He dropped his hands from her. “You said no Christmas presents, that we’d go away together for a weekend next month when we both have off, and that would be our gift to each other.”

“Okay, so it’s not a Christmas present,” she said. “Call it a present present. Do you remember months ago when I told you I was going home for Christmas for my aunt Chloe’s wedding?” She hesitated. “Well…I bought two plane tickets, not just one.” She pulled his confirmation from her purse and handed it to him.

Mia’s aunt Chloe and her fiancé, Sawyer Thompson, had been together for five years now. Being committed but not tethered had suited both of their wild souls, but recently Chloe had caught baby fever from her sister Maddie, who’d just had her second child.

Nick stared down at the paper Mia had handed him. “The wedding in Lucky Harbor?” he asked. “In Washington State?”

“Yes,” Mia said. She’d spent her first summer there five years ago at age seventeen, where she’d found and met her birth parents. She’d discovered her first crush there, too, her first love.

She and Carlos had done their best, but they’d been so young. Too young. Their teenage romance hadn’t survived, but she’d still gone to Lucky Harbor as often as she could over the past five years. “I realize it’s all the way across the country,” she said. “And also that it’s short notice, but I’ve been wanting to ask you for a while now. I just didn’t want you to feel obligated.”

He wasn’t looking like he felt obligated. He was looking like she’d clobbered him over the head with her purse, and some of her happiness faded.

“You want me to meet your birth parents?” he asked slowly.

“No,” she said slowly. “Well, yes. But mostly I just want to spend the holiday with you.” She knew the holidays had never been kind to him, and she wanted to show him how magical it could be. “This’ll be our first Christmas. It’ll be fun.” She smiled.

He didn’t. “Mia, I can’t.”

She took in his blank expression and got suddenly cold. “Can’t?” she murmured, not understanding.

“Okay, won’t,” he corrected, voice soft but his meaning brutally clear.

Shocked, she stepped back, coming up against her front door.

Nick reached for her, but she lifted a hand, holding him off. “You know it’s just a trip, right?” she asked as lightly as she could. “It’s not a request for a diamond or anything like that.” She’d never make that request of him. Maybe she’d secretly hoped that someday he’d make that request, but she certainly wouldn’t.

“I can’t,” he repeated.

No warm smile, no explanation to soften the blow, nothing. She actually looked down at herself. Was she bleeding? It felt like she was bleeding. But she wasn’t. She was in perfect working order as Mrs. Claus. Feeling stupid, she lifted her chin. “Okay,” she said quietly, even as her heart seized. “Never mind.” A little numb, which was a good thing at the moment since she didn’t want to fall apart, yet, she unlocked her door and stepped inside. Don’t look back, don’t look back—

She totally looked back.

Tension radiated from Nick, but he wasn’t giving anything away. A moment ago, he’d been touching her as if he needed her more than air, and now he was a complete stranger.

She quietly shut and locked the door, then leaned back against it.

He hadn’t picked her.

Chapter 2

Nick spent the next hour studying the ticket confirmation Mia had given him as if it held the answers to the universe. Not that he was actually seeing the piece of paper. Nope, he kept flashing back to Mia sitting across from him at the table earlier, her long brown hair falling like silk to her shoulders, her mossy green eyes full of affection and heat.

For him.

He loved the way she looked at him, though he’d managed to ruin that pretty well tonight. Disgusted with himself, he set the paper aside, turned off the lights, and got into bed where he proceeded to stare up at the ceiling, counting the ways in which he’d screwed up.

There were too many to count.

He could argue that his life was in crazy flux, but that was an excuse, and he hated excuses. His reaction to Mia’s invitation had been knee-jerk, and he’d hurt her.

He felt like shit about that, but he knew in the end, it was for the best. He had no business going to meet her family. One, he had no family experience. None. Two, he had even less relationship experience. Three, he’d applied for a job that was going to take him places, the first of which was around the entire country for the next two years.

It was what he’d wanted, to defend the kids who were falling through the cracks of the system—as he had. Mia, more than anyone else, understood this need. She’d been given up at birth, too.

But she’d been adopted. Nick had been shuffled from home to home his entire childhood, never quite belonging anywhere. Mia knew all this about him. It was what drew them together.

