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“What about your secret?” she prodded.
He hesitated. His eyes shifted to the other men and then back to her. “Aren’t secrets made to be kept?”
Snow chewed her lip. She inched in and lowered her voice. “You can whisper it to me, if you want.”
Marcos’s grin spread. Preston lifted his chin, and Eric tapped the back of his hand against Tys’s chest. Carter’s cheeks pinked. He dipped his head for a moment before nodding.
She approached him, surprised at the butterflies flurrying in her stomach. She could sense the audience tilt forward in their seats too. Carter was only a few inches taller than she was. She inhaled his clean smell of soap and aftershave, and noticed the hazel in his eyes and the tousle in his nut-brown hair. His eyes held hers for moments, gauging her as if checking for her permission to move closer.
Snow gave him a little nod. The anticipation effervescing between them was somewhat ridiculous. It was just a whisper. Just a close proximity between essential strangers. But he was handsome—every man in this room was good-looking—and she got the sense she was treading toward the deep end before she’d learned how to swim.
“If you’re sure,” Carter said.
“I am.”
He placed a hand on her elbow, and the touch fizzled through to her bones. Snow’s lashes fluttered, and she inhaled his scent again as he inched closer. His warm breath struck her ear, and his voice became a melody all on its own.
“My secret is that I want to be the next Elon Musk.”
The words weren’t romantic in the slightest, yet the sound of them somehow melded with parts and pieces of her, breaking her into shambles before allowing her to recollect herself again.
Snow swallowed. “I think that’s a wonderful dream,” she said. “And your wish? Or was that your wish as well?”
“My wish and my secret are kind of the same,” Carter said with a sheepish smile.
“That’s all right,” she said, reaching into her basket. Her hand trembled as she passed the apple in his direction. “Thank you for sharing them both with me,” she said.
Carter’s eyes lit brighter than the spotlights overhead, and he took the apple. “Thank you,” he said, sounding completely sincere. Snow beamed at him before turning to the others.
“Who’s next?” she asked. “What about you, Eric?”
She scanned through the details she could remember from his profile. Eric had served in the Marines for eight years straight out of high school. The handsome man with dark hair and eyes straightened his shoulders, faced her, and then reared back again as a sneeze escaped. “Excuse me,” he said. “Allergies.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. I have some allergies too. What are you allergic to?”
“Everything but horses and feathers,” he said.
The audience laughed, and Eric only shrugged. Snow continued, “You work in construction. Do your allergies make being outside difficult?”
“I make it through,” Eric said. “I guess that could count as my truth, that I have allergies to many things.”
“It’s a good thing food labels can help with that.”
“Yeah,” he said. “My secret is that I hide in my closet while I record podcasts. It looks like an office, but it’s really just my closet.” He released a little chuckle with that and sniffed.
“I didn’t know you ran a podcast,” Snow said. Had that been in his profile? She couldn’t recall. “You’ll have to tell me about it.”
Eric’s smile grew. “I hope to. And my wish is like Preston’s. I’d really like to get to know you. To see if we can be anything more than friends.”
Snow found she liked his openness. She spoke with Judd next, who shared his love of horses and the fact that he had won over two hundred belt buckles from his days in the rodeo. His wish was to own a ranch.
Clayton was a dietician whose truth was that he not only adored food, but he was avid about learning of its properties and uses for healthy lifestyles. “More than just mangoes,” he said, giving Preston a playful smirk. Preston gave him a surly scowl in return.
Something told Snow he’d never live down his cheesy admission about loving the exotic fruit through the duration of the show, not only on the premiere.
Clayton’s secret was that he was working with several struggling teens—this fact was shared with Snow only, as he wanted to protect the kids he worked with. Snow gave him props for that. And his wish was touching:
“I wish to travel the world—and if things go well, I wish to take you anywhere you want to go. You’ll have to tell me where that is sometime.”
