The Wright Brother(28)

I couldn’t help it; I laughed. She sounded just like me. If someone had planned something like this for me, I would be losing my mind, having to know what was going on.

“Don’t laugh at me,” she said, swatting at my sleeve. “I’m impatient.”

“I don’t fault you. I am the same way.”

“So…where are we going?”

“It’s a surprise.”

Then, she slumped back down. “Ugh! Okay. I’ll wait.”

Luckily, she didn’t have to wait for long. Before she knew it, we pulled into the small town of Ransom Canyon. It was only about twenty minutes outside of Lubbock and generally considered a sort of suburb of Lubbock. Not that Lubbock actually had suburbs. It was just one of the closest towns.

“Ransom Canyon?” Emery asked, staring at the flat lake that took up the center of the canyon.

Unknown to most people, west Texas had a series of canyons that studded the land, like holes in Swiss cheese. Palo Duro Canyon, an hour and a half north of town and just outside of Amarillo, was the second largest canyon, after the Grand Canyon, in the United States. It was one of the many things that made this side of Texas interesting if you knew where to look.

“Have you seen their Christmas lights before?”

“Nope. I’ve been here a million times before. We used to go to the lake as kids. I’ve spent many a summer weekends on boats here. But I didn’t know about the Christmas lights. When did they start to do that?”

“A couple of years ago. They even have a radio station tuned in so that you can listen to Christmas music as you circle the neighborhood and the lake.”

“Festive.” Her tone instantly changed. She had gone from skeptical to excited. She leaned forward in her seat, wondering where we were going to start first. “Are we going to see them all?”

“Of course,” I told her. Even though I’d had something else in mind, I was not going to miss a minute of that smile.

I switched the station over to AM radio and drove around town. It was a small area of only about a thousand people, but the people who had chosen to move out on the lake rather than live in town generally had considerable wealth. The mansions were decked out in Christmas lights, which had all likely been done by the same company. It was like the modern version of How the Grinch Stole Christmas when the two Whos were fighting over who had the best lights. That was the entire town.

Our drive was punctuated by Emery’s oohs and aahs and the occasional, “Slow down; you’re going too fast.”

I had to say, that was something I’d never heard before.

Emery lit up brighter than any of the houses that we’d passed. Halfway through, she must have begun to relax around me because she started singing along with the Christmas music. She was a little off-key, but I found that it didn’t even matter. And, eventually, we were both belting out the chorus to Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You.”

Emery was laughing so hard that a few tears rolled down her face. “Oh my God, if I had thought for one second in high school that I would be singing Mariah Carey with Jensen Wright on a real date, I think I would have dropped dead.”

“Hey, don’t dis Mariah,” I said. “She’s an icon.”

“She can’t even sing anymore!”

“I’m going to pretend like you didn’t say that.”

She snorted and then covered her face. “Oh my God, what is my life?”

“Seems pretty awesome,” I said with a grin. “Even if you don’t like Mariah.”

“I do like Mariah!” she cried. “Stop twisting my words, you!”

“I’m not twisting anything.”

Her smile was magnetic, and I just wanted to kiss her. I mean…I’d wanted to kiss her all night. But sitting there, in front of the last lit house, with Christmas music playing in the background and her smile radiating joy, there was nowhere else I’d rather be. That thought hit me so suddenly and I didn’t even know why.

I put my truck into park, leaned over to her side of the car, and pushed my hand up into her dark hair. She froze, silhouetted by the light display behind her. Her eyes locked with mine, green meeting brown, and her eyes widened with surprise. She breathed out softly, and I could feel her pulse ratchet up at my touch.

This was the girl who had pulled me across the room at Sutton’s wedding, like a magnet finding its pair. This was the tension that I’d felt when we first spoke. Here was the world of desire and lust that had clouded both of our minds ever since our first kiss.

My face was only inches from hers. I wanted to take what was mine. I wanted to claim her mouth and then her body right here in the cab of my truck, like we were young, wild, and carefree.