Page 10 of Under The Mountain Man’s Spell

Hope came in right behind that, and it scared me worse than any fire I'd ever walked into.

Then I looked at her face, and my stomach dropped. The pink had drained out of it. Her knuckles were white around the feed scoop, she had her lower lip caught between her teeth, and she was looking at me as if I'd hit her. Whatever my face was doing, and I couldn't stop it, she was reading it wrong. She set the scoop on the rail so it barely made a sound against the wood, and walked into the corn.

"Watch the kids," I told the nearest parent volunteer, and I went over the rail.

I didn't use the gate. I put a hand on the top board and vaulted it and hit the ground running, and the corn closed around me three strides in. A few turns, and the festival went quiet behind me, and all I could hear was the dry rattle of the stalks overhead and my own boots crunching and my own breath. Dust and chaff hung gold in the slanting light. I followed her tracks the way I'd follow anybody's: fresh scuffs in the chaff, small boot prints turning left, left again, away from every exit I'd walked on Thursday. She wasn't looking for the way out. She was running from me.

I caught her braid whipping around a corner two rows over and put my head down, cold air burning my lungs. My hands were shaking. If she made it out of this corn and back behind her clinic door with her professional face on, that would be it. She'd be polite to me for the rest of my life, and I'd let her, because that was what I did. Like hell I was going to let that happen.

"Molly!"

The corn swallowed half of it. The footsteps ahead of me stopped.

I found her in the dead end I'd flagged on Thursday, back against the stalks, arms wrapped around her ribs, glasses crooked and eyes wet. A strip of low sun cut through the rows and lit her face, blotched red now, her braid half unraveled and chaff caught on her sleeve. She was breathing hard, little white puffs in the cold. She looked cornered and furious about it and so damn beautiful it hurt. In two years I had never dared tell her how beautiful she was.

I stopped ten feet away and opened my hands, and it took everything I had to keep my boots where they were.

"Don't," she said, and she took a step back until the stalks crackled against her spine.

"Don't what?"

"Be nice about it." Her voice shook. She dug her fingers into her own sleeves. "I know what this is. You were looking for her, and you got me. I saw your face."

"You think I'm disappointed?" It came out too loud, and I took a step before I caught myself and stopped.

"Aren't you?" She gave a short, humorless laugh and swiped the heel of her hand under her eye, shoving her glasses straight. "She isn't real, Grayson. I was playing a part. It was one night. You go back to normal, I go back to normal, and nobody ever has to know."

I dragged a hand down my jaw. My pulse was pounding in my throat, and my mouth had gone dry. "How old are you?"

That stopped her. She blinked. "What?"

"How old are you, Molly?"

"Thirty-three. Why?"

"Thirty-three." I rocked back on my heels. "I thought you were mid-twenties."

She stared at me, a crease forming between her brows. "I haven't been in my twenties for years. I did ten years in Seattle before I ever came here."

"Lyle calls you his young assistant." It sounded even dumber out loud than it had in my head, and I heard it. "My grandmother always said you never ask a woman her age."

"Lyle calls the mailman young. He's sixty-five." She sniffed and wiped her nose on her cuff. "And your grandmother wasn't talking about me."

I scrubbed a hand over my face. Shit. I'd done stupid things in my life, but this might be the dumbest. Two years of calling myself a dirty old man over a number I'd never once checked.

"Why didn't you just ask me?"

Her voice was quiet, and it cut worse than shouting. I lifted my head. She'd lowered her arms from her ribs, and she was looking straight at me, chin trembling, eyes bright.

"Two years, Grayson. You could have asked me one question, instead of assuming."

I opened my mouth. Nothing came out. The corn rattled, and a bead of sweat ran down my spine, and the answer hit me hard and cold. I hadn't asked because I hadn't wanted to know. For two years I'd told myself I was the careful one, the steady one, a man who had himself locked down tight. I'd walked past that clinic with my hands in my pockets and called it discipline. It wasn't discipline. It was fear. If I asked her age, I'd have to hear the answer, and then I'd have to do something about it. I had never been in control. I'd been faking it, and she'd just seen straight through me in about a minute.

"Right," she said, flat. She gave a small, hurt nod and wrapped her arms around her ribs again. "You didn't care enough to find out."

"No." It came out hard enough that she flinched, and I hated that. I dragged in a breath and made myself talk lower. "No, Molly. It's the opposite. I was scared. I never asked because I was scared of the answer, and I only just figured that out about ten seconds ago." My voice scraped. "You're my best friend. I didn't want to screw that up. So I told myself you were my kid sister's age and off limits, and I let that be enough. I got your age wrong on purpose. I just didn't know I was doing it."

She'd gone still. Even her fingers had stopped worrying at her sleeves.