I set the gift bag on the table and shrugged off my coat. “Well, first I was able to snag my scarf, so there’s that.”

I settled my coat on the back of the chair across from him and pulled the candy cane-themed scarf from the bag. I’d bought it figuring either my stepmom or I would end up with it, and in the end, it had come home with me.

“Good,” Nic said, sitting back in his chair and watching as I wrapped the scarf around my neck. I pulled back the chair and plopped down in it, using my coat as cushioning for my back. “But one of my gifts for you was in the box I took to the party.”

This was hard to explain. I’d loaded up my cookies, some paper plates, and two gift bags into the box, thinking one of them was my dad’s gift. It was still under the tree. But when I arrived, someone else had unloaded my box.

“I didn’t know until the pile started getting lower and there were three gifts left and only two people…” I stalled there.

Nic shook his head. “I don’t understand. What gift?”

I grimaced. “It was my own Dirty Santa gift for you. It’s lingerie.”

Now Nic grimaced. Then he thought about it for a second or two and burst into laughter.

“Are you saying someone opened your lingerie in front of your father?” he asked.

“And my stepmom.” I took a deep breath, then blurted out, “Nobody knows it was mine. It remains a mystery who brought it.”

“Are you sure about that?”

No, I wasn’t. In fact, Whitney flashed a look in my direction that indicated she knew exactly where the lingerie had come from. We were college roommates. We knew each other long before she met my father.

“I just wanted to recreate last year,” I said. “It was so…”

When I hesitated, he filled in the last word, “Hot.” Then he reached up and closed his laptop. “We don’t need lingerie to play our own version of Dirty Santa. In fact, I have a good half hour before my next meeting.” He stood up and reached out a hand. “What do you say we get to work on growing our family?”

I smiled. He was right. Just the mention of what happened last year was heating me up.

“On one condition,” I said as I reached out and slid my hand into his.

He hesitated, frowning. “What’s that?”

“We use the dice.”

That brought a smile to his face. “It’s a deal.”

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