“It wasn’t me.It was my father.”Her voice softened.“This was his observatory, and then it wasourobservatory.”
She didn’t add,and I will share this observatory with my children, but she didn’t have to.The faraway look in her eyes spoke for her.
Christopher swallowed.This was more proof that he should take his telescope and walk away.She didn’t just have ties to this village, she was anchored to this very room.
He smiled wryly.Perhaps that was why she had taken him to see the evergreens.To show him her roots ran just as deep.
“Oh, obviously,” she muttered as she settled behind a small workstation to inspect his telescope.She glanced up, said, “Easy as pie,” and immediately returned her focus to the task before her.
He gazed at her, spellbound.
She pulled a pair of odd spectacles out of a drawer.One side bore a single glass, the other a series of interconnected lenses not unlike a telescope.Or a microscope.
Christopher braced himself against the inevitable surge of trepidation when she exposed the expensive device’s delicate innards, but none came.
He trusted her, he realized.She might say fantastical things, but if she gave her word, she did everything in her power to keep it.
Her talented hands made short work of a complicated mess.In less than the predicted ten minutes, everything was back together, her tools put away, and her spectacles returned to their drawer.
There was no reason at all to feel a pang of disappointment.He should be thrilled.This was his cue to leave.
“All done?”he asked.
“Almost.”She moved her perfectly-centered telescope to one side of its platform and placed his on the other half.“Get the window?”
He climbed atop a small ladder that had clearly been left for that purpose, and pushed the skyward window open.
The sun had set enough not to be straight overhead, but nightfall was still hours away.Nonetheless, a sliver of a crescent moon was already visible in the sky.He grinned at her.With their telescopes, they would be able to see so much more.
He leapt down from the ladder and took his place beside her.Their hips and shoulders touched as they lowered their eyes to the lenses.His telescope was in excellent working order.She was a genius.
His jumbled brain, on the other hand… No matter how hard he concentrated his gaze through a series of perfectly functional lenses, his vision barely registered.
He did not feel the hard metal cylinder beneath his fingers, but the warm curves brushing tantalizingly against his side.He could not concentrate on picking out stars from the heavens, because his mind had filled with the scent of her hair.Or perhaps it was the scent of her skin.He suddenly wanted to know everything about her.To press his mouth to her cheek, to her hair, to her lips.
“I have to go,” he said hoarsely.
But he didn’t move away.He turned toward her.
She glanced up from her telescope and froze when she discovered her face scant inches from his.Froze, but did not move away, either.
There was that scent again.Lavender, or perhaps lilac.Something soft and floral and feminine.Something that could envelop him, just as he wished to envelop her in his arms.Bury his fingers in her hair.Crush his mouth to hers.
If only she wasn’t the exact opposite of what he needed.
He jerked his head backwards before he made a mistake that they would both regret.
“I should go,” he said again.His voice sounded tinny, as if it no longer belonged to him.“Thank you for fixing my telescope.And for sharing your viewing platform with me.”
She licked her lips.“You can leave yours here if you like.To keep it safe from the elements while you’re in town.”
He nodded.As much because it was a generous offer as because he did not trust himself to carry expensive equipment anywhere.
Come to think of it, right now he did not trust his hands at all.
He shoved them into his pockets to keep them a safe distance from his newly repaired device—and the softness of Miss Godwin’s hair—and walked away before they embarked down the wrong path.
Chapter 7
