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“All right, I guess I’ll see you in there.”
Declan made it onto the sidewalk before he turned and blurted out her name. “Holly?”
“Yeah?” she asked, turning on the top step.
“I wish I could see this time of year through your eyes. Maybe…maybe we’d be in a different place.”
“You mean where I’m not spraying you with confetti and recording it for social media?”
“What?”
She came back down the stairs, shaking her head. “When I found out you were coming, I wanted to get you back for the snakes. I was going to pop confetti onto you as soon as you got into the car and scare you. I was going to have Merry record it—”
He stiffened. “And post it online? Without asking me?”
Holly’s eyes widened. “No! I just wanted to see you jump.” She took a step toward him. “It was only going to be a prank, Declan. Like we’ve been doing all week.”
“It is one thing to stuff my car with gnomes or spray me with streamers, but you were going to put my business out there on the internet.”
“I wasn’t!”
“How do I really know that?” he said harshly. “You know I’m a private person, and just because you don’t mind making an idiot out of yourself doesn’t mean—” Declan caught the flash of hurt and cursed. “I didn’t mean…I just don’t want to make a spectacle of myself.”
“Unlike me, right?” Holly stomped down the steps until she was less than a foot away from him and poked him in the chest so hard he took a step back. “You know, I’m not ashamed of what I’ve accomplished. I’m debt-free. I’ve had money put away and incurring interest since I was twenty, so retirement isn’t an issue. If I have to put up with some judgmental assholes making asinine comments or calling me elf, I’ll take it…all the way to the bank.
“And for the record, I would have asked your permission if I wanted to put your video up, but you assume the worst of me. Why? I swear, every time I think there’s more to you than being an angry, temperamental miser, you prove me wrong.”
Holly spun away from him, and he chased her, taking hold of her arm. “Holly! Holly, stop. Please.”
“Why?”
“I—” A lump lodged in his throat, blocking the words. He struggled to open up to Clark. To his dad. But for some reason, he wanted to explain why he was this way to this short, feisty redhead.
He dropped his hand from her and backed up a step. “You’re out here trying to avoid your family because they love you too much. You have nothing but fond memories for this time of year, but not all of us get to have that. I may be a judgmental jerk, but you’re not perfect.”
“I never said I was perfect!”
“But you believe that anyone who doesn’t think like you needs to be fixed or changed.”
Holly stood there, mouth agape, and Declan couldn’t stay. Why did everything with them go so terribly wrong just when he thought they were heading towards something more?
“Please convey my apologies to your parents, but I need to go.”
Declan didn’t wait to see if she’d try to stop him, not that he thought she would. Maybe if things had gone differently that first day they wouldn’t be here now, but it was too late to change things now.
Two years too late.
CHAPTER 13
Holly finished making her last pre-recorded TikTok and took off the elf hat, tossing it onto the side table. She’d set up this room in the back of the store to record content during her downtime and it had definitely come in handy, but lip-sync videos wouldn’t satisfy her audience. Holly needed to figure out what was in store for her YouTube channel and how to transition her audience away from Adventure Elf.
She’d had some interesting requests, from climbing a pine tree and zip lining down, to the more scandalous suggestion that she wrestle another girl in a pool of eggnog. She hated to disappoint her fans, who were the reason Holly was able to buy A Shop for All Seasons to begin with, but she was running out of steam for adventurous content. Her current audience didn’t appreciate her recent videos quite like watching her paraglide through the sky.
Holly shrugged out of the elf costume and hung it up on the metal clothing pole with a few other outfits she kept back there. Declan’s reaction about taking a video of him had been eating at her. She’d managed to avoid him so far, but she still had four days of work left this week.
It didn’t help that Declan’s accusations made her wonder if she really was partly to blame for the breakdown between them. She knew nothing about Declan, and Holly could recall several times being so presumptuous she winced in response to the memories. She’d thought they’d been having fun, but maybe she misread the prank war.
Holly dragged a hand over her face. There was no maybe about it. He’d wrapped her car like a present and left her chocolates, and she’d tried to scare him. She was an idiot.
