Frosting Her Christmas Cookies - Alina Jacobs Page 0,110

him. I didn’t care about parties. I did like him, but if he decided that we weren’t like that, it was no skin off my back. I’d only been with him a few weeks, true, and even though it felt easy and perfect and right to be with him, I had survived worse things than losing Jonathan. But I was not going to let him screw over my friends.

“That meeting went pretty well,” he said brightly when he saw me. He stood up as I stalked up to him. He reached out to kiss me, but I pushed him down in the chair. “Are we getting kinky tonight?” he purred.

“No,” I said, “we are having a serious discussion. What are you and the Svenssons playing at with Dorothy?”

“What? We aren’t—nothing!” he sputtered.

“They seemed perturbed at the suggestions we made for Hamilton Yards,” I countered.

“They’re just super-conservative developer types,” he assured me. He pulled out sheets of paper. “Look,” he said. “I have it all worked out—the pro forma works.”

I didn’t know a lot about real estate finance. But there were a lot of black numbers on the spreadsheet, and the site plan seemed reasonable to my untrained eye.

“I promise,” Jonathan said, gaze sincere. “You know me, Morticia. You know that I’m all about unique and creative things. I own a whole craft distillery, bringing hyperlocal liquor to a global market, and I’m a judge in The Great Christmas Bake-Off. I’m all about artistic expression.”

His voice was soothing. I wanted to believe him.

He wrapped his arms around me. “Besides,” he added with a sigh, resting his head on the top of mine. “I’ve been doing some thinking about my father.”

“He’s wrong about you,” I said, voice slightly muffled against his chest. “You’re not a failure.”

“I guess.”

“Seriously.”

He leaned down and kissed me, then his blue eyes grew dark.

“I’ve decided I don’t want to be anything like him. If my dad went into real estate, he would be just like Greg, wanting to maximize profits and throw a tower everywhere to show people how great he was. All my life, I wanted to be like him, but I don’t think I ever will. I’m totally on board with making Hamilton Yards unique and artistic,” he promised, smiling down at me.

“My parents will have aneurisms,” he continued, dancing me around, “but so what? I’ll have you. We’ll develop Hamilton Yards together. It will be amazing, especially since we’re right across the street. I’ll have everything I love within a few hundred feet of me at all times.”

Oof.

Someone was lying in this room, and it wasn’t Jonathan. He was clearly on board with Dorothy’s and my vision. However, I was still planning on taking the Getty internship. That would put me across the country and far away from the man who was looking at me with adoration.

Just don’t take the internship, insisted the starry-eyed romantic, who I usually kept locked in a box in the cellar.

Not take the internship? That went against everything I believed in, everything I had worked for. One didn’t just turn down a Getty internship.

Relax, I chided myself. You haven’t even won it. They may not give it to you, and this issue would just disappear.

But I should at least give Jonathan a heads-up, right? That would be the adult thing to do.

I took a deep breath. “I need to tell you something…”

“Wait, wait!” Jonathan said in excitement. “I have a surprise first!” He put his hands over my eyes and guided me down the hall to the bedroom.

“We could just have sex in your study,” I told him.

“This is better—well, not better than sex,” he amended, “but I’m pretty excited. Ta-da!” he announced when I opened my eyes.

There in front of me was a rack holding several beautiful, gauzy, gothic dresses that were just my style.

“The Hillrock West Distillery company party is tonight,” he said. “I was hoping to convince you to go with me. To sweeten the deal, you may have your choice of gown, m’Christmas baking lady.”

I thumbed through the dresses then froze. “These are Kate Spencer dresses.” My eyes bugged out. She was known for gothic, Victorian-style dresses. They were hand sewn, they cost a fortune, and there was a waiting list to buy them. Yet Jonathan had five of them right here!

“I figured you would like them.” He was pleased with himself.

“They’re beautiful,” I purred.

There was an all-black dress with a trumpet flare. I earmarked that one for a big Halloween ball that I was going