Page 8 of Mad About Yule

“I’m not building them. Like I said, I’m not handy.”

“Right. I guess I’d better get started.”

Finally.

“Sounds great.”

He might be an arrogant, condescending volunteer who’d possibly been coerced into this by his mom, but at least I have someone to build my Christmas dreams.

If I don’t kick him out of the warehouse first.

THREE

GRIFFIN

I should have learnedby now to be suspicious whenever my mom asks me to do something with a big smile on her face. She’d fed me this sob story about how the Christmas festival organizer needed a replacement handyman ASAP or hundreds of little kids would have their hearts crushed. Wouldn’t I like to put my carpentry skills to use again? Don’t I want to save Christmas? Yada yada.

But I’ve been doing anything she asks for a solid year—of course I agreed.

Just hadn’t expected Hope Parrish to be the mystery organizer. I’d figured it would be some gray-haired old lady ready to reward me with butterscotch candies whenever I made sufficient progress. Not the former Homecoming Queen with the long dark hair and big brown eyes.

Standing here in her lime green sweater, she doesn’t seem so different from the girl I remember. Sky-high ambitions make her a little too eager to be taken seriously. Snarking at me comes as naturally as it had then, too. And her wide smile never leaves her face, like everything makes her crazy happy.

Not that she’s all that happy withme. I didn’t miss how her smile disappeared when she recognized me at the coffee shop. She’d smiled again even brighter right after, but too late. I’d be lying if I said her disappointment hadn’t dented my pride a little. Crazy smiles or not, the woman is gorgeous.

Always has been, in aDo Not Touch, No Admittancesort of way.

Hope had been voted Best Smile by our senior class. I’d been voted Most Likely to Burn the Woods. That never stopped me from admiring her, though. Even when frustrated with me, she was the prettiest girl I’d ever seen.

She’s the prettiest girl I’ve ever seen even now.

I tuck all of those thoughts into a mental lockbox, wrap it with a couple of chains for good measure, and toss it into the abyss of Things I Do Not Think About. Because this particular Hope Parrish also happens to be engaged.

“These are pretty simple designs.” I ran through the papers for the two bigger buildings already, marking down proper measurements and tallying up exactly what supplies I’ll need for each one. Basically oversized dollhouses, they’ll be easy enough for me to put together, given a little time.

I still maintain they can’t possibly deliver on her overblown expectations. That part isn’t my problem, though. I only need to worry about building them. She can deal with the results.

“So you said.” She hovers close by, trying to watch what I’m doing without looking like she’s watching.

“I could improve them if I—”

“What’s wrong with my designs?”

Her eyes shine with annoyance and probably a touch of hurt feelings. Great. First morning in, and I’ve already got off on the wrong foot with her. I do that with people sometimes. Well—most of the time. Not everybody responds well when I see a better way of doing things.

Case in point: my brother Caleb.

But she asked me here to build these for her—it only makes sense she’d want my advice on how to improve her project.

“Nothing’s wrong, but if I make a few changes—”

“If you don’t want to build them, I can find somebody else.” Her annoyance flares even brighter with the challenge.

We both know she’s bluffing. I already heard about the festival’s plight from my mom. She doesn’t have a line of people knocking down the door dying to make this stuff for her—she only has me. Lucky for her, I’m her best option anyway.

I set my pencil down and face her fully. “Are you going to let me finish?”

She twists her mouth like she has another defensive remark at the ready but manages to hold it back. She still glares a silentYou’re not the boss of me, but waves a hand my direction. “Go on.”

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