Page 50 of When Ivy Met Mr. Holiday
“Your family is a little scary,” he admitted with a smile.
“I did warn you.”
“Yes, you did. Well . . . A kiss for good luck, then.” Jack, without hesitation, grabbed my coat and pulled me flush against him.
His lips crashed into mine, urgently, passionately. A low groan rumbled from his chest. And the way his tongue barely skimmed my lips said he wanted more.
And honestly?
So did I.
But then a sane thought hit me. Jack truly was acting out an action movie scene, and I was just his costar in this production.
I tore myself away from him. “Good luck. You’re going to need it.”
Jack seemed a little dazed, as if my kiss had actually affected him. But he shook his head, his cocky attitude snapping back into place.
“Nah, I got this.” He picked up Emma and several snowballs in one effortless swoop and barreled headlong into the fray.
With my own supply of frozen ammunition, I went left and tried to give Jack some cover. Although he was faring well on his own. Shocker. Somehow he dodged, wove, and landed every throw, all while holding a toddler who was egging him on by yelling, “Get ’em, Un-coh Jack! Get ’em!”
Oh, she was calling himuncle. Or at least trying to. Sometimes thoseLs were hard for her. It was the cutest thing ever.
No matter how she said, “uncle,” it stopped me in my tracks. Big mistake.
Paige had entered the fight, coming in from behind the judge and jury she’d made of snow, and she played dirty. Her ice bullets penetrated my coat and made me forget for half a second that I was an evil, lying monster. Now, even my little niece was going to be heartbroken when Jack and I “broke up.”
Maybe he could just be like an honorary uncle. That would work. Right? Please let me be right. I mean, we would still be best friends. Hopefully. And someday, I would give my nieces and nephews a really great uncle. At least, that was the plan.
You know, after I got over my best friend, one of the sexiest men on the planet.
That should be a piece of cake. Except that the cake was too yummy and maybe even the best I’d ever tasted. Oh, gosh, I obviously had not thought through all the complications of this fake relationship. I knew we should never have kissed.
And yet . . . I wanted to again.
Argh! I had problems.
One of those being that I got pelted in the face by a snowball.
“Ouch!” I complained before zinging a return shot at Paige, who looked like a soldier ready for war. She’d even placed a smudge of coal under each eye. It was a littlefrightening. No wonder people were terrified of her in the courtroom.
Paige dodged my snowball by an inch. “Come on, little sister—I taught you better than that.”
That she had. I grinned and launched another snowball her way. Proudly, it was a direct hit to her chest. But the thrill of victory never came.
Paige, unfazed by my snowball throwing skills, pointed toward the forest. “There’s a man in the trees taking pictures,” she shouted.
What the what?
My parents’ closest neighbors were half a mile away.
The chaos immediately stopped as we all turned toward where Paige pointed. And sure enough, there was a man with a large telephoto lens hustling down the tree.
“Stop! My husband and I are lawyers.”
I’m not sure why she thought that was going to stop the man. I was sure it was paparazzo, and I felt ill.
Jack, rushing to my side, only confirmed my suspicions.
