“How about we go ice skating?” I asked before I could talk myself out of it. Glutton for punishment, apparently.
She turned to me, surprised but smiling. “Really? You’re not too busy with charity stuff?”
“This breakfast was the only thing on my schedule today.”
“If you’re sure, then yeah, I’d love to.” She pulled off her elf hat and set it down on one of the boxes in the staff room, a few strands of golden hair falling loose around her face.
“Great,” I said, fighting the ridiculous smile tugging at my mouth. “Let’s meet at the rink in half an hour. I need to shower and hope this costume didn’t give me a rash.”
She laughed. “Good luck with that, Santa.”
As I hurried back to my hotel room, my thoughtswere all over the place. For a guy who’d planned to hole up in his room all week, only surfacing for the mandatory charity stuff, I sure was doing a lot of holiday activities. Was it this place? The season? Or was it just…Belle?
I didn’t know what it was about her, but she made me feel like someone else, someone I might’ve been in a different life. One where my mom hadn’t looked at me like I was a mistake.
Or maybe Belle wasn’t showing me who I could’ve been, but maybe she was showing me who Icouldbe, despite my history.
Whatever the reason, I couldn’t stay away from her.
If Zeke or Ryder—or any of the guys on the team—saw me now, they’d never believe it. Decorating cookies, building snowmen, playing Santa—and doing it all with the same woman. The woman I couldn’t stop staring at. Couldn’t stop smiling around. Couldn’t stop wanting to be near.
Of course, none of it would last. Not once Alex showed back up.
But I wasn’t going to think about that now.
For once, I was going to let myself enjoy the moment—no worries, no fears, no what-ifs. Just ice skating and being around someone who made me feel…happy. I’d deal with the fallout later.
I got to the rink a few minutes early, hoping to ask a favor from whoever was running the place. All I wanted was twenty minutes—just twenty minutes of ice time without the public joining in. Normally, I wasn’t one tothrow around my name or status, but this felt like a good time to make an exception.
When Belle arrived, the rink had already been cleared, and I had Joe to thank for that. Luckily, he was a hockey fan, and it hadn’t taken much convincing.
She walked up, bundled in her coat, a bright scarf wrapped loosely around her neck—turquoise and coral and another color I couldn’t name, but it looked…cheerful. It looked like her.
“Oh no, is it closed?” she asked, glancing at the empty rink behind me.
“No,” I chuckled. “I called in a favor. We have the rink to ourselves for the next twenty minutes.”
Before I could stop myself, my hand reached out, my fingers brushing lightly over the end of her scarf. “You look good in bright colors.”
Her eyes lifted to mine, and something flickered there, something I couldn’t quite read. It was almost like I’d said something that meant more than just a compliment.
As the silence stretched between us, so did whatever had been building since our time together in New York. Again, I found myself wanting to pull her close and kiss her.
I cleared my throat and looked away before I did something stupid.
“We should probably get skating before our time is up,” I said, gesturing a thumb behind me toward the ice.
“Uh, yeah. Right.”
Was she just as flustered? Or was it only me feelingthis pull, this gravity that tugged at me whenever she was near?
We grabbed some skates and sat on a bench to start lacing them up.
“Have you skated much before?” I asked, curious how steady she’d be on the ice.
“Yes, actually. I used to go all the time as a kid,” she said, expertly lacing her skates as if to prove her point.
I shouldn’t have been disappointed by her answer, but I was. I’d secretly been hoping for an excuse to keep her close with her clinging to me while trying not to fall. Guess that wasn’t going to happen.
