Shaking his head, Wolfe looked at her. “What?”
Sophie grinned as the wolf sniffed the air. “An unambiguous sign. That, dear Wolfe, is a wolf with a heart.” She raised an eyebrow at Wolfe’s confused expression. “Wolfe-Hart?”
Wolfe looked at her seriously for a long moment—long enough that she began to be afraid he didn’t get it at all. But then he began to laugh. “Wolfe-Hart,” he repeated, his eyes bright and almost blue in the morning light. The wolf, hearing his laughter, took off through the trees, disappearing in an instant. “I mean, I have to admit … gray wolves are rare enough in these parts, but to find one with a perfect heart on its head?” He shook his head. “That’s pretty incredible.”
Smiling, Sophie stepped close to him and put her arms around his waist. “I think so, too. I just asked the universe for a sign that I was on the right path with you, and…” She shook her head. “Wow. There it is.”
“There it is,” Wolfe repeated, his eyes crinkled in the corners. Then, solemnly, looking down at her, he added, “So … What does this mean for us?””
“What it means, Mr. Wolfe,” Sophie said, rising on her tiptoes to meet his lips with hers, “is that we’re about to have a very merry Christmas.”
“Not just that,” he murmured against her mouth, his arms snaking around her and pulling her tight, “but a very merry, magical Christmas.”
This is it, Sophie thought. A happy ending better than anything I could’ve written.
A cascade of howls sounded through the forest, as if the universe couldn’t agree more.
Read on for a sneak peak of
Make Up Break Up
Coming in 2021
chapter one
“Detest” was a very strong word. So were “abhor” and “despise” and “loathe.” Annika, being a pacifist, preferred a different term—something her yoga teacher had said that struck a much more civil chord.
“I am elementally unaligned with you, Hudson Craft,” she muttered, staring at his picture on the Tech Buzz magazine website. Her right hand was curled so tightly around her wireless mouse that the opalescent white plastic creaked in protest. “Completely and utterly elementally unaligned.”
They were calling him “the hottest tech entrepreneur who doesn’t believe in true love.” It was like a train wreck you couldn’t help but stare at. A gratuitously handsome, Harvard-educated, blond train wreck who had (probably) stolen her idea.
Also, that magazine feature was supposed to be hers.
When the journalist had called to interview Annika, she’d assumed she was going to be the feature. Instead, this was her big mention: “‘Relationships are the new frontier as far as the tech sector goes,’ a local businesswoman agrees.”
That was it. That was all of it. Not only was there no mention of her business Make Up at all but Annika had been reduced to an anonymous “local businesswoman,” just propping up Hudson Craft in all his amazing amazingness.
“Arrrrghhhh.” Annika reached into her desk drawer to browse her stable of stress tools, all neatly organized using drawer separators. Mini Zen garden? Multicolored breathing sphere? Singing bowl? No, today called for something much more basic.
She grabbed the unicorn-zombie-shaped stress ball she’d lovingly named ZeeZee (he’d been a white elephant gift from one of her friends at yoga; when you squeezed him, his green brains squirted out between your fingers) and shut her drawer slightly harder than she meant to.
Spoil the ending to his book, Annika said to herself, aggressively kneading ZeeZee’s brain. Designer virus to his email address. Glitter bomb that’ll take days to rinse out of his stupid golden hair. She hadn’t seen him since Las Vegas last year, but she could renew their acquaintance in a way he wouldn’t easily forget.
Glancing away from the laptop screen, she let her gaze fall on the newest letter from the bank, lying facedown on her desk under an old teacup. Just like that, Annika’s anger was momentarily swallowed by a wave of anxiety.
The idea of running her own business had always held a glow for Annika. Make Up was supposed to have been her fairy tale. She’d never dreamed of a big, fancy wedding. She’d never wanted the handsome prince or the cherub-cheeked children or the home with a yard in some ritzy Los Angeles suburb. She remembered being six years old and dressing up as Indra Nooyi, then Pepsi CEO, longtime business badass, for Halloween. No one had gotten her costume, but she didn’t care. All she’d ever wanted was to be her own boss. As a four-year-old, that meant ordering Daddy around the house while wearing his suit jacket that hung to her ankles. As she got older, the dream morphed from bossing her dad around to running a company that made a difference in people’s lives.
Annika stood, smoothed down her black tulip skirt, and paced her tiny twenty-sixth-floor office, still throttling ZeeZee. Her gaze lingered on the tufted velvet settee in a trendy but sophisticated plum color; the original art from LA artist Cleo Sanders, which made a statement without being gauche; the giant metal sign she’d commissioned to wrap around the walls.
MAKE UP
HAPPILY EVER AFTER, REDUX
She looked out the floor-to-ceiling windows at the bustling city below. She’d thought being in downtown LA would put her right in the middle of the action, that it would make her easily accessible to beta testers for the app—most of whom would come from the university—and to other businesses that Make Up might want to collaborate with. It was expensive, but the payout would be totally worth it.
So Annika had borrowed money from the bank and signed away her life on her zillion-dollar-a-month lease.
It worked for a time. Make Up had seemed to be touched by magic—the grant she’d won last year had been the first one she’d applied for. She had innovation, a kick-ass developer, and a relentless hunger to change the world.
