Page 86 of Charlotte

The quiet between them changed. It deepened into something Lottie felt in her chest and did not dare name too quickly. Then, because her heart had always been quicker than her caution, she lifted his wrapped hand and pressed a light kiss to the back of it.

Peterson went motionless.

“Lottie.” Her name broke low in his voice.

She looked up.

His face was closer than she expected. The lamplight from the door touched one side of his jaw and left the rest in shadow. His left hand lifted, slow and uncertain, toward her cheek. Lottie did not move away.

“You shouldn’t,” he said.

“I know what I am doing.”

“No.” His hand hovered near her face. “You don’t know what I am.”

“I know what you have shown me.”

“That is not enough.”

“It is more than you think.”

His thumb brushed the edge of her bonnet ribbon. The touch was so careful it nearly undid her. Lottie held his wrapped hand between hers and looked up at him, letting him see plainly she was not frightened by the scarred hand, or the nearness, or the tenderness he had spent all week trying to bury beneath silence.

Peterson bent his head. This time, he did not stop.

His mouth touched hers softly at first, almost as if he were asking a question he feared she might answer too honestly. Lottie’s fingers tightened around his wrapped hand, and the small sound that left her was enough to break whatever restraint he had left.

His left arm came around her waist and drew her closer.

Not roughly. Never that. With a sudden, aching certainty that made her forget the music inside the meeting hall, the lamplight spilling through the door, and the whole town only a few boards away.

Lottie rose into the kiss.

Her free hand lifted to his shoulder, then slipped higher, trembling only a little as her fingers threaded into the dark hair at the nape of his neck. It was softer than she expected, and the discovery made her heart turn over in the most ridiculous, wonderful way.

Peterson made a low sound against her mouth. That sound did more to Lottie’s knees than the ladder had managed all morning.

She had dreamed of romance in letters and poetry, in grand declarations and moonlit certainty, but this was no polished dream. This was Peterson’s wrapped hand, held carefully in hers. It was his arm firm at her waist, his heart beating hard beneath her palm, his mouth warm and unsteady on hers as if he had been starving himself of tenderness and had forgotten, until this moment, how badly he wanted it.

Lottie kissed him back.

Not timidly, or with the airy sweetness she had imagined for a first kiss when she was younger and sillier and believed love would arrive easily.

She kissed him with all the hope she had carried from Chicago, all the courage it had taken to board the train, and all the affection that had been gathering in her since the dock, when a wounded logger had picked up her fallen book as though broken things deserved careful hands.

Peterson’s arm tightened around her. For one shining moment, he didn’t move to leave.

He stopped arguing with himself, stopped hiding his hand, stopped measuring all the ways she might be disappointed in him someday. He simply held her close and kissed her as if she was not a mistake, not a danger, not a dream he had no right to want.

As if she were Lottie.

His Lottie.

The thought went through her so sweetly she nearly lost her balance all over again.

Peterson lifted his mouth from hers just enough to breathe her name. “Lottie.”

It was barely more than a whisper. She opened her eyes.