He rewarded her with his warm, rumbly familiar laugh. “Actually, you have the most unforgettable face I’ve ever seen.” He looked into her eyes for a long time, and she gazed back at him, feeling perfectly and utterly happy. “Now, how about you? I’ve been going on about myself, when meanwhile, I know nothing about you. And I want to know everything.” He reached across the table and laced his fingers with hers. “Absolutely everything. No stone left unturned.” He made that sound so impossibly sexy, all the hairs on Anna’s arms stood on end.
“Right,” she said, trying to focus, even as his touch had made her body feel like fireworks were going off inside her veins. “Well, I’m Anna Gibson. Also born in Toronto, but I moved to Denver when I was seven.”
“And what was young Anna Gibson like?”
“Home-decor-obsessed? The youngest person on the planet to learn the entire Benjamin Moore paint-color lexicon by heart? Also, a die-hard Toronto Maple Leafs fan, even afterI moved from Toronto—and eventually realized they were probably never going to win the Stanley Cup again.”
He laughed and squeezed her fingers.
“Something you should know about me is... I’m unemployed. And I think I may now know exactly what you mean about ambition for the sake of it—or doing a job just because you feel like you have to, for the wrong reasons.”
“You quit a job you hated?”
“Well, technically no, but I’m almost sure I’m fired—and even if I’m not, I don’t think I can go back. It’s not what I want to do.”
“And whatdoyou want to do?”
“For one thing, I want more of those latkes!”
He hopped up and grabbed the platter and brought it over to the table. “For another,” she said as she helped herself to the delicious shredded potato pancakes with extra sour cream, “I want to enjoy tonight. And get to know you more. And—”
The shrieking sound of an alarm interrupted her, and they both ran to the kitchen to find smoke billowing out of the oven. Anna waved around a dish towel while Josh pulled a smoldering chocolate Yule log out of the oven. “Well,” he said sorrowfully, “I guess I really did lean into the spirit of the Yule log.”
“Not everything can be perfect,” Anna said.
“Not even you?”
“Especially not me. Please, don’t ever call me perfect.”
He put down the smoking pan and turned to her, pulling her close and looking down at her. “Anna, you are perfectly imperfect—and I like you exactly the way you are.”
Anna smiled up at him. “I feel the same about you,” shemurmured as he leaned down and kissed her softly, then with more intensity—until the room melted away and they almost forgot where they were. Eventually, he led her back to the table and poured out the last of the wine instead of dessert. In the candlelight, Anna told Josh about Beth’s letter, and how it had made her feel—about her hopes and dreams for the future, and how maybe they included finding a way to let Beth back into her life. They carried the plates into the kitchen together and washed up—laughing as they threw the entire burned Yule log straight into the garbage. Later, as Anna dried the last dish, she had to stifle a yawn. They had been too deep in conversation—and deep into each other—to notice how late it was getting. “You’re tired,” Josh said. “I should get you back to the inn.”
But Anna felt dismayed. “I don’t want this night to be over.”
He pulled her parka down from the hook he had hung it on earlier and bundled her inside it, then kissed her nose. “If you want it to be, this is the first of many nights like this with me.”
“You mean, the first of many nights when you borrow a restaurant that’s also a rom-com movie set and make me a perfect Hanukkah meal on Christmas Eve?”
“Well, maybe not exactly this,” he said with another deep and inviting laugh. He kissed her for a long moment, then smoothed her hair away from her face and looked down at her. “Especially if I’m going to be doing more writing, I may not always be so close to movie sets—but I can promise to always make our time together interesting.”
“I’d expect nothing less from a spy,” she said, standing on her tiptoes and kissing him again as he wrapped his armsaround her and made her feel right at home—even if she was in the last place she’d ever imagined she’d end up on Christmas Eve.
Outside, Josh shot Anna a mischievous look. “Would you like me to carry you home again?” he said, and held out his arms as she laughed.
“No, thank you. This time, I’m wearing much more practical footwear—although I must say, I never thought I’d go on a first date wearing borrowed, enormous snow boots.”
“First date, huh?” Josh smiled and reached for her hand. “We really did this, didn’t we?”
“We did,” Anna said, smiling into the holiday-lit glow of the night, the lights strung across every surface in Snow Falls shining like little red, green, silver, and gold stars.
“It didn’t really feel like a first date.” He squeezed her hand as they walked.
Anna murmured her agreement but then slowed her pace. Josh stopped walking and looked down at her. “Hey, you okay?”
She hesitated. “I am, but I want to be very honest with you. As you know, I just ended a relationship where things moved very quickly. I never really felt I had time to catch my breath until it was almost too late. I don’t want that to happen again. Because I really like you, and also... well, I don’t want this to end. But I also don’t want us to get ahead of ourselves. Am I making sense here?”
“You’re making perfect sense to me. You always do. And Anna, please know there is no pressure here.” Josh lifted his hand and touched her cheek, then put his thumb under her chin and gently raised her face so they were eye to eye once more. “I understand you. And while what’s happening between us feelslike it’s straight out of the pages of some romance-movie script, it’s real. And it’s important to me. We will take things slow, and we will do things right. I promise.” Then he kissed her and she forgot about everything else but the warmth of his lips in the cold December night.
