Page 39 of Santa's Mistletoe Playbook

“You know how you say you want to get out of your parents’ place?”

Bea finished sketching and looked up as Curtis came back from the store. His arms were full of grocery bags, and snow dotted his curls and the black ski jacket he wore.

That’s my boyfriend. I’m gonna go kiss him.

So she did.

“Wow.” Curtis smacked his lips a few times.

Bea giggled and wiped her lips. Her lips felt puffy, and Curtis’ were bright red. “You were saying?”

“I don’t care what I was saying. The sheets are done. Let’s go make the bed—and then go mess it up again.”

“No!” Bea giggled. “Well. Not now. I have another batch of roof shingles in the oven. Come on, tell me.”

“Oh! Right, you know how you want to move out of your parents’ place?”

“Yeah?”

“Why don’t you move in with me? You’re over here all the time, anyway. And I don’t mean right away! Like, when you’re ready to.”

Bea retrieved the paper she’d been drawing on and held it up. The new gingerbread cabin was not the pretty, quaint design she’d originally intended. This was a cabin that time had forgotten, that the woods had reclaimed. Snow made of sugar would be banked around it. Pine trees made of marzipan with carved almond pine cones stood like sentinels, and caramel cup tree stumps and pot au creme and sablé toadstools led up to the porch.

“Babe! That’s a masterpiece!” Curtis cried and squeezed her, rocking on his toes in his excitement.

Bea looked up at her best friend turned lover. How had she never fully appreciated Curtis for the work of art that he was? “Mm. Takes one to know one,” she purred, kissing his neck. “This has been the best worst day ever. Found out Neal is a scumbag who is just using me and that my best friend is a sex god who not only bakes but is almost as obsessive as I am about it.”

“Win-win?” Curtis asked, pulling a chocolate rose wrapped in gaudy red foil from one shopping bag.

Bea took it and twirled it coquettishly under her nose, fluttering her lashes up at him. “All the wins.”

CHAPTER SIX

“‘Lo?” Bea couldn’t make words come out of her throat.

Probably because it was raw from screaming and other activities that made Curtis’ eyes roll back in his head and whimper in an utterly adorable fashion.

“Hey. How’s it going?”

Bea’s arm felt heavy as she tried to get the phone to settle by her ear. And no wonder. She’d never had a workout like she had in the last twenty-four hours. If she and Curtis weren’t slaving over a hot stove, they were slaving over a hot mattress. Muscles she had never used were burning. Parts of her were throbbing with memories of pleasure, begging for another round, while her thighs told her no way in hell.

Well. Not until after a hot shower and coffee.

“Who is this?”

“Neal! Your partner!”

“Oh. Ohhhh. My partner.” Bea’s eyes snapped open, and she found some indignation-fueled strength. “Hey, I was thinking… This is a lot of work. How about I text you a list of things that you can handle around your work schedule?”

“Um…”

“Thanks, babe.”

“But I don’t have an oven in my dorm?—”

“That sucks. You could ask to use the kitchens in the culinary wing?”

“Maybe, but?—”

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