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She stares at my mouth. “I'm still undecided.”
Before I can help her reach a conclusion by grabbing her face and kissing the smudge of caramel off her lips, someone begins shouting near the Christmas tree.
"My tree! Oh, my beautiful tree!"
A woman dressed entirely in winter white storms toward the enormous resort Christmas tree that's supposed to be the highlight of the night.
Audrey lowers her brownie. “Who’s that?”
“Judging by the terror spreading through the staff? That must be Celeste Winters from Management.”
The manager of the resort appears through the crowd in a white trouser suit, red-framed glasses and a gold headset, moving with the purpose of a woman about to personally execute several members of the maintenance department.
Half the resort’s enormous Christmas tree has gone dark.
Celeste stops beneath it and points upward.
“The ceremony begins in eight minutes,” she announces. “I require somebody familiar with trees, electricity or miracles.”
Everyone nearby looks at me.
“Why the fuck are you all looking at me?”
Audrey folds her arms. “Um, hello, Mr. Christmas-tree Farmer.”
"I've literally never seen a woman look hotter while rolling their eyes at me."
Audrey laughs, but to try and save the disaster, Celeste sends the Wildcards out to entertain the crowd while Audrey and I disappear behind the velvet ropes surrounding the broken tree.
Beneath the enormous fir, the world changes as I follow behind Audrey as she seeks to solve yet another disastrous problem.
The crowd becomes a blur beyond thick branches, and crystal ornaments sway above us while snow clings to the needles and falls across Audrey’s blonde hair every time she moves ahead of me in that damn skirt.
She follows a dead strand toward the trunk. “The connection disappears above that branch. Grab that ladder.”
I look at the ladder and then at her skirt. “You’re not climbing that.”
She plants one boot on the first rung. “Watch me.”
Oh, I'll fucking watch.
The red skirt shifts higher as she climbs, revealing more black stocking and the soft curve where her thighs disappear beneath the wool.
This woman is going to kill me inside a Christmas tree.
“The connection is near the top,” she says.
“Then come down. I’ll lift you.”
Audrey looks over her shoulder. “You’ve spent three days avoiding touching me, and now you’re volunteering to put your hands all over my body?”
So much for subtlety.
“I haven’t been avoiding you.”
“You left the Ski Bar without saying goodnight.”
“You were surrounded by twelve drunk hockey players! Why do you care if I left early?”
