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“When did this start?” Charity asked. The parade had been less than twenty-four hours ago.
“He tried to arrest me Saturday night.”
Charity frowned. Was someone playing a prank on her?
“Arrest you over the mistletoe thing?” Charity asked.
“Not reallyarrest.He took me to the station to have a talk with me. He’d confiscated a pile of the mistletoe we hung. It was right there on his desk.”
Charity must be missing something. “And you somehow ended up dating from that?”
Noelle paused as the server approached with Charity’s drink. They both ordered grilled chicken sandwiches and a fruit bowl.
Charity didn’t waste a second once they were alone again. “So he asked you on a date, I assume?”
“Not really.” Noelle smiled dreamily as she stared out the window. “We ended up on the float yesterday, and we went to dinner afterward.” She hesitated, then she looked around before leaning forward and whispering the next words. “We kissed.”
Yeah, Charity could see why she’d whispered that. Neither Noelle nor Enzo would want it getting out that the woman who played the elf at the Christmas tree lighting ceremony had kissed the chief of police—even if mistletoe had been involved.
“So that’s my news.” Noelle took a sip of her drink and sat back.
It was going to take Charity a minute or two to adjust to this. It wasn’t like her best friend to run around kissing men. She took anything like that very seriously. But how could they be in an actual relationship after just a couple of encounters?
“Have you been on a date yet?” Charity asked, still trying to piece it together.
“No, but we talked on the phone for three hours last night. It was like being in high school again.”
Only in high school, Enzo had been a bit of a geek. He’d changed a lot since then, beefing up and becoming part of Misty Mountain’s small police force. He was apparently so good at it that when the longtime police chief left the job suddenly, they put Enzo in as a temporary replacement. It was starting to look like it would be permanent, though.
“What’s your news?” Noelle asked.
Oh, she’d almost forgotten she had to actually talk about this. Normally, she told Noelle everything, even when they were limited to their multi-weekly video chats. But for some reason, today she just didn’t want to talk about this particular thing. By talking about it, she’d have to admit she was sad he was gone.
“Nic and I spent some time together yesterday,” Charity said. “And at the tree-lighting ceremony.”
“Back up.” Noelle made a circular motion with her hand. “How did you know he was back in town?”
“I ran into him coming out of the coffee shop.” She smiled. “Almost literally. He was holding the door for me. I breezed right past him. If he hadn’t said anything, I probably would’ve never known he was in town.”
That wasn’t true. She would have known on Sunday when he showed up with his truck.
“And then we kissed.” Charity said that out loud, without even realizing she was going to say the words. At Noelle’s startled expression, she added, “Under the mistletoe you hung on that statue.”
“You keep skipping over important parts.” Noelle sat forward, arms crossed in front of her on the table. She narrowed her eyes at her best friend. “Start at the beginning.”
And that was exactly what Charity did. She relayed the conversation they had in front of the coffee shop, including his invitation to get together sometime. She also mentioned her rush to grab the mistletoe from the statue before they got in trouble and how that ended in a kiss.
“And then we kissed again last night,” Charity said after discussing the dinner they shared at the pizza place. “He wanted to see all the mistletoe you placed, so I took them on a quick tour.”
They’d skipped quite a few places, but she had a feeling Nic hadn’t really wanted to see mistletoe. It had been an excuse to continue to hang out with each other. She had been searching for the same excuses herself.
“So now what?” Noelle, clearly hanging on her friend’s every word, asked. Their food had arrived by then, and Noelle was digging into her chicken.
Charity shrugged. “He’s gone. He left first thing this morning. He’s probably halfway to Lexington by now. I’m sure he comes home every now and then, but it’s pretty clear one thing hasn’t changed. He doesn’t want to live in Misty Mountain.”
“Is that what he said?” Noelle asked, slipping a grape into her mouth and chewing while she waited for the answer.
“Not in so many words, but it was clear that I belong in Misty Mountain, and he couldn’t wait to get out of here.”
