December 2nd, one year after the first annual Santa Speed Dating event at Love at First Sip in Hideaway Harbor

 

Enzo

Lucy lifts up one of the beards Eileen just disinfected for Santa Single Dating. The coffee shop is closed in preparation for the event, but Lucy and I came over early to help. That's right, I'm intentionally spending my free time helping with the setup for this event.

​

Love does strange things to a man.

​

"Will you wear it?" Lucy asks, shaking the Santa beard. Her diamond ring sparkles in the low lighting of the cafe, and I feel a familiar surge of gratitude that she's consented to share her life with mine.

​

Still, a man has appearances to uphold.

​

I give her the look she deserves for asking such a question. "You don't work here anymore, cara." 

​

"No," Eileen says from behind the serving counter. "But she is family."

​

Lucy gives her the kind of look that regularly charms me into doing things I have no interest in doing, then hopefully turns that same look on me. I'm far from immune to it, but I say, "The answer's still no."

​

"Enzo, it's tradition."

​

"You need more than a year for something to become a tradition. Ask Nonna."

​

"You're so literal," she says, tossing the beard back into the bin dispiritedly.

​

Well, I can't have that. 

​

Grinning at her, I tell her what Eileen already knows, "But it just so happens that I have a beard that definitely doesn't have head lice that I ordered a few weeks ago and hid in Hidden Italy. If you find it, I may consent to wearing it tonight." 

​

"We're doing a scavenger hunt?" Lucy asks with bright eyes. She tucks her glorious hair behind her ears.

My girl and I do both enjoy challenges.

​

"Indeed."

​

"Are you okay without us for a little while, Eileen?" she asks, turning to Eileen, who's arranging some whoopie pies on a serving platter. No little smiles on these ones. They're decorated with Santa hats.

​

Kind of cannibalism if all the men dressed as Santas eat them, but I don't feel the need to say so.

​

"Oh, I think I can manage," Eileen says with a knowing smile. She gives me a slight nod, and I feel another surge of gratitude for having won her approval. I don't take it lightly.

​

I grab Lucy's coat from near the door and hold it out for her. She slips into it, grinning. I don't bother with my own. We only have to go next door, after all, and any Hidie can weather the cold for that long.

​

"I didn't need my coat either," Lucy says as we step out into the frigid air. Ice cracks beneath our boots on the sidewalk.

​

"I prefer you without frostbite."

​

We duck into the stairway next door, walking down to the entrance of Hidden Italy.

​

Once, this place filled me with such conflicting emotions, but now I feel only fondness. Because it brought me to Lucy, in a way, and a place that did that can't be very bad at all. 

​

I open the door for Lucy, who steps inside and instantly removes her coat. The decorated tree is across from her, and this year, Lucy and I were the ones who decorated it.

​

"Ah, my dear girl is here. Look how beautiful my girl is," Nonna Francesca says, beaming at her. 

​

She doesn't come in much anymore, but she knew this would be a special day.

​

A few customers are milling around - tourists - and they watch us as if we're the new Christmas special. Normally, that kind of thing aggravates me, but today I'm sure nothing could.

​

"Yes, our dear girl is here," Giovanni jokes, a shit-eating grin on his face as he steps away from the sandwich counter. "Nico, did you notice that our dear girl is here?"

​

"I'm going to tell your dear girl that you're hitting on Enzo's fiancée," Nico says, throwing a roll at him from behind the sandwich counter.

​

Giovanni catches it, shrugs, then takes a bite. 

​

"Do you guys know where Enzo's hiding his beard?" Lucy asks.

​

Giovanni nearly chokes on the roll. "I thought you were his beard." 

​

"Don't ask me to help you with any grand gestures," I say, rolling my eyes. Secretly not minding his ribbing too much. It's good to see him happy. 

​

Lucy turns toward me, pulling at the hem of my sweater. "Can I have a clue?"

​

"It's a place that has special memories for us," I say with a grin.

​

Lucy frowns at me, then asks, "Did you start selling Sharpies?"

​

Giovanni laughs. "As if we'd give you one, you mad woman."

​

Then my brilliant fiancée narrows in on the small seating area set up near the sandwich counter.

​

Her brow furrows. She's wondering how I'd hide a beard under a table, but it won't take her long.

​

She strides over with purpose feeling beneath the surface of one of the tables. The table. The spot where I first kissed her. Where I got down on my knees and showed her that I'm a man very capable of seeing to his woman.

​

"I don't even want to know what happened there," Nico moans, but my attention is all Lucy's.

​

Hers is all for the beard, her eyes sparkling with the thrill of the hunt as she detaches it from the table. She pulls it out, the tape still attached to it and lifts it into the air in triumph.

​

A couple of the customers who were wandering around give us strange looks and hustle out. The rest are watching with fixed attention. 

​

I, surprisingly, couldn't give a shit.

​

I stride toward her, grinning. "Look at the envelope, Lucia."

​

Her eyes widen as she finds it, taped to the surface of the beard. "What is this?"

​

"Your Christmas present."

​

She tugs it off, and I take the beard from her as she opens the envelope. I watch, fixed on her, as she pulls the tickets out of the envelope.

​

Her beautiful eyes meet mine. "Enzo, these are two tickets to Italy for next February."

​

"I want to spend Valentine's Day in Rome with you."

 

"We're going to Rome," she says, her voice full of wonder.

​

"We're going to Rome, then Venice, and Aria would kill me if we didn't visit her resort in Greece."

​

She throws her arms around me, and I twirl her, right there in my family's shop. "I love you, Lucia. I want to see the world with you."

​

I lower her to her feet, and she gets up on her tiptoes.

​

Before she kisses me, she says, "You are the world to me."

​

And it's like that with us, it really is. Everything I want and need is right here around me, in the last place I thought I'd find it.

​

Want more Hideaway Harbor? Check out the other Hideaway Harbor Christmas romcoms HERE!

​

Want more Angela Casella Christmas romcoms? Check out The Thief Who Saved Christmas, Jingle Bell Hell, and Matchmaking a Scrooge!