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Back First Comes Love Save as PDF
Chapters (92)
  1. First
  2. Love Connection
  3. Zero
  4. One
  5. Two
  6. Three
  7. Four
  8. Five
  9. Six
  10. Seven
  11. Eight
  12. Nine
  13. Ten
  14. Eleven
  15. One Month Later
  16. Twelve
  17. Thirteen
  18. Fourteen
  19. Fifteen
  20. Six Months Later
  21. Sixteen
  22. Seventeen
  23. Eighteen
  24. Nineteen
  25. Twenty
  26. Twenty-one
  27. Twenty-two
  28. Twenty-three
  29. Twenty-four
  30. Six Months Later
  31. Twenty-five
  32. Twenty-six
  33. Twenty-seven
  34. Twenty-eight
  35. Twenty-nine
  36. Thirty
  37. Thirty-one
  38. Thirty-two
  39. Thirty-three
  40. I Have Never
  41. One
  42. Two
  43. Three
  44. Four
  45. Five
  46. Six
  47. Seven
  48. Eight
  49. Nine
  50. Ten
  51. Eleven
  52. Twelve
  53. Thirteen
  54. Fourteen
  55. Fifteen
  56. Sixteen
  57. Seventeen
  58. Eighteen
  59. Nineteen
  60. Twenty
  61. Twenty-one
  62. Twenty-two
  63. A Christmas Date
  64. One
  65. Two
  66. Three
  67. Four
  68. Five
  69. Six
  70. Seven
  71. Eight
  72. Nine
  73. Ten
  74. Eleven
  75. Twelve
  76. Thirteen
  77. Fourteen
  78. Fifteen
  79. Sixteen
  80. Seventeen
  81. Eighteen
  82. Nineteen
  83. Twenty
  84. Twenty-one
  85. Twenty-two
  86. Note from the Author
  87. Sneak Peek – To the Stars and Back
  88. Two
  89. Three
  90. Four
  91. Also by Camilla Isley
  92. About the Author

“First, we need to find the right spot,” he says, advancing along the walkway that cuts the garden in half. Dad has plowed the way until about three-quarters into the backyard, leaving only the last stretch untouched. “Here.” Diego stops near the giant hemlock that towers over the garden. “We should build it under the shade of this tree so it doesn’t melt right away.”

I’m thinking that in this freezing cold, we could build our snowman in the sunniest spot and still it wouldn’t melt, but I don’t comment.

“I’m going to make the bigger body snowball,” Diego instructs. “And you can work on the chest ball.”

“Okay, show me what to do.”

He gathers some fresh snow in his hands and starts compacting it into a ball. When the globe is big enough, he starts rolling it on the ground, making it bigger and bigger. I imitate him and come up with a decent-sized, if not as perfectly round, sphere. Diego adjusts the misshapen bits, and then puts my ball on top of his.

“I’ll make the head,” he says. “Can you find some twigs for the arms and something to make the eyes and the mouth?”

I move into the wood shack to scavenge the twigs, collect two small pinecones for the eyes, and strip a curvy line of bark off a log to use for the mouth.

“Perfect,” Diego says, assessing the final result. “We just need a carrot for the nose.”

“I’ll go ask Mom for one.”

I jog back to the house, and I’m about to enter the kitchen when I overhear my mom and sister talking, so I stop just behind the open door.

“They look cute,” Mom says.

“They look weird,” Julia hisses.

“What do you mean, ‘weird?’”

“Come on, he’s not her type at all. No stable job, probably no education, dark hair… Nikki prefers blonds.”

Mostly true, but how dare she?

“Oh, honey… love is blind,” my mom sighs. “You can’t control who you fall for.”

“Love, sure,” Julia snaps.

“What do you have against Diego?”

“Nothing, he’s absolutely fine. But doesn’t it seem strange to you that out of the blue”—she snaps her fingers—“Nikki suddenly has a boyfriend no one has ever seen or heard of, and suddenly she’s bringing the guy home for Christmas?”

“What are you suggesting?”

“I don’t know. Maybe she didn’t want to be the single older sister for yet another year, and she asked a friend to do her a favor. I mean, it must be hard for her with me getting married before her…”