Page 27 of Dancing in Lake Mistletoe

“It was fine.”

He cuts his eyes to me. “Just fine?”

“What were you expecting, old man?” I ask.

He shrugs. “You left with a pretty lady. Seems to me that alone deserves more than a fine.”

I nod. “We had a nice dinner and then shared a bottle of wine. It was nice.”

“Nice. Well, I guess that’s better than fine,” he mumbles.

I sigh. “I like her. But she’s only here for a couple of months. A man with a crazy schedule and a seven-year-old probably doesn’t sound like a lot of fun to her.”

His brows furrow. “Did she say that?”

“No.”

“Then, how do you know?”

“I just assume.”

He laughs. “Boy, if there’s one piece of advice your old man can offer, it’s never to assume you know what a woman is thinking.”

We pull up to town hall, and Keller and Bob have already begun to pull supplies out of storage and load them onto the back of Bob’s truck. We scarf down our sandwiches before hopping out to help them. I’ve already inspected all the lights and have them categorized and sorted into labeled crates. Those go onto the back of my truck. Once the garlands, bows, wreathes, and mistletoe are loaded up, we wait for Hoyt to arrive. He has the ladder and power tools already on his truck, so we set out in a caravan to Christmasfy Lake Mistletoe.

“So, I heard Mindi and Willa talking over breakfast,” Keller says.

He’s holding the ladder I’m currently climbing to attach a string of lights to the top of the gazebo. Bran, who met us on the square, is already atop a ladder to my right, installing hooks.

“Yay, and?” I grunt as I make it to the top and heave the heavy strand from where it’s wrapped around my shoulder.

“And Mindi had fun last night. I think she’s into you,” he says.

“Okay,” I say as I settle the thick cord into the first hook and use the staple gun in my tool belt to secure it.

“Okay?” Bran yells from his perch. “You’d better lock it down. Those dimples aren’t gonna pull you through much longer. You’re, like, two, three years tops from gray whiskers and a beer gut.”

“Yeah, you’re not going to be able to turn the heads of hot dancers much longer, dude,” Keller bellows.

“I’m still trying to figure out how he got this one’s attention,” Bran agrees.

“You guys are hysterical,” I mutter as I move on to the next hook.

“When’s the last time you took a girl out?” Bran asks.

“Bethany Cooke. He brought her to Willa’s birthday party, remember?” Keller replies.

“Right. That was, what, six months ago?”

Bethany was a girl I met when I was doing some work on her grandparents’ Airbnb. She came to stay for a few weeks while she was between jobs. We had a fun but brief fling before she left for Indianapolis.

“Six months. Damn. That’s a dry spell,” Bran notes.

“No. Two years is a dry spell. Six months is nothing,” I say, recalling the time after Lexi’s death when I had no interest in other women.

He looks at me and grins. “It doesn’t have to be seven.”

“Yeah. Are you going to ask her out again or not?” Keller asks. “I know Willa is going to quiz me the minute I get home, and I’d like to have my answers straight beforehand.”

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