But what she didn’t know was that he’d gotten the job.

He’d been planning on telling her at dinner, and then they’d have celebrated. Except that being with her, as always, took him out of time and place. She made him forget everything but her and how he felt when he was with her.

And then there’d been the real problem.

Sitting with her at that candlelit table, watching her smile at him, for him…suddenly he hadn’t wanted to go anywhere.

He’d been wrestling with that when she’d dropped her wedding invite like a bombshell. She wanted him to go spend Christmas—a holiday he’d never believed in—with her family. Her family, something else he didn’t quite believe in.

When he finally fell into an exhausted, restless sleep, he dreamed about the first time they’d met, in a Human Behavior class that he’d needed in order to counsel teens on a volunteer basis.

She turned her head and gave him a long look when he slid into the class ten minutes late on the first day, thanks to a monster hangover. She was in glasses, her eyes nondescript, her brown hair piled up on top of her head. She had a laptop perched carefully on her lap and the required reading opened in one hand.

A nerd, he’d immediately decided, and knew he’d sat by the right girl. He always tried to sit by the smart ones because they were great study partners. He smiled at her.

She frowned and went back to concentrating on the lecture.

He realized he must have missed something important, as she had a full screen of notes. He leaned in to try to read over her shoulder at the same moment she turned back to him.

Their lips nearly brushed.

Her eyes widened and her lips opened in a little oh! of surprise. His reaction wasn’t all that different. Had he thought her nondescript? She was the furthest thing from nondescript, starting with her eyes. They were deep green and brimming with intelligence. She stared at him for a long beat, and then turned her laptop his way to share her notes.

“Oh, whoops,” she said, quickly closing a screen. “That was my research project for a different class.” She bit her lower lip. “You’re probably wondering about it now.”

Actually, he wasn’t. He wasn’t even looking at her screen. He was wondering how it was that she smelled so amazing, how her eyes could be so…green. He was wondering if she was wearing a bra beneath that thin sweater, or if she was just chilly…

“I’m writing about human sexuality,” she said.

Okay, now she had his attention. “You’re researching sex?” he asked. “As in how to have it?”

“Hey, I know how to have it,” she said, and then blushed gorgeously when she caught the teasing in his gaze.

Later he found out she’d been adopted, too. Drawn by this thing they had in common, he bought her a burger that night, and they ended up in Central Park beneath the stars watching an unexpected meteor shower. Mia made wishes on every falling star, big wishes, little wishes, wishes for everyone in her life…and he found himself entranced big-time.

Normally he never talked about himself, but she pulled him out of his shell, and they talked until dawn. Talked. Never in his life had he just sat and talked with a girl he hadn’t yet even gotten to second base. But she was different, and he shared things with her that he’d not shared with anyone.

The next night, she brought him homemade brownies. And unlike the brownies his roommates always made, hers weren’t illegal.

They’d been together ever since. Nick flopped over in his bed. They’d had fun exploring the city together. Exploring each other. Getting closer than he’d ever let someone get before.

And that’s about when her ex had shown up.

With a ring.

Yeah, that had been fun.

Carlos knocked on Mia’s door late one night. Mia was shocked at the visit. Nick was shocked when she asked him to go home so she could talk to Carlos alone.

Nick went downstairs and stood on the sidewalk, wondering if he was about to lose the best thing that had ever happened to him.

The longest hour of his life later, Carlos came out of the building, hood up and hands in his pockets as he headed down the sidewalk, never looking back.

Nick took the stairs at a jog, his gut in knots.

Mia’s shower was running, and he waited until she came out of the bathroom. In just a towel, steam surrounding her, she stared at him, and slowly shook her head.

And then her eyes filled with tears.

His heart squeezed as he strode to her and pulled her in close.

“He wanted me to marry him,” she said against his chest.

Nick went still. “And you said…?”

“I loved him when I was seventeen,” she said soggily, “with everything I had. I wanted to make it work, but he didn’t. He told me to move on. So that’s what I did. He broke my heart, and I just broke his.”

Nick let out the breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding and pressed his jaw to the top of her head.