Chapter 15

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

ANABELLE

Friday, December 5, 20 days until Christmas

Inns in peril: 1, but at least the water pipes won’t break

Santas sold: 5

Santas made: 2

Number of times I’ve secretly worn Ryan’s sweater: I’d prefer not to put it into writing.

Number of times I fantasized about crunching into the other end of Ryan’s candy cane so I could kiss him: That’s between me and my broken brain.

I didn’t mean to put on Ryan’s sweater. Again. In fact, I meant to return it days ago. It’s just so comfortable. Wearing it, I feel more comfortable in my own skin. It’s needed after this afternoon, when yet another stranger told me that my favorite place in the world was showing its wear.

I started working as soon as the electrician left, and the familiarity of crafting has sucked me in, bringing me to that creative space where I can make magic. Except I’m a Christmas witch who can only cast a single spell: making Franken-Santas.

I’m so lost in my work that I barely notice time has gone by or register the knocking on my door.

Saint Nick, who’s been snoozing on a little patch of sunlight on my bed, complains. I glance at the clock and see that it’s six.

I still feel lost to the world around me, but another knock lands on the door, and I remember that Ryan is hosting Hot Chocolate Happy Hour. Again.

It must be him.

A thread of self-recrimination gnaws at me, threatening to cut off my air supply. Part of me fears my father and Weston are right about me, and I’m just not cut out for inn-keeping. The last two days have gone surprisingly well, despite the visits from the plumber and the electrician, but that’s because I’ve had so much help from Ryan and Cynthia.

I set down the Santa I’m working on and pad over to the door, followed by Saint Nick, who sits beside me when I stop to peer through the peephole.

I see Ryan, holding a mug of hot chocolate.

I find myself smiling as I open the door.

Saint Nick weaves around Ryan’s legs and then sits down beside one of his shoes, so apparently their new truce still stands.

“Humping makes the heart grow fonder,” he says with a laugh.

“I’ll keep that in mind.” The words slip out before I can capture them and tug them back, and my brain immediately zips into overdrive. “I mean—”

“I know what you meant,” he says with a smile, capturing my hand for a moment. His eyes glide over me, clinging to the sweater, and his smile spreads wider. I feel a new awareness of the fabric engulfing me, its heat all around me.

“I’m sorry,” I say again, self-conscious. “I know it’s yours, and I still have every intention to give it back, but it’s very comfortable. It’s hard for me to find the perfect sweater.”

“You don’t have to be sorry. The sweater looks better on you. But you have a guest downstairs, and I thought maybe you’d want to see him—and also that you should drink this very alcoholic hot chocolate before you do.”

I step back into my room, needing to burrow into its safety, and my little cat rises and joins me. “Is it Weston?’

“Not Weston,” he says, catching my wrist again.

Usually I don’t like being touched by strangers, but his grip is light, his touch surprisingly soothing—and as soon as I stop moving backward, he releases me.

He hands me the chocolate. “Now, bottoms up. I think you definitely need to drink that before we move on to Exhibit B.”

“Exhibit B being the man who’s waiting for me downstairs?” I say with a long exhale. “Is it Santa Claus? An elf?”

“Neither of those, I’m sorry to say, but I think you’ll probably be happy to see him.”

“So it’s definitely not my father, then.”

My father has texted a couple of times since the estate sale, but I haven’t found it in me to message him back, particularly since neither of his texts contained an apology for A) saying I was a fool for not accepting Weston’s proposal, or B) telling Ryan that I’m not normal. He was right, I suppose, but his comment was both cruel and ill-intended.

“No, I would have warned you,” Ryan says.

“I don’t care for surprises,” I point out.

“And I usually like nothing better than ruining surprises, but in this particular situation, I don’t think it’s my place.” He gestures to the cup of hot chocolate. “Why don’t you take a good slug of that, though.”

He’s not wrong. I need it. So I take a gulp—cinnamon and chocolate, delicious—and then set the mug on the dresser.

“I’m as ready as I’ll ever be,” I announce, and Ryan grins at me encouragingly before nodding toward the stairs.

I shut my door behind me, because Saint Nick lost interest in our conversation a few minutes ago and has settled onto my bed as if he owns it. We walk down side by side, and I find myself giving Ryan a sidelong glance, taking in that little scar on his chin, the waves in his light-brown hair, and the powerful biceps hugged by his long-sleeved shirt. He’s a surprise—a mystery—and I’d like to unfurl him too.

