The Hawthorne Plant Nursery puts on famous holiday displays every year, full of Christmas trees and festive cheer. And Max Bellerose, successful scientist and entrepreneur, has come back to help out for a week, a favor to his former boss; they’re shorthanded, it’s Christmas, and James gave him his first job, years ago. But as he’s closing up for the night, he finds someone else staying late to work on this year’s decorations ... someone beautiful and artistic and tempting.
Pippin Hawthorne isn’t simply his father’s son. He works hard on the displays, bringing customers and tourists in. Everything has to be just right -- and he doesn’t need an interruption. Except this interruption is tall, dark, handsome, and commanding ... everything that Pippin likes.
Amid the holiday lights and ornaments and fir trees, Pippin and Max just might find some Christmas magic for themselves.
“You know, you look familiar. Have we met?”
“No? I mean ... don’t think so?” It came out a question. Max had met a few of the current nursery professionals, the certified crop advisors, over the past few days while he’d been helping out. Some of them had seen him elsewhere. At conferences, perhaps. Dressed up in coat and slacks, not work boots and jeans and slowly falling detritus of fir and faux-snow flocking.
He was very sure he hadn’t met a young man who lit up the night like one of those holiday lights, who evidently stayed late to conjure Christmas-display art into existence.
“Hmm. I could swear -- but never mind, it’s nice to meet you, then --” The sunshine tried to extend a hand. The armful of ornaments shifted treacherously. Slipped.
Max dove forward. Caught tumbling swimsuit-Santa figurines. “Here --”
“Oh, thanks --” More human, less fantastical, more wry; up close, those big brown eyes were a little older, maybe not quite Max’s own thirty-six years, but nearer than he’d initially guessed. “Just finishing up this last tree.”
“You do ... all of this?” He did remember the holiday displays at Hawthorne. Locally famous -- and more than locally; they’d made the news, brought in some visitors, drawing appreciators -- they’d begun as purely Christmas-themed, and then expanded. Halloween trees. Springtime flower arches. Summer sunflower paths. “I always thought it was, like ... a lot of people.”
“I have some help with set-up, especially the trees. But it’s mostly me.” They were standing close, so close, because Max had helped grab cascading ornaments. Colorful light -- red, green, gold -- leapt and swirled across the line of a tempting cheekbone. Over soft pink lips, a gift of a mouth, wrapped in smile-lines. That chin had a tiny dimple.
Max wanted to touch. To find out how that sunny hair felt. To feel that petite firm swimmer’s body pressed against his. Here and now, in this enchanted holiday space out of time, with the scents of fir and cinnamon and mint in the air. Where this person had stepped out from between branches and talked about creating magic.
The want was staggering. A thunderclap. A carol.
The man grinned at him more, and finished, “I do all the designs and displays. I have for years.”
“You’re an artist.”
“It’s probably the most useful thing I do around here. Well, maybe not, but ...” Those burnt-sugar eyes slid across Max’s body, shoulders, waist, thighs: definitely appreciating, Max understood with a quick white-hot thrill. “I’m not out there moving trees and walking the grounds, either. Hands-on. Under the sun. Much more impressive.”
The night was a dream, a story. A holiday from reality. Max leaned in. Couldn’t help it. “Impressive, was it?”
“Very.” The young man did not lean away. Even closer, head tipped back, meeting Max’s gaze. “You have pine needles in your hair.”
“Douglas fir.”
“And sap on your shoulder.”
“And you like it.” Ridiculous, and he heard it as he said it; who said that?
But his young man laughed. “I do. It’s familiar. Like home, and all of this. And elemental, kind of. Wild.” He even did a tiny lip-lick. His tongue was quick and pink, and left those lips even softer.
The floor skittered with projected snowflakes. The shop needed locking up. They both had hands full of absurd kitschy Christmas ornaments, because Max had helped catch those.
And he knew he was going to lean down more, and claim those shining parted lips; he knew it as he did it, even as he couldn’t believe it, himself kissing a man he did not know in the middle of the garden shop, nothing he’d planned for or researched.
But the young man tasted like peppermint and kissed back as if overjoyed to be kissed, fearless and thrilled. His eyes slid shut, growing lost in sensation; Max knew the feeling, because he was having it too.
He wasn’t sure how long it lasted. It felt right: that sweet plush mouth, opening for his. That eagerness, that willingness to be tasted and explored.
Max moved to lift a hand, to touch more, to draw them closer together --
He forgot about the terrible Santa-on-vacation ornaments. One slipped from his grip. Dropped. Hit the hard floor, with a spray of glazed porcelain.
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