A Little Country Christmas - Carolyn Brown Page 0,76
on the floor between her desk and the two seldom-used cells.
“Coop?” she called out. Where the hell was he? “Coop?”
“Up here!” she heard him say, and she did everything in her power not to burst into a sob as she looked up through the gaping hole in the ceiling to see him squatting at the edge.
“What are you doing up there? You need to get off the roof before the rest of this place caves in!
“I thought…How are you still up there? I saw you disappear so I came inside to save you!”
He smiled. The man had the freaking audacity to smile when she’d thought she was going to run into the building and find his broken body splayed on the floor.
“Not sure if you saw, but there was a bit of an earthquake up here. Knocked me off balance,” he said.
She threw her hands in the air. “Think you can get down before another quake happens?”
“Think you can get out?”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “Remove yourself from the roof, Mr. Mayor, before I arrest you for trespassing.”
She made her way back to the door and outside to safety, her heart squeezing in her chest for every second he wasn’t back on the ground.
Thirty seconds later he emerged from behind the building, and the crowd gathering in the square cheered.
It was all she could do to keep herself from running to him, but she had to be sure this was it, that he was for real.
He must have sensed her hesitation because he stopped walking when he was six feet in front her.
She opened her mouth to speak, prepared to launch into an inquisition about whether or not his commitment to Meadow Valley also meant a commitment to her, but Peyton spoke before she could get the words out.
“When you wouldn’t take my calls or answer my texts, I stopped by your mom’s house. I figured if I could get through to her that maybe she’d get through to you.”
Dani frowned. “She didn’t tell me.”
He shook his head. “It was only about an hour ago, when I was on my way here. I asked her not to tell you, at least until after I finished with my surprise.” He glanced back toward the caved-in building, then faced her with a nervous laugh. “Surprise?”
“You could have killed yourself,” she said.
He raised a brow. “But I didn’t. And also, I’m not done.” He pulled a small plastic container from his coat pocket and moved a couple of steps closer so she could see the red-and-white confections inside. Her mother’s peppermint meringues. “I guess I caught your mom in the middle of her holiday baking, and when I saw these, everything just sort of clicked.”
Dani sucked in a breath. Now she couldn’t speak even if she wanted to.
Peyton took another step toward her, close enough so that she could touch him, but she was frozen where she stood.
“You asked me to the winter formal,” he said. It wasn’t a question.
Dani nodded.
“And I was the idiot who asked Cady McKay if she knew who sent it and believed her when she said it was her.”
Dani nodded again, then cleared her throat. Okay. Good. She hadn’t completely lost the ability to utter sound. “It’s stupid,” she finally said, “that I’ve held on to that rejection for all these years. Everything seems so big when you’re a kid, though. You know? So when my dad left and you acted like you didn’t know I existed? It was—big.” She let out a nervous laugh.
He shook the little container in his hand. “I might have forgotten it was you who sold me these amazing cookies or whatever you call them—”
“Peppermint meringues,” she said.
Peyton cleared his throat. “I wasn’t done,” he said with a grin.
She winced. “Sorry.”
“I knew you existed, Dani. I wasn’t lying when I said I had a crush on you. But I was also out of my depth. I didn’t know how to pursue a girl who seemed to want nothing to do with me. But if I’d known?” He shoved the meringues back into his pocket and held his left hand out to her.
Dani suddenly remembered that they had quite an audience—an audience who seemed to be waiting with bated breath for whatever came next, as was she.
“What?” she asked, a small tremor in her voice.
“Go to the dance with me,” he said.
A collective Awww sounded from the aforementioned audience, and Dani’s heart felt like it was about to explode. Tears stung her eyes.