Finally, when they’d been talking for almost two hours, Roland reluctantly stood.
She stood with him and then gasped. “One of the things we forgot to talk about—how we were going to communicate. We can’t give each other our cell phone numbers.”
“No. Absolutely not.” They might find out that they already had each other’s numbers or something equally horrifying.
“But I don’t know what to do. I did give it some thought, and I was thinking the gazebo would work, but it’s in the middle of town. Not the best place at all.”
“No. I’ll tell you what, follow me.” He’d been thinking about this for a while, and he really thought his idea would probably work, although not nearly as good as messaging or texting, of course. That would be best if keeping their identities a secret wasn’t so important.
She hesitated a bit, and he realized that she was a woman alonewith a man she didn’t know. Would she trust him enough to follow him?
He wouldn’t blame her if she didn’t. He wasn’t sure if he were her that he would. After all, she was much smaller than he was, and he could easily overpower her if he wanted to.
But the hesitation was just for a brief moment, and then she followed him out into the town square and onto the sidewalk. He slipped into the shadows, and she slipped there with him, her cloak rippling behind her as a soft breeze picked it up as they walked through a few areas where the snow had not melted.
It was cold enough for the ground to freeze back up, so he wasn’t concerned about making footprints anywhere. But he did watch for icy spots.
Finally, they were on the outside of town, on the opposite end from which he had parked, near an old tree that had been struck by lightning a few years prior.
“There’s a hole here in this tree. I…happened to notice it this summer when the kids were playing ball and one of them kicked it way too hard. I ended up running over here and seeing this hole. It’s…not big enough for an animal to have a nest in, but it would be big enough for a note.” He put his finger in the hole and wiggled it.
“That’s perfect. I think we could get an entire piece of paper in there, and if we’re careful, we could completely hide it so that no one else would accidentally find it.”
“Exactly. I found the note that you left on the porch, but anyone else could have found it too.”
“I know. I wish I could have waited longer, but I just couldn’t.”
He let that go. He didn’t know why she couldn’t wait longer or anything about her, but…he really admired and respected her just from the conversation they’d had this evening.
“All right then. I’ll try to make a point of coming to check on this once a day if I can.”
“Me too. I usually take a walk in the morning, and I can makesure that my route ensures that I swing by this tree. It might be a little bit more touch and go in the evening though.”
“All right. When I come, it will probably be after I’m done with a Secret Saint delivery or around noon. So it looks like we won’t meet each other.”
“That’s important,” she agreed.
“We could also try to make sure that we are dressed in our disguises.” He indicated his ski mask and her cloak. “If we haven’t made specific plans to meet, we can meet here at midnight and discuss what we’re going to do.”
“All right. That sounds good. I don’t do something every night. I just couldn’t.”
“Me either. If we do the Kowalskis tomorrow night, I probably won’t do anything the next night, but I could meet you and discuss what we found and organize something else.”
“That sounds perfect. Every other night or every two nights. Maybe as we get closer to Christmas a little bit more often, but…work one night, meet one night.”
“Yes. Meet here, leave a note if anything has changed since the last time we talked that can’t wait until we talk again.”
She nodded. “That sounds perfect. I… I’m kind of excited about it. I know this is maybe immature on my part, but it’s made everything more interesting. A secret meeting tree, a little hole to put our notes, meeting times, it’s…super fun.”
“Yeah. I’ve always looked forward to doing this, and I’ve really been enjoying it, but this has definitely knocked it up a few levels. I… I’m more excited about it now than I had been when I first started.”
She couldn’t see his mouth, but he was grinning at her, and he assumed that she was probably smiling back. He wanted to picture her sparkling eyes, but he had a little bit of trouble. Were they blue? Green? Maybe a deep shade of walnut brown? He wasn’t sure, and for some reason, he was more tempted than he had been all evening to pull her cloak back and look deep into them.
But he resisted the urge. After all, that would be a huge betrayalof trust. It didn’t matter how much he wanted to, he certainly wasn’t going to.
“All right, tomorrow, at the Kowalskis’ house at midnight. If anything changes before that, I’ll leave a note or you will, and I won’t start on anything until we see each other at the Kowalskis’, just to confirm that everything’s a go.”
“Yes. That sounds good.”
