Chapter 21
FLETCH
I stare at the display case, completely overwhelmed by the glittering options before me. The jeweler, a patient older gentleman named Mr. Stevenson, waits while I browse necklaces, bracelets, and earrings.
“Something special for someone special this Christmas?” he asks.
“Yes.”
“Seems to be a theme, this year more than most.”
“Is there anything in particular you know she likes?”
Me. I hope she likes me.
“A stone or style?”
“I’m not sure.”
The soft instrumental version of “Twelve Days of Christmas” plays in the background as I consider my options.
The part where my brothers and I would belt out “Five Golden Rings” comes on. My eyes shift from side to side. From display case to display case.
I’m in the wrong part of the store.
Bree doesn’t need five golden rings. No, just one. From me.
I cross the plush carpet and brace my hands on the edge of the glass, peering inside.
I want to find an engagement ring that reminds me of Bree—unique and elegant, but not flashy.
Something a writer would love and that wouldn’t interfere with how her fingers fly across the keyboard.
Pucks move fast, but when she’s typing, all I see is a blur.
I almost cannot fathom how the ideas in her head find their way through her fingers and onto the page.
All of the engagement rings start to look identical until I spot a vintage-style ring with a modest diamond surrounded by flecks of rubies and emeralds, forming a wreath around the main stone.
Even though Bree came back to Cobbiton dragging a sack of coal, she’s now full of the Christmas spirit.
It’s on full display given her involvement in the toy drive, participation in the bake sale, and that she traded out the Do Not Disturb sign on the office door for a cluster of jingle bells hanging from red, white, and green ribbons.
Maybe this ring is just the one to symbolize what we have.
“Can I see that one?” I point.
As Mr. Stevenson retrieves it, my phone buzzes with a text from Nina, asking me about my skit for the pageant.
She dubbed it the Merry Ever After Project.
I smile at the code name she’s given to my plan.
After texting her back, I try to imagine Bree’s face when she sees what I’ve been preparing.
Will she think it’s too much? Not enough?
Our thirty days are almost up, and I’m betting everything on her wanting to stay.
Mr. Stevenson places the ring in my palm. “This setting is from the 1920s. We restored it with new stones.”
Just like Bree’s house—honoring the past while building something new. It’s perfect.
After he carefully wraps it, I check the time that I’m supposed to meet the team at Cornsilk Drive. That’s one gift that won’t fit under the tree.
I sit in my truck outside the jewelry store, the small velvet box in my palm. Taking a peek, the ring catches the winter sunlight, sparkling with promise. Or maybe it’s just foolishness wrapped in vintage gold.
What am I doing?
Soon, our thirty-day contract will be up. Bree will have her research, her completed manuscript, and her stipend. She’ll have everything she signed up for. And then what? Does she stay because she wants to, or because she’s gotten comfortable? Because it’s convenient?
The doubt sits in my gut like a not-so-shiny stone.
I’ve been skating on hope this whole time, telling myself that the way she looks at me means something. That the laughter we share, the comfortable silences, the moments when she reaches for my hand without thinking, all add up to something real.
But what if I’m wrong?
What if I’m just the research subject who happened to be convenient? The guy who fixed up her house and made her life easier for a month. What if, when the contract ends, she thanks me politely and walks away with nothing more than material for her next bestseller?
I think about my teammates’ warnings from the beginning. About how I never follow through, how I’m all flash and no substance. Maybe they were right. Maybe I’ve been playing at this, pretending it’s real when Bree’s just been doing her job.
The worst part is, I couldn’t even blame her. We went into this as a business arrangement. I’m the one who changed the rules by falling in love. That’s on me.
I just hope all this doubt is just noise in my head.
My phone buzzes with a text from Jack. He’s waiting. I pocket the ring.
The renovated house is my grand gesture, my way of showing Bree she has a place here. A home. But I can’t make someone stay with new paint and fixed plumbing. I can’t renovate her heart and just hope that there’s room for me.
Either she wants me, or she doesn’t.
And in a few days, I’ll find out which it is.
The thought terrifies me more than any opponent I’ve ever faced on the ice.
But a life with Bree is worth the risk.
Standing in the doorway of Bree’s writing room in the renovated Victorian, I hang a calligraphy print that says Just One More Chapter.
“A little more to the left,” Leah directs.
Gracie said the phrase works from a reader’s perspective because everyone wants to read one more chapter, but also, if she needs motivation, it can also mean writing one more chapter.
Ella and Jess arrange the assortment of vintage hardcovers that I found at an estate sale. Gracie fills the other shelves with modern romances.
Their husbands—my teammates—are scattered throughout the house under Mikey’s supervision, putting the finishing touches on various rooms. I check on progress and offer a helping hand as Jack hangs a curtain rod.
“You really think she’ll want to stay here?” he asks as I hold the other end.
So far, the guys have kept the mail-order matchmaking situation a secret, but it’s obvious it’s become something more. However, whether it’s something permanent remains to be seen.
“I hope so.” I step back to make sure the rods are level.
“Will she want to stay with you?” he adds.
I wince. “It’s a risk.”
He nods knowingly. “The biggest plays usually are.”
After adjusting a loose knob on a closet door, I say, “Hockey won’t last forever. I need something—someone—who I can give my all to.”
“Look at you, all grown up and prioritizing a future,” Jack teases, but his expression is sincere.
