An Ex for Christmas (Love Unexpectedly 5)

Mark studies me for a sec. “Huh.”

I set my mug on the coffee table. “So, now which of the stories with a happy ending is your favorite?”

He’s silent for a moment. “Still that one.”

“But she’s with someone else.”

“For now,” he says, releasing my foot and sitting up straight to stretch. It makes his black T-shirt ride up a bit, revealing a tiny strip of toned abs, but I act like a lady and don’t ogle, much.

“I’m just saying,” he continues, “I’d want to see what happens after the end of the movie.”

“Actually, I think there is a—”

“Nope.” He pats my knee. “My holiday-movie-conversation limits have officially been reached.”

He stands and picks up both mugs, glancing out the window. “Snow’s still coming down. What do you think the chances are I can coax your dog to take a piss in the blizzard before bed?”

I glance to where Rigby’s curled up on his dog bed in the corner of the living room. “I think if I put on his leash, I can probably drag him across the lawn on my way home, and bribe him with a treat to pee on the way.”

“You’re going back out in that? You can stay here.”

“I can’t,” I say, with no small measure of regret, because the thought of putting on my boots and snow crap really doesn’t appeal. “I’m too old to be sleeping on people’s couches, especially when my own bed is a thirty-second walk that way,” I say, pointing toward my house.

“?’K. I’ll walk you,” he says, taking the mugs into the kitchen.

I roll my eyes and follow him to the back door, grabbing my boots and beginning to wriggle my feet into them. “Seriously? You’re going to walk me the twenty steps to my back door? What do you think’s going to happen—I’ll get lost and walk into a snowbank?”

“Remember the senior year camping trip when you got lost going to the porta-potties that were fifty feet away? They had to send out a search party.”

Excellent point.

I shrug on my jacket and pull my hair into a messy bun. “So good of you to remind me, best friend. Can I wear these pajamas home? I’ll wash and return them.”

“Now she asks, after she’s already put on her shoes and coat.”

“Thank you,” I say with a toothy grin.

I reach for the door handle, but he’s there, reaching up and shutting the door. “Wait.”

I roll my eyes and wait for him to pull on his own boots. He winds a scarf around his neck and pulls on his coat. The zipper gets caught in the soft fabric of the scarf, and I can see he’s about to go ballistic and just yank on the thing, ruining the zipper or scarf or both, so I bat his hands out of the way.

“Hold still.”

It’s his turn to roll his eyes, but he does as I ask and I gently work the zipper back and forth, pulling slightly on the scarf, until it’s free with only a little roughing up of the fabric.

“There,” I say with satisfaction, tucking the scarf into his jacket and pulling the tab up to his chin.

I prep for some sort of mocking “Thanks, Mom” response, but none comes.

I glance up, and belatedly realize how close I’m standing. Close enough to smell his cologne—or is that simply his soap? Close enough to see the dark prickle of his stubble, close enough to see his chest expand with each breath. Close enough to remember what he felt like on top of me in the snow…

I take a deep breath and step back, pasting a smile on my face. “Shall we?”

He opens the door, putting his weight into it to push past the accumulating pile of snow, before making a sweeping gesture outward, even as all the snow blows inward.

I squint my eyes and step into the storm as Mark calls for the dog, once, twice, five times, until a reluctant Rigby joins us.

The dog apparently knows what’s up, because he immediately takes care of business and then goes bounding across the lawn to my house.