Unwrapped Read online

  Unwrapped

  A Holiday Romance

  Amelia Wilde

  Contents

  Unwrapped

  Mailing List

  Unwrapped

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Epilogue

  Single Dad’s Barista

  Single Dad’s Barista

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Epilogue

  Claim Your Free Book

  Single Dad’s Sweetheart

  Unwrapped

  He’ll give her more than just a gift...

  Emily was my first real kiss. First f*ck. First everything.

  But why would she want a bad boy with a rough past?

  We broke up ten years ago and she’s on my mind every day.

  So when she shows up in town for Thanksgiving with f*ck-me eyes and a reckless side to her uptight persona, I let her jingle my bells.

  Who wouldn’t?

  One last hot night together, and I’ll be over her. For good.

  Only it’s not that simple.

  By Christmas she’s back with news that changes everything.

  Turns out, you should keep all your gifts wrapped up tight.

  Because now we’re both on the naughty list...

  Unwrapped is a sexy, sweet Christmas novella. For a limited time only, this volume includes Single Dad’s Barista as a bonus novel! Unwrapped ends at around 35%.

  Mailing List

  It might get a little wild on my mailing list, but I promise you’ll love it. Join now and get a free copy of my full-length bad boy novel Hate Loving You! Click the link below or paste it into your browser and tell me where I should send it.

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  Unwrapped

  Chapter One

  Finn

  The door to the bar weighs thick and heavy against my arm, pushing back, asserting a little bit of resistance, in its effort to keep me out. Just like I figured it would. It’s not where I usually throw back a beer, but it’s been a long day and I want a drink.

  So what if the parking lot was so crowded that it’s spilling over into the one designated for the auto parts place next door?

  See, this is exactly what happens in places like Lakewood. Every time.

  The good bar in town ends up closing. The bar that feels comfortable, like a worn-in pair of jeans. Maybe there are some chips in the paint and dings in the bartop, but people know to mind their own business and the guy behind the counter doesn’t ask a hundred nosy questions as he’s pouring your drink.

  The good bar? That one was my bar.

  Up until the first of November, that is, when I stopped off for a drink after finishing a frantic rush job in one of the country club houses and found a sign on the door. Closed. It was closed the next day, and the one after that, and then the next week, a for sale sign appeared out front and it’s still there.

  Happy Holidays.

  Holidays—that’s why the parking lot is so full, and even before I make it inside, I can feel my face settling into a scowl.

  The Brew Pub—and Jesus, that name—is packed.

  Look. I took a job today knowing full well that nobody else in town is working. It’s a national holiday. But old Mr. Howland’s step was beyond fucked up, and I couldn’t be responsible for him taking a tumble and bashing his head on the ice on Thanksgiving. He doesn’t have any family around here.

  Neither do I.

  Unless you count my dad, which I don’t.

  It’s too loud in here, too bright, and there’s not a single corner I can hide in.

  I edge my way through the groups of people and shimmy up to the bar, which is teeming in women wearing the kind of dresses I’d peg for a nightclub, not the Brew Pub.

  And God, they’re all here.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I recognize some of the regulars from Jimmy’s tucked thick as thieves into a U-shaped in the back, looking about as uncomfortable as I feel, but I’m not in the mood to chat. All I wanted was a drink to unwind. A TV to stare at. A low hum of conversation to drown out the thoughts ringing in my head.

  Everyone in here might as well be screaming.

  One of the women sidled up to the bar turns around and her entire face lights up. “Finn!”

  Who the hell is she?

  “Finn Wyatt! Oh, my God, I can’t believe you’re here, too! Who invited you?”

  Who invited me? I wasn’t invited. I live here. This is where I go, now that Jimmy’s is a deserted ruin. I search her face for a clue…and that’s when it hits me.

  This is a regular high school reunion.

  How oblivious does a person have to be to miss that? Up until a few years ago, when things with my dad got really bad, we’d have dinner together, crack open a six-pack, and part ways when it was empty. It never occurred to me to come out on a holiday.

