Page 29 of Mishaps and Mistletoe

“Josie—I, uh, I can’t read this.”

Her chin wobbled and a veil of tears shielded her rounded eyes.

“I can’t, either.”

ChapterNine

She’d tried. So hard. When she’d gotten out the recipe cards earlier, she’d flung them on the counter and quickly backed away like they were on fire. And now, her eyes burned hot with the threat of oncoming tears. The irony wasn’t lost on her.

“This is Courtney’s handwriting, isn’t it?” Kevin asked. His features softened like the butter she’d sat on the counter moments ago, and before she knew it, he swallowed her in a hug a hundred times more comforting than the weighted blanket she slept with each night.

“I have a confession: I can’t bake. Courtney was always in charge of the cookies—I just helped. I was her ‘shoo chef.’”

“Don’t you mean ‘sous chef’?”

A watery giggle filled the tiny kitchen. “No. She called me that because I was always in charge of the time. You know—checking to make sure the cookies didn’t burn. She’d put a batch in and start on the next. The only thing I had to do was keep everything from burning. And without fail, every year, we lost a batch, and I’d be ‘shooing’ smoke out of the kitchen to keep the smoke alarms from going off. I thought it was apparent I was a kitchen failure when I told you the slash-and-burn cookie story. But you still wanted to bake with me.”

He looked down at her and brushed a piece of hair that had escaped her messy bun off her face. The featherlight touch of his fingers blazed a trail of fire down her neck, burning right down to the center of her chest. “Of course, I wanted to bake with you.” He stepped back and rubbed his hands up and down her upper arms. “I’d do anything with you.”

She looked down at the ground.Weak knees, don’t fail me now.“I’m such a mess,” she said with a sniffle.

“I don’t mind. Besides, I kinda enjoy getting messy with you.”

Her eyes trailed up his chest, past his parted lips, and into his deep, espresso eyes. Eyes that, like her favorite warm beverage, both comforted and made her feel alive. “Do you remember that last day we had together on the beach? When I couldn’t go in the water, and how I had to sit on a towel and stay out of the sun?” Against her father’s wishes, she’d worn a pair of “booty shorts” to dinner the night before. Unbeknownst to her, a dime had fallen out of her purse and landed on her seat in the car. After a couple hours in the restaurant, it had gotten mighty hot. So hot, in fact, that when Josie had sat down, the dime she’d dropped branded her skin, leaving the imprint of the back of the coin on the back of her leg—just below her butt.

Kevin narrowed his eyes. “Yeah. You’d gotten burnt and your mom didn’t want you to get it wet or anything so it wouldn’t get infected.”

It was kind of him to leave out the part where her burn had blistered up so badly, she couldn’t even sit on that part of her leg. “We were supposed to go surfing that day. You were so excited to teach me.”

“Yeah.” He drew out the word as he rubbed his chin, obviously not following why she’d brought this up.

“When I told you what had happened and how I couldn’t go surfing, you asked first if I was okay and then said, ‘Let’s go get some ice cream.’” He’d also carried her piggyback to the shop, even though she insisted it didn’t hurt to walk. “You didn’t laugh at me, didn’t make fun of me. And believe me, literally everyone who’s ever heard this story reacted like it was the funniest thing they’d ever heard. But you didn’t even smile. You weren’t even disappointed that we couldn’t go surfing.”

“I told you—I just like being around you, Josie. And you could never disappoint me. I’m an expert in disappointment, remember?” He said the last part with a chuckle, but the slump in his shoulders and the way his arms hung limp at his sides told her he thought that the last part was anything but funny.

“That woman who said that to you—if I could, I’d smack her around a bit for saying that to you. In a heartbeat.”

He hid his hands in his pockets and shrugged. “My mom’s no longer alive, so you’ll have to find another way to defend my honor.”

She blinked slowly, her mind failing to process what he’d said. He’d floated it into the air like a casual comment, but the weight of it rested on Josie’s chest, making it harder and harder for her to breathe. “Your mom called you a disappointment?” she whispered.

“She did little well, but she was a pro at speaking her mind.”

Josie shook her head. “But you must know it’s not true.”

“I didn’t. Not for a while, anyway. It took me a long time to understand many of the things she said to me came from a place of hurt. Didn’t mean I could easily forget them, though.” The tips of his ears turned as red as the apron he wore. “Josie, I’m dyslexic. That’s why I couldn’t read the recipe card. That’s also why I ordered what you did at the lodge the other night, and why I couldn’t read that bossy child’s Christmas list when I played Santa—thank you for not making a big deal about that, by the way.”

“Of course.” The memories of the past few weeks came into view, and she watched the replay from a new perspective. “Why didn’t you ask me to help? You had to know I would.”

“Embarrassment. Pride. Don’t get me wrong—I can read. I just don’t like being put on the spot. It adds pressure, and the pressure doesn’t help things—something I learned early on.” His eyes dropped to the floor. “My mom was a non-reader. She could have learned, but she wouldn’t. That responsibility rested on my shoulders. Overdue bill notices and other important mail came to our house, and it was my job to go to school and learn how to read so I could make sense of everything. Except I wasn’t learning as quickly as my classmates. I’ll never forget the day the power company shut off our electricity. She said if I hadn’t been so stupid, it wouldn’t have happened. That was the day she called me a disappointment.”

“You were just a child,” she whispered. Her nails bit into her palms, and she wouldn’t have been surprised to see blood when she unclenched her hands. “You arenota disappointment, Kevin McCann. If your value as a human being was based solely on one skill, then your mother was the disappointment because she totally failed you as a mother.” She took a slow breath to calm herself and reached for Kevin’s hand. His warm fingers squeezed hers. “For heaven’s sake, you told me you had to wake your own self up for school—in first grade! You were taking on grownup responsibilities when you were six.”

“She was sick. Addiction is an illness. I only did what I had to do.”

“You did. And I hate that you missed out on your childhood—and that what she said to you carried into your adult life. You’re amazing. That’s what you should remember.”

He reached for her other hand, and a slow smile spread across his face. “I happen to think you’re amazing.” His voice was warm, a comforting cup of tea that melted her insides and soothed the anger that bubbled moments ago. “I’ve never told that part of my past to anyone. In fact, I can count on one hand the number of people who even know I’m dyslexic.” He stepped forward, their toes touching at the proximity. His eyes hesitated on her lips, and the urge to kiss him pounded inside her. In this moment, every reason she’d wanted to keep him at arm’s length crumbled like Sandford the Sandman when the tide rolled in.

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