doubt that your boss will see what an amazing job you’ve done and make your promotion permanent.”
Just like that, her insides went squishy, her worries and cares lightening so much that they drifted away in the breeze. “Thank you. I needed to hear that.”
He must’ve caught something out of the corner of his eye, because he did a double take. “Oh, uh. Your marshmallow is—”
She jerked it away from the firepit, and the flaming marshmallow slipped off the end of the stick and flung through the air.
“Watch out,” she yelled, but luckily, no one was behind them. The melted goo blob landed in a clump of sand and fizzled out. She and Josh both stared at it for a few seconds before they burst into laughter. Then she lightly smacked his arm. “Someone was distracting me.”
One corner of his mouth kicked up. “Same.”
Her heart gave an excited leap in her chest.
“Now I feel extra bad for taking your perfectly toasted marshmallow,” he said.
“I happen to know a way you could make it up to me.” She wanted to show him that she could be flexible and do something that wasn’t on the agenda. Well, semi-flexible-ish at least.
“Take me to see the lanterns? Yesterday during the tour of the gingerbread houses you mentioned how amazing they looked all lit up at night, and I’ve been thinking about how pretty that would be ever since.” She’d just been too prideful to ask about it after their stupid squabble.
The corners of his eyes crinkled as a smile spread across his face, and if she could bottle the heady, exhilarating feelings running amok inside of her, she would. “Deal,” he said. “As long as somewhere along the way, you also let me buy you dessert.”
Chapter Fourteen
Evidently, the key to making Danae beyond happy was to take her for Thai ice cream. She bounced on the balls of her feet as she watched the shop’s teenage employee pour the ice cream mixture and use metal spatulas to blend it together.
Once it was frozen, the girl rolled it into floral-looking slices. She arranged it in a cup and added the toppings Danae had chosen.
“Extra marshmallows, please,” Josh said, winking at Danae. “I owe her.”
Danae’s eyes widened as the employee handed over the sugary concoction. “It’s almost too pretty to eat.”
Josh led her out of the shop so they could make the short, five-minute walk to the gingerbread houses. “Are you saying you need me to eat it?”
Danae squealed and swung the bowl away from him as he made a halfhearted grab at her spoon. She dug into the mix and brought a scoop of the cookies and cream with fudge, whipped cream, and marshmallows to her mouth. “Mmm. Nothing against toasted marshmallows, but I definitely won the dessert game tonight. Thank you.”
“My pleasure,” he said.
Several couples were out and about, strolling and enjoying the balmy weather. Josh steered Danae around the clusters of people so she could keep her attention where it should be: on her ice cream and reveling in the genial buzz that hung thick in the cool night air.
One minute she could be so fixated on schedules and itineraries, and the next, she was rambling on and on about the cool storefronts. She followed that up by asking if he thought there was anywhere for her to do alpaca yoga back in Newport.
“This might surprise you, but that was actually my first time doing alpaca yoga. Also, my first time doing yoga in general.”
“I am all surprise,” she said, heavy on the sarcasm. Like she had in the ice cream shop, she bounced in place, as if someone had turned her energy knob to high. “It was so much fun, though, right?”
He bit back a grin, and then went ahead and let it loose. “I had a lot more fun than I expected to.”
Mostly because of her. She’d moved so effortlessly, bending and stretching and flowing through moves that had been completely foreign to him. Then there was the way she smiled and laughed as the animals had flocked to her—not that he blamed them. Everything the woman did, she did on a grand scale, and while it occasionally drove him crazy, he admired her drive as well. It couldn’t have been easy to take on so much responsibility so young.
Which was why he had pushed her to allow herself to live in the moment more often.
Now he’d learned his lesson, though. Danae wasn’t the kind of woman you could push. Ice cream