Garrett had stayed in Annapolis longer than planned. Christmas was coming up fast, only four days away now. His worst time of the year. The time he generally could not hang out with people. But this year he wanted to. The idea of leaving Lauren . . . yeah, he couldn’t even think about that. Not when waking up with her each morning had become his favorite thing.

She’d sat across from him last night at the dinner table and talked over burgers about going out to buy a fresh tree. Something about lights and how one bulb always burned out. One she couldn’t find and it ruined the whole strand. His mind had stopped working as her eyes lit up and she debated the right size tree to fit her room.

The tree talk led to Christmas dinner talk. The discussion sounded familiar. Lotti and his aunt used all sorts of arguments to lure him home each year. The promise of the perfect gravy was a favorite.

But this was Lauren. Practical Lauren. She’d never been a big talker, but the stress had lifted. Jake and Bob were the police’s problem now. Both were looking at jail time; for Jake, it would be a lot.

Lauren being Lauren, she talked the detective and the prosecutor and anyone who would listen out of pursuing charges against Maryanne. She’d helped at the end, Lauren insisted. Garrett guessed Lauren’s choice was more about knowing what it was like to live with Carl than wanting to give the younger woman a break. Either way, the move made him smile.

Everything she did made him smile. He loved her tenacity and calm. She plowed through problems and refused to view herself as a victim. Her loyalty to Kayla and the way she joked with Matthias—it all worked for Garrett. It also scared him shitless.

He glanced at his cell and finished the text conversation with Lotti. The one he’d started right after a brief check-in with his aunt. It sounded to him like Lotti had found an interesting way to spend the holiday and was trying to hide it. The idea made him laugh. It also made it easier for him not to jump on a plane and go keep her company.

Lotti wrote back in less than five seconds. Mom’s such a tattletale. Weather’s bad.

She didn’t say anything about the weather. She had hopes you were with a guy. So did Garrett. He loved Lotti and wanted her to be happy . . . then he could tease her until she begged for mercy.

That sounded like defense mode to Garrett. Just remember, if his name starts with a letter between A and Z, he’s likely to ruin your life. You were warned.

He decided to sign off before she shot something back at him. With that done, he could concentrate on Lauren and watch as she unpacked a box of ornaments. The homemade lopsided ones and shiny red balls. The box housed a treasure trove of collected items from years past.

She turned around with an odd look on her face. A smile, but it seemed fake. Like she was forcing it. “Did you want to help me decorate the tree before you go? If so, we need to go find one.”

Before you go . . . “Am I leaving?”

“You said you weren’t a holiday guy. And I thought . . .” Her already dim smile vanished. “We got caught up in everything that was happening here. The danger and Carl. The not knowing.”

“What are you saying?” Because he didn’t have a clue.

“I texted you about Carl and didn’t really give you a choice not to be involved. Now you can get back to your plans.”

The world flipped on him. The walls between them had come down over the last week. He’d chipped away at her impressive defenses and negotiated his way around them until they really were dating. And now this.

The reality that she was turning them off, sending him away—again—and acting as if they were friends but little more than that hit him like a body blow. He felt the shot straight to his chest and it nearly doubled him over.

He stood up and walked around to the back of the couch. Put the furniture between them and tried not to notice when she flinched. “You’re kicking me out.”

“I’m telling you not to feel obligated.” She swallowed hard enough for him to see it across the room. “The tree means something to me, but the rest of the holiday doesn’t. You don’t need to stick around when I know you’d rather be by yourself.”

This was bullshit. Complete bullshit. The only question was if she really said all this for him or if this was about her hiding in plain sight again.

Matthias and Kayla had invited her to spend the day with all of them. They’d get her through the rough day while the brother-in-law she thought she knew spent the holiday in a cell. But that didn’t mean she wanted to spend it with him, and now that he realized that he could barely think. “Is this some sort of fear of commitment thing?”

Her hands shook as she put the ornament down on the coffee table. “It’s for you. I saw your bag when I got out of the shower an hour ago. It’s packed. You’ve been on the phone with your cousin in California. I can read the signs.”

Her response set his head on fire. Instead of talking to him, she was back to assessing and analyzing and guessing and not talking. “If you have a question for me, Lauren, ask it.”

“I’ve got to tell you I didn’t see that part coming. Not from the guy who begged for a date for months.” Her head fell to the side. “Or are you that guy? The one who likes the chase but nothing else.”

“You’ve got this all wrong.”

Her hands dropped to her lap. “Then explain it to me.”

“My parents died on Christmas Eve.” He shared the unshareable because saying anything else would not be enough. “I don’t celebrate. And, yeah, you’re right. I usually run but that wasn’t the plan today.” Even as her expression softened and her mouth dropped open, he continued to reel. The idea that it would always be this way with her, with her hiding her feelings and pushing him away, had his temper spiking.

