isn’t some Darcy-hoists-Elizabeth-into-her-carriage-and-the-
world-tips-on-its-axis moment, his thumb brushes the back of my
hand. Apparently there’s a nerve expressway between that spot
and every erogenous zone in my body, because I drop like a rag
doll onto my seat, a drumbeat of longing thudding through my
limbs.
If Jonathan feels anything close to what I just did, he doesn’t
show it. His face is unreadable, his features smooth as he shuts
my door.
What was that about not melting into a horny puddle? The little
devil on my shoulder cackles as she traces a flame in the air with
her pitchfork. You are so lusting over him.
The angel on my other side gives the devil a prim, reproachful
look. She’s supposed to be lusting after Mr. Reddit.
Seething, I stare ahead at the swirling snow outside the car. I
hate that both angel and devil are right. I hate that I want to be
keyed up for Mr. Reddit and instead it’s Jonathan Frost who’s
turned me into a hot, lusty mess while he’s as cool and calm as
ever.
But as I watch him round the car, his long, broad body
wrapped in a swirl of fast-falling snow, his hand flexes, then balls
into a brutal fist.
Maybe someone’s not so unaffected, after all.
Smug with satisfaction, I wet my thumb and index finger, then
pinch out the flame blazing in the air, because if he’s lusting as
bad as I am, that makes it…neutral. Or something.
 The tiny devil on my shoulder scowls. The angel beams in
approval.
Jonathan wrenches open his door, then slides in. Frowning, he
opens his phone, then taps an app icon I can’t see. So I crane my
neck a little. “Stop snooping, Gabriella.”
I glance away, red-cheeked and embarrassed. “You were
practically flashing it my way.”
“I was not.”
“Was too.”
“Were too,” he corrects.
“Argh!” I throw up my hands, then reach for the door handle.
“I’m walking home.”
The car doors’ locks click. Slowly, I turn and face him. “This is
how I die, isn’t it?”
Jonathan scrubs his face before his hands drop to his lap. He
turns his head and stares at me. “Gabriella.”
“Jonathan.”
“Please don’t threaten to walk home in the snow. Or joke about
me killing you.” He reaches in the center console and flips open a
tiny door, revealing a small stash of…candy?
“Who are you?” I ask as I watch him efficiently unwrap two
mini peanut butter cups, then pop them in his mouth.
“Jonathan Frost, co-manager that you love to hate. I thought we
covered this.” Chewing briskly, he pushes the button to start his
car.
“You have candy in your vehicle.” A shiver wracks me. My teeth
start to chatter. “You eat s-sugar? And enjoy it?”
“I’m a man of many mysteries, Gabriella. Help yourself.”
 I peer toward the console. There’s… “M-mint chocolate M&Ms?”
My teeth clack so hard, I barely get the words out.
“All yours.” He turns on my seat warmer, then cranks up the
heat and points all the vents my way.
My belly does a disconcerting swoop. He noticed that I’m cold.
He’s making sure I’m warm. “You don’t like them?”
“Not a bit,” he says. “Mint chocolate is foul.”
“Then why do you have mint chocolate M&Ms?”
Jonathan drops back in his seat again and rakes a hand
through his hair, tugging hard, jaw working until he finally says,
“Because I saw them at the grocery store after work today and
thought of you and bought them. Because I was an ass this
morning, and I regret that, and I bought apology candy, and then I
realized how ridiculous that was, when I’m starting to think there
aren’t enough M&Ms in the world to make things better between
us.”
I’m nothing short of stunned by this admission.
There’s a thick beat of silence. I stare down at the M&Ms.
Jonathan stares out at the snow.
Finally, he breaks the stillness, reaching for a stainless-steel
canteen in his cup holder, drinking from it in two long gulps that
make his Adam’s apple bob and infuriatingly make me think
about dragging my tongue up his throat. Then he checks his
phone again. After reading whatever it says, he seems satisfied. He
throws the car in reverse and starts to back out.
I’m still in shock. “So…you bought these…because of me?
Because you felt bad about this morning?”
 Jonathan stops the vehicle with a jolt halfway out of the
parking space, then turns and faces me. Suddenly this big SUV
feels very small. “Is it that unbelievable?”
“Uh…Well…” I lick my lips. This feels like a test. One that I’m
definitely going to fail.
“It’s not,” he tells me, because apparently I said that out loud.
“And you can’t fail it. You just answer the question.”
I stare at him curiously, the strong lines of his nose and
cheekbones. His striking pale eyes glowing in the faint light.
There’s this…pull, deep inside me, begging me to climb over the
console, straddle his lap, and kiss him until I taste bittersweet
chocolate and winter air, until I breathe in the warmth of his skin,
hot and clean from exercise followed by a quick scrub with soap
that makes him smell like a long, snowy walk in a forest of
evergreens.
And I don’t understand that. I don’t understand why it feels
like something’s dragging me, inch by inch, toward Jonathan
Frost. It shouldn’t be happening. Not when, in just a few weeks, I’ll
meet the guy I truly care about, and this Mr. Freeze mutant I work
with will be out of my life for good.
What is wrong with me?
“Hell if I know,” I mutter, answering both Jonathan’s quandary
and mine. Soothing the pain of my existential crisis, I open the
mint chocolate M&Ms and dump half the bag down my throat.
Jonathan sighs as he resumes pulling out of the parking space.
“So much sugar, Gabriella.”
“Hush up, you,” I tell him. “You bought them for me. Out of…
remorse, which, wow, that sounds weird.”
 His grip on the steering wheel tightens. His jaw tics,
emphasizing the hollow in his cheeks and the promise of a
dimple, if he ever smiled. It’s shadowed with dark, dense stubble,
and just looking at it, I can feel its sandpaper scruff abrading my
thighs. My mind runs with that, imagining hot, wet kisses from
that stern mouth wetting my skin, trailing higher, higher, until—
“I mean it,” Jonathan says, wrenching me from my lusty
thoughts. “I’m sorry. I know…I know I get short sometimes and I
make abrupt exits.” He pauses, as if searching for what to say next.
“It has nothing to do with you, but it affects you. And…I’m sorry.”
I stare at him, the M&Ms lowering to my lap. It’s weird,
experiencing an ounce of contrition from Jonathan Frost, hearing
him own his less-endearing qualities and apologize for them,
but…I believe him. So, shifting slightly in my seat to see him
better, I tell him, “I…forgive you.”
Eyes on the road, he says, “That sounded painful.”
“Saying ‘I forgive you’?” I laugh faintly. “It kinda was. We’ve
been hostile for so long, I don’t really know how to speak to you
otherwise.”
Jonathan’s silent, his brow furrowed. He looks worried.
For a moment, I have the oddest impulse to slip my fingers
soothingly through his hair, to trace my thumb along that divot
notched in his forehead and smooth it away. “I shouldn’t have
cornered you about story time this morning and tried to guilt you
into it. I’m…sorry, too.”
“It’s all right.” He clears his throat. “And for the record, the
CCTV footage streams to the bookkeeping room. I had my eye on
things; if it had gotten out of hand, I would have been there
immediately.”
I stare at him, confused, as if a veil’s been lifted, revealing a
person I barely recognize but who’s also strangely familiar, like
looking at a face and knowing I’ve seen it before, nagging at the
back of my brain.
“So—” he clears his throat. “What was with the weird moment
with Luke? When you told him he’d played well? And he said that’s
high praise, coming from you. Do you play hockey or something?”
“Oh…” My instinct is severely to guard this part of my life, but I
suppose if Jonathan’s capable of an apology, I can be capable of a
smidge of trust. “My dad’s Nicholas Sokolov. Needless to say, I
know the game pretty well.”
Jonathan throws me a shocked double take before refocusing
on the road. “That’s not funny.”
“It’s not a joke.”
He blinks slowly, stunned. “Explain yourself.”
“Well, he and my mom met and fell in love, then they made a
baby Gabby—”
“Gabriella,” he warns.
I snort a laugh. “All right, I’ll be serious. My dad wants a quiet
life. All three of us do. We keep a low profile so we don’t have to
deal with the crowds. And I go by my mom’s family name, Di
Natale. It makes things easier.”
Jonathan shakes his head slowly. “Holy shit.”
Honestly, he’s taking it better than most people do. He didn’t
swerve the car. He doesn’t look about to faint. And he hasn’t asked
me for an autograph.
 “That’s why he never visits work,” I explain. “Well, that’s not
true, I’ve brought in my parents after closing to show off the place,
but not when we’re open, because people can be so intense and
they swarm you and ask for autographs and they just—”
“Ruin it,” Jonathan says quietly. “Your ability to have an
ordinary life with him.”
I peer up at him. “Yeah.”
He nods. “I’m sure he’s very protective of that. And you. I would
be.”
“He is,” I whisper.
“Well…” Jonathan clears his throat, eyes fixed on the road.
“Your secret’s safe with me.”
I fiddle with the M&Ms bag, unsettled by how relieved I am
that he knows the truth, how sure I am that I can trust his word.
“Thanks, Jonathan. I appreciate that.”
Quiet stretches between us until it’s taut and dense. It’s almost
unbearable.
Until Jonathan tells Siri to play “Holiday Radio” with a note of
command in his voice that’s downright pornographic.
Now that’s unbearable.
I gape at him. He glances my way, then does a double take.
“What?”
“I’ve never heard your voice sound like that.”
He arches an eyebrow. “Like what?”
“Very stern and bossy.” I crisscross my legs against the ache
that’s nearly painful now. “Like…bedroom bossy.”
He gives me a disbelieving side-glance. “I told Siri to play a
music station, Gabriella, not get on her knees.”
 I choke on a fresh mouthful of M&Ms.
Jonathan stares at the road, battling a smile and barely
holding his ground. “You have a filthy mind.”
“Me? You’re the one who just said—”
“Hush, you,” he says, throwing my words back at me. “And enjoy
this assault on the ears that I’m putting up with for your sake.”
I snort a laugh. But my laugh fades as the song fills the car, the
words hot and thick with meaning:
I’ll wait up for you, dear. Santa baby, so hurry down the chimney
tonight.
Jonathan clears his throat and rolls his shoulders, like his
clothes feel too tight. I squirm in my seat, then crack the window.
My cheeks burn.
“Hot?” he asks.
God, am I ever.
“A bit,” I tell him.
Brow knit, Jonathan turns the dial down on the heat, then
cracks his window, too. This horny song helps nothing. We’re both
flushed, eyes pinned on the road. I can hear each deep breath he
takes, feel every thundering beat of his heart.
Maybe that’s how I sound, too.
Panicking, I set my hands on my lap and discreetly play the
song’s chord progression, like my thighs are piano keys. It’s a
soothing movement that always calms me.
And while I settle myself, I walk through, step-by-step, what’s
happened since I got in this car. I am increasingly turned on and
disoriented. The world feels like that Shel Silverstein poem,
“Backward Bill”—upside down and unrecognizable.
 Jonathan voluntarily drove me home. He bought mint
chocolate M&Ms for me because he’s sorry for how he acted this
morning. He’s playing holiday music for my enjoyment, even
though he hates it. Either he has another personality he’s been
hiding for twelve months, or he’s up to something.
I turn in my seat, facing him again. “Why are you being nice to
me?”
His gaze remains fastened on the road, which is covered in
snow. After a long, tense pause, he says, “I’m going to answer your
question with a question.”
“I don’t like that.”
“Too bad,” he says, before a deep inhale. Then he exhales, thin
and slow. “Why do you think I’m being nice to you?”
“Because you have a strategy. Some new angle for taking me
down at work.”
“And if I told you anything other than that, would you believe
me?”
After a year of relentless mutual antagonism, the answer is out
of my mouth before I consciously think it. “No, I wouldn’t.”
But for the first time since the day we met and chilly Jonathan
Frost tipped my snow-globe world on its head, I wonder if maybe
—just maybe—I’m wrong.
OceanofPDF.com
 Chapter 8
Playlist: “Mille Cherubini in Coro,” Andrew Bird

OVER HOLIDAY MUSIC and my stealthy lap piano playing, Jonathan

and I bicker the remainder of our way back to the city,
disagreeing on which is the most direct route to my apartment
that also avoids the worst traffic, right up until Jonathan smoothly
parallel parks in front of my building. Because that’s how life rolls
for Jonathan Frost, even though I can count on my hand in the
two years I’ve lived here how many times I’ve gotten a spot within
even a block of my apartment.
I glare at him. “Seriously? Right in front of my place?”
He gives me a self-satisfied arch of one eyebrow, a wry almost-
grin. “I have the world’s best luck with parking.”
“Of course you do,” I mutter darkly.
Wrenching the car into park, Jonathan turns off the ignition,
then stares at me, his throat working in a rough swallow. “I read
that romance novel I bought at Bailey’s.”
I peer up at him, surprised, and…intrigued. “Oh?”
He nods. “It was good. It’s not Austen, but—”
“Stop it.” I playfully punch his rock-hard thigh, feeling a weird
sense of déjà vu. “Stop baiting me!”
 His mouth tips, so close to a smile, before it dissolves, leaving
only silence and a thick, heavy charge in the air. Jonathan’s jaw
works. His eyes search mine. “They’re very different,” he says. “The
love interests.”
I nod. “Opposites, basically.”
“But…” His gaze slips down to my mouth. “That ends up really
working for them. It’s the heartbeat of their connection, being
drawn to each other’s differences, stretching themselves to
narrow that distance between each other without losing
themselves. They…grow. Together. And more deeply into their true
selves.”
My heart’s pounding, slamming against my ribs. Goddamn
him for saying it so perfectly.
“Forced proximity also helps,” I say, quieter, almost a whisper.
“Being stuck in a carriage for days in a row, an inn with only one
room and—”
“Only one bed,” he says, his throat working with a fresh
swallow. “I read about that. That’s a popular trope. I can see why.”
“Of course you read up on romance tropes.”
“I read up on the whole damn genre.” His fingers drum on the
steering wheel. “I don’t do things half-assed, Gabriella.”
“No…” I search his face. “No, you don’t.”
Jonathan’s hand flexes around the steering wheel. His jaw
ticks. And then, suddenly, he throws open his door.
I blink, snapped out of a daze. Then I realize what he’s about to
do. Dammit. He’s going to open my door next and be chivalrous
again. I can’t handle that, considering one hand clasp got me so
worked up, I’ve been squirming in my seat the whole ride home.
 I scramble for the handle, desperate to beat him to it, but he’s
already there, opening my door, then once again offering me his
hand. I glance down at the mound of snow at my feet that I need
to hurdle. Begrudgingly I take his hand and try to ignore the
electric heat that jolts through me, radiating from where our
hands are clasped to the tips of my toes.
Hopping over the snowbank, I land in the powdery softness
with a thud, then peer up at the sky and Mother Nature’s sugar
dust drifting down on us. I hold out my tongue and smile.
Snow brings out the child in me. The wonder. I will never not
love it.
A thick, cold flake lands on my tongue. I hum in pleasure, then
slowly open my eyes. Jonathan’s staring at me intently.
“What is it?”
“Your capacity for joy,” he says quietly. “It’s…humbling.”
A compliment from Jonathan Frost. And not just any
compliment—one that makes the heart of me feel seen and
glowing, like candlelight spilling from a window on a dark, cold
night.
My vision blurs with the threat of tears. My throat is thick. “You
don’t think it’s silly?”
He shakes his head. “No.”
“Odd? Strange? Juvenile?” I whisper. Just a sampling of the
things I’ve been called when my happiness spilled over around
those who found it to be “too much.”
Taking a slow step closer, boots crunching in the snow, he
holds my eyes. “No, Gabriella. I don’t think it’s silly or odd or
strange or juvenile to hold on with both hands to the best parts of
who we are when we’re young and not let life take that from you. I
think it’s brave and badass and infuriatingly impossible not to
admire you for it.”
His knuckles brush my cheek, and my eyes begin to drift shut.
It feels so overwhelmingly right, when all I can think is this is so
absolutely wrong.
This makes no sense. Jonathan Frost isn’t affectionate or
tender. He doesn’t read the shit out of a romance novel that I love
or look at me with need burning in his eyes. He doesn’t hold my
hand or keep me warm or stare at me like everything he wants in
the world is right in front of him.
And yet here he is—large rough hands gently cupping my face,
close and calm and intent, his eyes on my mouth. I need to kiss you,
his gaze says. So badly.
I stare up at him as his thumbs circle the dimples of my
cheeks, as heat pours off his body, so close to mine that our thighs
brush, our chests meet as we both draw in a deep breath. I feel
this tug toward him in the pit of my belly, and dangerously higher
up, where my heart thrashes against a tightening knot of
something I’m too scared to even begin to analyze.
I have never understood something less—how much I want
Jonathan, how deeply I ache for him. But maybe that’s exactly why
this needs to happen, to dispel the tension, to break the twisted
bond of enmity that’s braided us together the past twelve months.
Maybe a kiss is all we need. And then I’ll be free of this torture.
As I hold his gaze, he sees what I’m telling him: I need it, too.
My palms drift up his chest on a faint swoosh across the fabric.
Jonathan peers down at me, dark lashes lowered over
wintergreen eyes, that mouth that’s so often tight and stern now
lush and parted.
“I shouldn’t do this,” he says roughly, so quietly, I almost don’t
hear him. “Not yet.”
I don’t understand what he’s saying, but I’m beyond sense,
beyond thought. All I want is to be released from the torment that
is wanting him, that’s sunk its teeth into me, and make it let go.
I’m going to kiss it right out of my system. It has to work.
Jonathan bends closer despite his words, as I press up on my
toes, and finally our mouths brush, gently, then deep. I breathe
him in, and it’s pure exhilaration, like a gulp of bracing air while
rushing down a snowy mountain. He tastes like rich chocolate
and cool water and—Sweet Jesus—his tongue flicks mine and my
knees give out. I throw my arms around his neck, thread my
fingers through the thick, silky strands of his hair as his arms
wrap around me until we’re crushed together, chest to chest,
hearts pounding.
Tipping his head, Jonathan deepens our kiss until it’s hot and
slick, a desperate dance that beats to the rhythm of yes and more
and don’t stop. His fingers sink into my coat, and he drags our hips
together. I gasp, feeling him thick and halfway hard already, snug
against where I’m aching and wet beneath my clothes. Our
breathing’s harsh and ragged, between each feverish, devouring
slide and stroke of lips and tongue. I press myself against him.
Our bodies rock together.
Jonathan’s hands tighten around my waist and slide up my
back, tangling in my hair as he kisses me so deeply, it’s like our
mouths are making love. I’m frenzied, wild, sucking his tongue,
and he groans, rough and low in his throat, like there’s no sweeter
agony than this. A helpless moan leaves me, too. I sound
devastated. Because I am.
Why is this the best kiss of my life? Why did it have to be him?
“It’s too good,” I whisper through the knot in my throat, the
ache in my heart, even as I kiss him again and again. “It wasn’t
supposed to be this good.”
“It wasn’t, huh?” he says softly against my lips. “Of course
you’re roasting me. Even while we kiss.”
Kiss. The word echoes in the snowy silence as reality hits me
like a frigid slap of winter wind. I wrench myself away, shaky
fingers brushing my lips. Oh my God. I kissed Jonathan Frost.
More than once. In fact, many times. Passionately.
Jonathan looks at me like a haze has cleared for him, too. Like
he’s just processed what he’s done, and can’t believe he did it.
Before either of us can speak—though what the hell could we even
say?—I stagger backward, hurrying up the steps to my building’s
entrance. But for some inexplicable reason, as I reach the top, I
turn back and face him.
Jonathan stares up at me, still breathing roughly.
I’m still breathing like that too, like there’s not enough air, like
the only air I want is each jagged breath stolen between kisses
that unravel and tangle us together.
What an absolute disaster.
Frantic, I rush inside, then sprint upstairs to our second-floor
apartment. Shutting the door, I slump against it and sink to the
floor.
“What the fuck?” I whisper into the silence.
 From where I sit, I can see straight down the hall to my
bedroom and my desk, the laptop perched on its surface. I think
of Mr. Reddit, and my stomach sinks. He’s the one who I’ve been
waiting for, the one I was supposed to kiss someday as snow fell
from the sky.
No, we’re not together, but we both more or less admitted we
hoped for it, once we met and got to know each other in person.
How did I lose sight of that? How did I let Jonathan’s sultry wintry
scent and his romance-novel spiel and his cozy car and his cache
of mint chocolate M&Ms sway me so easily?
Sickening fear washes over me. What if I’ve waded into
dangerously familiar territory with Jonathan?
I’ve been seduced for ulterior motives before, and while Trey
was as different personality-wise from Jonathan as day from night
—all sunshine charm and flirtation, compared to my cold, surly
coworker—their aims are much too similar, aren’t they?
Trey’s ultimate goal was for his family’s business to own
Bailey’s Bookshop, and in an attempt to secure that, he took
advantage of my trust, my romanticism, my belief in the best of
people. Jonathan wants the bookshop for himself, too, and he’s
proven himself ambitiously strategic and calculating. I’m not sure
how this seductive campaign, this nice-guy routine and kissing
me breathless, plays into his scheme, but what reason do I have to
believe it’s anything other than just that—a scheme?
Whatever Jonathan’s motive for exploiting this sexual
attraction that I can’t deny any more than I can deny the curls on
my head or the color of my eyes, I have to stop this. Right now. Not
one more moment mulling over the longing in his gaze, that sexy
almost-smile as he walked out of the locker room and saw me
there. No more thinking about my perfect peppermint hot cocoa
or his mint chocolate candy stash, or his appreciation for
romance or his heartfelt apology…
Or those kisses. God, those kisses.
Then again…maybe every sweet, sensual thing that man
squeezed into one small hour is exactly what I should be thinking
about. Maybe it’s time to use Jonathan Frost’s weapons against
him.
Stumbling upright, I run to my room and wrench open my
closet door to search for the dress to beat all dresses. I unearth it,
then hang it on the closet door, inspecting it with a tilt of my head.
Gingerbread takes one look at the dress, then lets out a long
meow.
“Agreed, Ginge. It’s pretty va-va-voom for work, but you know
what they say: desperate times call for desperate measures.”
If Jonathan Frost thinks he’s going to Lothario me right out of
a job, he’s got another thing coming.
I pump myself up as I steam-press the wrinkles out of every
crimson panel of my dress and pick out the perfect pair of
superbly festive earrings. I remember the fire in Jonathan’s eyes
as he told me, I’m not walking away without fighting for this,
Gabriella.
I loathe myself for falling prey to his nice-guy act in the car.
I loathe myself for kissing him as much as he kissed me, for
letting him hold me to his body, fierce and hot and hard, when
he’s not supposed to be the one I want.
 I loathe that as I watch snow falling outside my window, all I
see is snowflakes crowning his dark hair, and when I lick my lips,
all I taste is that first intoxicating brush of his mouth and mine.
Flopping onto the bed, red dress pressed and waiting like a
suit of armor, poised for battle tomorrow, I wrap Gingerbread in
my arms and bury my face in her velvet-soft fur. She meows,
peering up at me inquisitively.
“What’s my plan, you ask?” I kiss her perfect pink nose. “I’m
going to work tomorrow, and I’m bringing Jonathan Frost to his
knees.”

