Doreen followed his gaze. The night sky stretched above them, impossibly vast and clear, stars scattered across it like handfuls of glitter tossed into the dark.
A breath caught in her chest. Out here, the sky felt closer, as if each star leaned down to whisper that she was allowed to want things again. Allowed to dream beyond survival. Allowed to step into a life that felt bigger than the one she’d boxed herself into.
“Wow.” There was no other word to describe it. The sight of them made her feel humble, a tiny fragment of something much, much bigger.
But she didn’t have time to ponder further before Jake and Bash were on the move once more.
“Come on, Aunt D! We’re gonna be late!” Jake shouted, leaping off the porch and landing with both feet in a pristinepatch of snow, creating perfect boot prints that he immediately began to exaggerate, taking giant steps that left monster-sized tracks.
Bash circled him in delirious loops, barking joyfully at the snow that flew up around Jake’s boots.
“Leash,” she reminded Jake.
“Come on, Bash, no chasing squirrels tonight.” Jake leaned down and clipped the leash to Bash’s collar. “Good boy!” Then they were off again, with Jake balling up snow before throwing it in the air for Bash to catch.
Doreen chuckled as she crossed the porch with some care. Although the porch and the paths around the cabins had been gritted, there was still plenty of ice to slip on. Now, that would not be a good omen for the evening.
She followed behind Jake and Bash, making sure she kept out of the range of the snowballs.
As the pair got further ahead, she took a moment to absorb her surroundings. The forest around them was impossibly quiet, sound muffled by the blanket of snow. Even Bash’s excited barks seemed to fade quickly into the stillness.
Then, James was back inside her head. Would he be there already?
Stop it,she scolded herself. It didn’t matter if he was. There was nothing between them other than her own fanciful thoughts.
But her traitorous mind replayed the moment their eyes had met, the way his gaze had lingered on her face. She could almost feel it like a lover’s caress.
It doesn’t matter,she told herself firmly.You’re only here for a short visit. A holiday fling is the last thing you need.
But her heart had other ideas. It said this was exactly what she needed.
The cold air bit at her cheeks, but underneath her coat she felt warm, almost too warm. It had been years since a man’s attention—real or imagined—had stirred anything but self-doubt in her. The sensation was thrilling… and terrifying.
What if she was misreading everything? What if wanting something…someone…again only led to disappointment?
Her heart had been wrong before. Spectacularly wrong. And the fallout had nearly hollowed her out. She wasn’t sure she had it in her to survive another mistake. But hope, stubborn thing that it was, pressed insistently against her ribs as if begging for one more chance.
“Jake!” she called, quickening her pace as he and Bash veered toward a stand of trees. “Stay where I can see you!”
Jake pivoted mid-stride, his face flushed with cold and excitement. “But Aunt D, I think I saw a rabbit track! Can’t Bash and I just…”
“Not now,” she said, catching up to him. “We don’t want to be late, remember?”
“Okay,” he agreed, falling into step beside her, though his eyes still darted toward the tree line. “Bash loves the special spot I made for him by the window. Do you think Deputy Pike will show me how to make that whistle sound tomorrow? He said golden retrievers are smart, but they need con-sis-tent guidance. That means you have to tell them the same thing every time so they don’t get confused.”
Doreen laughed out loud. Jake’s enthusiasm was contagious, his rapid-fire observations jumping from topic to topic without pause for breath.
“I’m sure he’ll show you,” she said, reaching out to steady him when he slipped on a patch of ice. “Careful there.”
“And did you know he has a special police whistle? He said he could practice the commands with Bash every day. Do you think Bash will learn to sit better? He only sits sometimes when I tell him to.”
As Jake chattered on, Doreen felt some of the tension ease from her shoulders. His endless stream of facts and questions was the perfect distraction from her own tangled thoughts.
“Bash! No!” she called sharply as the golden retriever lunged toward a rustling in the underbrush. She caught his collar just in time and pulled him back onto the path. “No squirrels tonight.”
“I would have looked like I had been dragged through a bush forward,” Jake said. “Do you get it? Forward. Not backward!”
“I do get it,” Doreen said, giggling as she ruffled Jake’s hair.