She came over to him then. “I’m so sorry, but . . .”

“What?” He barked out the question.

She retreated then. Pulled back and kept that safe distance between them. “You have a life. I have a life.”

“You have got to be shitting me.” Not his most eloquent line, but the words tumbled out of him and he didn’t bother to pretty them up because he didn’t feel pretty right now.

His attraction to her nearly snapped him in half. He kept looking for things he didn’t like and nothing came to him except what was happening this minute. She wasn’t perfect but he loved that, too.

Loved. That was the problem. He made sure he loved only few people. He kept that circle tight and she blew it wide open.

“I lost a husband and my family. I had to rebuild everything.” Her voice started out soft then got louder. “Is it that weird that I need some time to figure out who and what I want?”

From anyone else, maybe not. From her it felt like one more excuse.

Matthias had warned him. Garrett ignored the alarm because he’d thought they had gotten past the part where she pushed him away and made him prove himself by running back. They’d slept together, woken up together, survived Jake together. She’d trusted him and leaned on him and now she was stepping back. Shoving him away and making him work for it.

He was so fucking tired of this. She shredded him with this lack of trust.

Here he’d thought he would be the one running today. True, he did pack the bag. Out of habit. Out of years of pain over the holiday. He’d planned to explain all of that to her, but that was before she gave him the it’s-time-to-go speech. If this went on much longer she might hit him with the it’s-not-you-it’s-me line and then he would really lose it.

“I fell for you, Lauren.” His words floated there in the room, amid the half-unwrapped ornaments and the cleared space where the tree might go. He’d meant to hold them back, but what the hell did he have to lose now? “Do you get that?”

“It’s only been a short time and—”

“Fucking stop with that.” He shook his head until he thought he’d get sick from it. “We’ve been doing this dance for months. Stop pretending what’s happening between us is new.”

“Don’t you dare talk to me like that.” She walked over to the chair by the door and picked up his coat. “No man is going to yell at me again and not get it thrown back at him.”

He saw it then. The fear and pain in her eyes. The way she held her body frozen, still. She was mistaking him for Carl, and he hated that, but he needed to give her a breath to fix that thought. “Look, Lauren . . .”

“I’m done with men treating me like I don’t get to make choices.”

The words dunked him right back into a pool of fury. She refused to separate him from Carl and it pissed him off. “I am not your idiot former husband.”

But her expression suggested she’d made up her mind and had no room for him to try to maneuver her. She shoved the coat into his chest. “Get. Out.”

Two days later Lauren stood in the Christmas tree lot and looked at the slim choices left over. Most were too big. She’d have to cut a hole in her roof to fit them in. Others looked a little sickly. Truth was, she didn’t care about any of them. Losing Garrett had sucked the life right out of Christmas for her.

Watching him leave ripped her apart. She hadn’t been able to eat or sleep since. Her breath still came in harsh gasps if she let her mind wander back to their limited days together.

But that was the point. They were officially dating for a short time, but they had been around each other, connected to each other, for so much longer. Months of getting to know each other. Him breaking down her defenses. And now she was alone.

The crappy part was that it had been her decision. She’d shoved him out the door. All that talk about his parents and hating the holiday . . . it had shaken her. She’d tried to push him away before he could leave and she’d done a hell of a job.

Her first call this morning was to Matthias to get information on where Garrett might be, but Matthias was out. How convenient.

Her next move was to swallow her pride and text Garrett. She’d typed the words then deleted then typed again. Hitting Send took all of her strength. She had to block out her memories of the past and her doubts about the future and do the one thing she’d long stopped doing—hope.

Call me. That’s all she wrote because the rest of the words needed to be delivered in person. She owed him an apology. She needed to see his face as she explained how her walls inched up without any signal from her brain. How she shut down when he raised her voice, even though she knew he had every right.

She’d sent the text sixty-eight minutes ago and nothing.

A dragging mix of frustration and sadness swamped her at the lack of response. He always texted back immediately and she’d had no idea how much she counted on that until right now.

The temptation to go home and curl up on her couch hit her, but she fought it off. She needed something happy and she refused to go through the holiday without a tree. It was a matter of principle. It was her house. Her holiday. She would make it happen then turn a corner in her life. Finally move forward . . . somehow.

She stopped in front of a four-foot tree. It managed to be both too short and too tall. Flurries whirled around her head. None of it stuck to the ground but a few specks melted in her hair.

“You should wear a hat.”

He was there. At the sound of Garrett’s voice, she spun around so fast she slipped on a slick spot in the grass. Her heart thudded loud enough to drown out everything else. She tried to think of the right thing to say but nothing came to her.

Her gaze wandered over him. She took in the tired eyes and thin line of his mouth. She could see black pants and a jacket and little else because he’d bundled up tight in his jacket and scarf.

