Page 21 of The Holiday Fail

It wasn’t until the TV went silent that I grew conscious of the fact that Ireallyshould notbe staring at another guy’s lips.

“So…” I cleared my throat and forced my gaze away. “I haven’t forgotten about helping you with your dating life.”

“Yeah…” Levi’s shoulders went stiff. “Listen, I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that. You really don’t have to help me. I’m sure you have other stuff you need to do.”

I did. I had a whole list of things I’d planned during my six-month stay here. Sure, the B&B had been slow recently, but I knew business would pick up when all the winter tourists came running to town.

Henry informed me that we were completely booked out starting next month, and I wanted to have the menu perfected by then.

I’d also talked to Peter about opening the restaurant to the general public, and he was receptive to the idea. But that meant there would be even more on my plate with all the planning, logistics, and marketing to get that plan up and running.

Julie was happy to have more hours, but if we were to be full service to the public, we’d need more than just one waitress. And I needed to give Peter a solid plan showing thisendeavor would work to give him a reason to add another person to the staff.

So I already had my hands full. He was giving me an out, and if I were a smarter person, I would take it.

Well, I never claimed to be smart.

Chapter Ten

LEVI

It had been a few weeks since the night we’d gone to the bar, and when Andy didn’t mention again about being my wingman and helping me navigate dating, I figured he’d forgotten about it, or that I was such a train wreck when I pretended to pick him up that he regretted his decision and tried to sweep it under the rug.

I wouldn’t have blamed him. If I was in his position, I wouldn’t want to teach me how to date either.

That was why, when I’d been asked about it at the last couple of weekly gatherings with Jim and Austin, I hadn’t known what to say. They had invited Andy to join us, but I hadn’t seen him around recently and he never sought me out either.

I didn’t think he was intentionally avoiding me or anything like that. I’d been busy with the B&B, as usual, and he’d had his own duties to take care of. I also heard from my parents that Andy was thinking of a new plan to expand our kitchen service, which probably kept him more than enough busy.

I was a little surprised when he joined me to watch themovie tonight. It’d been a long day cleaning an accident one of the guests had. Their toddler, who they thought was potty trained, wasn’t so potty trained after all, and thought that going in the middle of our vintage rug was a good idea.

And guess who was the lucky person who had to spend all afternoon cleaning that up? Lucky me.

The parents had been very apologetic and offered to reimburse us, so I wasn’t mad at them or anything. Kids were messy and there were bound to be accidents. I understood. But that didn’t mean I enjoyed spending a couple of hours on my hands and knees getting the yellow stain out.

Thankfully, it did come out though. After averythorough washing of the entire thing and drying it in the sun for a few days, it should be as good as new.

After that, all I wanted to do was go home and watch one of my comfort movies. What I didn’t expect was for Andy to join me and have an enjoyable time bantering with him about the genre of the movie.

Which he was catastrophically wrong about.The Nightmare before Christmaswas obviously a Halloween movie.

Nor had I expected him to bring up the date—fake date—we talked about.

“No, let’s do this. I said I would help you, and I want to. I’m off tomorrow, so what do you say we grab dinner tomorrow night? Oh wait, you have the weekly meetup with your friends, right?”

“They’ll understand if I skip a week!” I quickly added. Not that I didn’t want to see my friends, but I could see them anytime, and I really,reallywanted to go on this not-date with Andy.

If tonight was anything to go by, I already knew I enjoyed spending time with him, and his offer to helpme with dating was very tempting because Ididwant to find a meaningful relationship with someone who thought I was worth keeping.

Andy eyed me, that amused glint in his eyes again. I thought he would tease me about how I was overly excited about this dinner. Which, stupid,stupid, Levi. I really needed to learn how to keep my cool.

Instead, he replied with a soft “Okay” that had me feeling almost giddy about tomorrow night’s plan. We both returned to our rooms not long later, but there was no way I could sleep with how much I was looking forward to this.

I’d gone on plenty of dates before, but those dates always had an underline expectation in them. The men I dated knew they’d get me into their beds at the end of the night…and now that I was thinking about it, had I ever dated someone who wanted to actually get to know me and not just the me underneath my clothes?

Man, that thought was depressing as fuck.

Tomorrow would be good for me. I’d have a nice time pretending to date someone who had absolutely no expectations from me besides wanting to help me, and maybe I’d learn a thing or two about him as well.

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