Page 55 of All I Want For Christmas Is You

He’d thought they were happy. They’d seemed so in sync. He’d never felt that way with anyone, but did that mean he’d lost sight of her needs?

Fuck.

If he could go back, he’d pay less attention to his own pleasure and more to hers.

As she sat back down, the sleeve of her sweater brushed over the crumpled notes. He tensed, waiting for her to notice them.

One fell off the table, but she was busy gluing the gumdrops and leading the charge. He got up and put it back, but she didn’t notice.

He’d just have to wait until the event ended. In the meantime, he’d do his part to make their house stand out. Going back to the supply table, he found some ice cream cones and then picked through the M&M candies, grabbing as many green ones as he could find. After he got back to the table, he glued the round candies to the cone to make it look like a tree.

“Can I have some of those?” Charlie pointed to the pile.

“Go get your own,” his brother said, laughing. “Let him make the trees.”

“No, no. It’s fine.” Beau pushed some over and then got up. “I can get more.”

But when he returned to the table, he found Margot was gone.

And she’d left the notes behind.

At six fifteen, the guests gathered around the fireplace in the lobby to sing Christmas carols. From his vantage point in a club chair, Beau could clearly see a bouquet of flowers behind the check-in counter. They were the ones he’d bought yesterday.

Impulsively, he’d gone into a flower shop next to the bistro last night. He’d asked the concierge to deliver them to Margot today, on Christmas Eve. It looked like, in the chaos, they’d forgotten to give them to her.

He’d meant to shower her with gifts, turn a lonely Christmas into something better. Instead, he’d done the opposite.

He glanced to the corner of the lobby where Santa was finishing up with the kids. It was Margot, of course. He’d recognized her immediately—her smile never failed to light him up like the Fourth of July. But it was also the way she listened to the kids with such genuine interest, as if she had the power to deliver their dreams.

Talk to me, Margot. Let me know what you’re thinking.

But she was busy. All he knew was that she hadn’t read his notes, and she hadn’t gotten his flowers.

Which meant she was still hurting.

And he just couldn’t stand it.

Chapter Ten

The silver lining in this holiday disaster was that Margot finally got a chance to truly help her aunt out.

The man they usually hired to play Santa obviously couldn’t make it to the lodge, so Margot had stepped in. She’d strapped a pillow around her waist, shrugged on the heavy, itchy costume, and sat in that throne-like chair for three hours.

She’d loved listening to the children and was surprised by many of their requests.

“I want…I want…I want… Can I have some peanuts, please?”

“I want tools and underwears that don’t has no balloons on them…and I want my brudder to stop being mean.”

“I thought Santa had blue eyes.” That one had her laughing out loud.

Mostly, it had taken her mind off Beau.

Now, karaoke was in full swing, and she was racing to fulfill drink and appetizer orders. With a tray loaded with espresso martinis, she wove through the tables, nearly stumbling when she saw Beau enter the dining room.

All he needed was a cowboy hat to complete the look of an outlaw striding into a saloon.

How crazy was it that in all the chaos of a restaurant crowded to capacity, she immediately noticed him? And when their gazes locked, she jolted so hard, the liquid sloshed out of the frothy drinks. Dammit.

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