Page 19 of The Holiday Fail

“No. Why would you think that?”

“I don’t know.” Levi shrugged. “You just seemdifferentsuddenly.”

Ifeltdifferent.

I shouldn’t be feeling all confused by a man, one who was basically my boss to boot. Idefinitelyshouldn’t be imagining licking those damn dimples whenever he smiled all innocently at me. Or the way he pursed his lips when he wanted to argue back, making his already pouty lips look even more pouty, moresuckable.

Yeah, those were things we weren’t thinking about anymore.

“No, you didn’t. It’s getting late, and I think we’ve accomplished what we set out to do tonight,” I said, tucking my hands into my pocket.

“We did?”

His confused expression had me laughing, which only made him frown. I swung an arm around him and pulled him toward the parking lot in the back.

“Yeah. We learned that you, my friend, need a whole refresh on this whole dating business. So that’s where we’ll start. With a date.”

He looked conflicted, almost as if he wasn’t sure if this was a good idea or not.

Well, me neither buddy.

I didn’t come here to give dating lessons to my new boss. I had more important matters to focus on, but Levi was so earnest in his efforts to find a boyfriend, making it almost impossible to leave him to his own devices.

It wasn’t until we settled in the car that Levi spoke. “Thanks. For agreeing to help me, I mean,” he said, his voice soft and almostvulnerable.

AndthatI didn’t do.

So I ruffled his hair, purely to break the moment. Itdefinitely wasn’t because I liked the way his soft hair tickled my hand. Definitely not.

“I figured since I already helped you twice, I should keep that trend going.”

He frowned. “I thought we weren’t going to bring up that first night again.”

I chuckled and ruffled his hair again. Levi smiled too, only wide enough for one of his dimples to peek through. At least that meant he wasn’t actually pissed about me bringing up our first encounter.

Looking away, I watched the dark shadows outside the window the entire drive home. That was better than wondering just how deep I could stick my tongue into his dimple.

Was having a dimple fetish a thing? Because,damn, I never knew they were so sexy.

We said our goodnights when we got back to his place. Levi lived in a small, two-bedroom cabin that was about a ten-minute walk from the B&B. It was a cozy place surrounded by nothing but nature.

Maybe being out here was the reason he thought it was okay to ask a stranger out on a hike. He obviously didn’t watch enough horror movies.

Or maybe he was right, and my judgment had been too clouded from growing up in New York, and everywhere else had a more relaxed stance on going out with strangers?

It was true people here were nicer—even the tourists at the B&B.

There was no yelling in the kitchen for havingtoo muchortoo littlesauce. Nobody complained about their food being too hot or not having an Acai Bowl on the menu because it’sa New York staple.

Not in an Asian Fusion restaurant, it wasn’t!

Instead, I was getting ‘compliments to the chef’—somethingthat rarely happened in the previous restaurants I’d worked at. People heretrustedme with their food. They trusted the menu I put together and took their time to genuinely enjoy the meal.

There was none of that in-and-out attitude here. It was a slower pace I was starting to get behind.

Sure, the volume of customers was vastly different from what I was used to in the city. That was to be expected, with this being a small B&B, and most people were out exploring the little town for lunch. But that just meant I could give special attention to the people I was serving.

And, whenever I had a lull in customers, I had time to try out a new cooking technique I’d learned or a recipe that I’d been wanting to test, which usually went for the staff meals.

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