Page 41 of The Mistletoe Trap
“Hey.” Julie placed her hand on the center of his chest, and his traitorous heart threw itself against the mercy of her palm, determined to be the next part of his body to give him away, apparently. “You should be right here with me.”
At those words, his heart stopped entirely. Did she mean…? Even if she did, he couldn’t go there.Shit, shit, shit.
“I’m the one who’ll work out your knots with love and tenderness instead of damp, meaty man hands.”
“Well, you definitely worded it in the worst way possible.” However, her assessment wasn’t entirely untrue. Jules was a lot cuter, too.
“You’re welcome,” she said, flashing him a grin and triggering an internal tornado of complicated emotions: desire and affection, along with nostalgia and a swirl of something new and scary yet exciting.
“Get this. Since I was bored during your practice and Kylo refused to wake up from his nap to entertain me, I asked your mom if there was anything I could do. She told me she’d baked several batches of cut-out cookies and said that I could start frosting them if I wanted to.” Julie bounced on the balls of her feet, her enthusiasm falling on that scary yet exciting scale as well. “So, while she still doesn’t trust me to actually bake the cookies, she’s entrusting the decorating to us.”
“Decorating cookies? Are you sure that’s not another form of punishment?” Gavin wasn’t sure how the task had gone from her tous. “Did she task you with this before or after you told her about the Christmas card?” he asked, and Julie’s sudden fascination with picking a piece of lint off her pants was answer enough. “You didn’t tell her? What if she hasn’t already sent them all?”
“She called me from the nursing home, Gavin. What was I supposed to do? Drop the bomb while she was there spreading Christmas cheer?” That plump lower lip popped out, and if she thought he’d take over the task of telling his mom about the topless woman, she was dead wrong. Thelastthing he wanted to discuss with his parents was anything involving them and nudity.
I guess that’s something to be grateful for. At leasttheyweren’t wearing matching birthday suits.Before that nightmare image could settle in and take hold, he quickly batted it away.
Julie continued to vibrate with energy, as if she’d been charging for hours and needed somewhere to expend the excess. “The point is, decorating cookies will be fun, and it’ll also soften the blow when we tell her about the hula girl.”
“What’s with all this ‘we’ stuff? And how do you know she’s a hula girl?”
“Because, silly.” She gave his chest a little pat, pat, pat. “That turns it into a whole cultural experience. It’s not nearly as embarrassing.”
“Sure, let’s go with that. But don’t think I didn’t notice that you failed to address thewepart.”
“What part of you is wee?” she asked, innocently blinking her big blue eyes, and it jerked the reins he’d used to constrain his thoughts right out of his hands. They didn’t just gutter dive, they rolled around in the muck.
Time to give it back and gauge her reaction. “It’s a little late for us to play doctor, but if you’re curious…?” He hooked a thumb in the waistband of his track pants, and her eyes dipped to his crotch.
Her hand went to the side of her neck as she took a giant step back, knocking into the stool she’d abandoned a couple of minutes ago. The legs wobbled on the tile for a noisy eternity, the clatter adding to the racket in his head.
“Anyway, so the frosting is already made.” She rounded the counter and opened the fridge, searching the contents as if it were her life’s purpose. “All we have to do is add dye, and then we can decorate with candies and sprinkles. One of the perks of eating junk food all the time is that I can have cookies for dinner without it affecting my performance in the lab.”
He made a noncommittalhmmnoise. What else was there to do? Besides down a protein shake so he would have something of substance in his stomach before eating too many cookies. By the time he’d finished blending and drinking his first course, Julie had divided the enormous batch of frosting into several bowls, leaving one white, and coloring the others red, green, and yellow.
Carefully, she selected a tree-shaped cookie off the top of the pile and began covering it in green. Gavin, on the other hand, didn’t even pay attention to shapes. He simply plucked one off the top and grabbed the bowl closest to him—yellow.
“Wow, so you chose to go with the snowman made from snow that’d been peed on?” The adorable nose crinkle he couldn’t stop noticing made it clear how she felt about his decision. “How very appetizing. Did I forget to say that while we can obviously eat a few, your mom wants to deliver some to neighbors?”
“In that case…” Gavin plunked the goopy spoon back in the frosting and reached for the candy bowls. He figured this was more mature than replyingyour mom.With the chocolate chips dotting the yellow, the snowman looked about as appetizing as the bruised, speckled banana that Andy Johnson bet him ten dollars to eat back in sixth grade. Once you’ve had overly ripe, liquified banana, there was no going back. To this day, he still couldn’t eat a banana.
Don’t think about that.
Snapping his eyes to Julie’s, he shoved the entire cookie in his mouth. His cheek popped out on one side, and it was all he could do to chew with his mouth so full—evidently, he’d decided to regress to his childhood self.
That way, he was choosing not to woo her or do anything flirty, and of course there wouldn’t be any kissing.Solid logic, Frost.
“Amateur,” she said, snagging two cookies from the top of the pile. He wasn’t sure she’d picked the right word.Juvenile,harebrained,asinine. All those fit, and through the years, she’d called him those and worse.
She placed a huge dollop on one of the cookies and then smashed the other on the top. She heaped on more white frosting, scooped a handful of mini M&Ms, and placed it atop the cloud-shaped monstrosity. Red and green gummy bears went next, along with mini marshmallows, and then she topped the entire thing with sprinkles.
There was no way she was actually gonna—
She jammed the entire cookie in her mouth, same way he’d done. Icing escaped one corner of her mouth and oozed partway down her chin as she worked to keep the cookie and myriad toppings inside. Her attempt at a laugh as she wiped the frosting off her face with the back of her hand resulted in a shower of cookie crumbs.
“I think I…” Both of Julie’s cheeks popped out, chipmunk-in-the-woods style. “Bit off more than I could chew.”
She giggled at her own joke, and he laughed along with her.
