Page 24 of Santa's Girl
Bear stood there, boots planted, beer bottle hanging loose in one hand. His eyes were on me, not the man behind me. Dark. Flat. Waiting.
The guy—mint-and-cookies beard, warm eyes—let out a low laugh, trying to play it off. “Didn’t know she was with anyone, brother.”
“I’m not—” I started, but Bear’s gaze flicked to me, and the words tangled in my throat.
He stepped closer, close enough that the air between us tightened. The smell of smoke and cold clung to him, cutting clean through the haze of beer and perfume and fried food. He didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t have to.
“Time to go, sugar.”
The way he said it—steady, quiet, final—did something strange to my pulse. It wasn’t a question. It wasn’t even a request. It was anend.
The other man’s hands slid off my waist. I felt the loss of warmth immediately.
I blinked up at Bear, mouth dry. “Excuse me?”
His jaw flexed once. “You heard me.”
I should’ve been mad. Embarrassed. Iwasembarrassed—every curious head in the room turned toward us, whispers rising over the music. But under that, something else prickled low and hot: the unmistakable feeling of being seen, claimed, protected—and I didn’t know which part of it made me more flustered.
Jinx appeared out of nowhere, eyes wide. “Everything good here, Prez?”
Bear didn’t even glance his way. “We’re done here.”
I folded my arms. “You don’t get to just bark orders?—”
“Not an order,” he said evenly. “A suggestion. Before you end up in the middle of somethin’ you don’t want.”
The warmth of the club had turned heavy, eyes everywhere. The man I’d been dancing with muttered something under his breath and drifted toward the bar. Bear stepped back just enough to let me pass.
For a long second I didn’t move.
Then, quietly, I said, “Fine.”
I slid past him, my heart thudding too fast, too loud. The cold from the door hit my face as we stepped out into the snow again. The music muffled behind us, swallowed by the night.
I tugged my coat tighter. “You really need to work on your people skills.”
“Did fine,” he said. “You’re still in one piece.”
I glared up at him. “Barely.”
He looked down, eyes catching the light from the porch. “You keep drinkin’ with wolves, sugar, you’re gonna get bit.”
I rolled my eyes at him. “He was my mint-and-cookie lumberjack fantasy. Maybe I just wanted to get in trouble tonight.”
That stopped him cold.
The night air hung still, and his gaze cut back to me—dark, steady, burning from the inside out. For the first time, Iwondered if maybe Bear wasn’t all frost and stone. Maybe there was something underneath the armor, something that could still melt.
Then he ruined it by reaching for that ridiculous snowsuit again.
“What is it with you and trying to put clothes on me?” I asked, exasperated.
He didn’t blink. “You’d rather I take ’em off?”
The words hit the air and just stayed there. My breath came out in little white puffs, the cold biting at my cheeks, but the rest of me felt too warm. The wind whistled through the trees. The silence between us stretched, tight as a wire.
I forced a laugh. “I just had a bad breakup, that’s all. I wanted to have some fun.”
