Page 22 of A Merry Mountain Christmas

He twists his mouth to the side. “You could sprain your ankle though.”

I wave him off, consider the sleigh for a second, and decide Olive would be most amused if I sat next to the creepy Santa. I step in beside the mannequin and put an arm around him. “Can you take it like this?” I ask, smiling up at Harry.

He’s gaping at me, not making a move to lift his phone. “Oh. My. God.”

“What?”

“Don’t freak out, Kennedy,” he says slowly.

I half expect him to say our safe words—candy cane—because he’s seen one of the guys or, God forbid, Nana Mayberry up at the cabin, but it takes only a second for me to realize he’s looking to the right of me. I glance over and shriek. The Santa’s hinged mouth has dropped open, and an enormous spider is crawling out of it.

I try to leap out of the sleigh, but my foot gets caught on something, and I go sprawling next to it. My hot chocolate is a casualty of the fall, but thankfully none of the hot liquid spills on me. I catch sight of someone in my peripheral vision, hurrying toward me. Harry.

But when I look up, it’s not Harry. It’s Rowan, his forehead sweaty.

“What happened?” he blurts, crouching next to me.

“I…” But suddenly I can’t get any words out, because he’s so close to me, staring at me with such intensity, like he might chop up the ground if he finds out it tripped me. My lips part, but no words come. His spicy scent is engulfing me and making me stupid.

“Princess,” he says, reaching out to touch my hair. He runs his fingers through it, and my lips part further.

“It’s okay,” Harry says, stepping toward us but keeping a good distance between himself and the sleigh. I honestly can’t blame him. It’s better decision-making than mine. “She wanted to take a photo with the Nightmare Santa, and then its mouth popped open, and it belched out a spider. I’m really having second thoughts about this outing, Rowan. Are you sure this isn’t one of those scenarios where they’re secretly taping people while they torture them? I know most of those movies are fictional, but if people can think it up to put in a movie, then they can just as easily make it happen in real life.”

I’m prepared for Rowan to scoff about princesses and their selfie habits, but instead he looks amused. “You wanted to pose withthat?”

He nods at the Santa with the gaping mouth just as Oliver emerges from the woods. “Everything all right?”

“Nothing some whiskey can’t cure,” Rowan says, reaching for my hand. I let him take it, feeling a tingling awareness as his big hand engulfs mine, even through his work gloves, and he lifts me to my feet as easily as if I were a doll. As soon as I’m on my feet, he hands his cup to me.

“You carried that all the way over here?” I ask, stunned. He got to us so quickly he must have sprinted.

He looks a little embarrassed as he says, “I was about to take a sip when I heard you scream.” He juts it toward my hand again.

“But it’s yours,” I say.

“Worried about backwash?”

Maybe. I’m also keenly aware that his lips were probably pressed to the plastic lid, and mine might go in the same place.

“I didn’t drink any yet,” he says. “I was too busy picking out a tree.”

“You’re sweating,” I say. I have the desire to trace it off his forehead, but that would be demented. If I were to mention such a thing in front of my mother, she’d probably tell me it’s a sign that I’m defective and have been since birth.

“I started chopping it already,” he says, then swears under his breath. “I shouldn’t have left it like that.”

“Well, let’s go finish,” I say, before I can totally think it through.

He glances at Oliver, who’s now standing next to Harry.

The woman from earlier pops her head out the door. “What’s wrong?” she asks, her face drawn. “We can’t afford another accident with one of the axes.”

“An ax accident,” Harry says, his color worsening. “You could call them ax-ccidents.” He shoots me a panicked look, silently communicating that this was another occasion when I should have been close enough to kick him in the shin.

I mouth the word “sorry.”

“Just a spider,” Rowan tells her, and because he can probably see the righteous indignation on my face, he adds, “You know how I am about spiders.”

She chuckles, probably too relieved that we haven’t axed ourselves to really care what we’re up to, and heads back into the cabin.

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