chapter 24
[Angelica]
I need a minute to wrap my head around what just happened.
The equation of Jude being my date to my own wedding equals him as my groom, which makes no sense. None. It would never happen.
Yet, I still can’t get out of my head all he said. Me in white. And my faceless future husband doing salacious things to me beneath my dress.
I shiver at the thought and grip the washing machine behind me to steady myself.
My legs are already shaky after what he just did to me.
His fingers were ruthless yet delectable.
He’d gone so deep and touched me in a way I’ve never been touched.
Something inside me triggered an orgasm that brought stars to my eyes.
Jude was so bad, in the most complex and delicious way.
Speaking of delicious, I need to get back upstairs to cookie baking and act like nothing just happened in this laundry room.
Trouble is, I’m horrible at pretending.
As I enter the kitchen, I catch the tail end of Jude telling Beau, “Sorry, man, but that date in The Oak Room is unavailable. We’re actually completely booked for the season.”
When Jude notices me just inside the kitchen, he winks. That flip of his eyelid shouldn’t do funny things to my insides. Neither should the way he talks dirty to me or touches me.
But as he watches me, that funny feeling flutters faster and I place my hand on my belly in an attempt to settle down.
“Alright, fancy pants, suit coat off, shirt sleeves up,” Aunt Gertie demands, staring at Jude.
Most of my female family members are mesmerized by him as he slowly shrugs off his coat and then meticulously rolls his shirt sleeves up to his elbows.
Christmas bumps into my shoulder and hums. “He’s sex on a peppermint stick.”
“You’re married.” I turn on her.
“Which means I’m taken, not blind.”
Jude steps over to the sink to wash his hands, and I watch Aunt Gertie pick up Jude’s suit coat and bring it to her nose.
Stepping forward, I snag the jacket from her hands. “Aunt Gertie, why don’t you grab the flour?”
I spin for the dining room to set Jude’s coat on the back of a chair, but not before taking my own whiff, inhaling his expensive scent.
Within minutes of returning to the crowded kitchen, Christmas is pulling sugar cookie dough
from the refrigerator. Panic sets in as I know Gran can mess up the recipe.
“Don’t worry,” Christmas says near me. “I made the dough last night.”
Hunks of dough are broken off from the giant balls and distributed. When one is handed to Jude, he stares at it like he isn’t certain what to do. I step closer to him as he focuses on the clump in his hand.
“I’ve never actually made cookies.” His voice is low, so only I can hear.
“All the images on my mother’s social media were staged.
The cut-outs had to be perfect. The decorations like a master baker had made them.
Kids in the kitchen were messy.” He glances up at me with sadness and fear in his eyes.
Like he’s afraid he’ll fail here, like a repeat of when he’d spilled the bowl of eggs during the breakfast with Santa.
“I’ll help you,” I say, placing my hand on his forearm, finding his skin no longer so cold but warm beneath my hand. Stepping in front of him, I take the dough from his hands.
“First, you need flour.” I point to the giant container and watch as Jude dumps an exorbitant amount on the plastic tablecloth, noticing that Christmas did the same thing.
“Next, you spread it.” There’s no reason for my voice to drop, but I take Jude’s hand and place it right in the flour, forcing the downy whiteness to spread. When he picks up his hand, he stares at the powder still on his palm.
“Okay, now we drop the dough in the flour and roll it.” I lean forward, stretching over the table for a rolling pin. Bringing it closer to me, I take Jude’s powdered hand, wrap it around the wooden cylinder, and guide him to stroke it, intending to coat the roller with the excess flour.
My gaze leaps to Aunt Gertie, who is watching Jude’s action like he’s doing something sexual.
“Okay,” I say a little too loudly. “Now we roll the dough.”
I hand Jude the roller and place my hands over his, and together we flatten the dough.
“Just like that,” I mutter. “You’re doing great,” I encourage, all the while being hyper aware of Jude’s closeness at my back and the way the roller moves back and forth, rocking Jude’s body ever so slightly into mine.
“Now who’s the bad one?” he eventually whispers near my ear, his breath tickling my neck and reminding me of his hand on it, his thumb stroking over my pulse point, and eventually his mouth sucking at me there.
“Pick a cutter,” I state, finding my voice tight, strained almost, when we finally have the dough spread out.
Is it hot in here? How can I be getting turned on with my family in the room? I tug at the collar of my sweater.
“You okay there, Angelica?” Christmas asks from across the table.
I glare back at her. “I’m fine.” But I’m certain my cheeks are rosy and my eyes wild.
