And for the first time in a long while, the idea of Christmas didn’t feel like a performance.
It felt like possibility.
Then he froze.His sister’s bakery?EliWinters?That would make him…
Aileen’s brother.
Hoo boy.
Chapter Four
Eli managedto leave Home Depot with everything on Aileen’s list plus three extra boxes of lights he didnotneed but couldn’t resist, then drove back to the bakery pretending he was not replaying a two-minute interaction as though it was cinematic evidence of his romantic potential.
His palm still tingled.
It was stupid. Ridiculous.
And he couldn’t stop thinking about it.
The road from Home Depot to Mapleford’s town center wound past pine groves and houses decorated as if every resident had signed a legally binding agreement to out-Christmas their neighbors, and everyone was starting early. Inflatable snowmen bowed politely as he passed. A pair of golden retrievers in matching holiday bandanas watched him from a porch. The air smelled faintly of chimney smoke and pine.
And every time he tried to focus on the road, his brain insisted on looping back toYou looked cute.
Cute.
He hadn’t been called cute by a handsome stranger in… well, a long time.
He pulled into the bakery’s back parking spot, grabbed the bags of lights, and marched inside like a man who wasnotthinking about sawdust caught in hair, storm-colored eyes, and a great line.
Aileen was waiting.
“Who’s minding the store?” he asked.
“Sam, but he finishes in half an hour. He can cope with the morning crowd while I do stuff back here.” She turned from the mixer, her arms crossed, one eyebrow raised in predatory big-sister fashion. “You took forever. So… what’s his name?”
Eli froze, the keys to his car still in hand. “I was goneforty minutes.”
“Exactly,” she said. “The store is ten minutes away. So you either got lost, or you got flirted with.” Her eyes gleamed. “I’m going with the latter.”
He dumped the lights onto the prep counter. “His name,” he enunciated in a flat tone, “is none of your business.”
Aileen gasped. “You know hisname? Oh my God.”
Eli gritted his teeth. “He told me because that is what people do before they leave.”
“Leave you or leave the aisle?”
He shot her a look, but it was plain it sailed right over her head.
“Wow.” She leaned an elbow onto the counter, her chin resting in her flour-dusted hand. “Was he hot?”
“Aileen.”
She cackled in triumph. “That’s a yes. You only say my name like that when you’re trying to hide things from me.”
“He grabbed my hand,” Eli blurted, immediately regretting it.
Her eyes went huge. “Hewhat?”
