“How bad do you hate me right now?” Maple winced as Lady Bird tugged at the end of her leash to touch noses with Fuzzy.
Then her gaze swept over the hot cocoa stand Adaline had set up beneath the gazebo. A massive stainless steel dispenser held several gallons of cocoa. She’d filled canisters with garnishes like marshmallows, chocolate shavings and peppermint sticks. And of course, she’d wrapped the gingerbread dog cookies in individual cellophane bags and tied them with red satin ribbon. Comfort Paws stickers decorated the cocoa cups, and brochures about the organization’s mission were stacked at both ends of the wooden cart.
“Okay, this all looks incredible. I can’t believe you pulled this together in a day,” Maple said, agog. “But circling back to what I said before, how bad do you hate me?” She scrunched her face. “Really, really bad?”
“Of course I don’t hate you. I don’t even know what you’re talking about.” Adaline adjusted Fuzzy’s Comfort Paws therapy-dog-in-training vest, which wasn’t the easiest task while he greeted his good friend Lady Bird with a heaping dose of enthusiasm.
“I’m talking about last night.” Maple gave her a curious once over and then lowered her voice to a whisper. “When I left you alone at the bakery with you-know-who.”
“Oh, that.” Adaline tried—and failed—not to glance across the square at Jace, who was carrying another tree around like he was Paul Bunyan. She’d been overly aware of his presence since the moment she’d arrived to set up the hot chocolate stand.
It was beyond annoying.
“I had no idea that Jenna and Belle were going to follow me out the door. Ford and I had a meeting scheduled at Bluebonnet Chapel, and I didn’t want to say anything until our change of plans was official. I kind of wanted to give Ford the chance to tell you himself, anyway.” Maple’s eyebrows rose. “I heard he got to sit down with you and Gram this morning. What do you think? Are we crazy?”
Crazy in love, maybe.
Adaline’s gaze once again strayed toward Jace. She really needed to stop doing that.
“I love the idea of a Christmas Eve wedding. Gram is thrilled to pieces, and Jace said I could bake the wedding cake. Please tell me he cleared that with you first,” Adaline said.
“Of course you’re baking the cake. I would never even consider anyone else. We’re going to be sisters soon. Can you believe it?” Maple sighed. “I always wanted a sister. I hated being an only child.”
“Me too.” Adaline bounced on her toes before she could remind herself to be cool and take it down a notch. “I mean, not the only child part because Ford was there. As awesome as he is, a brother isn’t the same as a sister.”
“And you’re sure about the cake? I know you’ve got a lot going on this month.” Maple gestured toward the cocoa cart, the new bane of Adaline’s existence since it involved working in such close proximity to Jace.
“One thousand percent sure. Do you have a specific kind of cake in mind?”
Maple shook her head. “Not at all. You’re the expert. We’re leaving all the cake details completely up to you. Is that okay?”
“Music to my ears.” Adaline beamed.
She already knew exactly what she wanted to do. It was kind of a lot, but with a little bit of luck and some help from Gram, Adaline knew she could pull it off. A lot was her comfort zone, after all.
“So how did it go last night after I left?” Maple cast a purposeful glance at Jace in all his flannel-clad glory. “Was it awful?”
“It was fine,” Adaline lied. Much to her confusion, it had been nice. Fun, even.
Maple’s eyes narrowed. “You’re being uncharacteristically vague.”
“We decorated the tree and, as I explained in the email to you and the rest of the Comfort Paws board this morning, he suggested the hot chocolate stand as an alternate fundraiser.” Adaline busied herself with refilling the container of marshmallows, even though it was already almost filled to the brim. “That was it. There’s really nothing else to tell.”
“Nothing at all, huh?” Maple tilted her head. Did she realize she was beginning to look like she was questioning someone on the witness stand? Maybe she’d picked up that particular facial expression from her lawyer parents.
“I made gingerbread.” Adaline shrugged. “He seemed to like it.”
