Page 35 of The Hockey Grump Saves Christmas

I pause to look out toward the auditorium and upward, absorbing the ornate moldings, the gold accents, the murals between pillars on each side of the room, the multilevel ceiling. Of course I noticed them yesterday, but didn’t really take them in.

“It’s unexpectedly elaborate for a small-town theater,” I remark.

She moves beside me and looks out at the same view. “It was designed by someone who was obsessed with the Beacon Theater in Manhattan. And they kind of copied it. There’s a whole section about it at the historical society, if you’re interested.”

I turn my attention from the red velvet seats and the gilded trim around the exit archways to Natalie. “Of course this town has a historical society.”

She screws up one side of her mouth, making her lips pucker, and shoots me a look from the corner of her eye. “They also have a display about the legend of Wendolyn and Lord Percival that you might enjoy.”

“Maybe some other time.” There will never be that other time. “For now, scenery painting. I just need a couple of brushes.”

At exactly the same moment, we bend down to pick up the pack of brushes that are resting on top of the can of white paint and our foreheads smack together.

We cry out and grab our heads.

“Jesus Christ,” she says, “haven’t you injured me enough already without headbutting me as well?”

“It hurt me too,” I object, rubbing the point of impact.

“But you were only hit by my dainty girly head. I was hit by your big burly hockey hero one that’s more like a block of concrete than part of a human body.”

Fuck me, did I hurt her again? “Let me see.”

She looks up at me and sucks in her lips before dropping her hand to reveal a red circle in the corner of her forehead.

It looks fine. A bit red, but no broken skin.

But right this second, I have an excuse to touch it. An excuse I might not get again to learn what her skin feels like.

So, against every sensible cellin my brain, I do.

Her eyes don’t leave me as I trace my fingers slowly around the sore patch. “Am I hurting you?” I ask.

“No.” She breathes it more than says it.

I let my fingers draw another completely unnecessary circle on her soft skin. This time, as my chest rises and falls it also vibrates. And the tremors trickle lower.

“I think it’ll be fine.” My eyes slip from the scene of the crime to those goddamn blue fucking eyes that suck me right back in.

“It’s not so bad anymore,” she says, holding my gaze. “It was probably just the surprise that made it feel worse.”

“Yeah, okay.” My fingers slide down her hairline. What the fuck are they doing? They’ve lost their minds. I’ve lost my mind. My brain has dissolved right here in those glistening pools of blueness, and I don’t know how to get it back.

My fingers are sentient beings in their own right, operating without any reference to anything that I know is good sense. They glide along her jawline at a snail’s pace, then stop at her chin.

No other part of either of us moves a muscle.

Apart from Natalie’s eyelids, which blink.

I don’t dare blink. In case it breaks whatever magic spell has just been conjured between us.

As I tip her face up a little, the bright stage lights catch the golden highlights in her hair, and her mouth parts just the tiniest amount.

Oh, Christ, this is a bad idea. The most terrible idea. There could not be a worse idea at this moment than kissing Natalie Bourne on the fire-damaged stage of a 1940s theater where I should be painting the row of trees lined up like soldiers behind me.

But I lean down toward her anyway.

And it’s at this moment that whoever’s driving the sensible part of my brain wakes up and whacks it into reverse.

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