‘If you think I can concentrate on icing a gingerbread house now …’ he says with a laugh.
I giggle too because my brain has simultaneously turned to mush and melted out of my ears. I’m glad I’ve made this Christmas cake many times before and have a well-used recipe to follow because all I can think about is that burning hot spot next to my lips and the tingling where his stubble grazed over the edge of my jaw.
We carry on in almost silence, but whenever I have to weave around him to get my fruitcake in the oven or check on it, the touches are lingering, and everything about him makes me want more.
‘You know that’s amazing, don’t you?’ I say when he finally steps out of the way and lets me see the gingerbread house.
He’s used white and milk chocolate buttons as roof tiles between scalloped lines of icing. Each window and doorframe is lined with perfectly even dots and there are Jelly Tots along the middle of the roof and down each slanted side. He’s used candy canes on either side of the door and stuck red and green M&M’s on like Christmas lights. The traditional peppermint swirl is above the door, surrounded by tiny stuck-on snowflakes and colourful dots. He’s even managed to do some lattice work at the back, and there are lines of icicles drying on the greaseproof paper, ready to be peeled off and stuck to the roof edges.
‘You’ve seriously never done this before?’ I carry on when he shakes his head. ‘You’ve got such a steady hand and an incredible eye for detail. You’ve done better one-handed than I could do if I was the human equivalent of an eight-handed octopus. You’re wasted in your day job. Do you seriously just sit in front of a computer all day?’
‘Yep.’ He shrugs and aborts the movement when it clearly pulls on his ribs. ‘Analysing figures. Sometimes for a change of pace, I spin around in my spinny chair and stare at the wall.’ He lifts his arm and drops it around my shoulders. ‘That was so much fun, and surprisingly relaxing.’
Relaxing. Not a word I would ever usually associate with baking.
I must look dubious because he squeezes my shoulders tighter. ‘Honestly, Nia. I never do stuff like this. It was fun.’
I’ve thought he had a creative side since that morning Stacey and I watched him repaint his shop sign, and it gives me a weird thrill to see this gorgeous man, who I thought was so uptight at first, wearing reindeer antlers and an apron that’s now covered with splotches of multicoloured icing and so much powdered sugar that it looks like he’s just come in out of a snowstorm.
‘There is no part of tonight that hasn’t been fun.’ My hand involuntarily drifts towards the imagined imprint of his lips covering the edge of mine. Everything seems to have been fun since I met him and I can’t remember what my life was like before he came into it. He’s easily the best thing about Christmas this year.
Chapter 14
‘We’ve got a budget increase!’ Hubert bounces out of his sweetshop door as Stacey and I walk past on the way to work a couple of mornings later. His red cheeks match the red stripes in his red-and-white candy-esque striped shirt and his smile looks like it’s trying to expand past the width of his face while he waves around a letter.
‘Who – Scrooge?’ I ask and he nods excitedly.
‘Maybe the ghosts of Past, Present, and Future finally got to him,’ Stacey says.
‘The sales reports finally got to his desk, more like.’ I fold my arms as she unlocks our door and retrieves our letter from the doormat. ‘Or the mention we got in the local paper last weekend, or the amount of foot traffic through the door, or the comments and pictures of the hidden nutcrackers on social media. People are talking about our little wooden army.’
‘One of my neighbours stopped me as I was going out my gate this morning and asked me if the magic was really back on Nutcracker Lane,’ Stacey says. ‘Even Scrooge isn’t immune.’
‘You don’t think he did it out of the goodness of his kind ’ickle heart, do you?’ I ask as she tears the letter open. ‘And it’s December 17th. Couldn’t he have done it earlier? We needed a budget increase in November. A week before Christmas is not good enough.’
‘From now until Christmas, he’s increased our budget.’ Stacey summarises the letter. ‘It doesn’t say how much by.’
‘Of course not. Scrooge would never let us have goalposts we could actually see – that would be too easy.’
‘It says to build and expand on wish-granting because it’s getting people talking,’ she continues. ‘Nothing about the competition between shops or keeping the lane. Just a cheery “keep doing what you’re doing” tacked onto the end.’
‘Keep earning what you’re earning so I can screw you all over in January,’ I translate the letter as she hands it to me. ‘Scrooge doesn’t do anything to benefit the lane, only him—’
I’m cut off when the door to James’s shop opens from inside and he appears in the doorway. All thoughts of Scrooge disappear instantaneously at the sight of him. He’s wearing jeans and another Christmas jumper, this time depicting Max, the Grinch’s dog, sitting in the snow with a Santa hat on, and his arm is in the sling across his chest again. On his head is a brown and
