“You do that.”
Without hesitation or even a goodbye, Dominic turned andfled, climbing in his truck and hightailing it down the road, leaving me standing there staring at the huge red and gold sleigh wondering who I pissed off to have to deal with this. Again.
nineteen
HOLLY
It had beenfour hours since that kiss and I swear my lips were still tingling. Not just my lips either. My whole body felt like it had come alive for the first time in years.
After Nick, I didn’t want anything. I didn’t think I’d ever want anyone again. I was happy with it just being me and Noelle. At least, I thought I was. Maybe content was what we were. I didn't think we were missing out on anything until we ended up stuck in a snowstorm with a man who hated Christmas.
Noelle was curled up on the couch watching a movie, and Chris still hadn’t reappeared. I didn’t know what had happened. One minute he was kissing me making my toes curl, the next, he’d morphed back into the Grinch and stomped around like a bear with a sore head, acting like I was in his way. Maybe we were. He said we were welcome as long as we wanted, but after kissing me maybe he regretted it and wanted me gone. If that was the case, I wish he’d just come out and say it instead of leaving me here wondering what the hell I did wrong.
“I’m just going downstairs for a minute,” I told Noelle who didn’t even look up.
I shrugged on my coat and stuffed my feet into my boots before carefully heading down the stairs. The storm may have passed, but it was still as cold as a witch’s tit and the stairs were slippery.
By the time I made it to the door of Chris’s workshop my heart was pounding in my chest, and I could hear the blood roaring through my veins. Nerves made me jittery, and I felt lightheaded.
“Pull it together,” I told myself, taking a deep breath and reaching for the door handle.
Pushing it open, I stepped inside.
Everything was quiet and dark. Carefully, I rounded the table in the back and stepped into the workshop area.
There in the middle of the shop, lifted up on a hoist, was the most beautiful red and gold sleigh I’d ever seen. It was truly a work of art, and I could tell someone had spent hours working on making sure every single detail was perfect.
Standing beneath it, in his grease-covered, once blue coveralls, was a man wielding a torch and spanner swearing like a sailor.
“What did that sleigh ever do to you?” I risked asking as I stepped out of the shadows and into the middle of the room.
“Shit!” Chris swore, spinning toward me flashing the torch directly in my eyes.
I lifted my hand to block the light and stepped to the side. “Am I interrupting?” I asked as I moved toward where he was working.
“It’s fine.”
It might have been, but Chris certainly wasn’t. From the moment this sleigh was mentioned he’d become cranky and miserable.
“Can I help?” I offered.
“Can you hold this?” Chris replied, holding out the torch.
When I reached for it, his fingers brushed mine, sending a zap of something I didn’t quite understand racing through my body. With every nerve ending awakened, I stood beside Chris while he pointed to where he wanted me to focus the light.
For a few minutes we stood in silence, me holding the torch and Chris tinkering with something. It wasn’t uncomfortable, but it wasn’t exactly nice either. It was more a weird, awkward silence that annoyed me.
“Do you know what’s wrong with it?” I dared to ask after a while because from what I could see, he had no idea. I mean, I was no mechanic, but the fact he was checking every bolt and tugging on every wire had me believing that he was still looking for what was causing the problem.
“It’s a piece of shit, that’s the problem.” Chris snorted as he tightened another bolt.
Another few minutes went by, and Chris grunted and pointed, and we continued to work in silence. My mind was spinning. I couldn’t imagine what Santa’s sleigh had done to him to put him in such a foul mood. Being around him when he was like this was not someplace I wanted to be, and unless he pulled his head out of his ass soon, he could hold his own damn torch and grunt at the empty workshop. He might have saved my ass this week, but I wasn’t about to put up with his bullshit.
When another long list of cuss words flew from his mouth, I lowered the torch and set it on the ground.
“What are you doing?” Chris snapped, turning to face me.
“Going upstairs.”