I caved last night and listened to my romance audiobook because

I was desperately under-slept and I needed to be rested for my
plan of attack. Unfortunately that led to another erotic
aristocrats-in-the-library dream that put its predecessor to
shame.
I cannot think about it.
Not without blushing head to toe and remembering every
place Fantasy Jonathan’s hands and mouth were last night.
Which is why, as I power down the sidewalk toward the
bookshop, I’m doing everything I can to distract myself. Mentally
checking off my to-do list for the rest of the week, I have holiday
tunes blasting in my headphones, and I’m relying entirely on my
vision to ensure I’m not taken out by a car like a spare bowling
pin. This means my headphones block out not only traffic noise
but also the sound of approaching footsteps, leaving me fully
unprepared when a hand wraps around my elbow.
I let out an instinctive shriek and drop my peppermint hot
cocoa to the pavement as self-defense kicks in. I’m about to grab
their wrist and, like Mom taught me, tug forward, then twist, but
they let go of my arm before I can.
Just as I’m spinning around to throw the heel of my hand into
their nose, the familiar scent of overpowering cologne wafts
through the air and jogs my memory. “Trey!”
Blond hair, short on the sides, longer on top. Wide sky-blue
eyes. He looks like a Ken doll who’s been surprised.
Panting, I rip off my headphones and face him. “What the hell,
Trey? You scared me!”
He opens his mouth to answer me, but it’s not his voice I hear.
It’s Jonathan’s.
“Gabby!” Holy shit. It’s his Siri-get-on-your-knees voice.
Commanding and deep and thunderously loud.
I’m speechless as I glance past Trey’s shoulder, watching
Jonathan sprint closer and closer.
Trey seems to sense he has very little time. “Gabby, listen to
me,” he says. “Bailey’s days are numbered. Come work with me.
Bring that small-store charm to Potter’s. Independent bookstores
are dying, almost extinct. All that’s left is to bring what you love
about them to the chain store experience.”
I recoil from that. “That’s not what I want. I want to save
Bailey’s.”
“You can’t,” he argues, stepping toward me. “Don’t be naïve.
Your idealism isn’t going to save—”
 Thankfully, Trey doesn’t get to finish that dismissive thought.
It’s cut off abruptly as Jonathan restrains him in one smooth
motion, pinning him against the nearby building.
He could have body checked and brutalized him, but
Jonathan’s controlled, leaving Trey undamaged, only stunned, his
breath rasping faintly beneath Jonathan’s forearm. “Are you hurt?”
Jonathan asks me, scanning me for signs of harm.
“I’m okay. He caught me by surprise and startled me, but he
didn’t hurt me. You can let him go.”
Immediately, Jonathan lowers his arm and comes my way,
ignoring Trey, who makes a big show of coughing and rubbing his
throat.
Besides the fire in his eyes, the tight set of his mouth, Jonathan
looks completely calm. He’s not even winded. “You’re sure he
didn’t hurt you?”
“I’m sure,” I whisper, something thrilling and terrifying
happening inside my heart. My ribcage is a club when the ball
drops at midnight—glittering, glowing, effervescent.
“I wasn’t trying to scare you, Gabs,” Trey says, breaking the
moment.
Gabs. God, I hate that nickname. Peeling my gaze from
Jonathan, I glance his way. “And yet you grabbed my arm from
behind?”
“I called your name a dozen times,” he says patronizingly, as if
this is somehow an oversight on my part. “You didn’t hear me.”
“Of course I didn’t hear you!” I point to my headphones. “And I
still don’t want to.”
 “Well, what else was I supposed to do?” Trey says, giving me
those pathetic pleading blue eyes he tried when I broke up with
him. “I’ve tried calling and texting you from a handful of numbers,
none of which went through after my first message. I wrote you
notes. I sent you a bouquet. I said I was sorry and I missed you. I
heard nothing.”
“That’s because I blocked every number you used and because
when I said we were over, Trey, I meant it! I’m done. And now I’m
going to work. For the last time, leave me alone.”
“Gabs,” he begs, stepping into my space, “hear me out—”
“No, Trey.”
“Please.” He steps closer, reaching for me. “Just—”
Jonathan’s hand lands with a hard slap on Trey’s chest, then
pushes him back until Trey can’t reach me. His voice is black ice—
lethal but dark and deceptively smooth. “She said no.”
Trey glares up at Jonathan, then shrugs out of his touch,
stepping back as he brushes off his douchey puffer jacket where
Jonathan’s hand is still imprinted in the expensive down fill.
Peering my way, he scoffs. “What, is he your boyfriend now or
something? The bookshop help?” The condescension he crams
into one little word is astounding.
“Jonathan and I are co-managers, Trey. And while our
relationship is none of your business, I’ll tell you this much—he’s
ten times the person you are. Now fuck off, and have yourself a
miserable little Christmas.”
Storming past my piece-of-garbage ex, I start down the
sidewalk. Jonathan falls into step with me, twice glancing
menacingly over his shoulder, most likely to scare the hell out of
Trey so he doesn’t follow me. We don’t speak as we walk the block
between Bailey’s and where Trey stopped me. When we reach the
shop, Jonathan unlocks the front door, then holds it open so I can
enter first.
“Thank you,” I tell him quietly.
Before he can respond, I power walk to the back room, yanking
off my mittens, unwinding my scarf, blinking away threatening
tears.
Fucking Trey. Telling me that I’m naïve and idealistic. That I
can’t save this place. I’ll show him. I have to.
There’s a soft knock against wood nearby, and I know why.
After my scare, Jonathan’s being considerate, not wanting to
startle me. Gone is my chilly, surly nemesis, and in his place
stands someone who I told Trey is ten times the person he is.
And I meant it.
Because I simply cannot believe that Jonathan Frost would
come running my way and throw himself bodily between me and
the threat of harm, then turn around and try to seduce, swindle,
or sabotage me out of a career.
Which, I realize, after all these months of hating his guts, is a
profound relief. Despising someone is exhausting, and believing
the worst in them is a burden to the soul. I didn’t realize how tired
it made me, until now, like peeling off frigid soaked clothes after a
long day in the snow, I feel a weight lift, the warmth of tentative
hope wrapped around me.
I’m not exactly sure what I think of Jonathan. Not yet. I only
know that what I’ve thought of him doesn’t fit what I just
experienced. I know he stuck up for me and protected me and you
don’t do that for someone whose life and job you want to ruin.
Beyond that, I don’t know what to think.
What I do know is this turn of events unfortunately takes the
wind out of my sails with the wardrobe choice today. Now this
dress isn’t vengefully sexy. It’s just…sexy. And I’m pretty sure after
kissing each other the way we did last night, looking sexy for
Jonathan Frost is a not-so-good idea.
“Gabriella.” Quiet and low, Jonathan’s voice dances like a
lover’s fingertip straight down my spine.
“Yes,” I manage.
“Are you all right?”
Standing with my back to him, I keep my coat on and stare at
the wall.
Am I all right? No. I’m not. My shithole ex just scared the hell
out of me and defended his invasive behavior. Jonathan came
running to defend me. And now I’m standing in the tiny back
room with nothing but a wool coat keeping Jonathan Frost from
seeing me in The Very Sexy Red Dress. I’m standing here, my
heart pounding, because my world’s rearranging, because despite
my deepest desire to keep Jonathan Frost in the tidy box of
enmity wrapped in a bow of prideful dislike, he punched a hole in
that box last night, then obliterated it entirely this morning.
Now I have…nothing. Not enmity, not arm’s angry length, not
even a wool coat or a red dress or skin and bones, guarding my
heart from him.
And I have to face that. I have to face him.
So, sliding off my coat, turning toward Jonathan, I do.
OceanofPDF.com
 Chapter 9
Playlist: “Merry Christmas (I Don’t Want to Fight
Tonight),” Alex Lahey

“GABRIELLA,” JONATHAN SAYS again, gentler, patient, as I start to turn

and face him. “I asked if you’re…” His voice dies off. His gaze slides
down my body like it’s beyond helping, before he shuts his eyes
and drops his head against the doorway with an audible thunk.
“Jesus Christ.”
“It’s a little much for work,” I admit, staring down at the flowy
red fabric, biting my lip. “Okay it’s a lotta much for work.”
Jonathan’s so quiet.
“You okay over there?” I ask.
“I asked you first,” he says through a tight jaw.
His eyes are still shut, his dark hair windblown and messy, a
flush high on his cheeks. He breathes deeply through his nose,
and his jaw tics with each breath. My gaze travels the evergreen V-
neck sweater hugging his strong arms and broad chest, draping
just a little at his waist, leaving me to imagine the pleasure of my
hands traveling that soft fabric and the hard, unyielding muscle
beneath.
His hands are fists in the pockets of his buckskin brown slacks,
tailored perfectly to a gloriously hard ass and long muscular legs,
the classic powerful build of a hockey player. His polished brown
boots wink under the store’s lights. He looks as good as he ever
has, no—better. He looks fine as hell.
I stare down at my red wrap dress, a soft flowy bow at the
waist, a deep V neckline with a snap that holds it together at the
swell of my cleavage. The bell sleeves and fluttery hem, paired
with chunky heel boots, turn my not-so-substantial cup size busty,
accentuate my wide hips, and make my legs look a mile long.
We both brought our seductive wardrobe A-games, and for a
moment I wonder if Jonathan suspected me of the very thing I
suspected him of, too.
What a pair we make.
“I’ll be okay,” I finally answer him. Jonathan hasn’t opened his
eyes. “Fair’s fair. I answered. Now you.”
He shakes his head side to side. Slowly, I walk toward him,
each clack of my boots on the warm wood floors an echoing
heartbeat. And when I stop, placing us toe to toe, I realize we’re
standing beneath mistletoe.
Slowly, Jonathan opens his eyes. But he won’t look down at me.
He stares up at the mistletoe hung above us, golden ribbon tied
around it.
And for a moment, I have the ridiculous thought that I would
love nothing more than to kiss Jonathan Frost until the end of
time.
But even with my newfound confidence that he’s not playing
dirty, not attempting to Casanova me right out of my dress and
into unemployment, our rivalry still stands. Even if we aren’t the
vilest of enemies like I thought we were, our goals are still
fundamentally opposed.
And then there’s my greatest reason of all. My online friend,
the guy who’s wanted to meet me for months, who I’ve wanted to
meet, too. The good, kind, nerdy Mr. Reddit.
I can’t let myself forget that. I can’t daydream about kissing
Jonathan Frost at work or in my bed or outside on a snowy day. I
can’t lust after him. Not when I have less than two weeks to kick
his ass and close out the year with record sales. Not when Mr.
Reddit’s almost within reach.
Finally, Jonathan lowers his eyes until they meet mine. I have
never seen someone try so hard not to stare at my breasts. “Miss
Di Natale.”
“Yes, Mr. Frost.”
He glances back up at the ceiling. “You keep spare clothes here,
don’t you?”
“Yes. Why?”
“I need to know what it will take for you to change out of that
dress, and into those clothes.”
I snort a laugh. “But I’m comfy. I don’t want to change.”
He sighs like he knew I was going to say that.
“Unless…” I pop a hip and tap my chin, feigning thought.
He lowers his gaze until it settles on my mouth. “Unless what?”
“Unless…you forfeit a day of sales to me.”
His eyes snap up and meet mine, fire flashing in them. “Back to
that damn bargain of yours, are we?”
I shrug, hoping I look more nonchalant than I feel. My heart’s
pounding. “It’s your bargain, too,” I say coolly. “You agreed to it.”
 He laughs emptily, shaking his head. The arrogant
condescension of his response trips a wire in me.
“I’m not sure what’s so amusing about our bargain and what’s
at stake, Mr. Frost. Is the situation somehow beneath you? Am I
being ridiculous, holding us to it? Maybe I’m supposed to set aside
our understanding since we got a little carried away last night and
because you stuck up for me this morning while I dealt with my
creep of an ex—the same guy who, I’ll let you in on a little secret,
was the last person I made the mistake of trusting to have the best
intentions and nearly sabotaged my career.”
Jonathan levels me with the coldest look I’ve ever seen from
those wintergreen eyes. “Perhaps, Gabriella, you might consider
that not everyone is a morally bankrupt prick like Trey Fucking
Potter. But of course, by all means, hold on to that bargain. Throw
it in my face every moment we go anywhere beyond mere civility,
and certainly don’t let anything like the past twelve hours, let
alone the past twelve months, get in its way.”
He pushes off the wall and steps toward me, until our chests
brush and we’re face to face, sharing heated, livid glares. “God
forbid you trust me,” he says, “or think well of me or allow for the
even slightest possibility that making you miserable and jobless
isn’t my life’s calling. No matter what I do or say, Gabriella, you see
only what you want: a villain.”
“And why shouldn’t I? Am I missing something? Did you or did
you not come into this shop twelve months ago, level me with one
cold, disdainful glance, and then proceed to systematically
criticize everything I was doing wrong, scoffing at my—yes, I’ll
admit, somewhat chaotic—methods, and time and again poking a
hole in my every creative idea for how to give this place a fighting
chance because it wasn’t a ‘data-driven’ approach? Did you or did
you not agree to secure your place as sole manager here after the
new year by outstripping me in sales?”
He leans in, voice low and dangerous. “Fine. I haven’t been the
warmest personality, and I might have come across as cold at first,
but you have a very interesting recollection of the last twelve
months, Gabriella. Because from where I’m standing, you spent
the past year repeatedly perceiving practical changes in business
operations as personal attacks, resenting me for doing the job I
was hired to do, to make this shop more efficient and profitable,
all the while—or so I thought, until quite recently—dating the
fucking competition.”
I open my mouth, but he presses on, his breathing harsh, his
eyes burning. “As for your little ‘bargain’ over who ends up
running this place, yes, I agreed. But you’re forgetting a rather
important detail, Miss Di Natale: this was your idea, your terms,
your ultimatum. You never once considered a different outcome
or solicited my opinion on the methods to achieve it. Because in
your eyes, all we could ever be is spiteful, petty opposition.”
Leaning in until his breath is soft at the shell of my ear, his mouth
so close, I could turn and our lips would brush, he whispers,
“Who’s the real villain here?”
Anger floods my body like lava, molten hot, burning through
me. The audacity he has—
The jingle of the back door chime makes us wrench apart. Mrs.
Bailey’s humming to herself as she walks in, all smiles when she
glances up. “Good morning!”
 Both of us manage stilted Good mornings in response as she
shuts the door behind her and shucks off buttery black leather
gloves. Her smile falters as she peers between us. “Everything all
right?”
Jonathan clears his throat and sets his hands in his pockets.
“Just fine, Mrs. Bailey.”
“Yep.” I force a smile. “Just fine.”
Peering up at the sprig of mistletoe hanging over us, she sighs.
Then, without a word, she steps around us toward the
bookkeeping room.
I’m still staring after Mrs. Bailey when Jonathan storms over to
his coat hook, grabs his jacket and gloves, and is out the back door
in a gust of arctic wind that follows in his wake.