Why was she elaborating? Maple was certain to get the wrong idea.
Sure enough, her eyes grew wide. “You baked for him.”
Adaline’s face went warm. She tugged at the collar of her red Comfort Paws hoodie. “I’m a baker, remember? It’s what I do.”
“You could have served him anything you had on hand, but instead you baked something special.”
“The dough was already chilling. I overcooked the cookies. They were barely edible.” On the contrary, they were perfect, as evidenced by Jace’s satisfied moan the second he bit into one of the cookies.
If last night’s restlessness was any indication, Adaline would be hearing that breathy noise in her sleep for weeks.
“Oh, please. You never overcook anything.” Maple filled a cup of cocoa for a customer who then dropped a ten-dollar bill in the donation jar. Cha-ching! Then she turned toward Adaline, eyes dancing beneath the twinkle lights. “I think you might actually like him, and you’re afraid to admit it.”
Adaline prepared a cup of hot chocolate for a little girl who collapsed into giggles when she bent to pet Fuzzy and the Cavalier licked her cheek. Once the child’s mittened hands were wrapped around a steaming paper cup topped with a candy cane, she skipped off to rejoin her parents in search of the perfect tree.
“Well?” Maple prompted.
“I do not like him.” Adaline snuck another glance at him as he heaved a massive pine tree onto his shoulder and carried to a waiting vehicle.
His dark hair was dusted with snowflakes—a rarity in the Texas Hill Country, which made the town square seem charged with holiday magic. Jace had brought Christmas with him when he rolled into town. Whenever a branch snapped off one of his trees, he picked it up and presented it to one of the kids on the lot, pretending it was a tiny pint-sized Christmas tree, like in the classic animated Charlie Brown film. Bent and broken, but still beautiful in its own special way.
Jace Martin was borderline charming. Perfectly likable...
Not to Adaline, obviously. But she could see the appeal. For other people, that is.
“I don’t even know him,” she said in an effort to emphasize her point.
“Exactly!” Maple whisper-screamed. They really needed to stop talking about Jace. Someone was sure to overhear, and if that someone turned out to be Jace himself, Adaline might have to close her bakery and move to another town clear on the opposite end of the Lone Star state. “He’s obviously not the same person he was in fifth grade. None of us are. You thought you knew him, but you don’t. So it’s perfectly okay to like him.”
She made it sound so simple and logical, but Adaline’s emotions were like a wadded-up bundle of Christmas lights. She didn’t know where one feeling ended and another began. And some of the secret thoughts she’d had about Jace certainly weren’t logical, especially the ones involving mistletoe.
“Is it perfectly okay to loathe him too?” she asked, pinning Maple with a glare.
“You said he was nice to you at the senior center yesterday. He gave you a Christmas tree last night and helped you decorate it, and now he’s sharing his tree lot with Comfort Paws.” Maple’s mouth twitched. “He also bears a striking resemblance to the hot Brawny paper towel guy. Surely you’ve noticed.”
Adaline had eyes. Of course she’d noticed. She was pretty sure Lady Bird and Fuzzy had noticed too, considering both their tails wagged like crazy every time Jace came within ten feet of the gazebo.
“Does my brother know you have a thing for the Brawny guy?” Adaline laughed, and her breath hung in the air in a cold puff of vapor. “Your secret is safe with me, so long as we can stop talking about Jace for the rest of the night.”
“Deal. Just for tonight, though.” Maple winked. Her nose shone cherry red from the cold. “This isn’t over.”
Adaline took a deep inhale of frosty air. She knew it wasn’t over. Like it or not, she had to coexist with Jace for the rest of the holidays. Counting down the days was going to be like the world’s most awkward Advent calendar.
Christmas couldn’t come quickly enough.
This can’t go on until Christmas.
Jace did a walk-through of the entire lot at closing time, picking up any stray branches that littered the ground, which was rapidly being covered in a generous dusting of snow.
