Page 16 of Her Frosty Billionaire
Hope’s eyes glistened.
“I can’t promise I’m going to suddenly love Christmas the way you do. I can’t promise I won’t mess this up a hundred more times. But I want to try. With you.” I took a step closer. “You make me want to feel again. And that terrifies me. But losing you terrifies me more.”
“I don’t want to change you,” she said quietly. “I just want you to let me in.”
“I know. And I will. I am.” I pulled something from my coat pocket—a small wrapped box. “I got you something.”
She looked at it suspiciously. “What is it?”
“Open it.”
She unwrapped it carefully, revealing a hand-painted ornament—a rose gold pine cone with her name written on it in delicate script.
“It’s from that booth over there,” I said, pointing. “The artist charges forty dollars for painted pine cones. And she’s worth every penny.”
She laughed—actually laughed—and wiped at her eyes. “You bought me a tchotchke.”
“I bought you the most beautiful tchotchke I could find.” I touched her face, tilting it up to mine. “I don’t know how to do this, Hope. I don’t know how to be the guy who goes to Christmas markets and bakes cookies and doesn’t see everything as a transaction. But I want to learn. If you’ll teach me.”
“You really went to your mom’s grave?”
“I did. And you know what I realized? Christmas isn’t what took her from me. It was just trying to give us light in the darkness. Like you said.” I brushed my thumb across her cheek. “You’re my light, Hope. And I’ve been living in the dark for too long.”
She was crying now, and I was probably about to cry too, and we were standing in the middle of a Christmas market like something out of a cheesy holiday movie.
And I didn’t care.
“I’m still going to be bad at this,” I warned. “I’m probably going to complain about Christmas music and make cynical comments about consumer spending?—”
“I don’t need you to be perfect,” she interrupted. “I just need you to try.”
“Then I’m trying. Starting now.” I leaned down and kissed her—soft and slow and full of everything I’d been too afraid to say.
When we broke apart, she was smiling through her tears. “So, does this mean you’ll actually go ice skating with me?”
I looked over at the rink, where people were wobbling around on skates, falling, laughing. Everything I usually avoided.
“Yes,” I said. “But I’m warning you—I’m going to fall on my ass.”
“Good.” She grabbed my hand. “I’ll catch you.”
EPILOGUE
NOEL
Hope’s original rose gold pine cones still hung on our tree—not the scraggly little tabletop tree from that first Christmas, but a towering nine-footer that practically swallowed half the penthouse living room. Over the past four years, we’d filled its branches with memories—hand-painted baubles from Prague, fragile glass icicles from Stockholm, wooden angels we’d haggled for in a snow-covered Swiss village.
The penthouse—ourpenthouse now—looked like Christmas had staged a full-scale takeover. Garland draped every surface, lights glittered against the glass, and a ridiculous singing Santa still sat grinning on the mantle. I’d threatened to “accidentally” drop him more times than I could count, but somehow, every year, he found his way back up there—loud, tacky, and impossible not to love.
Because Hope loved him. And somewhere along the way, I’d learned to love him too.
“You’re staring again,” she said from the kitchen doorway, one hand resting on the generous bump beneath her holiday sweater—this one featuring a gingerbread house with actual bells sewn on.
Eight months pregnant. Our first child. A girl, according to the ultrasound we’d gotten last week. I was terrified. And more excited than I’d ever been about anything in my life.
“I’m admiring,” I corrected, setting down my phone.
December was always chaos at Frost & Co. Digital—our busiest season, our most critical quarter. But I’d learned to carve out time. To be present. To remember that profit margins meant nothing if I had no one to share them with. My wife had taught me that.
