A Very Merry Mess (Cider Cove Sweet Southern RomComs #3)

Elliott

ELLIOTT

The air smells like freshly printed paper and a hint of something far more delicious. I’m pretty sure it’s the pesto chicken panini I’m carrying back to Ry, but it could be the lingering scent of her strawberry lip gloss still attached to my mouth. Mindy also likes to burn cinnamon-scented candles at the registers, and that smell makes my stomach pitch.

Now that I’ve thought of it, all I can smell is pesto, chicken, bread, and that sickeningly sweet-spicy Christmas cinnamon garbage back by the registers. The store does seem unusually busy today, but I’m a pro at navigating aisles to avoid anyone who might impede my progress toward the back office. A superhero feat, really, considering my vision issues.

My heartbeat thuds strangely in my chest, landing at the bottom and then pausing before it rebounds up again. I’m going to have to tell Ry about the encounter at the deli on the other side of the parking lot, even if the thought sends fear through me. Just a little.

One, the woman there—someone Ryanne has gushed over before named Lareesh—totally hit on me today. I guess she has in the past, but I’ve never noticed it until today. Until I imagined how Ry would react had she been at my side. Until she’d been so mad over the weekend about me even talking to those other women at the Christmas movie date-night, where we only stayed for ten minutes.

Two, I may or may not have told Lareesh that Ry and I were going to New York for Christmas. Together. Because we’re together. The shock flowing from the other woman still sits in my throat the wrong way. And her words— Oh, I didn’t realize you and Ryanne were more than friends —echo in my ears, my brain, and down to my toes.

Yeah, I didn’t realize it either, until I did. And now she knows, which means it won’t be long before everyone does.

“We have to have a staff meeting,” I mutter, because the last thing I want to do is have an individual conversation about my relationship with Ryanne with every employee at Paper Trail.

The black door leading into the back of the store looms ahead, and I only have a few more steps until I’m home-free. I remind myself that we’re at work, and I can’t have a romantic lunch date with Ry the way I have the past several days. We do actually have work to do.

I make it through the black door and quickly stride around the corner—and very nearly ram into the closed office door. To save my nose from becoming bloody, I have to sacrifice the panini, and I grunt and groan as the soft sandwich smashes into the very solid door.

Multiple swears go through my head, all of them in the robotic voices of the Mars rovers. Leave it to me to try to juggle walking and carrying lunch, like that’s a hard thing to do. I swear, everything I do ends with me wearing some sort of food product, along with a side of embarrassment.

“The panini isn’t all over you,” I mutter, though my hand definitely feels greasier than it had a moment ago. I fumble for the doorknob, finally grabbing it with my non-panini’ed hand, and practically falling into the room.

As I finally settle confidently in the office, I hold up the panini. Ryanne sits at her desk, blinking at me with wide eyes. “Wow,” she says, her smile slowly crawling across her face. “Great entrance.”

I grin, holding up the smashed bag like I’ve just run a marathon and come in first. “Chicken pesto panini, extra-pressed.” I glance away, because surely she heard me ram the door only ten feet from where she’s sitting.

“Did you get your discount?” she teases, her dark ponytail falling over her shoulder as she leans forward to take her mutilated lunch. “Was Lareesh there?”

“No discount.” I’d forgotten in the wake of all the flirting. “And yes, she was.” I pass over the bag and hold my head high as I spin my desk chair around so I can sit. “And she totally hit on me, and I pretty much blurted out that you and I are dating.”

“Ell.”

I hate it when she gasps my name like that. Like I’ve just done something I’ll never recover from. “We need to have a staff meeting. Or an office-wide memo sent out. Something.”

“Yeah,” she whips back at me. “Something.”

“Did you think we wouldn’t tell anyone here?” I throw her plenty of fire in my side-eyed look. I don’t even know what work needs to be done right now. The scent of the panini is all mixed up with the chocolate and cherry-something of her M&Ms, which is all masked by Ry’s rose-petally skin cream. I want to open the door, but I don’t want the conversation to leak out of the office.

“Of course we’re going to tell people.”

“Should probably do it then,” I say.

She grins, the corners of her mouth lifting into that smile that lights up her whole face. She takes out the smashed panini and unwraps it without comment. It seriously looks like I strangled it on the way across the parking lot.

“Well, you’re doing a fantastic job of embracing the chaos our lives have become.”

“Embracing chaos is my middle name,” I say, nodding toward her desk. “Where did you put the headset?”

She’s now staring at the panini like it’s turned into a python. “What happened to this?”

“Oh, it’s fine.” I snatch it from her and wrap the white paper around it to hold it all together. Some of the chicken and cheese and pesto has seeped outside the edges of the bread. I take a big bite and go, “Mm, yes, this is so good,” all around the food.

“You’re going to eat my lunch?” Her midnight eyes shine with stars, and I hold it out to her while I finish my bite. She rolls her chair closer, but I pull the panini back.

