“Tinsel Takes has been trending. They find and rate all the holiday movies you could ever possibly want to watch.”
“I’ll have to check it out.”
“A Christmas jammies maker is their sponsor this week—” Why the hell am I rambling about my parents’ side hustle as we race walk down the street, passing a hot cocoa cart? Oh, right. Because we can’t go to their house to satisfy our holiday horniness.
“My place is twenty minutes away,” Rowan offers. “Fifteen if I drive fast.”
But that only leaves us with twenty minutes.
“We could get—” But I don’t actually sayget a hotel room. I’m not a rent-a-room-by-the-hour kind of person. “There’s a place at the bottom of the sledding hill. A secluded little parking lot.”
Rowan stops outside the toy shop on the street corner, meeting my gaze with filthy approval in his. “I know where to go. Do you trust me?”
No question there. “Of course.”
We keep walking, and only then do I consider my answer more deeply. Idotrust him. I trusted him the other night in the car when I told him my fears about love. I trusted him in the Ferry Building when I told him how JD had hurt me. I trust him now, even though this isn’t the kind of vulnerability I meant when I gave him this assignment.
With a firm hand on my back, he guides me farther down Main Street, where evening crowds have thinned as stores close. Only bars, restaurants, and the bookstore are still open. As we near the edge of downtown, he ducks down a side street.
“I spotted this when I dropped off Mia,” he says, gesturing to a little cobblestoned alley behind the shops.
“I’ve never seen this before.”
“I thought of you when I saw it,” he says, sounding…hopeful. And a little vulnerable.
“You did?”
He runs a hand up the back of my coat and into my hair, making me shiver. “I think you like it outside. A little risk. Just out of public view.”
I tremble. I haven’t explored these desires before. I’m not even sure I knew they existed until that day at the treefarm, when I first imagined him chasing me and having his way with me in the snow.
But the alleyway calls to me. “Is that the back of Rudy’s? With the pretty lights?”
The twinkling lights on the trellis have nothing on the twinkle in Rowan’s eyes though. “A back patio,” he says, like the words are candy on his tongue.
“They’re not open now,” I say, a little breathless. Or maybe a lot.
“And no one’s around,” he says, scanning the alley.
“What about Nest cameras though?”
“I looked earlier. I didn’t see any.”
This is risky. I should hit the brakes. But I don’t. I want to see what happens when I stop pretending that I don’t want him.
We reach the patio. It’s set back into a sort of nook, so most of it isn’t even visible from the mouth of the alleyway.
I picture the owner of Rudy’s—grandmotherly, always serving smiles and quips. What would she think if she knew I wastrespassingon her patio? Wandering through the green metal tables after hours? Checking out the lights flickering along the trellis?
I’m pulled from those thoughts when a familiar tune fills my ears. I whirl around, my heart beating faster. “Do you hear the music?”
A smile shifts his lips, and his gaze drifts down. The music is faint and it’s coming from…his coat pocket. Michael Bublé’s unfairly sexy version of “White Christmas.”
Rowan is definitely Christmas-seducing me.
I grab his shirt collar at the same time that he lunges for me. Our mouths crash together. His hands ropethrough my hair. He tugs me against him, kissing me so thoroughly my head goes hazy and hot.
I clutch the lapels of his peacoat like I’ll fall off the earth if I let go. We’re a portrait of desperation, making out in a closed coffee shop’s courtyard under flickering holiday lights. The chill of the night air swirls around me. It smells like snow. Like the ocean breeze. Like Rowan.
