For stability?
Or theatrics? Is she playing the Mrs.?
Or... could that possibly be a real, live romantic gesture?
“What . . . ?” I begin walking toward the group, and as I do so, my head swivels around, looking for Oliver. Why hadn’t Clarence mentioned this to me? The man’s walked asum total of a hundred steps back and forth for the past two weeks, going less than half a mile an houron carpet. And then here he goes traipsing around town with two feet of snow blanketing every square inch not covered in salt, playing Santa for the train.
But no, no, don’t mention the grandiose plan to me. Talk about your love of fish sticks you had in a particular diner outside Kansas City thirty years ago for half an hour, sure, but don’t even think to mention—
My thoughts halt as Oliver comes into view. He’s standing at the far end of the station’s empty parking lot, lit only by a couple lampposts and the receding lights of a turning car.
When our eyes lock, his lips tilt slightly upward, and he beckons to me with one gloved hand.
The other holding firm to the reins. The reins.
Of a one-horse open sleigh.
I freeze.
Something inside me says,he’s not really meaning you, and I check over my shoulder in both directions. But nobody is there. Nobody except a few of the staff watching from the windows who, when they spot me, dart behind the curtains.
He really means me.Me.
My boots crackle along the deeply salted sidewalk as I move toward him. The sleigh grows larger the closer I come, and when I finally have made my way across the parking lot and taken several knee-deep steps through the snow-blanketed field to the sleigh, I take it all in. The horse is larger than any breed I’ve ever seen, its black mane glistening beneath themoon of the cloudless night sky. Icicle clouds curl from its nostrils as it exhales and shakes off a thin layer of snow. The wooden red sleigh itself is small enough for two or three passengers in the cab, with a raised area another foot higher for the driver. Only Oliver is not sitting in the cab. He’s alone, standing in the driver’s area, waiting for me.
“Want a lift?” he says.
I raise a brow. “I don’t know. Are you driving?”
He grins and takes my hand, steadying me as I put my foot on the wrought-iron step and pull myself up.
Icicle clouds form around my face as I exhale and look around. On the wooden seat is a wool blanket. To his left on the seat, a wicker basket.
He lets my marveling linger for a full minute, then explains. “I know a guy.”
“What? Who lends you one-horse open sleighs on occasion and you lend him trains?”
At this Oliver’s face breaks into a full and wide smile. “Something like that. Shall we?”
As we settle in together, side by side, and I feel his warm body against mine, I can’t help but remember the question that had seemed so innocent days ago.“Horse-drawn sleighs are what it takes to win you over, eh?”
“I can’t believe this.” These are the words I find myself repeating as the horse clomps its way upward on the path between the trees. The moon trails along overhead, lighting the lean white bodies of the quaking aspen and the glittering mounds of snow at their feet. A long way off lies a clusterof pines at the base of the first of a collection of gargantuan mountains, all reaching toward the moon with sharp, needle-thin tops as though trying to pop it. Overhead hang a hundred thousand stars.
I turn and face Oliver. I’m so overwhelmed by it all, so afraid to really show how much it all means to me, that instead I say, “So this is how you treat people who beat you in chess, then? You treat them to one of their dream goals?”
“That’s another thing I like about you, Willow,” Oliver says, not baited by the jest. He gives a light shake on the reins when the horse slows. “Your dreams are so attainable.”
I note the way he saidanotherand pocket it quietly.
“Attainable?” I look at the scenery around me. “I’m sorry, but this? This is not easily attainable. My dreams are challengingto achieve, sir.Challenging.”
Oliver tilts his head toward me and raises a brow. “You told me in Lancaster that you achieved one of your deepest lifelong dreams by eating roasted chestnuts over an open fire.”
“Becausehow many people get to do that?” I exclaim. “Thatisa legitimate goal.”
“You said in Minnesota you met a lifelong goal byice skating.”
“It was on afrozen lake.Frozen. It was dangerous, really. I could’ve fallen through and died.”