Jude leans around me to pick a cutter from the middle of the table. “What the heck is this one?”
“A grinch,” one of my nephews states.
“Fitting,” Jude mumbles before pressing the form into the dough.
But when the cookie is eventually baked and decorated by Jude himself, he’s rather proud.
I’m proud of him, too. He didn’t complain about the flour on his suit pants or the chaotic noise of my family.
“You okay?” I asked him at one point.
“It’s just so bizarre,” he admitted. “No one is fighting or complaining or demanding a reshoot.”
He means the staged photo shoots of his younger cookie-baking experience.
I focused on the side of Jude’s beautiful face.
The puzzlement and wonder frosted in his expression, and my heart crumbled like a few of the cookies we’d made.
He’s missed out on so much. Things he didn’t even know he’d missed.
Things he hadn’t known were possible. Love and laughter, even happy bickering, among a family. I wanted to wrap him in a hug.
And in this case, the only one taking pictures is my Aunt Gertie, who has an unhealthy obsession with her phone camera and is using it to capture every moment.
Or hot men baking cookies.
On more than one occasion, Gran had to tell Gertie she’d take her phone away from her. I caught Gran’s eye, who nodded at Jude. Thank goodness Aunt Gertie didn’t understand the internet or how to upload images to social media.
Eventually, the air was permeated with scents of vanilla and peppermint. Flour and brightly colored sugar is everywhere. Frosting overdecorates cookies and drips onto the table.
Christmas’s three boys were out of control, doped up by a sugar buzz. My brother, Dane’s twin girls were polar opposites of each other. The shier one wanted everything to be perfect; the wilder one deciding the more candy on a cookie, the better.
And in the middle of it all was Jude, silently observing, like he was taking notes.
My family didn’t leave him out of the mix but blended him in as if he’d always been here. A part of us. A member of the family.
The thought was doing strange things to my head. Weren’t we pretending to date?
“Uncle Beau is sucking Belle’s face again,” the oldest of my nephews eventually announces to the crowded kitchen, sometime after dinner, which was delivered pizzas.
Gran rushes out of the room to separate the couple while Gertie reaches for her cell phone. “Just going to capture the moment.”
Our cookie baking is winding down.
With Dane and the twins long gone and Christmas wrangling her boys upstairs for a bath, I glance around the kitchen, which looks like holiday elves had a rage party.
“I guess I should get to cleaning up.”
The countertops don’t have a stitch of vacant space. The table is covered in remnants of flour and colored sugar. The candy-sprinkle containers and bowls of dried frosting add to the mayhem.
“I can stay, too,” Jude offers, but he can’t fight a tight yawn.
“You need to work tomorrow,” I remind him.
“So do you,” he states.
It strikes me how much we know about one another in such a short period of time. Where we each live. Our work schedules. We both work odd hours and any day of the week, although he has more liberty than I do, and I need to make up for missed shifts when I’d called off sick.
“When can I see you next?” he says, stepping close to me and brushing back hairs that have come loose from my braid.
“Jude,” I whisper, lowering my head. “We don’t need to do this.”
“Do what?” he asks, slipping his hands into his pants pockets, which have a dusting of flour near the edge.
“This.” I point between us. “Pretend.”
“Pretend?” he parrots.
“The boyfriend-girlfriend thing.” I exhale heavily. He made quite an impression on my family, and I’ll have to pick up the pieces eventually, explaining how Jude wasn’t ever really my boyfriend. But for now, he’s fitting in. “My family loves you. You can be my date for Beau’s wedding.”
My voice isn’t convincing. I mean, I want him to be my date for Beau’s wedding. But I also want him to be more. However, all that talk in the laundry room was just talk. Flirty words while getting me off, distracting me from the issue at hand. Beau’s wedding. Which I still don’t have a venue for.
“We don’t need to keep up the ruse outside of them.”
“Ruse?” Jude takes another step closer to me, forcing me back into the side of the refrigerator. Brushing loose curls around my ear again, he strokes down the side of my neck, and I close my eyes.
“Does this feel like pretend?”
Isn’t that the issue? Everything is starting to feel a little too real. The way we meshed on my couch last night. The way he blended with my family. The way he kisses me.
“I don’t know,” I whisper, swallowing against the goosebumps breaking out on my skin. “Isn’t it?”
Jude’s expression hardens, and he drops his hand. His eyes slowly restore to that icy glare. His brows pinch like he’s deep in thought.
“What about when my fingers were inside you earlier? Did that feel fake?”