My Merry Mistake

<p><strong style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)><em>Sometimes the perfect gift is standing right in front of you. . . You're just too stubborn to see it.</em></strong></p><p></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>I don't like to make mistakes. Ever.</span></p><p></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>Especially when those mistakes are witnessed by the same person-flirty Finn Holbrook-who can't seem to leave me alone. Can I really trust him not to tell anyone that the night we met I tried to kiss him? Or that I fell apart after I got fired from a job I loved? Or that I'm not as strong as I want everyone to think I am?</span></p><p></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>The simple fact that he's boomeranged back into my orbit after all these years feels like a great big cosmic joke.</span></p><p></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>Only now he's a professional hockey player and while he doesn't </span><em style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>look</em><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)> like the goofy college bartender I met all those years ago he still acts like one-immature flirty and unable to take anything seriously.</span></p><p></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>Which is why I never </span><em style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>ever </em><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>fall for his game.</span></p><p></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>I know better than to get swept up in romance. I don't have time. I'm busy making myself irreplaceable in my new job with the Chicago Comets. Work isn't just something I do it's who I am.</span></p><p></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>And while my sisters are constantly on me to slow down and take breaks those things aren't on my schedule so . . . I push on. Do more. Load up my schedule. Overcommit. Until eventually my stress lands me in the emergency room.</span></p><p></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>The prescription? A month off. No emails. No work. No distractions.</span></p><p></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>Unless you count Finn Holbrook who keeps showing up at my door determined to leverage his positive golden retriever energy to show me there's a great big world outside that I haven't bothered to explore most of it covered with white twinkle lights and Christmas decorations.</span></p><p></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>I begrudgingly go along with his grand plans and little by little I start to see there really </span><em style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>is</em><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)> more to life than work-and more to Finn than flirting.</span></p><p></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>Which makes me wonder . . . how can someone so obviously wrong for me start to feel completely right? And more importantly . . . how do I make those feelings go away?</span></p><p></p>