Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 76656 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 383(@200wpm)___ 307(@250wpm)___ 256(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76656 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 383(@200wpm)___ 307(@250wpm)___ 256(@300wpm)
Shut up, Meg’s brain.
That doesn’t work.
Also, Trevor’s not going into the kitchen.
He stands there in the arched doorway, the glow of the neighbor’s Christmas lights coming in through the window and giving him a green tint, his body turned in my direction.
And then he sighs.
I don’t hear it so much as I see the rise and fall of his shoulders and the shift in his strong jaw.
Yes, I’m watching, and yes, it’s starting to hurt to keep staring at him with my eyes off to the side like that.
“Sorry I was an ass,” he says.
I think.
My headphones cancel out a lot, but I have unfortunately always been tuned in to anything that Trevor Stafford says when he’s in my vicinity.
Usually it was no big deal, because I’ve traveled the States trying to find my dream job while he’s been here in Copper Valley, Virginia, or other baseball towns that I’ve never been to.
But now—now, I think I’ve found where I fit, and even after I move out, Trevor and I will be living in the same town and I don’t know how I’m going to handle that long-term.
I drop the baby blanket, pause the movie, and push my headphones off my ears. “There are extra cookies on the counter, but if you don’t want sweets in the house, I can—”
“They’re fine. Thanks.”
“The rest of the kitchen—”
“I don’t like Christmas.”
“—is clean.” I blink as I finish my sentence. “I mean, okay. Not everybody does. You don’t have to.”
I huddle deeper into the couch.
Probably should be looking for an apartment instead of watching a movie. Or making some new friends outside of work and the Bergers. I’m sure Zeus and Joey would let me crash at their place—oh my holy Santa Claus, I have never seen a house decorated so much, which really shouldn’t surprise me after getting to know Zeus—but much as I love them and the babies, I’d constantly feel like I was at work, and living at my job doesn’t really jive with my personality.
I’d never stop working, and then I’d get fired for trying to be a parent instead of a nanny, and I really don’t want to be fired.
I love this job more than I’ve loved any job in my life.
Maybe I should ask them if they have friends who know anything about the apartment market right now.
Not that I expect they’d have friends who know anything about the apartment market in my price range. Zeus is a retired professional hockey player and Joey co-owns one of the most successful flight adventure-slash-zero gravity research companies in the world.
“You like the holidays,” Trevor says.
He noticed! teenage me squeals in my head.
You literally barfed the whole holiday all over his kitchen, replies the part of me that likes to remind me I’m supposed to be an adult.
“I…might have an unhealthy obsession with twinkly lights and Christmas cookies.”
He makes one of those weirdly endearing grunts that work on absolutely no other man in the entire world.
Also? It’s not a sound I’d ever heard out of him until I got here a few weeks ago.
Jude says Trevor’s taking the end of his career hard.
I never knew Trevor well enough to know if my oh my god, he’s hot reaction was warranted every time I saw him—the outside doesn’t always match the inside when it comes to hot sportsers, and good manners can fool a person—but he was Jude’s best friend, which always earned him a point in the good guy column, and the two of them used to be so happy when they were together.
I can’t resist happy.
And I thought I’d bring some happy into Trevor’s life with the holidays.
Clearly, I miscalculated.
“I’ll stop. It’s just one Christmas,” I say in response to his grunt, which probably means if I’d known you loved Christmas when I hate it, I wouldn’t have offered to let you stay here over the holidays. “I can live for one year without a tree. Or I can just go see the quadruplets. They each have trees. And Zeus has a tree. And he put up three for Joey—don’t ask how he themed them—or I can just go hang at any coffee shop in town. They’re all decorated. I can get my fix there. And I’ll start looking for an apartment, but there aren’t exactly a ton of people moving around the holidays, so—”
“If you want a tree, get a tree.”
“It’s okay. I don’t have any of my decorations, and there’s no point in buying new lights all over again when you won’t want them—”
“Zeus will take them when you’re done.”
My lips twitch.
He’s not wrong.
My boss has more Christmas spirit in his admittedly large pinky finger than I do in my whole body.
And that’s ridiculously impressive considering how much I love the holidays.
“Why don’t you like Christmas?” See again, shut up, Meg.