Chapter 24 A Moose in My Heart
A MOOSE IN MY HEART
ISLA
Since the competition begins tomorrow bright and early, I make plans with my teammates for a secret meeting tonight, pre-practice date.
I need to focus on work though, not on Rowan, so I spend the rest of the afternoon at my parents’ home, reviewing bios for new clients, then drawing up lists of potential matches I can connect them with in the new year.
When the sun dips lower in the sky, a dangerous burst of excitement blooms in me. Time to get ready.
I really need to tamp down these feelings. How though? I just don’t know so I focus on the practical.
I change into a white sweater with soft silver sparkles woven into the yarn. I add my mistletoe necklace. I touch up my makeup.
“What are you doing?” I whisper to my reflection. I can’t stop primping. I can’t stop these damn flutters either.
I’m twisted and torn as I head to the door right as Mom sails out from the kitchen.
“I need to run some errands in town. Want a ride, darling?”
“Sure,” I say, relieved I don’t have to drive with all this want taking up space inside me.
As she drives down our street, she tosses a glance at my top, visible since my red coat’s open. “Cute sweater. That would be nice for your date with Oliver.”
My heart pinches with guilt. But for a woman who’s usually agile with words, I have nothing to say.
Mom, though, has plenty. “Especially with that pretty scarf.”
Looking down, I take my time adjusting my newest scarf, a sliver of guilt wedging into my heart.
Mom’s trying to play matchmaker. And Oliver seems like a good guy.
But I didn’t wear or buy this midnight blue scarf for him.
I picked it up yesterday in the city before I left.
The sweater’s new, too, but I can’t tell any of this to my mom.
I don’t want her to worry about me wanting someone I can’t have.
I raise my face and put on a smile. “Thanks for the tip.”
“You look lovely in anything, though,” she says, then shoots me a warm smile as we near Main Street. “So, does this mean I can set it up? The date?”
I can’t put this off any longer. Especially since I know the answer, thanks to that conversation with Mabel earlier. “I appreciate your efforts, Mom,” I begin as she maneuvers her car into a spot outside the Sugar Plum Bakery. “But I don’t feel sparks with him.”
“Oh,” she says, deflated. Her cheery expression falters as she turns off the car and looks to me. “I just thought…that you’d be a good fit. But it’s okay.”
“I’m sorry,” I say, somehow feeling worse. She’s trying so hard. “I can tell him—Oliver that is. I know how to let people down gently. It’s part of the job.”
She shakes her head. “First off—don’t apologize. Sparks are important. And it was only a conversation with his mother. I don’t think she brought it up to him yet, so there’s no need to let him down.”
I let out a huge sigh of relief. “That’s good. And I feel better for telling you.”
“You can tell me anything.”
I want to tell her I’m inappropriately lusting after a client, but I keep that to myself. “I know,” I say, then reach for the door handle.
“Isla.” There’s concern in her voice.
“Yes?”
“Is it also that you’re not quite ready to put yourself out there yet? After JD and all?”
“I don’t think so?” But it comes out as a question. Maybe because…it is.
“It takes time. And if you need more of it, that’s fine too. But someday, I hope you’ll see the world isn’t full of JDs. That there are love stories like your dad’s and mine.”
My throat tightens with emotion. “That’s what we all want…I suppose.”
“You believe that, don’t you?”
“Of course I believe it,” I say, taken aback she’d even ask. “Why wouldn’t I?”
She shrugs, but it’s a hopeful shrug somehow. That’s fitting for her. “I know you believe in it for others, but I hope one bad romance didn’t make you stop believing in it…for you.”
I freeze. Have I stopped believing in true love for me?
No. Of course not. I wouldn’t do that. Even though my romance with JD isn’t my only romance that’s failed.
My others did too. Perhaps not as spectacularly, but there was Peter, the guy I dated before JD, and after two years we simply petered out.
There was also Tristan, a man I met on the apps, since of course I had to try them.
How could I commiserate with clients over them if I didn’t know how they worked?
He said he was interested in love in his profile, but his attitude on dates said otherwise.
A dark cloud forms over my head as I think about my ghosts of romance past. The dates that went nowhere. The love stories that came to an end. The promises broken.
“Of course, I believe in it,” I say, as bright and cheery as I can be. “That’s why I do what I do. Love you, Mom.”
Dropping a quick kiss to her cheek, I grab the door handle and get far, far away from my doubts. There’s no room for those dark thoughts at this time of year. Or anytime.
