Page 62 of The Naughty List Agreement

“Try me,” she said, sitting down next to him but leaving a good few inches of space between them. It was chilly and she shivered, until Nick put his hand on her forearm and a wave of heat surrounded her.

It was so weird how he managed to do that, but she was tired and edgy because he was being oddly secretive.

“Um … I’m not sure where to start.”

“Dude, stop stalling! You’re making it worse.”

“Pete and I are competing to see who will get to run … the family enterprise,” he said. “If I don’t meet certain conditions, then the board will hand control to him. I’ll lose it.”

“Lose what?”

“Everything that matters,” he said. “We were both raised to be CEO—same training and same expectations but very different philosophies.”

“Is that why you both have the same tattoo?”

“It marks the line of succession. We’re the ones responsible for keeping the season running smoothly.”

“It’s an unusual saying for a corporate motto. I mean, it’s from a song, right?” she asked, trying to figure out why this man had such a tight connection with the holiday season.

“They nicked it from us—it was ours first,” he told her.

“But he’s so different from you. I can’t see Pete coming up with something as exciting as the WonderHaus.”

“We are different. We disagree about many things.”

“And where does getting married fit into that?”

“A wife will be the heart of the company. She’ll be my … anchor.”

“You’re on a deadline to find her. That’s not very romantic,” she said. His anchor. If she needed another example of how different Nick and his ideas were to hers, she had it. In her parents’ marriage she’d been the anchor and it hadn’t been enough to keep them together. Anchors weren’t a good idea for a relationship. No one wanted to be tied down and unmovable.

“It isn’t.”

“And yet you’re here, with me?” she said.

“I want to see where this goes. Not because I’m trying to change your mind but because I can’t seem to stay away.”

“You haven’t forgotten that I don’t want to get married.”

“I haven’t forgotten.”

“And that doesn’t scare you?”

“It makes this honest. And that’s the truth.”

That’s all she could ask of him. She wasn’t entirely sure how she felt about all this, but he had answered her question so she let him pull her toward the fresh snow to the side of her house. Drops of it fell from the heavy branches of the tree in her front yard.

She felt silly. She’d never done a snow angel before because you needed a second person to help you up or the angel’s body got messed up.

Instead, she reached down and scooped up a ball of snow just as Nick fell backwards to make his angel.

He clocked the snowball in her hand a second too late. She lobbed it at him. Not being great at aiming, she was pleased when it hit him in the shoulder.

He let out that big, booming belly laugh of his that made the snow globe in her tummy start swirling. As soon as he stooped to make his own snowball, she realized that she’d better find cover. Darting behind the trunk of the tree, she tried to form more ammunition but Nick was there, hitting her in the chest with a snowball, and she tumbled to the ground. Cold snow on her back and a hot man on her front.

Her heartbeat increased. She had to be very careful not to fall for this man who needed her to be the one thing she’d sworn never to become.

CHAPTER 16