In Shining Whatever (Three Magic Words Trilogy #2)(68)

"My favorite." She tore into it.

"I remember," he said.

She looked over at him. "What? You remember what?"

"Snickers. I had one in my pocket the first time I met you. It was on the playground. You were there with Sophie and Fancy. Fancy went off with Chris Miller. I knew he was trouble in disguise, but it wasn't any of my business. Sophie had to go home, and we were there alone. Stephanie and I'd just broken up because I wouldn't give her an engagement ring. I gave you the candy bar when you said you were hungry."

She had to swallow around a lump in her throat. "I kept the wrapper. It's in my keepsake box."

It was his turn to be amazed. "Really. You've got a fifteenyear-old candy wrapper?"

"Five of them," she admitted.

"Who else gave you Snickers bars?" He frowned.

"No one. I've had roses by the dozens. Lots of boxes of candy. But no one else gave me Snickers."

"Been a busy girl," he grumbled.

"And you? How many roses have you paid for?"

He looked away.

"How many women did you give my Snickers to?"

"No one else has ever gotten Snickers. I swear it, Kate. Roses? Enough to buy a good stud Angus bull. Rings? One, and she didn't turn it down and got to keep it when I broke the engagement. Candy? Enough that I can't remember. Must have been at least twelve boxes or more, because there's been fifteen Valentine's Days since then."

"Sixteen," she corrected him.

He waved his hand. "Whatever."

Is he my knight in shining whatever?

"What are you thinking about that put a smile like that on your face? Keep thinking it. You are so beautiful when you smile," he said.

Is this a courtship dance? In a Baymont hotel with a Snickers in my hand?

"You going to tell me what went through your mind?" he asked.

"Good candy," she said. A woman didn't give away all her secrets; and it was a good candy bar, even more so after all those days on the island with no sweets.

"So talk about serious stuff?" he asked.

"Oh, that. You go first"

"Okay. If you laugh at me, I'll get a complex."

"Boys get complexes. Men don't."

He shook his head. "That's a myth. We're wired from birth with a fear of rejection. That's why we don't ask girls out, and why we don't talk about what's in our heart but about candy bars."

"Okay, then talk." Girls didn't like rejection a bit better than boys. The difference was that boys didn't have a network of friends to talk everything to death. She had always had Sophie and Fancy, and they had good broad shoulders when she needed to weep and moan.

He swallowed hard. "The reason I couldn't marry that girl had everything to do with you, not her. She was a good woman. A lawyer who loved rodeo and owned a ranch, so we had a lot in common. She was a good cook. A tall blond with crystal-clear blue eyes."

Kate looked across the room at her reflection in the mirror above the dresser. She was surprised that her skin wasn't leprechaun green.

It was a month before the wedding. I was sitting on the edge of a motel bed after a bull ride one night and picked up a Snickers candy bar. Everything about you came back to mind. Your long dark hair. The way you made me feel like I was ten feet tall when you looked at me. All of it. I couldn't marry Gretchen, not feeling like that about you. I called her right then and told her the truth. She screamed and yelled and threatened to put out a contract on me."

Kate's mouth went as dry as if it had been swabbed out with freshly picked cotton balls. She was glad he hadn't asked her a question, because she couldn't have spoken if it had meant talk or die.

"For the next five years, every time I went to anything around Albany or Breckenridge, I looked for you. I even went into your aunt's cafe, but I never quite got the courage to ask her where you were. I think it was because I was afraid she'd say you were living in south Texas with your husband and had five or six kids already."

He went on. "So anyway, I didn't ask and finally just flat gave up. You'd gone your way and found happiness. I didn't deserve it. And then I looked across the room and there you were, of all places, at Theron's wedding reception. And you were a bridesmaid. God, you looked good in that red dress, but I didn't believe it could be you. After all, I'd been searching and thinking about you a long time. So I figured you were just a friend of Fancy's that looked like my Kate"

My Kate.

Her heart skipped a whole beat.

"You're not making this a bit easy. You could nod or comment every so often, so that I would have some inkling of an idea how this is coming across," he said.

She sat down on the edge of the bed and patted the place beside her. "Go on."

He slung an arm around her. "You were really Kate and I was almost tongue-tied. I'd played the scene so many times in my head about what I'd say when we met again, but nothing came to mind except to ask who you were. You couldn't be Kate, not right there in front of me," he said.

She snuggled in even tighter.

"Then we were in the motel room, and it was Kate all grown up and even more beautiful and desirable than she'd been all those years before, and we were laughing and talking. You know why I rented a room that night? Because I was afraid if you had to follow me all the way to my ranch to talk, you'd change your mind. So I pulled into the Ridge and rented a room so you wouldn't chicken out. You didn't have to save my skin and reputation, but you did. You didn't have to sit with me in the hospital, but you did. My life was going in the right direction. And then you disappeared."