Page 43 of Once Upon A Christmas Song

I had no earthly idea. “Fine, I was checking you out.”

“Whatever works.”

“The hell is that supposed to mean?”

“It means I thought, since you still love me, that your heart would return to me first, but I will take your body as well.”

“You’re a smug prick right now.”

“No, not at all,” he husked, reaching into the breast pocket of his black leather biker jacket and pulling out a very chunky gold ring with five large square-cut diamonds on top. “I’m actually scared to death.”

“The hell is that?”

He waggled his eyebrows.

“You cannot think for a minute⁠—”

“I just want you to see it’s here, and I’m carrying it around, ready to put it on your finger the second you say yes.”

“No,” I replied firmly, annoyed. “You can be here, play here, because honestly, that’s a benefit to us as well as to the guys in your band, but there is nothing you can say to change my mind about us.”

He nodded. “That’s fair.”

“Thank you.”

“So how about I kiss you instead?”

“Have you lost your mind?”

“Christopher Isiah Gardner, have you lost your mind?” Georgine yelled, echoing me as she charged into the room.

“You people need new material,” Dawson stated.

“A rabbit?” Georgine asked loudly, slipping in front of me, obscuring my view of Dawson.

I gestured to Otto with both hands. “Ta-dah!”

“Absolutely not,” she informed me, then looked at the pile of gifts Dawson had moved. “And what in the world is all that?”

“I’m gonna say your kid made out like a bandit on the last day before winter break, and the rest of this is…well, it’s rabbit stuff.”

She refocused on me. “I do not like rodents.”

“Rabbits aren’t rodents.”

“How do you know?”

I squinted at her.

“Oh shit, that’s right. Her report with the rabbit ears.”

“Yeah,” I grumbled, picking up the cage and moving it from the table to the sunny spot in the corner by the chair and ottoman, relieved to know that I was done after that. The next person moving it anywhere would not be me. “Rabbits are part of the Lagomorpha order of mammals with other animals I don’t remember. And I only remember Lagomorpha because Cami said it like eight hundred times and it started sounding like a magic spell.”

“Yes, it did,” she agreed.

I pointed at the cage. “That thing is heavy, by the way, so wherever you decide to put the little fucker in your place, you better like it.”

“You bench way more than that at the gym, and isn’t that what you’re doing there? Building all the pretty muscles?” she asked, gesturing at me.