While Mrs. Bailey deals with whatever bleak financial reality

awaits her in the bookkeeping room and Jonathan remains
strangely absent—not that I’ve kept an eye out for his return or
anything—I stay busy.
My usual headphones on, I drown out the replay of Jonathan’s
embittered words, because if I think too long about them, I start to
panic.
What if I was wrong about him? About us? About so much?
I push back against that growing fear and tune out the world
with holiday music while I rearrange the window displays, redo
the outdoor easel’s chalk art, then send an email to our
subscribers about the Big Sale Event on our last open day,
December 23, featuring unprecedented discounts, the local
bakery’s best seasonal pastries, homemade holiday gift crafting,
and live music.
When my stomach starts to spasm with hunger pains, I
emerge from my deep focus long enough to wander into the break
room and inhale a mint chocolate protein bar. I had all of two sips
of my peppermint hot cocoa before Trey scared it right out of my
hands, and I haven’t had anything since.
Just as I’m finishing my last bite, Mrs. Bailey pops her head out
of the back room and says, “Gabby, dear—my office, please?”
“Of course,” I tell her, trying very hard not to catastrophize as I
follow her into the bookkeeping room, where I’m met with the
sight of a cluttered desk that makes Jonathan hive.
Gesturing to the chair across the table, she says, “Please have a
seat.”
I feel like I’ve been called to the principal’s office. In which
case, I want my partner in crime getting handed the same talking-
to.
“Is Jonathan joining us?” I ask.
“I’m not sure Jonathan will be back. I called his cell phone and
told him to take the day off if he needs it.”
My stomach drops. “What?”
He’ll lose a day of sales. And besides that, Jonathan’s such a
hard-ass, he only misses work if he’s on-death’s-doorstep sick. It’s
happened twice in twelve months, and he was gone a grand total
of one day each time.
“I wouldn’t worry,” she says.
 Except I am worrying. Because since he left this morning and
despite my best efforts to distract myself, I’ve been replaying
every word of Jonathan’s tirade. The foundation I’ve stood on
since the day he started here feels like it’s crumbling.
What if I wasn’t just wrong about my seduction suspicions?
What if I’ve been wrong about Jonathan himself? What if the man
I saw this morning, whose behavior upended my perception of
him and our dynamic, isn’t a stranger so much as someone I
rarely saw?
But if that’s the case, why hasn’t he told me? I have never met a
more direct person than Jonathan Frost. He pulls no punches,
minces no words. He lobs brutal truths like darts, with no concern
for how they stick when they sink into the bullseye of your hopes
and dreams and the comforting familiarity of all you’ve ever
known. Why wouldn’t he set me straight sooner?
“Gabby.” Mrs. Bailey removes her glasses and sets her elbows
on the desk. “May I ask you something?”
“Yes, Mrs. Bailey.”
“What makes you still see Jonathan as your enemy? I
understand why you did, at first. He encroached on your routine,
on our old way of doing things; he’s proficient in the areas you
aren’t, just as you are strong in many areas he isn’t, I’d like to add.
But I’d hoped…” She sighs, tipping her head. “I’d hoped by now you
two would be past quarreling. Especially with what we’re facing
now, I’d hoped you’d find a way to set aside differences and see…all
the good that could be possible between you.”
I blink back tears, the full weight of this bearing down on me
as Jonathan’s voice echoes in my thoughts.
 You never once considered a different outcome or solicited my
opinion on the methods to achieve it. Because in your eyes, all we
could ever be is spiteful, petty opposition.
“It’s so hard,” I whisper, “when you’ve been taken advantage of
in the past, when the most vulnerable part of yourself is exploited
so deeply. It’s difficult to trust, to open yourself up once more and
give people the benefit of the doubt. It’s terrifying to risk getting
that wrong all over again.”
Mrs. Bailey’s eyes crinkle with concern.
I dab looming tears from my eyes and try to smile
reassuringly. “I’m sorry. I’m fine, really. I shouldn’t be saying this
to you—”
“Gabby, dear, of course you should. I asked. I want to know.”
Mrs. Bailey’s soft, weathered hand lands warm on top of mine. She
squeezes gently. “What you said, about having your trust broken,
being manipulated, this is about the Potter boy?”
The memory of this morning makes me shiver. Trey’s
unwelcome touch, Jonathan running toward me like nothing in
the world was going to stop him.
And then those words. Did he hurt you?
Nodding, I wipe away tears. Mrs. Bailey knows what happened
with Trey months ago, because I told her. She knows I had no idea
who he really was, that as soon as I realized his true intentions,
we were through. It was awkward and not my favorite
conversation, telling her, but Mrs. Bailey was sympathetic and
reassured me that she believed me. I still felt like shit about it for
months. “That really messed me up,” I whisper.
 She nods. “It’s understandable to be wary after something like
that. And let’s be clear, while Jonathan isn’t nearly as…sinister as
you perceive him, he’s no saint, either. He and I have had a few
conversations about his demeanor towards you as well as our
customers. He’s exacting and proud and impatient, and he could
certainly stand to smile more.”
“Try ever,” I mutter.
Mrs. Bailey chuckles. “You’re very different people. I knew it
would be a rocky start, and it was. Throw in a few
misunderstandings, some power struggles, slightly clashing
managerial styles—”
“Slightly clashing?”
She smiles a little sadly. “I didn’t count on how stubborn you
two would be, how resistant to…giving each other a chance.” For a
quiet moment, Mrs. Bailey searches my eyes. Releasing my hand,
she sits back. “What if you tried to be friends?”
“I’m sorry, what?”
“Often the best path forward is discovered one step at a time.
It’s a difficult journey from enmity to friendship, but not an
impossible one.”
Friendship. I taste the word on my tongue, trying it out.
Friendship. Could I be…friends with Jonathan?
I allow myself to picture it, ending this long, bitter slog of the
past twelve months on a dignified final bend in the road. Our
heads held high, mutual respect and may-the-best-one-win,
friendly well-wishes for the other as we part ways.
But then I think about how I feel when my hand touches his,
when Jonathan’s eyes lock with mine and there’s heat on his
cheeks and he’s looking at me how he did after the business
meeting, in the car, when we kissed, when we faced off this
morning—intense, charged, fraught…
None of that is friendship to me. At least, not like any
friendship I’ve ever known. But maybe that’s all right. Maybe
whatever friendship looks like for Jonathan and me, for this sliver
of time before we part ways, doesn’t have to look like any other
friendship in my past.
Mrs. Bailey seems to read my mind, as if she knows a thing or
two about what it’s like to walk the line between longing and
loathing and try to carve a safe path between the two, to find a
smooth, mild middle way.
“It’s worth a try, isn’t it? In the spirit of the season?” she adds, a
twinkle in her eye. “To have a little peace on earth here in Bailey’s
Bookshop?”
I envision proposing friendship to Jonathan, laying down my
weapon first, extending my hand as I offer a truce. I remember
how it felt, his hand clasping mine. My fingertips and palms turn
hot, singed with memory.
Privately, I reflect that “peace,” whether we turn out friend or
foe, is the last thing I’ll ever find with Jonathan Frost. But what I
tell Mrs. Bailey is, “I’ll try. I promise.”
OceanofPDF.com
 Chapter 10
Playlist: “Make Way for the Holidays,” Le Bon

AN HOUR LATER, Mrs. Bailey is gone and the store is forty-five

minutes into being open. I’ve sold two romance novels, one cozy
mystery, and—gag—three thrillers. The place is empty for the time
being, and I’m on my way to make a cup of sugary, milky tea, when
I notice the mistletoe fell from the archway leading from the
register to the back room. Stretching on tiptoe, I tack it back up by
its golden thread.
That’s when the back door opens for Jonathan Frost and with
him, a gust of winter wind. He shuts it quietly, then peers up
beneath dark lashes, those striking wintergreen eyes locked on
me. I lower to my heels as Jonathan walks down the hallway, a
beverage cup decorated with snowflakes in each hand.
“I’m sorry,” we say at the same time.
“Can we talk?” I ask.
Jonathan searches my eyes. “Yes.”
I wrap my hand around the cup he’s holding that smells like
peppermint and bittersweet chocolate. Our fingers brush. “I think
I could use some liquid courage first.”
His mouth lifts at the corner, the shadow of a smile. “You’re in
luck then.”
 “Thank you.” Glancing over my shoulder, I see the store is still
empty. I peer back at Jonathan and tip my head toward the break
room. “Is now okay? Do you mind?”
He shakes his head. “I don’t mind.”
I lead the way to the back room, hot cocoa in hand, and sit at
the table, watching him set down his coffee, then peel off his
gloves, finger by finger. He shrugs off his coat, and it slips past his
shoulders, down his back, before he rakes a hand through his hair
and tidies the windswept waves.
Sitting across from me, Jonathan takes his cup, which I didn’t
realize I’d wrapped my hand around. His thumb brushes my
finger, a reassurance.
“Thanks again for this,” I tell him.
“You’re welcome, Gabriella.”
I take a drink of my peppermint hot cocoa. Jonathan sips his
coffee. We sit in silence, steam wafting from our drinks.
Until I find my courage and say, “I’m not excellent at reading
people, and…recent events have led me to believe that for quite a
while, maybe since you started here, I’ve been thoroughly
misreading you. And because of that, I’ve maybe, potentially, been
slightly more hostile than warranted.” I clear my throat and
extend my hand. “So, I want to apologize for that and propose
friendship.”
Jonathan’s brow furrows as he glances at my hand.
Silence hangs, colder than the outside air that followed him in
on his return. My hand starts to waver, as does my courage. But
just when I start to retreat, he clasps it, his grip warm and strong.
Relief rushes through me, glittering like sunlight on snow and
tinsel on tree boughs.
Jonathan’s thumb strokes the back of my hand as he says, “I
appreciate that. And I’m sorry, too.” His mouth tips at the corner.
“I’ve also, maybe, potentially, been slightly more hostile than
warranted.”
“Friendship?” I ask. His thumb’s driving me wild. I cross my
legs under the table and focus on the matter at hand.
“Friendship,” he says.
“Great.” I wrench away my hand more abruptly than I meant
to, but friends don’t get horny from hand-holding, and I’ve got to
get this under control. “Excellent. Friendship it is.”
Tipping his head, Jonathan wraps his big hands around his
coffee. I should get a sainthood for how I stop myself from staring
at those long fingers and how they curl around the cup. “What you
said, before I left—”
“That was harsh of me.” My cheeks heat. “I got carried away.”
“Gabriella,” he says quietly, his foot nudging mine under the
table. “Let me finish.”
I nod and stare into my peppermint hot cocoa.
“What you said about how I behaved toward you when I
started,” he says. “You’re right, and I’m sorry. I’ve never been good
at softening blows, conveying hard truths in comforting words. I
don’t get emotional about these things, but you do. Deeply. And I
didn’t understand that or empathize.” He stares down at his coffee
and sighs heavily. “I regret that.”
“Don’t beat yourself up. We’re very different people with very
different visions for this place, Jonathan. I think, even on our best
behavior, we were bound to clash.”
He glances up, fastening his gaze on me. “What’s your vision?”
I smile, because it’s impossible not to when I talk about the
bookshop. “I want it to keep its heart. I want it to be a community
cornerstone that welcomes with open arms anyone who wants to
come in. I want it to be personal, set apart from online and chain
bookstores. I want to keep its soul.” Searching his eyes, I ask him,
“What about you?”
He seems to hesitate for a moment, searching for the right
words, before he finally says, “I…want it to be an efficient,
modernized business that’s financially secure enough to survive,
so that ‘soul’ you speak of has a home for as long as possible.”
Hearing him say that, my heart does a double axel and sticks
the landing, a joyful rush of relief.
“Cheers to that.” I knock my cup gently with his.
After a moment of silence, Jonathan says, “Gear shift.”
“Ready.”
“What’s with the red dress of torture, Gabriella?” He’s doing
that thing again where he’s very diligently not staring at my
breasts.
I laugh. “Oh, that. So, last night, after—you know—I convinced
myself in a whirlwind paranoia that you were using your sexual
wiles to seduce me out of the job.”
His eyebrows shoot up. “What?”
“You had mistletoe motive, or so I thought—”
“What the hell is ‘mistletoe motive’?”
“C’mon, Frost. Stay with me. Hanging mistletoe is a tryst trap, a
sensual snare. Like your alleged motives. You tracking?”
 He bites his lip and stares up at the ceiling. “Tracking.”
“So, I figured you’ve got this seductive sabotage angle, driving
me home last night, playing chivalrous with that sexy Darcy-
offering-a-hand-up-to-his-carriage business—”
“Wait, what?”
“Making my legs all noodley, kissing me—”
“Hey, you kissed me, too,” he points out. “We kissed each other.”
“Fair. We kissed each other. That was a m-mistake—” I falter,
because it’s hard to call those incredible kisses mistakes, but they
were.
Weren’t they?
“The point is,” I continue, “we kissed, yes, but everything
leading up to it, that was all you. And I couldn’t figure out why. So I
assumed the worst. Until you proved me very wrong this morning.
And now I realize that while we don’t exactly gel in our
personalities or managerial styles or bookstore visions, you
haven’t been out to make my life a living hell, and at certain
angles I’m not too hard on the eyes, and so maybe you’re a little
hot for me, and sometimes a kiss is just a kiss.”
He’s silent, his eyes dark and intense. “I haven’t wanted to
make your life hell, Gabriella. And I’m not trying to seduce you out
of a job.” Jonathan stares down at the tabletop, tracing a whorl in
the wood grain. “And you definitely aren’t hard on the eyes, from
any angle. But I’m not so sure about that last part.”
“The kiss? Or, kisses, rather?”
He nods.
“I’m with you. I don’t just kiss people to kiss them. I don’t feel
sexual desire for them out of the blue, either. Not until I feel
emotionally connected. Which sort of stumped me at first, when I
realized I was…” I clear my throat as a blush heats my cheeks.
“Into you. I’m demisexual, and I’ve never wanted someone I didn’t
deeply like after growing close with them.
“But then I reasoned, while I haven’t liked you very much for
most of the time I’ve known you, Mr. Frost, I’ve forged a bond with
you—our love for this place, our shared responsibilities, even the
way I can predict what’ll irritate you as much as what’ll please
your money-counting Scrooge heart. It’s a deeply fraught bond,
but a bond nonetheless. There’s familiarity and ironically enough,
a bizarre form of safety in our dynamic and its predictability. A
sort of…intimacy. That makes you, unfortunately, fair game. But
what about you?”
I swipe my finger through the whipped cream on top of my hot
cocoa, slip it into my mouth, and suck it clean.
A low, painted sound leaves Jonathan, like he’s quietly dying.
“What?” I ask.
He buries his face in his hands. “You have to stop doing that.”
“I’m just enjoying my festive beverage, Mr. Frost. Come on, I
want to hear your theory about the kisses.”
A long, ragged exhale leaves him. “I’ve said about all I can
manage right now.”
“Why?”
Finally he lifts his head. With one soft swipe of his thumb
across my lips, he sets my whole body on fire. “You have whipped
cream—” He swallows roughly. “Right at the corner of your mouth.
And I cannot focus on this conversation, especially one about
sexual attraction, while you do.”
 A fresh blush sweeps up my throat and cheeks. A heavy silence
hangs between us.
Slowly I dart out my tongue, wetting my lips until I taste
another fleck of sweet, heavy whipped cream. “How about now?
All better?”
“No,” he says quietly, his eyes glued on my mouth. “Not at all.”
My breath hitches in my throat. “Why not?”
Jonathan’s gaze flicks up and meets mine. “Because I want to
kiss you more than ever. And you want to kiss me, too. And, given
present circumstances, that should not be happening. Not
between…friends.”
God, he’s right. I shouldn’t want to kiss him. Not when we’ve
barely crossed from enmity to friendly territory, not when there’s
Mr. Reddit waiting for me at the end of this madness.
And yet here I am, staring at Jonathan and his mouth,
remembering what it felt like to kiss him—the longing that
flooded me with each stroke of his tongue, every deep, hot brush
of his lips.
Friendship, the angel on my shoulder singsongs. You’ve agreed
to friendship!
Friends don’t kiss like that, the devil purrs on my other side,
twirling her fiery pitchfork deviously between her hands. Friends
don’t star in your steamy nighttime fantasies—
Steeling my resolve, I lift my cup and offer a toast. “To
friendship.”
Slowly, Jonathan lifts his cup and clinks it with mine.
“Friendship.”
 “To doing everything we can to save Bailey’s. To selling as many
books as possible, even if it’s still in competition with each other.
We can be professionally competitive but still friendly toward
each other, right? We can agree not to fight anymore? Well, not
fight with each other, but still fight for the store, because I am
fighting for this. Bailey’s is my world. I’ve never wanted to work
anywhere else.”
He’s quiet for a moment. “I know that.”
“Can’t you go work somewhere else after the new year?” I
plead, my elaborate toast abandoned. We set down our drinks.
“You’re so business savvy. Don’t you want to crunch numbers in
one of those skyscrapers downtown, make a lot of money, drive a
brand-new SUV?”
He arches an eyebrow. “Wow, Gabriella. Could you make me
sound any shallower?”
“I’m sorry.” I hang my head. “You’re not. I know you’re not. I
just feel like you could succeed anywhere. And I’m not like that.”
Shifting so that one of his boots slides between mine, Jonathan
knocks knees with me. “When you say, ‘I’m not like that,’ what
does that mean?”
“It means…” I clamp my boots around his and nervously tap
them. And then here they are, the words I’ve held back for so long:
“It means I’m autistic. And finding work environments that suit
my sensitivities, that play into my strengths, isn’t as easy for me as
it is for you neurotypicals. It means I’m not great with people, but
with books, I’m better. Books help me make sense of others, and
they help me make sense to others. They’re my conduit, one of the
best ways I can relate to people.
 “There’s never been a place where I’ve felt so sure that I’m
doing exactly what I’m supposed to, that I’m right where I belong,
as when I’m helping someone find the perfect book here at
Bailey’s, connecting with them over a character, introducing a
child to the story that begins their love of reading, turning a
world-weary cynic into a voracious romance reader.”
Jonathan stares at me. Tentatively, his hand travels the table,
and his fingers tangle with mine.
Not a single word leaves his lips, but like our first kiss, his
voice is in my head, so clear. I want to know. Tell me everything you
want, or nothing, if that’s what you want. I’m listening.
“It means I don’t have the most nuanced social awareness and
I do best with very direct, honest communication,” I tell him, a
little quieter, suddenly aware of how much I’m confessing. “It
means loud and sudden noises hurt not just my ears but my brain
and startle me badly—that’s why I wear my noise-cancelling
headphones so much. It means I love to start my day with a hot
cocoa and I often eat the same lunch, because routines are
soothing and make order out of what feels like a very chaotic
world.
“It means I have the same sweater dress in six colors, because
finding clothes that are actually comfortable and work
appropriate is harder than you’d think, and when I find a unicorn
like that, I hoard it. It means music isn’t just a pleasure for me, it’s
vital to my happiness. It means I’m trusting and literal and I’ve
been underestimated and misunderstood more than my pride
would like me to admit.
 “And it also means that I’m a creative and a daydreamer, an
artistically expressive person who pours herself into her passions
and loves fiercely—the causes and people close to my heart—and
does none of that by half-measures.”
As I draw in a deep breath, finally unburdened, I hazard a
glance up at Jonathan. His jaw is tight, his eyes on fire.
“I feel very vulnerable right now,” I whisper. “Say something.”
“I—” He swallows roughly. “I wish I’d known. And at the same
time, I feel like I already know a lot of this, too.” His fingers dance
along mine. “I’m glad I know even more now.”
I swallow nervously. “I realize that just because I’ve explained
all this doesn’t mean I’m suddenly necessarily easy to
understand.”
He tips his head, staring at me. “But I think I do understand
you, Gabriella…at least, a little. I couldn’t help but start figuring
you out, spending so much time together.”
“I don’t feel like I’ve figured you out at all.”
His mouth quirks. “I have an excellent poker face.”
“It’s rude.” I start to pull my hand away, but he holds tight.
“It’s a defense mechanism,” he says. “I’m good at hiding the
things you aren’t. And maybe that sounds like an advantage, but
because you’ve been yourself around me, in lots of ways, Gabriella,
I’ve learned what you like and what you need. I’ve figured out that
change stresses you and unknowns give you unbearable anxiety.”
I stare at him. “You have?”
“That’s why I didn’t tell you about the business meeting a week
in advance. I knew you’d worry. And I—” He cuts himself off with a
sigh, rubbing his forehead. “I didn’t want you to worry, so I figured
I’d tell you the day before, but then the flowers came that day, and
you dropped that bomb about Trey, and it threw me off, and then
the next morning, before the meeting—”
“I know.” I squeeze his hand, still tangled with mine. “You
planned to tell me that morning. But the Baileys got here early.”
His gaze searches mine. “Do you…believe me now?”
I smile. “I do.”
Relief washes over his expression. “Good.”
Our gazes hold. It’s so intense. So…oddly intimate. It’s
overwhelming. So I look away, staring down at his hand wrapped
around mine, our fingertips brushing.
“Gabriella,” Jonathan says.
I keep my eyes down, heart pounding. “Yes, Jonathan.”
His thumb strokes the back of my hand. “Thank you for
trusting me.”
“Thank you for being safe to trust.”
Jonathan slips our hands apart, then clasps his coffee again,
spinning it in a slow, steady clockwise turn. “I suppose in the
spirit of friendship, I could reciprocate and be…vulnerable, too.”
“Don’t sound too excited.”
He gives me a baleful look. “I’m trying here, Gabriella.”
“Sorry.” I nudge his foot under the table. “I appreciate that.”
He stares into his coffee. “I have type 1 diabetes. It’s well-
managed. But it still impacts me. It’s impacted us. Sometimes,
when I’ve been grumpy, when I’ve abruptly ended conversations
and stalked off, it’s been because I didn’t feel well, or my alerts
were warning me I was too high or low. Because I needed to check
my blood sugar or have a quick snack or catch my breath and wait
for the insulin adjustment to kick in.”
So many moments that confused me over the past year start to
fall into place. “Story time with Eli. Was your blood sugar low?”
He nods.
“And in the car, when you ate your candy, it was low then, too?”
He nods again.
“Your phone, you track it somehow.”
“That’s right. I have an app that’s connected to my CGM—my
continuous glucose monitor—but I check my blood sugar with
finger pricks using a glucometer, too. My CGM isn’t foolproof and
I don’t like relying only on that. So last night for instance, I
checked with the glucometer right before I left the locker room
after my game, and I was a little low. When I knew I was driving
you, I wanted to be sure I was up enough and safe behind the
wheel, so I checked again in the car using the app and my CGM,
and I was still lower than I wanted. Thus, the peanut butter cups.”
He’s still staring into his coffee like he’s not quite ready to face
me after that. I wonder if, like me and my reluctance to open up
before today, he’s been scared to be seen differently. I want him to
know he’s safe with me, that knowing this about him feels like I’ve
been given a key to a room of his heart that very few are allowed
in, and that’s a gift I’ll protect fiercely.
Knocking his boot gently under the table, I finally earn his
eyes and give him the words of affirmation that he gave me.
“Thank you for trusting me.”
His eyes search mine, and he nudges my foot back. “Thank you
for being safe to trust.”
 “You can tell me from now on, okay? When you don’t feel well
or when you need a break. Just like I’ll try to be real with you,
especially when I’m struggling.” I pause for a moment, to try to
find the words, because this matters and I want to say it right. “I
know I don’t get it, in the sense that I don’t have diabetes, too, but…
maybe I understand it a little, living with something persistent
and beyond your control. You can’t take it off or walk away from it
or lay it down for a while. And even when you’ve become
accustomed to its reality, when it’s not really bad or good, it just…
is, sometimes it’s hard when you’re with others. When you feel
that sense of difference and distance from them as you deal with
the part of yourself that they don’t understand, that you have to
think about in social situations and in your daily life in ways they
don’t.”
Jonathan’s quiet. But then his boots softly clamp around mine,
our feet tangled under the table. “Thank you, Gabriella. That—” He
clears his throat, and when he speaks again, his voice sounds
different. Quieter, tight, like he’s barely holding something in.
“That means a lot to me.”
Our eyes meet. We lean close. A little closer. Warning bells ring
in my head. His thigh is right there, between mine. I’m staring at
his mouth, remembering our every perfect kiss.
And thank God, right when I’m about to grab my friend by the
gorgeous evergreen sweater and kiss him into the new year, the
bell chimes over the door, heralding a customer.

