Chapter 16
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Every time I go to Nina’s house, there’s a new decoration—another string of lights, more sprigs of holly, and the Santa figurines seem to be multiplying. The dog—still nameless—wears reindeer antlers as he lounges on a candy cane-patterned tuffet like he’s a little Christmas prince.
Now that Nina knows where Fletch keeps his hide-a-key, she sneaks over and brings the dog to her house for the afternoon after she closes the bakery.
“Thank you again for watching him while we were stranded. We really need to name him.” And find a home for him. I scratch behind his ears.
Nina flops onto the couch beside me. “What about Comet? Cupid?”
“Fletch already suggested Dasher, but that name is taken by a reindeer.”
“Fine. What about … Puck? Since Fletch is a hockey player.”
“That’s actually not terrible, but I think he wants to stick with a holiday name.”
Nina wiggles her eyebrows. “Speaking of Fletch ... How was your romantic ice storm adventure?”
Heat rises to my cheeks as I remember cuddling up together and then the kiss at the pond yesterday. “It was ... educational.”
Nina bursts into laughter. “Educational? You write romance novels for a living and the best adjective you can come up with is ‘educational’?”
“Fine. It was ...” I search for the right words, something that won’t give away too much. “Unexpected.”
“Did you kiss him?” Nina asks bluntly.
I nearly choke on my hot chocolate. “Why would you ask that?”
“Because you’re blushing like one of your heroines. You did!”
“Not at the cabin,” I mumble, but don’t specify where or when.
“But you did smooch. I can tell!” Nina bounces.
“Maybe.”
She claps her hands. “You kissed your fake husband. This is better than in your books!”
“It’s not like that. It’s complicated,” I protest, but even I don’t believe the words as they come out of my mouth.
Nina playfully rolls her eyes. “It’s really not. Girl meets boy. Girl marries boy for weird contractual reasons. Girl falls for boy anyway. Tale as old as time.”
“I’m not—” I stop myself. Am I falling for him? The thought makes my stomach bounce like I’m on a trampoline. “It’s just ... he’s not what I expected.”
She clicks her tongue. “And what did you expect?”
“I don’t know. Someone arrogant? Self-absorbed? He’s a professional athlete. The guy who so coolly said that he’s going to marry me someday.”
Nina angles her head to the side. “And instead, he’s kind, thoughtful, and looks at you like you’re the Stanley Cup.”
I throw a pillow with a big red bow on it at her, which she dodges easily.
“You write about people falling in love all day long. How do you not see what’s happening here?”
“It’s different.”
“Is it? Because from where I’m sitting, you’ve written yourself into a perfect semi-second-chance, small-town, holiday romance.”
I groan, burying my face in the pillow. “That would be ridiculous.”
“Life imitating art.”
“Hush now,” I say into the pillow, but it’s muffled.
Nina pulls the pillow away from my face. “So, are you two spending Christmas together?”
I blink. “I haven’t thought about it.”
“It’s next week, Bree.”
I bolt upright. “Next week? That can’t be right.”
“December 25th. Comes every year, same date.”
My mind races. The manuscript is due January 2nd. The thirty days with Fletch also end right after New Year’s Day and I haven’t planned anything beyond that.
“I’ve been so focused on the book that I haven’t ...”
“And falling in love with your fake husband.”
“I’m not—” I start again, then cover my face with my hands. “I don’t know what I am.”
“For someone who writes about love for a living, you’re remarkably foggy about it in real life.”
I throw another pillow at her.
She catches it. “You should get him a Christmas present.”
The idea makes me nervous. “What would I even get him?”
“What does he like?”
I think back to our shopping trip for the toy drive, how his eyes had lingered on a wooden tabletop game that was part foosball and part air hockey. “I might have an idea,” I say slowly.
Three hours later, I’ve managed exactly two new pages on my manuscript and my mother has called twice about planning a wedding reception … “Even though you’ve already done the legal part without me, which I’m not upset about, sweetheart, really.” That’s a Monique Darling direct quote.
Hmm. I could write a pesky mom into this story.
Research on 1880s New York society takes me down a rabbit hole of Gilded Age fashion—Lorna is a fish out of water, having left the big city for the Wild West as a mail-order bride. I’m crafting dialogue between her and the brooding cowboy when Nina bursts into the house.
Fletch needs to find a new place for the key.
“We’re going to the Christmas Market,” she announces.
“I’m working.”
“You’ve been staring at the same paragraph for twenty minutes.”
“How do you know that?”
“It’s a hunch. But we both know I’m right.”
She’s not wrong.
“Get your coat.”
I don’t move, feeling the pressure to get down some words.
“I’ll get you some chocolate, Bree and this little guy gets a special treat too.” Nina clips the dog’s leash onto his collar.
I do not object.
Downtown Cobbiton and the town square are a winter wonderland, daring me to continue to resist getting into the Christmas spirit. I’d been so successful, but fear I may soon succumb.
Jolly jingle bells!
We enter the Christmas Market under the Merry Kiss Me sign that was popular last year. My thoughts drift to the pond when I lifted onto my toes and Fletch leaned down and …
I bump into an older man carrying his wife’s shopping bags.
“Sorry, sir.”
“Lost in thought?” Nina asks with a bounce to her eyebrows. “Anything particular on your mind?”
“Oh, just Lorna and Drake since I should be working right now.”
“You’ll simply have to burn the midnight oil. Maybe someone special will keep you company.”
“You mean the dog?”
She chuckles because no, obviously, she means Fletch … who I cannot stop thinking about even after I beg my characters to come alive in my mind.
The dog leads the way on our walk to the Christmas Market, where wooden stalls sell everything from hand-knitted scarves to artisanal cheeses.
