Wrapped Up in Christmas Joy

“Sure of yourself, aren’t you?” he couldn’t resist asking.

She lifted her chin. “Tell me I’m wrong.”

“You’re wrong, Sophie,” he said without hesitation. He put the SUV into park in front of her shop, realizing only after he’d done so that he hadn’t gone to the last business on their list. He’d go by himself later. “Forget whatever it is you think you feel for me, because I’m not interested.”

“You were.”

Now that the car was parked, he held her gaze.

“I got distracted. I never should have let that happen. Not in my line of work.”

Making sure to keep the inner turmoil, the doubts he struggled with hidden, Cole ended what shouldn’t have began

“We aren’t friends. We never have been, and we never will be. The sooner you accept that, the better things will be for all involved, especially me.”

“He didn’t mean it,” Sophie assured Stitches through her open bedroom window.

The cat’s meow in return seemed to sound a little doubtful. Or maybe she was just projecting because, despite her brave claim, she worried that Cole had meant every word.

She’d seen how quickly those walls had gone up, had seen how thick they were, had seen his refusal to let her back in.

“He’s going to miss me,” she said out loud, although her brain’s version went more along the lines of how she was going to miss him.

She glanced over at the quilt she’d yet to finish, neatly folded on her dresser. The quilt she’d put so much appreciation and love into stitching long before she’d admitted she was making it for Cole.

The quilt he didn’t want.

“Meow.”

Sophie glanced up just in time to see the cat make the jump from the windowsill onto the foot of the bed.

“Oh wow,” she breathed softly, almost afraid to say anything, worried she’d scare her guest away. “This is an unexpected surprise.”

The cat meowed again, then, seeming content at the foot of her bed, lay down and watched her.

“Um, yeah, so am I supposed to not move now for the rest of the night for fear of scaring you off?”

Just as she’d scared Cole off.

“Seriously, he’s an ex-Marine. Nothing I do should scare the man,” she mumbled to herself, to the cat, to the wall.

This was pathetic. She was pathetic.

“I guess if it means you staying in here with me, listening to me pour my heart out, then I can do my best to lie here and work on these puzzles the way he never did. Why buy crossword puzzle books, then never do them? Tell me that.”

None of the ones she’d seen in his SUV had contained a single filled-in space.

The cat just blinked.

“Obviously, he can’t even commit to penciling in his answers.”

Sophie piddled with the crossword puzzle book for another ten minutes or so before sitting it on her dresser.

Cole might not be able to commit to even answering a crossword puzzle in print, but Sophie didn’t have that same fear.

Her fears went just as deeply as his, though. Her fear was caring about a man who could never let himself care back because of all the protective walls shielding his heart.

It wasn’t a new fear. When she was a child, it had been her father. Now, it was Cole.