a summons to ignore.”
“I can carry that myself.” Dani tried to tug the bag from him.
“Nonsense. You devote yourself to your doggy companion”—he looked at Canine Max, who had calmed down but took the baronial attention as his cue to start yapping again—“and I’ll carry this.”
“We are going to have the best drinks,” Gabby said, skipping ahead of everyone as they made their way across the clearing. “I got to help make them. They have rosehips in them. And mine has a mixture of 7Up and pomegranate juice. You guys get sparkling wine.”
Leo grabbed Marie’s hand as they brought up the rear. He let everyone else’s chatter wash over him as they strolled. Gabby was still talking about the drinks. Max was trying to impress Dani by telling her about his master’s thesis. Leo deliberately slowed their pace—not enough that they’d fall too far behind, but enough to put some distance between them and the others.
When they reached their spot, he planted his feet and tugged on her arm, stopping her progress.
“Leo!” she protested, but she didn’t mean it. They always stopped here on the way to or from the cabin. This was the spot where they’d danced in the woods that first night. He liked to mark it. He pulled her in with a flourish, as if they were contestants on a cheesy dance TV show. She came, easily, as if everything had been choregraphed for them long ago. He paused, watching Dani and Max and Gabby recede a little farther into the distance. Summer was short in Eldovia, but it was at its peak, and soon the leafy trees swallowed them.
This was what he did now, what he was learning to do. To carve out a little time and space for them to be Leo and Marie instead of the princess and the taxi driver.
“Leo,” she whispered, and her breath against his cheek made him shiver.
“Hmm?”
“Dance with me.”
“Yes,” he said. “Yes.” And he pulled her closer and danced in the woods with his love.
Acknowledgments
Once upon a time I idly thought, Hey, what if I did a Hallmark-style Christmas book? I am so happy I have an agent, Courtney Miller-Callihan, who responded by saying, “What if you did?!” And I’m so happy I have an editor, Elle Keck, who raised the bar by saying, “What if you did three of them?” And lo, this series was born. I am so grateful to Courtney and Elle for their enthusiasm and hard work.
The idea for this book really started, though, with my dad, who is possibly the world’s biggest fan of cable-channel holiday movies. One of the major joys of the Christmas season for me is getting his play-by-play analysis via text. So one day, I thought to myself, Hmm . . . Maybe I should try one in book form. Unfortunately for my dad but fortunately for my existing readers, what I ended up with was more aligned with the Jenny Holiday brand than the Hallmark brand. This means that even though I would prefer he not read this book, Dad will in fact read it. (He will also make the rounds to stores in his city to make “adjustments” if it’s not facing out on the shelves.) We just won’t talk about Those Parts. I knew all those emotional sublimation skills I picked up in my Minnesota youth would come in handy someday.
Thanks also to my friend Marion Kuhn for the German language help. I learned a lot about German (non) swearing!
And as usual, thanks to my readers, both old and new. You’re the best!
Announcement
Keep reading for an exclusive excerpt from Max and Dani’s fairy-tale Christmas romance,
Duke, Actually
Winter 2021
Teaser
When Dani Martinez woke up Friday the twenty-first of December, she thought, It’s going to be a good day.
And then she thought, Liar.
But whatever, just because it was the last Friday of the semester and she was about to be inundated with a hundred essays on The (Not So) Great Gatsby, it didn’t necessarily follow that today was going to be bad.
So she hadn’t done a lick of Christmas shopping, forget the fruitcake she was supposed to have started weeks ago. That didn’t mean this particular day was automatically going to suck.
And just because the cherry on top of December twenty-first was going to be the departmental holiday party at which she would “get” to see her still-not-quite-ex-husband with his trade-in trollop didn’t mean—Ah, forget it. This day was going to be crap.
Her phone dinged. It would be Leo. Because of