Page 41 of Mistletoe Face Off

Of all the ways I like to spend my afternoons before a game, trying to put together a gingerbread house using only edible ingredients—and not the super glue and tape I suggested when we started—isn't exactly at the top of my list.

Or evenonmy list.

But despite the fact I’m not made for this kind of fiddly stuff, my task is made one hundred percent better by the fact I have Holly as my partner.

Holly and her pretty eyes and gorgeous smile.

Holly with her quick wit and feistiness.

Holly who seemed so moved by the way I helped her daughter get on the ice earlier this week.

In fact, I would go so far as to say that’s the best version of her I’ve seen so far. Heartfelt. The way she looked at me, her eyes brimming with tears, her face aglow with love for her daughter and what I’d helped her overcome? Yeah, that’s the way I want Holly to look at me always, and not just because I’m helping her cute kid overcome her fear of skating—although it gave me so much genuine satisfaction to help her conquer her anxieties. But because of the way she feels aboutme.

Yeah, I know, I’m getting way ahead of myself. We’ve only spent a handful of hours together, and we were arguing—fake and real—for half of those

But you know that old saying, when you know you know? Well, when it comes to Holly Coleman, it’s simple. I know.

Sure, I had a crush on her back in high school, and the fact she had a crush on me at the same time without me knowing is one of life’s sweet ironies. But who knows? If we’d been honest with our feelings for one another back then we would probably have broken up when we went off to college or tried long distance or whatever. Life could have so easily gotten in the way.

Meeting now, getting to know the grown up Holly, the woman, the journalist, and the mom, means we get a fresh shot. And I for one am not going to waste it. Not when I’ve started to get feelings for her, feelings I’ve not had for a woman in a long, long time.

If ever.

I’d even go so far as to say this whole thing with Holly is totally new territory for me. But I know one thing for sure. I’m not about to let this beautiful, smart, sexy woman at my side slip between my fingers.

I want to make Holly Coleman mine. End of story.

Just how I’m going to go about that is a conundrum I’m prepared to unravel.

Once again we're at one of the team’s Christmas events, this time raising money to get books in schools in some of the lower socioeconomic areas in the city. When Abby Sinclair, our team’s new PR person, turned up here with a list of which team member was paired with which journalist or local figure, I made sure to ask her to switch so that I would be Holly’s partner.

“Totally for the staged argument we're going to have later,” I had assured her in a bald faced lie. Truth is, I just want to be near Holly.

But I wasn't about to tell Abby that.

Abby had done me a solid and put me and Holly together, taking the guy who was going to be my partner—a broadcaster from a local TV channel—and pairing me with the woman I'm finding increasingly hard to get out of my head.

“Thanks, Abby. I owe you one,” I’d said.

“I’ll remember that,” she had replied, her eyes bright.

The industrial-sized ovens of the commercial kitchen in downtown Chicago fill the air with the delicious aroma of gingerbread and sugar as we work side by side. I can't help but steal glances at Holly as she leans over our gingerbread house, her brow furrowed adorably in concentration.

“You’ve done this before,” I comment as her nimble fingers guide the frosting piping bag with surgeon-like precision, forming a pretty decent line of frosting along the roof's edge.

But it’s too little, too late for our gingerbread house.

Straight frosted lines on a skewed house that looks like it could topple if anyone so much as sneezed beside it is a little like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic after the iceberg had met its hull. Like the Titanic, our house is doomed, and really, I’m surprised it’s still upright at this point.

A loose strand of Holly’s chestnut hair falls across her face, and I’ve got to resist the urge to smooth it behind her ear. Not only are we in public, but it’s too early for that sort of intimacy between us. That said, if things go in the direction they’ve already begun to, I hope to get in that ballpark before too long.

Yeah, I’ve got a fat crush on my gingerbread house teammate, and I’m not afraid to admit it.

I mean, all I’ve got to do is look at Holly and my belly goes all kinds of crazy. Of course I’m attracted to her—she’s one sexy woman, that’s for sure—but it’s more than just skin deep with her. Sure, I know we've only spent a handful of days together. Heck, I only met her just over two weeks ago. Or re-met her, if that’s a thing. But there's something different about her, different from the women I usually meet. She's got an indefinable quality, like a spark, that I find totally irresistible.

Then there’s the banter in our arguments. I've never met anyone who can match me quip for quip like Holly, and then some. It's like mental hockey, and dang, has she got some seriously smooth moves.

There's something about the way her eyes light up when she's about to deliver a particularly scathing comeback. It's like watching fireworks, a combination of beauty and danger, and I find I cannot look away. I never thought I'd look forward to arguing with someone, but I’m counting the hours until our next “fight.”

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