Dreaming of His Pen Pal's Kiss - Jessie Gussman Page 0,56

actually met him. There’s nothing between us. I just...I just feel like this isn’t a good time,” she finished kind of lamely.

It didn’t matter to him. His heart was jumping up and down in his chest, and he wanted to smile and fist pump the air, except he didn’t want to scare the horse, because a nice, slow walk was about all he could handle.

Still, his elation calmed rather quickly because they still had the same problems. Even though he knew now she was kind of interested, even if she didn’t know who he really was.

But he had football, and that’s what he had to be invested in, and she had her hometown and the roots that she had deliberately put down and didn’t want to shift.

There was also the small problem of the fact that he couldn’t really tell her who he was. Not without breaking what felt like Race’s trust.

It was a dilemma he wasn’t quite sure what to do about. To top it off, he wasn’t going to be able to stick around and work on it. He needed to leave. He needed to get home for training camp.

Still, it was encouraging that things seemed to be headed in the right direction.

Chapter 20

Journee stood beside Dante as the two teens who won the Not Such an Ironman Ironman competition got ready to throw their pies.

They’d been given ponchos, but nobody was going to be aiming for their body.

“I think I’ll have a hard time not ducking,” Dante murmured to her.

“My reflexes aren’t that good, but I think I’ll close my eyes anyway. Because you’re right. I’m gonna want to dodge.”

The kids on the other side of the table only had to throw across maybe six feet. As they were choosing which kind of cream pie they wanted, Journee and Dante exchanged looks.

Despite all their efforts, they’d managed to come in dead last.

Thankfully, though things had gotten awkward after they’d fallen off the horse, they pretty much had been back to normal by the time they got off the horse and delivered their Christmas tree to the table.

The gingerbread house had been an unmitigated disaster. The chimney idea had been really good, but they’d been in a hurry and hadn’t allowed the icing to solidify, and it had toppled. Not just toppled, but toppled off the table.

It had been impossible to piece it together from the floor, so they just basically emptied the icing container on it and made it into an igloo.

No one had ever heard of a gingerbread house being made almost completely from icing and shaped like an igloo, so, yeah. Disaster.

“I think this experience will be good for next year. Pretty sure we’ll be able to whip their butts.”

“You can’t be serious. You’re thinking about next year? You’d do this again? Voluntarily?”

“Sure. It was fun.” He looked like he meant it too. He was smiling, one side of his jaw pulled up a little higher than the other, giving his grin a lopsided, almost boyish look, and she felt her chest tighten.

Never in her life before had she had the problem that she felt like she had now.

There were two men in her life; she liked them both.

It shouldn’t be a problem. Dante was leaving. Leaving for football, and she probably wouldn’t hear from him again until the season was over.

She didn’t know much about it, but she was pretty sure he didn’t have scads of free time, definitely not weekends where they could meet and do something.

Plus, there was a huge social scene involved with sports figures, a scene she knew nothing about and definitely wouldn’t fit in.

She needed to think of him as a friend, and although he had kind of hinted around about more, and she’d been more tempted than she ever had in her life to just close her eyes and jump, she was glad she hadn’t.

It was a decision she almost certainly would regret.

“Okay, you two,” Mr. Albright said, having somehow lucked out and been not only in charge of the Not Such an Ironman Ironman Contest but also in charge of the pie throwing as well. If there was a dunking booth, he probably would have gotten that too.

Some people had all the luck.

“Look at that, everyone. Journee looks like she’s excited about tasting some chocolate cream. Don’t miss with the chocolate pie,” he called out to the twitters of the audience.

“That’s just fine by me. I don’t mind standing here and watching,” Dante said, and everyone laughed