“Everyone’s definitely watching,” I agreed, though I made no immediate move to get off her or put distance between us.
Mrs. Peterson was beaming at us like we’d just fulfilled her personal Christmas wish. Mrs. Hall looked smugly satisfied, as if strategic mistletoe placement had worked exactly as she’d planned. And approximately fifty people were using their phones to document what was clearly going to be the most talked-about moment of the entire festival season.
“We should probably get up,” Holly said, though she didn’t sound entirely convinced.
“Probably,” I agreed, though what I was actually thinking was that kissing Holly in front of the entire community had felt like making a public claim, like announcing to everyone that she was mine to protect and care for.
Which was exactly the kind of possessive, territorial thinking that professional boundaries were supposed to prevent.
I helped Holly to her feet, both of us brushing snow off our coats while trying to ignore the continued applause and commentary from our audience.
“Nice work, you two!” called Mrs. Watkins. “That’s what I call effective mistletoe deployment!”
“Very romantic!” added Mrs. Johnson. “Just like in the movies!”
Holly was smiling and waving at the crowd, but I could see the tension in her shoulders, the way her confidence was wavering now that the moment was over, and the implications were starting to sink in.
“Holly,” I said quietly, trying to catch her attention without being overheard by the dozens of people who were still watching us with obvious interest.
“We should probably finish the ceremony,” she said briskly, avoiding my eyes as she straightened her coat and checked her hair. “The tree lighting is supposed to happen in ten minutes, and we still need to test the countdown system.”
The sudden return to festival logistics felt like a defense mechanism, a way of putting distance between us even though we’d just kissed in front of half the county.
“Right,” I said, though what I wanted to say was that kissing her had felt like the most right thing I’d done in months, public audience or not. “The tree lighting.”
As Holly moved through the crowd, coordinating final details with the kind of focused efficiency that suggested she was deliberately avoiding personal conversation, I realized that our mistletoe kiss had complicated things in exactly the way we were trying to prevent.
Because now everyone in Everdale Falls was going to assume we were together. Now Matt was going to hear about this from approximately seventeen different sources before we had a chance to explain what had happened. And now I was going to have to figure out how to navigate festival coordination with a woman I’d just kissed in public while she was clearly regretting the entire situation, very publicly.
The tree lighting ceremony went off without a hitch—the countdown echoed through the square as children bounced on their tiptoes and adults clutched steaming cups of cocoa with anticipation. When we hit zero, the massive pine erupted with thousands of twinkling lights in gold and silver and red, transforming from a dark silhouette into a beacon that cast a warm glow across every upturned face. The crowd gasped in unison before breaking into applause and cheers, their breathvisible in the cold air as parents hoisted small children onto shoulders for a better view of the spectacle that made all the planning, all the ladder accidents, all the complications worthwhile.
But I spent the entire ceremony watching Holly work the crowd with professional charm while carefully avoiding any interaction with me that might be construed as personal, and I realized that our moment of mistletoe-induced temporary insanity might have set us back further than our stupid, fucking boundaries conversation had.
Some public declarations, apparently, were more complicated than others. Especially when they involved beautiful women who were scared of trusting their own judgment and men who were falling in love faster than they knew how to handle.
The festival was in a few days, and I had less than a week to figure out whether Holly’s retreat was about the public nature of our kiss or about the kiss itself.
Either way, Mrs. Hall’s strategic mistletoe placement had been devastatingly effective. The question now was whether it had brought us closer together or driven us further apart.
Eighteen
HOLLY
Ladies’ Room Confessions
The ladies’room in the Everdale Falls Community Center had never been my intended destination for having an emotional crisis, but it was the only place I could think of where three hundred people wouldn’t be staring at me with knowing smiles and making comments about “what a lovely couple” Declan and I made.
I locked myself in a stall and put my head in my hands, trying to process what had just happened in the town square. I’d kissed Declan Hayes. In public. Under strategic mistletoe. In front of every person I’d known since childhood, plus their visiting relatives and probably their dogs.
And it had been amazing.
Which was precisely the problem.
The bathroom door opened with a rush of cold air, followed by the voices of several women who were clearly still discussing the evening’s entertainment.
“Did you see that kiss?” Mrs. Patterson was saying with obvious delight. “I thought poor Holly was going to melt right into the snow!”
“It was like something out of a movie,” agreed a voice I recognized as Sandra from the bakery. “So romantic! And they make such a beautiful couple.”
