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He sat down, rustled through the bag and pulled out both burgers. After looking beneath the top bun of one, he found the one with jalapeños and set it on his plate.
“I never had Christmas before the Traverses. They included me in the celebration when they didn’t have to.”
He looked up, raising one brow. “Are you going to sit and eat? Because I will eat all of your French fries.”
She sat down, taking her own hamburger, which was a bit more vanilla than his, and transferring it to the plate in front of her. “Eat my French fries and suffer a painful fate,” she said, snatching the bag and removing a little pouch of fries. “Now. About you helping me with my amazing Christmas party....”
“Hollyberry,” he said, using an old name for her that only he could ever get away with, “do you see a damned Christmas tree on my boat?”
“No. But it’s early still.”
“There will be no Christmas tree on my boat. I may, in fact, skip Christmas. It’s on a Tuesday and I’ll be out fishing, like I am every day.” He took a bite of his burger and groaned, and she felt a strange, heated sense of satisfaction blooming in her stomach. Why did he have to make sex noises while eating?
At least, they sounded like sex noises to her. Curse Ryan and his ability to push her mind straight into the gutter with his mere presence.
“I know Margie and Dan mean a lot to you too,” she said. “Maybe you could skip handling fish carcasses for a day and help me make something special for them. A Christmas Eve party, and a traditional Travers family Christmas.”
“You plan parties for a living, and you want my help putting together one Christmas party?”
“That’s the thing. I’m busy. Very busy this time of year. I have two weddings coming up, and several Christmas parties that I’m organizing the details for already.”
“And that’s why you decided to add to your list of responsibilities, and do an unpaid party for the Traverses.”
“It’s the one party that actually matters to me,” she said, taking a deep breath. “Christmas is important to me, Ryan. Margie and Dan are important to me. They’ve given me so many Christmases and it’s my chance to return that gift.”
Ryan assessed her, his expression unmoved as he chewed his dinner.
“They’ve given us all so much,” she continued, trying her best not to make an idiot of herself by crying into a cheeseburger on Ryan’s boat. “I just want to give them a little something back. I thought...I thought it would be the same for you.”
CHAPTER TWO (#u54c97559-7b5b-5b40-9586-9a0f6e0c3510)
RYAN KNEW DAMN WELL when he was being emotionally manipulated. It wasn’t an easy thing for a person to do to him, seeing as he had few emotional attachments in this world, and he liked it that way.
But damn it all, Dan and Margie Travers were the two most important people in his life. He knew full well what Holly was talking about when she spoke of all they’d given her. They’d done just the same for him.
He’d come to live with them when he was twelve, with a bad attitude and anger that went deeper than the ocean. But they’d put up with him, refused to give up on him. Kept him with them until after he was eighteen, until he’d gotten his first boat and established himself with restaurants and stores in Copper Ridge as the go-to supplier.
It wasn’t the Christmases that stood out for him. It was the quiet, firm guidance from Dan. The hugs from Margie, even when he’d been twelve and had pretended he didn’t want them. Being touched in a way that didn’t leave bruises behind had been rare in his world before them. Being told he could accomplish anything he worked for? Even more rare.
Yeah, he owed them. More than he could ever repay. They’d given him his first real home, his first job, carrying bags of feed at the Farm and Garden store they owned. They’d taught him that tough love didn’t mean using fists. That hard work did pay off, and that he could make something of himself, regardless of what his old man had told him.
But he would rather shove broken glass under his fingernails than get roped into holiday festivities.
“Well?” Holly asked.
“You’re evil,” he said.
“I’m not evil. I’m like a little Christmas elf.”
“Evil.”
“I want your help planning a party, not burying a body.”
“Depending on the circumstances, I’m a better bet for body burial than I am for decorations and cheer.”
She rolled her eyes and just sat there, looking at once soft and formidable, as she tended to. She took a bite of her burger, chewing thoughtfully. He couldn’t help but follow the motion of her lips as she did. There was no question that she was beautiful. She always had been. Bright red hair, green eyes, a perfect smattering of freckles across her small, upturned nose. And her lips. Full, pink. Yeah, she was pretty. She was also about a million years younger than he was, and several teaspoons of sugar sweeter.
