“Hmm?” My attention was still buried in my inbox.
“A nightcap!” Luca called as he twirled, basking in the quietness of the dark velvet sky against the fluffy snow dusting absolutely everything.
The magic of this place was very real.
“Supposedly there’s a strip club just outside of town called the North Pole,” Angel said.
I slid my phone into the pocket of my coat and skipped to catch up to them. “Any other night, I would totally be there, but I’m beat.”
Angel threw his arm around my shoulders. “There will be plenty of other nights to lubricate the local sex worker economy,” he promised.
Luca bit back a smile. He’d never admit it, because Luca would never dare admit to any vulnerability, but he’d long carried a torch for Angel. I was happy to head back to my room and crash early if it meant giving the two of them a little uninterrupted time together in this winter wonderland.
As we approached the entrance of the inn, Angel opened his phone to search his rideshare apps.
“I don’t know if you’re going to find a Lyft or Uber out here,” I said gently so as not to dash their Christmas-themed stripper dreams.
And as if on cue, the trolley bus parked under the inn’s carport opened its door with a creaky wheeze. “You gentle folks look like you could use a ride,” the man behind the wheel said. His wiry gray beard was so long it covered the bib of his overalls.
Luca shook his head, his whole body going into L.A. stranger-danger mode. “Uh, we’re okay—”
“The North Pole!” I yelled over his hesitation.
The man in the driver’s seat let out a knowing chuckle. “Well, hop on in. I’ll swing back by fifteen after midnight. If your business isn’t done by then, you’re on your own till morning.”
Angel took Luca’s hand and charged forward. “Perfect.” He waved to me. “See you in thea.m., Bee!”
Luca glanced back, panic stricken.
I gave him a thumbs-up, and every ounce of anxiety vanished as he rolled his eyes at my overbearing, mother hen levels of enthusiasm.
I laughed as the trolley—dripping in multicolor Christmas lights and garland—sped off toward what I assumed was the only strip club in a fifty-mile radius.
Inside the inn, the blast of heat was so immediate I had to take my jacket off before my trek upstairs. I was beginning to wonder if the elevator in this place had ever worked and if Stella’s Out of Order sign was more permanent than she’d led me to believe.
“Oh, Bee!” a lyrical voice called.
Sitting in front of the crackling fire in the lobby were Pearl and Gretchen, curled up together, the latter of the two nodding off.
Pearl nudged at Gretchen. “Babe, it’s Bee.”
Gretchen’s eyes fluttered into focus. “Oh, hey, Bee. Good first day?”
I gave them both two thumbs-up. “A dream come true, actually, now that I think about it.” My first day on set moved so fast that I could barely process any of it in the moment, which was probably for the best, because now it was all coming back to me in overwhelming snapshots. Blocking thekiss. Declarations of undying love. The evening scene where the duke divulged his tragic backstory. Actually kissing. My breath hitching as my tongue flicked against Nolan’s. By the end of our final take, my body was aching for more as I began to wonder what else he could do with that tongue.
I still couldn’t believe it. I shared a kiss with the object of my teenage obsession, Nolan Shaw. Teenage Bee was dying. Adult Bee was dying. It was no mistake that the ceiling above my teenage bedroom was covered in INK posters. Of course, I had a crush on Kallum and Isaac, but Nolan was the boy whose thousand-yard stare felt like it was meant just for me. Every post. Every photo shoot. Nolan’s piercing blue gaze was teenage Bee’s number one withdrawal from the spank bank.
“Sit down for a sec, if you don’t mind,” Gretchen said, motioning to the leather ottoman.
I obeyed, because who could say no to Gretchen?TheGretchen Young. I’d been so in my head about starring opposite Nolan that I hadn’t even taken a moment to consider the fact that I’d be working so closely with Gretchen, the ultimateitgirl of my teen years. She was in Disney movies, young adult book adaptations, and also a few indie films that made her even more impossibly cool. If you didn’t want to kiss her, you wanted to be her, and if you did want to kiss her, you probably still wanted to be her.
“You were great today,” she said genuinely.
“So natural,” Pearl confirmed.
“And I don’t want to interfere with your process,” Gretchen continued. “But I just wanted to let you know that there’s no pressure to be so... full bodied in your kissing scenes.”
“Full... bodied?”