When we get to the parlor, Ryan gapes at the room beyond.

It’s empty.

“Is the surprise that he’s transparent?” I ask. “Because that would be impressive.”

“Well, I’ll be…” Ryan says, but then his gaze falls to the coffee table, mine following it.

There’s a handwritten note:

I’m a coward. Can you please tell her? I’ll come back for Hot Chocolate Happy Hour tomorrow.

I give Ryan a quizzical glance.

“Why don’t you sit?” he suggests.

“I’ll stand.” I’m tired of being a person who has to sit to absorb bad—or at least strange—news.

“So, it was your friend Jo who came by.”

Excitement bursts through me. “She was here ? She asked about meeting in person, but I thought we’d set a date.”

Then I remember the note. The mystery man…

“Yes.” His mouth hitches to the side, his eyes crinkling slightly at the corners, and I know he’s amused. “But she is a he.”

“ What? ”

He maintains a level gaze, his face impossible to read. “I’m surprised you two have never met before. He said you’ve been chatting online for a year and a half, about everything. Your boyfriends. Your businesses.”

“It’s easier for me to communicate in writing most of the time,” I say, feeling completely thrown. Over the last couple of days, one surprise after another has materialized, like a set of Russian dolls. I don’t care that Joe’s a man and not a woman. It’s his soul that matters to me. But the fact that we’ve been talking for this long and I didn’t know, and he didn’t tell me…it’s stunning.

I don’t like that he didn’t trust me enough to tell me the truth.

“Joe realized you thought he was a woman, but by then you’d been talking for months, and he was worried you’d retreat. He didn’t want to lose you, so he let the misunderstanding stand. But it sounds like his life just imploded in a big way and he might need our help.”

“ Our help?” I repeat, stunned anew.

It’s not the first time Ryan has called us a “we,” but this one really rattles me for some reason. In a good way, I think, but it also feels dangerous.

He meets my gaze, and his mouth curls again into that smirk, and something inside of me melts like chocolate yielding to a hot marshmallow. “Yeah. What do you know. I think he just became my friend too.” He glances at my merry Santas. “He says he needs somewhere to stow his Christmas stuff. His ex-boyfriend is threatening to toss it all.”

I gasp, promptly decide that I would like to sit after all, and plop down onto the sofa. Ryan’s smile spreads wider as he sits next to me.

“It’s not funny.”

“Didn’t say it was. It’s just…cute, how into this you both are. He nearly snapped my head off when I almost used that tea towel on the credenza to wipe up a spill.”

I chuckle, remembering. “Probably because that’s how I met Joe. We both bid on it, and I won.”

“Why didn’t you sell it if it’s worth that much dough? No offense, but it’s nothing special to look at.”

I glance at the tea towel, then at him. “I could have sold it. I had someone who wanted to buy it, but it was tied to how I met Joe, and I couldn’t bring myself to give it up.”

He watches me for a long moment, his throat bobbing up and down, like he’s literally swallowing what I said.

I don’t think any man has ever looked at me this way—like he likes what he’s seeing. Like he wouldn’t change a thing about me if given the chance. I’ve had men who have wanted me, and men who have used me, but never a man who valued me.

My hand reaches up without bothering to ask permission from my body, my fingers brushing the tiny scar under his lip. His mouth opens, and a hidden pervert who must have been dwelling inside of me my whole life suddenly comes out. I want to stick my finger in his mouth to see if he’d suck on it.

It’s an intrusive thought, and I tug my hand back. But I don’t move away from him.

“How’d you get that scar? I’ve been wondering.”

“I did something stupid and got hit for it.”

“What happened?” I ask, my heart hurting for him, because somehow I know it wasn’t good, and it wasn’t his fault.

He shrugs. “I was eighteen, maybe, and my boss asked me to do something a certain way. I thought I could do it better. He disagreed.”

“So he punched you? What kind of work did you do?”

His smile feels half-hearted. “Dark work.”

“So you said,” I murmur numbly. Was he a wrestler? An underground boxer? Some kind of criminal? “Did you punch him back?”

He makes a snort of amusement. I feel myself edging a little closer to him, enough that our sides are lightly touching, and I’m so hyper-conscious of him that I can barely think.

“No, Anabelle, I didn’t punch him back. He was… I looked up to him a lot back then. I figured I probably deserved it.”

“No one ever deserves to get punched,” I say fiercely, reaching up again to brush my fingers over his scar. He watches me as I do it. I can’t read the look in his eyes, but it’s warm.