Okay, she was only four years younger, but it might as well have been a lifetime.
She took another bite and his gaze dropped, yet again, to her lips, forcing an unwelcome memory into his mind.
Another night, about nine years ago, when he’d been fixated on her lips. She’d been crying then. It had been her eighteenth birthday and her parents had arranged to visit her at Dan and Margie’s, but they hadn’t come. He’d put his arm around her and pulled her in for a hug, then the air between them had changed. Crackled with electricity.
And he’d pulled away like he’d been burned. Holly Fulton had enough bad things in her life without having him too. That had been true then, and it was true now. No matter how pretty she was.
“They worry about you, you know,” she said.
“Why?”
“Because.” She picked up a French fry and waved it around. “You’re a boat-dwelling weirdo.”
“And?”
“Maybe you could show them that you’re...well-adjusted? Doing fine? Participating in normal, human type things?”
“You’re using Dan and Margie’s emotional distress at my possibly sad life against me?”
She scrunched up her face. “When you put it like that it sounds... unsavory.”
He picked up a French fry and stuffed the whole thing into his mouth. “It is unsavory. It’s downright small. Low. Frankly, I’m surprised at you. For someone who looks so sweet, you’re ruthless.”
He could tell that she was very uncomfortable with being called ruthless. It was also the furthest thing from the truth. Still, he couldn’t help but goad her a little bit. Seeing as she was roping him into planning a Christmas party, and attending said Christmas party, both of which sounded about as appealing as getting a root canal while also receiving a vasectomy without anesthetic.
“Oh, cry me a river, Ryan. I’m strong-arming you into taking part in Christmas cheer and I will likely force-feed you gingerbread. It’s for your own good.”
“Like cod liver oil, flu shots and any book Oprah recommends.”
“A Christmas party is comparable to none of those.”
“Maybe not for you.”
“I promise not to get any joy on you. You don’t even have to like it.”
Saying yes to Holly really was the best idea. She wasn’t wrong. His involvement in this would make Dan and Margie less likely to think that he was turning into a seafaring hermit. He was a seafaring hermit, but as long as they saw him as something different, they might not worry so much.
He owed them way more than worry.
“Okay, Holly, you have a deal. I’ll help you plan your Christmas party. But I don’t have to like it.”
She brightened. “Oh, I expect you to hate it.”
“You seem awfully happy about that idea.”
“The more you hate something, the better I know it is. Since you seem to dislike the sorts of things normal people find extremely enjoyable.”
“What exactly are you going to enlist me for?”
She bit her lip, and he did his best not to watch as she worried her teeth over the delicate surface. “Putting up decorations. Helping me procure a tree. Tasting pies. You can taste my pies.”
He felt like he’d just taken a straight shot of whiskey, a trail of fire burning down his throat and settling straight in his gut. It happened so fast he could do nothing to stop it, could do nothing to reason out the fact that she was talking about literal pie, and that even if she wasn’t, it was Holly, and not some random chick in a bar.
He could try to blame it on the fact that, for a bachelor, the promise of fresh baked goods was a turn-on all on its own. But he knew it was more than that.
Holly looked placid and pleased with herself and definitely not like she had any idea she had conjured up an image of him eating her pie. So to speak.
He cleared his throat. “All that, huh? Are you trying to kill me?”
She stood, taking the paper that her cheeseburger had been wrapped in and wadding it up into a ball. “No. But if you die, don’t die before Christmas. Because I need your help.”
“It might be Christmas that kills me.”
She laughed, turning on her heel, her red hair swirling around her. Even her hair was merry and bright. “Joy to the world the Lord is come...” she sang, off-key and too loud, all the way out of his cabin.
As soon as she disappeared from view, he let out a breath he hadn’t been aware he was holding. Two weeks with all that Holly was going to be a whole lot of enforced happiness.
But he was hardly going to let Holly do this on her own, and have it get back to Dan, Margie and Elizabeth that he’d refused to help plan a Christmas party in their honor.
He was not that big of a dick. Well, maybe he was, but he didn’t want them thinking that.
And as long as he didn’t think about Holly’s euphemistic pie again, everything would be fine.
