All's Fair in Love and Chocolate (Marietta Chocolate Wars #1) - Amy Andrews Page 0,67

then, sliding her arms around his waist, pressing her cheek to his chest and hugging him tight. Reuben slid his hand into the hair at her nape and rubbed lightly. “But I’m only stay for a couple of hours and then I’m coming back here.”

She nodded and he thought he heard a sniffle before she whispered, “Thank you.”

*

Reuben pulled into his parents’ house half an hour later, so not feeling the joy of Christmas. He walked up the front path, blind to the beauty of the clear starry night as his warm breath misted into the freezing air and the cold hurt his lungs.

Or maybe it was just that breathing hurt in general, hitching every time he inhaled because he couldn’t stop thinking about Vivian at the cottage all alone on Christmas Day. And how much he wanted to be there with the woman he loved, instead of here.

But she’d asked him to go—needed him to go—and so here he was.

Worse than that, she was going to leave, he just knew it. Sure, she’d always been going to leave but these past weeks they’d grown so close he’d been lulled into a false sense of security. And he’d been counting on having three months. Hell, he’d been hoping she might be amendable to pushing that to the full six months. But with the store gone and a rebuild/remodel likely months away according to the conversations she’d been having, there was no reason for her to stick around.

And she was going to walk away. Maybe not today or tomorrow…but soon. He felt it in the way she was withdrawing from him, in the way she was pushing him into the arms of his family. Hell, he felt it right down to his fucking bones.

And he didn’t know what to do about it because he’d promised her he wouldn’t fall in love. He’d sworn it on his deputy badge. So he couldn’t confess his feelings.

Which meant he was going to have to let her walk away. Watch her walk away.

The front door was locked so he knocked and waited, a container full of his mother’s favorite hot chocolate stirrers in hand. “Hey, Reuben.” His mother grinned and pulled him in for a tight hug on the doorstep. “Merry Christmas.”

Reuben shut his eyes for a second and leaned into her embrace before saying, “Merry Christmas, Mom,” and pulling back.

Gaylene looked over his shoulder. “No Viv?”

“She sends her apologies and these.” He passed over the container. “She’s pretty wiped from last night and not much in a celebrating mood.”

“Of course.” His mom nodded sympathetically. “I don’t blame her. It was so awful, poor thing.” And then she frowned, her shrewd gaze narrowing, those eagle eyes inspecting what felt like every skin cell on his face. “Are you okay?”

Reuben thought about denying how he was feeling for a nanosecond but his heart was too heavy not to talk to somebody. “No.”

Her hand slid onto his arm. “What happened?”

He let out a long exhalation. “I’m in love with Vivian.”

She laughed then. Not unkindly. It was soft and low as she shook her head, her expression full of exasperated patience. “You don’t say?”

“Mom.” She didn’t realize how bad this was. “I promised on my deputy badge I wouldn’t do that.”

She sighed and rolled her eyes. “Well that was kinda stupid wasn’t it?” But then she gave his arm a squeeze and stood aside. “Come on in.”

*

The next few days flew by for Vivian in a kind of a haze. She’d switched into survival mode. The way she saw it, she had two options. She could wallow about the misfortune that had befallen them or she could start the process of getting the store back on its feet.

And she chose the latter.

It wasn’t just a point of pride for her, or for Delish—two local employees depended on the store opening again. And they were her priority. So, she put her head down and did what had to be done.

By the end of the day after Christmas the investigators had given them the all clear, finding it was an electrical fault in the hand dryer in the staff restroom that had caused the blaze. Then, for the next two days she and Robbie and Mackenzie worked their fingers to the bone clearing the store, salvaging the few items that could be salvaged and tossing everything else, taking it back to a shell.

When the insurance was all settled—probably by the end of March according to head office—Delish would send their