1. Chapter One

Chapter One

Clara

“ G et fucked you stupid piece of—” I tossed the tartan bow I’d spent the last hour trying to tie just right on this Christmas wreath, trying to get the placement just right.

The rope of jingle bells attached to my shop’s front door announced a customer.

Ignoring the urge to scream and hurl the wreath against the wall, I straightened and greeted them with a smile. “Welcome to Floral Wonderland! Oh—It’s you.”

My gut twisted when Bastion Weber strode into my shop, the door swinging shut behind him with a festive jingle. Wearing that shit-eating smirk of his, he picked his teeth with the candy-cane he was never seen without—always sucked into a deadly point.

“Not exactly a holly jolly greeting, Clara. You greet your customers like that?”

My smile slipped back into a scowl. “You’re not my customer, you’re my Christmas tree guy.”

Bastion’s line of sight dropped to the wreath on my counter, with pine cones and poinsettias scattered around it like a cadaver after a botched operation. “Tough client?”

“This one’s for me. I’m going to put it on my car. I just need it to be perfect. Something’s off, and I can’t put my finger on what.”

“It’s probably fine. You know how you are.”

My eyes narrowed into deadly slits and I drummed my bright Santa red nails against the counter. “Excuse me? How I am? What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

I’d known Bastion since we were little. We’d gone to the same school, raised in the same little Christmas-obsessed, Krampus-themed town nestled in the Cascade mountains.

The handsome bastard, with coal-black hair and conniving eyes, rubbed me the wrong way. He was the only one in this town who saw through the mask I wore every day.

“You like to obsess over the details because it distracts you from the life you spend so long pretending is perfect. And that’s okay. Just because everyone else in this town is so damn cherry all the time doesn’t mean you have to be. Swear all you want, throw all the wreaths. Just don’t mind me while I get the popcorn.”

“You’re a dick,” I seethed, turning my attention back to the wreath.

“Come on Clara,” his voice softened with an apologetic cadence. “Jokes aside, I’m being serious. Just because we live in a winter-fucking-wonderland doesn’t mean we have to pretend like our lives are perfect.”

Easy for him to say.

Bastion had no damn idea the kind of fresh hell my life was every night I went home to my piece of shit fiancé.

Admitting just how messed up my relationship with Hogan was would quite possibly break me. No. Better to live in a winter wonderland of make believe. The one that allowed me to pretend my life as a florist, running my own flower shop in the most magical, hallmark-Christmas-type town was nothing short of perfect.

“Why are you here?”

He gestured to my shop window, where his truck loaded up with Christmas trees was parked beside the snow-covered curb. “Got one last Christmas tree delivery for you.”

“Shipment isn’t due for another three days.”

Bastion chuckled as he approached my register counter. When his shadow fell over me, I finally looked up from my wreath to see him leering down with a grin. “Decided to drop off the trees early.” He paused for a beat before adding, “Got a good batch. Figured I’d let you have it before all the tree lots swooped in.”

Just like how he could see right through the sun-shiney, “my life is perfect” persona I put on for everyone else, including myself, I saw right through his lies. He was always looking for excuses to come around and check on me.

Maybe I would enjoy his company—he was hot as fuck—if it wasn’t for the fact that Hogan hated him. My fiancé was under the impression that my Christmas tree guy had a thing for me.

Maybe he knew that too, and that’s why he came around… just to get on Hogan’s nerves. I wondered if he’d still do it if he knew just how angry Hogan could get.

“Just leave the Christmas trees out front.” I gestured to the wooden caddy his dad had built for the person who’d owned the floral shop before me. Bastion and his family had been running the local Christmas tree farm for decades. When his father passed, he inherited it.

The caddy was looking bare, with only a dried out tree missing many of its needles. As annoyed as I was that Bastion was here and that Hogan might catch him, I was relieved to get my delivery early.

“Fine. Look, the real reason I came…”

Because you like pissing my fiancé off by hanging around all the time, and you have no idea the Hell that’s brought down on me when another man even so much as breathes in my direction.

I didn’t dare voice the words in my head as I watched him reach into his jacket, pulling out a package wrapped in Krampus gift paper and topped with a silver bow. The wrapping was a design I’d seen often, one that all the souvenir shops on main street sold.

