Page 23 of The Mistletoe Kisser

“You’ve gotten really bad at giving compliments since we first met,” she observed.

“Ha. Joke’s on you. I wasnevergood at it. ’Sides, why should I tell you you’re sexy when you obviously already know you are? Waste of time.” He hiccupped.

“What the hell happened to you, Ryan?” she asked. The guy she remembered had been mischievous, lively, flirtatious. The man he’d grown into was a grumpy pain in the ass.Maybe it was the military school his mother had threatened him with all those years ago?

She found a pack of lime green sticky notes on the skinny table at the foot of the stairs. The mirror above it was covered in Carson’s nearly indecipherable notes to himself.

Find lightbulbs.

Buy overalls.

Breakfast with BC.

Her eyes narrowed when she read the last one. In Blue Moon, BC stood for the Beautification Committee, and the Beautification Committee stood for trouble. Before she could puzzle out why Carson would be having breakfast with them, Ryan distracted her.

“Hey! Hey, Sexy Sam?”

She didn’t turn around fast enough, and he pegged her in the back with a cross-stitched throw pillow that saidFarm Life.

“What?” she asked in exasperation.

“Why do you keep pretending like we know each other?” he asked. His bloodshot eyes narrowed, presumably to keep her in focus.

“Because wedoknow each other.” But only one of them had been memorable apparently. It was downright disheartening to know that she’d meant nothing to the guy who had given her her first kiss and set her on the right path.

She cringed when she thought of all those Solstice celebrations when she’d strolled past Mistletoe Corner, wrapping herself in warm, fuzzy memories.

Let Stan out into pasture, she scrawled on the note.

Looking around for a good place to put it, she settled on Ryan’s forehead. She gave the adhesive an extra smack just to make sure it stuck.

“Hey,” he mumbled.

“I seriously can’t believe you don’t remember me, you ass,” Sammy grumbled, wrestling the first loafer off his big, stupid foot.

“Why in the hell would I remember you?” he slurred.

“Oh, only because you were my first kiss, jerk. Under the mistletoe, surrounded by Christmas lights.”

He snorted with drunken derision. “That sounds like one of those stupid holiday movies.”

“Just for that, I’m leaving your other shoe on.”

“I wasnotyour kirst fiss,” he enunciated with arrogance.

“Yes. You were.”

“Not. I’ve never been to this tie-dye holiday hellhole before today.”

“I was fourteen,” she lectured. “You were Ryan Shufflebottom from Des Moines visiting your great-uncle Carson Shufflebottom. We met in the park during the Winter Solstice and Multicultural Holiday Celebration. We were both in line for fried tofu.”

He sat up abruptly, stopping mere inches from her face.

“Shufflebottom? Des Moines?” he squinted at her. “Tofu?”

“Ha. I told you,” she said triumphantly. And then—because she was a good person, damn it—she yanked off his other shoe and threw it in the direction of the first. “You were so sweet. So much fun. What happened to you?”

“First of all, I wouldnevereat fried tofu. That’s dic-susting. Nextly, I was never sweet. And bullet point number B, that wasn’t me.”