Page 20 of Unromance

She stared up at him like he had three heads.

“C’mon,” he goaded her, nudging her with his elbow. “You added this to the list. Surely you must find something romantic about it?”

Sawyer hummed thoughtfully, but whatever she was about to say, he never found out. As they shuffled forward in line, the pine needles on the ground shifted underfoot to reveal a patch of ice. He careened backward, windmilling his arms in a futile attempt to regain his balance. Gravity won out, and he went down, his ass meeting the ground with asmack.

Sawyer covered her mouth, but it did little to conceal her throaty laugh. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Mason grumbled, embarrassment stinging his cheeks as sharply as his ass cheeks smarted from hitting the semi-frozen ground.

“You know what?” she said around a laugh. “Call me a convert. I’m finding this all to beveryromantic. Aren’t you?”

She extended a hand to help him up—the idea that five-foot-nothingSawyer Greene could pick him up was laughable—but he took it anyway. Everything went sideways from there. As he pushed off the ground, the muddy slush beneath Sawyer’s boots shifted, and she lost her footing. He caught her mid-fall, but he couldn’t stop their foreheads from colliding with a resounding smack. Rearing back, he stared up at the gray sky, laid out on the muddy ground for a second time.

Sawyer collapsed on top of his chest with anoof, their faces a millimeter apart. Her bangs tickled the tops of his cheeks. Her narrowed eyes flicked down to his mouth, a hairbreadth from hers. “You did that on purpose,” she accused with a frown.

“I didn’t,” he laughed. “Romance must be in the air.”

“Gross,” Sawyer grumbled. Disentangling their legs, she pushed off his chest and clumsily got to her feet.

Mason ensured she was steady—and not standing on another ice patch—before picking himself up off the ground with as much dignity as he could muster. Wiping off the seat of his pants, he groaned when his hands came away muddy.

“Don’t worry,” Sawyer reassured him through relentless giggles as she inspected his backside. “It onlykindalooks like you shit yourself.”

“Fantastic,” he deadpanned.

Taking pity, she fussed over him, brushing pine needles off his shirt. She pinched a spot below the breast pocket, tugging at it. To his mortification, she pulled a sticker off his newly purchased flannel.

“When I asked you if you had a plaid flannel to wear, and you said yes—?” She let the rest of the question hang in the air.

“I went and bought one,” he confessed.

“Mason, I asked you thatthis morning. You could’ve said no!”

“I aim to please, and if the lumberjack look does it for you, then…” He flashed his trademark sultry smirk that fans ofDiagnosticswent wild for.

Sawyer tucked her fingers into his belt loops, tugging him closer. Tilting her head back, she looked up at him through heavy-lidded eyes. “It really, really does,” she purred. His attention drifted over her cheeks, rosy from the cold, down to her red-painted mouth. “But how did you know,” she continued in her low, raspy bedroom voice, “that my real weakness is men who shit themselves?”

Mason’s eyes fluttered shut as the realization washed over him. She was fucking with him. He’d fallen for it without a second thought.

She shoved him away playfully before stepping up to the little red ticket booth to pay for her tree. When he reached for his wallet, she bent over the counter, sticking out her ass to put space between him and the card reader. “Be a dear and grab us a saw, Mr. Lumberjack.”

It was a good thing their mission didn’t require them to keep score, because if it did, well, he’d definitely be losing. If this were a first date, if he really were trying to woo Sawyer, then this was the worst show he’d ever put on.

Hardening his resolve, Mason wandered over to the shelter that housed the handsaws, picking through them. He wasn’t the most handy, something his dad loved to rib him about. His parents were an odd match, yet the perfect cliché. The ex-army stuntman and the leading lady. His dad tinkered with muscle cars and wouldn’t pay for anyone to fix anything around their grand house until his mother insisted—or scheduled it without his knowledge. He’d tried to teach Mason how to do all of that, but Mason never had a knack for it. Margot had gotten the How Things Work gene, but she preferred numbers and dollar signs to carburetors and spark plugs.

Still, Mason didn’t spend as much time as he did with a trainer tonotbe able to cut down a tree.

In a flannel.

Yeah, he’d lied when Sawyer asked him if he had a red lumberjackflannel. He owned no such thing and had run out to buy one. But the way her eyes had lit up when she spied it under his coat? Worth it.

The same light was currently brightening her green eyes, her irises now the viridescent green of a new leaf. She came to halt in front of him, brandishing her tree receipt like a golden ticket.

“Let’s go, lumberjack,” she said, beaming. Looping her arm through his, she practically dragged him behind her on her quest to find the perfect tree. With Christmas only two weeks away, the pickings were slim.

Sawyer was cooing over a shapely fir when a little girl in a pink reindeer hat ran up to it, hugging it and proclaiming it the best tree ever. Sawyer agreed, and they waited until the girl’s family caught up before beginning their tree hunt anew.

Mason smiled. He was beginning to suspect Sawyer wasn’t as sour as she pretended. Somewhere beneath the jaded layers, there was a cinnamon roll soul. He just needed her to teach him her secret, how he could guard his heart more effectively, stop handing it out so readily.

---