It’s how Grandma does Christmas in August.
Next month, she’ll replace them with schoolteacher nutcrackers. October, they’ll be ghosts. November, turkey farmers.
Every year, she ponders if she can change up the nutcrackers to aim a middle finger at the Fruitcake Emporium, and every year, my mom reminds her that we’re the classy family in the feud.
I will carry the secret to my grave that I actually like their fruitcake.
Lorelei used to sneak it to me in her lunch box at school.
“Do you like gingerbread?” I ask Dane. It seems like something his fiancée should know.
“I like building gingerbread houses.”
“Tell me you don’t mean with the store-bought kits.”
“I do not use store-bought kits.”
“Store-bought kits are the reason people hate gingerbread.”
“I promise, I only use gingerbread that Lorelei bakes.”
“She’s so good in the kitchen. I can’t bake anything, but even I know store-bought kits are a travesty. They give gingerbread a bad name. Do you know how many kids have to be told every year that they can eat the gingerbread houses that they make at Grandma’s place? And then how many kidslikeit, even when they think they won’t?”
He slides a raised-brow look at me.
I lean back in my seat and sigh. “I can love Tinsel and care about my family’s business and still not be the right person to live here and take over.”
“I had the same conversation with my grandpa two years ago. About living here. Not about taking over the Emporium. Similar enough,though, I suppose.” He squeezes my knee, and it takes every ounce of willpower that I possess to not jump at his touch.
Not because it’s bad.
More because it’sgood.
Which is, I suppose, bad in its own way.
We need to be comfortable touching each other if we’re going to pull this off. Just another role. That’s all this is. One more role.
I’ve played parts opposite plenty of guys that I didn’t want to touch me in any other circumstances.
But between thinking Dane’s hot because he wants to end our family feud, the way he’s answered every single objection I could think to raise before I raised it, and the relatability of knowing he, too, prefers city living to Tinsel—I could be wrong, but I think I accidentally signed myself up for a very good fake fiancé.
Provided us carrying through with the charade for a week doesn’t give my grandma a real heart attack.
I wouldnotbe doing this if I thought it was putting her at risk of anything more than swallowing her pride.
He’s right. The animosity needs to end.
We pass downtown, which means we’re about three minutes from his grandparents’ house.
“Tell me again who I’m meeting tonight and what I have to say to each of them to convince them that I’m not out to steal the Fruitcake Emporium,” I say.
I’m in. I’m in all the way.
And I’ll be the best fake fiancée Dane could ask for in the process, and I’ll win over his family.
I have to.
If I don’t, if we can’t pull this off—I don’t want to think about what it’ll mean for either of our futures.
