Page 55 of When in December

“I’d better start laughing then,” I said without a hint of humor.

She scoffed. “That would be the day.”

“The day what?”

“Hell would rise, and the snow would suddenly miraculously melt,” she pleasantly informed me.

I snorted, not quite a laugh.

I bent down and swept her up into my arms. She let out a small yelp. It echoed through the trees.

“The phrase iswhenhell freezes over, homemaker.”

“I think Satan wouldn’t mind this moment of creative freedom to describe you.” She held on tight to my neck, but didn’t argue with me as I carried her the rest of the way into the house.

“I’m Satan now?”

“One of his underlings maybe,” she muttered. “This isn’t professional.”

“Too bad.”

twelve

. . .

Poppy

“Areyou going to tell me how to build this thing or not?”

“You’re going to put that piece together there.” I pointed at what I was talking about as I walked Aaron through how to make a bookshelf that looked like it had always been part of the home, step by step.

“Did you ever think that maybe this would’ve been better if you had gotten them from one of those big-box stores?” he asked. “You know they have a piece of paper that tells you what to do and everything. Emergency urgent care run probably not included, however.”

And have the delivery not arrive to this place, like everything else?

I instructed one piece after another as Aaron worked through how exactly I’d managed to put the first one together myself. Time and a lot of energy.

Both of which I didn’t exactly have in truckloads right now.

I was never going to get this place done.

I shook my head. No. I was. I was going to do everything in my power to turn this cabin around into the most idyllic holidaygetaway anyone had ever seen. For the promotion. For Aaron and his family. For me.

No matter what it took, I was going to make it happen, even if my hand still throbbed from whatever disinfectant they’d put on it at the doctor’s office and I’d already suffered through Aaron putting me directly into the shower after we got inside from my embarrassingly ill-timed fall. I couldn’t even find it in me to care. The water was so warm it tingled on the bottom of my feet. When I got out of the shower, a folded stack containing a gray pair of sweatpants I had to roll over a few times to make fit and an oversized gray sweatshirt waited for me on the counter.

Aaron’s attention locked on me when I reentered the living room. His stare roamed over the way my wet hair stuck to the shoulders of the heather-gray cotton sweatshirt. Only then did he meet my eyes, which should’ve let him know then and there that I knew how absurd I looked.

“Make sure you take care of that sweatshirt,” he said. “It’s my favorite.”

Worried I was missing something, I looked down at myself. “It’s plain gray.”

“And?” he questioned.

“I’ll guard it with my life.”

“That’s all I ask.”

That was also why I was forced to have a large napkin unfolded over my chest by the time pizza was miraculously delivered from the roads I wasn’t allowed to drive on.

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