OceanofPDF.com
 Chapter 11
Playlist: “The Holidays with You,” Sara Watkins

WHEN THE BIG Sale Event—also our final day open—arrives, Jonathan
and I have successfully spent the past eleven days behaving
ourselves. No petty squabbles. No arguing about whose turn it is to
make the coffee and who made it too strong. No juvenile shelf-
switching or feature-table rearranging to privilege our preferred
genres.
No frantic, breathless kisses.
It’s been devastatingly boring.
Except for the part where, as of yesterday’s total that Jonathan
ran—with my supervision, of course, to make sure there was no
funny business when he crunched the numbers—our December
sales totaled twenty-five percent greater than last year’s and I am
unequivocally in the lead.
I’m not exactly surprised, because while Jonathan’s still
hustled with customers to make decent sales, he’s also spent a
good bit of time frowning at his computer, shooing me away when
I got too close. Every moment he was tap-tapping away on his
laptop, I was out on the floor, logging more sales than him. A
strategy that’s had me a bit stumped. What’s he been doing with
that computer? I can’t begin to imagine, unless he’s started
applying to those skyscraper downtown finance jobs, after all.
This should make me ecstatic. I should be running victory laps
around Jonathan Frost to the Chariots of Fire theme. And yet, as I
stare out at my bookstore kingdom, I feel no glory in my triumph.
Instead, I feel very close to crying.
Which is absurd. This is what I’ve wanted—the bookshop safe,
for now at least, my place in it secure. I’ve made peace with
Jonathan, and we’ll part on good terms. In just a few days I’ll meet
Mr. Reddit and hopefully feel every wonderful thing for him in
person that I felt online.
So why am I on the verge of tears? What is wrong with me?
As I dab my eyes with the back of my hand, Jonathan joins me,
hands on hips, surveying the store, which, I can admit, sort of
looks like Santa’s workshop and the Abominable Snowman had a
baby and it just threw up all over the place.
Garland, tinsel, fake snow, sparkling homemade papier mâché
and clay stars and snowflakes, kinaras, and dreidels, seven star
piñatas, menorahs, and solstice symbols, as well as shiny silver
and gold curled ribbons dangle from the ceiling and, let’s be
honest, all possible surfaces on which something can hang.
The air smells like powdered sugar and dark chocolate, citrus
and fresh cut pine. Twinkly lights glitter across the tops of
bookshelves, and iridescent metallic figurines decorate shelves
and tables—reindeer, tiny gift boxes, and pine cones. The train set
whistles softly on its tiny tracks, spinning around the base of the
store’s Christmas tree decorated in white lights and jewel-tone
ribbon, garland and ornaments, nestled near the fireplace.
 Colorful stacks of books brighten every table the store owns,
placing them front and center, within reach, garnished with
clever little labels that list genre, tropes, themes, setting, and “If
you like Such and Such Title, you’ll love this.” Beside the window
display on one side is a massive table of pastries, which is next to
another table of crafting supplies—cotton balls, paper plates, and
glue to make snow people and winter animals like foxes, rabbits,
and polar bears; gingerbread house materials; glitter and coffee
filters to make snowflakes, finger paint and construction paper
and colorful pipe cleaners to make any kind of festive craft a child
could want, and pre-cut wood bookmarks for folks to decorate to
their heart’s content.
Sighing, Jonathan rubs his temple. “This is hell.”
“It’s not that bad,” I tell him. At least, it won’t be until we have
to do clean-up after closing tonight.
“It is. And it will be even worse when your damned live
carolers come.”
Happiness swallows up my melancholy. It feels good to slip
back into our old bickering routine. “It’s a jazz trio.”
There it is, that familiar disapproving arch of his eyebrow.
“Who’ll be singing Christmas carols.”
“And lots of other wintertime tunes.” I poke him in the ribs.
“Don’t be such a grinch. It’s just a little festive fun.”
“Festive fun?” He spins and stares me down, sending me
stumbling back. But before my body hits the hard wood column
behind me, Jonathan’s hand slips around my waist, stopping me,
wrenching me against him. For just a moment, we stare at each
other and everything else…melts away.
 Very deliberately, Jonathan releases my waist. But he doesn’t
step back. And neither do I. “Glitter, Gabriella,” he finally says.
“Hot glue. Confetti. Gingerbread. Sugar cookies. Icing… None of
that goes with books.”
I smile brightly. “Indirectly they do. They draw customers,
ingratiate them to the store, and compel them to buy our books.”
Grumbling to himself, Jonathan turns away and stomps
toward the back room. “I’m drugging myself. I have a headache
already.”
“It’s good for business!” I call after him.
“I know!” he calls back. “And I still reserve the right to despise
it!”
Laughing, I turn back and examine the main floor, then make
some last-minute adjustments. Another pack of baby wipes on the
pastry table—hopefully people will take the hint and clean their
hands before touching books. The craft table closer to the front, so
window-shopping passersby can see the holiday gift-making fun
in action, along with the musicians, who’ll be stationed in front of
the other window.
The jazz trio arrives right on time, settles in, and has just
finished warming up with the Vince Guaraldi Charlie Brown
Christmas theme when I turn the sign to say Open. Not a minute
later, a kid with dark hair bursts into the store, a woman with the
same dark hair just past her shoulders chasing after him. “Jack!”
He freezes, hand hovering over the pastry table, specifically a
massive chocolate cookie loaded with candy cane pieces. “What?”
“Slow down.” Clutching him to her front, she offers me a weary
smile. There’s something faintly familiar about them both—their
bone structure, their dark wavy hair. I can’t place why I might
know them, though. “Sorry for the explosive entrance,” the woman
says. “I’m Liz. And this is Jack.” She peers down at him and arches
her eyebrow, and that’s familiar, too. “Who has something to say.”
Jack peers up at me, looking sheepish. “Sorry I tried to grab a
cookie.”
“That’s all right,” I tell him as I crouch so that we’re eye level.
He seems like he’s in elementary school, but tall for his age.
Smiling, I offer him my hand. He smiles back, then gives my hand
a firm shake. “I’m Gabby.”
“Jack,” he says. “Nice to meet you.”
“Likewise, Jack.”
He tips his head. “You like the holidays, huh?”
I wiggle my jingle-bell earrings and adjust my reindeer-antler
headband. Jack eyes up the reversible white sequin snowflakes on
my red sweater dress. “What clued you in?”
He laughs. “You’re funny.”
“Aw, thanks.” I tip my head toward the pastry table. “If Liz is all
right with it, you’re welcome to have that cookie you wanted.”
He glances up at her and earns her smile. “Mommy? Can I
have it?”
“Yes, you may.”
With his mother’s approval, I pass Jack a small recycled-paper
plate that I hand-stamped with snowflakes. Jonathan definitely
almost burst an organ not teasing me for working on them every
spare minute I had when a customer wasn’t around, and the
weirdest part is I missed his heckling.
 Using the tongs expertly, Jack slides the cookie onto his plate.
“Mint chocolate’s my favorite,” I tell him.
He grins up at me, mouth already full of cookie. “Mine, too.”
His eyes wander the store as he chews his bite, and then they
widen as he spots a book in the children’s section that I keep on
lower shelves so kids can access them. Gasping, he drops the
cookie plate on the pastry table and runs toward it.
“Jack, wait!” his mom calls. “Use a…” He’s already tugged the
book off the shelf and dropped to the floor, flipping through the
pages. “Baby wipe,” she says helplessly. “We’ll buy that, I promise.”
“I wasn’t worried in the least. Would you like coffee?” I ask her,
pointing to the carafes I set up. “Or tea? We also have hot cocoa
and spiced cider.”
Before Liz can answer me, Jonathan’s voice cuts in, chilly as a
blizzard. “This isn’t a library, kid. You browse it, you buy it.”
I whip around, scowling at him from across the store.
“Jonathan Frost! Don’t be such a Scrooge.”
He arches an eyebrow at Jack, who’s glaring up at him and
says, “Bah humbug.”
Rage pulses through me. I storm toward Jonathan, prepared to
give him a piece of my mind. But suddenly Jack’s face breaks into
a grin, and he leaps from the floor, launching himself at Jonathan.
“Uncle Jon!”
Jonathan sweeps him up and hikes him high in his arms. “Hey,
bud.”
“Throw me!” Jack says. “Come on, throw me!”
Rolling his eyes like I’ve seen him so many times, Jonathan
sighs. “Ah, I don’t know.”
 “Do it, do it, do it!” Jack yells.
Jonathan tips his head side to side, like he’s deliberating. Then,
catching Jack completely off guard, he tosses him high up into the
air, making his nephew shriek with happiness.
I watch them with a growing sense of panic. I can’t take this,
watching Jonathan so confident and capable with his nephew,
playfully tossing Jack higher and higher, before hugging him
tight. My heart’s melting like hot caramel, warming every corner
of me.
After one last toss that earns his nephew’s shrieking laughter,
Jonathan sets Jack on the ground, not the slightest bit winded, a
faint flush of pink on his cheeks the only clue he just threw a
sixty-pound kid into the air a half dozen times. Our eyes meet.
“Liz, Jack,” Jonathan says, eyes on me as he wraps an arm
around Jack’s shoulders, “I’m assuming you’ve met Gabriella.
Gabriella, this is my sister, Liz, and her son, my nephew, Jack. Who
I did not know were coming.”
He gives her some kind of censorious sibling glare, but Liz
only grins at him, a look that’s downright disarming. She has
deep, long dimples in both her cheeks, and her dark blue eyes
sparkle. It makes me wonder if Jonathan becomes even more
stunning when he smiles, too.
“We’ve met,” Liz says. “Gabby was very gracious about our less
than smooth entrance.”
Jack tells him, “She gave me a cookie and let me look at books.
And she’s really pretty, just like you said—”
Jonathan’s hand claps over Jack’s mouth, his cheeks turning
an even deeper pink. “Ever heard of a secret, Jack?”
 “I warned you.” Liz steps in with a baby wipe and cleans her
son’s hands. “Don’t tell him anything you don’t want him to
repeat.”
“He asked,” Jonathan mutters defensively, pointedly not
meeting my eyes. “What was I going to do, lie?”
Jonathan’s mentioned me to his family? He thinks…I’m pretty?
I mean, we’ve kissed each other, so I suppose I knew he found me
attractive, but there’s something different about hearing it, about
seeing the way he looks at me now, serious and a little shy.
He glances away.
“We’re going to look for a few more books, with clean hands,”
Liz says, taking Jack back to the children’s section and leaving the
two of us alone. The jazz trio’s rendition of “The Christmas Song”
plays softly in the background as Jonathan and I stare at each
other.
“He’s really sweet,” I say quietly.
Jonathan throws his nephew a glance and buries his hands in
his pockets. “He’s a chaos demon.”
It’s so his humor, so obviously a deflection. I wonder how often
dry wit has covered what Jonathan really feels. “You love him. He’s
got you wrapped around his finger.”
He glances back my way. “Unreasonably so.”
“Lucky him,” I whisper.
Jonathan’s eyes hold mine. The jazz trio’s music fades as the
song ends, leaving a new, weighty silence between us.
But then the upbeat melody of “Ocho Kandelikas” colors the
air, and the door opens to a rush of customers, the silence
trampled by their arrival.
I’m tying a sparkling silver bow around a recycled paper bag
stamped with Bailey’s Bookshop logo when I sense Jonathan
behind me, big and warm, smelling like woodsmoke and
Christmas trees.
My customer senses him, too, and looks a little intimidated.
“Thank you for your business,” I tell them brightly as I set the
receipt inside the bag. “Don’t forget to fill up on a complimentary
hot beverage before you head outside, and have a happy holiday!”
I spin around and face the grinch behind me. He’s scowling.
“Turn that frown upside down, Jack Frost.”
His scowl deepens. “Have you stopped since the place opened?”
I scrunch my nose, thinking. “Maybe?”
“Eat.” He sets a chocolate cookie with candy cane chunks on
the counter, takes my elbow, and plops me on a stool. “And drink
that.” He points to a big cup of ice water.
“Wow.” I’m already chewing the cookie. It tastes like heaven.
“This is incredible.”
He pastes on a polite almost-smile for the next customer
whose books he’s started ringing up and says over his shoulder,
“Cardboard would taste incredible after how long you’ve gone.”
Warmth floods me. “Have you been keeping an eye on me?”
“Absolutely.” He starts scanning the next stack of books. “You’re
not passing out and leaving me alone in this glitter-bomb
hellscape.”
I snort a laugh. “Ah, c’mon, Frost. It’s not that bad.”
 He arches an eyebrow, slipping the customer’s card into the
chip reader and throwing me a stern glance. “Drink your water,
Gabriella.”
“So bossy,” I mutter into the cup before draining it in one long
gulp.
I get a grunt in response.
“There you are!” Eli’s voice comes from right behind me. I spin
around and see him, shoulder to shoulder with Luke and June.
“Look at you two,” Luke says, sighing happily as he admires
Jonathan and me. “The portrait of professional bliss.”
Jonathan gives his friend a death glare while Eli and I hug
hello. Before I can unpack exactly what’s happening, June throws
her arms around me next. “The place looks great,” she says.
“Thanks,” I whisper, hugging her back. “Um. So.” I clear my
throat as we pull away and throw a thumb over my shoulder.
“Don’t dismember him, but this is Jonathan Frost. Jonathan, this
is my dear friend, June Li.”
June peers up at him, and it’s quite a journey, seeing as June is
5’2” on a good day and Jonathan’s well over a foot taller than her.
She gives him a pursed lip, blank look. “Hm,” she says.
“We have a truce,” I tell her out of the side of my mouth.
“Remember?”
Eli sighs. “June. Be nice. It’s the holidays.”
“Bah humbug,” she mutters.
Jonathan arches his eyebrow. “That’s my line.”
June’s mouth twitches. She’s fighting a smile. “So long as you’re
treating her like a queen now,” she mutters, sticking out her hand.
Jonathan takes it and gives her a firm shake. “Doing my best.”
 “He’s been a gem,” I tell her. “He brought me cookies and
hydration.”
June nods. “I approve. She neglects herself.”
“See?” Jonathan says to me, sounding annoyingly vindicated.
“Hey.” I glance between them. “I get distracted sometimes. I
don’t neglect myself.”
“What do you call not eating for six hours straight, Gabriella?”
Jonathan folds his arms across his chest. “Hm?”
“Trust me,” Eli says. “We know all about it.”
“Okay.” I hop off the stool and shove the last of the cookie in my
mouth. “Enough of Gang Up on Gabby Hour. I’m taking June for a
tour of the place.”
Eli pouts. “What about me?”
I shoulder him playfully. “You saw it already for story time. Go
browse with your honey. Oh, and Frost.”
Jonathan’s watching me intently. “Di Natale.”
“Don’t even try to steal my sales. Ring ‘em up, fair and square,
promise?”
His mouth lifts in the faintest whisper of a smile. “Scout’s
honor, Gabriella.”
“Good.” Dragging June with me down the hallway, I yank her
outside to the back alley and slam the door behind us.
June frowns. “I thought I was getting a tour.”
“I’m freaking out.”
Her eyes widen. “Okay,” she says slowly. “About what?”
“About Jonathan. And Mr. Reddit. It’s like—my brain is this
giant knot of tangled up Christmas lights, and I can’t tell what’s
lighting up for who, and I feel guilty because it’s like I’m betraying
Mr. Reddit, and I feel scared about Jonathan because this is all so
new, being friends with him, but somehow it doesn’t feel new at
all, and I’m weirdly happy around him and—”
“Woah.” June sets her hands on my shoulders and squeezes.
“Deep breath, Gabby.”
I suck in a breath.
“And out,” she says calmly.
I exhale.
“Good. Now.” She yanks open the door and drags me back
inside. “It’s cold as Satan’s balls out there. Let’s go find a closet to
talk.”
“But it’s hot in hell.”
“Not according to Dante,” June mutters, guiding me ahead of
her. “Find a closet, would ya? In Dante’s Inferno, Satan’s frozen up
to his waist, his wings beating furiously, but ironically that just
keeps the lake frozen. The innermost circle of hell is self-
sabotage…and balls that are blocks of ice.”
“Wow. I forgot about that.” I open the closet door where we
keep janitorial supplies and lunge over a box of industrial-
strength cleaner. June follows behind and shuts the door.
“Speaking of self-sabotage,” she says, rounding on me. “Sit.”
I sit. “I’m surrounded by bossy pants.”
“Someone’s got to balance out Eli,” she says, nudging items off
a box of toilet paper until it’s clear for her to sit on. “He’s too
nurturing. Listen.” June leans in, elbows on her knees. “You need
to cut yourself a break. You’re busting your ass at work, trying to
save this place. It’s your last day before holiday break, you’re
crushing it, and you’re spending the day beating yourself up about
a guy you’ve never met in real life and a guy you’ve hated for
nearly a year and just started to be civil with. You owe them
nothing, Gabby.
“If this Mr. Frost, who actually keeps an eye out for you and
makes you happy, ends up being your person, then that was how it
was meant to be, and Mr. Reddit was someone who was right for
you at one time and not the other, and that’s okay. If, once you
meet Mr. Reddit in person, you realize that while you have an
intense bond with your coworker after close quarters the past
twelve months, the bond you and Mr. Reddit built over nightly
chats has forged something much deeper, then that will be what
you were meant to figure out and that’s okay. Or they might both
turn out to be assholes I have to beat up, and I will, and that will
be okay, too.”
“June. No assault.”
“Fine,” she grumbles, “but only because it’s the holidays.” Her
eyes search mine. “My point is, you’re too damn hard on yourself.”
“But this doesn’t make sense!” I moan, scrubbing my face. “It’s
confusing, and I’m emotional and—”
“Hey.” June wraps her arms around me as the first tears spill
down my cheeks. “Let’s just take this one hour at a time, okay?
You’re doing great.”
I pull away and wipe my eyes. “You think?”
“I know. You should be really proud of what you did out there.
It’s gorgeous. It’s busy. You’ve poured your heart into this place,
Gabby, and it shows. So let’s celebrate that. Today, focus on your
incredible professional achievement here. Three days from now,
we’ll deal with Mr. Reddit. After that, we deal with tall, dark, and
surly out there. Now—” Standing, she straightens the black beanie
she’s wearing that nearly blends in with her sable locks. “Time for
you to give me an actual tour.”
June and I slip out of the closet, into the bookstore, and my
heart does a twirl of joy. After hours of being immersed in the
busyness, I see it with fresh eyes—twinkly lights and jewel-tone
ornaments, sparkling decorations and polished wood and row
after row of rainbow spines. Customers sipping from steaming
cups, kids and adults alike making crafts, the jazz trio with a small
cluster of patrons dancing by the door. It’s everything I hoped it
could be.
Then I glance toward Eli and Luke who stand beside Jonathan
at the register in conversation with the Baileys. This is beyond
what I could have imagined, but it’s so right—all of it, all of us,
together.
Mrs. Bailey catches my eye and winks. I smile at her, before
taking June for the grand tour.
Each step I take, I feel Jonathan’s eyes on me. As I greet new
customers, answer others’ questions. As I break away from June
long enough to stretch on tiptoe and reach my favorite holiday
romance because it’s just what this one customer needs. By the
time we make our way back toward the register, when June’s
finally seen it all, my heart is flying, curving the bend of what I
don’t know, before it leaps into the air and spins and spins—
I glance up, knowing I’ll meet his eyes, and I do, as my heart
lands, safe and sure. This is what it is, to be caught in Jonathan’s
gaze, to be held, warm and steady: a gift.
One I’m terrified I won’t get to keep.
OceanofPDF.com
 Chapter 12
Playlist: “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,”
Birdy

