December 23

Karen woke the next morning in an unfamiliar bed, in an unfamiliar room, but with a familiar zip of excitement thrumming through her veins. Today she’d get to see Janie and Hugh Nicholson, and be part of a family Christmas again. She stretched, scrambled out of bed, and selected shorts and a T-shirt printed with an alpaca wearing a Santa hat. The photogenic alpaca was Aretha, the female diva of her herd who was happy to pose for the camera. It’d been Karen’s idea to turn photos of the doe-eyed beauties into a range of printed T-shirts, hoodies, and tote bags. One of the males, Elvis, made a hilarious emo llama, even though he was technically a chocolate brown alpaca.

Checking her reflection in the full-length mirror, Karen poked out her tongue. Let’s see Arty-Farty’s reaction to today’s Christmassy choice of apparel.

Heat prickled over her cheekbones. She’d told herself after yesterday’s kitchen conversation that Art was just another guy who’d made a snap judgment about her. It didn’t matter that he’d continued to be oddly charming during dinner. Or that he’d made a number of self-depreciating jokes about science nerds like himself. Or that she’d chosen a spot in their living room once it grew dark to avoid gawking at his handsome face.

She’d also excused herself early, relying on the tried-and-true I’ve got a headache excuse to disappear into the bedroom she’d been assigned for the night. As a guest, she’d had first choice of their absent roommates’ rooms. She had chosen Lexie’s room, a University of Canterbury student who was also working at Mount John Observatory but had returned to her family in Auckland for the holidays.

As Karen sat to slip her feet into her sandals, she glanced up at Lexie’s desk at eye level, wincing at the stack of textbooks.

An Introduction to Astrophysics. Evolution of the Stars. Galaxy Formation and Dynamics. Just your average light reading. All that was missing was a paperback edition of Astronomy for Dummies Like Karen Wallace.

She snorted softly and left the bedroom. Never again would she feel less than for following her heart rather than her head. And it didn’t matter anyway, because after breakfast she’d never have to see Art again.

Bad luck—Art was already seated at the breakfast bar. He looked distractingly cute in plaid sleep pants and a white tank top, and a swirling inked design exposed on his upper right bicep.

He glanced up and caught her staring. “Andromeda Galaxy.” He half turned to show her the five small tattooed stars on his other arm.

“The Southern Cross,” she said before he could offer the information.

Hah! That much she did know about astronomy.

His mouth curved into a smile which cranked up the temperature in the chilly room. “Fitting for a science nerd, right?”

Karen walked into the kitchen and eyed up the coffee carafe. Beside it were three empty mugs, so she helped herself. “You keep calling yourself a nerd, but a true nerd wouldn’t risk hepatitis or tetanus getting himself inked.”

“Busted.” His smile widened and the heat of it on her skin caused prickles to scurry up and down her spine. “Guess there’s more to me than science, and more to you than llama wrangling.”

“Guess there is.”

She stirred sugar into her coffee, doing some wrangling of her own. Get control of yourself, woman. Anyone would think she’d absolutely no experience with men. Attractive men.

Truth was, as far as romance was concerned, she was pretty busted herself. While Moira, Amy, and Becca flirted as easily as they breathed, tongue-tied was Karen’s default setting when it came to men she was attracted to.

Like Art, dammit.

Except, weirdly, with him her tongue loosened and seemed to have a mind of its own.

“There’s cereal in the pantry,” he said.

Karen’s gaze dipped down to the bowl in front of him. He toasted her with a spoonful of colorful doughnut-shaped sugar bombs.

“Fruit Loops?” she said, unable to prevent a snort of laughter from following. “What are you, eight years old?”

He chuckled. “Don’t knock them until you try them. Take a walk on the wild side.” He slipped the spoon into his mouth and made a low hum of approval.

A battalion of butterflies swarmed around her stomach. This was ridiculous. She stalked over to the pantry and flung open the doors. Next to the big box of sugar bombs was a box of dried twigs, aka some sort of bran cereal. She could almost guarantee they were Jeff’s.

“Naughty or nice, Karen?”

Couldn’t she be both? After all, it was the holidays. She gave Art the side-eye and found him watching her with the same intensity with which she’d studied the cereal boxes. More stomach butterflies came to the party.

Jeff wandered into the kitchen looking as if he’d just fallen out of a catalog featuring casual but stylish menswear. Not a hair out of place, he was obviously ready to hit the road. “Don’t let him corrupt you with that sugary crap,” he said. “There’s home-made organic whole-grain bread in the bread bin.”

Moira also wandered into the kitchen, dressed but yawning like crazy. She headed straight for the coffeepot and poured herself a mug, holding up a finger to her brother when he opened his mouth to say something. She sipped with closed eyes, and after two deep swallows she lowered her finger. “Now you may speak, brother dearest.”

