Page 40 of The Christmas Lodge
“Yup.”
“And you have the key.”
“In St. Louis, yes. I’ll have to go back to get it. There’s a box of my mother’s things that I never went through after she passed. Maybe there’s something in it that will clarify whatever I find in Nicholas’s box. Not that I actually know what to expect from Nicholas’s box…”
“There’s only one way to find out.”
Lacy sighed. “I know.”
“Wow… it’s going to be tough to wait to get answers.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, it’s a couple of weeks until the party.”
“Oh, I’m not waiting for the party to go back.”
Derek blinked, looking stunned and deeply disappointed. “So you’re just leaving? Just like that?”
Lacy wrinkled her brow in confusion and then realized where the miscommunication lay. Butterflies erupted in her stomach as she put the clues together and realized why he seemed so disappointed. She clenched her hand behind her back to keep from trembling and willed her voice to come out steady when she spoke. “Oh, I’m coming back for the party. I’m just going to St. Louis first.”
Derek blew out a breath that he must have been holding, relief flooding his face. He blushed a little and tried to make a joke, although his eyes were still a little vulnerable.
“Good. This town would hate to lose a good party like that. Plus, we’d all miss the party planner herself.”
“Just the town would miss me, huh?” She couldn’t help herself. The words flew from her mouth before she could question whether it was a good idea to say them. She felt her cheeks heat up when she realized she was one hundred percent flirting with Derek, opening the door for him to flirt back.
“And me,” he admitted, his voice soft. He tucked his hands into his pockets. “I would miss you too. I’ve gotten used to having you around.”
Their eyes caught and held, electricity buzzing between them. She swallowed, trying not to notice his freckles and the intensity in his deep brown eyes, but failing miserably. Derek took a step forward, his mouth opening as if he wanted to say something. For a brief moment, Lacy leaned toward him, as though pulled in by an unstoppable force. When their faces were just inches apart, the logical part of her brain finally caught up to her and she whirled around, breaking their gaze and picking up her paint roller again as though it was a lifeline for her to cling to.
No,she told herself fiercely,no,you can’t have him. Not with everything going on. Not when you know you’ll be leaving again so soon.
CHAPTERTWENTY
The shelf full of car cleaning kits blurred in front of Derek’s eyes until his eyes only took in amorphous blobs of color, but he didn’t notice. He was too lost in thought to realize that he had been standing in the same spot for a good five minutes or that he wasn’t even in the correct section of the store. He had headed over to Mitchell Hardware that afternoon in a break between lessons to pick up some WD-40 and a few other things to keep up with sled maintenance. The trip, however, had proven unfruitful thus far, and he could blame it entirely on one person: Lacy Preston.
It had been all he could do not to think about her constantly, and he’d been trying to ignore the fact that he had been failing entirely in that regard. His lessons were suffering for it, and more than one client had commented on the fact that he seemed distracted. So, today, he’d made an extra effort to focus while teaching his pupils, and he’d succeeded some, but on his drive to Mitchell Hardware he had, unfortunately, passed Nicholas’s old mansion and, just like that, he was pulled inexorably back to thoughts of Lacy.
“Derek!”
Derek jumped, spinning around to see his best friend, Clark, staring at him. “Clark, don’t sneak up on a man like that!”
Clark folded his arms and raised an eyebrow. “You good, man? I called your name like, three or four times.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. And I’m pretty sure you haven’t moved in a while—I was starting to wonder if you were a cardboard cutout or something.”
Derek smiled weakly at the lame joke and raked a hand through his already disheveled hair, blowing out a breath as he did so. “Guess I was just lost in thought.”
Clark tilted his head, throwing Derek a knowing look. “Come on, I know you better than that. I’ve seen you lost in thought before, but this seems like something else.”
“You know me too well.”
“Well, yeah, that happens when you’ve been friends with someone since the second grade.”
Derek gave a lopsided grin at that. “Sometimes I can’t believe it’s been that long.”