“MISS DI NATALE.” Jonathan shuts the back door behind him after his
last trip to the dumpster, locking up for the night.
I drop into one of the wingbacks in front of the fireplace,
groaning as I toe off my boots. “Mr. Frost.”
Walking my way, Jonathan peels off the name tag that I stuck
between his shoulder blades hours ago and holds it with thumbs
and forefingers. “How long have I walked around with my front
name tag saying, Mr. Frost, and my back name tag saying—” He
pauses for dramatic effect. “Actually, it’s Mr. Grinch.”
I bite my lip. “That would be…after you poached the couple
from me when I was about to sell them the romance series box set
—”
“I did not poach.” He crumples the name tag, tosses it into a
waste basket without even watching it land, as if he’s so sure it will
—which, annoyingly, it does—then drops with a groan onto the
chair across from me. “I pivoted. You made your sale, then I made
mine. They bought the romance box set—”
“And half of Stephen King’s backlist.”
 Jonathan sighs as he stretches out his long legs and crosses
them at the ankles. His head falls back against the chair, exposing
the long line of his throat, the prominent jut of his Adam’s apple.
He looks gorgeous. And like he worked his ass off to make my big
Saturday sale idea a reality.
It makes me feel a smidge guilty for my juvenile move.
“Sorry about the name tag prank.”
His eyes stay shut. “It’s fine. I slapped one on your back hours
ago, too.”
I gasp. “What?” Feeling for the name tag, I first try over my
shoulder, then underneath. It’s in the one spot I can’t reach. “I
can’t get it.”
His mouth twitches in another thwarted smile. He opens one
eye and glances my way. “That’s the idea, Di Natale.”
“Get it off, you meanie.” I cross the small space between our
wingback chairs and turn so my prank name tag faces him.
It’s quiet for so long, I glance over my shoulder. Jonathan’s
staring up at me, firelight bathing his face, turning his eyes dark.
Slowly, he straightens in the chair, uncrossing his legs, then
bracketing me inside them. He sets his hands on my hips and
coaxes me back. One hand stays on my waist, while the other
slowly peels off the name tag. And then he sits back with it,
crunching the name tag into a ball.
“Not fair!” I yell, tugging on his hand. Jonathan tugs back.
It sends me tumbling into his lap. Air rushes out of him.
“Christ, woman,” he groans. “You just pulverized my liver.”
“Sorry,” I mutter halfheartedly, freeing the balled-up name tag
from his hand and carefully tugging it apart. The backing isn’t
very sticky anymore, after a long day on my fuzzy sweater dress,
so after a few careful maneuvers, it’s wrinkled but open, its words
reading, Off-Limits Under the Mistletoe.
I give him a flat look. “Wow. Way to smash the patriarchy.”
“I saw no less than five people hit on you today. I was just
trying to convey that you’re here to do your job and enjoy yourself,
not fend off unwanted advances.”
“Who was hitting on me? I didn’t even notice.”
He gives me a withering look. “Don’t pretend you don’t know,
Gabriella.”
“I’m serious! I can’t tell when people are flirting with me.”
He stares at me for a moment, his expression tense, before he
clears his throat and says, “Well, trust me. They were.”
“Hm.” I stare at the name tag. “So he’s sabotaging my sales,
after all.”
“You sold me under the table today, and you know it.”
“Yeah, I did.” Leaning in, I whisper, “So. Many. Children’s.
Books.”
His gaze dips to my mouth. That’s when I realize I’m in his lap
still, our faces mere inches apart. I lean a little closer. Jonathan
does, too. And it feels like a tear down the center of me, an awful,
aching tug-of-war.
I’m meeting Mr. Reddit three days from now—Boxing Day,
outside the Winter Wonderland display at the conservatory, 10:00
a.m. sharp—a plan I picked from among the ones he proposed in
our Telegram chat, as promised. I’ve been counting down the days,
both excited and nervous that we’ll finally meet.
 But it’s harder now, to remind myself that I’m holding out for
Mr. Reddit, the unlikely friend I found, who I’ve hoped might
become more, when Jonathan Frost and I are seconds away from
kissing each other.
Stay strong, Gabriella! the angel on my shoulder whispers.
Before the devil on my other side can chime in and tempt me, I
spring out of Jonathan’s lap and fuss with the sequins of my
snowflake dress. “Do you want a cup of tea?”
Jonathan sits upright, too, and clears his throat. There’s a flush
on his cheeks. “A cup of tea?”
“With a splash of whiskey. I think we earned it.”
“Ah, so you too know that Mrs. Bailey keeps it in the cabinet for
when she has to do month-end financials.”
I laugh. “Before you came, that whiskey bottle made an
appearance, often in our tea, at least once a week.”
“Sure. Then let’s have tea.”
Jonathan goes to stand, presumably to contribute to tea-
making, but I gently clutch his shoulders and push him back. “Sit.
You did so much to make today happen.”
“So did you,” he says. “I can help.”
“Don’t argue with me for once, okay, Frost? You did a ton. Now
let me make tea.”
“I’ll keep you company, at least,” he says, gently clasping my
elbows and guiding me back so he can stand.
After traipsing together into the back room, I prepare tea in
the kitchenette while Jonathan digs around in his messenger bag,
pulls out his glucometer, and does a finger prick as he sits at the
breakroom table.
 Seemingly satisfied with what his glucometer has to say,
Jonathan packs up his kit and stashes it in his bag. He steps close
behind me. “Sure I can’t help?”
It’s so unbearably pleasurable, his voice low and quiet, his big
body right behind me, I nearly burn myself, pouring tea. I want to
lean into him, let my head fall back against his shoulder and feel
his arms wrap around me. “N-no. I’ve got it under control.”
He seems to hesitate for a moment, like he’s weighing…
something. But whatever it is, it passes. Without another word,
Jonathan strolls back toward the fireplace, then drops onto the
wingback with a sigh.
“How ya feeling?” I ask, stealing a glance at him as I doctor our
teas with whiskey.
He lounges in the wingback like a king on his throne, one long
leg stretched out, an arm thrown behind his head. Firelight paints
his face, the long line of his nose, the hollows of his cheeks. Our
eyes meet, and he tips his head, examining me. “Fine, Gabriella.”
I stare at the dark waves of his hair, his cool green eyes and
long nose. Sharp cheekbones and lush mouth. And yet, for all his
severe handsomeness, there’s something softer about him as he
looks at me, as I look at him.
Two cups of Darjeeling in hand, with a splash of milk and
whiskey in each, I walk carefully back to the chairs and pass him
his. “I put a sugar cube and a peanut butter blossom on the saucer.
Not sure if you could use a little boost or not right now.”
“Thank you.” He takes the cup from me and forgoes the sugar
cube but bites into the cookie.
Sitting across from him, I tuck my legs underneath me.
 We drink our tea and crunch on our cookies in silence, staring
into the fire. Until I glance his way and notice Jonathan’s
watching me. “What is it?”
He stares at me for a moment longer before he drains his tea,
then sets it aside and says, “The numbers are in. Congratulations,
Miss Di Natale. You won.”
My stomach sinks. “I don’t want to talk about that.”
“Why not? You should be proud, Gabriella. You outsold me. Not
that I ever doubted you would.”
Tears blur my vision. It feels like an ice pick puncturing my
chest.
I drain my tea, hoping it will thaw the chill spreading through
my body, but I don’t even feel the whiskey burn its way down as I
blurt, “You’re not quitting for sure, right?”
Jonathan examines me carefully, hands interlaced across his
stomach. “Those were the terms of our agreement.”
“What if I’ve changed my mind?” I whisper around tears
thickening my throat. “What if I wanted you to stay?”
He’s very still. Very quiet. Until he finally says, “You’d want
that?”
I stare at him, tearing deeper inside myself. Should I want
Jonathan around? When I’m drawn to him, when I miss our
bickering, and I wish I could kiss him again, when I’m meeting
Mr. Reddit, the friend I’ve hoped could become more?
Words catch in my throat. I don’t know what to say. I don’t
know what I want. I feel like I’m falling apart.
“I—” The words catch in my throat, until they finally spill out.
“I’m torn.”
 “About what?” Jonathan asks quietly.
I glance away, staring into the fire. “Because whatever’s going
on with us…it’s messing with me. And there’s someone I care
about, but it’s…complicated. Right now, we’re just friends. That’s all
we’ve ever been.”
“Friends,” he repeats softly.
“I hoped maybe we’d become more, and I think he’s hoped so,
too, but now—” I blink away tears. “I don’t know what I hope or
think. We’ve never met in person before. We’ve only ever talked
online. I mean it’s been over a year, so I feel like I know at least
parts of him very well, but that’s not the same as knowing
someone in real life, is it?”
He rubs his knuckles across his mouth. “How did you meet?”
“You’re about the only person who I don’t have to preface this
with, ‘don’t laugh,’ because you don’t seem to possess that bodily
impulse, but I met him on a nerdy bookish Reddit thread. He’s…
perfect,” I tell him bleakly. “At least in our chat he is. And in that
chat, I’m perfect, too. There’s no real-life tension, barely any of my
autistic traits foregrounded to trust him with and hope he’s gentle
toward. I’ve told myself it’s this magical thing, how well we get
along, but that’s not reality, and I know I’ve been hiding behind a
screen, hiding from being fully known and loved for all of who I
am. Which is why I told myself I was going to be brave. And now I
have plans to meet him in person.”
“When?” Jonathan says, voice soft and dark as a midnight
snowy walk.
“After we close for the holidays. Three days from now.”
 The hand in front of his mouth tightens to a fist. “Where are
you meeting him?”
I give him a look. “Don’t even think about playing security. I
already had to talk down June, who’s insisted on coming. We’ve
agreed that she’s allowed to observe from a discreet distance. She
watches too much Criminal Minds—”
“Gabriella,” he says, eyes pinning mine as he repeats himself.
“Where are you meeting?”
“The Winter Wonderland display at the conservatory.”
Jonathan’s fisted hand drops to his lap, his gaze fastened on
me. “Sounds like something you’d love.”
“It is,” I admit. He holds my eyes so intensely, I start to shift
uneasily in my chair. “What about—” I fight the roar of jealousy
clawing through me. “What about you? Is there someone?”
“A…friend,” he finally says. “She’s someone I met online, too,
actually. A pen pal of sorts.”
I smile. “Really? Have you met in person?”
“No.” He glances away, staring into the fire. “Not yet.”
Gently, I nudge his knee. “Why not? Mr. Frost, what do you have
to hide about yourself behind the trusty protection of online
chatrooms?”
He rolls his eyes. “Let’s see. A less than warm and cheery first
impression. Black moods, especially around the holidays.
Avoiding the ‘I have diabetes’ talk.”
“Please. You have a grinch façade, but underneath is a heart of
gold. And as for your less than cooperative pancreas, if she gives
you hell—” I mime a one-two punch. “Lemme at her.”
 I don’t even think he sees me. He’s lost in thought, staring into
the fire still. “What happens,” he asks quietly, “when you meet
and… What if he’s not how you pictured him? What if he’s the last
person you expected?”
“I don’t know. I just wish I’d met him months ago, and this
wouldn’t be an issue. I wish we didn’t have this built-up
idealization that we’ll have to unlearn and work through.”
“So you wish you knew the messy truths.” His gaze snaps my
way. “The hard-to-love parts of him.”
“Don’t you? Don’t you feel that way about her?”
His eyes search mine. “Yes. So much.”
“Then be brave,” I tell him, closing the distance between us and
squeezing his hand, torn as I struggle against the unreasonable
possessiveness I feel for him. “Promise me you’ll meet her, and
when she meets you, she’ll be lucky enough to see the real you, all
of you, Jonathan Frost.”
Staring at me, he’s quiet for a long moment before he flips his
hand and squeezes mine back. “You think she’ll like that?”
“Jonathan. You’re a grumpy curmudgeon, but you’re also one of
the best people I know. You’ve devoted yourself to this place. You’d
do anything for the Baileys. You’ve been a good friend to me the
past eleven days and an exceptional co-manager. You love your
nephew so hard, seeing you two together made my ovaries do
calisthenics—”
“Made them do what?”
“Shh, I’m being poetic. Let me pep-talk you. You’re a rock star
uncle and brother—you went and cleaned off your sister’s car
before they left because it had snowed, I saw you. You’re smart
and have the driest humor of anyone I’ve ever met, and if you’re
anything like in my sex dreams, you’re an amazing lover—oh my
GOD, I just said that.”
I clap both hands over my mouth.
Jonathan’s eyes widen. “What did you just say?
“Nothing.” A blush heats my cheeks. A blush like I see heating
his cheeks, too. “I should go.”
Standing, I turn off the gas fireplace, escape to the back room,
and start to bundle myself up for the walk home. I have to get out
of here, before I say or do anything else to shatter this fragile,
lovely thing we’ve built.
Friendship.
But then I feel him behind me, warm and close. So temptingly
close. “Gabriella—”
“What I meant to say,” I whisper, in the semi-darkness of the
store, facing away from him. I scrunch my eyes shut and take a
deep, steadying breath. “Was that if she’s worthy of you, she’s not
going to like knowing all of you, Jonathan.” I turn with his coat in
my hand and set it gently in his arms. “She’ll love it.”
Jonathan slowly tugs on his jacket. I slip on mine. It’s not until
I’ve pulled on my mittens that I realize I forgot to button my coat.
“Dammit,” I mutter.
Jonathan brushes my hands away as I start to remove my
mittens and steps closer, deftly buttoning each one. He looks
more serious than ever, eyes on his task, and I watch him with a
knot in my throat. I breathe in his wintry woods scent and soak up
the sight of him. “When will I see you?”
 He fumbles with a button. “Soon. There’s a lot to work out with
the store.”
“Okay,” I whisper.
His mouth tips at the corner. “Gonna miss me, Di Natale?”
“Like I miss an abscessed tooth.”
His mouth tips a little more. It’s the closest to a smile yet.
“Good.”
And then we step out into the snowy world. Jonathan locks up,
mouth pursed as he concentrates before he says, “I’ll walk you
home.”
“Jonathan, you don’t have to.”
“It’s late, and it’s not safe for you to walk alone.” He turns and
then gently clasps my headphones from where they sit around my
neck, nestling them on my ears. “We don’t have to talk,” his
muffled voice says. “We can just…” He peers out at the snow, then
tips his face up to the sky.
“Be,” I finish for him.
He peers down at me, his eyes warm. “Yeah.”
And we do just that, long, quiet strides along the snow-packed
sidewalk. Elbows bumping, eyes dancing each other’s way. I hum
to myself, and Jonathan is silent, staring ahead, a soldier
marching into battle. He looks so serious, and I wonder what’s
heavy on his mind. But I don’t ask. Because I shouldn’t want to
know. I shouldn’t want to drag him inside my apartment and
warm him up and ask him to pour out his heart.
As we stop in front of my building, I turn and face Jonathan.
“Thank you for your escort, good sir.”
 He gives me a stern look. “You have no business walking alone,
especially with those headphones on, understand?”
I shrug. “It keeps life exciting.”
“Exciting.” He massages the bridge of his nose. “Christ,
Gabriella.”
Carefully, I step close and smile up at him, blinking away snow
and the threat of tears. “Happy holidays, Jonathan.”
To my absolute dizzying delight and bittersweet astonishment,
Jonathan wraps me in his arms and sets his cheek on the crown
of my head. A long slow exhale leaves him. “Merry Christmas,
Gabriella.”
We pull apart, setting necessary distance between us as I tell
him, “Promise you’ll meet your online friend, okay?”
He nods. “I promise. And you, too?”
“Yes.” I swallow a lump in my throat. “I hope she’s everything
you wanted.”
Jonathan stares down at me, searching my gaze. “I already
know she is.”
I roll my eyes. “You’re so cocky. Some of us, however, who are
also meeting our anonymous online pen pals, are quaking in our
snow boots.”
“Your Mr. Reddit better be quaking in his boots. He’s got a lot to
prove before he’s worthy of you.”
A blush heats my cheeks. “I’m talking about what he thinks of
me. I’m nervous. But I’m thinking I’ll go baptism by fire and show
up in my ugliest Christmas sweater. It plays music. If he can
handle that, we can make it through anything.”
 Jonathan’s face breaks into a smile so devastating, it knocks
the air out of my lungs. It transforms him, two gorgeous dimples
carving down his cheeks, his eyes crinkled handsomely at the
corners. His throat works as he laughs loud and deep. Then he
drags me into his arms again, hugging me hard as he whispers
something into my hair.
“Hey!” I squeak. “Stop smothering me! You finally smiled, and
I’m missing it!”
He pulls back and exhales roughly, the smile gone, replaced by
something raw and fierce.
“What is it?” I ask.
But he doesn’t answer me. He opens my building’s door and
nudges me inside. And then he sets his gloved hand on the glass
of the door. I set my hand there, too.
A moment later, he steps back, turns, and disappears into the
snowy night.
“What a strange, lovely man.”
My vision’s watery, a solitary tear slipping down my cheek, but
I smile to myself the whole way up the stairs.
OceanofPDF.com
 Chapter 13
Playlist: “You and Me at Christmas,” Why Don’t
We