Jeff held out his palm and flicked his fingers. “Hand over the car keys and I’ll gas up your gray slug before we hit the road.”

“Awww. Aren’t you sweet?” Moira dug the keys out of her shorts and handed them over.

Caffeine must’ve worked its magic, because Moira started chatting to Art while Jeff left the house. Karen offered to make toast if Moira whipped up one of her perfect omelets, and her friend had just broken two eggs into a bowl when Jeff returned.

“That was quick,” Art said.

“Car won’t start.” Jeff’s mouth twisted into a grimace. “I had a quick poke around under the hood and it looks like the cambelt is stuffed.”

Moira frowned. “Have you got a new one kicking around in your garage?”

Both Art and Jeff looked at her as if she’d asked whether they had an Elf on the Shelf stashed away in there, too.

“You’re probably thinking of a fan belt,” Art said diplomatically. “You could check out the local mechanic?”

The intonation of his voice implied they’d need a Christmas miracle, stat.

“Yeah.” Jeff flopped into an armchair with a groan. “After breakfast, Moira and I’ll take a walk into town.”

Once Moira and Jeff left on their cambelt quest, Art hit the shower. The odds of them finding a match for the gray slug were approximately the same as snow falling on Lake Tekapo today. Which was to say, not at all likely. You didn’t need to be a meteorologist to calculate those odds. So there was the possibility she’d have to stay a little longer, and those were odds he found appealing.

Art took his time getting dressed and, remembering the admiration in Karen’s eyes earlier, chose a short-sleeved blue shirt that exposed part of his tattoo. He wasn’t embarrassed to admit he liked her gaze on him.

He returned to the living room to find Karen in front of the pine tree. He caught her in the middle of hooking a shiny gold ball over a branch. She’d obviously been at it for a few minutes because a number of shiny gold balls were spaced evenly on the branches. She looked up guiltily as she registered she wasn’t alone.

“Sorry. I couldn’t stand it looking so lopsided.”

He found himself smiling at her again. Smiling goofily at Karen was rapidly becoming a thing. Yet he couldn’t stop. “It looks good. But I think you’re meant to string the lights on first.” He pointed toward an unopened box tucked behind the base of the tree.

She made the cutest little growling sound and crouched down to pull the box toward her. She pried open the lid and lifted out a tangled snarl of green, red, and white Christmas lights. Her eyes narrowed to slits as she turned her glare on him. “Did you pack away the lights like this?”

He strolled over to the couch and sat down. “What makes you think it was me?”

“Well, we both know it wasn’t Jeff, and no self-respecting female would show such disregard for decoration storage protocol. Which leaves you.”

“My bad.” He held out his hand and wriggled his fingers in a bring it here gesture.

Actually it wasn’t him, but their second absent roommate, Tim, whose laid-back-ness was both a blessing and a curse. Since Karen came with the tangled lights and sat next to him on the couch, he counted this incidence as a blessing.

She held up the plug and gave it a little wiggle. “Here’s one end.”

“Got to start somewhere.”

They worked untangling the snarls of wire and light bulbs in companionable silence, broken only by the occasional “push that bit through this loop” type comments.

“Does Lexie work at the observatory, too?” Karen shook out a section then groaned as her fingers tugged at yet another knot.

He frowned at the green-tinted light bulb he was trying to loop around two stuck-together white ones. The mention of Lexie threw him a little. “Uh. Yeah. She’s gone back to Auckland for the holidays.” When he caught her sideways glance, he added, “With her boyfriend, Simon.”

In case she’d been fishing for information about whether he and his coworker were keeping each other warm on Tekapo’s frigid winter nights.

“Oh, that’s nice. It’s always nice to spend the festive season with friends and family.”

Nice? He guessed it could be. But over the years of study, traveling, and friends and family doing their own thing with their friends and family, he’d kinda forgotten what that was like.

“Do you miss them?” she asked. “Your family back in the UK, I mean.”

“Sure. But it’s a long way to go just for Mum’s dried-out roast turkey and Trivial Pursuit battles with my brothers.”

“Do you get along with your brothers?”

“Mostly. When we’re not trying to outdo and kill each other, that is. One Christmas I asked the department store Santa if I could become an only child. I think the man thought I was a serial killer in the making.”

Karen chuckled and tackled the next section. “I take it Santa didn’t deliver?”

He shrugged. “Nope. But my mum did that May. Charles David Donnelly ousted me as the baby of the family.”

“Aww. You poor thing.”

“It was pretty tragic being relegated to the middle child. Luckily I inherited the lion’s share of Donnelly brains, while Charlie was left with only the pretty-boy genes.”

She made a soft snorting sound, and when he slanted a glance at her, splotches of rose pink had appeared on her cheeks.

