Page 39 of Snowed In
“New couples do. In-love couples do. And if you want to be convincing, you have to act like you’re in love. You do realize this?”
“We’re just helping each other out. It’s not like we’re getting married or anything. As long as we stick to the rules, no one’s getting hurt. I’ll be fine.”
“And if you’re not, you can just come home.” She sounds like she’s saying it more to herself than to me, but it still makes me pause. Home. Meaning these four walls and Frankie’s cooking and the shower you can only use for exactly three minutes before it starts deciding its own temperature. “Promise me you’ll give me a call if you need me to— Okay. Love you too, Megs.”
I hug her so hard she falls back on the bed, and there we stay until my phone buzzes with a text from Christian, telling me he’s outside.
“Make good choices,” Frankie says in herdon’t be an idiotvoice, and then I’m off, dragging my biggest suitcase down the stairs where Christian waits just by the door, a Santa hat on his head.
“Seriously?” I ask.
“I got one for you too,” he says, tugging it on over my hair. “Although, on second thought, that might be too much red.”
He steps back, gazing at my coat, and just for a second, I feel a hint of an old self-consciousness I’d fought so hard to forget. I get it. It’s a big coat. A very big, very red coat that I found in a charity shop when I was nineteen and fell completely in love with it. It falls mid-thigh and has white wooden buttons and a hood that doesnotfall back at the first hint of a breeze and is perfect even though, yes, I am aware it makes me look a tiny bit ridiculous.
“Did you make that too?” Christian asks.
“No.”
“So you…exchanged money for it.”
“Do you not like my coat, Christian Fitzpatrick?”
“I love your coat,” he says seriously. “It’s very important to me that I’ll be able to see you in a blizzard.”
“You can make fun all you want, but I will be warm and cozy all winter.”
“On our trip to the Arctic?”
I hand him my suitcase. “I have three more bags.”
“You— What?”
I don’t answer, running up the stairs where Frankie hands me the rest of my stuff.
“How much are you bringing?” Christian asks when I come back down. He doesn’t sound annoyed, just starts a game of Tetris with all the luggage in the car.
“A lot,” I say. “I don’t have any clothes at home.” I keep my knitting bag on me, as well as my purse, but by the time I shove my coat into the back and slide into the passenger seat, we’ve used up nearly all the space. And that’s saying something because there is a lot of it.
I run my hand over the beige leather seats, marveling at the feel of them as he gets behind the wheel. “I think I’m attracted to your car.”
“Well, so am I, so that’s just another thing we have in common. Here.” He holds out his hand, offering me a pink paper-wrapped box. “Happy Christmas, Megan.”
“It’s mid-December.”
“Take the damn present.”
I do, peeking inside to see a swirl of vanilla frosting. “You got me a cupcake?”
“I did.” He clicks his seatbelt in while I stick a finger in the buttered sugar. “This is going to be good, okay?” And he sounds so confident, and he looks so confident, that all of my earlier worries vanish from my mind.
“Okay,” I say, as he pulls out onto the street. I tuck the cupcake carefully back into its box, not wanting to get crumbs everywhere. It’s one thing I’m beginning to suspect about Christian. The man is tidy.
“Pick your poison,” he says, gesturing to the dashboard where a screen shows a range of music apps.
“I get to choose?”
“You are the passenger princess, which means you can do whatever you like.”