MAYBE IT’S CUMULATIVE exhaustion, but for the first time in weeks, my
sleep is a black blanket, heavy and dreamless. I wake up rested on
Christmas Eve morning and whip up brunch with Eli and June
before heading to my parents’ to celebrate. It’s laughter and good
food and music, happy chaos that I love but also requires lots of
headphone time.
I sleep dreamlessly that night, too, and wake up to a picture-
perfect white Christmas.
Bing sings the famous apropos song as snow drifts from the
sky and my parents and I open presents in front of the tree. When
the next song starts, my heart twists.
Little Jack Frost, get lost, get lost.
I try very hard to banish Jonathan from my thoughts, because
tomorrow I meet Mr. Reddit. But after another long day of
celebrating, after I tumble into my bed that night, savoring the
cozy comfort of my apartment and my cuddly Gingerbread, I’m
not as lucky as I have been the past two nights.
This time, my dreams are different. The hands and body
holding me close, loving me, filling me, are gentler, careful, like it’s
our first time and there’s a world to discover between us. It’s not
Jonathan…and yet something deep in my mind says it is. As I swim
to the surface of my dreams, they morph to Jonathan and I saying
goodbye outside my apartment, just like after the big sale.
Jonathan’s staring down at me, something fierce and hot in his
gaze as he tells me what he told me that night:
“Your Mr. Reddit better be quaking in his boots. He’s got a lot to
prove before he’s worthy of you.”
Mr. Reddit… It snags my brain, hooks my thoughts, and yanks
me closer, closer to the surface of wakefulness.
Mr. Reddit…
I never told him that name. I only told Mr. Reddit himself.
I’m thrashing among waves where memory and dreams crash
and swell, reaching for him, choked and wordless.
Don’t leave! I want to tell him. Don’t leave when I’ve just found
you!
I’m so scared he’ll dissolve into midnight-water darkness like
he did when we said goodbye. But instead, Jonathan clutches me
tight and rips me to the surface, wrapping me in his arms, his
mouth taking mine, filling me with words and air and hope. It’s
me, he whispers. It’s always been me.
Jackknifing up in bed, I gasp. My heart is pounding.
I can’t believe it. And yet it’s the only thing I can believe.
It’s hard to grasp that something so unlikely could be true, but
I know I’ve never used the name “Mr. Reddit” around Jonathan. It
has to be him. There’s no other explanation.
As I rush around, replaying our conversation the night we
closed up Bailey’s, the questions he asked, his hesitation and
tenderness, the wariness in his expression, I become more and
more sure. It’s him. Jonathan is my Mr. Reddit.
Frantically tugging on fleece-lined leggings, my most garish
fuzzy candy-cane-stripe socks, I falter when I realize my ugly
Christmas sweater is nowhere to be seen.
It takes me a moment to recall when I last saw it, and that’s
when I remember—I left it at Bailey’s. My sensory comforts
fluctuate from day to day, so I always bring back-up clothes in
case what I’m wearing starts to bother me. That last day of work, I
brought the heinous sweater and another pair of fleece lined
leggings similar to what I’m wearing now, and then failed to bring
them home.
I could wear something else. But then I remember Jonathan’s
breathtaking smile, that deep, rich laugh when I promised to wear
the ugly Christmas sweater.
My heart leaps, toe loop after toe loop, as I drag on a cotton
long-sleeved tee that I’ll wear under the sweater, as I brush my
teeth and sort out my wild hair, then run out of the house. A
thousand questions storm my mind. How long has he known?
When did he figure it out? And why didn’t he tell me?
I run, desperate for answers and desperate to see him, slipping
on snow, darting around bundled-up slowpokes, my headphones
quieting the world to a peaceful hush as snow kisses my skin like
a blessing and a promise.
His voice echoes in my head, what he said when I told him I
hoped his online friend was everything he wanted.
I already know she is.
 My heart’s flying, I have wings. I soar across the last block
leading up to Bailey’s, then let myself into the shop. It’s quiet
inside, a hush of emptiness that I love, compounded by my
headphones. Daylight streams in, no lights on. The smell of books
and wood polish tickles my nose.
Quickly, I stroll to the back and spot the canvas bag hanging
from my clothes hook. I lift it open, yank out my ugly Christmas
sweater, then tug it on, which knocks my headphones off and
sends a rush of sound into my ears.
“Why haven’t you told her?” Mrs. Bailey’s voice carries from the
bookkeeping room.
I freeze. My breathing sounds a thousand times louder than it
should.
“You know why.” My stomach drops. That’s Jonathan. “She’s
going to despise me for it.”
Blood roars in my ears. I try to breathe, try to make sense of
what he’s saying.
“Perhaps at first,” Mrs. Bailey says quietly. “But once she sees
that this is the only way to save the bookshop, she’ll understand.”
It feels like the floor is crumbling beneath me. I grapple for
something to steady myself as I picture it: Mrs. Bailey gently
calling me into her office when we come back after the new year,
holding my hand, thanking me for all I’ve given the place, telling
me she’s sorry, but she has to think of the business first and what
Jonathan’s brought to it.
Jonathan’s words cut to the heart of me: She’s going to despise
me for it.
 Desperate to escape, I wend my way through the store as
quietly as possible, then slip outside. And then I start to run,
streaking down the sidewalk, slipping on ice and snow, tears
blurring my vision—
The shriek of a car’s horn stops me just in time before I run
farther into the crosswalk.
That’s when I realize I left my noise-cancelling headphones at
the store.
Stumbling back onto the sidewalk, I slump against the coffee
shop storefront of all places, where I bought my peppermint hot
cocoa six days a week this December, not far from where Trey
accosted me and Jonathan came running and everything
changed. I gasp for air and stare up at the sky, tiny snowflakes
drifting down.
“What do I do?” I whisper. Shutting my eyes, I let the cool wind
kiss my skin. I let my heart slow and steady.
And then, like the smooth beauty of fresh-fallen snow, my
mind becomes clear. I’m being…ridiculous. I walked into the
middle of a conversation between two people who’ve shown me
time and again that they’re worthy of my trust and they wouldn’t
betray me. What am I thinking, running off like this? I’m safe with
the Baileys and with Jonathan. There has to be a reason. An
explanation—
“Gabby!” Jonathan’s voice carries from down the block.
And just like that morning he came running my way, he’s
running again, hurdling snowbanks and dodging meandering
couples. I watch him, tearing toward me, the wind whipping his
dark hair, fire burning in those wintergreen eyes.
 And then he comes to a halt at my feet, staring at me intensely,
my headphones in hand. “I saw them,” he says. “And I knew you’d
been there, and I don’t know what all you heard Gabby, but I
promise I’m on your side—”
“I know.” I step close, wrapping my hand around his. “I know
you are.”
His eyes search mine. “You do?”
I smile faintly, taking my headphones, setting them around my
neck. “I do. And I’m on your side, too. I don’t know what you were
discussing. I just know you’re afraid to tell me.”
“I…” He wraps his hands around my shoulders. “I tried so many
times, but I was so scared you’d hate it.”
“I heard that part. But I trust you, Jonathan.”
“You do?”
“I do.”
He frowns. “That’s it?”
I nod, blinking away tears. “Yeah. I mean, I wouldn’t mind
hearing more about whatever ruthless capitalist measures you
took to save the place that you’re so sure I’m going to despise you
for, but I do trust you.”
His jaw ticks, like he’s steeling himself. “It’s…an online version
of the bookstore. Hard copies, audio, e-books. Romance readers
are our key segment, our number-one target customer. It’s going
to drive traffic to the website and not necessarily to the brick-and-
mortar store, and I know you hate that. I know you want the place
brimming with people, like it once was, Gabby, but it was this kind
of bookstore or no bookstore at all.” His eyes search mine. “I
wanted it to be safe for you, to keep Bailey’s open for you for years
and years. I know it’s not ideal, but it’s the only way—”
“Jonathan,” I whisper.
He stares down at me, breathless, wide-eyed. He looks a little
terrified.
“Thank you,” I tell him, bringing a hand to his face, softly
stroking his cheek with my mittened thumb. “For explaining that.
For…everything you did. I can’t begin to say how much it means,
and I want to hear so much more, but the thing is…”
I stare up at Jonathan, and that tear within my heart stitches
itself together, as everything I’ve come to admire and adore in
these two men—my nemesis and my friend, my gritty reality and
my sweetest escape—fuses into one breathtaking, perfectly
imperfect reality.
Him.
“I actually have a date,” I whisper, still stroking his cheek. “And
I wouldn’t want to keep him waiting.”
He stares at me very carefully, searching my expression. “As it
happens, I do, too.”
Tears hover in my eyes, threatening to spill over. “Tell me
where.”
He steps closer. “The Winter Wonderland at the conservatory,”
he says softly, “10:00 a.m. sharp. I get to meet the
MargaretCATwood of my dreams. And I can only hope—”
I throw myself at him, crush my mouth to his, hot and hard
and frantic. His deep, rough groan makes my toes curl, makes
sparks dance across my skin. Jonathan’s mouth opens for me, his
tongue finds mine, and it’s hunger and waiting and longing and
relief. It’s feverish and fervent, panting gasps as we clutch each
other like the world’s ending and we’re holding on for dear life.
“Gabriella.” His hands drift down my back, grip my hips,
holding me against him.
“Jonathan,” I whisper through tears, clutching him tight. “It’s
you.”
He nods, his hands sliding along my back. “You’re not
disappointed?”
“Disappointed?” I laugh through tears and kiss the corner of
his mouth, his jaw, then suck the hollow of his throat, making his
hips lurch against mine. “Am I acting disappointed?”
“No,” he says roughly, slipping a hand deep inside my hair,
massaging my scalp, his other hand drifting up my waist. He
kisses me again, deep and velvet hot. “No, you aren’t.”
“I’m relieved.” My hands find his back pockets and squeeze his
round, hard ass through the fabric. “Thrilled. Beyond happy. My
heart was breaking. I wanted both of you, and now I don’t have to
choose, because it’s all…you.”
He smiles against our kiss. “Even with my capitalist wiles and
the online bookstore?”
I nod and bury my face in his neck, breathing in woodsmoke
and wintry forests. “Especially with your capitalist wiles and the
online bookstore. You saved Bailey’s.”
“For you.”
“For me.”
I feel his smile deepen as he nuzzles me, then kisses my neck
down to my collarbone. “I won’t work there,” he says, “if you don’t
want. You can have it all for yourself—”
 “What?” It’s a bucket of ice water right over me. Yanking my
hands from his pockets, I pick up my head. Our noses brush, but
there’s no kiss, only frowning. “I just found you, and now you’re
leaving me?”
Jonathan’s smile is sweet and gentle as he tugs me back into
his arms and returns my hands to his back pockets. “You always
had me, Gabriella. And I’d love to stay, but not if it won’t make you
happy.”
I melt inside his arms, as Jonathan’s hands drift in soothing
circles down my waist, then palm my butt affectionately. “It would
make me endlessly happy,” I tell him. “We’re the perfect team, you
and I.” Our eyes search each other’s. I slip a hand from his pocket
and brush a dark lock of hair from his face. “When did you know?”
I ask.
He leans into my touch, his eyes slipping shut. “Our fight after
meeting with the Baileys. When I picked up the romance novel,
and you made that dig about Jane Austen. It was nearly verbatim
what I’d said, what we’d talked about in our chat. I thought I was
losing it for a second, imagining things, but then I asked you to
name more of your favorite romances, and the ones you pointed
out were every single title MCAT had told me. Then I went home
and I tried to talk with you on Telegram about work to see if I
could get any more clues. When you said you had one coworker
who made you miserable and hated the holidays—I knew it was
you. At least, I was as sure as I could be.”
“That’s why you said it,” I whisper. “When we kissed. I shouldn’t
do this. Not yet.”
 Sighing, he opens his eyes. “I wanted to wait until we both
knew, until everything was out in the open. Only you were just so
perfect, standing there catching snowflakes on your tongue, a
smile lighting you up, and I knew you wanted me, even though you
were torn. I’d spent thirty minutes with you in my car, listening to
the smoke in your voice, watching you squirm your little ass on
the seat, rubbing your thighs, staring at my mouth and—God,
Gabby, I couldn’t stop myself. Not when you were right there with
me.”
“And when we kissed?” I bite my lip, remembering every hot,
wet slick of our tongues and mouths, the way his hands sank into
my coat and pinned our hips together.
He’s quiet for a moment as he stares at me, holding me tight,
so tight, as if he’s afraid the moment he lets go, I might vanish.
“That’s when I prayed, because kissing you was water in a desert,
sunlight breaking the horizon, and I was gone for you, no turning
back. I’m not a praying man, Gabriella, but I prayed so fucking
hard that this wasn’t some horrible joke, that you’d be happy
when you realized it was me, that whatever cosmic force gave me
the gift of stumbling into your life wasn’t cruel enough to keep me
from always belonging to it.”
“Jonathan.” I pull away, clasping his face. “My Mr. Reddit. My
own grumpy Scrooge McGrinch. It was you. It had to be.”
“How did you know?” he asks quietly.
I smile so hard my face hurts. “You slipped. The night we
closed up, you mentioned Mr. Reddit.”
His eyes widen. “Shit. Did I?”
 I nod. “I didn’t process it until last night—well, early this
morning. In my dreams.”
His smile is slow and lazy and so arrogantly sensual, I want to
kiss it right off his face. “Been dreaming about me, have you, Di
Natale?”
I shove him playfully. “I already admitted that the night we
closed up.” Our humor dies away as I search his eyes. “Why didn’t
you tell me as soon as you suspected it?”
He drifts his knuckle down my cheek, brow furrowed. So
serious. “At first, because I was reeling. I needed time to sort it out
in my head. And because you hated me, Gabriella. Especially once
I realized how badly I wanted it to work, I realized you needed
time to see my less terrible qualities…” He blows out a slow stream
of air. “And I needed time to finish the online bookstore build-out,
then find the guts to tell you about it. It didn’t feel right, the idea of
revealing who I was—who we were—before I told you everything,
including the store.”
“I’m so glad it was you,” I whisper, throwing my arms around
his neck and holding him tight. “I wanted it so badly to be you.”
He drinks me in, and a tender smile lifts his mouth. “Look at
you.”
I peer down at my ugly Christmas sweater with its obnoxious
twinkling lights, just waiting for me to flip the hidden switch
that’ll make it sing. “Brutal, right?”
“Beautiful,” he whispers, hands caressing my waist, drawing
me close. “The most beautiful. Here.” He bends and kisses my
temple. “Here.” Over my heart. “And here.” Then his lips brush
mine.
 My mouth parts as he wraps me tighter in his arms. This kiss
is quiet and gentle, but it doesn’t stay that way for long. Before we
know it, Jonathan’s walking me back until we bump against a wall.
I’m starting to tear off his jacket, dragging away mine.
“Wait,” he says, even though it sounds like the last thing he
wants to say, especially when I slide my hand up his hard thigh,
toward where I see clear evidence that he’s hurting as badly as I
am. “Slow down. Gabriella.” God, that voice, deep and
commanding, it’s just how he sounded in my filthy-aristocrat,
sheet-twisting, hours-of-lovemaking, fantasies. It makes me wild.
“I need you,” I tell him.
“God, Gabby.” He draws me closer, and his hands slip down my
ass, to my thighs, lifting me up and hiking my legs around his
waist. “I need you, too.”
“So…about that date?” I tell him. “How about we relocate it?
Somewhere with a bed. And no one who needs a damn thing from
us. For days.”
“My place,” he says. “No roommates. No interruptions.”
I kiss him hard and deep, then slip slowly down his body.
“Your place.” I take a step back.
“Hey.” He frowns. “Where are you going? We have a date.”
“I just need…a quick stop at my place? Fifteen minutes?”
“Fifteen minutes!” he yells like I’ve told him fifteen years.
“Just to grab a few essentials. Hint: I won’t be packing
underwear.”
His eyes darken. He starts stalking toward me. “I’ll drive you.
It’ll go faster.”
 A coy smile slips out. “I said fifteen minutes, Frost, and I meant
it.”
I screech with laughter as he bends and throws me over his
shoulder, gently swatting my butt. “Fine. Just be ready to make up
for lost time.”