I hustle back into the bakery, closed now, for our secret meeting. Aurora’s letting us use the cellar as HQ. We’re surrounded by fifty-pound bags of sugar, huge buckets full of chocolate chips, and shelves lined with vanilla extract, and all I can think is—Rowan would love all the sweetness here.
But I must put him out of my mind, and all these new questions about romance, because it’s strategy time. The room is perfect because there’s a whiteboard in it—one half covered in bakery inventory lists, the other blissfully blank. I tap the clean side and grab a red marker.
List time. Planning mode. I’m in my element, and my element is thinking about others.
“Tomorrow’s first challenge is the snowman challenge,” I say, since Mayor Bumblefritz gave all the teams a general idea about the event but not specifics. “But they’re not telling us whether we’ll be judged on unconventional uses for carrots or not—and no, you can’t use them for dicks.”
“Shame,” Eloise says with a pout on her pretty, pale, heart-shaped face. Her light brown hair frames her cheekbones, but it’s almost impossible to look away from her eyes. One is blue, one is green. They’re captivating—and they sparkle with mischief.
“I know, but we’ll soldier on,” Aurora says, chipper and upbeat, all traces of flour and sugar wiped off her freckled face.
“Exactly. We might face ‘most classic,’ ‘most creative,’ or other types,” I say, then rattle off more ideas.
“We need to be prepared for all sorts of possibilities,” Eloise adds, an eager and savvy competitor.
“They might do non-snowmen snowmen. I read about a town in the Swiss Alps that did that in a Christmas contest. Threw everyone off—except for a local sculptor. She had no problem making a dog out of snow.”
I write that down. “Good to know. We should be ready to make snow cats, snow dogs, or snow people. And that brings me to my point: what’s the one thing we bring to the table—the three of us?”
“It’s certainly not years of snowman-building,” Eloise says, “since I’m more of a snow angel girlie myself.”
“That’s my point. We’re creative,” I say, then walk them through how we might be able to win tomorrow, taking notes on the board, then choosing a team name.
“You’re a goddess,” Eloise says when we’re done.
I give a bob of a shoulder. “No. I just like to win.”
We smack palms, and before we go, I clear my throat, point to the whiteboard, and say, “We’d better erase this. The stakes are high. Everyone wants to win the prize.”
I picture Rowan. Hell, the man wants to be a coach when he retires. He’ll be doing everything he can to make sure his team wins. He’s ruthless. But I’ll be more so.
Eloise grabs the eraser, but before she wipes the board clean, she taps her forehead. “I’ve got it all up here, boss.”
“Please. Call me by my official name.”
“Isla?” she asks, confused.
I toss my midnight blue snowflake scarf jauntily around my neck. “Miss Christmas.”
“All hail Miss Christmas,” they say in unison.
“This meeting of the Sugar Plum Ladies is officially adjourned!” We place our hands together, one on top of the other, then let them fly.
I head upstairs, grab my coat, and check the time. Fifteen minutes till I’m running romantic drills with my grumpy, stupidly hot client-slash-competition.
No big deal. Except for the part where he kissed me senseless last week under the mistletoe.
But tonight’s not about my desire. Tonight is about my client, and my goal is to help him, not to ogle him.
“You’re Miss Christmas,” I say to myself as I leave the bakery.
“There’s nothing you can’t handle during the holidays. ”
Over the years, I’ve handled missing gifts, a dog who ate the reindeer’s cookies, and a stolen yule log cake at a corporate Christmas retreat. I can manage a few flutters.
As I tighten my coat against the chilly winter air, my boots crunch over the remains of the snow along Main Street toward the diner.
I pass the display at A Likely Story, its windows full of Christmas romances peeking out of stockings, then reach the Candy Cane Diner, with its red-and-white striped door.
I pull it open. And my chest heats when I spot Rowan at the counter, wearing…another Santa sweater?
His lush lips are curved up, like he’s smirking. Well, he probably is.
When he spots me, he rises, and I stop in my tracks. Is that a Christmas moose on his sweater? It’s subtler than the Santa one he wore earlier. It’s something you might pick up in a store here rather than a novelty online shop. I resume my pace, striding to him.
“Hey there,” he says, his voice a sexy rasp, the sound sliding down my spine.
It…disarms me. “Hi.”
He leans in and presses a soft kiss to my cheek. I catch the scent of his cologne—that ocean breeze scent, masculine and enticing. It wraps around me, and my eyes flutter closed for a second or two as his lips dust across my skin.
These aren’t just flutters. These are sparks. The full-throttle kind.