Graham pressed his back into the wall, the women’s voices on the other side reaching his ears but the words like ribbons without sound.

He’s a bit of a beast, to be honest.

Laney thought he was a beast?

His fingers curled into fists, clenching tight before releasing. So maybe he’d been a bit short with her in the past. Maybe. He couldn’t actually remember being anything but himself, but that didn’t really mean he hadn’t come off as a beast.

A beast.

He couldn’t believe she’d said that about him to his personal chef. But of course she knew Celia Armstrong, the original short-order cook at the diner in town for thirty-five years before retiring a few years ago.

What was he going to do now? He’d stepped down the hall to his office for a little bit, mostly to get re-centered after the bone-melting kiss he’d shared with Laney near her barn. Now he’d been hoping to get a few more private moments with her somehow.

He couldn’t suggest a walk because of the weather, but he’d been planning to ask her to go around with him and hang the nameplates her daughter had made. So maybe he’d envisioned himself kissing her in the dim theater room, or around the corner in the hallway upstairs.

The beast got his kiss with Beauty, didn’t he?

Maybe you’ve already gotten yours, he thought, his heart sinking all the way to the soles of his feet. And maybe he needed to be the forty-year-old he was and talk to her about everything from the kiss to why she thought he was a beast.

So he stepped around the wall to the delicious smell of Celia’s beef stew and Laney washing her hands and saying, “What do you need next?”

“I was wondering if I could steal Laney for a few minutes.” He flashed a smile that was certainly un-beastly at Celia. “She’s helping me get the rooms ready for the guests.”

Both women raised their eyebrows. Laney recovered first, taking a few extra seconds to wipe her hands on a towel and say, “Let me find Bailey.”

“She gave me the nameplates,” Graham said. “They’re in the office. And I was hoping we could work on decorating the tree tonight and tomorrow too. I want to have the big lighting ceremony in the evening after everyone arrives.”

“I thought you were going to have Bree do the decorating.”

“She ran out of time,” Graham said simply, hoping Celia wouldn’t spill all the secrets he’d kept behind the closed doors of Whiskey Mountain Lodge. Laney didn’t need to know that Bree had run out of time to decorate the twenty-foot Christmas tree in the foyer because Graham had given her the task of finding enough stockings for all the guests coming in and doing all of his gift shopping.

Bree had become somewhat of his personal assistant this winter, and he suddenly felt like a beast for not going down to town and buying his own brothers their gifts.

“I’m sure Bailey would love to do that,” she said. “We don’t even have a tree at home.” She held his gaze for only a moment and then tucked her hands into her pockets.

The second stretched, with the three of them standing there in an awkward triangle. Finally, Celia said, “Well, go on then. I can manage just fine in here alone.” She ping-ponged her gaze back and forth between Graham and Laney. “Probably better if no one’s in my hair.” She turned back to the large pot on the stove, leaving Graham nowhere to look but at Laney.

“Shall we?” He wanted to recall the words as soon as they left his mouth. This wasn’t a date, and he didn’t need to act like it was. Unsure of what else to say, he stepped out of the kitchen and started down the hall toward his office.

Celia caught him at the second arch—which also led into the kitchen, just on the other side where the mudroom was—a roll of clear tape in her hand. She didn’t say anything but cocked one eyebrow at him and ducked back into the kitchen.

He collected the nameplates from his desk and rounded the corner to put up his mother’s. The words he wanted to say, the questions he had to ask, seemed to pile on top of each other, unable to come out one at a time.

So he taped the rainbow-colored paper that said Amanda on it in all capital letters. “Bailey is really creative,” he said.

“She is.” Laney edged in a little closer, and he caught a whiff of her perfume.

He stepped back and over to the next door.

“I didn’t think anyone was going to stay here,” she said.

“Andrew requested a quiet wing for his assistant.” He rolled his eyes as he tore off another piece of tape. “Apparently public relations personnel are always working, even at Christmastime.”

“You don’t sound happy about it.”

He smoothed the tape so it would hold the sign with Tilly on it, little sea creatures floating in the ocean scene surrounding the letters.

