Page 117 of Mistletoe All the Way

“It’s Krav Maga adapted into snowball fights,” she says with a smirk.

“Remind me never to cross you,” I deadpan.

“I think you already know that.”

“I really, really do.”

The clouds hang low, and a few rebel snowflakes taunt us on the walk back to her place.

“I hope we get snowed in tonight,” she says, blowing out a hopeful, chilly breath that leaves an imprint on the air.

“Sweetheart, you don’t need snow to be stuck with me. You’re stuck with me tonight whether there’s a blizzard or not.”

She tosses me a smile that I want to keep in my pocket forever. “I want the whole thing. Snow, fireplace, hot cocoa, snuggles, and orgasms.”

My ears perk at the last items on her list. “Snuggles and orgasms? I’m in.”

“I thought so.”

But those words—the whole thing—scratch at my brain. I think of Chris’s advice from yesterday. Sometimes you make an exception for the right person.

Would Eloise do that for me? Try dating long-distance even though she knows firsthand how hard it is? Even though she was on the receiving end of the breakup with that guy I hate simply for hurting her heart? She deserves someone who will treat her heart like the precious gift it is. How the hell does a man fall out of feelings for a woman like her? And really, is it even fair to ask her to reconsider? She deserves the whole thing. And I have responsibilities back in Colorado that I can’t shirk—a clinic to run, a promotion on the line, patients to tend to. It feels manipulative to even ask her to do something that’s hurt her in the past.

Inside her apartment, we toe off boots and take off coats. When the last jacket is hung, she beelines for the couch. “And now we do nothing.”

I laugh. “What even is that?”

She pats the couch. “Try it.”

“You try it. You’re a workaholic too.”

“True,” she says as I join her.

We’re quiet though. My thoughts drift out the window into the falling snow, back to the whole thing and the right person and ideas taking shape in my head. “But here with you I don’t feel so obsessed. I feel a little…”

I’m not sure what the word is that I’m ready to share. Audrey didn’t care for this side of me—the workaholic. The piece—or really, the whole—that was obsessed with work. What if Eloise doesn’t want the whole?

“Happy?” she supplies.

That works well enough. “Yes. Happy.” I wrap an arm around Eloise, kiss the top of her head, and inhale her citrusy scent. The blinking lights of Betty glow softly in the window, our muted reflection flickering back at us.

I let out a contented sigh as she picks up her phone and clicks over to a Christmas playlist, showing it to me. Sinatra, Harry Connick Jr., Perry Como… It’s titled Grinch Favorites. I could protest that I hate Christmas music, but she’d see through the lie.

Since I love that she made this list for me.

After she hits play, I wrap an arm around her once more as Perry Como’s “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” fills her home.

How has she done this to me in a few short weeks? Turned me into someone who wears a Christmas sweater for a photo, sings holiday songs before a crowd, listens to seasonal music without rolling his eyes, and shops for holiday outfits?

Someone who throws snowballs… for fun.

Someone who’s utterly obsessed with her happiness. She’s turned me into this smitten man who can’t stop entertaining what-ifs.

After I cook her a lentil curry with coconut milk and rice that she declares divine, she pats the couch and points to the mantel above the electric fireplace. Two stockings hang—a red-and-pink argyle one that was here the other night, and she said it was for her cat. There’s now a plaid one too—green and red.

“Did your cat get you a stocking?”

Turning to face me, she licks her lips, a tiny bit of nerves flickering in those blue and green eyes. “It’s for you. Maybe it’s presumptuous, but I wanted you to have a stocking for when Santa comes down the chimney on Christmas Eve.”