Mistletoe Baby (Crescent Cove 9.50)

Until I turned my head and glimpsed the curvy woman standing in front of the café across the street.

Her hair wasn’t pink. Wasn’t even that light. At this distance, I could’ve mistaken her features. But I knew it was her.

Proving yet again I had no business in such an upstanding town, I dashed across the street outside the crosswalk. She didn’t notice me as I jogged up to her, but that gave me time to study her face.

It was definitely her, and she was even more beautiful than I remembered

. Even if now her hair was brown.

I unwound her scarf from around my neck, and her gaze shot to mine. “You lost this.” I lifted the scarf. “And I’ll return it, if you’ll spend the rest of your life with me.”

Three

The air was brisk, and snow snapped in the air. It also swirled around the man I hadn’t been able to get out of my mind for the last day.

Making out under the mistletoe wasn’t exactly in my life plan. Then again, having three jobs kind of killed all ideas of romance. So much so that the kiss seemed like a fuzzy flash in a dream. The kind you wake from with a gasp and can’t quite shake.

Because surely that didn’t happen in real life to a woman like me.

It happened in those Hallmark movies I secretly binge-watched in July and November through December. I couldn’t help it. Those happy hours were a soft paintbrush over my usual lonely Christmases. Add in the Polaroids I took of styles for my look book, and watching those movies was almost like homework in between the moments of longing.

But it wasn’t real.

And neither was getting kissed by a stranger.

Even if this stranger had stunning gray eyes that matched the perpetually overcast sky of my hometown. Intelligence sparked there and made all sorts of crazy thoughts flutter in my brain like the flakes that spun around on the shelf of snow globes that lined my bedroom bookcase.

And because I wanted to step closer to him, I folded my arms over my bulging look book journal against my chest. He was holding my favorite cashmere scarf. The one I’d bought myself for graduation. Okay, so cosmetology school wasn’t exactly like a college graduation, but I had a brand spanking new certificate that said I could cut hair in the state of New York. For me, that was a big thing. It had warranted a rare splurge of spending on myself.

His long, slightly dirty fingers were holding out the scarf to me like a gift. Well, it wasn’t quite dirt on them, but they sure weren’t clean.

I glanced down at those fingers and quickly tucked the urge to snarl at him that he was ruining the fine fabric under the polite smile I pasted on my face. “Forever shouldn’t be offered up so easily for a scrap of cashmere.”

He brought the crimson scarf up to his whiskered chin and slid it down his neck. “It’s a lovely scrap of cashmere, and I wish I could say it still smells like you.” He inhaled and something warm and foreign unfurled in my belly. “Unfortunately, that’s not the case. But I remember how you tasted. And that’s why vanilla is my new favorite flavor until the end of time.”

I narrowed my eyes. “Then go to The Rusty Spoon and have yourself a vanilla milkshake. I highly recommend it.”

A flash of teeth gleamed from his full lips. He had just enough scruff to make my palms itch to touch, and a head of thick hair that the hairdresser flourishing inside of me wanted to get a hold of. But it was the lonely woman inside of me who was the real troublemaker. She wanted to step closer and see if that kiss was just a fluke.

But she was me, and that wasn’t happening.

“Then come with me.”

“What?” I blinked out of the haze that seemed to descend when I was with him. “No. I have to work.”

“Then after work.”

I shook myself out of the stupor. “I don’t know you. I don’t go out with strangers.”

He held out his hand. “Callum MacGregor.”

Of course he had a hot name. Hell, it was a Hallmark movie name. Not a real guy. Not a George or Gary or Greg. Nope, he was a Callum.

I glanced down at his hand, but I didn’t take it. I only hugged my notebook tighter. “Look, I’m flattered. And that kiss was…”

“Amazing. Stupendous. Life-altering.”

I frowned. “It was a kiss.”