“You’re here.” It was the first thing that popped into her brain.

He glanced around, his gaze lingering on the trees. That’s all it took for her sympathy to rise. With everything that had passed between them, she knew it had to be hard for him here.

He kept coming back and one of these times he wouldn’t. The thought made her want to heave.

When his gaze shot back to her some of the cloudiness had cleared. “I’m here for you. Because I can’t stay away.”

It would be so unfair to give her hope then snatch it away. That wasn’t who he was or had ever been with her, but trust came hard for her. She’d been tested and bruised, but when it came to him her armor fell.

“You were so angry,” she said, trying to block out his face when he walked out the door.

“Because it felt like you gave up on us. That you wanted to push us back into what we were.” He shook his head. “I’ll negotiate and fight, but I can’t just be your friend, Lauren.”

“I don’t want that.” She abandoned thoughts about trees and the holidays and concentrated on him. Said the words that made her ache. “I missed you.”

He closed his eyes for a second. When he opened them again some of the exhaustion had cleared. “Two damn days and I missed you so much I couldn’t see straight.”

The breath rushed out of her so quickly her chest burned. “I’ve been so careful for so long.”

“Me, too.” He slipped off his gloves and stuffed them in his pockets. “But I don’t want to be. Not anymore.”

The words chipped away at the wall she’d built to hold him back. They sounded so familiar because that’s how she lived, too. “What changed?”

“I met this hot woman with a boat and she turned my life upside down.” He put his hands on her hips. “I screwed up and yelled. I walked out when I should have stayed and fought.”

“I pushed you.”

His smile didn’t reach his eyes but his hands were soothing. They skimmed up and down her arms, pulling her closer. “I negotiate for a living. I convince people to do things, but I couldn’t think of a way to make you understand that for the first time ever, I don’t want to be alone in December.”

He said the right things. Snagged her with this intense look that held her in that spot. “I’ve spent my whole life pushing people away but I can’t watch you leave me again.”

That’s not what she meant to say. But then he was in front of her, holding her. She wanted to wipe the pain off his face and take him home with her. Forget her past and her relationship failures. Put Carl and the pain of being lied to aside and focus on the man who had been nothing but decent and devoted for months. The one she took for granted.

“I was hoping you’d let me help you with the tree.” His voice actually cracked as he spoke.

A rush of love swamped her. “That sounds like something people who are dating and committed might do.”

“I want both of those things with you.” He dropped a soft kiss on her nose. “I at least want us to try. Tell me what you want and I’ll try to give it to you.”

“You’re negotiating.” And she loved it because he didn’t just expect her to change and give in. For him it was a back and forth.

His hand cupped her cheek. “This is the most important negotiation of my life.”

Everything she never knew she wanted loomed in front of her. All she had to do was reach out and grab it. Take the risk.

She slipped her hand over his. “I’m not easy.”

He snorted. “I’ve got you beat. I’ve spent years running away from ornaments and Christmas carols. I’ve blocked the whole holiday.”

Laughter bubbled up inside her. “You understand that I’m halfway down the road to loving you. I think it started months ago, but it happened.”

She stood there and waited. Weeks ago she would have accepted less. She’d had no expectation of caring about anyone. But now she knew him and believed, truly believed, that they could build something. They had baggage and walls to break down, but she was betting that he was worth it. That he wouldn’t care about the stupid stuff or comment on the size of her thighs. He would never steal from her.

But it would be better if he moved or spoke or did anything. “Garrett?”

“I never wanted holidays and a future before you. You give me everything.” He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close. “I couldn’t go two days without you. Give me a chance to prove it to you.”

He whispered the words against her mouth before he kissed her. His mouth slid over hers in a kiss that started out frantic then morphed into something sexy and inviting. A promise of what they could have if they worked at it.

After a minute, he lifted his head and looked down at her. “When you get the rest of the way down that road to loving me, I’ll be waiting there for you.” He finally smiled. “You’re stuck with me, Lauren. I’m pretty sure I’ve proven that.”

She’d never heard anything better. Not a full declaration, not for either of them. But a place to start. Something to build. She didn’t fight it. “We need a tree.”

His eyes didn’t fill with fear this time when he looked around the lot. “You pick. I already have what I need to get through the holiday.”

“Sweet-talker.”

He winked at her. “Wait till you see my expertise with a string of lights.”

The joking, his smiles. She didn’t really need anything else. “Actually, I’m in charge of decorating. Like, forever.”

“We’ll negotiate the details.” His mouth brushed over hers.

She loved the thought of that, of arguing and joking with him over silly things. “You are a great negotiator.”

He laughed. “That’s what I’ve been saying.”

“Then let’s get that tree and go home and do some negotiating.”

“Yeah, you’re definitely perfect for me.” He dropped another kiss on her mouth. Quick and sweet. “No doubt about it.”