Page 8 of A Little Merry

“Yep. Thanks again,” he said and jogged across the street to the square where folks were busy blowing the snow away from the paths and getting things set up for tomorrow.

I’d be helping Ethan very soon, but first coffee and a breakfast burrito.

I had a couple million followers for my fitness videos. It had taken me a few years to build up a strong following of subscribers, and I appreciated every single one of them. No way would I ever do anything to jeopardize what I worked so hard to create. I tried to give my followers new information on a weekly basis. If it wasn’t some fun new exercise, it was a simple technique to help build strength and muscle.

When I combined the videos with my private Zoom workouts and my fitness mindset workshops, I made a damn good living, and I never had to leave home. Well… hardly ever. Sometimes I’d be on a stage with another mindset speaker, and those were both lucrative and fun. I loved meeting the folks who followedme, along with finding new followers. Mostly, I made my videos from either the rooftop or from my well-equipped apartment.

Life was good… at least that part of my life.

Other things… like any kind of a love and sex life… not so much. It had been so long since I’d had sex with a woman that I sometimes wondered if I even remembered how.

Which brought me back to that fucking kiss.

So, yes, it was a great kiss. And amazing kiss. Epic, even. One I hadn’t expected, but she was way too cheery for my tastes. I liked a more serious woman. A woman who knew how life could turn to shit on a dime. Not someone who loved a holiday I had come to dread. When I was a kid, one of Cricket’s many floods not only destroyed everything my family owned, including our house, three days before Christmas, but it separated us from the time I was ten until I was sixteen. My sister went to live with my father’s parents three thousand miles away, while I went to live with my uncle and aunt who never celebrated Christmas, and my older brother went away to school, then enlisted in the Army as soon as he turned eighteen. My parents ended up getting a divorce. We never recovered, and even though we tried to celebrate the holiday when I turned eighteen, my sister was twenty, and my brother was twenty-eight and home from Iraq for the holidays, none of us really tried. My brother was killed in a battle not long after that.

Nothing was ever right after he died. We all just drifted apart, with barely a connection. Even when our mom died last year, my sister didn’t even make it to the funeral. Said she couldn’t handle the sadness.

So, no, I’m not too fond of the holiday or the music that goes with it.

Okay, so maybe Merry kissed way better than I’d expected, but when you haven’t been kissed in a while, almost any kiss will do. And Merry’s joy seemed genuine, like all this happy shittruly was part of her character, unlike my sister or father’s total facade.

Still, I wasn’t about to go back to that little kid who believed in all the magic that Christmas had to offer. I was all grown up now and knew better.

No way was I going anywhere near that kind of hurt ever again. I’d buried all that Christmas bullshit a long time ago and had no intention of ever digging it back up.

“Hey, Lucas,” Merry said, causing my insides to melt, as she looked up from a table in the front of the place.

What the fuck?

“Yeah, hi,” I said. I couldn’t be rude, even though I wanted to be. “How’s it going?”

“Good. Real good. Thanks. What’s going on in the square today?” she asked, gazing out from the shop windows.

Why did she have to be so pretty and so bubbly? Couldn’t she be pretty and a complete grump? Now that would be my kind of woman, but this one… hell, she was probably a good person on the inside as well.

A total red flag that I should grab my coffee and get out of here.

“Setting up for the Christmas Art Festival tomorrow,” I answered, not wanting to engage in conversation with her. It was enough that I’d had a reaction in seeing her this morning. I didn’t need to get mired in it.

“There’s an art festival?”

“Yeah,” I said as Connor placed my coffee on the counter, nodding my way, then smirking. I’d already told him and Ethan that I’d had a reaction to this Christmas elf. Connor thought it was funny, despite my telling him it pained me to even think about her. “In the town square across the street.”

I was ready to head on out to help Ethan with getting his booth up when she stopped me. “Do you know where I couldvolunteer to help? I’m not working anywhere yet, and this might be a way for me to get to meet some of the shopkeepers. Might help me get a job.”

Oh fuck!

Why did she have to look so damn cute? I wanted to tell her that no one needed her help. No one wanted her help. That she should just fuck off.

But those sweet eyes and those pouty lips told me I couldn’t be that mean.

Or could I?

“Ah… Um… There’s no—” Her expression grew even sadder. “Yeah. Right. Help you. Look, Ethan and I could use an extra set of hands, if you’re up to helping us get his booth up, then showcasing his artwork tomorrow morning. The guy who works here was supposed to help us, but he came down with a nasty cold, so he’s down for a few days, along with Katy, the girl who usually works the counter. But I should warn you, it’s hard work.”

I had no idea why all that crap came out of me. Why I even asked her. Did I have rocks for brains or what? I hoped like hell she’d ignore my ask and go on about her happy day doing… whatever she liked to do. Like tormenting some of the other folks of Cricket.

She sipped from her extra-large cup like her life depended on it. Then she said, “I know all about erecting booths like that. I used to help in college whenever we had an event on the lawn. I love to build things. My dad was a builder and when I was little, he’d take me to his site all the time. I could build a house if I had to.”

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