Page 10 of The Bright Side of Christmas
“It’s the town’s tradition. You’re in the town, so it’s now your tradition, I would think,” Colton adds. When I look at him, there’s an entertained look on his face, and he’s clearly enjoying my irritation.
This entire town is wack.
“That’s not how that works,” I say.
Someone calls Wren’s name from the table she came from, and she stands, giving them aone-secondgesture, before turning back to me.
“Well, I’m taking it upon myself to ensure that you have holiday spirit this year.”
“You can’t make me decorate my house, Wren.”
She stares at me, taking me in for a moment before a grin spreads across her face. “I can’t?”
It’s less of a question and more of a challenge, something that settles somewhere deep in me. Not in a bad way, either. That’s when I come to the complete realization I’m in for it with Wren King. She is going to push my every button in her mission to get her way.
If that hadn’t already been obvious, I might be surprised. But I’m not.
What surprises me is that I might just let her.
“No, you can’t.”
“Hmm. Well, I guess we’ll see, won’t we?” And then she walks off, pitcher in hand, and I tell myself not to stare at her ass as she does, at the way the edges of her sweet dress sway with each step across the backs of her thighs.
I realize I completely lost the battle when Colt starts laughing loudly, snapping my attention back to him. He’s shaking his head at me with a wide grin.
“Good luck with that, man.”
I flip him off but don’t argue.
How can I, really?
Instead, I watch her as she pours drinks for her friends, then sits in front of an empty glass, smiling and nodding to whatever they’re saying.
“Does she do that a lot?” I ask without really thinking.
“What?”
“Ignore what she wants for the greater good?”
“Oh, yeah. She’s best friends with my little sister, and the two of them couldn’t be more different. Hallie? That girl will knock over any and everyone to get what she wants. But Wren wants everyone around her to be happy, even if it means she never gets what she wants. Youngest of three, but you’d think she was the responsible, self-sacrificing oldest sister instead.”
I turn back around, staring at my half-empty glass and letting his words sink in. A part of me doesn’t like that—Wren never getting what she wants.
A sweet, gorgeous woman like that should always get her way. She has to know that if she just smiles and flips her hair, she could get anything she wanted. It’s the playbook she’s been using on me, after all.
Seemingly unable to control myself, I glance over my shoulder, catching one of the women she’s with handing her a glass of beer. Wren lifts her hands and shakes her head, but her friend must insist, so she accepts it with a small nod. Although she sets the glass before her, she doesn’t take a sip.
“What does she drink?” I ask, continuing to watch the table like a fucking creep.
“What?”
I turn back to him. “What does she normally drink? You said she’s not gonna drink the beer, right?” He takes me in for a long moment before he looks at me, assessing in a way I don’t necessarily like.
“Anything sweet.”Of course, the woman who is all sugar plums and fairy lights likes sweet drinks. “Though it’s late and she’s volunteering bright and early tomorrow, so she probably won’t even have a real drink tonight. If she weren’t humoring her friends like she is now, she’d probably have ordered a Shirley Temple. But she won’t want anyone to feel bad for getting beer, so she’ll just nurse that for the next hour before she leaves.”
A fucking Shirley Temple.
I take her in, then, in a way I haven’t let myself yet. She’s in a white turtleneck with a burgundy dress over top, a pair of translucent, dark tights covering her legs, and little boots on her feet that are hooked into the railing of the stool she’s sitting on. As she always seems to do, she finished the outfit with a matching burgundy bow in her hair, tying back her loose chocolate brown curls that float down to the center of her back.