Our town was famous for its Krampus lore. Sure, Krampus originated from Germany, but it was said that Bigfoot roamed the other side of these mountains. Krampus sightings among the skiers and hikers over the last century occasionally popped into the papers. Probably too much boozy eggnog. And what else did the Leavenworth Gazette have to publish? It wasn’t like our town with a population of twenty-four-hundred had much else going on.

I eyed the Christmas present he placed on the counter for a beat before pretending to look for a hidden camera. “Am I being punked right now? I thought Bastion Weber doesn’t ‘do’ Christmas.”

“I don’t. It’s not a Christmas present. It’s just a gift. Take it.”

I blinked. “You’ve never given me anything before.”

“Not true. I gave you my candy cane in the third grade, remember?”

“You mean the one you stole from Tommy Brown and stabbed him with before handing it to me?”

“He bullied you. I made him pay. I’ll make any man who hurts you pay, Clara.”

Bastion was already protective. Too bad it would take more than a sharpened candy cane to deal with Hogan.

“You don’t like Hogan. That’s fine. You don’t have to. It’s almost like it’s none of your business. You know why, Bast? Because you’re my Christmas tree delivery guy.”

“I’ve known you since we were kids. No one else in this town seems to notice how miserable you are, no matter how much you put on that pretty fucking smile, Clara.”

“I’m not miserable, asshole.”

Bastion’s brow furrowed with doubt. He knew I was lying. The three year anniversary of my mom’s death had just passed, and everyone seemed to know my dad wasn’t coming into town for Christmas this year. Again. My dad was busy living up his new life in sunny Florida with his new girlfriend. Everyone in town had gotten his cheesy Christmas card of them posing in an orange grove, him dressed up like Santa with his girlfriend dressed as an elf, pulling two large oranges out of a big red bag labeled “Santa’s Sack.”

I’d be all alone on Christmas. Well, Hogan would be there, but that made the whole thing worse.

“Look. Just take the gift, okay?” Bastion’s mouth hardened into a line.

I stared at the package with a pit in my stomach. I wanted to take it, but if Hogan found out…

“I can’t accept it,” I told him with a shake of my head.

“Why?” Bastion challenged, his voice hard and full of ice. He knew the reason, but I’d never confirm it. I couldn’t let him, or anyone else, know that I was terrified of accepting attention from any man that wasn’t Hogan.

“I—I didn’t get you anything,” I replied lamely.

Bastion sighed, shoving his hands in his pockets and pulling out the gloves he wore to unload his trees. I watched him tug them on, trying not to drool at his huge hands and how good they looked wrapped in the bark-roughened leather. “I’m gonna unload the trees.”

He turned, leaving the package on the counter. I shouted at him but he pretended he didn’t hear me as he weaved his way through the tables covered in floral arrangements, pots and various planters. When he opened the door, the sound of Christmas carolers from across the street and the clip-clop of hooves from the horse-drawn carriages carried inside.

Bastion shot me a lingering backward glance. It seemed like he was going to say something but thought against it and settled for a smile that seemed to have all sorts of secrets tucked into the corners of his mouth. “You know I’m not the biggest fan of this holiday. But… Merry Christmas, Clara. If anyone deserves to have a good one, it’s you.”

“Um, yeah. You too.” I pretended to turn my attention back to my wreath but from the corner of my eye I watched Bastion unload the trees from his truck and arrange them in his dad’s old tree-caddy through my storefront window.

Movement drew my eye to the other window, and my heartbeat froze in my chest.

A man wearing a plaid fleece jacket—the one I’d gotten slapped for because I’d bought him the wrong color last Christmas—stood outside the window.

It was Hogan.

By the look of rage on his face, he’d seen Bastion—knowing full well it wasn’t a scheduled delivery day—give me the gift.

It would have been such an innocent gesture in anyone else’s eyes. But not my fiancé

Hogan was beyond possessive. He was a fucking psychopath, and not in the fun way like in some of those romances I read to escape my own shitty reality. In those kinds of books, the “hero” was almost always the villain that would burn the world down for his woman. Hogan, the hog farmer otherwise known as “the honied ham man” in town since he also opened up a pop-up ham shop during the holidays, was very much a bad guy. But Hogan wasn’t like the men in those books.

He wouldn’t hurt anyone but me.