The angle of his jaw worked some more, clenching and unclenching, as he stared at her for a long time, his face unreadable. “For how long?”

A flood of relief swamped Suzanne’s body, but she quelled it quickly. He hadn’t said yes yet. “Two weeks.”

“What?” His brows raised in alarm. “Two weeks?”

“I know…” She held up her hands in a placating manner. “I’m sorry. It’s longer than I expected.”

Her mother had texted twenty minutes after she’d hung up with the flight details, and Suzanne had read it several times over, thinking surely her mom had made a mistake. But no, her mother had confirmed via text they’d decided to have a nice long break.

Two weeks. They were staying for two weeks, leaving a few days after Christmas.

It was fine, though, because Suzanne had a plan. “It’s okay—I have a plan.”

Grady stared at her incredulously. “Because the last one worked out so well?”

“Operation Hokiest Christmas Ever,” Suzanne said, ignoring his sarcasm.

He didn’t say anything this time, just picked up his glass and swallowed half his wine in one hit.

“I’m going to work my ass off these next two weeks getting my parents’ marriage back on track while surrounding them in the tackiest, schmaltziest Christmas crap in the country, so they don’t feel inclined to stay too long after they’ve realized they’re meant to be together.”

To say Grady looked unimpressed by her plan was a gigantic understatement.

“You don’t have to do anything,” she added. “I’ll arrange all the schmaltzy stuff.”

Given her lack of experience in seasonal schmaltz, Suzanne was going to have to do some research on that, but for someone who had craved it for as long as she could remember, it wasn’t going to be any hardship.

“You can still go about your…ranching,” she hastened to assure. Whatever the hell that involved. “We won’t interfere with that, and I’ll do all the heavy lifting with my parents, I promise. I’ll keep them busy and run interference so they’re not hassling you. Plus, when you come home from…the range every day, there’ll be a hot meal”—she gestured to the pasta—“waiting for you.”

“Home from the range?”

“Yeah, you know. Where the deer and the antelope play?”

He gaped at her, then muttered “Christ on a cracker” under his breath.

“All you have to do is smile,” Suzanne said, ignoring his mutterings, eyeing him speculatively. “You do know how to smile, right?”

He met the question with a grim kind of blankness before lifting his lips into a smile that looked more menacing than festive. Freaking hell. They were doomed.

“Okay, well…” She nodded. “We can work on that.” She smiled, trying to pass the criticism off as a joke, but his face remained implacable. “If you wouldn’t mind faking some Christmas cheer, too, that’d help.”

“And share my house. And stare at you with goo-goo eyes. And pretend I can’t keep my hands off you.”

Suzanne swallowed, getting a little weak down below at the thought of goo-goo eyes and those big hands of his. On her. “Right.”