THE HOLIDAY HYPOTHESIS
THE HOLIDAY HYPOTHESIS
A Sweet’n’Spicy novelette from the Spoonieverse
Copyright © 2026 Linn Rhinehart – All rights reserved
Cover Design: Linnea Lucifer/Äppelpaj
࿐ ࿔*˖𓇼 DEDICATION 𓇼˖*࿔࿐
This one is for the family oddballs, the info-dumpers, and everyone who’s ever been told they’re too much.
You’re not too much. You’re exactly right.
࿐ ࿔*˖𓇼 DESCRIPTION 𓇼˖*࿔࿐
The Plan: Seduce my brother’s best friend, get him out of my system, and move on.
The Reality: Falling harder.
Ella has been in love with Marco Benedetti for exactly eight years, ten months, and three days. She knows this because she’s a scientist and tracks data. She also knows that pining after her brother’s best friend is illogical, inefficient, and mortifying as hell.
So when she finds herself at a family gathering at Marco’s Tuscan vineyard, she formulates a new hypothesis: If she sleeps with him, the mystery will vanish, the crush will fade, and she’ll finally be able to get on with her life.
Marco doesn’t recognise the confident woman in the green dress as the awkward teenager he used to tease. He just sees smart, direct, and dangerously attractive Gabby. And when she propositions him? He’s more than willing to assist with her research.
But one night in the wine cellar changes everything.
Now Ella has to return to London with inconclusive results. The experiment was supposed to end the crush. Instead, she might have just discovered her most important variable yet: some chemical reactions can’t be controlled, predicted, or explained by science alone.
࿐ ࿔*˖𓇼 EXCERPT 𓇼˖*࿔࿐
Ella had been in love with Marco Benedetti for exactly eight years, ten months, and three days, but tonight she was finally going to fuck him out of her system.
She could pinpoint the exact moment it had started. It was the summer she turned fourteen, the eighteenth of July, and her brother James had brought “a mate from uni” home for a weekend. Marco had smiled at her over breakfast – all dark eyes, long lashes, and that stupid floppy hair of his – and she’d knocked over an entire carafe of orange juice.
James had laughed himself sick, but Marco had been kind about it. Which somehow had made everything worse.
What followed were two years of excruciating visits where James would announce to anyone within earshot that “Ella fancies Marco something rotten.” It was horrible. So much so, she’d wanted to dissolve into the floorboards. To simply cease existing.
Fourteen-year-old Ella had been all elbows and spots. She’d been drowning in James’s old tennis tees and cargo shorts, because wearing actual girls’ clothes felt like admitting to a body she had no idea what to do with. She’d been the kind of awkward kid who went tomato-red if Marco so much as glanced her way. The stupid little sister everybody made fun of.
But that was eight years, ten months, and three days ago.
She was a woman now. She’d grown into her features and learned that clothes could actually fit properly. Her skin had cleared up, and she’d even figured out what to do with her hair. Though normally she couldn’t be bothered. The woman sitting at this table tonight, though? She was a vixen.
Aunt Mags – her best friend and de facto landlady – had helped her get ready that afternoon, insisting that Mum’s sixtieth deserved “a proper effort.” The emerald green silk dress had been Mags’s find. “In this, you can endure a family dinner and conquer the world. It’s not a dress, babes. It’s armour.”
She’d been right, too. The unfamiliar feeling of a face covered in makeup, the soft fabric brushing against her skin, her hair down instead of pulled back in its usual functional bun – even the stupid shoes – it did make her feel like she was wearing armour. Like she could be someone other than “James’s weird sister” for one night.
Mags had suggested she’d swap the glasses for contacts too, “to complete the look,” but Ella dismissed the idea as ridiculous. She wasn’t trying to be someone else; she just wanted to feel like a woman.
At almost twenty-three, with a Master’s in Molecular Biology and a doctorate somewhere on the horizon, she could discuss enzyme kinetics without blushing. She’d had a few lovers, thank you very much. She was a woman. And tonight, she was going to prove it.
Ella had spent the evening at the far end of a long table in the children’s section, watching Marco Benedetti charm her entire family, and she was done carrying this mortifying torch. Done feeling her stomach flip every time someone mentioned his stupid name. She’d have no more of it.
The plan was simple. She would seduce Marco, fuck his brains out, and put this ridiculous teenage crush to rest. Treat him like any other gorgeous man. Just scratch the itch and move on with her life.
Three glasses of cool Vermentino on the terrace of a Tuscan vineyard had made her plan seem rather… inspired.
࿐ ࿔*˖𓇼 REVIEWS 𓇼˖*࿔࿐
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