A Wright Christmas - K.A. Linde Page 0,4

Lawson, Lubbock’s resident high-profile lawyer team, who approached me. Kill me now.

“Angelica,” I said with a head nod. I took Bart’s hand. “Bart.”

“Isaac, just lovely to see you,” Angelica said.

“You too.”

“How’s Aly?”

“You know Aly. Always happy to be in dance tights.” I laughed with the couple. “How’s everything going with Katelyn?”

Angelica pursed her lips. “Well, they gave the Clara role to Bebe.”

She made it sound like it was an affront. I knew enough about ballet to know that Bebe was the best dancer we’d seen in over a decade. My heart panged at that thought. Being here always reminded me of Peyton. I tried to hide it all away, but there was a reason I knew how the ballet world worked.

“They should have given it to our Katelyn,” Bart said.

“She’s worked so much harder for this,” Angelica agreed. “Don’t you think so?”

There was no winning here. I couldn’t say that Bebe was the better dancer. Katelyn did work hard, but she had the added advantage of parents who cared way too much.

“What part is Katelyn playing?” I asked instead.

Angelica waved her hand. “She’s a soloist in the snow scene, and she’s one of the flowers. But it’s not the same as being Clara, especially the way that Kathy choreographs the role.”

“Of course. Those are both great parts.” I glanced over their shoulders. The baby class hadn’t let out yet. “Excuse me. I’m going to go check on Aly.”

I brushed past the couple and headed toward the studio space. Just as I was nearly to Aly’s class, Kathy stepped out of the costume room with another woman.

I stopped dead in my tracks, my stomach dropping to the floor. It couldn’t be. This made no sense. I was having a hallucination. That was the only possible explanation for this. Because what would Peyton Medina, a principal dancer in New York City, be doing in Lubbock?

But there was no denying it.

No one else had her grace or poise. The slicked-back bun that had wisps of brown curls constantly escaping, no matter how much hairspray or gel she applied. The lithe frame with her tan complexion. The dimple that appeared just on her right cheek when she really smiled, as she was now. The widening of her big brown eyes as she saw me for the first time, too.

“Isaac?” she gasped.

Her eyes swept up and down my form, just as I had done to her. Something ignited inside me. She’d left so long ago, and still, that connection between us sparked. I took a half-step forward for a moment, remembering all the times I’d held her perfect body and kissed her perfect lips.

Before I ripped myself away from who we’d been at seventeen and back to the present, an ache settled in its place. An old, familiar feeling of missing her. One that had never truly gone away.

“Hey, Peyton.”

3

Peyton

Isaac Donoghue was standing in the Lubbock Ballet Company lobby.

I blinked and blinked again. This wasn’t going away. He was really there. Right there. As if I had conjured him out of thin air. I’d anticipated seeing him but not on my first day back. Not here, like this, where I was so unguarded.

God, I had been so hopelessly in love with him. And looking into those green eyes, I could see it happening all over again. Just how easy it would be to get lost in my first love.

He was somehow even more gorgeous than I remembered. He towered over me, as he always had. And while he’d been tall and lanky in high school with his intense soccer schedule, plus running cross-country, he had completely filled out. His shoulders were broad and defined in his suit, his waist tapered in, and his chest had expanded considerably. But it was the bright green of his eyes, the red scruff along his defined jawline, and the warmth of that smile that had always drawn me in. Just as they did now.

“Hi,” I said, flustered.

He laughed softly, and something in my chest eased at the sound. “It’s good to see you. What are you doing in town?”

“I’m…well, Kathy invited me out to perform as the Sugar Plum Fairy for the season.”

Kathy deviously grinned at us both. “We’re so lucky to have her. If you’ll excuse me…”

“That’s incredible,” Isaac said. “You’re not performing in New York?”

“I rearranged my schedule to dance the last week of the year in New York so that I could be here for the entire LBC Nutcracker season.”

“Wow. So, you’ll be here for a