Eli nearly choked, and Noah let out a strangled noise that might have been a laugh or a gasp.
“Mrs. Donnelly.” Noah coughed. “We’re working here.”
“Oh, isthatwhat you’re doing?” Her tone declared her unimpressed. “Well,I’mworking on my holiday bingo card, and ‘Noah Carter finally gets a boyfriend’ is the center square.”
Eli covered his face with both hands. “Please don’t.”
Mrs. Donnelly hooted. “Too late, darling,” she said as she marched down the street. “The whole town’s rooting for you.”
As she walked away, Noah and Eli slowly turned to each other with matching expressions of horror and affection.
“She’s not wrong, you know,” Noah murmured.
“About the town?”
“About rooting for us.”
Eli swallowed. “Are we… an us?”
Noah opened his mouth, closed it, looked away, then back at Eli.
“I want us to be,” he said in a low voice. “I really, really want that.”
Eli shuddered out a breath. “I want that too,” he whispered.
The air thickened with warmth despite the cold, laced with a magnetic pull he couldn’t ignore.
Noah cleared his throat. “Okay, I need to stop looking at you like this unless you want the entire town to combust.”
“Maybe I don’t care,” Eli murmured.
“ButIcare.” Pink crept into Noah’s cheeks. “Because if Idon’tlook away, I’m going to kiss you in front of thirty volunteers and a pug.”
Eli looked around. “Is there another pug? I thought he’d gone.” When Noah’s stricken expression didn’t change, Eli relented. “Would kissing me be so bad?” His heart pounded at the thought.
Noah snorted. “It wouldn’t be subtle.”
“I don’t think wedosubtle, do we?”
Noah laughed, and the sound was light and beautiful.
“Come to my place at seven?” Noah asked.
Eli nodded. “Yeah. Seven.”
They lingered a moment longer, their breath mingling in the cold, neither moving. Then Aileen hollered from across the street, her voice gleeful.
“Stop flirting and hang your lanterns!”
Eli groaned and Noah grinned. But even as they turned back to work, their hands brushed again.
Eli didn’t mind in the slightest.
Noah stood in the middle of his living room, taking in everything.
The throw blanket was crooked. The books on the coffee table were either too neat or not neat enough.
Are the lights too bright? Too dim?
