Page 38 of The Hanukkah Hoax
“I like made-up stories,” Marisa said, lifting a shoulder. “Did Santa have a mid-air collision during sleigh testing and land on your shoulder?”
He shook his head, grinning. “No, but the lad who tackled me during the Vancouver match might have weighed about as much as the Big Fella.” Then Marisa gave him the space he needed to talk about the fear that had chased him all over the globe. “I misjudged the pitch and my opponent. Took on more of a bloke than I could handle and didn’t land properly. A total rookie error. Woke up in a hospital bed with a concussion diagnosis and the worst headache you’d ever imagined, and that was before I got an eyeful of Brennan’s mangy jowls flapping at me, screaming about how I owe him a new suit for causing him to spill his drink all over his crotch when I didn’t get up after taking the hit. Even through the pounding in my skull, I managed to tell him it didn’t matter. Any equipment that may have been affected between his legs had been inactive for so long, I doubted window dressings would have made it work again.”
Marisa laughed cheerfully, brightening his spirits. “No you didn’t.”
“I did.”
“No wonder he doesn’t like you.”
“Oh, he likes me fine. He just doesn’t understand me. No one does, except Cal and sometimes Hugh.”
“Who’s Hugh?”
Then the inkling of an idea sifted through his thoughts, one that just might fix his execution problem when it came to this whole fake relationship charade.
“My roommate while I’m in Jersey. Snores like a beast and eats all my good steaks. Hates any food that’s green and gets mighty irritated when I turn off the TV, even though he’s already fallen asleep to it. Would you like to meet him?”
At that, Marisa’s eyes widened. “Meet him?”
“Sure.” Then Alec set their coffees aside and clasped her hand, the one that hadn’t been holding the cup, and rubbed away the remaining bit of chill with his fingers. “Listen, I know I fucked this up. That kiss wasn’t exactly planned.”
“But it was effective,” she added, gesturing with her chin toward her phone sitting on the table. “Word’s spreading. Even Monica liked the photo, which I’m still not sure how I feel about. Either way, it definitely made people sit up and take notice, including a few rugby organization names I didn’t recognize liking the photo as well.”
“If that’s what we can achieve with an accidental spark, imagine what we could do with an intentional fire.”
Marisa’s brow furrowed. “Huh?”
“The Ball’s coming up, and we won’t have many more public opportunities to drum up business, so let’s make one. This time, you and I will have ground rules set in advance. No kissing without consent. No touching without prior approval. Everything staged and thought out beforehand. Think of it like a director’s shot list. What do you say?”
Marisa bit her lip, and for a moment, he was terrified she was going to send him packing, having dealt with far too much of his shit and all the stink that came with it. But then she smiled at him and raised her coffee cup. “I’m in. On one condition.”
He faux clinked his paper cup with hers. “What’s that?” he asked, taking a sip.
A flash of something he couldn’t quite place lit her eyes. “That there be more kissing.”
He turned just in time to spit his hot coffee all over the frozen window and watch in shaky fascination as the hot liquid melted away every inch of snow that had been choking out his escape route moments before.
Chapter 16
Marisa’s tired shipping label printer had just successfully spat out the last postage label of the evening despite its wheezing protestations.
“There. Done,” she said as she started gathering what was supposed to go in the order so Eden could pack it up. “Shop’s officially closed until after the holidays. Now I can finally focus on the goods for Monica’s event. I think I’ve got the recipes nailed down.”
“You freaking better,” Eden added from her place on Marisa’s living room floor as she grabbed the next bundle of orders and began packing them up. “I’m generally not one to worry for other people, but you’re not other people, so congratulations. You have my worry.”
“Thank you?”
“You are cutting things really close here. Like, heinously so.”
“It’s not heinous. It’s Hanukkah. This is all totally normal.”
Eden snorted and popped another sweet and sour gummy Christmas tree into her mouth. “Could have fooled me.” The silence that followed lasted just long enough to tear Marisa away from her laptop screen and mark the track of Eden’s eye roll, which landed squarely on the saddest excuse for a Hanukkah celebration collecting dust on Marisa’s mantle. “Pretty sure that menorah has more wax build-up than what an ENT sees when they go elbows-deep in an ear canal. It’s what, the third night? Isn’t that thing supposed to be lit? Like, what the hell, girl? I usually work any holiday that’s willing to pay me time and a half, and I can even manage to remember pulling out my tiny fake hot pink Christmas tree and setting it on my coffee table.”
“I’ve had a lot on my mind, all right? At least I remembered to take the menorah out of the closet this year.”
Eden snorted around a mouthful of gummies. “Pretty sure that thing wanted to stay right where it was. Sterling silver can sense shame, you know.”
That was true, and Marisa’s weepy menorah was nothing if not judgmental about it. The once-polished hand-me-down was from her grandmother, who loved to hoard shiny shit and made damn sure everyone in the family had an appreciation for her collection as well. When Marisa went to college, the thing had been shipped off with her, along with a gleaming new bank account and a boatload of silent expectations. She’d never asked for it and yet had been tasked with its upkeep, or, in her case, the guilt that came when she didn’t clean and polish it regularly. Or light it regularly to boot.
