Читать книгу 12 Gifts for Christmas - Джулия Кеннер, Джулия Кеннер - Страница 31

PRETENDING he wasn’t hurt, Declan turned back to the manger he’d just finished hammering together before Mari’s surprise visit. With a grunt, he lifted it upright and set it on the cement to make sure it was even.

“You’re working on the holiday contest entry?” she asked. He could hear by her tone that she was fishing around for a safe topic. Probably to give herself time to figure out another way to nag him into a town confession.

Declan set his teeth and kept his attention on the eight-foot wooden display, ignoring the frustration—sexual and otherwise—clawing through his system.

“Yeah. This is the Coles’ year to win,” he declared, grabbing a file from his toolbox. Wincing a little, he crouched down to take a little off the right side so the manger stood steady.

“My mom was just saying she’d love to come in first this year,” Mari mused. “I promised her we’d enter together. I’m going to come up with a fun design and surprise her with it.”

Declan craned his head around to watch her poking at the various wooden pieces he’d built. Angels for the roof, sheep and cows for the yard. The structures for the living nativity Uncle Eric was choreographing for the town.

“Are you asking for my help?” He rubbed his chin, wondering at the ethics of aiding and abetting someone in competition with his family. Maybe if the design were different enough …?

“I already asked for your help and you turned me down, remember?” she said, giving him a saucy look. “I’ve decorated storefronts and windows before. I can win the decorating contest without you.”

“Darlin’, you haven’t got a chance,” he told her with a laugh. “I’m a professional carpenter. My aunt and uncle have been working on their design for months now. And the contest is in a matter of days. How do you expect to compete with that?”

The gleam in Mari’s pretty blue eyes made him twitchy.

They’d run in different circles back in high school—so different they might as well have been on separate planets—and neither of them had stuck around after. So Declan couldn’t claim he had a lot of knowledge about Mari Madison. But still, there were three things he did know.

She was gorgeous.

She was sweet.

And she was stubborn as hell.

That day he’d given her a ride home, it’d been because she’d been trying to change her own tire, despite the fact that she didn’t have a tire iron. She’d been so sure she could figure out some other way to get it fixed without having to call her mom away from work or incur a tow bill. He’d had to promise that he’d fix the tire before she got out of the rain and into his car.

“Anyone who’s a resident can enter the contest. And I plan to win. How I do it is up to me, isn’t it?” she returned with a smile so sweet it set off warning bells in his brain.

“What are you up to?”

“I’m just wondering if you’re game for a little bet?”

Intrigued, he tossed the file back in the toolbox and sunk his hands into his pockets, watching her carefully while she inspected the props, not looking at him. “What’s the wager?”

“I bet my display will beat yours in the contest.”

Declan laughed. “Yeah? And the stakes?”

She turned and met his eyes. “When I win, you tell the truth about us. And you do it in front of the whole town when they announce the winner of the decorating contest.”