Free Have Yourself a Curvy Little Christmas: A Perfect Fit Holiday Novella (A Perfect Fit Novel) by Sugar Jamison Page B

kids, so it was one of the few times we got to play with the local children. We would run around and throw snowballs and just as we were about to drive our parents crazy the ceremony would start and the whole town broke out into ‘Silent Night.’ And when it was over my parents would take us home and feed us shortbread cookies and for that one night we got to sleep in front of the fireplace. It was my favorite time of year.”
    “Why did you stop going?”
    “My mother died right before Christmas when I was eight. Nothing was ever the same after that.”
    “No,” Dina agreed. “It wouldn’t be, but that doesn’t mean we can’t make Dash’s Christmases as happy as yours once were.”
    “I would like very much for Dash to have happy Christmases.”
    He looked at her son before pressing a gentle kiss to his forehead. Dash closed his eyes as if he were savoring Ben’s affection as if it was something he had been missing out on his entire life. Dina felt a large lump form in her chest. It choked her. He needed this. They both needed this.
    “I would like to get some pie now,” Ben said to her. “There’s a little place not far from here that serves the best apple pie on the planet. I would like to buy you some.”
    “And I would like to eat some. Let’s go.”
    *   *   *
    Ben watched Dina’s eyes grow wide as the waitress set her slice of pie down in front of her. After minutes of agonizing over the menu and questioning him about every flavor she had settled on cherry, his second favorite.
    “This looks amazing,” she said before she thanked the waitress. Dina’s smile was wide. Her eyes practically danced with enjoyment. Never had he met anybody so excited about a piece of pie.
    “My little sister loves cherry pie,” she said more to herself than to him.
    “Ellis?”
    “Yeah,” Dina answered, but that one word was filled with so much heaviness that it caused him to feel her sadness too. “I was so mean to her when we were kids. I loved her, only God knows how much I did, but I was always picking on her. If I ever have another kid I hope Dash isn’t as mean to them as I was to her.”
    “Why did you tease her?”
    “Because her father loved her and mine didn’t.” She tried to shrug the statement away like it was nothing. “It took me a long time to figure it out, but I’ve got daddy issues.” She gave him a wobbly smile. “My parents divorced when I was two. My mother remarried and when I was ten my real father stopped coming around. So I took it out on Ellis and my stepfather, Walter. I was evil.”
    He shook his head, not believing that was true. Hurt? Yes. Jealous? Absolutely. But he could never see her as evil. “I hated Virgil sometimes,” he admitted for the first time aloud. “He seemed to get everything without even trying. Friends would flock to him when I had to work hard to make connections. Things just fell into his lap when I spent hours trying to get ahead. He was more popular and smarter and more handsome then I could ever be and sometimes I hated my brother. I was jealous of him.”
    She reached across the table and gently locked fingers with Ben. “For the record. I don’t think he was more handsome. But then again, I got a thing for grouchy-looking dark-haired men who buy me pie and don’t run away when I spill my guts to them.”
    “Ma!”
    She looked over at Dash, who was staring at her. “Did you want some pie, baby?” She unlinked her fingers from Ben’s and he missed the sensation immediately.
    She slipped one of the soft cherries out of her pie and fed it to her son, who shuddered and scrunched his little face with disgust. “I’m guessing he’s not a cherry pie fan.”
    Ben smiled at him. “That’s okay. There will be more for us.” He dipped his spoon in his ice cream and fed it to Dash, whose reaction was much less dramatic this time. “A vanilla ice cream man, I see. A man after my own heart.”
    Dash smiled at him and lifted his arms. Without