“Oh, am I being a little bit like a beast?” He cast her a glare, lifted his eyebrows, and rounded the corner before she could respond. He’d taken three steps before he spun back, his pulse ricocheting around inside his chest. But he wasn’t going to walk away.

Graham pulled up short when he found Laney only a pace behind him. “You know what?” he asked. “This year hasn’t been easy for me. So maybe I’ve come off a little rough around the edges. Doesn’t mean I’m a beast.”

Her eyes blazed with something like lightning. “You were eavesdropping?”

“There are half a dozen entrances into that kitchen. I was walking by.”

Her countenance fell. “I didn’t mean anything by it.” She put her palm flat against his breastbone, and dang if his heart didn’t hammer faster. And she’d probably be able to feel it. “I just didn’t want Celia to know about…you know.”

“That we kissed,” he said, not ashamed of it. Was she?

She grabbed onto his elbow and pulled him back around the corner, her eyes anxious and her grip firm. Somehow, it made his blood run hotter.

“Laney, did you not want me to kiss you?”

“No,” she said. “I mean, yes.” She exhaled and ran her palm over her hair, smoothing back the errant pieces.

“You just don’t want anyone to know about it.”

She looked up at him, the fire and strength he’d seen in her as a ten-year-old when she punched the bullies on the school bus who kept stealing her bubble gum blazing in those light green eyes.

He’d seen this determination when she entered the FFA competitions. And as she’d reprimanded him for trespassing on her property.

“Graham,” she said in a freaky calm voice. “I have a six-year-old daughter. I’ve been married before. You’ll forgive me if this needs to go…slow.”

Graham wasn’t sure how to answer. He also wasn’t sure he’d ever considered the position she was in, and where she’d be coming from , or what she brought from her past into her present.

“You are interested in me, right?” he asked.

She trilled out a laugh and stretched up on her toes to kiss his cheek. “Graham, I’m very interested in you.” Her eyes twinkled now, but that determination loitered just beneath the surface. All of it faded into fear. “But I do need this to go slow, and I need you to understand that it might take time for me to come to certain…decisions.”

“I can go slow,” he said almost stupidly, the foolishness racing through him that he’d gotten his feelings hurt fast and furious. “And I guess now’s a good time to say I don’t like being called a beast. I’m not trying to be rude.”

She had no idea what it was like, stepping into his father’s shoes after an abrupt death, and trying to run a company he had no knowledge of and no inclination to head up. He’d worked non-stop for months to get his head wrapped around everything Springside Energy did, all while the general manager simply wanted him to go away.

And when that work was done for the day—which was laughable. The work at Springside was never really done—he had the entire lodge, the grounds, and the farm to take care of.

“What did I do?” he asked, drawing her into his arms and holding her against his chest. “To make you think I’m a bit of a beast?”

“It’s just…it’s just the way you say things,” she said. “Like it doesn’t sound like asking. It sounds like telling.”

“I needed your help,” he said. “I didn’t mean to demand it.”

“I know that.”

“I’ll work on it,” he said.

“I have some things to work on too,” she said. “But right now, I just want to hang these nameplates and then get the tree decorated.” She stepped back and smiled at him, a cautious, beautiful smile. “Okay?”

“Okay.” He swept one hand around her waist and brought her close again. “But I think maybe I need a kiss to make up for being called a beast behind my back.” He smiled down at her, glad when she caught the teasing quality in his tone.

Her eyes drifted closed and she tipped her head back, an open invitation for him to kiss her. He took an extra moment to soak in her beauty, and then he claimed her mouth, this kiss just as wonderful, just as passionate, and just as life-changing as the first.

Graham brought another box of ornaments in from the garage, the heat hitting him in the face. “This is it,” he said as he set the glittering orbs on the floor in the foyer.

Laney exhaled and straightened, taking in the mess of boxes spread between the two of them. “I don’t know if we can do this in a single day.”

Bailey hummed to herself as she slipped another hook through the top of a red ball and hung it on one of the lowest branches. Graham let his eyes travel up the tree, realizing just how tall it was and big around it spanned, and how he probably shouldn’t have left this task for the last day.

Or for himself.

His eyes met Laney’s and locked, and she shrugged one shoulder in that classic Laney-way and said, “Maybe if we have chocolate….”