  “Kenzie,” I say finally, my tongue tripping over the word. I’m having flashbacks of her as a pretty timid goth, all black hair and black lipstick. It’s why her face isn’t computing right now. She looks decent, though her dress is about a mile too short for the kind of weather we’re having, and she seems to have moved up in the world, because she’s here with none other than Chance Cunningham, who was the star quarterback all four years we were in high school.

  He finally notices me over her head. “Wyatt, buddy, how you been?” He shouts out the greeting so the words carry over the noise, raising his drink in a toast.

  I can’t do this.

  I didn’t go to the five-year reunion, and I didn’t go to the ten-year, and eleven years out of high school, I am not interested in shooting the shit with Chance Cunningham. Or Kenzie Drew. Or any single one of them. The longer I look, more faces pop out at me from a decade ago, only we�
�re all grown up. And if they’re all here—

  If they’re all here… I don’t want to see her.

  I raise my hand in an awkward wave and then reach desperately for the phone in my jacket pocket. By the time I have it out and in my hand, Chance has already turned back to the crowd, which is par for the course. Even Kenzie, who made all that fuss, is distracted by some other woman barreling in for a giant, shrieking hug, the kind I can’t stand.

  I don’t know why I pretend to get a text message, but I do, and then I turn away from the bar and start advancing through the crowded tables. It’s way too hot in here. The grocery store won’t be open today, but I can stop at the gas station to pick up some shitty beer and drink it at home, alone, in relative peace, and hope for the holiday season to be over. There’s something about the holidays that makes my chest ache, and I hate it.

  I’m three steps from freedom when a voice calls out, “Wait!”

  I know it’s her before I look.

  I shouldn’t look.

  I look anyway.

  I haven’t seen her in eleven years, but Emily Powell looks exactly the same. Better, even, and my heart twists in my chest at the sight of her big green eyes.

  She’s dressed in jeans so tight they could be leggings, and a white sweater that’s so long it covers her ass, somehow looking both gorgeous and like she could face the cold without looking like an idiot, and she’s holding a beer in each hand.

  “Hey, Finn,” she says, like we’ve never been apart a day in all these years. My name is that familiar on her tongue. “You look like you could use a drink.”

  Chapter Two

  Emily

  Maybe it’s because I’ve already downed one cocktail that I have the bravery to approach Finn. Or maybe it’s not that at all. Maybe it’s the sight of him in his tough work jacket over honest-to-God flannel, just like he used to wear in high school, which draws me to him like a moth to a flame.

  He doesn’t want to be here. That much is clear. Finn has always been the kind of man who belongs at Jimmy’s, not in a trendy place like the Brew Pub. And not on a night like this, when everyone from our graduating class and every other graduating class has crammed themselves into the room.

  The moment I saw him, I ordered two beers from my coveted spot up at the bar. I watched the whole interaction with Kenzie transpire, and felt—it’s so stupid—jealous when I saw her moving closer to him, leaning into that space around his chiseled muscles carved from hours of honest manual labor, attracting the attention of those blue eyes. I haven’t had a claim on him in, what, ten years?

  When the beers arrived, it jolted me into action. My chest hummed with the knowledge of what was going to happen, and by the time I picked up the glasses, Finn was following the script, already making his way to the door.

  It’s a lot easier to slip through the crowd when you’re 5’3’’ and not 6’2’’.

  My heart might as well be a bass drum, it’s pounding so hard that it drowns out all the chatter, the music a backdrop to it all—boy bands backed by fiddles and violins, because that’s the kind of place we’re in.

  He’s almost to the door.

  And my hands are full of beers.

  I want to touch him, hook my hand in the crook in his arm like I’ve done a million times before, but I can’t. My voice is my only option. Is it possible to feel half-buzzed and half stone-cold sober? That’s how I feel. “Wait!”

  His shoulders lift a fraction of an inch. He heard me, and my heart leaps up into my throat. Is he going to turn around?

  Thank God. He turns around.

  Our eyes meet, and it’s like I’m looking at the person I knew ten years ago. It’s almost eerie, how similar his expression is—his jaw set, eyes blazing, but guarded somehow, like a wall has been thrown up between us. That much is probably true. And in all these years, it hasn’t come down yet. Not a single block has chipped away.

