Page 22 of Cole

“Yep. Both Benji and I skate. Growing up, our dad always set up a rink for us.”

“Did you want to become a figure skater?”

Annie chuckled. “Well, I wanted to because I have always admired female figure skaters. But the reality was that I enjoyed sitting on the couch watching them perform more than I liked being on the ice. It required too much working out for my liking.”

Lexi gave a laugh. “Yep. It sure does require a lot of physical exertion.”

“So you don’t like exercising, Annie?”

“Not really. At most, I go for walks and lift some light weights.”

Cole found it interesting how she wasn’t even trying to impress him with the answers she gave. Most women would be sure to tell him how much they exercised to get their very fit figures. He wasn’t sure how fit Annie actually was because he’d only seen her in loose fitting clothing.

“You and Benji should come to one of the open skates we have here,” Lexi said. “It’s pretty relaxed. Doesn’t require too much physical exertion.”

“I’m pretty sure your definition of not much physical exertion and mine are not the same.”

That made Lexi laugh again. “Perhaps.” She turned to face Annie’s phone. “Do you skate, Cole? Or have you always been focused on basketball?”

“Oh, all of us Halverson kids learned to skate,” Cole said. “Like Annie, we had a rink in our backyard, so we all got pretty good on the blades. Not all of us liked it, though. Jay was a solid no when it came to ice skating.”

“Next time you’re home, we should all come skating,” Lexi said.

Cole wanted to protest that Serenity wasn’t home, but he held it back. He knew what she meant. “We could always try. It has been a looooong time since I was last on skates. Might be a bit rusty.”

Lexi’s attention had been on the ice throughout the conversation, so after calling out something to Amelia, she gave him a smile, then pushed away from the boards. “Gotta get back to work.”

“You treating my niece right, Benji?”

“Huh?”

Annie was laughing as she turned the camera so that Cole could see Benji, and Benji could see Cole. The teen was staring at him with wide eyes and his mouth open.

“You doing that, Benji?” Cole asked.

“Of course, I’m treating her well,” Benji said, his expression morphing from shock to earnestness. “Annie wouldn’t let me do anything else.”

“Plus, you’re just a really caring person by nature,” Annie said. “You wouldn’t treat anyone badly.”

“That’s a good quality to have, Benji,” Cole told the teen. “Never lose it.”

Benji’s gaze left the phone for a moment, then he said, “Annie has it too, you know. She’s nice to everyone.”

“Somehow, I knew she’d be like that. Glad to know I was right.”

“You owe me an ice cream, Benjamin,” Annie said.

“Why?” The teen lifted his hands into the air. “What did I say?”

“Using me as a way to deflect Cole’s questions about you and Amelia costs you an ice cream.”

Cole grinned at the back and forth between the siblings. Though there was a large discrepancy in their sizes, they looked fairly similar. They both had light brown hair and blue eyes, though, if he remembered correctly, Annie’s were more of a blue-green.

When music started playing, Annie and Benji stopped talking and turned to the ice. After a moment, Annie glanced down at her phone. “Oops. Sorry.”

She lifted her phone and once again fixed the camera direction so that he could see Amelia on the ice.

Cole had never watched any figure skating competitions. If Lexi had still been competing when she and Wilder had gotten together, he probably would have paid more attention to the sport. So watching Amelia show both artistry and athleticism on the ice for the first time was an amazing experience.

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