“That makes sense,” he said, nodding. “If you moved away or started working on another show it would be kind of a spoiler.”
“And I’d hate to ruin your enjoyment ofRidley Hospital,” she said.
“Oh, I won’t be watching it anymore,” he said. “I was a BeeBee Evans fan, not aRidley Hospitalfan.”
She laughed and the sound rang like bells through the frozen night.
She’s home,his helpless heart cried out.
But he knew better than to think it was forever. She would be cast again immediately, and maybe even go on to play the kinds of parts she had wanted in the first place. The only reason she didn’t have another show already was that she hadn’t been allowed to audition. The farm was probably just an investment for her, or a nod to sentimentality.
If it is, then she’s sentimental about me.
But that kind of thinking was dangerous, so he pushed it out of his head.
“So, the power was out when you got there?” he asked her, forcing himself back to the task at hand as they crossed through the pine trees and the cottage came fully into view.
“No,” she said. “I came in and I was turning on lightsand it went out as soon as I got back to the bedroom. Scared me to death.”
He tried not to smile at the idea. Hailey had always been easily frightened. They had never been able to watch any scary movies when they came to the theater over in Springton Valley. She didn’t even like hearing ghost stories around the campfire. The idea of her all the way back in the bedroom of the old cottage when the power went out was a funny image, even if he did hate the idea of her being scared and alone. No wonder she had hurried out of the house and run across the meadow.
“I’ll need to go down to the basement and check the breaker box,” he told her when they reached the front door. “But you can stay upstairs and just holler if the lights come on, okay?”
“Okay,” she said, in obvious relief. “Thank you, Ransom.”
He headed around the side to the metal doors and lifted one side to enter the basement from outside. The concrete steps were full of dead leaves and spiderwebs but they were perfectly sound.
He couldn’t help but chuckle at the idea that she had bought the house but was afraid to go into the basement with the power out.
He used the light on his phone to locate the panel, which has a tripped main breaker, just as he’d suspected.
He flipped it back, and a moment later heard Hailey cheering.
The sound filled his heart with sunlight for the second time in ten minutes.
When he got back outside, every single window of thecottage was illuminated, flooding the snowy yard with golden light. Hailey stood on the front lawn waiting for him with a big smile on her face, her hair aglow under the post light.
“You did it,” she said happily, like he was a superhero or something.
“It was just a breaker,” he said, though his chest was filled with pride at having made her smile like that.
“It wasn’tjustanything,” she said. “Honestly? I was so spooked I probably would have gone to a hotel and called the power company in the morning.”
That made him laugh, and she joined him.
Hailey never had taken herself too seriously. It was one of his favorite things about her.
“Call me anytime,” he told her. “Or just stop by. I’m always glad to help.”
She tilted her chin up to look him right in the eyes and it was only then that he realized how close he was standing to her.
The wind lifted her hair and he caught a hint of her spiced apple shampoo. It snapped him back to the past, to that day in the barn when he’d kissed her…
His heart thundered in his chest and suddenly heachedto hold her close and never let her go again.
“I… I’d better get back to the kids,” he said, forcing himself to tear his eyes from hers. “See you around.”
See you around?