  “Hey, Finn,” I say, my mind shifting into overdrive. I ordered him a beer. Now, standing here with both mugs in my hands, it seems presumptuous, silly. Why did I do that, after what I did to him that year? The last time we ever talked? “You look like you could use a drink.”

  His eyes linger on my face. Does he notice that it’s not an empty gesture—that I have two beers, right here? Is he going to turn around and keep walking? I would. I definitely would, if I was him, and it was me interrupting him on his way outside.

  Finally, he speaks. “Are you offering me one of those?”

  The beers are this close to spilling, my hands are trembling so much. “Yeah. I ordered each of us one. I saw you in that crowd and I knew—” No. I’m saying too much. Damn the 7 & 7 I drank when I first got here to feel a little more at ease, at home. It wasn’t my first choice to come to my parents’ for the Thanksgiving holiday, but this afternoon, I got cabin fever and by evening I was here.

  Maybe a part of me hoped he’d be here. I don’t know.

  “You knew what?”

  Finn’s voice, deep and smooth, unlocks something in me. Something reckless.

  But this isn’t something reckless. This is a drink with an old friend.

  One drink, with one old friend, in one bar.

  Nothing else.

  “I knew you’d come for a drink, and I knew you were going to walk out without one if I didn’t take drastic action.” I smile at my own joke. I can’t help it. Off to my left, a couple slides out of a booth and wraps themselves up in coats, scarves, each other. It’s the only empty space in the whole bar. I tilt my head at the booth. “Quick. Before someone takes it.”

  Finn doesn’t move from his spot, but I do. I’m always the one moving. I’m always the one leaping before I look, which is why I didn’t want to come back here. The thing no one ever tells you about following your every impulse is that eventually one of them is wrong.

  I snag the booth and set both beers down on the surface, brushing a layer of napkins toward the edge. They can bus this while we sit down.

  The door to the bar swings shut and my heart sinks.

  He walked away. He left.

  Well, that’s his right.

  “Are you just going to stand there?”

  He’s close enough behind me that I can feel the heat of his breath sweeping on my neck, and on the next inhale, I get a lungful of his scent—spicy and rugged and vaguely like work. “So you’re taking me up on the offer?” I glance back at him, and his eyes are steady, patient, waiting. Like always.

  “Before it gets away from me,” he says. He steps closer and every nerve in my body tingles with anticipation. But not even our clothes make contact. For someone so tall and muscled, he’s deft, and he doesn’t touch me at all as he slides into the opposite side of the booth. Suddenly he’s the one inviting me. “Take a seat, Em. Let’s have a beer. That’s what you want, right?”

  Chapter Three

  Finn

  That last part comes out a little harsher than I intended, and I think we’re both momentarily shocked that I’d say such a dickish thing. What I can’t tell Emily—not right now—is that seeing her is bringing things back to me, swimming up to the surface of my memory and playing out in front of my eyes like they’re on the big screen.

  There are a lot of pleasant memories. More than pleasant. Emily’s smooth, creamy skin under my hands as we fucked in the front seat of my truck, her hands braced against my shoulders, hair still pulled back in a long ponytail from cheerleading practice. This habit she had of burying her face into the skin of my shoulder and taking a deep breath after she came. The afternoons we’d spend in her basement, completely fucking chaste, watching shitty movies while her mom cooked upstairs.

  But one memory in particular stands out. One I don’t want to think about.

  It was what she wanted at the time.

  Emily doesn’t flinch. She slides into the booth across from me and wraps a hand around her beer, giving me an amused smile.

  I know exactly what that smile means.

  “That i
s what I want,” she says, then she lifts the beer to her lips and takes a sip.

  “Emily, I’m—”

  “That’s why I, you know, bought it, and chased you down, and offered it to you.”

  “I didn’t mean it that way.”

  “You didn’t mean to imply that this is all about what I want, like I’m a spoiled brat?” She purses her lips.

  “Fine. Maybe I did mean it that way.”

  “But here’s the thing.”

  “Oh, God.” How many times did she say that to me? She’d always launch into some alternative explanation of the world, dragging me out of my bleak pessimism and into the light of this relentless way she had of seeing the silver lining in everything. So obnoxious.