Snow in Texas! All night, the flurries swirling against the darkened sky had sent a buzz of electricity through the town square. People had come to opening night at the lot in droves, eager to make the most of the holiday weather. Snow was a rare and beautiful thing in the Hill Country. It was sticking to the ground for the moment but would likely melt within a day or two, and that made it all the more precious. With each frosty, pine-scented inhale, Jace remembered the winter he’d spent in Bluebonnet. The kids at school held their breaths every time the forecast dipped below freezing, praying for a snow day. They’d never gotten one that year, making tonight feel like the fulfillment of an old promise. An ending and new beginning, all wrapped up with a magical holiday bow.
But Jace’s spirits had been dashed every time he glanced Adaline’s way. She didn’t send him dirty looks or anything. Jace might’ve preferred it if she did. Instead, her expression had remained a mask of cool indifference. And that’s when she actually let herself make eye contact with him. For most of the night, she’d averted her gaze the moment his eyes met hers. The first two times, he’d chalked it up to coincidence. The third time it happened, he knew she was trying to avoid him. Aggressively so, by all appearances.
It was driving Jace crazy. He knew he should simply brush it off, but he couldn’t. Adaline was generous with her kindness. All night he’d watched her work the hot chocolate crowd with her dog, offering an easy smile as she told people about Comfort Paws and their mission of healing through unconditional love. Back at the senior center, she’d even launched a charm assault on Gus. Jace seemed to be the only person in town she had absolutely zero interest in befriending.
If she kept this up, he was going to lose his mind long before the cocoa stand closed on Christmas Eve. Adaline was a puzzle he couldn’t quite figure out. If he didn’t know better, he might’ve thought he was emotionally invested in getting her to like him.
He wasn’t, obviously. He was simply trying to be a decent person. He’d made up for the mix-up with the town square reservation. He was working on getting Gus to be nice to her. Last night, for a minute there, it seemed as if she was coming around. Tonight, not so much.
Jace’s head told him to simply let it go. His feet, on the other hand, didn’t seem to get the message. When the last car pulled away from the Christmas tree lot with a six-foot Fraser fir strapped to its roof, Jace gently placed the fallen branches in a plastic tub in case he decided to try and propagate them. He and Adaline were the only people left in the square. Fuzzy was zonked out in his therapy dog vest beneath the gazebo, head resting on his furry little paws. Before Jace could stop himself, he stalked straight toward the gazebo, peeling off his work gloves along the way.
“Hey.” He climbed the three worn wooden steps.
Fuzzy cracked one eye open and promptly fell back asleep while Adaline crossed her arms, uncrossed them and promptly crossed them again. “Hey.”
“How did things go with the first night of the hot chocolate stand?”
“Great. I haven’t added everything up, but we were busy all evening.” She clamped the lock on the cashbox. “Thank you for this, Jace. This means a lot to Comfort Paws. I’m not sure I’ve told you yet, but I’m really grateful.”
“Grateful enough to tell me what I did?” he asked quietly.
Adaline’s lips parted, and for a second, he thought she was going to answer him, just like that. But then she blinked and her lovely face turned into a perfectly unreadable mask. “I’m not sure what you mean.”
“I think you do.” Jace dipped his chin to try and catch her gaze. When she finally looked him in the eyes again, the vulnerability shining in those blue-violet irises of hers made him want to wrap his arms around her and never let her go. He shoved his hands in his pockets to prevent himself from doing something utterly stupid. “Come on, Adaline. Just tell me.”
She huffed out a breath. “You seriously don’t remember fifth grade?”
“I remember I had a mad crush on you back then.” He tilted his head. “Like most fifth-grade boys, I was an idiot, but I kinda thought the feeling was mutual.”
Adaline nodded. “You’re right.”
“So you did have a crush on me.” He felt himself smile.
“I meant you were right when you said you were an idiot,” she said without an ounce of humor.
Jace’s jaw clenched. He didn’t like where this was going.