Graham grinned and turned back to the kitchen. A steaming pot of water sat on the stove and Celia slid a handful of lasagna noodles into it. “Celia,” he said, listening to his own voice. Did he sound too demanding? He hadn’t stomped in and yelled, “Hot chocolate in the next two minutes or you’re fired!” That was something, right?

She turned toward him and scraped her bangs off her forehead. “Hey, Graham.” She reminded him so much of his mother, and Graham was glad his mom had decided to stay at the lodge for the holidays. Then all the brothers could pamper her on this first year she was alone for the holidays.

She’d gone to Bora Bora for Thanksgiving, and Eli hadn’t even served turkey or mashed potatoes.

“We’re getting started on the tree decorating,” he said, feeling like an idiot for how he was talking. This wasn’t normal or who he was. “And Laney’s wondering what the possibility of hot chocolate is?” He pitched his voice up on the last word as if it were a question.

Celia blinked at him, confusion on her face. “Graham?”

He was likewise confused. “Can you make us some hot chocolate while we decorate the tree?”

“Sure.” She went over to the cupboard and pulled down three mugs. “I already have water heating.”

“Thanks.” He returned to the foyer and found Laney trying to hide her smile. “What?”

“Ah, there he is.” She started laughing as she unwrapped another box of lights.

He rolled his eyes and growled, a very beastly thing to do, before bending to collect a box of red-and-white striped ornaments shaped like icicles. “All right, Bailey, hook me up with these.”

The towhead came over, her bright blue eyes so out of place on a face that looked so much like Laney’s. He didn’t know her husband, but the man must’ve had blue eyes.

They worked together, the hot chocolate coming out only a few minutes later, and ornament by ornament, candy cane by candy cane, and Christmas song by Christmas song, the tree got decorated.

Graham groaned as he dismounted the ladder for what felt like the millionth time and stretched his back. Bailey had wandered into the kitchen at least an hour ago, and Celia had told Graham lunch was ready three times before she gave up.

Laney stood back, almost under the archway that led down the hall to his bedroom, her eyes raking from the top of the tree to the bottom. “I think it looks pretty good.”

Graham caught her lingering on a spot near the top. “There’s a bare patch up there.” He looked at the mess on the floor, hating that he had to clean it all up. This decorating thing was entirely too much work. “Do we have anything else?”

“It’s fine,” Laney said. “We still have farm work to do.”

He checked down the hall toward the garage before sweeping his arm around her waist. “It hasn’t snowed nearly as much today. Should go faster.”

She leaned into him a little bit, and he liked that she gave her exhaustion to him. He’d gladly shoulder it for her. “Let’s get this cleaned up.”

“How about you clean this up and I’ll do the outside chores?”

Laney froze, her eyes now wide and glittering. “What?”

“I only have the three horses. I can get them done lickety-split and get down to your place before you even have half of this put away.” He saw the indecision in her eyes and shrugged. “I mean, we can race.”

He closed his eyes in a moment of idiocy. We can race? Were they four years old?

“Deal,” she said. “I’ll text you when I’m done, and if you’re not done with your horses before I get all these put away, you….” She trailed off, and Graham wanted to bail her out but he also really wanted to know how she’d finish that sentence.

“I’ll what?” he asked.

“Take me to dinner.”

“I already asked you to dinner.” He grinned at her and cocked one eyebrow.

“You’re a beast.” She pushed against his chest, a smile dancing in her eyes.

“Oh, you can’t say that about everything.” He laughed and added, “I get some time to get properly dressed for the outdoors.” He gave her a quick kiss on the cheek and headed for the mudroom. “I’ll yell at you when you can go.”

He heard boxes sliding and plastic rustling, and he called, “Cheater!” as he shoved his feet into his boots. Laney giggled, the sound high and girlish and absolutely diving right into the soft places of his heart.

He thought about the word he’d called as he finished getting ready and burst out in the cold. Cheater.

Erica had cheated on him in Seattle, and he’d expected the sting, the shrinking of his chest, to linger with him forever. But it was gone. He tossed a last look at the back door of the lodge, wondering if Laney had anything to do with how healed his heart felt.