The Promise of Christmas

“Do you have any idea where in Phoenix you’d live?” she asked him. How long had he been thinking about this? If Cal hadn’t died, would he have looked her up when he got to town?

She hated that it mattered.

“That’s just it,” Kip said, drumming the table with his fingertips, his eyes darting away before coming back to rest on her. He wore that predatory expression she’d seen him bestow on any number of cheerleader types during her growing-up years of unrequited love. “I haven’t had any time to think through the details yet,” he was saying, “but I believe it would be best if we all lived together….”

Leslie stared at him, horrified, immobile. She finally understood the old cliché about jumping from the frying pan into the fire. She would’ve preferred to remain ignorant of that particular insight.

“LET’S GET OUT OF HERE,” Kip said when his living arrangement suggestion was met with a solid minute of openmouthed silence from his lovely companion. He’d just, for the first time in his life, asked a woman to live with him.

Somehow, whenever he’d pictured this moment, with anticipation or aversion, it hadn’t gone anything like this. In all his scripts, the woman had been beside herself with joy. Sometimes she’d cried. Sometimes she’d shrieked and laughed and shouted her acceptance from the nearest rooftop. Sometimes she’d wildly torn off her clothes and launched herself at him with thirsty kisses. Of course, those last scenes had been set in private places.

Kip welcomed the blast of cold air that hit him square in the face as he pushed through the heavy wooden door at the front of the bar, and then stood holding it for Leslie, who was still zipping up the parka she’d borrowed from her mother.

She was a beautiful woman—Leslie, not her mother, although Clara was attractive, too, for a woman of her age. But Leslie… Even after four days in her company, he still wasn’t used to looking at his best friend’s little sister and seeing this gorgeous and completely grown-up woman.