Page 10 of Planes, Trains, and Candy Canes

“Do you travel a lot for work?” Derrick asked.

“No. I’m a behind-the-scenes person. I do boring stuff with maps,” she whispered back.

“If we can’t get a flight, we can take a train. It’ll take about eighteen hours to get from Pensacola to Philadelphia by train. Then we could rent a car. Or see if we can get a puddle jumper to Binghamton, but the closer it gets to Christmas day, the harder it will be to get a flight. It might even be hard to get a seat on a train. Or a rental car.”

“God, I really messed up,” Reese groaned, eyes closing.

“Huh? This isn’t your fault. You were going to get to Buffalo just fine. Not your fault the airline canceled the flight. Then what was going to happen?”

“My dad was going to pick me up.”

“Well... maybe we can still get him to pick us up.”

“That’s so cute.”

“What?”

Reese bit her lip. How could she explain that the idea of her and Derrick sitting in the back of her dad’s car, holding hands and laughing as they rode back to their hometown, was so sweet and innocent and adorable? So “young love”?

I’m thirty-two. No more young love for me.

“Nothing.”

“You better tell me. I’ll take my handy-dandy, perfect-for-the-traveling-man blankie back,” he threatened in a teasing tone.

“It would be cute to have someone to bring home for Christmas, riding in the backseat of my dad’s car while he drives and makes awkward small talk like when he used to drive me to the movies with my high school boyfriends. Okay?”

“Okay. That does sound cute, in a cheesy holiday movie kind of way.”

“I hate to tell you this, but I think we’d be booed off the set. The girls in those movies are all cute, crafty, perky twenty-somethings with leggings and a budding bakery. None of them go around mapping sewage treatment centers.”

“Maybe. I think you’d get the part. But me? I think I’m supposed to be rugged and wearing plaid, trying to save my family ranch or something. No business casual engineers who are married to their Google calendars and have travel blankets and miniature eyeglasses repair kits in their laptop cases.”

“I don’t know. I’d date that guy.”

Derrick didn’t say anything for a moment. Several long moments.

In fact, she stopped hearing anything at all, but she fell asleep holding his hand.

THIRTY-SIX. MARRIEDto your schedule. On the way to antacids and strict orders from the doctor to get a life before you lose it.

Derrick looked at the sleeping woman beside him. Her face was flawless, and youthful, and even in her sleep, Reese looked like she would wake up with a smile and start talking nonstop.

He realized he was smiling at her, just thinking about waking up and hearing her plotting and planning kick into overdrive.

“Mm.”

In her sleep, she stretched, snuggled, and flopped, burrowing into his shoulder.

It was definitely wrong to pull her close and wrap them more tightly in the blanket, resting his head on hers.

They were both exhausted and had coffee and candy cane breath.

I don’t care. I’d kiss her this second if she woke up and wanted to.

You need sleep, man. You’re talking crazy.

She’s a little crazy. I think I need a little crazy.

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