“Then, we better get going. Bruce isn’t going to decorate himself.”
Austin
“Okay, who cut the cheese?”
Nellie’s question was met with a few snorts and giggles.
“I beg your pardon?” Killian asked, without a trace of humor.
“Very funny,” Nellie said, rolling her eyes. “Aside from Killian, you all have the humor of a twelve-year-old boy. Seriously, though, what happened to my cheddar?”
She held up a rectangle of aged cheddar cheese in one hand and a slightly smaller piece in the other. “They don’t match.”
Leighton snatched the larger piece and promptly nibbled the end off, trimming it down to match the other. “There, now they do.”
I had decorated my fair share of gingerbread houses. In fact, as an uncle to nearly a dozen nieces and nephews, I had decorated gingerbread castles, horses, and even a spaceship or two, but Nellie and her friends had taken it to the next level by cutting out the spicy cookie altogether.
Which was why we were decorating charcuterie houses.
“Okay, full disclosure,” Nora announced. “Mine isn’t so much a chalet as it is . . . the cottage fromThe Holiday.”
Scratch that—charcuterie chalets.
Nora and Bowie had met us back at Nellie’s apartment nearly two hours ago, arms full of reusable shopping bags. Together, the six of us had decorated Nellie’s tree, Bruce, while listeningto Nora’s aptly namedA Very Cute, Very Demure, Very Merry Christmasplaylist. Tree decorating had led to another round of hot chocolate—this time with peppermint schnapps—followed quickly by our current activity.
Cheese and crackers of all shapes and sizes littered Nellie’s rustic white table, along with sprigs of rosemary and berries for trees and foliage, mixed nuts for a cobblestone pathway, and a wide selection of deli meats—because a house wasn’t a home without a salami or two. That last bit might have come from my nona, and in my experience, Nona knew best.
“Will somebody please pass the pepperoni?” Bowie asked. “I’m going for something . . . thick and meaty.”
“That’s what he said,” Leighton and Nora answered together before breaking out into laughter. Nellie tried—and failed—to resist the urge to join them.
It was impossible not to grin, watching them gas each other up, laugh at each other’s juvenile dick jokes. They reminded me of my sisters. Well, maybe not Nellie—there was nothing brotherly about the way I felt about her, the things I wanted to do to her. Nonetheless, she had the spirit of an Amato sister. All three of them did. There wasn’t a doubt in my mind that if my sisters ever joined forces with this dynamic trio, the lot of them could conquer the world. Or burn it to the ground, whatever they preferred.
“Here, you can have mine,” Nellie said, forking her pile of pepperoni over to the redheaded Brit. “I wouldn’t say no to extra parmesan snow, if anybody has some to spare.”
Her eyes lit up when I nudged my bag across the table in her direction.
“Thanks, Santa.”
My pants tightened when she bit down on her bottom lip.Save some for me, naughty girl.In a different cinematic universe—or maybe a cheap porno—I would have swept the artisanal crackersand sliced prosciutto over the edge of her small dining table and crushed my lips to hers. That might not have gone over well with her friends, though.
I couldn’t help it. She was too tempting, too beautiful, too everything, and I wanted it all.
“Do you mind if I ask how the whole Santa thing started?”
“Not at all,” I answered Killian. “It was about ten years ago. My oldest sister’s husband passed away right before Christmas, and in an effort to cheer her and her twins up, I came dressed as Santa to our family’s Christmas dinner. It sort of became a tradition after that, one that we still do today, even though most of the kids are teenagers.”
Leighton bit into one of the crackers holding up her house. “That’s so sweet.”
“I kind of kept it up for fun when I moved to L.A. At first, it was just to make a few extra bucks around the holidays, but now, it really just makes me happy to make other people happy.”
Nellie’s lips split into a grin. “You’re good at it.”
“Being Santa?”
“Making people happy.”
Everything else slipped away after that. Time, insecurities, our audience—gone. For now, there was only us. Only this. Her eyes locked on mine. Pools of piercing amber-brown liquid filled me with visions of things I had no business thinking about, especially not in the company of other people.
