Page 57 of No Business Like Snow Business

I took another piece of fudge. “What’s yours?”

He smiled. “A thousand bucks and a suitcase full of old books?”

“Sounds nice.”

“You got more than a thousand bucks, didn’t you?”

I snorted. “I did, yeah. No suitcase full of books though.”

“Well, you win some, you lose some, I guess.” Harvey’s expression grew serious again. “But you’ll be okay?”

“I’ll be more than okay, I promise.”

He let out a breath. “Good.” He reached for my hand, his cheeks pink, and twined our fingers together. “There. That’s better.”

“That’s much better,” I agreed.

Harvey stood up, still holding my hand, and tugged me gently to my feet. He led me out of the reception area of the museum, and through the room with all the photographs to the storeroom where we’d gone through all those old newspapers looking for clues about what had happened to Freddy. He opened the door of the storeroom, turned the light on, and then pulled me inside with him.

“What are we doing?” I asked as he backed me up against the wall beside the ladder.

“Research project,” Harvey said, his eyes bright as he leaned in to kiss me.

Researching Harvey Novak and the way he kissed?

That was a project I’d happily volunteer for, for as long as he’d have me.

We snagged a booth at the Snowflake Shack for lunch, and ordered burgers and fries.

“I’m probably going to have to come here for lunch every day,” I said.

“You should,” Harvey said. “And invite me too.”

“That goes without saying.”

“You have a lot of things to plan.”

“I do.” I needed to buy a car, and find a place to live that wasn’t my uncle’s spare room. Win and Kyle had been nothing but welcoming, but if I was going to be here for the long term then I definitely wanted to give them their space back. Also, I wanted to be in town, and wasn’t that something? I’d thought Christmas Falls was crazy when I’d first arrived, and now I wanted to live here. Most of it was admittedly down to the guy sitting across the booth from me, but why the hell not enjoy Christmas all year round? I had a lot of catching up to do when it came to actually enjoying the holiday season. “I’m excited for everything I have to do, though. Finding a place, a car, furniture?—”

“Cats,” Harvey agreed, nodding.

“Cats?”

“Sterling, there are cats in need. One of us has to get some of them.”

I stole one of his fries. “Congratulations on your new fur babies, then.”

He laughed, and used his finger to trace a mistletoe on the laminated dessert menu the server had left on our table. “Do you know why it’s a tradition to kiss under the mistletoe?”

“I have no idea,” I said, warmth spreading through me. I could listen to Harvey talk about random facts and trivia for hours, not just because it was genuinely interesting to me, but because of the way it made him light up.

“Mistletoe blooms even in winter, so ancient people believed it was a symbol of life and fertility,” Harvey said. “The Celtic druids had a rule that if two enemies met under the mistletoe, they had to put their weapons down and have a truce. I guess it’s only a short jump from that to kissing!”

I laughed.

“And in Norse mythology, Frigg is the goddess of love. And her son, Baldur, was prophesied to die. So Frigg went around toall the animals and plants in the world, and made them promise not to kill him.” His eyes danced. “But she overlooked the little mistletoe, and Loki made an arrow out of it and killed Baldur.”

“This is a happy story,” I said, dragged a fry through a puddle of ketchup.

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