Page 34
They stared at each other. The space between them was charged and tight and approximately four inches wide. Cole could smell flour and sugar and that shampoo she used that he was not going to think about right now.
He straightened and stepped back. “I’m leaving. You’re not invited.”
He turned and walked toward the back door.
Behind him he heard Emily yell, “Mom! Hold down the fort. I’ll be back.”
Cole wanted to turn around. Wanted to yell at her until she saw sense. Until she agreed to stay right there and do what she was supposed to do.
But it was pointless. He knew that.
She would follow him to every doorstep on his list and ask her own questions and interpret every answer through the lens of a seventeen-year grudge. There was absolutely nothing he could do to stop her short of physically removing her from a snowmobile, which he wasn’t about to do in front of her mother.
Cole was already outside, halfway to the snowmobile, when the back door slammed shut behind him.
“You forgot something,” Emily said, holding out his elf hat.
Cole looked at the hat. He looked at her, standing there in her jingle bell hat, coat half-zipped, cheeks flushed with cold and fury, ready to interrogate witnesses about a seventeen-year-old cookie theft.
“I’m not wearing that,” he said.
“It has your name on it.” She shook it at him. The bell jingled.
“Emily.”
“Cole.”
He took the hat. He did not put it on. He shoved it in his coat pocket, where the bell made a muffled jingle of protest.
“Get on,” he said, nodding at the snowmobile.
Emily climbed on behind him without a word.
God help him. He was going to strangle an elf.
ELEVEN
EMILY
Monday, December 14th
Emily would like it on the record that she hated every second of the snowmobile ride.
She hated the cold biting at her cheeks. She hated the roaring engine. And she really hated that the only way to stay on was to wrap her arms around the man driving it.
Cole Alders’ back was broad and solid beneath his heavy turnout coat, radiating heat like a furnace even through all the layers. She kept her grip strictly functional with her hands locked at his waist, fingers curled into the thick fabric. Nothing more. She refused to give him the satisfaction of knowing how affected she was.
But the snowmobile had other ideas.
Every bump in the trail, every sharp turn, every time Cole shifted his weight sent her sliding tighter against him. Her chest pressed to his back. Her thighs bracketed his hips. The steady, controlled power in his body as he handled the machine was doing dangerous things to her.
God, he looks stupidly hot in that gear, she thought bitterly.
The heavy turnout jacket stretched across his shoulders. The suspenders she had slid down his shoulders two days before. His gloved hands looked huge on the handlebars. She hated how attractive she found the whole picture—the embodiment of every ridiculous firefighter fantasy she’d ever rolled her eyes at in books.
Her traitorous brain took that thought and ran with it.
She imagined sliding her hands lower… past his belt… down the front of his bunker pants. Feeling him harden under her palm while the snowmobile vibrated beneath them. She pictured herself unzipping him right here, wrapping her fingers around him, stroking while he tried to keep the machine steady on the trail.
