The Christmas Cookie Chronicles: Carrie Read Online Free Page A

but she then snapped it shut. He dropped the smile that he’d been hanging onto. It was his default mode, and he just let it go. It felt scary, shucking off Mark Leland TV personality, letting the well-constructed mask slip, if only for a second.
    Narrowing her eyes, she stepped closer. So close the tips of her sneakers were almost touching the ends of his toes. He could smell her. Fragrant as the summer memories of time spent on her family’s porch swing, all ripe honeysuckle and peaches and lovesick teens. Her scent had not changed. It was still the same honest, melodious aroma. She smelled of home.
    Every impulse in his body pushed him to grab her up in his arms and kiss her until neither one of them could breathe.
    “I was in love with an image of you. The person I thought you were. Clearly, I was delusional. The person I knew would never, ever come back to wreck his hometown for personal gain.”
    If she’d hauled off and punched him in the stomach he couldn’t have been more shocked. He shook his head. “I’m not here to wreck Twilight.”
    “No?”
    “This show is going to help the town. Bring in more business.”
    Her glare dissected him like a medical examiner’s scalpel, clean and mean. “Ah, I get it now.”
    “Get what?”
    “How you live with who you’ve become. You spin yourself beautiful lies and then fall for them. Lying is one thing, believing your own bullshit is something else.”
    A brackish taste filled his mouth, and he felt immediately defensive. Who was she to judge? The woman who’d stayed in the same small town all her life. The woman who told him their marriage was a mistake. “What’s wrong with who I’ve become?”
    “If you have to ask, you’re even more clueless than I thought.” Tart. That tongue of hers.
    He should have just let it go. There was absolutely no reason to continue the conversation. He had changed. He no longer belonged here, and she was wrapped in the cocoon of Twilight and couldn’t see beyond the narrow confines of her insular little world. This is what he would have been like if he’d stayed.
    But he couldn’t help thinking about all he’d missed. Waking up beside her every morning, making love to her every night. Wistful. Whenever he looked at those lush lips, stared into her saucy blue eyes, he felt an unexpected yearning for what he’d let slip through his fingers.
    “Wake-up call, Leland. Your show is going to destroy Twilight,” she said. “Not boost business.”
    “How do you figure?” He leaned in toward her until their noses were almost touching. Alarm flared in her eyes, but she held her ground. She’d always been brave. It was one of the things he’d most admired about her.
    “ Fact or Fantasy is about busting myths and legends, right?” She notched up her chin.
    “So?”
    “What do you think is going to happen when you bust the very myth this town is founded on?”
    “How do you know I’m not going to prove the myth true?” he murmured.
    “Because,” she said, darting out the tip of her pink tongue to moisten her lips. The gesture caused something to shift below his belt. “The myth says if you toss a penny into the fountain, you’ll be forever reunited with your high school sweetheart and live happily ever after.”
    “You tossed a penny into the fountain?” His pulse was revving like the engine of his Cobra running full throttle on the open road. He could feel blood throbbing through his entire body.
    “Once, long ago. When I was young and stupid and believing in a ridiculous legend.”
    “Carrie.” Her name came out of him like a sigh. He remembered his longing for her, because it hit him anew. This yearning. A slap to the face—shocking.
    “So you see, Mark. The legend is total crap, because there’s no way in hell that you and I will ever, not ever in your wildest dreams, be reunited, much less live happily-ever-after.”
    “Okay,” he said, feeling sick to his stomach.
    “But if you ever felt anything at