Rebecca Raisin - Midnight and Mistletoe at Cedarwood Lodge - Your invite to the most uplifting and romantic party of the year!

She gave a quick shake of her head, her candy cane earrings swinging and blinking merrily.

“You, my lucky lady, are about to be educated on what makes a perfect Christmas breakfast.”

I wasn’t sure what the hell monkey bread was either but it certainly looked pretty damn good. A man who could cook, and better yet was actually professionally trained in the culinary arts, was a keeper. Even un domestic goddess Amory could see it and was coming around to our small town living ways. In Evergreen, if someone cooked you food, you damn well ate it. There was no I’m on a diet here. People would frown like you were insane if you so much as uttered the words, put the dressing on the side … or hold the butter .

Once upon a time there was zero chance Amory would have sat down and consumed so many varieties of carbs – neither would I, for that matter! In New York we’d been so accustomed to following fads. So much had changed in just a few months being back home and now she was much more lax about restrictions and would end up fighting me over the last gingerbread cookie. Another positive to living out here meant we got plenty of exercise – zooming around the grounds and inside the lodge all day every day, including trudging up the stairs a million times sure worked up an appetite, that and the abundance of fresh air, or that was my excuse anyway. Sure, it wasn’t a gym on the Upper East Side, but it was a hell of a lot prettier and a lot more fun.

An hour later the table was laden with the biggest Christmas breakfast I’d ever seen. I touched my belly in apology, because there was no way I was going to be able to hold back from demolishing it all: from the monkey bread and caramel sauce to the crisp berry nice Christmas tree; the steaming cheese and chili tamales; and a helping of eggnog pancakes with lashings of butterscotch cream. And that’s what I could see in front of me, Cruz was still stirring pots and flicking frying pans. We’d be living on leftovers for a week at this rate.

Beside me, Kai sent a look to the heavens as if he was also apologizing then helped himself to a huge serving of the pastry tree, the bright berries as fragrant as they were pretty. With a grin, he took up a slice of monkey bread and drowned it in caramel sauce.

“Your body is your temple, hey?” Amory teased him.

I grinned. I could hardly believe it, Kai – who ran up mountains for fun, practiced yoga at midnight and waxed lyrical on the pros of fermented vegetables – had a sweet tooth? It was good to see he was a mere mortal…

He blushed. “Well, I’ll be extra nice to my body tomorrow.”

“And what a body it is.” I said, and instantly wanted to slap my forehead. I coughed. “What I meant was…” Yeah, Clio, what did you mean? “… you can obviously see that you work out, and um… eat well, and that reflects in your… erm physique.” Kill me.

He winked, which of course provoked what I’d come to call tremble leg and I wondered if there was something wrong with me. Honestly, my brain was betraying me in the worst way. I didn’t dare look at Amory, even though I could feel her gaze on me like a laser beam.

Heat crept from my toes to my nose, and I concentrated really hard on staring into the coffee in my mug. I’d have buried my head in it if I could have. It was like being a teenager all over again… was it glaringly obvious to those around me?

It was kissing him again that did it. My lips tingled every time I remembered, and he’d even stolen into my dreams. It was almost impossible to eat because my nerves were fluttering in my belly like the tips of butterfly wings, but I made an effort, since it was Christmas and Cruz had cooked such a feast. I couldn’t possibly let any of it go to waste…

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