I roll onto my back as she slides away, climbing out of the bed to stare down at me. Her gaze travels over my face, down to my chest, back up to meet my eyes.
“I’m going to make breakfast,” she says. “I’d love for you to go out and start the generator so that it’s easier for me. Come find me in the kitchen when you’re hungry. I’ll be the one acting like I wasn’t wrapped around you like tinsel.”
She turns and walks out, her skin still flushed, her hair poking up in the back, and she has never been more adorable.
But I am way too smart to say that out loud.
Chapter Twelve
Taylor
JiminyfreakingChristmas.Whatjust happened?!
The facts are straightforward. I woke up wrapped around Levi like a garland. He’s not wrong about that.
I liked it. That’s undeniable.
It doesn’t mean I have to say that out loud to Levi. Why does he even need me to?
Levi liked it.
This is . . . a new development. It’s barely less shocking than it would have been even a few days ago, but I guess that kiss on game night was a taste of things to come. Aliteraltaste. And once again, it is cinnamon. Levi tastes like cinnamon and bad choices.
Immeasurably bad choices. The kind of choices that wreck friendships and ruin family alliances and get charming midfence gates padlocked because that’s what happens when your adult kids ruin the quasi-arranged marriage you’ve planned for them with a superhot makeout.
Or almost do. That superhot makeout is technically theoretical, no matter if every one of my bones, all the flips of my stomach, and every hair standing up on the back of my neck is certain that it will be scorching.
Not today, Satan. Or Levi Taft. Or whoever is trying to ruin Christmas in Whoville with a poorly considered fling.
I do not have flings. I definitely do not have them with people I’ve adored since childhood just because they stroll into my café after four years looking good enough to eat.
This is ridiculous. I need to go stand under the bitterly cold shower until my brain resets. Wait, my brain is fine. My hormones are the problem.
“Whoa,” Levi says from the living room. He must have spotted our newest headache. “What the—”
I hear the front door open, followed by a yelp, silence, and the front door closing again. Levi appears a few seconds later, hair dotted with clumps of snow as he stares past me through the glass top half of the kitchen door leading outside.
“I guess we didn’t miss the storm.”
“Nope.”
“Snow from the roof fell on my head.”
“Sure looks like it.”
“Is this you pretending everything is one hundred percent normal between us?”
“Yep.”
“Cool, cool. Just making sure I’m in the same part of the script. We’re going to only talk about the snow now, right?”
“Correct.”
“I’ve got thirty percent battery and a signal. Let me call and make some inquiries as to what one does at the Taft cabin when a storm tries to swallow it whole.”
“Great. And then you can have the generator generate and I’ll make some breakfast.”
“I can cook,” he says.
