Lincoln felt his heart skip slightly. “I was worried it would be too much. That you’d be creeped out that I still remembered things like that.”
Imogen laughed. “Not at all! It feels like ages since I’ve felt someone knew me so well. I mean… I have friends here, of course, close friends, but they don’t know me quite as well as you do. We’ve known each other for so long. And maybe we don’t know the people we are now that well, but having someone who remembers who I was then—” She broke off. “I feel like I’m rambling. But?—”
“No, I get it,” Lincoln interrupted. “I really do. I felt the same way about the boots. It was such a silly thing to be obsessed with back then, and I honestly forgot about it for years. Obviously, I guess, since I never bought myself a pair. But seeing that box, realizing you remembered that… it felt like being a teenager again. I remembered why I wanted them so badly, and I couldn’t help but wish that I’d had them all this time… even though I’m also thrilled just to have them now.”
The words spilled out before he could stop them, and as he heard himself speak, he couldn’t help but wonder if he was still talking about the boots. He felt Imogen go still next to him, and he thought that maybe she was thinking the same thing.
He missed this, he realized. He missed having more than friendship, with her. He missed how she truly listened when he talked, how she remembered things about him the same way he did for her, how she could make any situation feel lighter by her outlook on it. Nothing ever brought her down for long, and if it did, she found a way out of it. Even getting lost in the snow could be turned into something positive if Imogen was there.
“It made high school feel like yesterday,” he said quietly. “Even if it was fifteen years ago. And then it made me feel like the time has gone by so fast.”
“It has,” Imogen agreed. “It always does, really. So you just have to enjoy the good moments while you have them, and make sure you remember the parts that make you happy.”
Like this one,Lincoln thought. He turned toward her, and her eyes shone in the moonlight, as beautiful as he remembered. She was looking at him, right at him, and suddenly all he wanted was to kiss her, out there in the snow, on the ridiculously romantic sleigh that they’d been maneuvered into taking for a ride.
He could picture it: pushing her hair gently behind her ear, tipping her chin up… and then his lips on hers, for the first time since he’d stupidly walked away all those years ago.
And then, just as he was about to lean in, a blinding light shone directly in front of them both, nearly blinding him.
“What in the world?” Imogen gasped.
The light bobbed and weaved as it approached them, and gradually they could make out the figure of a man on foot, carrying what appeared to be the most powerful flashlight Lincoln had ever seen.
“Hello there!” Henry’s voice called out. “Imogen? Lincoln? That you two out there?”
“Henry!” Lincoln called out, relief flooding through him. “Thank goodness you found us.”
The flashlight shone down a little, and they saw Henry getting closer, bundled up until only a little of his face was visible. Suddenly, everything around them was illuminated, bright enough that they had a pretty clear view of where they were, even if Lincoln still didn’t recognize it exactly.
“We might have known,” Imogen said with a laugh, “that our trusty electrician would have the brightest light bulb in Fir Tree Grove at his disposal.”
Henry got to the side of the sleigh, pausing to pat one of the horses on the neck. “When Mabel called and said you two hadgone missing on a sleigh ride, I figured you’d probably ended up on one of these back roads,” Henry said, scratching either Jingle or Belle behind the ear. “These old farm roads can be tricky in the dark, especially if you’re not familiar with where they lead. And these horses know this area well. The family that owns them runs a farm about a mile down this road. They probably just naturally headed toward familiar territory when you gave them free rein.”
“Can you get us back?” Lincoln asked, and Henry nodded, chuckling.
“Sure. Scoot over a bit, and I’ll get us back into town.”
“Henry, you’re a lifesaver,” Imogen said gratefully. “I was starting to worry that we’d end up spending the night out here.”
“Now that would have been an adventure,” Henry said wryly. “Although I suspect Katie might have had something to say about her mama not getting home until the morning.”
“Oh goodness, Katie,” Imogen said, suddenly looking stricken. “It hasn’t been that long, right? Hopefully she’s not worried about me.”
“Don’t you worry about that,” Henry assured her. “Vanessa called Mabel about an hour ago to let her know that Katie was having the time of her life making Christmas cookies and had completely forgotten about everything else. They’re watching Christmas movies, and Vanessa said she could stay the night if need be.”
Despite the fact that he felt very sure they’d been tricked into this sleigh ride, Lincoln was grateful to Vanessa for thinking it through so thoroughly. Even their current predicament seemed to be working out better than it had any right to.
“Well then,” he said as Henry picked up the reins. “I suppose we should head back before those cookies are all gone.”
As they headed back toward town, Lincoln found himself both grateful that they’d been rescued and also a littledisappointed that the night was at an end. The time alone with Imogen, even lost in the middle of nowhere, had been unexpectedly eye-opening. And he was realizing rapidly that not only did he not want it to end, he wanted more time with her like this. More time that felt like something other than just friends.
“Thank you for being such a good sport about all this,” he said to Imogen as Henry’s flashlight guided them safely down the dark road.
“Are you kidding?” Imogen laughed. “When was the last time I had an evening this exciting? Getting lost on a mysterious sleigh ride is definitely not something I had on my calendar for this week.”
They dropped Henry back off at his car, where Mabel was waiting with the owner to collect the horses and sleigh. “I can walk you back to your shop,” Lincoln said to Imogen, and she smiled gratefully.
“I’d like that.”
