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The girl crouched down and pointed under the tree.
Lily and Cullen exchanged bemused glances, and together they bent down to see if they could get a better look at whatever it was that had the kids so perplexed.
Suddenly they heard a thud behind them. George had appeared from somewhere and was holding a small green branch over their heads.
“Kiss her! Kiss her! Kiss her!” Hannah sang as she jumped up and down.
“It’s mistletoe,” Bridget exclaimed.
“Now you have to kiss,” Megan said smugly. “If you don’t, it’s like you’ll be breaking the rules of Christmas.”
For one breathtaking moment, Lily’s gaze locked with Cullen’s and time stood still.
Something flickered in his eyes.
He was going to kiss her.
She wanted him to kiss her.
But the sound of a ringing cell phone broke the spell. Lily flinched and pulled back, mortified by what she’d almost let happen.
“You’d better answer that,” she said.
It might be Giselle.
Women like that always had impeccable timing.
Before Cullen pushed the button to pick up the call, he leaned in and dusted her lips with a featherlight kiss.
“We don’t want to break the rules of Christmas, do we?”
Chapter Five
It was one of those days.
No, it was worse. Lily had never had a day when quite so many things had gone wrong. Cullen had been distant when she got to work that morning. Or maybe she’d been the distant one. The kiss, even as chaste as it was, had left them in an awkward place.
After he kissed her, he’d walked away to take his call. Lily had stayed with the kids, distracting them from their whooping and hollering delight over their successful prank. She’d reminded herself that was all the kiss had been: the product of a prank.
A prank that had suddenly made everything awkward.
And that had set the tone for the day. After Cullen had nearly fallen all over himself to get out the door to work, Lily loaded the kids into the rented SUV and drove George to the community center to get him signed up for the basketball camp. He’d already missed three days of it. So she’d wanted to get him there as soon as possible.
How was she supposed to know that he needed a specific kind of shoe to play basketball? A shoe with non-marking soles. Apparently shoes with dark soles scuffed up the court. They should’ve included this tidbit in the registration information.
The coach had been nice about it, but he’d also been adamant that George could not play until he had the proper shoes. He’d even told Lily where she could buy them—at Main Street Sporting Goods right there in downtown Celebration.
That sounded easy enough.
Main Street Sporting Goods was five minutes away from the community center. They could go get the shoes and have him back within a half hour, maybe even before the kids had finished the warm-up drill if they hustled.
Well, she could’ve gotten him back in time if Main Street Sporting Goods had had George’s size in any of the shoes the coach had recommended.
They didn’t.
Apparently lots of other little boys needed shoes with non-marking soles, too, because the store was sold out. The sales associate was good enough to call the national chain sporting-goods store in Dallas, which was about twenty minutes away. What choice did Lily have but to load the kids back into the car and head to Dallas? If they didn’t dawdle, they could be back before lunch, right?
Well, they could’ve been if she hadn’t been in such a blasted hurry that she’d neglected to check the gas gauge and realized that it was frightfully low…until she and the kids ran out of gas halfway between Celebration and Dallas.
How could she have been so stupid? Wasn’t that one of the things that her grandmother had drilled into her head when she taught Lily to drive?
Always check your gas gauge before you back out of the driveway.
Besides, rental cars usually came with only a minimal amount of gas. After the SUV had been delivered late yesterday afternoon, they’d driven to the tree lot. Granted, it wasn’t a long haul, but after the electricity of that kiss, stopping for gas had been the furthest thing from either of their minds. Case in point of why she didn’t need to distract herself with an inappropriate crush on a man she had no business thinking inappropriate thoughts about.
