Page 17 of Promise Yule Be Mine
Shoot.
What a way to embarrass myself.
But even though I’d been a creep swooning over him, he just deepened his smile and looked into my eyes as if I were his world.
Or my imagination was very vivid. And drunk. In any case, I needed to get my shit together and stop acting like a fool.
“Sorry. Nothing. I…erm…I was going to say, should we visit the venue?”
“Sure,” Kody said. “It’s right across the street.”
I chuckled and shot up before either of them could and marched right for the door as if putting distance between him and I would give me back my brain.
True to his word, and small town magic, the venue was literally across the street.
The Christmas Falls Festival Museum.
I couldn’t believe that was a thing, and yet, it most certainly was, as my research into the place had shown me.
It was a large, magnificent space with a number of rooms. Photographs and artifacts from past decades on display along with plaques and larger posters told of the town’s history and its holiday traditions.
“It’s amazing how much history a place can hold from such a short time span,” I said when we’d gone through most of the rooms, briefly but no less respectfully.
“Yeah. I kinda wish I could see into the future, how much more there will be in here to display in a hundred years or so.” Kody smiled and brushed his hair back but it fell into his face again as if to spite him, but he looked cute, so it was hardly a crime.
“And to see if even a little part of you has left its mark in history?” I added and Kody beamed.
“I don’t care to leave a mark necessarily. People who wanted to do that often left quite a terrible stain in history, but…it’d be nice to know something I did made someone’s life a little better.”
My lungs filled with air and my heart pumped faster because how could they not? Wasn’t that sweetest statement ever?
Why Kody? Why do you have to do this to me? Why do you have to be such a perfect man and make it so much harder to hate you, or at the very least, dislike you?
“What kind of difference would you like to make?” I asked, not even trying to hide the fact that his face, his eyes, were far more interesting than anything the museum had to show me.
He put his hands together and rubbed them slowly. “I…I’m still trying to figure that part out.”
“Keep me posted. I might want to copy your paper.”
Kody pursed his lips into what could only be described as a cheeky smile, his mustache tipping to one side as if it had a life of its own.
“You got it.”
I took a couple more steps and stopped on my tracks, my breath catching at the sight of a large horrifying Santa sitting in a lonely corner, and I clutched my chest.
“Are you okay?” Kody asked as Jenna touched my shoulder.
“That is the stuff of nightmares.” I pointed to the thing.
“Don’t let Nikita hear you say that. It’s what made him go into robotics,” Kody said.
“Who’s Nikita, and whatisthat?”
“A mechanical Santa from one of the floats in the 90s,” Jenna said.
“That is not a Santa. That is a clown dressed as Freddy Kruger.”
Kody grimaced, barely concealing his laugh. “Yeah, it didn’t do a great job standing the test of time.”