“I’ve punched other people,” he says. “Plenty. For saying my brother and me had fleas. For calling me stupid, even though it’s mostly true—”

“It’s not,” I snap.

He smiles softly at me. “Thank you for that. But I got in lots of dumb fights in school. It’s one of the reasons I dropped out. The other is that I couldn’t focus.”

I trace the scar again, trying to see him as the wild kid who got into fights. The lost kid who didn’t get the help he needed.

“They failed you,” I tell him, my hand still cupped around his face.

“You keep saying that.” He shakes his head, the motion moving my hand. I’m struck by how little space exists between us right now, as if the world has shrunken to bring us closer together. He’s still smiling at me, and I feel a painful awareness of him. At this moment we really do feel like an us. “And while I’m encouraged that you care enough to make excuses for me, you don’t have to. I was a terror. They didn’t know what to do with me.”

“You’re not like that anymore.” My fingers trace the side of his face as if they don’t know how to stop touching him. He shaved this morning, but I feel scruff under my fingers, everywhere except on that scar.

“I still am a bit. I can’t tell you how much self-restraint it took for me not to punch Weston the other day. I still want to do it. Right this minute, I’d like to get up and track him down, just so I can punch his face the instant he opens the door.”

“Oh, he’d never open the door if he saw your face through the peephole. I think he’s afraid of you.”

“He should be.”

This time, my finger moves over the scar and then traces his bottom lip. His lips are softer than I expected them to be, and I feel my heart beating faster. Each breath I take feels harder to draw in. I’m dancing at the edge of a cliff, but I don’t want to stop. This man is dangerous and full of secrets, and my parents would never, ever approve of him, but I’ve known him to be nothing but kind and thoughtful. Sweet.

“You didn’t hit him, though,” I say. “You’re older. More capable of controlling yourself. You’ve learned.”

“You’re like a one-woman hype squad.” He leans his face in a little closer, as if nuzzling my hand, and I’m so overcome by him it takes me a moment to form words.

“So are you. You make me feel…” Suddenly tears are forming behind my eyes. I brush my hand up and into his hair, weaving it around my fingers. “You make me feel like I’m capable.”

“You are,” he says intently, his brow furrowing, making me want to skate my fingers across that too. There’s still a few inches between us on the sofa, but we’re leaning into each other, our mouths so close that the air between us is shared. “I hope I also make you feel beautiful.”

“You do,” I say, that breathless feeling gripping me again.

“Because you’re so beautiful to me, Anabelle.” He leans in closer, his mouth a whisper away from mine, and I’m so enthralled by it, by him. Every bit of me is present and in need.

“And you’re beautiful to me,” I admit, to him and myself.

His mouth is still hovering over mine, so close I can almost feel his lips. But he doesn’t span the distance between us, and he doesn’t pull away. The tension between us is pulled taut like a caught thread. Maybe I’ll always be hanging here, in the middle of something, because I’m not brave enough to take a chance.

That’s the thought that finally does it, and I lean closer and press my lips to his. He sighs into me as he kisses me.

His mouth is soft on mine at first—a brush of the lips, almost like we were leaning in for a cheek kiss and someone got confused. My hand is still wrapped around his hair, though, and when I use it to bring him closer, his lips become more demanding. They move over mine as if he’s as interested in learning me as I am in learning him. He sucks in my bottom lip and moves his tongue against mine, and everything inside of me is focused on him. I no longer hear the hiss of the radiator or notice the way the Christmas lights shine off the ornaments or hear the slight creaks of an old house filled with people. I only experience Ryan—the groan he makes in the back of his throat as he kisses me, the feeling of his lips and tongue, and the taste of his cinnamon whiskey. The way he keeps his eyes open, as if he wants to remember who it is he’s kissing.

So do I. Kissing someone new for the first time after the end of a relationship should probably feel strange, but there’s no awkwardness or regret. This is what kissing should be, I decide—so delicious and decadent you don’t want to stop and maybe don’t even know how.

Ryan is the one who pulls back, his hair mussed and his dark eyebrows arched as if in surprise. “Whoa,” he says, tipping his forehead until it touches mine. Tingles of pleasure radiate through me.

“Whoa,” I echo.

His hand reaches for mine, and I give it to him, only then feeling a brush of apprehension. Because there’s an unreadable look in his eyes as he pulls his head from mine.

“God, I like you, Anabelle. I like you so damn much. But I don’t know how long I’m going to stay.”

