Page 68 of Mistlefoe
I turn my attention to it because it’s snowing pretty hard. Sighing, I say, “I was looking up places to go on a date.”
“Anything good?” she surprises me by asking.
“I don’t know yet. I couldn’t even click on the link before he started trying to fish for information.” After a beat, I add, “Sorry.”
Sierra turns to the window. “It’s okay. Eventually everybody will find out, right? It’s just that right now it’s so…”
“New?”
“Yes. And different.”
“That too.” I tap my steering wheel. “A month ago we were exchanging barbs in every conversation. I guess they’ll pass out when they see us holding hands or something.”
“Or not,” she says with more calm than I’d have expected. “Conor, there’s something you should know.”
“Uh-oh, that sounds bad.”
Sierra clears her throat and because I stop at a red light and traffic is light, I allow myself to look at her directly. She’s biting her lips in a way that lately makes my blood boil, and that makes me miss the first words she says. “…about us.”
“What?”
“They have a whole bet running about us.”
“What?” I ask with more force.
“Yeah, half of our team thinks we’ll eventually end up dating. The other half says it’s never gonna happen. Apparently, it’s running for a few hundred dollars.”
My jaw drops. If it wasn’t because someone honks behind us, I’d have stayed frozen there until I turned into an old man. I get us going again before I dare to speak. “Uh, so who all is winning?”
“Rachel and Kaylee. They saw the potential before we did.”
“Huh, and here I thought I was the captain of this ship,” I say with a snort.
“So, about that date…” Sierra trails off and I tense, waiting for whatever comes next. “When is it going to be?”
I shift a little on my seat. “Maybe this weekend after the event?”
“Hmm, sounds good.”
I bite my lips so I don’t hoot like a frat boy or something, and we spend the rest of the drive in a weird silence where it’s tense with all the things I’m not saying, because I’m busting at the seams. I want to tell her that being with her makes me feel just as happy as when I was smack in the middle of a gritty hockey shift, like deep down I have this certainty that it’s what I’m supposed to be doing with my life.
Sierra jumps out of my truck the second I park it, but shegrabs my hand as we trudge over the snowy gravel to my front door. The house feels colder inside than the air outside, and I hurry to get a fire going so it can warm up. Tonight we have to wrap as many presents as we possibly can. They’ll be the ones we throw in the ball pit for people to fish around, and we intend to be generous. It will definitely help the process if our fingers are not falling off with frostbite.
“Come here.” I motion at her to join me by the fireplace and she skips over. This isn’t the first night of overtime work where this has happened, but it’s the first time I pull her close against me and hug her from behind.
Sierra sinks against me with a sigh that does something to me. I’m pretty sure my whole body is as hot behind her as the heat radiating off the fire in front of us.
“Can we stay like this the whole night?” she asks with a sleepy voice.
“If it was up to me, yes. A thousand times yes.” I tuck my chin over her head and hug her just a bit tighter. “But maybe laying down on the couch instead.”
“Ugh, don’t tempt me, Mahoney.” Slowly, she extricates herself from my hold and turns. She blinks slowly at me, more because she’s tired than anything else. “Let’s get to work before I fall asleep and start snoring in your presence. It’s way too early in this relationship for that.”
So, it is a relationship? I tuck my tongue against my cheek, voicing nothing to that effect and just basking in the win.
“Okay. Let’s turn this place into a gift factory.”
I make us two cups of coffee as strong as tar and she sets out the layout in the living room. It gets toasty pretty quick, so we discard our outerwear and sit on the carpet around the coffee table. We get to wrapping and it goes well maybe for an hour or two, we start collecting a decent pile of presents wrapped in clear cellophane with curly ribbons.
