“We agreed to keep things mature and sensible.”
“That sounds terrible,” Matt said with obvious amusement.
“Matt!”
“I’m just saying, if you like him and he likes you, maybe boundaries are less important than figuring out if you’re compatible for something more than festival planning.”
“And if we’re not compatible? If I’m just projecting my rebound feelings onto the first guy who’s been nice to me? If he’s just looking for a holiday distraction before he goes back to his real life?”
“Then you’ll figure that out too,” Matt said simply. “But Holly, you can’t protect yourself from every possible disappointment. At some point, you have to decide if the risk is worth it.”
“You need to fuck off out of my business and get your ass up here A-SAP,” I grumbled.
He chuckled, and when we hung up, I sat on my bed for a long time, staring at my reflection in the mirror and trying to process everything Matt had told me. Declan had had a crush on me when we were teenagers. He was going through his own career crisis. I was apparently more obvious about my attraction than I’d realized.
And I was making decisions based on fear rather than what I actually wanted.
The truth was, I did want something more with Declan Hayes. I wanted to find out if the chemistry between us was real. I wanted to see if the man who brought me chocolate croissants and solved festival problems and looked at me like I was someone worth paying attention to was as wonderful as he seemed.
But I also wanted to protect myself from making another devastating mistake.
Which left me exactly where I’d started—attracted to my festival co-chair, uncertain about his intentions, and completely unsure how to navigate the space between wanting someone and trusting them.
I looked at myself in the mirror again. I looked confident, capable, attractive. I looked like someone who could handle whatever complications came her way.
The question was whether I actually felt that confident, or if I was just really good at faking it.
Time would tell, but either way, tomorrow’s vendor meeting was going to require some serious emotional compartmentalization. And possibly a different outfit.
I glared at the polka dot skirt on the bed. Or maybe the same outfit, worn with enough confidence to remind both of us that Holly Winters was worth taking seriously, regardless of what kind of boundaries we were maintaining.
Some decisions, apparently, were easier to make while looking good in polka dots.
Fifteen
DECLAN
Mistletoe Strategy
Holly was avoiding me.
Not obviously. She still answered my texts about vendor confirmations and showed up to planning meetings on time with her perfectly organized clipboard and color-coded schedules. But there was a new distance in her interactions, a careful politeness that hadn’t been there before our boundaries conversation.
It was driving me absolutely insane.
“So,” I said, consulting the festival checklist while trying not to notice how Holly’s top clung to her tits in ways that made concentration difficult, “Mrs. Peterson wants to discuss mistletoe placement for maximum community interaction.”
“Mistletoe placement,” Holly repeated, not looking up from her vendor contact list. “Right. That’s definitely a safe topic.”
The slight edge in her voice suggested she was thinking the same thing I was—that discussing strategic mistletoe placement with someone you were trying not to kiss was like discussing fire safety while holding a lit match.
“Very appropriate,” I agreed. “Nothing says mature festival coordination like planning where to hang romantic vegetation for optimal effectiveness.”
“Romantic vegetation,” Holly said with a snort of laughter that sounded more genuine than anything she’d said to me in two days. “That’s going on my business cards. Holly Winters: Expert in Romantic Vegetation Placement.”
“It’s a specialized skill,” I said solemnly. “Not everyone can handle the responsibility of strategic mistletoe deployment.”
“The power could easily go to my head,” Holly agreed, and for a moment her smile was warm and unguarded, like the woman who’d solved electrical problems with me instead of politely distant like she’d been since yesterday.
