Chapter 16

Crouching down and scooping snow into her cupped hands, Natalie patted it, molding it into a round shape. Standing up, she added it to her snowman, giggling at the oddly shaped head.

"This was your idea, Nat," Delia stuck her head out of the cottage door, grumbling. "Get your scrawny derriere in here and help."

"Just a minute," Natalie called absently, gathering the branches she'd collected earlier from the ground. She stuck the branches into the sides of the snowman, and viola! He had arms if not a face. Her brown eyes searched the snow-blanketed ground for anything appropriate for a nose. She looked up abruptly when she heard voices approaching, and a tree, seemingly with legs of its own. Scampering up the cottage steps, she pushed the door open, yelling, "The tree! Delia, Gwen, it's here!"

Gwen set the box of ornaments she was rifling through down on the sofa, her jaw dropping open when she saw what Natalie had seen. She stifled her laughter when a leather-encased arm struck out, and a man's deep voice filled the cozy cottage.

"Natalie Crane?" Antonio cleared his throat.

Smiling radiantly, Natalie proclaimed, "That's me!"

"Where do you want the tree, Ma'am?" Noah's dark blond head emerged from the branches as he asked his question.

Delia, previously disentangling Christmas twinkle lights boredly, did a double take when she got one look at his ocean blue eyes. Her fingers fumbled with the tangled lights, and her cheeks hurt with the effort it took not to look back up, smile, and bat her lashes flirtatiously at him.

Clasping her hands together in front of her, Gwen pondered the best position for the tree while Noah and Antonio groaned to themselves. Finally making a decision, she instructed, "Over there. In front of the window."

"That's perfect," Natalie's brown eyes lit up. "It'll be the first thing Aunt Sheridan sees." Her boots thudded on the cottage steps as she raced outside to get a good look for herself.

"Don't mind her," Delia waved her sister off with an embarrassed laugh. "The smallest things excite her, but she goes overboard with holidays. Christmas especially."

Standing the tree up in the tree stand with Noah's help, Antonio chuckled, "My sister Theresa's the same way."

"Did you say Theresa?" Gwen remarked, her interest piqued. "You don't have another sister named Paloma, do you? Are you…"

"Antonio Lopez-Fitzgerald," Antonio answered her with a grin, wiping his hand off on his jeans leg before offering it to Gwen.

"Gwen," Gwen said, pulling her hand from his before it could reach his lips, brown eyes sparkling at the surprised expression the gesture made appear on his face.

"I can't believe her," Delia scoffed. "She's…she's…"

"Flirting," Noah supplied with a crooked grin. "So," he began, suddenly struggling for conversation under the scrutiny of her ice blue gaze, "You're a Crane."

"And you're obviously a genius," Delia softened her sarcasm with an inviting smile. "Delia Crane. And you?"

"Bennett," Noah stammered. "Noah."

"What is it with men and their James Bond complexes?" Delia lightly teased him, finding the flush of his cheeks oddly endearing.

Antonio walked up behind Noah and whispered into his ear, "Careful, boy. She's drawing you into her web." He gave Noah's shoulder a firm squeeze and headed out of the cottage door, but not before winking in Gwen's direction. She rolled her eyes in response, and he grinned. To Noah, he ribbed, "Any day now."

"I gotta…nice to…bye," Noah mumbled over his thick tongue, stumbling out of the cottage to the soundtrack of Gwen's and Delia's laughter. He pulled the collar of his coat up over his neck and lumbered after Antonio, already half-way to the pickup truck.

Tying his gray scarf loosely around the newly made-over snowman's neck, Luis nodded his head at the starstruck young Crane, his brown eyes twinkling as he told her, devastatingly handsome grin in place, "Nice doing business with you."

Natalie watched him walk away, hands in the pockets of some very well worn jeans, and get into the passenger side of the pickup truck. As the pickup truck disappeared down the hill and through the gates of the Crane estate, she dropped onto her back in the snow below, a giddy, awed grin making her cheeks hurt while she pondered the fluttery flip-flopping of her stomach and what it meant.

Uh oh! Looks like someone has a crush.

More than one someone actually.

:D

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