Page 3 of Carpenter's Christmas Bride

“Clearly not,” Kenzie said, looking at the cute little logo on the paper bag. “You went from a shy little thing to a girl boss while I was gone, didn’t you?”

“I like this spin on things,” Mal laughed. “It’s much better than just saying that I never left my hometown.”

“Well, that’s the other thing I’ve been thinking about,” Kenzie said. “I know it’s kind of old-fashioned, but I’ve honestly been thinking more and more about settling down and starting a family. You know I love kids, and I can’t dance forever.”

She held her breath, knowing a lot of women her age might laugh at that idea.

“You do love kids,” Mal said, nodding without a bit of judgement in her eyes.

“Well, maybe this injury was a sign that it’s time for that to happen,” Kenzie said feeling the same little tingle of excitement she always felt when she thought about falling in love. “And if the movies are right, finding a nice guy in my hometown at Christmas should be easy as pie.”

“First of all,” Mal said. “Baking a perfect pie is anything but easy. Secondly, no, that’s not going to happen here.”

“Weren’t you getting ready for a date the other day when we were on the phone?” Kenzie asked. “With dreamy Aidan Webb?”

She pretended to swoon, and Mal laughed.

“So how was it?” Kenzie asked, leaning in.

“Honestly,” Mal said, frowning. “I can’t believe he’s the same guy.”

“What do you mean?” Kenzie asked.

“I’m not even sure why he went on the date in the first place,” Mal said. “We got set up, but he could have just said no.”

“What happened?” Kenzie asked, sipping her coffee. As disappointed as she was that the date hadn’t gone well, she loved the feeling of sitting and gossiping with her bestie.

“He was… an indifferent grump,” Mal said, shaking her head sadly. “We met at the restaurant because he had to work in the city until late, which was fine. But he was fifteen minutes late, didn’t really apologize, and then he was rude to the waiter. He asked me like two questions, didn’t listen to the answers, said nothing about himself, and spent the rest of the night staring at his phone.”

“Yikes,” Kenzie said.

“Right?” Mal said. “I keep trying to think if I could have said anything to offend him. But I never really got the chance because I barely said anything to him at all.”

“That doesn’t sound like Aidan Webb,” Kenzie said, shaking her head.

“Remember when he was the emcee of the talent show our freshman year?” Mal asked.

“What were we thinking?” Kenzie asked, shaking her head and laughing.

She and Mal had dressed up like clowns and done a juggling act with hacky sacks. They weren’t very good jugglers, and all the other girls who competed wore super pretty outfits and sang love songs.

Aidan had been amazing though—he’d been super sweet and funny announcing them, not rolling his eyes like the cool upper-class girls did.

“Do you remember when he invented the School Spirit Awards?” she asked.

“Yep,” Mal said. “He made all that homemade swag and got on the intercom during morning announcements to congratulate the winner every month and share a bio about them. I learned a lot of cool stuff about kids who weren’t on the football team because of his wacky bios.”

“Remember when he knitted Jessie Sullivan a scarf in the school colors for winning the district chess tournament?” Kenzie said fondly.

“His grandma taught him to knit just for that,” Mal said with a sigh. “But it’s like the guy I went out with hid the real Aidan Webb and took his place. I guess people change as they get older.”

“Not us,” Kenzie told her firmly. “We’re not a pair of jaded old maids. We’re about to have the time of our lives. My parents are on their Christmas cruise for a month, so we have the house to ourselves. We can have movie marathons and order a pizza every night if we want.”

“Sure,” Mal said, giving her a funny smile.

Suddenly Kenzie felt stupid. Mallory had her own place and she had probably been choosing what she wanted to watch on television and eating whatever she wanted to eat every single night of her adult life.

Ballet had control of Kenzie’s days, obviously, and of course the nights and weekends when she performed. But sometimes she forgot that it controlled her free time, too. Between the strict diet and sleep routine she needed to stay strong, and the tiny paychecks, it was pretty safe to say that ballet dictated just about everything in her life.

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