She hung up. I hung up. You could have knocked me over with an Ipanema.

• • •

I headed back to my apartment as soon as I was done with work, the conversation playing over and over in my head. I really needed the quiet time now. I’d texted Simon and told him to meet me at my apartment right before the party. I didn’t mention anything about Rio; I wanted to see his face when I brought it up. I didn’t understand what in the world was going on.

I let myself into my apartment with a big sigh of relief, the sound escaping me before I realized it. The air was a little stuffy; it’d been a while since I was here. I cracked a few windows, running my hand along the deep windowsills as I did. Clive loved a deep windowsill. I looked around at the thoughtfully chosen knicks and knacks, remembering how I delighted in selecting all the pieces, the first apartment I’d ever had on my own. Through the kitchen doorway I caught sight of gleaming metal, all curves and heaven. My KitchenAid mixer.

I cracked my back, rolled my neck, and thought about all the cookies I was about to bake. I took off my heels; they’d been pinching my feet all day. And while I was at it, I took off my snug pencil skirt too.

I baked better when I was comfortable.

I had literally worked through every lunch hour and stayed late almost every day, just so I could knock off a few hours early and bake the cookies I’d promised Mimi. I’d tried mixing up a few batches of dough at Jillian’s the night before, but it wasn’t the same. Off-brand mixer. Subpar paddle. Eh.

Tuning my stereo to an all-Christmas station, I wrapped my apron on, pulled my hair into a bun on top of my head, and got to work. I stroked my KitchenAid, feeling the cool metal soothe my frayed nerves.

While Bing serenaded me, I scooped balls of chocolate chip and plopped them onto a parchment paper–lined cookie sheet. While Frank told me I’d better watch out and I’d better not cry, I mixed up a batch of snickerdoodles, rolled in extra cinnamon sugar. While Judy sang to me of having a merry little Christmas, I doused pecan sandies in powdered sugar, gently setting them to cool on wire racks that covered the dining room table. And when Elvis was blue, I was frosting red and green sugar cookies, cut into snowmen, angels, and evergreen tree shapes.

As I rolled and dipped, sugared and iced, my mind kept playing over the conversation with Jillian. Why in the world would Simon have canceled the trip without asking me? Maybe she’d gotten it wrong. Maybe she hadn’t heard Benjamin correctly. But why would Benjamin have gotten the idea that we were spending Christmas here?

I was irritated. More than irritated. If this was true, I was downright pissed. While there was no place like home for the holidays (thank you, Perry Como), and I wanted nothing in the world than to bring my boyfriend home for said holidays, this holiday I wanted Rio!

As I baked, I got more and more irritated. Adult Caroline said things like, “Just talk to Simon; find out what’s really going on.” Pissed Off Caroline was saying things like, “I already bought a new bikini, dammit, and I want to wear it!”

Guess which one was winning? By the time Simon came waltzing in, I squeezed a poor gingerbread man right where his gingerbread nuts would have been.

“Do you think this is what heaven looks like?” he asked happily. Simon, not the nutless gingerbread man.

“Cookie heaven?”

“No, my heaven: cookies and you in panties,” he replied, picking up a snickerdoodle and inhaling deeply.

I blushed. I’d forgotten about the panties. I turned around to grab the last round of gingerbread men from out of the oven. “So I talked to Jillian today. She said the funniest thing about—”

“You’re killing me, bent over like that, and with cookies! Dreaming, I’m dreaming,” he joked, coming up behind me and unexpectedly grabbing my hips.

Startled, I dropped the pan, gingerbread men spilling all over the floor and shattering. It looked like a disaster scene; legs broken, arms severed, even a few decapitations.

“Dammit!” I set the pan down a little louder than was necessary, then turned to face Simon with my hands on my hips, eyebrows arched.

“Oh, I’m so sorry, Caroline. I didn’t mean—wow. They’re kind of scary like that, aren’t they?” he said, looking around at my feet.

I took a breath, held it, counted to thirteen, then let it out.

“Did you cancel our trip to Brazil?”

“Brazil?” he asked, looking guilty.

“Yes, Brazil. When I talked to Jillian today, she told me about a conversation you had with Benjamin—that you’d canceled our trip. Did you?”

He was quiet for a minute, his eyes unreadable.

“Yes.”

He had. He really had.

“You want to tell me why?”

“I was going to surprise you,” he started, walking over to me, dodging ginger parts.

“Most guys surprise their girlfriends with trips, Simon—not the opposite,” I snapped, throwing the cookie sheets into the sink and squeezing soap all over them. I scrubbed at them furiously, splashing suds everywhere. “Why in the world would you do that?”

“I wanted to—”

“Do you have any idea how hard I’ve been working? How much I was looking forward to that trip?”

“I know; I just thought that—”

“You can’t just up and cancel something like that without talking to me! I literally can’t believe that you—”

“Would you just listen to me for a second? Jesus!” he exploded, slamming his hand down on the counter, crushing more gingerbread men. “I wanted to spend Christmas with your folks, Caroline. I invited them here.”

The sponge fell from my hand. “You . . . what?”

“I wanted us to have a real Christmas this year, so I called your mom and dad and invited them to stay with us. I thought I’d surprise you. They’ll be here the day before we were supposed to leave. I know how disappointed you were when you couldn’t go home for Thanksgiving, so I thought they could come here,” he said. “I had no idea you’d get so upset, believe me, or I would have talked to you about it first.”

My thoughts whirled; emotions crashed and banged around inside. Touched? Overwhelmed? Surprised? My eyes filled with tears as I crossed to him through the gingerbread carnage.

“You really want to spend Christmas with my family?” I asked, taking his face in my hands.

“I do,” he murmured, his eyes full of something I couldn’t pinpoint. “Weird?”