Free Christmas on Main Street by Susan Donovan, Alexis Morgan, Joann Ross, Luann McLane Page A

her hands.
    “That’d be my guess.” She hadn’t changed, but he could hear the water running in the oversized tub. “Which room do you want?”
    She shrugged. “It’s your family’s cabin. I don’t care.”
    “I’ll move my stuff out of the master and you can have it.”
    “There’s no need.”
    “It looks out onto the waterfall. Which, by the way, is starting to freeze.”
    “Really?” She followed him into the bedroom, which had always been his parents’, then stopped in front of the French doors to stare in wonder at the view. He had to admit it was pretty freaking incredible.
    “Oh, wow. How cool is that?” Her blue eyes widened with pleasure, reminding him of a child who’d just been informed it was a snow day.
    “It’s got to get pretty cold to freeze that much water,” he said.
    He went into the adjoining bathroom and got a large beach towel from the linen closet, which he put on the floor so the snow from the suitcase and trash bag wouldn’t dampen the rag rug his grandmother had hand hooked decades ago.
    “It’s so magical out here,” she said on a long, happy sigh. “Enough that I’m not going to get mad at our families for tricking us.”
    “What about Archer? How are you going to explain spending Christmas out here alone with me?”
    “I don’t have to explain anything to anyone. And, although it really isn’t any of your business, Brad and I are no longer seeing each other.”
    “Are we sorry about that?”
    She folded her arms and shot him a look over her shoulder. “No more sorry than we are about Marcia Wayburn being out of the picture. And, for the record, I wasn’t jealous about you proposing to her. Just disappointed you displayed such poor judgment.”
    “Yeah. Sure. The same way I was going to warn you about Archer.”
    She’d gone back to looking out at the swirling flakes that were coming down faster and harder by the minute. But that drew her attention again.
    “Why on earth would you have wanted to warn me about Brad? He’s totally harmless.”
    “That was my point. It never would’ve worked because that guy never could have satisfied you.”
    “Oh, really?” The frost in her voice was chillier than the temperature outside the paned glass doors. “And what would you know about what satisfies me?”
    He nodded at that. “Your point.”
    One he was planning to rectify. But deciding that his grandmother was right about not pushing, Cole decided to take things slowly. Let the situation play out.
    He still wasn’t exactly sure what he was feeling toward her. The one thing he did know was that their families could manipulate things until doomsday, but he was damn well going to make his own choices.
    And for now, for this stolen time away from war and family and the over-the-top holiday celebrations that his hometown loved to indulge in, he chose Kelli Carpenter.
    “The tub’s probably filled,” he said. “Why don’t you take your bath while I start dinner?”
    “You don’t have to cook for me.”
    “I’m not. Along with all the liquor, the freezer’s stocked with meals.”
    “I didn’t realize your family had elves,” she said dryly.
    “Neither did I. But someone’s definitely been busy. We could probably survive until spring before we’d have to stoop to squirrel stew.
    “There’s also a small roasting turkey and all the fixings in the fridge. But I guess we’re expected to cook it ourselves. I suppose that’s to encourage us to put aside our differences and work together.”
    She shook her head, but her lips quirked. “It might be humiliating to be set up by our parents at our age, if they weren’t so obvious. And I’ll have to give them an A for effort. But I’m not some puppet they can make dance to their matchmaking scheme.”
    “That makes two of us.”
    “So. We’ll eat their food and drink their wine and catch up on each other’s lives. Enjoy ourselves like the old friends we used to be.”
    “And if there are strings to be