Page 33 of Italian’s Christmas Acquisition

She had known that this would happen. It was okay that it was happening.

Still, she felt overcome.

“I... The road is going to be cleared today,” she said.

“Oh,” he said. “Then we can go to town.”

“Yes,” she said. “You can leave—what?”

“We can go to town,” he said. “Noelle, I want to see this town. The way that you do.”

It was the nicest, most unexpected thing he could’ve said.

“Okay,” she said.

That was how she found herself bundled up two hours later, and headed down to town with Rocco. She hadn’t really thought this through. She felt raw from having made love to him. She felt overawed by him in the entire situation, in fact.

And she was going to town, where she would run into people that she undoubtedly knew, and she would be forced to look at them in the eye and not announce that she had just had sex with this man.

This man who was now going to leave.

She ignored the lancing pain in her heart.

She had bigger problems on her hands. He was still going to try to take the bed-and-breakfast away from her.

That was a much bigger problem than him leaving. She felt torn in half, and she didn’t want to examine it.

What if she’d played right into his hand? She was more afraid of the sex being an act of manipulation than she was of actually being manipulated by it.

Which maybe didn’t make sense, but she wasn’t sure she was thinking clearly.

He parked his car on the street, and he surprised her by taking her hand when they began to walk down the sidewalk.

“People know me here,” she said.

“And? Do you have an attachment to them seeing you as Mother Mary?”

“No,” she said. “I don’t have an attachment to that at all.”

“Well, that is good. Because you are decidedly no longer virginal.”

“But people will talk,” she said.

“And you care about that?”

She thought about it. No. Not really. But she was predictable. She’d always been Noelle Holiday of Holiday House and she’d never dated any men around town. So no one...thought of her like that really.

So nobody would see this coming. And they wouldn’t be able to figure out what exactly it meant. She liked that.

Why not? Why not revel in walking down the street with the most handsome man she had ever seen.

So she did. From shop to shop. She took him to the ice skating rink that was put over the top of the parking lot every year in the center of town. They didn’t skate, but they watched people. She took him to the town Christmas tree, and through any number of shops that boasted the best souvenirs in town. He declined to buy any. Not even the taxidermist raccoon holding a banjo. Which, if she were a billionaire, she probably would have bought. Because it was hilarious.

Everywhere they went, people said hi to her. And to him. They looked at them with curiosity, and she simply smiled.

Then they went into Sweet Melody, and she walked to the counter with him smiling, and ordered them both hot chocolate.

“Hi, Noelle,” Melody said, her eyebrows rising up to her hairline.

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