“Anyway,” he said, reaching down for the Magnolia Boutique bag with a frisson of nerves, “I wanted to tell you how much your support has meant to me these past few weeks. And I also was really touched by the way that you shared about your past. I know it’s not easy to be honest about the things that hurt us…” He cleared his throat, worrying that he was getting a little too sentimental. “Anyway, I saw this, and I thought of you.”
He handed over the bag and watched, heart in his throat, as Winnie pulled out the soft pink sweater.
For a moment, she just stared at it in silence, and when she looked up, her eyes were shiny with unshed tears.
“This…” She gave him a soft smile, and one tear trickled out her eye before she quickly dashed it away. “This is just like my mom’s. I… Shane, this is too much.”
“Do you like it?” he asked, needing to be certain.
She clutched the sweater to her chest. “I love it.”
“Then it’s not too much,” he said firmly. Honestly, her happiness was all the repayment he could possibly need.
She rubbed the sleeve of the sweater against her cheek, then draped it carefully over the back of her chair before coming around to join him on the booth side of the table. She threw her arms around his neck in a warm, exuberant hug.
It was possibly the best hug Shane had ever experienced. He felt a little bad thinking it, because he’d had many wonderful hugs from his family over the years. But there was something about Winnie…
And maybe that was the crux of it. There was just something about Winnie that he couldn’t seem to resist. And, when she pulled back and gave him a shy smile, he decided that he didn’twantto resist her, not anymore.
He leaned in and kissed her.
He surprised himself by doing it, honestly. He hadn’t made the decision very clearly, at least not before he was already leaning in. But when his lips touched hers, it felt like…
It felt like coming home. It felt like a kind of happiness he hadn’t experienced in a long, long while.
The kiss was quick and chaste, even for an impulsive first kiss. They were in public, after all. When they pulled apart, though, Winnie’s cheeks burned bright pink and there was a crooked smile on her face.
Shane cleared his throat.
“I, uh, I’m sorry,” he said, a touch awkwardly. “I probably shouldn’t have done that, at least not without asking first.”
She shook her head, seeming more like she was trying to clear her thoughts than offering censure.
“No, I… I’m glad you did,” she said. “I’ve been having a really, really nice time with you these past few weeks. And not just because you keep helping me with all my problems,” she added with a self-deprecating little laugh.
Emboldened, Shane reached out and squeezed her hand.
“At first, I wasn’t sure I would find what I needed in Magnolia Shore,” he admitted. “But now, getting to know you is answering every question I ever had about why coming here was the right choice.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Eleanor’s hands were busy stacking books on the shelves in her shop, but her mind was on Garrett. It had been several days now, and she still hadn’t talked to him. She knew that delaying wasn’t helping anything. No, in fact, it was making everything worse, because now she wasn’t only embarrassed about her ‘too much too soon’ feelings, but she was also worried that he was getting angrier by the dayandmortified that she was behaving so childishly. Worst of all, she felt that she likely deserved any anger he wanted to toss in her direction.
She was not precisely at her best, after all.
And it wasn’t as though she’d been getting calmer as the days went on either. On the contrary, she had been sleeping extremely poorly, which meant she was only growing crankier as the days went on.
Crankier and more absentminded.
This point was made particularly clear to her when she jumped about a foot in the air when she heard her brother’s voice from behind her.
“Everything okay, there, Ellie? You’re slamming those books down pretty hard on the shelf there…”
Frustrated with her own surprise, Eleanor slammed down the next book even harder and whirled on her brother.
“You,” she said accusingly.
This was perhaps atouchdramatic, but she wasn’t feeling terribly reasonable.
