Page 43 of One Little Chance
“Rogers, I’m building houses all day, looking at walls. When I come home, all I want to look at is you.”
“These walls are gingerbread,” I said, mindlessly licking frosting off my fingers, his eyes tracking the movement. My heart race quickened.
He placed his hands on either side of my waist. “Gingerbread walls. And a distractingly gorgeous contractor.” He tugged me into his lap.
“A handsy assistant,” I said.
He weaved his arms around my waist, tucking my back against his chest, his breath against my neck sending goosebumps across my skin.
I attempted to concentrate, placing messy dollops of frosting on the gingerbread roof. I knew I was better than the work I was doing, but Jordan was kissing the back of my neck, leaving a trail of kisses on my shoulder.
“I like the red gumdrops best, you know,” he said, his warm breath behind my ear, and I barely understood a word. He reached over and grabbed a red gumdrop I’d stuck to a frosting dollop on the gingerbread door and popped it in his mouth.
My jaw dropped. “Actively working against my efforts now?”
He shrugged sheepishly as he chewed.
I shook my head at him. “I should fire my assistant. He’s no help, then eats my doorknob.”
“Eh, those doorknobs weren’t up to code, anyway,” Jordan said, twisting me around in his lap until we were nose to nose. Our breath mingled between us. I pressed into him, his warmth encompassing me. I wanted to live right here, in this spot, forever.
His lips met mine, and it tasted like sugary frosting and felt like home.
Chapter 20
DECEMBER 15TH, 2023
“Let’s go for a drive,” Jordan bypassed a greeting, standing on my front porch. It was a few days into December, and the temperature had plummeted. We were both bundled up in our coats. “I’ve got a thermos of hot chocolate in the truck.”
This man and his thermoses of hot chocolate. I grinned. “You know I can’t resist a Christmas lights drive.”
We’d gone for our traditional drives with hot cocoa to see the houses strung with Christmas lights since we were sixteen and had finally gotten our driver’s licenses, so we had our established Christmas lights routes by now. I was surprised when he turned left from my driveway instead of right.
“Heading to the school?” I asked.
“Heading towardour house,” he said with a twinkle in his eye that put the decorated houses we passed to shame.
Our house. By that, I knew he meant our mutual dream house. The one we both would park in front of just to think. Or dream.
“As much as we love that place, it is never decorated,” I said. No one lived there, so no one ever decorated it.
He turned on the oldies Christmas radio station. “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” pulsed through the speakers.
“Let’s drive by anyway. Just to see.”
My breath caught in my chest as we pulled up outside the house. It was decorated straight out of a Hallmark Christmas movie—strung with lights, wreaths on the windows and front door, and a pathway of lights lining the sidewalk path to the front porch.
“Oh.” My heart sank a little. “Someone bought it.”
Mine and Jordan’s future didn’t need those old dreams to come true. All we needed was each other. Any house would do. I still couldn’t help but feel a little ache, knowing someone else would call it theirs now when for so long, we used to joke it wasours.
Jordan put his truck in park. “It was about time someone snatched it up.”
I grabbed the thermos and took a warm sip. “Let’s keep driving. The family inside might feel weirded out with our truck idling out here.”
“Let’s go say hi and wish them Merry Christmas.” Jordan unbuckled his seatbelt.
I scrunched my nose at the idea and shook my head no.