“Holy shit.” By the sounds of it, June drops her eyeliner pen.
“Scrooge is Mr. Reddit? Jonathan Frost?”
“It’s the stuff of fiction,” I tell her, packing the world’s most
chaotic sleepover bag. My own pillow. Fuzzy socks. Zero
underwear. Lots of sweaters. Romance novels. Thin mint cookies.
“And yet it’s my reality. I’m never going to stop pinching myself.”
“You’re gonna bang each other’s lights out, aren’t you?”
“For days.” I plop on my bed beside Gingerbread and feed her a
handful of treats. “Don’t miss me too much,” I tell her. “And don’t
worry, I’ll bring Jonathan by soon so you can meet him.”
Gingerbread purrs like an engine missing its muffler, and
while it’s probably because I gave her three times more treats
than normal, I’m choosing to believe that it’s her excitement
about getting to meet the man waiting not-so-patiently
downstairs in his SUV.
“Gabby?” June’s voice wafts from the Jack and Jill bathroom
connecting our bedrooms.
“Yeah?”
 “What are the chances? Have you wrapped your head around
that?”
Glancing toward the window facing the street and Jonathan’s
car below, I picture him—dark hair, stern features, wintergreen
eyes, that soft, warm smile only for me.
“Terrifyingly slim,” I tell her. “I’m the luckiest person in the
world.”
Easing off the bed, I throw my bag over my shoulder. It feels
like Christmas morning all over again.
June catches me in the mirror, observing my dazed smile, the
hearts dancing in my eyes. “Wow,” she says. “You’re a goner.”
I smile even wider. “Yeah.”
“Well, he just better deserve you,” she mutters, back at her
eyeliner.
“Considering he built out an online store with enough
projected profits that Bailey’s will be safe indefinitely, and he did
it all for me—”
“Goddammit.” A streak of kohl black eyeliner marks her
temple. June tosses the pen aside and spins to face me, tears in
her eyes. “No more of this mushy stuff. It’s messing up my cat-eye.
Why must you torture me with heartfelt, makeup-wrecking
drivel?”
“Because I want your support. Yours and Eli’s.”
She snorts, dabbing her eyes. “We know Eli’s all for it.”
“True. He’s already planning our double wedding with him and
Luke. He’s over the moon. I want you to be, too, June.”
Crossing the small space between us, she hugs me tight, her
voice hoarse as she kisses my temple. “If anyone deserves a happy
ending, it’s you.” She smacks my butt as I run out of the bathroom.
“Now go be naughty!”

OceanofPDF.com
 Chapter 14
Playlist: “Under the Christmas Lights,” Gwen
Stefani

HEART AGLOW, I bound down the stairs of my apartment building,

burst out of the door, and launch myself into Jonathan’s arms.
He laughs, warm and deep, as he kisses my cheeks, my nose,
my mouth. “I missed you,” he says. “Worst fifteen minutes ever.”
“Felt like fifteen days.” I smile up at him, taking his hand when
he offers it so I can step over another snowbank and into my seat
in his SUV.
Jonathan drives, and we bicker. I complain about him
observing the speed limits when there’s just a little snow on the
road and I desperately want to be at his place, already naked. He
reminds me that he’s very much on board with being at his place
and already naked, but I’m the one who demanded a pit-stop.
Honestly, after behaving ourselves for two weeks, it feels great. It
feels like slipping into my softest shirt and under my coziest
blanket—familiar and safe and right.
“Satisfied?” he says, throwing the car into park.
“Not yet.” Climbing the center console, I straddle his lap the
way I wanted to the first time he drove me home. “But soon I will
be.”
 Jonathan can’t even hide his smile as I slip my hands up his
shirt, careful of his infusion site above his hip, and tease his
stomach and chest. His eyes drift shut as I kiss my way up his
throat, his jaw, his cheekbones, then the corner of his mouth. “I
nearly ran a red light back there,” he mutters, slipping his hands
down my hips to my backside, caressing, kneading.. “Thanks to
you and your sexual demands.”
“You like my sexual demands.”
“I do,” he admits, moving me against him where he’s hard and
straining against his slacks. “But I’d like them better upstairs on
the bed in front of the fire.”
I wrench myself away, tumbling like a lopsided snowball back
onto my seat and throwing open the door. “Hurry up!”
Laughing, Jonathan runs around the car and sweeps me into
his arms. I wrap myself around him like an oversized koala as he
unlocks his building’s door and jogs up the stairs. “Impressive
fitness,” I tell him.
“Hockey’s good for something.”
“Running up a flight of stairs with your sexually demanding
woman and not being breathless?”
He arches an eyebrow as he opens the door to his place. “Yes,
but more generally—” He kicks the door shut behind us.
“Stamina.”
With the push of a remote button, flames dance to life in his
apartment’s living room fireplace.
“Wow,” I whisper.
He grins and says, “Hold that thought.”
 In an impressive display of strength, Jonathan drags his low
platform bed from its corner in the studio space, across the room,
until it rests, covered in cozy blankets right in front of the fire.
Before I can say a word, Jonathan slips my coat off of my
shoulders, then hangs it up. Pressing a featherlight kiss to my
neck, he breathes me in. I sigh, letting my head fall back on his
shoulder, how I’ve wanted to. His arms wrap around me from
behind as I reach back and palm him over the hard, thick outline
of his erection.
“I want you so bad, I can barely see straight,” he says roughly.
“That festive firecracker at work got you horny?” I whisper.
“With her generous hips and bedhead curls and a penchant for
pushing your buttons?”
He groans a laugh. “It’s like you speak from experience or
something. Got a colleague you’ve been hot for?”
“You drive me wild.” I spin in his arms and growl the words
against his mouth as we kiss, biting his lip. “You are designed to
make me feral.”
He clasps my face and kisses me again, hard and hungry,
walking us toward the bed. “You have no idea.”
“I want to know.”
“From the moment I realized the statistical likelihood that
MCAT was you,” he says between kisses, “given all the overlapping
circumstances and evidence, I’ve been gone. All I’d been
repressing around you, Gabriella”—kiss—“all I’d denied myself
from imagining with MCAT”—kiss—“coalesced. I’ve been wrecked.
I had to watch you walk around the store and glare at me, still
hating my guts. And then I had to go home and beat off in the
shower every night because you made me furious and so fucking
hard.”
My mouth falls open. “I want a replay later.”
“I’m so glad it’s you, Gabriella.” He’s past the horny talk, on to
the romance, tugging me against him, teasing my nipples over my
sweater. “I wouldn’t have been able to stand it any other way.”
“Jonathan,” I whisper, deliriously happy with how he’s
touching me. “Me, too.”
Taking my hand, he sits on the bed and tugs me down, the fire
dancing behind us.
I tumble onto his lap, staring down at Jonathan as he smooths
errant curls away from my face and tucks one behind my ear. I
slip my hand beneath his shirt, up his chest to rest over his heart,
and then I kiss him. Our tongues touch, and it’s flint and steel, air
rushing out of us, both of us toeing off our shoes, crawling back on
the bed, attacking each other’s clothes.
“You smell incredible,” I whisper, burying my nose in his neck,
breathing him in. “How do you smell so incredible?”
He huffs a laugh, but it turns tight and ragged as I lick his
Adam’s apple, tasting his skin. “It’s just my bodywash. When I
realized harsh scents gave you headaches, I stopped wearing
cologne and switched to this instead.”
I sigh with pleasure, shamelessly rubbing myself against him,
touching him, tasting him. “That’s unacceptably sweet.”
“I tried,” he admits, kissing a wildly sensitive spot on my neck,
nipping my ear with his teeth. “In very stealthy ways.”
“Clothes,” I whine. “Off. All of them.”
 He clasps the hem of my shirt and starts to lift. “Tell me,
Gabriella. What you want. What you don’t. Promise.”
“I promise,” I tell him, kissing his jaw, palming him over his
pants where he’s hard and tenting the fabric.
Jonathan peels away my sweater, then my shirt beneath,
baring my breasts to him since I’m not wearing a bra. What was
the point when he was just going to take it off anyway?
His hands shake as he glides them up my waist and gently
cups my breasts. His thumbs circle my nipples as he kisses my
neck, my jaw, my mouth. “How are you so beautiful?”
“Because I’m yours.”
“Mine,” he whispers, bending to kiss my breasts, dragging each
nipple in his mouth with long slow sucks that send bolts of
pleasure down my stomach, lower, where I’m wet and dying for
his touch.
Pressing me back onto the bed, he tugs down my leggings. And
when he sees me, he sucks in a ragged breath. His hands drift
around to my bare backside and tug me closer. “I want to drive
you wild,” he mutters.
I sit up on elbows, so I can see him better, watch his hands
traveling my body. “Please do. You’ve been much too nice the past
two weeks. I’m in withdrawal.”
Laughing, he presses a kiss to my hip, then my stomach. On
the first, gentle kiss to my clit, I buckle and fall back on the bed.
He grins, looking supremely pleased. “That impressive, eh?”
I push myself back up. “Just slow down there, Mr. Frost. I have
some undressing to do, myself.”
 First I slip off his sweater, deepest jade, like evergreens at
midnight. Then I peel off his tight, white undershirt, baring a
beautiful, muscled body dusted in dark hair. I touch his hard
chest and flat, dusky nipples. Then I kiss and suck them, making
him groan.
When I get to his slacks, I stop myself. My hand rests at his hip,
near his infusion site and the pocket where I see his pump. “Show
me?”
“I—” He clears his throat. “I like to unplug, so I can move
around freely and not worry about tugging on the tubing.” I watch
him carefully as he disconnects the thin clear tube attached to his
pump from the small disc adhered to his skin, then gathers it in
his hand. “Just don’t let me fall asleep after you wear me out.” He
flashes me a grin. “It’s best to plug back in afterward.”
“I won’t let you fall asleep,” I tell him quietly, softly tracing the
V along his hip, up the strong muscles knit to his ribs.
Extracting the pump from his pocket, Jonathan sets both
pump and tubing safely on the nearby coffee table. And when he
turns back, I give him a long, slow kiss.
“What was that for?” he says.
“Because I wanted to.”
He smiles, recognizing his own words from the night he drove
me home, the night everything started to change. “I wanted to do
much more than help you into my car, Gabriella.”
“That feeling was mutual,” I tell him, pushing Jonathan onto
his back. I lower his zipper, then drag his pants and boxer briefs
down. God, he’s beautiful, all long, powerful muscles and a thick,
jutting erection. I kiss his big, muscly thighs, his lean hips, every
inch of him that’s hard beneath firm, warm skin.
“Gabriella,” he whispers, yanking me close, kissing my neck,
my collarbone, gently tugging one of my nipples with his mouth,
then the other. “I want you to come.”
“I want us both to.” I smile as he pushes me onto my back and
crawls down my body.
“You first,” he says, all growl and command that makes me
spread my legs shamelessly wide. “Like this, huh?” he asks coyly,
kissing his way up my thighs.
“God, yes. And I got tested recently. No STIs.”
“Same. On both counts,” he says softly. A pained groan leaves
him as he strokes me with his fingertips. “Fuck, you’re wet. And
soft. And gorgeous.” Then he drops down and drags me by the
hips until I’m right in his face, and his tongue is exactly where I
want it.
He starts soft rhythmic laps of my clit, then slips one finger
deep inside, working me steadily, watching me, learning what
makes me melt and moan.
It’s not fast for me, but Jonathan doesn’t seem to mind one bit.
He licks and tastes and teases, strokes me with his fingers. He says
every filthy thing I knew he would and a few I didn’t see coming,
words that make my back arch, makes desire sing through my
veins.
I’m hot and yet I’m shivering, pleasure swirling deep inside
me, radiating out to my breasts and throat, my fingertips and toes.
“Feels so good,” I whisper.
A deep, satisfied hum rumbles in his throat. “Good.”
 “So good,” I tell him again, when he finds that perfect rhythm
of his mouth and hands, his tongue swirling my clit, two fingers
rubbing my G-spot. I arch off the bed. “Don’t stop. Just like that.
Please don’t stop.”
Jonathan groans again, so clearly turned on by turning me on.
He thrusts his pelvis into the mattress in rhythm with his fingers’
movement, his eyes shut like he’s in ecstasy. I want to watch him
fucking the bed because he’s so desperate for me, but as he works
me harder, faster, my eyes fall shut and pleasure spools, tight and
white hot through my limbs. I bend my legs, locking them around
his shoulders. Canting my hips against his mouth, I slip my
fingers into his hair. “Oh God, I’m so close. Please, I’m so—”
I shatter, gasping again and again as he chases my tremoring
hips with his tongue, stretching out my orgasm until I gently push
him away, begging for no more.
“Gabriella,” he says, leaning over me.
“Jonathan,” I tell him breathlessly, drawing his hips close to
mine. “No STIs. We covered that. I take the pill every morning.”
His thick length, dark and wet at the tip rubs against me. “No
condoms?” he grits out.
“I don’t like the feel of them. I understand their importance,
and I can use them if needed, but if you’re okay with not—”
“I’m very okay with not.” He cups my breast and moves against
me, working me up to another orgasm with sure, slow strokes of
his cock over my clit.
I’m so close, rubbing against him, begging nonsensically, until
I finally manage to say, “Inside me. I want you inside me.”
 Jonathan kisses me hungrily and starts to ease himself in, but
it’s tight and I start to panic. His hand slips into my hair,
massaging my scalp. He kisses my cheek, my nose, my cupid’s
bow. “Relax for me, Gabriella.”
I moan at the command in his voice, feeling my body loosen
responsively. Gently, he rocks in a little deeper.
“Breathe, beautiful,” he says against my ear, before pressing a
long, hot kiss to my neck. He’s big, and it’s tight, but I’m wet, so
wet, and he kisses me, praises me, until I feel him seated fully
inside.
I grip his shoulders, arching up into him. “I need you.”
“I’m here.” He groans as he pumps into me, his grip hard and
possessive on my hip. “I’m right here, and you are goddamn
exquisite. Fuck, you feel so good. So tight and warm.”
Jonathan holds me close, stroking a place deep inside me that
makes my breath catch, makes my hips buck into his frantically.
He wraps his arms tighter around me, his weight pushing me
into the mattress, making me feel every nudge of his hips, the
steady rub of his pelvis against my clit. He kisses my neck, my
mouth, my breasts. It’s fast and desperate, and I start to shake
beneath him, to buck and cry, and then I’m coming in such
powerful waves, only his body can hold me down.
“Gabby,” he whispers. “Oh, God, I feel you.”
He pulls back and strokes into me, faster, harder, air rushing
out of him. “I’m gonna come, Gabby.”
I hold him close as he drops down again and slips his arms
around me, between my back and the bed. He drives into me,
sending me higher up the mattress with each deep, pained grunt.
I feel him let go, feel him surrender his body to mine as I hold
him tight.
“Oh God, Gabby. Oh fuck—”
“I want it all,” I tell him through a hard kiss, sinking my hands
into his ass, urging him on. “Give me everything.”
On a shout, he thrusts into me and spills, long and hot, frantic
punches of his hips as he calls my name, until he’s spent. After a
quiet moment and a dozen tender, breathless kisses, Jonathan
eases off my body and tugs me into his arms. Content and dazed,
we search each other’s eyes.
“Wow,” I whisper.
“‘Wow’ is right,” he says on a soft smile, his hand wrapping
around my waist. He stares at me so intently, that soft smile
deepening.
“What is it?”
He sighs happily. “You’re here.”
Now my smile mirrors his. “I’m here. We just had amazing sex.
What did I do to deserve that? Have I been naughty? Or nice?”
He laughs deep and rich, drawing me closer in his arms,
kissing me slowly. “Both.”
Pulling back, I slide my hands through his hair and examine
him. “Do you know how lucky we are? That we found each other
not once but twice?”
He searches my eyes, his expression serious. “The luckiest.”
“Why do you look like that makes you sad?”
He tugs me closer and kisses me again. “I’m too familiar with
probability and statistics.”
“What does that mean?”
 “It means one wrong move,” he says quietly, his forehead
against mine, “one single misstep, and I’d have missed you. And I
don’t want that world. I never want a world without you.”
“Jonathan.” I cup his face, searching his eyes. They’re wet. “Hey.
It’s all right. I’m here.”
He crushes me in his arms and buries his face in my neck,
breathing me in. “Sugar plums,” he whispers. “You smell like tart
plums and cinnamon sugar, and it’s the best fucking smell in the
world.”
I smile, sliding my fingers through his hair in a way that I hope
soothes him. “You’ve been a little stressed, haven’t you? You’ve had
all this knowledge and worry bottled up beneath that tough-guy
surface.”
He nuzzles me and hides in the crook of my neck, kissing me
there softly. “That last night at work, when you told me where you
were meeting him—me—I wanted to tell you so badly. And so
many times in those three days we were apart, I almost texted you,
almost called, almost went on Telegram and told you everything,
but…” He pulls away, holding my eyes. “but I just couldn’t do it. I
kept freaking out, that I’d tell you and you’d truly despise me for
what I’d done with the store, and then I’d lose you—”
“Never,” I tell him.
“I know that now,” he says quietly, almost to himself, playing
with a lock of my hair. “That’s why I met Mrs. Bailey, for advice
about how to finally get the courage to tell you.”
“You figured it out.” I smile at him. “We both did.”
“Yeah.” His eyes search mine. “We did.”
 And for a long time, we lie there in the quiet, nothing but the
soft dance of the fire’s flames, the sound of our breath and
whispered voices as we touch and stare at each other, bursts of
laughter and smiles, piecing together the past year, stitching
every part of ourselves and our past into one glorious, promising
whole.
After a sweet, slow kiss, Jonathan nods his chin toward the
miniature Christmas tree nestled on the mantle of his fireplace,
sparkling with tiny twinkly lights. “This is what you did to me,” he
grumbles. “I have a Christmas tree. I’m an agnostic who, despite
my business acumen, loathes the empty consumerist impulses of
the season, and here I am, with a Christmas tree on my mantle.”
“I don’t think it’s tiny enough. And it’s definitely missing a
fingernail-sized tree topper.” I kiss him softly. “It’s the sweetest
thing, Jonathan, but just so you know…you don’t have to love the
holidays. I love them enough for both of us.”
It’s quiet for a minute. He traces my breasts with a fingertip,
turning my nipples hard and tender. “It’s not so much that I hate
the holidays,” he says. “I just don’t…have many happy memories
from them. My parents weren’t good together. They always fought
badly, but they were at their worst around the holidays—
screaming fights, slamming doors, driving off at night and not
coming back until the next day.
“My sister Liz, who you met, she’s older, and she bore such a
burden around that time of year, trying to offset my parents’
animosity, to make things extra ‘festive’ and ‘happy’ for me. As I
got older, that just struck me as deeply unfair and oppressive, this
pressure and guilt if we weren’t always ‘cheerful’ simply because it
was the month of December and ‘Christmas was coming!’”
I peer up at him, gliding my fingers through his hair. “I’m
sorry. That makes complete sense.”
He turns his head and kisses my palm. “You don’t need to be
sorry, Gabriella. And all that to say, while I don’t have many
positive associations with the holidays…” He gently cups my
breast, then kisses me slowly. “I think, going forward I will.”
I sigh into our kiss, but then I pull away, meeting his eyes. “I’m
still sorry it was hard. For you and Liz.”
“Thank you, Gabby.” He’s kissing me more, trying to move past
the moment. And I understand. But I need him to know this.
Sitting up, I press Jonathan onto his back, then straddle his lap. I
set my hands on his shoulders and peer down, one eyebrow
arched.
He gives me an amused, affectionate smile. “I see what you’re
doing. And you’re not quite there.” Gently, with his index finger, he
lifts the arch of my eyebrow higher. “Better.”
“Good. Now listen up, champ.”
“Champ, huh?”
“You heard me.” I drop the act and settle my weight on him,
making Jonathan exhale roughly and grip my waist. “Especially
now that I know why the holidays aren’t your favorite, I need you
to believe me—that, yes, I love holiday cheer and festive fun, but
not as much as I love…” I search his eyes, afraid to say something
so true so soon. Instead, I tell him, “I don’t want you to change for
me. I want you, just as you are, Jonathan Frost. That’s more than
enough.”
 His eyes search mine. “I believe you. And I know you’d never
expect me to change. I just think it’ll be pretty damn impossible
not to love the holidays just a little, now that I get to share them
with you.”
I bite my lip so I won’t cry. “That’s…absurdly sweet, Jonathan.”
Smiling, he drags me down and wraps me in his arms.
“Gabriella,” he says quietly, hiking my leg around his waist.
He’s hard again, snug and hot between my thighs. “Jonathan,” I
whisper.
His lips brush mine as he tells me, “Gabriella, I love you. I don’t
expect you to say it back, but I can’t go a moment longer without
you knowing the truth.”
I gasp, joyful and thrilled, but he kisses me before I can say a
word, a bone-melting, world-tipping kiss. “‘I cannot fix on the
hour,’” he says quietly, “‘or the spot, or the look or the words, which
laid the foundation. It is too long ago. I was in the middle before I
knew that I had begun.’”
Warmth spills from my heart into my hands, touching him,
into my lips, kissing him. My love is a glowing sunrise pouring
over hard, snowy ground. “Pride and Prejudice,” I whisper.
He nods. “Austen’s best.”
“Yeah, it really is.”
“There’s a lot more to the romance genre, I’ll have you know,
but P and P is some good shit. So much frustration,” he growls
against my skin, “and longing and work—”
“Before they’re ready to set aside their judgment and
preconceived notions.” I search his eyes. “To be brave and lay
down their defenses. That’s when they see each other clearly. And
they fall madly in love.”
He kisses me, deep and slow. I taste how much he wants me.
“And they earn their happy ending.”
“No more unrequited longing,” I tell him.
“No more being brave on your own,” he says. “Now we’re brave
together.”
“Together.” I smile up at him and hold his eyes. “I love you, too,
you know.”
He grins, twirling a ribbon of my hair around his finger, then
bringing it to his lips for a reverent kiss. “I know.”
I study him, stern features softened as he meets my gaze and
flashes an even brighter smile. I’ve mussed his dark, lovely hair.
There’s a flush on his cheeks. His pale green eyes sparkle. I want a
hundred lifetimes to look at that face and love him.
“I love you,” I whisper, reaching between us, stroking him as he
rocks against me. “And I want you. This way. A thousand ways.”
“God, yes,” he groans. He eases inside me, as we lay on our
sides, facing each other, one hand low on my back, the other
between us, rubbing my clit. I cling to him, riding his length,
staring into his eyes, bathed in firelight and tangled sheets and
the heat of his body against mine.
It’s not frantic this time, but deliciously slow and patient,
drawn out so long because we’re desperate for it not to end.
Jonathan’s hips roll with mine, his grip tightens. And when his
thumb circles my clit just right, I start to come around him.
Holding my eyes, Jonathan clutches me tight and buries
himself in me as he finds his own release. And afterward, we lay
tangled in each other’s arms, breathless, bathed in firelight and
the tiniest Christmas tree’s twinkling lights.
My hand over his pounding heart, his hand over mine, I kiss
the man I love. My happiest happy ending.
He kisses me, too, soft and cool as falling snow, and whispers
what I already know, down to my bones—
I’m his happy ending, too.
OceanofPDF.com
 Epilogue
Jonathan
Playlist: “Merry Christmas, Marry Me,” Crofts
Family