“We teased each other. That’s what kids that age do when they’re trying to make sense of feelings they’ve never had before.” A sinking feeling came over him. He was like his Uncle Gus, wasn’t he? “Did I bully you?”
“No, nothing like that.” Adaline shook her head, and her eyelashes fluttered as she lifted her gaze to the sky. Jace had forgotten how bright the stars in Bluebonnet looked on a winter’s night—diamonds among the snow flurries. “We don’t have to do this, Jace. It was a million years ago.”
She was giving him an out, but he didn’t want it. He wanted to clear the air before his thoughts ran wild and he talked himself into thinking he’d been a mean, Jell-O-throwing jerk in elementary school.
“It doesn’t matter how long ago it was if it’s still upsetting you.”
“I heard your friends teasing you about liking me, okay? And instead of defending me, you said you were only being nice to me because you felt sorry for me because I still believed in Santa Claus. You thought I was weird and too much, just like everyone else did.” When her voice broke, something inside Jace broke too.
He remembered the conversation now. It had been at the school dance on his last night in Bluebonnet. His friends had teased him, and he’d said whatever he thought it might take for them to leave him alone. He hadn’t meant a word of it. All he’d wanted was to dance with Adaline before he had to tell her goodbye. He thought it was cute that she still believed in Santa. Even back then, he’d envied her innocence. Jace’s childhood innocence had come to an abrupt end the day his father had been diagnosed.
Jace hadn’t told a soul he was leaving. He’d been too scared to believe it himself until the next morning when his mom and dad came to get him from Uncle Gus’s house. Somewhere deep down, he’d been afraid his mom was going to show up by herself and tell Jace that his father was dead. Why else would they send him away for a year?
Nothing about cancer made sense to a little kid. But that unspoken fear had been brimming beneath the surface the entire time he’d been with Gus. Jace would lie awake at night, staring up at the knotted pine ceiling and wondering what it might be like to stay right there in Bluebonnet instead of going home to face whatever his family had wanted to shield him from. When the family station wagon pulled up to Gus’s house, Jace had run and hid. It took over half an hour for Gus to find him hiding in the back corner of a horse stall in the big old barn on his property.
He’d wanted to stay, and that thought had been the most frightening thing of all.
His mouth went bone dry at the memory. The shame and guilt of those childhood feelings still clung to him. No wonder his past girlfriends always accused him of keeping things at surface level. He didn’t want to revisit emotions he’d spent a lifetime trying to forget.
Jace shifted from foot to foot. “Adaline, surely you know I didn’t mean those things.”
“It didn’t matter if you meant them or not. You said them, and it made me feel like there was something wrong with me.” Her chin wobbled, and Jace got the feeling there was more to this story than the part he’d played in it. That didn’t matter, though. He’d hurt her, full stop. “You were just a kid, but so was I.”
There were so many things he could’ve said right then, but he couldn’t seem to form the words for any of them. Not even the one resounding truth that might’ve made a difference.
You were the best of this town for me.
“I’m sorry,” he said instead.
She didn’t say anything for a long moment, like she might be waiting for more. Outside the gazebo, snow flurries whirled in dizzying circles. But beneath that old shelter, shimmering with golden light, the stillness was almost unbearable.
“It’s okay,” she finally said, and when she smiled at him this time, she really looked at him. She actually meant it. “Like I said, fifth grade was a really long time ago. It was silly of me to hang on to all of that. It’s just that the way I felt when I overheard you talking about me...” she sighed. “Let’s just say I’ve heard similar things from other men in my life. But that’s my problem, not yours. In any case, now you know.”
Yes, he did. Minutes ago, that’s all he’d been focused on. And now, Jace had gotten exactly what he’d wanted. Adaline had opened up to him. She’d even absolved him.
Christmas came early, he thought, but the realization was bittersweet. Jace should’ve felt better. He wanted to feel better.
So why didn’t he?