I was reaching for her again when the sound of sleigh bells cut through the moment. They got louder and louder until they were practically deafening, drowning out everything else.
“Jingle Bells” played cheerfully through the lodge’s sound system, and I groaned as I realized what had pulled me from sleep. I reached for my phone and checked the time. It was only eight in the morning, and they were already playing Christmas music?
I rubbed my eyes and tried to clear my head, but I was immediately reminded of my dream by the urgent problem between my legs. Morning wood was nothing new, but this was something else entirely, the kind of arousal that came from a very specific fantasy about a very specific person.
That was definitely the first Christmas wet dream I’d ever had. Hell, it might have been the first Christmas-related anything I had ever enjoyed.
I dragged myself to the shower, letting the hot water wash away both the remnants of sleep and the lingering images from my dream. As reality came flooding back, the fantasies of Sylvie wrapped in ribbons faded, replaced by the harsh truth of why I was really here.
I had to figure out how to convince Sylvie and her family to sell this place.
Soon.
The longer I stayed, the more complicated this was going to get. Already I could feel myself getting pulled into their world, starting to care about things that shouldn’t matter to me. If I wasn’t careful, I’d end up forgetting what I came here to do entirely.
And that wasn’t an option. Not if I wanted to remain a Bancroft.
CHAPTER 11
SYLVIE
Iwas in full survival mode. It was going to be one of those days. I hated those days. It was like everything that could go wrong went wrong. And it started with one of the coffeemakers going on the fritz. Then I dropped a platter of scrambled eggs. That should have been a sign for me to just crawl back in bed.
But I didn’t and now I was looking at what was absolutely a disaster.
Somehow—and I still couldn’t figure out exactly how—Ozzo had managed to back his own truck into a perfectly arranged row of Fraser firs. Not just any row, mind you, but the one he’d positioned ridiculously close together the day before in what I now realized was a spectacularly poor planning decision.
Thirty-three trees were now lying on their sides like fallen dominoes. And of course, they were blocking the main entrance to the customer lot, right where families would be arriving any minute for what I desperately hoped would be a busy Saturday with Santa making his first official appearance of the season.
“Fiddlesticks,” I muttered under my breath, surveying the chaos. “Ozzo, what happened here?”
Ozzo was already trying to right one of the larger trees, his face red with exertion and embarrassment. “I was just trying tomove my truck closer to help with loading. I guess I misjudged the distance, and then when I tried to back up, the trees were all so close together that when one went down, they all went down like those domino things you see on TV, and?—”
“Okay, okay,” I interrupted before he could spiral into a full explanation that would take longer than actually fixing the problem. “Let’s just get these back up before customers start arriving.”
I dove in beside him, grabbing the trunk of the nearest Fraser fir and trying to wrestle it back into an upright position. The tree was heavier than I’d anticipated, waterlogged from melting snow and surprisingly unwieldy when you were trying to maneuver it while wearing winter gloves that were already soaked through.
This was going to take forever. At the rate we were going, we’d still be cleaning up this mess when Santa was supposed to start his shift. There was no way I could disappoint the kids who were probably already getting excited about their visit.
I glanced up toward the lodge, hoping to spot Brom so I could wave him down for help. Sure enough, I could see a figure in a dark winter coat making his way down the hill toward us. Thank goodness. Brom must have seen the disaster from one of the lodge windows and was coming to help.
“Brom’s coming,” I said.
“Sorry, Sylvie.”
“It’s fine,” I assured him. “Accidents happen. I should know. I’ve been a walking accident all morning.”
That made him chuckle. He picked up another tree like it weighed nothing while I still struggled with my first one. It was an awkward task. I poked myself in the face with a branch when I tried to use my entire body to lift the stupid thing.
I glanced over to see how much longer until Brom was there to help and froze.
The man approaching us was too tall to be Brom, and there was something different about the way he moved. It wasn’t until he was within fifty feet that I realized who it was.
Kent Bancroft, wearing what I now recognized as one of Brom’s spare jackets, striding through the snow in winter boots that looked like they came straight out of the box. I supposed it was a good thing to know he wasn’t a complete idiot and had actually packed for the weather.
He reached out and stuck his hand right through the branches and grabbed the center of the tree I was struggling with.
“You don’t have to—” I started to say but he was already pulling it off me.
