Page 48 of My Rival for Christmas

Paige scoffs, sounding severely uninterested. “Please. It would hurt your feelings to know how little I think about you.”

I stop in front of her. Our chests practically touching as I lower my voice. “Then hurt my feelings, Princess. It’ll only make me like you more.”

Her lips part, stunned. I know she’s flustered with how her cheeks flush and how her chest moves faster, like she’s struggling to get a full breath.

I’d give all the money in my bank account away to know what’s churning behind those wide, cautious, leaning-more-green-today eyes.

Is she thinking about the way my body feels pressed against hers? Or is she thinking about the lake as she looks at me? About the kiss and what my lips would feel like if they claimed hers?

I know it hasn’t strayed from the forefront of my mind.

Her eyes dip to my mouth, and I can’t stop myself as my tongue darts out, licking my lips.

Her lips part in answer. Before crashing into a grimace. “You’re trying to distract me from the problem.” Paige pushes me away.

“Right.” I draw out the word, ignoring the hollow pang in my chest bone as I do.

Always pushing me away.

I have to tell her why I ended our partnership two years ago. And I know I had the perfect opportunity to do that today, but…I chickened out.

For the first time in a really long time, I got to hang out with Paige, and being in her company again was too good to ruin.

Tomorrow. I’ll tell her tomorrow. When we drive back down the mountain, before I leave her to the rest of her vacation. Give her time to process what I’ve said to her before we meet back up in New York.

“Nate,” she snaps, sounding both annoyed and frazzled.

I realize I kind of zoned out. Blinking back into the present, I follow her flailing, gesturing hands. “Right.”

The problemisn’t just that we’re snowed in at my family’s fishing cabin, which has very questionable insulation, even with the heater running, but sometime between the summer and now, my dad took it upon himself to do a little renovation to the space.

Mainly consisting of turning the second bedroom into a storage type area, full of boxes stacked almost to the ceiling and fishing poles and old pieces of furniture I haven’t seen since I was a kid and we sold our place in town.

My dad must’ve cleared out our storage unit, but in doing so, he turned the bedroom I usually sleep in into a hoarder’s dream paradise.

And yet, as packed to the brim as that room is, suspiciously missing from it is the bed. I tried to see if I saw any part of it from the doorway, but it’s so jammed in there I couldn’t see more than two rows of crap in front of me.

So even if it is buried under all the boxes and junk, there is no way to get to it. The cabin is small. Everything has to stay in there.

Meaningwe are currently staring at the only bed in the entire house.

Or rather, I’m staring. Paige is in her factory standard mode of glaring at it.

“How many pillows do you need to sleep with?” Paige asks, hands on her hips, sizing the bed up like it’s her single greatest task to conquer.

“One.”

“One?” she repeats, snapping her attention to me like I’m some deranged creature. “What are you, a psycho?”

“First a murderer, now a psycho. Keep talking to me like that, Princess, and I’m going to propose to you before we leave here.”

Her face scrunches. “There is something seriously wrong with you.”

“Now you’re just teasing me.”

If glares could cut, I’d be sliced in half. “Nathan.”

I have no choice. The tone is too sexy to resist when she says my name so sternly. Slowly, I start to sink to one knee.

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