Page 19 of A Taste of Christmas Magic

You’d have thought she’d burst out of a cake in pasties and a G-string and started rapping an Ice Spice song.

Dead silence and unnerving stares. A shiver bloomed at the base of Chloe’s spine and spread to the tips of her toes and fingertips. Even her lips felt chilled.

“How very unusual,” Mrs. Parker Louisa Smith said. She had grown up alongside the Maye sisters and Chloe and now lived on her family’s town estate with her husband and three young children. “And quite shocking to spring it on us with no warning.”

Her hard gaze pinned Jessica. “Don’t tell me your hobby garden will be on the feast’s map this year. That’s more than a stroll—the…what was it called…farm, I believe is five miles out of town.”

Jessica, sipping her own created spicy chai blend, stirred in the chair, and Chloe could practically hear her claws unsheathe.

“Ahhhh, not exactly,” Chloe hedged, not wanting to insult Jessica—Did she want to be on the feast’s map?—“but Jessica is—”

“Surely you’re not thinking of cooking anything, Chloe,” Parker interrupted sweetly. “Perhaps a punch. I’m sure you could manage a punch. My Reese, who’s seven…”

And then it started. A cacophony of comments about needing to rearrange the order of the feast. The menus. The map. The printer. She heard “Dear God, not Chloe, bless her heart” several times. Everyone was talking at once, and Chloe knew she had to gain control before Grandma Millie felt the need to launch a rescue. She was nearing twenty-seven. She was a teacher. A choir director.

Shame coated her throat. She should have let Jessica take the feast. Or Sarah. Meghan would have hated doing it, but any of them would have skillfully risen to the challenge. All the Mayes would have.

Except me.

She couldn’t help but shoot a desperate look at Jessica, who pursed her lips and put two fingers to her lips as if to whistle. She winked, and Chloe felt a ping of humor.

“Good afternoon, ladies.”

Rustin Wildish strode into the room, a platter of beautiful somethings in his hands. And oh God it smelled amazing. Her mouth watered over the man and the food. She ate him up with her gaze, while Jessica, still sitting, paled, her deep green eyes widened, and she slowly stood.

Rustin knew how to make an entrance. He stood, feet slightly apart, floor-to-ceiling windows of the parlor at his back framing him in a halo of light like some otherworldly creature entering through a portal.

He wore black jeans. Black boots with chunky soles making him even taller. A black T-shirt that stretched over his broad shoulders and sinfully defined chest and hinted at abs that made Chloe’s knees weak. Black leather bomber jacket unzipped. His hair was unbound and flowed to kiss his shoulders in waves. His charcoal eyes appeared to be black and snapping with barely repressed emotion. His whole aura snapped and crackled like the moment before lightning hit. Chloe felt the sizzle of him on her skin.

The shock and tension clashed and would have been funny if she’d had any head space to notice anything except how Rustin looked as he dominated the elegant and feminine parlor.

“Sorry, I’m a bit late, Chloe.” He speared her with a look. “Your poppers have popped.”

His smile dazzled as she’d rarely seen it, and she gulped. Feeling behind herself for a chair and not finding one, she squished herself next to the immobile Jessica.

“R-Rustin Wildish?” Parker struggled to find her voice. “How dare…what…” She sucked in a breath. “Whatever areyoudoing here?” Her voice trailed off.

The silence pulsed.

“What are you doing back in Belmont?” Kitty Oxford, whose family had been in town almost as long as the Mayes, snapped. “And why interrupt our very important meeting?”

“Not interrupting.” Rustin’s smile went a bit feral, and Chloe’s tummy heated.

“I’m opening a restaurant, The Wild Side. It’ll be the first and last stop on the Movable Feast,” he said to the stunned crowd.

Chloe bounced on her toes.

Yes.

“Popper anyone?” she called out, and swept the tray out of his hands, noting the cocktail napkins said, OLIVE ME. For some hosts, the napkins would have been cutesy. Chloe felt like Rustin was symbolically flipping the gathered Belmont society leaders a wink and a middle finger.

“I insist,” she said when Parker demurred the offered appetizer.

*

Rustin returned toMiss Millie’s kitchen feeling like he’d run a marathon barefoot and with the flu, but he was still standing. He hadn’t turned to stone and then smoked to ash after seeing Jessica.

No black despair dragged him under. No fury burned through his brain.

---