“Being off the ice gave me plenty of time to think.” Which makes me wonder if Badaszek extended my leave on purpose. It’s not that I was headed in the wrong direction, but he likes his men to be focused—on the game and on what truly matters in life: people, connections, true love.
“For what it’s worth, she looks at you the way Ella looks at me. Like you … deck the halls of her heart.”
I groan. “Oh, no, that’s the worst.”
He chuckles. “Trust me, that’s worth more than any trophy.”
We continue to work amidst the sounds of hammering and good-natured jesting from the guys filling the house. By late afternoon, the place is transformed—warm, inviting, and ready for a new beginning.
As we leave, Leah helps me tie a pair of enormous red bows around the front porch columns.
“Perfect. Now all you need is the girl,” she declares.
After I thank everyone profusely, we say goodbye and I drive home, I go from feeling confident to worried and back again.
Parts one and two of my three-part plan to woo Bree for Christmas are in place.
The last part is more in her wheelhouse, writing, but maybe tapping into her passions is just what I need to prove that I’m not the jokester from college who teased the pretty journalist.
Back home, the fire crackles in the hearth as I stretch out on the couch, and the dog—as-yet-unnamed—snores softly at my feet. I’ve propped my reading glasses on my nose and am halfway through Bree’s second book, Love Forged on the Range.
I didn’t intend to get so absorbed in the story, but Landon Anssen—the stoic rancher with a secret past—reminds me a bit of my teammate Liam. And Joy, the headstrong schoolteacher who challenges him at every turn, definitely features shades of Bree herself.
The front door opens, and the dog lifts his head sleepily.
“Hey, I grabbed some—” Bree freezes mid-sentence, staring at me.
I lower the book, suddenly self-conscious. “Um, hope you don’t mind. I was curious.”
She doesn’t respond, just keeps looking at me with an expression I can’t quite decipher. Is she upset that I’m reading her work? Embarrassed?
“I can put it away if—”
“No!” She steps forward, cheeks flushed from the cold and possibly something else. Could Bree like what she sees? Like me?
I sit up as the dog trots over to her, tail like a windshield wiper in a monsoon.
She greets him with lots of happy pets and scratches.
I mark my place with a receipt and set the book on the coffee table.
Noting my motion, Bree says, “I just didn’t expect ... You’re reading one of my books. Wow.”
“I’m on chapter fifteen. Landon just rescued Joy from the river, and they’re at his cabin. She noticed the wound on his leg from his encounter with a discourteous gang of rustlers and is tending to it while he regales her with tales of his heroism.”
Her eyes widen and her lips quirk. “That’s pretty far along.”
“It’s good, Bree. Great, actually. I like how you include little details—how Landon notices that Joy uses big words when she’s nervous, or how he feels protective but also respects that she can handle herself out there in the Wild West.”
The smile that spreads across her face makes my heart skip. She looks beautiful with her rosy cheeks and bright eyes, snow melting in her hair.
“You’re wearing glasses,” she says, as if just noticing.
“They’re just for reading.”
“They suit you.” She pauses, then laughs at herself.
I reach up self-consciously. “My eyes get tired otherwise.”
She covers her eyes with her hands. “Oh dear. Listen to me, I just said ‘They suit you.’ I sound like I’m in a Victorian drawing room.
This is what happens when you write historical romance—you start talking like your characters.
” She plops onto the couch beside me. “Next, I’ll be swooning and clutching my pearls. ”
I can’t resist a grin … or this woman. “Do you have pearls to clutch?”
“No, but I’d buy some just to complete the dramatic effect.” She seems as if caught off guard with how easily we fell into joking, rather than poking at the fictional hatred she seemed to believe existed between us for so long.
“I was afraid the glasses make me look old.”
She shakes her head as her eyes spark. “Very distinguished.”
“Distinguished? So I look old?”
She laughs. “No, you look ...” She pauses, her lips swishing from side to side as she searches for the right word—or a synonym for old. “Handsome.”
What shifted between us earlier grows, takes shape, gives way to a new warmth, a deeper understanding, and far more intense attraction. I’m starting to truly believe we might have a future beyond our thirty-day arrangement.
The dog doesn’t stop wagging his tail, sensing the happiness blooming between us, and Bree reaches down to scratch behind his ears. As I watch them, I picture many more evenings like this—the three of us, warm and content while building a life together.
However, the one I see takes place in a newly renovated Victorian. Only in this vision, Bree’s ring finger isn’t bare and our hearts are full.
After dinner, with a bowl of popcorn, we settle in to watch It’s a Wonderful Life, which is, hands down, my favorite Christmas movie of all time. I’m surprised when Bree says she hasn’t watched it before.
About halfway through, she leaps from the couch. “I’ve got it!”
Somewhat alarmed, the dog and I both straighten, sitting at attention. Then I realize she probably means she figured out a passage she was stuck on in her story.
Crouching in front of the dog, she says, “I have the perfect name for you.”
Oh, that. I lean in, eager to know.
She simply says, “Bailey.”
The dog pants and pats his front legs on the couch cushion.
“Bailey?” I repeat.
He turns to me, ears perking.
Bree explains, “For George Bailey.”
The dog lets out a happy yap.
“I think we have our name, Bailey, boy.”
“I like it.”
“He seems to as well,” Bree says as the dog slobbers her with kisses.
I can’t help but hope that both Bree and Bailey feel very much at home because I cannot imagine one without them.