Page 1 of A Holly Jilly Christmas

CHAPTER 1

If my life were anything like the romantic holiday movies made by the studio I work for, this mini road trip would look a whole heck of a lot different.

Take the scowling man in the passenger seat, for example. He wouldn’t be glued to his phone, completely ignoring me. No, we would be exchanging playful, flirty banter while Christmas music played softly in the background and snow swirled outside my car.

He’d also have a secret crush on me. One to match the secret crush I’ve harbored on him since my first day at Brightmark Studios when I bumped into him on the elevator.

That moment had all the makings of a meet cute. When I say I bumped into him—I mean literally. I walked on the elevator while looking at my phone, glancing up just in time to see a vision in a dark gray suit and expertly trimmed beard as I stepped into him. His coffee spilled all over the front of his shirt, and I could totally imagine the rest of the scene: I would try to pat him dry with napkins, noting the firm muscles hiding under his shirt. The elevator would mysteriously get stuck, and when the firemen finally pried the doors open, they’d find us making out inside. Him shirtless, of course, because of the wet coffee.

That is NOT what happened.

Instead, Case Winchester glared hard enough to burn a hole straight through me, muttered something about my carelessness, and darted off the elevator before the doors shut. Which meant when the elevator actually did get stuck, I was alone. Hot firemen didn’t even rescue me—the old, stooped building manager pried open the doors, and I tore my favorite skirt climbing out.

Things between me and Case only went downhill from there. More like they went nowhere, because he’s spent the past four years avoiding me not like I have the plague, but like I AM the plague.

Despite having zero reason to thrive, my crush grew like a stubborn weed poking up from a crack in the sidewalk. Thankfully, so did my cynicism about the kind of movies Brightmark Studio makes. My new motto is just say nope to tropes.

For the record, I LOVE my job. I love our cheesy holiday movies and their total C- or D-list actors’ performances. And I love tropes—in movies or books, where they belong. Give me all the brother's best friend’s cowboy rock star’s nanny’s secret baby stories. I eat that stuff up, and I’m not afraid to say how happy it makes my heart.

But I have intimate, personal knowledge of how they do NOT work in the real world. Or at least in my relationships. So, while I enjoy my job, and the contents of my kindle are embarrassingly tropey, I am aware it’s all fiction. My teeny tiny itty bitty crush on the man glued to his phone will remain just that—a crush. Unrequited. Nothing more.

What I need in my life is just a guy—no boss, no brother’s best friend, no rock star—with no meet cute necessary. So far, the likelihood of this happening seems to be as far-fetched as “Dancer Prances Home,” Brightmark’s big streaming hit from last year involving a talking reindeer playing matchmaker.

“Could you drive any faster?” my scroogey sidekick asks without looking up from his phone.

“I could.”

I let my foot off the gas. Just a SMIDGE but enough to make him set down his phone and heave a sigh. I bite my lip to keep from smiling.

But then my silly power play backfires when Case leans all the way over the console to look at the speedometer. Or odometer? I’m not into cars other than the part where they get me where I’m going.

Case is all up in my space, which was not the plan. I just wanted to annoy him—mature, I know—or at least garner a tiny smidge of attention. I know nothing romantic is going to happen here, but was it too much to hope for basic, civilized conversation while I’m driving? The man didn’t even want the radio on.

My heart goes rogue, beating like a kid in the marching band at halftime in the big game. Case’s cologne hits my nose, and I do my best to NOT take an audible sniff. Just a subtle one he hopefully won’t notice.

It’s incredibly unfair how good he smells. Maybe there’s some kind of ratio where the jerkier the guy, the better they smell, like a Murphy’s Law of cologne.

“Now you’re going under the speed limit,” Case says, shifting back to his side and going right back to his phone.

“It’s snowing. I don’t know how to drive in snow.”

It almost never snows in Houston, where we both live, and when I scout for Christmas movies, it’s usually not in December but during a sunny spring or summer. This trip is a last-minute plan I suggested to my boss when my entire family got the flu. I figured if I’m going to be alone, I might as well distract myself with work. And if this trip goes well, my hope is to earn myself a raise.

“It’s barely more than a flurry. And it’s not sticking to the roads,” Case says.

“But the roads are still wet.”

“Wet isn’t icy, Jillian.”

“It’s Jilly,” I tell him for what must be the hundredth time. The man is averse to using nicknames. Or, at least, mine. “The only person who calls me Jillian is my great grandmother, and she hates me.”

He frowns. “Why does your great-grandmother hate you?”

“She hates everyone, really, but seems to save a special piece of that pie for me.” Though I probably shouldn’t, I take it as a kind of compliment that my great-grandmother gives me so much attention, even if it comes in the form of criticism.

“Did you just slow down again?” he asks.

“No.” I inch my foot off the gas again. NOW I slowed down again. “The roads are still dangerous. Especially in the dark. And it’s below freezing. Black ice is a real thing.”

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