Caught up in the playful moment, I give her an exaggerated puppy dog pout.
Something about the moment causes her gaze to dim with remembered hurt. She straightens her shoulders, looking away from me more purposefully. “Anyway, we still have a lot of work to do, so we’d better get started.”
Chapter Eleven
Callan
The car ride is peaceful, even once it starts to snow. Ordinarily no one riding in the passenger seat of my car—save for Carla—would dare mess with my radio settings, but seeing as Noelle has been underneath me naked in my bed, she has a high enough level of comfort that she fiddles with the controls until she finds Christmas music.
I guess it’s not the worst thing in the world, driving through light fluffy snow while Noelle watches out the window and hums Silver Bells along with the radio.
By the time Michael Bublé starts telling us It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas, we’re in Marymount. Noelle gives me the address for the bookstore I’m taking her to, then gets distracted when she happens upon pictures of the town’s winter festival online.
“Oh my God,” she says suddenly, causing my grip to tighten on the steering wheel. My initial thought is that she spotted something ahead of us on the road, but then she goes on, still looking at her phone. “They have carriage rides around the square! You can literally ride in a one-horse open sleigh. Why doesn’t Oak Grove have a cute winter festival like this?”
Turns out, the bookstore is right in the thick of it, too. We turn into the parking area behind the row of small-town storefronts. There’s an entrance to the bookstore back here, but Noelle is curious about the festival, so we walk around to the front entrance.
From the sidewalk, we can see the winter wonderland set up in the town square. Carolers are singing, there’s an ice skating rink in the center with a big Christmas tree behind it—likely inspired by Rockefeller Center, judging by the looks of it.
There are vendors set up, food trucks and concession stands, booths with carnival games, and Christmas lights twinkling all over the place. Noelle has a hard time tearing her gaze away, but I open the door for her and a bell jingles overhead, nabbing her attention.
“Oh, thank you,” she says absently before making her way inside.
The shop is quaint, a mix of new and used books in separate sections. Noelle stops to inspect the small tabletop tree decorated with miniature book cover ornaments.
Glancing at me over her shoulder, she says, “You need one of these.”
I shake my head. “I don’t do Christmas trees.”
“Scrooge. You have the perfect open space for one in the far corner of your living room, you should put one up there. Even if it’s just a small tabletop one like this. You could set presents around the table instead of under the tree.”
“I’m not getting any, remember?”
“You don’t deserve any, that’s for sure,” she mutters, moving past the Christmas tree and looking around for the lady she spoke to on the phone.
I wander around and look at books while Noelle handles the business side of things. I figure she’ll come find me if she needs help, but I’m sure she can handle it herself.
As I’m perusing the rare and unique books section, I stumble upon a nice red leather-bound edition of A Christmas Carol with gilded pages. It’s signed by the illustrator and underpriced at only $50. They could’ve priced it at double or triple that, if they really wanted to.
Given Noelle’s propensity for calling me Scrooge, I pluck it off the shelf and flip through to check out the illustrations. It’s in like-new condition, probably a collector item no one ever even cracked the spine on.
While I’m checking out the book, I overhear Noelle across the small shop saying, “Oh, excuse me.”
I glance back to see what she’s doing and see her fumbling awkwardly with her cell phone, looking around—for me?—in the wrong direction, then darting down an aisle as if she needs privacy to take her call.
I frown, closing the book and putting it back on the shelf, then I drift nearer to the aisle Noelle is in.
“Hi,” she says brightly. “I’m sorry I missed your texts, I promise I wasn’t blowing you off. I had an afterschool thing and I wasn’t paying attention to my phone.”
That’s a lie. She was on her phone in the car when she looked up the address for this shop and got distracted by Snowfest or whatever the hell it’s called.
“Yeah, we’re still on for tonight. We already dropped off the toy drive stuff at the fire station, we just had to make another stop and we’re there right now, so I should be on my way home within the next half hour. Um…” She pauses. “I’ll probably need like twenty minutes to get ready, so… pick me up at six?”
Pick her up at six?
“Okay, sounds great,” she enthuses. “Yeah, I’m looking forward to it, too. I’ve been wanting to see this movie and I just haven’t had time. Did you see his last one? No, not that one. Oh, you liked that one?” She sounds at once surprised and disappointed. “Yeah, that one wasn’t for me, but I’m excited to—”
I stop being subtle and make my way into the aisle, flicking a glance at Noelle before returning my gaze to the rows of books.