He gave her another smile and then popped back inside where he was probably cleaning up. It was one week until Christmas, and Bennett had sort of moved in and had kind of been helping her run the place since the snowstorm and it was all a terribly bad idea and yet…
He came out of the little cabin, down the steps and put an arm around her. ‘Ready to head home?’
Home.
Together.
She was in so deep.
‘Yep.’
They walked from the tree farm parking lot up the drive to her house, and it was all such an epically bad idea but she couldn’t seem to walk away from it. After the storm, Bennett had gone back to Jeanie’s apartment, and they’d pretended that they were actually parting ways, that the end of the storm heralded the end of them. There really was no point in extending this fling until New Year’s Day. She’d tried to tell herself it was for the best, that there was no need to drag this out. Better to say goodbye now.
But it was Christmas.
No one wanted to be alone for Christmas.
And Chloe was across the world. And her parents made her crazy. And what was she supposed to do, ignore the sexy man she liked just because he was leaving soon? Why start missing him before she had to?
So she might have invited him back in a moment of weakness, and he’d accepted, and he’d brought some extra clothes and his dogs and his laptop, and now for a week, he’d worked from her kitchen table and helped her when she needed it, and they’d slept on that mattress he’d dragged in front of the fire, and it was all so good that Kira couldn’t give it up.
Not yet.
Describe yourself in two words. Selfish and stupid. That was her. But people could only change so much at one time, right? She didn’t want to sprain something.
They walked into the house to find Elizabeth laid out on the bed by the fire and the two smaller dogs perched on the couch, snoring loudly.
‘Off the bed.’ Bennett snapped his fingers and the big dog looked at him with doleful eyes.
Kira laughed as he gave a sigh of frustration.
‘Off the bed,’ he growled, and the dog slowly unwound herself and sauntered over to the dog bed they’d put in the corner.
The other corner was filled with Kira’s Christmas tree decorated with the attic ornaments and more lights than really seemed necessary, but Bennett had insisted. He’d also strung white lights across the mantle and suddenly Kira was living inside one of the holiday movies she’d once loved to mock.
But surprisingly, she didn’t hate it.
The whole thing was very different from her mother’s professionally decorated trees that she had in nearly every room of their house, each with a different theme, making the house feel like a Christmas museum. Whereas, this little tree, with its hand-me-down ornaments felt … cozy. Homey. It was an entirely new type of Christmas, one she was making with Bennett. One she’d never forget.
She sighed, tossing herself onto the couch, exhausted from removing her boots and outerwear.
‘Winter is so hard,’ she groaned, snuggling into the dogs’ warm bodies.
‘Why did you pick a farm so far north?’ Bennett asked as he hung up his coat in the hall.
‘Trying to get as far from home as possible,’ she said through the blanket door. ‘Also winter seemed pretty theoretical at the time.’
Bennett appeared back in the room a minute later. ‘Why not California?’
‘Too expensive. Too earthquakey.’
‘Right.’
Right. Maybe in some other timeline, some other dimension or whatever, Kira and Ben would have met in California. Maybe their lives would have fit together better. Maybe she wouldn’t have had to let him go.
But she didn’t live in whatever timeline that was.
She was here.
In the winter.
He sat down on the other side of the dogs, laptop on his lap. ‘Got a few things to finish up.’
‘Sure. Of course.’ He’d been fitting in his work in between loading trees onto cars and filling in for Iris when she’d come down with the flu. Guilt had been Kira’s constant companion. He was doing too much for her.
Kira grabbed one of Edwin’s old letters from the stack she’d gathered on the coffee table. She’d been going through them looking for clues about where he’d hidden his treasure, but so far had found nothing but smut. She’d also spent a few evenings sorting through the boxes in the attic. But besides a few boxes of old books, she hadn’t found anything valuable. Yet. She was still holding out hope for a Christmas miracle.
Her phone vibrated in her pocket and she pulled it out.
‘It’s Chloe. FaceTiming. Do you mind?’ she asked Bennett.
‘Go for it.’
‘Hey, Chlo.’ She smiled at her sister’s face.
‘Kiki!’
Bennett gave a little snort at the nickname and Kira nudged him with her foot.
