In this dance, he saw everything he’d been denying himself his entire life: the chance to be free. Not only of his past, but of his own fears and hatred of the world. By trying to protect himself, he’d robbed himself of simple, easy joys like dancing.
And falling in love.
Not that he would have fallen in love before this moment. There was no one on earth like Kate Buckner, and even if he’d been looking for love before now, he wouldn’t have found it. It existed in her and her alone. And now, he’d found it.
As they twirled and tripped and floated across the floor, Kate whistled the tune, her eyes never leaving his face and his never leaving hers. Could she feel his heartbeat? Could she hear it? Could she make out the Morse code of its beating? Bum… Bum… I think I… Bum… Bum… Love you.
They spun out and stopped their movements when Kate’s song wound to a close. Unmoving, they held one another as if they hadn’t stopped the waltz. Her eyes seemed to be made for him to admire. The perfect color. The perfect shape. The perfect windows into a perfect soul.
Was he crazy enough to think she felt this way too?
“I have some bad news,” Kate whispered, too close to him to speak at a normal volume. Clark’s hands shook.
“What’s that?”
A glance upward. A guilty smile.
“We’re under the mistletoe.”
Sure enough. Green leaves and white berries dangled overhead.
“You know the tradition, don’t you?” she asked.
Nodding, not trusting himself to speak, he waited for her to answer the unspoken questions hovering in the air between them. There was no way she didn’t hear his heart now.
“Would you…” The whisper trailed off. Clark moved a tiny bit closer. “Would you like…” Another trail off. Another bit closer. “Would you like to…” She trailed off a third time. He was so close he could count the tiny wrinkles in her lips. Another breath closer, and their souls would collide as they fell into a tender, sweet kiss.
“Yes.” He saved her from asking as he tightened his grip on her waist. “Yes, I would.”
RIIIIINNNG! RIIIIINNNNGG!!!
The moment shattered. The possibility of a kiss died. Kate fled Clark’s arms, diving across the room to collect her cell phone from the nearest table.
He never knew two hands could feel as empty as his did when Kate left him like that.
Chapter Fourteen
Shaking so violently she almost dropped the phone twice, Kate scrambled to answer the call while trying to brush the stardust from her eyes. She almost kissed Clark Woodward. She wanted to kiss Clark Woodward.
“Hello?”
“Kate!”
Her lifelong friend Michael’s voice couldn’t possibly be mistaken for anyone else’s, even when it was dominated by loud background noise. In the split second of his greeting, Kate picked out bits of sound with surgical precision. Laughter. A Santa going ho-ho-ho. Music. So much music and conversation everything mixed into a chaotic, cacophonous mud of sound.
“Michael? Where are you?” Kate pressed her free ear with a finger, hoping the closeness would help her hear his shouting voice.
“Are you still with Public Enemy Number One?”
“Yeah, he’s in here with me. And don’t call him that.”
Kate didn’t dare look at him. He’d wanted to kiss her, too. The very thought weakened her knees and blew on the embers inside her heart.
“Great. Get into the car and have him drive out to the location I’m texting you, okay? You should be able to get there if the roads in his backwoods are clear.”
A ding from her phone alerted Kate to a text message. She glanced at the GPS signal Michael sent and furrowed her brow. A random spot in a random field.
“Why are we going there?” she asked, not fully convinced Michael would even tell her if murder was in the plans for tonight.
“Just do it, okay? You’ll see. Trust me.”
“Okay… If you say so.”
“Don’t sound so glum! If this doesn’t make him fall in love with Christmas, nothing will!”
“I’ll ask him if he wants to go.”
Fingers still shaking, Kate ended the call. They’d planned something, a secret kept even from her…what could they be up to?
“What’s up?”
“Do you want to go on a little drive?”
Everything about him—his stance, his mouth half-opened and ready to ask a million questions she didn’t have the answers to—told her he wanted to talk about what just happened between them. The kiss. Well. The almost-kiss. The kiss she desperately wanted. The kiss whose absence tingled on her lips. She could only hope everything about her told him not to push his luck.
“Yeah. Yeah.” His head dipped in disappointment as he dipped out of the room. “Sounds good. Let me get my coat.”
Ten minutes later, they sat next to each other in the front seat of the car. The GPS gave muted directions to Clark, who had to navigate by headlights because the back forty didn’t have any lights to speak of.
“Do you know where we’re going?” he asked, scrunching his face as he tried to see further ahead of them than the light would allow.
She shrugged and leaned into the impossibly comfortable seats of Clark’s car. They needed to get there soon. Any longer in this quiet, dark, comfortable seat and she’d definitely be asleep.
“I don’t know. Maybe they’re having a bonfire or something.”
“On my property? Without my permission?”
“I can’t think of anything else they could be doing. It’s a big, empty field.”
Kate kept her arms firmly tightened across her chest and her eyes anywhere but Clark’s direction. Pretending to be endlessly fascinated by the dark blurs passing them outside wasn’t easy. It was, however, necessary. She didn’t have the time to parse out her feelings about her impulsive desire to kiss him. She’d only come here to make him
