Page 16 of Second Chance Christmas

Aspen laughed and threw the truck in park. “See. Told you. Come on. Ms. Lucille’s going to love seeing you again. It’s all her and Mrs. Winters have talked about in town for days now.”

“Oh.”

He nodded.

Their eighth grade English and math teacher was the sole reason Ivy felt bold enough to follow her dream and become an interior decorator. The dream morphed over the years and she now applied her knowledge as a real estate redeveloper and refurbisher, but she still did what she loved and that was making old things new again.

After graduating, her dreams grew. Became brighter. Flashier. Too flashy for a small town like Dixen and the weight of marriage.

She had every aspect of her life all mapped. Only thing that didn’t fit was marriage.

College degree by twenty-two, check.

Her own successful business by twenty-five. Semi-check, given her recent setbacks.

Own her home the same year. Check. Well, sort of. Did a charred and burned to the ground house still count?

Engaged and married by the time she turned twenty-seven. Again. Sort of. Her life had taken three major steps back with no distinctive answer about how to recover.

Her sisters thought something had gone wrong in the brain compartment with how she liked everything detailed down to what she would eat three days from now, but it took the guesswork out of the mundane. She liked the control writing everything down gave her. As though the written word held a kind of magic. For her anyway.

With six months on the clock until she hit the big two-seven, the magic plan she had didn’t seem all that magical anymore.

I’ve got everything right where I want it.

Ms. Lucille. She smiled, rolling the name around in her head after such a long time. Ms. Lucille also had a way of adopting everyone’s troubles as her own and had no problem meddling if it meant a happy result. So she remembered.

“It’s not like any school bus I’ve ever seen.” Ivy didn’t budge from the edge of the seat, still in awe.

“See the front of the bus where the door is?” She followed where Aspen pointed before looking back to him. His eyes lit with clear excitement and pride as he spoke, and she remembered how he loved to build things growing up. Treehouses, birdhouses, motors... you name it and he could build it.

“It still has the original chrome bumper and the original hinge door.” He pointed. “And all the headlights, rear lights. If you pop the hood, the motor purrs like a kitten. I tinker with it from time to time but Ms. Lucille doesn’t really like it moved.”

She doubted that the beast’s motor sounded anything like a kitten, but it was wonderful to see a smile replace the sadness that was there when they were talking about his brother.

“I can see why.” It seemed Gran and Lucille conspired to buy out all the red-leafed plants they could find across town. There had to be over fifty poinsettias between the wooden stairs lined with railing pots, the window planters and the raised beads that hugged the entire perimeter of the bus.

Just like the B&B.

“It looks like this bus smacked into the posh side of a home makeover store and came out looking like a Cadillac. I had no idea anyone could get a simple school bus to look so cool. We used to hate riding on these things, remember?”

“Yeah. It took years before we madeback of busstatus.”

She smiled as he turned his beautiful eyes on her. “And led to our first kiss,” she offered fondly.

Aspen raised a brow at her and brushed the pad of a callused thumb across her cheek. “How could I forget?” He sat there, taking up nearly half the small cabin, exuding a raw power about him that lured her into his circle of energy.

She repositioned herself back in the seat, drawn into his deep brown gaze, but unwilling to fall into the pull. “How did it happen?” She heard the question come out, but she couldn’t focus on anything other than how perfect his lips were or how sexy his hair looked mussed from running his fingers through it.

“The kiss? As far as I remember, it was hot.” He arched a single eyebrow and smiled until a dimple appeared above his turned lip. “Like sexy hot. I had the prettiest cheerleader in the school and the sweetest girl running up to kiss me in the middle of football practice. I was the envy of every guy on the team that year and the next. So I repeat, how could I ever forget the first time our lips touched?”

He drew closer the longer he spoke and she had a hard time not focusing on the way his mouth moved or how much she’d missed the rich smell of pine. It had to be from all the firewood he carried around this morning, right? Wow, when did it get so hot? She cleared her throat. What he may not know was why it happened. She lost a bet with her sister riding to school on one of those ugly buses and the payment was stealing a kiss from the boy you wanted to go to prom with. She got more than she bargained for in the end.

Aspen.

She smiled.

Life was a lot less complicated in her teenage years. “Um. Not what I meant at all.” She laughed lightly. “I meant the bus. Did you design it and do all the work?”

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