“Funny?” he asked.

“Please.” She shook out another section of lights and the plastic covers rattled together. “Like women only throw themselves at you because you can tell them the difference between Jupiter and Saturn.”

He laughed. The young women he met as a tour guide at the observatory couldn’t even see his face because of the total ban on white light during the two-hour tour. He’d certainly never been propositioned by a woman after one of his rambling talks about the solar system. But a sliver of warmth threaded through him at the idea that Karen thought him attractive enough to have a problem with overenthusiastic females.

She jerked to her feet, the last loop of wire untangling itself and falling to the floor. “Anyway, if you plug this in I’ll remove any fall-risk ornaments.”

She crossed to the tree and carefully pulled off a few baubles. He caught her eye as he crouched beside the power socket.

“One year when I was a kid,” she said, “I asked Santa for a baby brother or sister. I never got one.” She offered him a small sad smile. “I think the holidays would be more bearable without my mum and dad if I had siblings to share it with.”

Jeff had given him a heads-up about Karen’s parents last night. “I’m sorry. It must make this time of year especially difficult.”

She tilted her head, and some of the sadness left her gaze. “Every day is difficult when you’re separated from the people you love, but Christmas is the season to be grateful for good friends and good times. Even if it is dried-out roast turkey, Trivial Pursuit, and a shedding pine tree.”

“Mum’s turkey really isn’t that bad,” he admitted with a twinge to his chest, thinking about the hours she’d spend cooking and setting the table, thrilled to have her three grown chicks return home. “And I’ve yet to be beaten in the science and nature category of Trivial Pursuit.”

Karen finished draping the lights over the top of the tree. “That’s the spirit. Switch it on.”

He did, and she fussed about for a few moments replacing the baubles she’d removed. “Perfect—well, almost perfect. Now what’s it going to be? Angel or star?”

He rose with a sigh and found she had plucked both from the box of decorations and was holding them up, first the star higher, then the angel, almost directly under his nose.

“Did Jeff put you up to this?”

“This is all me. Since you don’t have a Christmas llama for a tree topper”—she lifted one delicate eyebrow—“you’ll have to choose between the unoriginal angel and sparkly tinsel star.”

“There’s a Christmas llama?” He grinned, unable to prevent his gaze from dropping to the print on her T-shirt…and the way it hugged each and every one of her curves.

Nerd he might be; blind he was not.

“There is on my tree.” She jiggled the angel and tinsel star again. “Choose.”

“Considering my occupation, there can only be one choice.” He moved in, toe to toe with her almost, lifted the angel out of her hands, and dropped it back into the box.

“I knew it,” she said, but instead of smugness in her tone at being correct, there was huskiness to her voice.

“You should put it in place.”

“Okeydokey.”

She rose on tiptoe, stretched out her hand, wobbled, and clutched at his shoulder with her free hand. The heat of her fingers, even through a layer of cotton, burned like embers on his skin and he sucked in a breath.

She turned her face to him, nose crinkled in consternation. “I can’t reach the—”

He cut her off by wrapping his arms around her, lifting her off her feet, and angling her toward the tree. She squeaked out a surprised giggle and her nails dug into his skin, but she managed to place the star on the topmost branch.

“Oh, it’s beautiful. Don’t you think?”

They agreed on something, but he didn’t mean the pine tree covered in blinking fairy lights and glittery balls. Did Karen have any idea how beautiful she was?

She smiled down at him and his pulse blasted off into the stratosphere. It was a wonder she couldn’t feel the vibration of it through his arms. That mouth, those soft kissable lips, the temptation of them was like nothing he’d felt for a long time.

He’d been staring at her mouth instead of answering so he cleared his throat, gently lowering her to her feet and returning his hands to his side. “Very Christmassy.”

“Says Scrooge McScroogeface.” She rolled her eyes, and even her sarcasm didn’t take away his need to see if her lips tasted as sweet as they looked.

Footsteps on the deck outside were a welcome distraction—one second more and he would’ve thrown caution to the wind and kissed her. The stomping arrival of Jeff and Moira, both with matching scowls on their faces, heralded less than good news.

“The mechanic ordered a new cambelt,” Jeff said, “but because of the statutory holidays it won’t be delivered until the day after Boxing Day.”

“Could we hire a car?” Karen asked.

She’d moved a safe distance from him, folding her arms tightly across her chest.

Moira shook her head and flung herself onto the couch. “None available. We’ve already tried the two nearest car rental places.”

“We’re stranded here?”

Maybe it was Art’s imagination, but there was more than disappointment in Karen’s voice. Something like anticipation.

“Yup,” Moira said.

Jeff plucked a strand of tinsel from the decoration box and draped it around Karen’s shoulders. “Looks as if we’ll all be having a Tekapo Christmas.”