“I know what indefinitely means,” I say, my tone a little prickly, because uncertainty is starting to pulse back into my bloodstream.

“Of course you do.” He smiles and traces my jaw, his fingers insistent on knowing me. “You probably know ninety-nine percent of the words in the dictionary.”

I don’t argue. I expect he’s right. I just wait for him to get to whatever point he’s inching his way toward, feeling dread in the pit of my stomach.

But he doesn’t get to the point. He just peers at me, his eyes intense and full of a meaning I can’t interpret, and finally I say, “You’re trying to tell me this was a mistake.”

He shakes his head, though his eyes are full of regret. Usually, it’s hard for me to read other people’s cues, but I can almost see it clustered around his pupils. “Not a mistake. A kiss like that could never be a mistake. But you’re too important to me to…”

“Too important to kiss?” I ask in disbelief.

“Exactly,” he says as if he agrees with that nonsensical remark. “I’m here to help you, and I can’t let wanting to…” he clears his throat, “kiss you get in the way. Your grandmother asked me to help you with the inn, and that’s what I intend to do.”

It’s as if he just broke the spell that had descended over us.

I get to my feet, suddenly furious with him, my grandmother, and every single person in my life. Even Joe, whom I’ve trusted with far too much personal information, has lied to and manipulated me. “That’s what was in that letter?”

“Part of it.”

“My grandmother asked a complete stranger to help me?”

He bows his head, his hair hanging in the front. “She meant a lot to me.”

“She meant a lot to me too, Ryan. But I didn’t ask you for help. And I don’t need or want it, not if you’re giving it to me out of some sort of obligation.”

“I’m not,” he says, getting up too. “I’m not. That’s not—” He swears, sweeping his hands through his hair. “I’m no good at finding the right words, Anabelle. I’m not here because your grandmother asked me to get rid of Weston, I—”

“ What ?” I fume, my voice rising.

A groan rolls out of him. “Oh shit. That wasn’t the right thing to say either.”

The terse woman who’s staying in Room C hurries past us and up the stairs.

“Have a pleasant day, Bea,” Ryan calls after her.

Of course he knows her name. I do, too, but it’s not because she and I have had any conversations. I dart an accusatory look at him.

Turning back toward me, he says, “I’m doing this all wrong.”

He has the expression of a puppy dog who peed on the rug, but I can’t worry about his feelings right now, while I’m being eaten alive by mine. There’s anger, certainly, but beneath it is something rawer.

“You think? Why would I be happy to find out you only kissed me because my grandmother told you to take care of me , like I’m some kind of problem? I thought you believed in me.” My throat gets tight. “I thought she did too.”

“She did ,” he says, almost frantic. He reaches for my hand, but I tug it away. “So do I.” His tone is firmer. “If you’re wondering if I’m here because Grandma Edith asked me to come back, then yes. That’s why I’m here. But I didn’t have to stay. I wasn’t going to mess with your life. I just wanted to stick around for long enough to make sure you were safe and everything was going well.”

“And you saw what a mess my life really is. Fantastic.” I fold my arms over my chest. “But I don’t need you to fix me, Ryan. I don’t need anyone to fix me.”

Something like hurt passes over his face, but he nods. “Are you asking me to leave?”

I could.

I should .

The expression on his face suggests he’d listen.

But I still haven’t unfurled his mysteries. If I don’t, I’ll always wonder. I’ll wonder, too, if I sent him back into the darkness after he left this place.

So I shake my head.

“I’m your friend, Anabelle,” he pleads. “I want to be your friend.”

The part he leaves out— I don’t want to kiss you.

He implied it was a good kiss, but maybe it wasn’t. Maybe he’s used to kissing fashion models who take kissing classes in Paris, and my lack of technique disgusted him. Or maybe I misread his signals and he didn’t want to kiss me at all…

Anxiety pulses through me, springing back and forth between my muscles and skin.

“I have to go,” I say.

“I’m sorry.”

“I’m the one who should be apologizing it seems,” I say primly. But I still can’t bring myself to do it. “Good night.”

I’m dying to tell someone about this, but Jo’s…well, Joe…and that’s something else I still haven’t wrapped my head around. I could call Cynthia, but she’s probably on her way back from D.C., and I don’t want to be the reason she gets into an accident.

An hour later, there’s a knock on my door, but when I peer out of the peephole, I don’t see anyone.

I open the door and find a wrapped sandwich waiting for me.

He made it. I can tell by the layers of flavor and the perfect execution.

I eat it like a ravenous animal.