“We have to send an email today about our relationship and the fact that there will be a temporary manager here over the holidays.”

She sobers too, but none of the brightness in her gaze dims. “Fine.”

“Those usually come from you, but I can draft it if you want.” I don’t know why I want the store to know about me and Ry, but I do. I want the world to know.

“You draft it,” she says. “Now let me have a bite of my own lunch.”

“That I bought.” Grinning, and with a dose of heat flowing through my bloodstream, I hold the panini out to her, and she leans forward, her eyes never leaving mine. The whole room is going to light on fire at any moment, what with the fizzing flames between us. Finally, she takes a generous bite, her eyes closing in bliss.

A moan fills her chest, then the air, and my word, my skin breaks out in a sweat.

“Okay, this is delicious,” she admits, her mouth full. “Even smushed like that.”

“I aim to please,” I say, trying to sound suave, but it comes out more like a lame pickup line.

She swallows, everything about her turning a little harder, a little colder. “Just remember that when we’re in New York.” Her eyebrows go up, all Miss Bossy Pants now. “I expect you to be just as charming when we meet my family.”

“Oh, I will be,” I assure her, though a twinge of nerves flares up in my stomach. “Just as long as you keep the M&Ms coming.”

“Deal,” she replies, and her smile softens as she swallows. “But seriously, I’m a little nervous about introducing you.”

“Why? I’m not that scary.” And I’ve met my previous girlfriend’s parents before. Several times. I’m actually really great at parties.

She scoffs and lifts her panini again. “You have no idea how terrifying you can be.”

“For your parents? Your siblings?” I do the scoffing now. “They won’t be afraid of me.”

“This isn’t about that.” She scoots over to her desk, and I recognize her way of hiding behind the fridge.

“It’s about you being afraid to be with me.” I fold my arms.

“No,” she shoots at me, along with a venomous look.

I shrug, trying to keep the mood light, but there’s a heaviness in my chest I can’t quite shake. “I’m going for you, Ry, and you alone. I don’t care what they think of me. It’s going to be great.” I turn to focus on drafting that email, because then I won’t have to acknowledge the sting in my chest or the fact that she’s blurred slightly now that she’s further away.

After a few minutes with only the sound of my fingers tapping keys and the occasional shuffle of panini paper, she says, “My mom’s lasagna is legendary. You’ll love it.”

“Lasagna, huh? That sounds promising. I hope she doesn’t expect me to cook, though.”

“We do a cookie baking contest.” She sighs in an absolutely miserable way, and I force myself to keep working.

“Good thing you can read a recipe,” I say. “Since I can barely make toast.”

“It’ll be fine,” she says in that way that tells me she’s trying to convince herself as much as me. “Anna will win. She wins every year, but don’t worry. She’s not my daddy’s favorite.” The last line is delivered with precise sarcasm that actually makes me smile.

“So we’ll blow it on purpose,” I say casually. “Try to make the most outlandish cookie on the planet, that will never possibly work.”

She giggles and adds, “And we’ll have to go around to like, sixteen different stores to find each specialty ingredient.”

“Yep.” I chuckle too. “Who cares if you win a family baking contest?”

“Don’t say that out loud when we get there, okay?”

I mime zipping my lips, mostly because I’m about to blurt out another embarrassing thing. I just want to be good enough for you.

But there’s no way I’m vocalizing that. Nope. Nada. Not happening.

Someone pounds on the door as it opens, and I jump in my seat. “Holy horses,” I say, mimicking one of the old Mars rovers who no longer functions, as I spin in my chair. “What’s the emergency, Darcy?”

She glares at me and then Ryanne, who has likewise frozen with her panini in mid-air. “I’ve called on the headset seventy- four times about a manager return.” She surveys the office again, and I wonder what she sees. “What are you guys doing in here?”

“I’m coming,” I say as I jump to my feet. I swipe the headset from Ry’s desk before I turn to follow the dark blonde woman who’s still swirling with a storm. “Hey, Ry,” I call over my shoulder. “Check out that email when you finish lunch, okay?”

“Yes, sir,” she parrots to me, but I hear the notes of disgust in her voice. She’s not technically my boss, and I’m not hers, and we’ve always worked really well together.

I can’t help it if I want things out in the open. We went from fake to real really fast, and I’m here for it. I want it.

I want her to know I’m here for it and want everyone to know about us. As I approach the customer service counter, where a disgruntled man in his fifties literally taps his toe at me, a voice rises within me.

I can’t silence it while I type in my manager PIN and start his return-longer-than-thirty-days. I smile through the wail that starts in my gut and hand the gentleman his receipt.

“Thanks,” Darcy says, lifting something from the printer.

“Yeah,” I say. “Yep.” My sign of nerves, because I know the real reason I want everyone to know about me and Ry is because I can’t keep another secret from everyone. The things I’m hiding are heavy enough as it is.

And that’s when the little voice becomes a shout as it says, You better tell Ry the real reason your momma moved in before you go to Upstate New York.