Page 39 of Santa's Girl
From the outside, I probably looked steady. Inside, my head was a mess.
I’d made sure Jinx and the boys understood the rules before the crowd showed.
Becca’s off limits.
My woman.
The words had come out before I’d thought about them. I could almost hear her voice in my head giving me hell for it. We’d shared one kiss under a plastic sprig of mistletoe, and here I was calling hermine.
Yeah. Real smooth, Boone.
Still, the word had done its job. Every man in the place gave her a wide berth. Didn’t stop them from looking, though. Hard not to—she lit the room up.
She was laughing with the girls at the bar, hair falling in loose curls, red cheeks from the heat and the schnapps she’d somehow convinced McDaniel to pour into jello cups. She’d invented some kind of sugar-cookie cocktail that was strong enough to take paint off the walls. And she was glowing.
I should’ve stayed on the sidelines, kept doing my rounds, but when the band kicked up, something in me gave. One song, I told myself. Just to make sure she didn’t fall off the table she was dancing on.
I crossed the floor, slipped behind her, and when she turned, surprise flickering across her face, I just laughed and wrapped my arms around her waist. She didn’t pull away. We moved with the beat, nothing fancy—just swaying, easy. The noise around us blurred until it was just her laughter, the smell of cinnamon schnapps, the warmth of her back against me.
Later, when the air inside got too thick, we stepped out into the cold. The night sky was clear, the moon sharp. A few of the younger guys had started a bonfire, sparks snapping up into the dark. Arctic Cats idled nearby, engines purring like wolves waiting to run.
“Still got energy?” I asked.
She grinned, eyes bright. “You offering a rematch?”
“Something like that.”
We climbed onto the sleds, engines growling to life, the headlights cutting through the trees. The others fell in behindus. The forest turned into a blur of snow and light, machines weaving and circling, figure eights around the fire until the whole mountain hummed with sound.
Up here, there aren’t any streets to race.
We run the woods instead.
And tonight, for the first time in a long while, it felt good to justrun.
The engines wound down one by one until only mine was left running.
I eased us off the trail, deeper into the trees where the snow lay untouched, smooth as glass. The lights from the clubhouse were long gone; only the stars were left—bright, cold, and sharp enough to cut the sky into a million pieces.
I killed the engine. The silence that followed was so deep it rang in my ears.
Becca pulled off her helmet, her breath turning to mist in the dark.
“Wow,” she whispered. “It’s beautiful.”
The word didn’t begin to cover it.
Snow glowed faint blue under the moonlight, the air crisp and clear. Her cheeks were flushed from the cold and the ride or the drinks she’d had. Her eyes bright as the stars themselves.
“Worth the trip?” I asked.
She turned toward me, smiling. “Definitely…. oops,” she giggled, clutching at me before almost falling in the snow. Buzzed Becca was cute. Adorable.
I don’t know what happened next—whether it was the quiet, the cold, or the way her voice softened—but something inside me slipped. All the reasons I’d told myself to keep my distance faded with the sound of the wind in the trees.
I reached out, brushed a snowflake from her hair. She looked up, and for a long moment we just stood there, breathing thesame cold air, caught somewhere between sense and something else entirely.
Then she rose onto her toes, fingers curling in my jacket, and kissed me.
