She had no way to believe that could change. What if this was just the memories talking? The magic of the season and the snow? The hope they could recapture something that was so brutally lost?
“Bad idea?” He tried to laugh after her silence lasted a beat too long, clearly taking it as a rejection.
Was it?
“I just…” Biting her lip, she leaned into him, then dropped her head onto his shoulder, his jacket pressing against her cheeks. Vaguely aware that tears slipped through her nearly frozen eyelashes, she clung to him while every emotion a woman could feel ricocheted through her body.
Finally, she lifted her face, looking at him, silent and stunned and…shockingly close to saying yes.
“NowI’m dumbfounded,” she breathed into a laugh. “And I don’t know what to say.”
“It’s fine. I understand. My time has come and gone and I just…I had to let you know I’ve been thinking about it. Fantasizing, in fact.”
She opened her mouth to say she had, too, but something stopped her. Something protected her. She never wanted to hurtlike she had that Christmas Day when he’d taken off to cover a competition and the last thing she’d said was…leave and this marriage is over.
And he left.
For that reason, she couldn’t say yes now.
He stepped back and gave a sad smile, tipping his head toward the horse.
“We better get back,” he said. “Copper should rest before his last ride.”
And Cindy, she realized with a sad thud, was not getting a second first kiss.
Her eyes burned, but she lifted her face and let the snowflakes melt on her cheeks. That way, he’d never know she’d cried.
“Do we have to go to Sugarfall?” Benny asked as Nicole turned onto the side street near her cousin’s bakery.
It was ten days before Christmas, and Park City was jammed with tourists, but Nicole found a parking spot and snagged it. “Your mom had to work late on a wedding cake, Benny, and I promised I’d bring you to see her after your choral practice was over.”
“But can’t we just go home to Snowberry? Santa—er, I mean Grandpa—is waiting for me.”
She looked in the rearview mirror, meeting his bespectacled gaze from his safe seat in the back and wishing he were up here next to her. He’d be allowed to ride in the front next year, Gracie said, but she was a very protective single mom, and Nicole respected that.
“You always want me to bring you here when she works late and I pick you up from school,” she reminded him. “I believe it has something to do with…cookies.”
“We had cookies at practice,” he said. “Bad boxed ones that tasted like cardboard covered in Elmer’s glue.”
She snorted. “You sound more like your great-grandfather every day.”
“Well, it’s true. They were just bribing us to sing louder.”
“Did you?”
He lowered his glasses and gave her a “get real” look, making her laugh. “I just really want to go home and, um, be with Grandpa. We had plans, especially if no one is booked on the sleigh.”
“It’s booked,” she told him as she unlatched her seatbelt. “I looked at the schedule because I had some customers ask and there are not many openings.”
“It’s booked? Is the whole lodge full yet? The way Aunt Cindy wanted?”
She climbed out and opened his door, beaming at him. “I love that you care so much about the adult stuff, Benny.”
“Oh, I do care,” he said. “Are we booked? Did she make December?”
Nicole shook her head, ever amused by this child-man, who refused her hand to help him onto the snowy curb. “Benny, you are ten going on forty, you know that?”
“I just…care about that.”
