Window Shopping

Yeah.

I have.

Last Christmas Eve was the start of Stella Schmidt giving her whole self to life and love. I stayed with Aiden while helping Nicole find employment at a catering company. She lived in my uncle’s place for about two months before he broke up with his current girlfriend and decided to return, so we found Nicole a room to rent in a three-bedroom apartment in Astoria. She shares it with two other girls our age and they’ve become good friends. We still meet for dinner once a month and talk on the phone, but we’re individuals. She has her own life now and I have mine. Our relationship is a lot healthier and stronger because of it.

As far as my living situation…once I moved in with Aiden so Nicole could make use of my uncle’s apartment, I sort of never left.

He made it way too difficult.

For one, he redecorated little by little. Stella touches, he called them. He kept the throwback Mad Men vibe of his apartment, but it slowly became a bachelor and bachelorette pad. His coffee table was replaced by an ornate vintage trunk. He had an accent wall painted a black metallic color. He brought home the retro dress cage from my first Vivant window and positioned it in the corner of our bedroom…and that’s when I realized I’d started calling it our bedroom. Our apartment. He’d bamboozled me. Redecorated without actually mentioning he was making any changes. But one day I looked around and realized what he’d done.

“What are you thinking about?” Aiden asks me now, the pad of his thumb coasting across my bottom lip.

“I’m thinking about home.” I turn my head and kiss his wrist. “Our home in New York.”

His eyes go soft, searching, the way they do when he’s feeling romantic. So pretty much constantly. “What about it, sweetheart?”

I narrow my eyes at him, but I’m smiling. “How you Stella-fied it.”

The muscles shift in his throat. “Once I got you, I couldn’t let you leave.”

My heart starts to chug. “I was never going to leave.”

We reach for the collar of each other’s winter coats at the same time, pulling eagerly, our mouths locking over the center console. I can taste the hot chocolate we drank before entering Pennsylvania on his tongue, as if he needs any additional help being delicious. His big fingers spear into my hair and I unhook my seatbelt with trembling fingers, no idea what I’m intending, only knowing I need to get closer to him. Always closer.

“There was a motel a mile back—“

“I saw it,” he growls. We dive back into the kiss, my upper half leaning over the console now, his left hand leaving my hair to tease my nipples into points through my sweater, pinching them lightly and tugging. “God, Stella…I need you.”

Here’s the thing. Christmas season at Vivant was extra-spectacularly busy this year. We worked without cease from Thanksgiving through Christmas Eve—which was yesterday—and had very little couple time in the home stretch. Last night was the annual staff party, we passed out on the couch afterwards. Then this morning we had to wake up bright and early to drive to Pennsylvania to my parents’ house for brunch.

To put it mildly, we’re hornier than jackrabbits.

I’m strongly considering climbing onto his lap on this public road to get some relief.

Breaking the kiss, I raise an eyebrow at him. “Should we…”

Simultaneously, we glance at the dashboard clock. Eleven forty-nine.

“We told them we’d be there at noon,” Aiden groans, his head falling back against the driver’s seat. “And we’ve got another ten minutes to drive.”

With a whiny sound I’m not proud of, I drop back into my seat and reconnect the seatbelt. “Motel on the way back?”

“We might need to keep the room for a few days.” Bravely, Aiden squares his shoulders and starts the car engine again. “I guess we should be happy the store broke sales records this year. Your windows, Stella…” A breath puffs out of him as he pulls back onto the road. “You outdid yourself and I didn’t think that was possible after the summer designs.”

Spinning pastel pinwheels and glowing Chinese lanterns dance through my mind, but when I see the turnoff for my childhood street up ahead, the rush of good memories ends abruptly and my belly flops over. “Aiden, I’m really not sure about this.”

He reaches over and takes my hand, bringing it to his mouth. “I am.” He kisses my knuckles, brushing his lips sideways over my diamond engagement ring. “I’m damn sure. You’ve spent the last year learning how to be proud of yourself, Stella. Now they get a turn. They get to see who you’ve been all along. The woman I’d crawl across the Sahara to marry in March.” He squeezes my hand, saying in a softer tone, “We want them there when you walk down the aisle. Let’s start working toward that now, okay?”