Before I can reverse direction, our mouths collide.
It’s not romantic at all—at least not at first—but after the initial startle of surprise on his part and muttered apologies on my part, I find every inch of my skin humming with a case of the tingles unlike anything I’ve experienced since Colin hefted me off that countertop. Because he doesn’t pull away. He steps into the space Chewpaca has left behind, wraps an arm around my waist, pulls me tight against him, and deepens the kiss.
For a moment, I’m keenly aware that we have an audience—Hope is making a happy cooing sound, or maybe that’s Chewpaca, I’m not sure—but soon awareness of everything but Colin’s fantastic lips vanishes completely. His tongue slips past my lips with a controlled confidence as I melt against his strong chest, wishing this moment never had to end.
But it does end, with an alpaca snout shoved in between our faces and a happy purring sound that makes me laugh.
I press my hands to my hot cheeks as we pull apart.
Hope laughs, sounding half-apologetic, half gleeful. “Sorry! He just wants you to open one of his hearts and take the clue out. It’s what he was trained to do. Otherwise, he’d never interrupt such nice kissing.”
My devious but possibly perfect friend’s eyes glitter as Colin reaches for one of the hearts.
I do my best to stop blushing.
“That was very nice kissing, by the way,” she says innocently. “You two should do more of it. Though probably somewhere else. Where you won’t be interrupted by alpacas or the smell of a rotten baby butt. Baxter always lets loose with something nasty after his afternoon feeding.”
As if on cue, the baby gives forth an adorable grunt and a much less adorable juicy fart.
“Oh my God,” I mutter as the smell starts to drift my way on the breeze. “The poor thing. That sounded painful.”
“He’ll be quite all right,” Colin says as he scans the clue. “Beatrice was the same way as an infant. It’s the one thing I don’t miss about those baby years.”
My soaring heart nosedives back toward the ground as his words remind me of my unhappy secret. Plus, he hasn’t made eye contact with me since we broke the kiss. What does that mean?
Ugh. How do people survive falling in love? This up-and-down, emotional roller coaster is enough to make me want to run away again, just like I did three years ago when I found Steve cheating on me. And just like I did yesterday when I realized I couldn’t keep pretending that Colin and Beatrice were my family when Colin doesn’t love me the way I love him.
But—is he not making eye contact because he’s embarrassed?
Or is it because he’s afraid I’m embarrassed?
What if it did mean something to him? What if he is here for me, and not because he doesn’t want to find Beatrice a new nanny, but because he wants me?
And if that kiss meant as much to Colin as it did to me, then I need to tell him everything, and everything could break his heart as much as it’s breaking mine, and again, why do people have to fall in love?
When he hands me the clue and I instantly realize we’re bound for the cemetery clear on the other side of Happy Cat, I’m relieved. We’ll have plenty of time to talk while we bike over.
And we should talk, even though I don’t want to.
I don’t want to know if he doesn’t love me.
And if he does love me half as much as I’ve grown to love him, I don’t want to have to tell him that I can’t make all his dreams come true and that he might be better off finding someone else.
The thought makes my heart ache as we bid Hope goodbye and hurry back to fetch our bikes just as the two teen boys emerge from the woods covered in…feathers? How George managed that—and whether his nemesis, Nutquacker, the savage goose from heck, might be involved—is anyone’s guess.
The world will probably never know exactly what went down in those woods, but I know I’m grateful to George. There’s still a good chance I’ll need that treasure hunt medal and the love magic that goes along with it, a fact Colin proves by scowling at me as we start off down the road, bound for a place where love never dies.
Chapter Seven
Colin
She kissed me.
I kissed her.
And the kiss was flat out fucking brilliant.
And then she decided to rush off to the next clue on this godforsaken hunt as if she wasn’t affected at all by the chemistry that exploded between us. I’m sure that at some point in my life I’ve been more irritated than I am right now, but I can’t remember when.
I want to jump off this bike, lift it over my head, and hurl it into the woods beside the road with a caveman’s roar. Then I want to rip Savannah off her bike, toss her over my shoulder, and carry her to my cursed manor in the woods, where I will hold her prisoner until she comes to her senses and falls in love with me…proving I’ve watched Beauty and the Beast with Beatrice far too many times.