Page 71 of Daddy's Little Christmas

“High responsibility,” he murmured, but I saw the way his shoulders dropped, tension easing out of him as he rolled up his sleeves.

We worked side by side, moving around each other with an ease we hadn’t earned yet but seemed to have anyway. I showed him where I kept the good olive oil; he bumped my hip gently when I reached past him for the salt.

At one point, he sprinkled pepper over the chicken and somehow managed to dust his sweater too.

I reached out automatically, brushing the stray grains away from his chest. My fingers lingered a fraction of a second longer than necessary, feeling the warmth of him through the knit.

His breath hitched. “Careful,” he said lightly. “You’re going to make me think you like me or something.”

“I do like you,” I said.

His gaze darted up to mine, and whatever joke he’d been about to make melted on his tongue. “Yeah,” he whispered. “I like you too.”

The oven accepted the chicken with a soft whoosh of heat when I slid the pan inside. I set the timer, then turned back to him.

“So,” I said, leaning against the counter as he stirred the green beans in the skillet. “You mentioned last night that you picked up a new campaign,” I said.

He explained that a friend of a friend had reached out—someone whose usual social media manager had been sidelined unexpectedly. An accident, a last-minute gap, a lot of scrambling. Rudy had been recommended as a steady pair of hands.

“Temporary,” he said. “Just helping them keep things running. They sell artisanal gingerbread kits,” he added, rolling his eyes fondly. “Very earnest. Very festive. Zero understanding of scheduling or captions longer than six exclamation points.”

I snorted. “Chaotic gingerbread influencer energy.”

Rudy grinned. “Exactly that.”

“Does it change anything for you while you’re here?” I asked.

He shook his head. “No. Just a few hours here and there. I already had the bandwidth.”

“Of course you do,” I said. “You’re very good at making things feel calm.”

He glanced over his shoulder, eyes soft. “You kind of are too,” he said quietly.

We ate at the small table by the window, the world outside dim and blue around the edges, the house wrapped in candlelight and the faint glow from the tree in the next room.

The food wasn’t complicated—roasted chicken, potatoes, green beans with slivered almonds—but it felt like a holiday meal anyway, the kind meant to be eaten slowly, together. And Rudy treated every bite like something special.

“This is so good,” he said around a mouthful, then swallowed quickly. “I mean, like, comfort-food good. I feel like I should be paying you.”

“You already helped cook it,” I reminded him. “That’s your fee.”

“I’d have helped even if you were a terrible cook,” he said. “But I’m glad you’re not. Makes the whole ‘spend Christmas Eve with this man’ thing less risky.”

“Just for my cooking?” I asked, arching a brow.

He smiled, slow and a little shy. “That’s one of the reasons,” he said.

Between bites, we drifted into stories. I told him about when my mom was alive she insisted on dropping off cinnamon rolls every Christmas morning to our neighbors, and how the Fitzgerald twins used to race shovels down the main street after heavy snows until Sheriff Tom threatened to ticket them for making snowdrifts.

Rudy laughed, eyes crinkling at the corners. “Of course they did,” he said. “I can completely see that.”

“What about you?” I asked gently. “Christmases growing up?”

His fork slowed on the plate. For a moment I worried I’d pushed too hard, but then he breathed out and met my gaze.

“They were… different,” he said. “Some years we had a tree. Some years we had a plant that someone said was a tree. Some years we had… nothing. It depended on which house I was in.”

“Rudy,” I murmured.