He led her to the windows. With one hand holding hers, he wrapped the other around her waist. Without her shoes, she only came up to his chest. Outside the window, snow fell in wide, languid flakes.
“It’s snowing,” she said as she looked up at him.
“Just for you.”
She smiled and tucked her head against his chest as they swayed to the music. After all this time, a man’s arms held her, as if they’d been doing this for years.
They danced to one, then another. She drifted in his arms, like the snowflakes outside the window.
In the middle of the third song, a noise from the frontdoor drew their attention. The young people were home. Her instinct was to jump apart, as if they were doing something wrong. However, before she could do so, all that energy piled into the room. Maggie and Jackson came in first, holding hands and flushed from the cold. Trey cradled Autumn in his arms, like a groom carrying his bride over the threshold. Nico had a laughing Ria by the hand, flakes of snow in her black hair. Stone carried Pepper on his back, her dancer legs encircling his waist. David came in last, carrying a stack of logs.
They all stopped in their tracks when they spotted Rosa and Dominic still in their embrace.
Hands on her hips, Ria was the first to speak. “Did you forget to invite us to the party?”
“Um, no,” Rosa said.
“We’re having a dance,” Dominic said. “Care to join us?”
Maggie’s face broke into a huge smile as she turned to her husband. “Dancing is just the perfect end to a great night.”
Jackson took her in his arms. “I couldn’t agree more.”
“Yes, dancing. Let’s all dance,” Pepper said as she jumped from Stone’s back.
No one needed any convincing. David offered to make eggnog in the kitchen, but the rest joined them by the window. Stone and Pepper held on to each other so tightly that no air could come between them. Autumn slumped against Trey’s strong body, letting him take the burden of her weight. Nico, however, was light on his feet as he waltzed Ria around the room.
She and Dominic inched closer together and carried on with their dance.
The first side of the album finished. Jackson put more logs on the fire. David passed around glasses of eggnog. They all drank as the kids told them about the rest of the evening. Other than Lisa’s parents, who’d managed to rentseparate rooms at the lodge and gone to bed, they’d gone back to the bar for another round, telling stories and laughing.
Halfway through their eggnogs, Pepper jumped to her feet and suggested Christmas music for their next dance. Stone found the old Emmylou Harris Christmas album. Soon, the bluegrass drifted out of the speakers. The fire glowed orange. Snow continued to fall outside the window. Instead of getting back up to dance, the young people flopped on couches and chairs by the window. Among a splay of entwined arms and legs, they talked and laughed, but to Rosa it was only background noise. She could see and hear only Dominic.
“Shall we sit?” he asked.
“Yes. My feet are a little out of dancing practice.”
She snuggled into a corner of the couch in front of the fireplace. Dominic sat next to her. After such a short time, they’d established this as their spot in the house.
Rosa Soto and Mama Soto seemed to merge then. She would always be a mama to this adopted flock of adult children, these grown men and women who were still so young and tender. But she was a woman, too. A woman sitting close to a man on a couch in front of a roaring fire. A man who wanted to take her on a date. He might even want to kiss her later. She would ask him to walk her to her room. When they reached her door, he might lean down and brush her mouth with his. The idea coursed through her like a wildfire until she was hot and alive and burning with excitement. She wanted him to kiss her. More than anything, she wanted to know what his mouth felt like against her own.
“Dominic?”
He looked over at her. “Yes?”
She leaned close to whisper in his ear. “If you want to kiss me good-night, I’ll allow it.”
His mouth widened in a slow smile. “I’m glad to know, because I would very much like to kiss you good-night.”
“I haven’t been kissed in thirty-four years.”
“Then I better make sure it’s a good one.” He shifted to face her. “But first things first. May I hold your hand, Rosa Soto?”
“You may.”
While the iridescent voice of Emmylou continued to sing of Christmas, Dominic took her hand in his large one. They sat together staring into the fire, not speaking, but communicating in the comfortable way their fingers intertwined. A man by her side. Who would have ever thought it possible? A man to go through the rest of her life with had never seemed like a possibility. But now, basking in the glow of the fire, the dream of a new kind of life pushed aside her assumptions, and a flicker of hope emerged.
Rosa Soto might just live to love again.