SHE LEANS OUT of the doorway, winter wind caressing her honey-
brown curls, whipping her red sweater dress against her lush
body. I was never much for presents, but I now have even less use
for them—Gabriella is gift enough.
“Merry Christmas!” shouts her latest customer from down the
sidewalk, a kid bundled up and wearing fuzzy white earmuffs that
evoke old, sweet memories and a pang of nostalgia.
“Merry Christmas!” Gabriella calls back, waving and smiling
brightly.
And just like always, her radiant joy hits me like an arrow to
the heart.
And just like always, she stands outside too long in nothing but
a flimsy dress to keep her warm.
“Mrs. Frost.”
She glances over shoulder, curls swinging, sparkling hazel
eyes, and deep, sweet dimples in her cheeks. God, she’s beautiful.
“Yes, Mr. Frost?”
 “I’d like my wife and I to ring in the new year tonight without a
case of hypothermia on our hands—”
“Oh, good grief. I got a little shivery on that solstice hike. I was
not hypothermic.”
“Not what June said.”
She rolls her eyes, turning back and waving once more to the
kid outside. “You and June are two overprotective peas in a pod.”
“Also known as pragmatists who love you despite your
impractical attachment to wading through hip-high snow.”
Stepping behind her, I wrap my arms around her waist. “How
about you join me in the heat?”
Sighing, Gabby lets me spin her around and tug her inside,
then shut the door behind us. And don’t you know, she’s shivering.
Slipping her arms around my waist, she burrows against my chest
for warmth.
“Freezing your ass off for customers,” I mutter.
“Seeing off a patron makes them feel appreciated and special,”
she tells me primly. “It’s this thing called a positive customer
service experience, which our market research indicates is a
leading reason customers report returning to the brick-and-
mortar store. Someone around here has to make it happen, seeing
as the other guy who hangs around the place is a real grinch.”
“Mm.” I run my hands along her arms, warming her up. “You
oughta give him the boot.”
Her smile’s back in full, breathtaking force. “I think I’ll keep
him. He might look like he’s doing more harm than good,
scowling at patrons while they thumb through his books—”
“Our books. And this isn’t a library. They browse it, they buy it.”
 “Our books,” she concedes, her fingers slipping through my
hair. “This guy, though, he’s deceptive. At first I thought, ‘He’s such
a Scrooge!’ Turns out, he’s got a heart of gold. He invested well and
made this bookstore solidly profitable over the past ten years,
then guess what he did? He started donating money!”
I boo-hiss because I know it’ll make her laugh.
“Even worse,” she says around fits of laughter, “he had the gall
to co-found a charity with me dedicated to—wait for it.” She leans
in conspiratorially. “Wintertime needs. People who could use help
paying to heat and light their homes. Coats, boots, hats, and gloves
for those without them. And a massive fund to buy gifts for kids
whose families can’t afford them.”
“Sounds like a real piece of work.”
“Oh, he is.” She wraps her arms around my neck and sways us
side to side. “But I love him. So very, very much.”
My hands slide down her waist, and I walk her back until she’s
pressed against the door. “Jonathan!” she hisses. “What are you
doing? We’re going to traumatize some poor kid who just wants to
come in and buy a book—”
“Store’s closed.” I flip over the sign, lock the bolt, then sweep
her into my arms, carrying Gabby toward the newest feature of
the store: a sturdy wooden ladder that glides across the built-in
bookshelves. It fulfilled Gabriella’s fantasy of recreating Belle’s
moment in Beauty and the Beast, and it fulfilled my fantasy of
lounging by the fire and seeing right up her dress.
“We can’t just close the store,” she says. “We have a bottom line
to maintain, Mr. Frost. Crucial profits will be lost.”
 “God, I love when you talk money to me. Thankfully, after
having a long, hard—” I set her on a rung of the ladder, slide her
dress up her thighs to those decadently full hips, then spread her
legs until she can feel and appreciate the double-meaning in my
words “—look at the numbers, I’ve determined we can afford to
lose fifteen minutes’ worth of business.”
“Fifteen minutes?” She arches an eyebrow. “Awfully confident
in your seductive powers after all these years, Jonathan Frost.”
“Damn right.”
Her head falls back against the ladder as I kiss her throat,
lower the neckline of her dress, and free her breasts. I tease each
nipple with my mouth in hard, rhythmic sucks, while my thumbs
trace her silky inner thighs in slow circles that drive her wild.
“What did I do to deserve a mid-morning orgasm?” she asks, a
dreamy smile on her gorgeous face.
“You’ve been naughty, Gabriella.”
She bites her lip. “It was just a little holiday prank.”
“It was a very real-looking audit from the IRS, until I saw it was
addressed to Jonathan Scrooge McGrinch.”
She cackles. “Gotta keep you on your toes, Frost.”
I nip her neck, then chase it with a wet, hot kiss. “You’re lucky I
love you.”
“So lucky,” she breathes, her hands gliding down my back, then
lower, pulling me close. “Now remind me just how lucky, please.”
“I’m the lucky one,” I tell her as she yanks open my buckle, still
mindful of my nearby infusion site and tubing at my hip.
Pressing a hot, slow kiss to the hollow of my throat, she slips
my pump from my front pocket to the back one, like a sexy
pickpocket, so it’s out of the way, then drags down the zipper of
my slacks and frees my cock, which throbs, hard and aching for
her.
The moment I sink inside her, we both moan with relief.
How many times have I done this? How many places and ways?
And yet every time with her, I’m desperate and undone, aching for
the moment I’m inside her.
On the first deep thrust of my hips, her eyes drift shut. She
sinks her hands into my shirt and bites her lip. Hard. The sight of
it makes me groan rough and low in my throat.
Gabby clenches around me, torturing me because she loves to,
and I couldn’t live without it. It makes me grip the ladder hard
and wrap her tight inside my other arm. “Behave yourself.”
She laughs breathily. “I’d rather not.”
Another clench around me makes me buck into her. “Fuck,
Gabby.”
Watching her full lips part in pleasure, those feline hazel eyes
flutter open and find mine, I touch her clit just how she loves, in
tight, fast circles that make her work herself over every inch of me
and ride me hard, chasing her release. The ladder creaks. Gabby’s
cries grow louder, uninhibited as they echo around us, smoky and
breathless. I soak up each desperate call of my name, every
gasped yes and please and I love you until she comes, hard and
breathless, and takes me with her.
After we’ve cleaned up and straightened out our clothes, I
sweep Gabby into my arms again and carry her to one of the
wingback chairs in front of the fire.
 “What’s with all the carrying?” she says, arms thrown around
my neck, head lolling heavily on my shoulder. Her voice is languid
and satisfied. I live for that sound in her voice.
“Because one brief carry across an apartment threshold after
your wedding is absolutely not enough.”
She laughs. “After that performance on the ladder, if I hadn’t
already done it, I’d marry your fine ass in a heartbeat, Jonathan
Frost.”
“I know,” I tell her, kissing her as I set her down on the ground.
“But it’s nice to know you married me years ago and for more than
my ruthless capitalist machinations’ power to set you up for life
with chocolate milk.”
“Hot cocoa,” she growls playfully, clasping my waist and
kissing me again. Her eyes search mine. “Speaking of ruthless
capitalist machinations, I’m still not sure I forgive you for what
you pulled after the wedding.”
“Gabriella.” I sit in one of the wingbacks and haul her onto my
lap. “What I ‘pulled’ was a wedding gift.”
Toeing off her boots, she curls up close to my chest, nestled
right where I want her. With a fingertip she traces my wedding
ring—a broad white-gold band etched with snowflakes inside it,
an exact replica of the more delicate band adorning her finger.
“Buying us this place is the most unforgivably romantic thing,
Mr. Frost. But I’m trying my best to let bygones be bygones.” Her
expression grows serious as she peers up at me. “It was the best
gift ever. And I’ll never be able to give you a gift like that in return.”
“Gabriella. Love of my life, you already have.”
 She tips her head, her smile soft and curious. “What gift is
that?”
I set her hand over my heart and kiss her with all I’ve got.
“You.”

THE END

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 Acknowledgements
Jonathan and Gabby’s story was a joy to write. It was my first time
writing a novella, in single point of view, and a holiday romance,
and going for it felt sort of like that first time down a “real” hill
when you learn to ski—a daunting, exhilarating, accelerating
adventure that starts off a little nervously and ends in a Wow-I’ve-
got-to-do-that-again thrill. I am beyond delighted by how their
story turned out, and I’m so very grateful to those who helped
make it possible.
My deepest thanks to Michelle, Jessica, and the entire team at
Kobo who supported this project every step of the way; to my
irreplaceable editor, Jackie; and last but most certainly not least,
to my phenomenal agent, Samantha. A very special thanks also to
Ellie and Izzy, whose feedback on this romance’s structure,
nuances, and representation was invaluable.
Finally, thank you with all my heart to the readers who make
this author journey possible. Every thoughtful, kind email and
comment, every heartfelt message—I treasure them and you
beyond words.

XO,
Chloe

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 About the Author
Chloe writes romances reflecting her belief that everyone
deserves a love story. Her stories pack a punch of heat, heart, and
humor, and often feature characters who are neurodivergent like
herself. When not dreaming up her next book, Chloe spends her
time wandering in nature, playing soccer, and most happily at
home with her family and mischievous cats.
To sign up for Chloe’s latest news, new releases, and special
offers, please visit her website (www.chloeliese.com) and
subscribe!

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 More by Chloe Liese
Craving more from Chloe? Add the steamy Bergman Brother
series to your reading lists!

Only When It’s Us (Book 1)

Always Only You (Book 2)
Ever After Always (Book 3)
With You Forever (Book 4)

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