CHAPTER THREE (#u54c97559-7b5b-5b40-9586-9a0f6e0c3510)
SHE’D TEXTED RYAN a little over an hour ago and he still hadn’t responded. Fortunately, she’d gotten quite a bit of work done sitting in The Grind, the local coffee house. She also drank too much coffee and ate too many biscottis, but really, what was too many biscottis? Cassie Caldwell, the owner of the shop and baker extraordinaire, had made cranberry, white chocolate, and gingerbread in honor of the season, so, really, Holly had been obligated to sample them all.
An eggnog latte had also been a must in the spirit of the season.
Cassie was expecting her first child any day now with her husband Jake, and Holly felt that meant her work needed to be doubly honored, considering.
Holly looked out the window at the encroaching darkness. The shop windows outside were lit up, full Christmas displays adding warmth to the chilly evening.
She looked down at her phone, which was still dark, the inactivity beginning to stress her out. She was starting to wonder if Ryan had only agreed to help her with the party to get her off his boat last night, and now that he had routed her out of his domain, he had no reason to play along.
She looked morosely at her phone, which was still resolutely not receiving a return text.
Ryan should be off the water by now. Which meant he was just ignoring her.
She frowned and took another sip of her latte. She could do this without him. She planned parties for a living, after all. So what if he’d been the person she should have been able to count on most to want to give back to the Traverses? So what if she was busy? Where Margie and Dan were concerned, nothing was too difficult.
And if she just wanted to spend a little bit of time with Ryan because it reminded her of Christmases past, well, she would just have to get over it. Because it didn’t matter. And anyway, he was a lot meaner now than he used to be. She hardly even liked him. She just liked the way he filled out a sweater, that was all. An entirely different thing than liking his personality.
The door to The Grind opened and she turned to look, her breath catching and becoming a lump in her throat when she realized it was Ryan.
He was a bit more cleaned up than he’d been last night. No beanie, his dark hair pushed off his forehead as though he’d been running his fingers through it. He was wearing a black wool coat and tan corduroy pants, a tight, gray T-shirt conforming to his hard torso.
At least, she was assuming it was hard. It looked hard. She’d never actually touched his stomach, or his chest, though she had thought about it. In fact, she was thinking about it now.
Smiling, she waved from her position at the table and got nothing more than an arched brow and one corner of his lips turned slightly upward in return. He walked to the counter and she sat there, watching, taking a moment to get an eyeful of his physique.
Then she realized the long-distance ogling was probably a little bit weird and stood, leaving her laptop sitting on the table and making her way across the coffee shop to the counter. One of the many perks of living in a small town was that she didn’t have to worry about leaving her things unattended to stand next to the man she should see as nothing more than a surrogate older brother so that she wasn’t leering at him from across the room.
“You came,” she said.
“Yeah.”
“I wasn’t sure if you would. Seeing as you didn’t return my text.”
He lifted a shoulder. “I didn’t tell you I wasn’t coming.”
Just then, Cassie came out from the kitchen, brushing her hands on a flour-covered apron over her rounded stomach. “Hi,” she said, by way of greeting to them both. “More biscotti, Holly?”
Ryan shot her a look that clearly asked How many did you eat? Holly ignored him.
“No, thanks,” she told Cassie. “I think I ate enough for it to count as lunch, dinner, and dessert.”
“Nothing wrong with that,” Cassie replied cheerfully.
“I’ll have a biscotti,” Ryan said.
“What kind would you like?”
“Whichever is your favorite, and a large black coffee.”
Cassie smiled. “You got it. Go ahead and have a seat.”
Ryan actually smiled back, and Holly was so stunned for a moment she forgot to breathe.
He started to walk back toward her table, and she followed. “So,” she said, “you are capable of basic friendliness.”
“Yes,” he said. “I can also use silverware and operate basic machinery.”
“It’s just that you don’t smile very much these days. At least not at me.”
He lifted a brow. “Did you ever think maybe it’s because you’re a pain in the ass?”
She thinned her lips into a flat line and shot him her most evil look. “How would I have time to stop and notice? You’re so busy being a pain in mine.”
“What did I do to you? I was just on my boat, minding my own business. You came in with cheeseburgers and dire commentary on my living situation and general countenance. Face it, Holly, you aren’t very nice to me.”
