Page 119 of Christmas with the Denton Billionaires

Chris took a restorative breath before launching into the situation with Mara. Her winning the local contest only to be paired against him. Their electric reunion, flour imprints and all. The epic weekend in his condo, followed by the recurring jealousy issues.

“Turns out,” Chris concluded, “She’s been keeping some business plans from me. She wants to open a bakery and was going to use the winnings to do it.”

“You could give that money to her in a heartbeat,” Mitch said.

The mere words caused his own heart to start beating faster. “I know. Exactly. I just wish she’d told me what was going on. I’d already announced that I was giving the prize money to the community center in my parents’ name. But she was so damn tight-lipped about it all.”

“Well, she wasn’t sure how it would pan out,” Josh chimed in. “Plus, you were competitors! It’s not like she was going to goad you into losing just for the sake of her future business.”

Josh’s words thudded through him, and that’s when he realized his cousin was sort of right. If he’d known that Mara was planning on using that money to invest in the startup of her dreams…he might have considered approaching the network executives to ensure that he lost and Mara won.

“We had an awful falling out,” Chris said, stuffing his free hand into the pocket of his coat. “Things had been goingreallywell, and then…I got the new show. And I realized that we won’t be able to make it work.”

Josh laughed. “Oh, you can’t?”

“Not anymore. She wants nothing to do with me.”

Mitch made some sort of garbled noise that was partly a laugh. “Yeah, been there, done that. It’s not as hopeless as you think, I promise.”

“How would you know?” The emptiness pinged through him again, this time stronger than it had been over the past few days. Winning the competition had made it shriek inside him. He was tired of being successful everywhere but in love. He wanted someone to come home to. He wantedMara.

“Because we’re all Denton men,” Mitch responded simply. “We’re all hard-headed until the right woman comes along.”

Chris mulled over the words for a moment, and then he broke into laughter.

“It’s true,” Mitch went on. “My priorities changed completely once I fell for Jules. Sometimes you have to take big risks if you want to chase the things that matter most.”

The cousins chatted a while longer, and by the time they hung up, Chris had reached his condo. Pacing, pensive and alone.

His cousins had given him plenty to think about.

Now he just had to figure out what to do from here.

16

MARA

Mara called Julia’s office early the next morning to cancel her deposit on the space. Dan’s mother was understandably upset at the decision, but she honored Mara’s wishes even though she encouraged her to take some more time to think about it.

“And this isn’t because I want the commission from this,” Julia said before they hung up. “I want to see you go after your dreams.”

“I will,” Mara promised, her throat tightening. “I just have to adjust my timeline. That’s all.”

She repeated those words to herself the entire rest of the morning as she took a shower, headed for the community center, and met up with her sister Kaitlyn to pack up her gingerbread village. She’d promised the piece of art to a local charity for their Christmas party. She and Kaitlyn worked at sectioning the village as quickly and carefully as possible.

“So what will happen with Chris’s giant dickscraper?” Kaitlyn asked with a snort. Her sister knew the gist of what had gone down between them.

“Who knows? He’ll probably throw it in the trash.” Mara felt her frown deepen. On its way to becoming permanent.

“Would he waste something like that?”

Mara sighed. “Probably. I don’t know. I don’t know anything anymore.” The confusion and despair had layered on so thickly that it formed a crust around her. She wanted Chris and at the same time she was glad to be rid of him. But even those feelings were tempered with more longing. She felt lost inside her own head.

Life with him seemed foreign and impossible, but life without him seemed off too.

“I probably should have told him that I was gunning for the bakery,” Mara murmured a long while after their conversation had died down. Kaitlyn sent her a sharp look.

“You think that would have solved everything?”

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