I scowled thinking about it…and about Merrie being there.
“I’m selling it.”
“Seriously? You spent a shit ton of money on it.”
“Yeah, remind me again how Hensley was a terrible idea.”
“People did tell you that you could do better,” Eli said.
I looked out the window with its view out over Main Street. The Christmas market was setting up for the lunch crowd. I should have been with Hensley doing last-minute wedding planning. Instead, she was probably with Brody.
I jumped up. “I need some air.”
“We have the meeting—”
“I know,” I snapped at Eli.
I needed the cold. The building was too warm. When I was a kid, I used to sneak outside at night in the winter to play in the fresh snow. My happiest memory was when Belle saw me out there one night and came to play. My brothers joined in, and we had a snowball fight in the middle of the night.
Of course, the neighbors told our parents, and they yelled at us. My mother had said that the neighbors would think she was a bad mom. Which she was.
Kringle followed me out onto the street. The nonstop Christmas carols hadn’t begun to play from the bandstand yet. Last night’s snow had been cleared off the streets.
All I wanted to do was cancel the meeting and go walk in the woods or do anything really that didn’t involve nonstop Christmas.
As I stood there trying to cool down, a familiar figure in a red coat skipped down the street giving a cheery “Merry Christmas” to the townspeople she passed.
“Merry Christmas, Ida!” She waved to the senior citizen who was arguing with another older man.
“This is my zone. You need to stay below 10thStreet if you’re going to sell alcohol.”
“Merry oh—” my bake-off partner said, the cheer leaving her face when she saw me. “Never mind. You don’t deserve a merry Christmas.”
“I don’t want a Christmas, merry or otherwise.”
“The way you were staring at my tits last night after surprising me in my bedroom, I would think you would want aMerrieChristmas.”
I clenched my jaw. I had spent all last night trying not to think about her, and here she was.
“That was not your bedroom. That was a commercial business that you were living in illegally.”
She took a sip from the coffee mug. The scent of sugar and spices wafted from her. She gestured with the cup.
“You know, I really wish people who move to small towns from big cities would learn the universal skill of minding your own freaking business.”
“And I wish people who start businesses would actually learn how to run them. Spoiler for the people who went to the Instagram School of Business—if you have to sleep there, you’re doing it wrong.”
“Says the person who ruined my chances atThe Great Christmas Bake-Off,”she said loudly. “If we weren’t about to be voted off the show, I would have been even more pissed about almost freezing to death last night. I could have lost my icing piping finger.”
I was suddenly slightly a little bit concerned. And guilty.
“Where did you sleep?”
I had assumed she had a friend or family member she could go to. Had she slept outside?
“Again, none of your freaking business,” she said. “You can’t kick someone out of their home slash store then act all concerned about where they spent the night.”
People in the Christmas market turned to look at us. They clearly were not minding their own fucking business.
