I shot a look to Vincent to see if he’d been joking but his face remained serene, so I kept my raunchy response at bay. “That they do,” I said neutrally.
“I’ll start more popcorn.” Vincent reached for the next bag of kernels. “You know, I started out at the front desk too,” he said as he dumped the kernels into the little pot.
“Oh?” I asked.
“I think it’s very impressive not only what you’ve done here tonight but for the Lodge. I can tell your career means a lot to you.”
I hid my face, hating how my cheeks heated at the compliment. “Thank you, sir,” I said, then cringed at my use of the honorific. Where was this man in the hierarchy of the Lodge? I wondered if he even knew with all the sudden changes. I respected that he didn’t want to give me a promotion without knowing me. Even though it sucked. At least he was making an effort to get to know me. Maybe he was starting to see me as something close to a peer.
I had to be careful. If he learned about my past, he wouldn’t be so eager to promote me up the ranks. As I helped person after person, checking in on local families, interacting with the visitors staying at the Lodge, I maintained a professional persona. Nobody said anything about me beingthatRoxy Kincaid. However at one point, Scotia Simmons made a comment about how glad she was “I turned my life around.” Thankfully, Vincent had been busy helping out and didn’t hear her. Soon, I started to relax and just get lost in the transactions. Hand out popcorn, pimp Lodge. I could do that.
“This has been a really great event, Roxanne,” Vincent said when the movie started and the line finally stopped.
It was so weird to hear him call me anything but Roxy after spending the last few hours chatting with him. But he’d finally stopped calling me “Miss Kincaid” and so it was still progress.
“Thank you,” I said. “It’s a good little town.”
“Hmm,” he said looking out at the crowd. His face was unreadable as he looked back at me. “Excuse me, I have to see a man about a horse. Is that what you all say?”
As always, my face spoke for me.
“I’ll work on it,” he said with a hint of a smile before walking away.
I took a deep breath, finally alone for the first time in hours. And yet, being alone with my thoughts, the inevitable crept in. The “I made a terrible mistake leaving Sanders” thoughts. It had seemed so important to me to maintain boundaries that night in Denver. But my mind kept drifting back to him. Like the pair of shoes I talked myself out of buying only to obsess over how often I would’ve actually worn them. But a thousand times worse. Because now my heart was constantly aching over might-have-beens.
I searched for something to do behind the table to distract me. I folded brochures, restocked the water, fluffed the popcorn. I was just bending down to open a new case of water when a voice said my name. A voice I never thought I’d hear again.
“Roxy?” the smooth Australian accent asked. “Is that you?”
I straightened and turned around slowly. I’m sure my eyes were as wide open as my mouth. There he stood. Sanders. Sexier, taller, and even more stunning than the memories that had played on a loop this last week. Like he’d been manifested straight from my recurring dreams, there he stood with his head tilted, brows pushed up together with hesitation and a soft smile playing on his lips.
It would be damn corny to say that my heart exploded into a thousand little butterflies and took flight into the air around me. So I’d just keep that feeling to myself.
I was around the table without thinking. My arms wrapped around his shoulders. His deep rumbling laughter filled my ears as he squeezed me back, lifting me off the ground. My feet kicked up. I was laughing. I was actually laughing. Or crying, I couldn’t tell. The relief was immediate.
I was still floating off the ground, held in his strong bracing grasp, when I pulled back to look at his face. My gaze moved all over from his laughing grin with his silly teeth to his dark blond brows lifted high with humor.
“It’s you,” was all I could say.
“Hi,” he said back.
For who knows how long, we seemed to just stand there memorizing each other’s faces. I never thought I’d seen him again. Truly never. And now that he stood here in front of me, I understood so clearly how that thought depressed me. I’d been telling myself it was for the best but my instant joy told me otherwise. Eventually, he slowly dropped me to the ground.
The second my feet touched the field, reality sunk back in. Where we were. What I was doing. I stepped back with a heavy heart. I was here for work, this wasn’t the time or place to have a reunion. After feeling like that night in Denver had been a weird and wonderful dream, I couldn’t seem to slide Sanders into my real life. He didn’t fit in this world, like wearing a life vest to a funeral.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
He opened his mouth but from behind me, Vincent said, “Hello. Who’s this?”
As I scrambled back around the table, he extended his hand to Vincent.
“I’m Sanders Olsson,” he said. His face was still bright with a huge smile. I managed to smooth my features into neutrality but my heart was pounding.
“Sanders,” Vincent said, flatly. “We spoke on the phone earlier.
“You two know each other?” Vincent asked, looking between the two of us in a way that made my stomach twist.
“I met Roxy in Denver. My corporate adventure company was at the hospitality convention,” Sanders explained.
