Page 56 of Fake It for Christmas

“Oh, fuck off,” he said, standing up and coming to pull me off of my chair.

I stood up and his arms were wrapped around me a moment later, pulling me as tight as he could and crushing his lips to mine.

As he kissed me, I felt the rest of the night melt away. The rest of the last fewmonthsmelted away, actually.

Sure, a guy’s kiss couldn’t fix my entire life.

But goddamn, it could fix a whole lot.

“I still apologize for my family being over-the-top,” he said in between kisses, nuzzling up against my neck. “God, I can’t believe the shit my mom was saying.”

“I loved it,” I told him. I breathed in the clean scent of his hair, every cell in my body feeling magnetized to him.

He backed up, looking at me with his arms still wrapped around me.

“I can’t believe this is real.”

“Neither can I,” I told him. “It’s magic.”

He melted into my arms, and here at the edge of the yard, I just held him close.

Everything I wanted was right here, I realized.

Maybe I’d lost it all back in the city, but I’d found something real in the middle of Bestens, Tennessee. A guy-next-door in a quirky little saloon who turned out to be the best person I’d ever met.

“So when we walk back in there, we won’t be faking it anymore,” Shane said.

“I’m not sure I was ever faking it, to be honest.”

He leaned in to kiss me. “You definitely weren’t faking it when I made youcome.”

“Hell no, I wasn’t.”

“And I’m going to want to do that a lot, just to warn you,” he told me.

“Threatening me with a good time.”

“Damn right.”

I ran my hand across his hair. “Let’s head back in before you freeze?”

“As a couple,” he said.

“I want to be the best fucking boyfriend you’ve ever had,” I told him, looking him dead in the eye and meaning every word of it.

His blue eyes sparkled and he gave me that killer smile.

“The best Christmas gift I’ve ever gotten.”

13

SHANE

ONE MONTH LATER

“So you’re telling me that cotton candy and Moon Pies were both invented in Tennessee?” Rowen asked.

We were talking to a man in a cowboy hat who had showed up here at the Hard Spot Saloon a little over an hour ago.

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