“What is this movie about again?”
“A would-be bride who doesn’t believe in the spirit of Christmas gets sent back in time by the Christmas Witch? And then she meets a duke and learns the real meaning of Christmas?”
The designer shook his head as I stepped behind the waist-high wall of tubs and started kicking off my jeans. “So there’s no sex in this?”
I stared at him, my jeans tangled around my ankles. “Uh. No.”
“Huh.”
Huh indeed.
Right as I pulled on my breeches and saw that they fit, there was a knock at the door. An assistant poked her head into the room. “Sorry to interrupt, Mr.Shaw,” she chirped, “but Gretchen asked me to tell you when Ms.Hobbes arrived.”
“Awesome, thank you,” I said. I’d just nip out to say hi to New Winnie and then come back to figure out which jacket and waistcoat I wanted to pair with the breeches.
After shoving my feet back into my shoes and finding my coat, I stepped outside the fake toy shop storefront. I scanned the snow-frosted main street until I saw some people clumped on the bridge leading to the steepled church, and I trotted over,pulling off my beanie and ruffling my dark brown hair as I went. Of all the lessons I’d learned in my thirty-one years of life, perhaps the most important one was that my hair was usually a solid fifty percent of what people liked about me. The remaining fifty percent was split among my voice, my eyes, and my general air ofbarely giving a shit, which people found charming for some reason. Or they used to, before the Olympics happened.
But now thebarely giving a shithad to take a back seat toblandly appealingandsafely earnest, so it was up to the hair to carry my good impressions these days.
Beanie in hand, I approached the group and caught the musical strains of Pearl Purkiss’s voice saying, “...and this creek is fed by water straight from the mountains, if you’d like to recharge your crystals in running water while you’re here.”
“Thanks for the tip,” came the sultry-voiced response, and as I stepped into the circle of people, I saw the voice’s source immediately. Shock ripped through me at the sight of her, and then my entire body flushed with an avid, hungry heat.
Dark hair tumbling everywhere.
Fair skin that had been sun-kissed into a pale golden hue.
Olive-green eyes, pouty lips, and a septum piercing that winked in the weak winter light. And a lush body perfectly and flirtily revealed by a short skirt and a sinfully clingy sweater.
Fuck.
Need made my skin tight all over, and I realized too late that fall front breeches werenotmeant for concealing boners as my stiffening length pressed against the fabric.
I moved the hand holding my beanie instinctively over mygroin as I locked eyes with the woman I’d jerked off to more times than I could count. The woman who’d fingered herself to a chest-flushing, leg-shaking orgasm late last night, live for her fans only.
The woman who’d starred in my dirtiest dreams for the past six years.
Bee Hobbes was none other than Bianca von Honey.
Chapter Three
Bee
When I got to the airport, Teddy handed me a Chili’s kids’ menu, on the back of which he had thoughtfully handwritten his rules. He had also completed the word search and the maze, and muttered something about keeping his brain sharp when he realized that I had been looking at his work. During the whole flight and the car ride to Christmas Notch, I recited the rules over and over again to myself.
No fucking. On camera or for fun.
You are Bee Hobbes. You’ve never heard of Bianca. You’ve never even watched porn. You use parental controls on your Netflix, because you are that fuckingwholesome. You might as well be a virgin. (Yes, I know. Virginity is a construct. Blah, blah, blah.)
Come up with a backstory and stick to it. You were plucked from student-film obscurity and are so thankful for your big break.
See that giant gaping hole between the two bubbles? That’s our only shot at getting away with this. MIND THE GAP.
4b. Keep the jokes about gaping holes to yourself.
