Chapter 15 #2
Back in the kitchen, Cora did indeed have warm gingerbread and ice-cold milk waiting. Her hair was still tousled from their encounter, her face rosy, but there was a serene calmness that radiated from her.
He sat next to her on the bench at her kitchen table, the heat of her body pressed against his right side. “This was nice.”
“Baking always works,” she said.
“Like magic.”
“What is it with you and magic? It’s not something most CEOs focus on.”
“I’m not most CEOs.”
There was a feeling of peace inside of her that Cora had never experienced before.
It was nice, but at the same time it unnerved her.
Nick’s altruistic ways were great and all, but a part of her didn’t buy it.
No one did so many things out of the goodness of their heart.
Certainly not CEOs. She’d had lots of experience with them and never had any one of them stepped up the way Nick had.
She was thrown when people didn’t act as she expected them to.
“No, you’re not. No one else would have jumped on the stage and led the caroling tonight. I’ve noticed you do that a lot. Just reach out with no thought of what’s in it for you.”
He flushed a little then looked over to the windows. It had stopped snowing but the moon on the snow cast a glow on the landscape outside. “I’m not sure what you mean.”
“What’s really in this for you?”
“This?” he asked, gesturing to the two of them.
“This, and also stepping up with WonderHaus. Every person associated with the festival only does what they’re contracted to do. There’s never anything extra. But not with you.”
He took a deep breath and then reached for one of the gingerbread women, breaking the cookie in half and dipping it in milk.
She was momentarily distracted by his mouth and remembering how it felt on hers.
Were they ever going to really sleep together?
And was she ever going to get to the bottom of why he had agreed to help her?
“One good deed feeds another. Me helping you out meant that all the attendees tonight got to sing songs which lifts spirits.”
“Again, that’s too ‘big picture.’ What’s in it for you?”
“Want to go outside and make snow angels?” he asked instead of answering. He needed the distraction, some perspective, and being in the snow would do just that.
“Answer the question first.”
“Make a snow angel with me and I’ll tell you.”
“Fine.”
She shifted off the bench and they both put on their boots and coats and went outside. She was aggravated with him and with herself for not just kicking him out when he wouldn’t give her the truth.
“Mistletoe,” he said, pulling her close, his head angling down to hers.
She put her hands on the sides of his face, the sable softness of his beard rubbing against her fingers. “Kissing me won’t keep me from getting answers.”
He rested his forehead against her. “You are doggedly determined. The kiss is for courage.”
Courage?
What did he have to reveal to her?
He must have guessed she was going to ask another question because his lips were on hers.
Her mind hit pause as her instincts took over.
Nick was the best kisser. He tasted good, his lips were warm and he always made the world drop away.
To her harried mind that was always busy with anticipating the next disaster, it was a relief.
But right now, it felt like a distraction.
“You’re stalling,” she said, pushing him away.
“I am,” he admitted, moving away from her and sitting on the step that led to the path in her front yard.
“Why?”
“It’s complicated.”
“So’s life. Stop with the excuses. Just say it. There’s literally nothing you could say that would shock or surprise me.”
“I bet there is.”
“Try me,” she said, sitting down next to him but leaving a good few inches of space between them. It was chilly and she shivered, until Nick put his hand on her forearm and a wave of heat surrounded her.
It was so weird how he managed to do that, but she was tired and edgy because he was being oddly secretive.
“Um … I’m not sure where to start.”
“Dude, stop stalling! You’re making it worse.”
“Pete and I are competing to see who will get to run … the family enterprise,” he said. “If I don’t meet certain conditions, then the board will hand control to him. I’ll lose it.”
“Lose what?”
“Everything that matters,” he said. “We were both raised to be CEO—same training and same expectations but very different philosophies.”
“Is that why you both have the same tattoo?”
“It marks the line of succession. We’re the ones responsible for keeping the season running smoothly.”
“It’s an unusual saying for a corporate motto. I mean, it’s from a song, right?” she asked, trying to figure out why this man had such a tight connection with the holiday season.
“They nicked it from us—it was ours first,” he told her.
“But he’s so different from you. I can’t see Pete coming up with something as exciting as the WonderHaus.”
“We are different. We disagree about many things.”
“And where does getting married fit into that?”
“A wife will be the heart of the company. She’ll be my … anchor.”
“You’re on a deadline to find her. That’s not very romantic,” she said.
His anchor. If she needed another example of how different Nick and his ideas were to hers, she had it.
In her parents’ marriage she’d been the anchor and it hadn’t been enough to keep them together.
Anchors weren’t a good idea for a relationship.
No one wanted to be tied down and unmovable.
“It isn’t.”
“And yet you’re here, with me?” she said.
“I want to see where this goes. Not because I’m trying to change your mind but because I can’t seem to stay away.”
“You haven’t forgotten that I don’t want to get married.”
“I haven’t forgotten.”
“And that doesn’t scare you?”
“It makes this honest. And that’s the truth.”
That’s all she could ask of him. She wasn’t entirely sure how she felt about all this, but he had answered her question so she let him pull her toward the fresh snow to the side of her house. Drops of it fell from the heavy branches of the tree in her front yard.
She felt silly. She’d never done a snow angel before because you needed a second person to help you up or the angel’s body got messed up.
Instead, she reached down and scooped up a ball of snow just as Nick fell backwards to make his angel.
He clocked the snowball in her hand a second too late. She lobbed it at him. Not being great at aiming, she was pleased when it hit him in the shoulder.
He let out that big, booming belly laugh of his that made the snow globe in her tummy start swirling.
As soon as he stooped to make his own snowball, she realized that she’d better find cover.
Darting behind the trunk of the tree, she tried to form more ammunition but Nick was there, hitting her in the chest with a snowball, and she tumbled to the ground.
Cold snow on her back and a hot man on her front.
Her heartbeat increased. She had to be very careful not to fall for this man who needed her to be the one thing she’d sworn never to become.