A Cliché Christmas(3)

“You need help with your chains?” The stranger’s voice was deep. Not danger-deep. Dreamy-deep.

I backed up, bumping against my open trunk, wondering what I could grab to use as a weapon if needed. Of course, being able to see my murderer would be priority numero uno.

“I, uh . . .”

He was getting closer. I dropped my arm and reached into the trunk behind me and came up with a half-eaten canister of Pringles. Crapola!

As it turned out, I needed way more protection than a can of chips.

I knew him. A face from my past.

One . . . two . . . five seconds of shock invaded the space between us.

“Weston James.” I spoke his name the way one would spit out a sip of curdled milk.

It was him—only he wasn’t the boy I had left behind.

No, this was Weston James, the man. And unfortunately time had been good to him. Too good.

“Well, well, well. If it isn’t Miss Georgia Cole, the Christmas Prodigy herself. I wondered if the rumor I’d heard about you coming back was true.”

“Funny, I haven’t wondered a thing about you.” The lie slid over my lips like butter melting on a hill of steaming mashed potatoes.

We stood there—me and the Lenox Heartbreaker—sizing each other up. This was us. And it had been us since that fateful day in first grade when he chased me around my desk with a glue stick and threatened to paste my eyelids closed.

He crossed his arms over his well-built chest. My adrenaline spiked, tiny tremors surging through my body. I had to tell myself to shift my gaze to the ground, or the trunk, or the—

“We gonna put those chains on before it gets pitch-black out here, or were you planning to sleep on the highway tonight?”

“I’m sure you’d have no problem leaving me out here.”

He smiled a don’t-tempt-me smile. Seven years may have passed, but we still had a lifetime of contention to wade through. He bent down, grabbed the chains, and strode past me. His leather jacket pulled tight across his broad shoulders, his dark hair peeked under the sides of his knit cap, and a day’s worth of scruff lined his jawbone. I suddenly felt way too hot for the cold night air. I wanted to jump down a giant hole of denial. And stay there.

Laying both chains out ahead of my two front tires, he hopped in the front seat of my car—without asking—started the ignition, and accelerated carefully until the chains were perfectly lined up.

“You can fasten that one.” He gestured to the far tire and shut the driver’s side door. “Or is that too much to ask of a Hollywood celebrity?”

“Have you ever known me to wimp out?”

I squatted in front of the tire, but that darn chain slipped through my trembling fingers over and over. Weston finished his tire, stretched his arms out like an Olympic swimmer, and sauntered toward me. Show-off.

A slight nudge to my left leg by Mr. Roadside Assistance was all it took to knock me over, plunging my backside onto the wet ground once again. “Hey!”

“What?” The sparkle in his eyes matched the wicked grin spreading across his face. “You already looked like you peed your pants. No harm done.”

He reached his hand down for me. I swatted it aside. “I guess one doesn’t outgrow being childish, huh, Wes?”

He knelt and slipped the chain around my tire in ten seconds flat. My teeth chattered through a new wave of shivers. The arctic air threatened to turn me into a living ice sculpture.

Standing again, he took off his jacket and wrapped the warm piece of Weston-smelling leather around my shoulders. “I guess one doesn’t outgrow being obstinate, huh, Georgia?”

I shrugged off the jacket and tossed it back to him, then opened my car door. I resisted spewing the rebuttals crowding my mind. I needed to save some of them for later. But hopefully, he was just here for Thanksgiving weekend and there wouldn’t be a later. I couldn’t imagine enduring his smirk for all of December.

I flicked my wrist in his direction, offering him a halfhearted wave. “Thanks for the help—I’m good now.”

I slid into my seat and slammed my door, waiting for him to pull out in front of me. It didn’t happen. I rolled my window down and waved him on, but still he refused to budge.

Whatever.

For the next hour and ten minutes, Weston James drove behind me on the dark, snowy highway. All the way to Nan’s cottage.

As I stepped out of my convertible onto her driveway, he leaned out his window. “See ya around, Sugar Plum Fairy.”

Bulging muscles or not, Weston James would always be the annoying little boy with the glue stick—the one I could not seem to erase from my memory.





CHAPTER TWO

You planning on sleeping all day, Georgia?”

The door creaked open, and Nan’s slippers shuffled across the old wooden floorboards. Turning my head slightly in her direction, my eyes squinted at the burst of light in the hallway behind her. Though we’d chatted late into the night, I could never sleep past—

“It’s seven thirty,” Nan said, reading my mind. She had this creepy ESP thing with me. I never got used to it, especially because it only worked one way.

I groaned. “Nan, you realize we didn’t go to bed till after one, right?”

“True, but I know how you like to get an early start.”

I let my head loll to one side and blinked. “Yes, when I’m working.”