Total pages in book: 25
Estimated words: 26056 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 130(@200wpm)___ 104(@250wpm)___ 87(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 26056 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 130(@200wpm)___ 104(@250wpm)___ 87(@300wpm)
“Careful, Hollis,” I murmur. “You’re starting to sound like foreplay.”
He stops a foot from me. “You want foreplay, tinsel girl?”
My mouth goes dry.
He leans in, close enough for his heat to lick at my skin.
“Try stringing up a strand of that glittery crap and see what happens.”
My lips part, ready to toss back something sharp, but the words get stuck in my throat.
He’s so close. Smells like cedar soap and something dark and masculine and devastating.
I swallow. “You really don’t want to know what happens when I get glittery.”
He chuckles. Low. Dangerous. “Oh, I have a few guesses.”
We stare at each other.
The fire cracks behind us. Wind howls outside.
He doesn’t move. Neither do I.
Finally, he straightens, that muscle in his jaw ticking.
“You’ve got forty-eight hours,” he says. “Decorate whatever the hell you want. But you stay out of my room. You don’t touch my kitchen. And if you hang a single elf, I’ll burn the place down.”
I smile. Sweetly.
“You’re gonna be so pretty with twinkle lights in your beard.”
He mutters something that sounds like I hate everything and storms off down the hall.
And me?
I plop a red velvet bow on the mantel and grin.
This might be the worst idea I’ve ever had.
Or the best one.
Either way?
It’s gonna be one hell of a week.
Chapter 2
Nash
She smells like cinnamon and bad decisions.
Red lipstick, combat boots, and an attitude I can already tell is going to give me an ulcer.
And now she’s in my goddamn cabin.
Humming.
Actually humming while she strings that sparkly tinsel shit across my bookshelf like she’s laying a trap.
Which she is.
Just not the kind I’m ready to fall into.
I lean in the doorway, arms crossed, watching her as snow needles the windows and the fire spits behind me. She hasn’t asked if she can stay. Hasn’t begged or apologized or offered to back her glitter-filled suitcase out the door.
Nope.
She just made herself at home. Claimed her corner. And now she's decorating my goddamn moose head.
“I swear to Christ,” I growl, “if you hot glue a Santa hat to Buckley’s skull—”
She tosses me a grin over her shoulder. “It’s not glue. It’s a festive headpiece. Temporary. Non-invasive. Very on-brand.”
“Buckley doesn’t want to be on brand.”
“Well, Buckley doesn’t have a say.”
I push off the frame, step closer, slow and heavy-footed just to make a point.
She doesn’t flinch.
Doesn’t so much as blink when I come to stand behind her, close enough to smell her hair—vanilla and something bright, like orange zest and holiday mischief.
“I’m tryin’ to figure out why a pretty girl like you would answer a mail-order bride ad—runnin’ from the law, maybe? Or a crazy ex? What the hell are you really doing here, Noel?”
She reaches up to adjust the crooked Santa hat on the mounted moose and pretends not to notice the heat coming off me like a furnace.
“I told you,” she says sweetly. “Reality show. Contest. I win, you win. Everyone walks away richer and full of holiday spirit.”
“This isn’t a Hallmark movie.”
“No,” she says, spinning slowly to face me. Her gaze snags on my chest—still half bare, still damp from the shower she interrupted—and lingers a beat longer than it should.
When her eyes lift back to mine, they’re full of fire.
“This is better.”
Damn woman has no idea what she’s doing.
Or maybe she does.
Because even with the glitter and the chaos and the god-awful soundtrack she just put on my old Bluetooth speaker (is that Mariah Carey?), I haven’t told her to leave again.
Not since I made the mistake of noticing how her leggings hug her thighs.
Not since I saw the curve of her waist when she reached for that top shelf.
Not since I felt the spark in my blood when she smirked and called herself my bride.
Fake or not, something about it made the animal in me sit up and listen.
“I don’t like people in my space,” I say quietly.
Noel crosses her arms. “I’m not just any people.”
“Noticed.”
She smiles like I gave her a compliment.
Then ruins it by hanging a string of fairy lights over my front window.
“I want peace,” I grind out.
“You’ll get it. Right after we win.”
I stare at her.
Hard.
She stares back, unbothered, cheeks flushed from the fire and that smart mouth of hers working overtime to push every single one of my buttons.
Hell, maybe that’s the real reason I haven’t kicked her out yet.
I haven’t felt this alive in months. Maybe years.
She steps forward, chin tilted up.
“You gonna glare me out the door, mountain man? Or are you gonna help me hang these?”
She dangles a set of silver bells between us like a weapon.
I reach up, slow and controlled, and take them from her fingers.
For a second, we’re just... quiet. The sound of the storm outside, the hum of the fire, the soft static from her ridiculous holiday playlist.
Then I murmur, “You talk a lot.”
Her eyes spark. “And you grunt like a caveman.”