Fairy lights twinkle overhead, the smell of mulled wine and roasted nuts smothered in butter, sugar, and cinnamon fills the air, along with a live band in the gazebo playing “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas. ”
“Bree Darling!” A voice calls out, and I turn to see Isaac Hopkins approaching, flanked by Pete Collins—high school classmates who must be back for the holidays. If they still lived here, Nina would’ve warned me.
“Heard you got married,” Isaac says, looking me up and down.
“Yeah,” I confirm, feeling strangely protective of Fletch and our arrangement, fake as it may be.
“Never pegged you as the trophy wife type,” Pete says with a laugh that instantly sets my teeth on edge.
“She’s a published author. Three books, with a fourth on the way.” Nina crosses her arms in front of her chest as if to say, that I’m accomplished in my own right.
Isaac raises his eyebrows. “No kidding? What kind of books?”
“Romance,” I say, daring him to make a joke.
“You mean you don’t write textbooks about trigonometry?” he teases.
I’d had such a crush on Isaac in high school. Looking at him now, I feel ... nothing. No flutter, no nerves, no spark. Just the vague sense that I’m suddenly wearing an itchy—and ugly Christmas—sweater.
“Bree?” a deep, familiar voice calls.
I turn and see Fletch approaching, a paper shopping bag in his hand.
My heart skips, then races—full of flutters, nerves, and a certain spark. Suddenly self-conscious, I stammer, “Shopping?”
“Just some ... things. For the stuff,” he says vaguely, tucking the bag behind him.
Nina watches us with amusement and says, “By the way, this is Isaac and Pete from high school. Bree helped Isaac with his math homework. Guys, this is Fletch.”
Isaac squints slightly as if trying to picture us standing together at the end of the aisle rather than several feet apart at the market.
“Bree’s husband,” Fletch says, apparently having dug into his personal thesaurus and found words that aren’t things and stuff. He shakes their hands, all easy confidence and genuine friendliness.
We make awkward small talk for approximately ninety seconds while Isaac and Pete stand there, seemingly perplexed by the high school nerd and the hottie hockey player match.
Me too, guys. Me too.
Pete snorts. “I’m just surprised a guy like that would settle down. Especially with—” He cuts himself off, but the damage is done.
Fletch looks murderous.
A scrappy, resourceful, protective frontier woman comes alive inside of me.
“With what? A walking textbook?” I step forward, surprising myself.
“Let me tell you about ‘a guy like that.’ He’s kind.
He volunteers with kids. He asks thoughtful questions about my books.
He sees people instead of just using them for homework help or stringing them along.
” I realize I’m not just defending Fletch.
I’m defending us. “So yeah, I’m exactly the kind of woman he’d choose. ”
“And I’m lucky I did.”
Isaac’s eyes widen. Pete actually takes a step back.
Fletch’s expression, a mixture of pride and something deeper, makes my already racing heart take off like one of Santa’s reindeer.
Isaac and Pete practically sprint away.
Fletch leans close, warm breath tickling my cheek. “That was hot.”
“Yeah?”
“Defending my honor? Very swoon-worthy.” He’s teasing, but his voice is rough. “Though I should mention, I can defend myself.”
“I know you can, but they had that coming.”
“I should let you get back to your shopping,” Fletch says, but he doesn’t move.
“Yeah, same,” I say.
“Or you could shop together,” Nina points out.
Turning to her, I say, “I thought we were—” But I can’t reveal that we were looking for something for Fletch.
Small but mighty, she smooshes us together and says, “Have fun, kids. Don’t spend all your money on chocolate.”
“Hey, you owe me,” I call.
She trots off with the dog.
I’m about to tell Fletch that he needs to hide his key better when he asks, “By the way, I’ve been meaning to ask, are you doing anything for Christmas?”
“Other than writing?”
“You can’t work on Christmas.”
“Says who?”
“It’s a literal rule, Bree.”
“So bossy,” I say.
“When I was a kid, we always had a big celebration at home.”
“By the way, where is home?” I ask, not having any idea where he grew up.
“Duluth, Minnesota.”
I can picture him and his brothers eagerly waiting at the top of the stairs for permission to dive into the presents Santa left under the tree. I wilt a little because my Christmases were more reserved.
“When I was a kid, we’d each exchange a couple of gifts, have a crustless quiche from the diner for breakfast, and then everyone would do their own thing. I usually spent the day reading. It wasn’t so bad. But it was lonely.”
Fletch stops mid-stride. “For the last few years, my family has been rotating houses since we’re more scattered now and in various stages of family life. But we could …” he starts.
“Maybe we should...” I say simultaneously.
We both laugh again.
“You first,” he offers.
At that moment, eyes locked on his, I realize something that terrifies me.
As far back as I can remember, I was raised with deliberate planning and encouraged to make practical decisions.
I’ve written about spontaneous attraction and playful romance, but always with the conviction that it wasn’t for me.
That real love required time and analysis and compatibility tests.
Fletch represents everything I don’t believe in—how he swept into my life on a bet, his persistent jokes about marrying me “for real someday,” and the easy way he seems to want me just as I am. He may have even said that he needs me.
It’s too simple, too straightforward to be real. Love in my books always involves grand gestures, dramatic circumstances, and earth-shattering revelations.
Standing in a Christmas Market with cold-reddened cheeks and just barely dodging awkward conversation, yet not saying truly how I feel, can’t be how love starts. Can it?
No sooner do the thoughts volley through my mind than the possibility that I’ve actually been at war with myself about love and romance abruptly blasts apart the stories I’ve been telling myself.
Fletch says, “We could spend Christmas together. If you want.”
The question hangs between us, weighted with possibilities I’ve spent years convincing myself were only fictional.
“I’d like that,” I hear myself say.
It’s almost like I channeled Lorna’s bold city-girl confidence and decided to take a real life risk.
And I kind of like it.