Page 56 of Smoky Mountain Dreams

“Wait,” she commanded, placing her hand on his and closingher eyes. She took six deep, slow breaths, and then opened her eyes again togaze at him with a shining, calm wonderment. “Now.”

They folded in silence. Jesse finished before Brigid and hesipped his wine, watching her fingers, long and slim like his own, tucking andbending the paper into three perfect paper cranes. He could hear the swellingmusic fromThe Hunger Gamesdrifting up the stairsfrom the basement and he wondered if her friends even noticed they’d beentemporarily abandoned.

“One more?” she asked as she completed the final bend of thecrane’s head.

“Go on back down to your friends. It’s important to be agood hostess, all right? Make sure everyone’s got enough to drink and eat.There are more snacks and sodas in the kitchen down there, okay?”

Having a kitchen in the basement had been Marcy’s idea. She’dthought there might come a day when Nova and Tim might need to move in withthem, and she’d wanted to make sure they could prepare their vegan meals intheir own kitchen without any concern of meaty cross-contamination. Of course,Nova and Tim weren’t vegans at all anymore and Jesse used the basement kitchento store junk food for the kids, leaving the appliances to go to waste.

As Brigid reluctantly went to join the other girls, Jesseheard the doorbell and his heart clenched hard and beat with a rapid joy thatmade his blood sing.

“Ridiculous,” he muttered under his breath, but the grinspreading over his face and the sweat on his palms didn’t stop in the face ofhis scorn.

He keyed in the security code and opened the door. His heartbloomed at the sight that greeted him: Christopher with tousled, shaggy hair,cheeks red from the cold, his lips pink and wet, and his long, golden lashesframing those green eyes with their sparkling brown flecks. He wore a navy bluepeacoat and a red scarf over jeans that skimmed his lean legs down to darkblack Timberland Earthkeeper leather boots.

Damn.

“Hi,” Christopher said, almost timidly. “You look… comfortable.”

Jesse glanced down at his black track pants and green RyanAdamsSo Hot, So Coldtour T-shirt.

“And good. I mean, you look good,” Christopher amended.

Jesse grinned and held the door open wider. “You too.” Heclapped Christopher on the arm, letting his hand linger and slide up to hisshoulder to squeeze in an almost-hug.

“Come on in. I was in the kitchen having some wine.”

He led Christopher down the hall, past some boxes ofHalloween decorations that were half-emptied on the floor. “Excuse the mess.The kids were putting out even more stuff but then they got distracted.”

They walked through the living room and into the kitchen. Heglanced over his shoulder and saw Christopher taking in the size of the place.He forgot sometimes how ridiculous the house was, probably because it was onlyhalf as big as the house he’d grown up in. People joked that his father’s placehad been a mountain palace, not a mountain cabin.

“I’ve got some beers if you’d rather have that.” Jessemotioned at the fridge.

“Wine’s fine,” Christopher said, taking off his jacket andholding it in his arms, half-obscuring the nice deep blue of a soft-lookingoxford shirt.

“Just drape it over the back of one of the chairs at thebar,” Jesse said, pulling a wine glass from the cabinet.

Christopher stood by the kitchen table, looking down at thesix completed cranes. He reached out and touched one.

“Those are Brigid’s.”

“I made a ton of these my sophomore year in high school. Fora school play. Stage decorations.”

“You’ll have an in with her, then,” Jesse said, grabbing thewine bottle. “She’s obsessed with them.”

“Yeah?”

“She’s trying to make two thousand of them before Christmas.She’s enlisting all the help she can wrangle out of me and Will, so if you tellher you can make them, expect to be put to work.” Jesse poured a generousglass.

Christopher picked up one of the cranes and tweaked itsdrooping head, straightening it. “She’s trying to make two thousand?”

“Yep. She read a book. Found it inspiring, I guess.” He didn’tmention what the therapist had said. “Did you have a hard time finding the place?”

“No, the GPS in my car knew the way.”

Jesse handed the glass of wine over to Christopher, whostarted to take a sip, and then pulled back, a flicker of embarrassmentflushing his face.

Jesse went on, pretending he hadn’t noticed. “Sometimes ittries to tell people to turn down Turtle Hollow, but there is no Turtle Hollow.I don’t know where the GPS systems even get that.”