along her spine, the desire to be seen as anything but Elfie or Goody Two-shoes.
And so, in a moment of total desperation, she had decided she must show him that she was not a child. She, the least impulsive of people, had acted on pure impulse.
He had been outside the door of the school, his backside leaning against his motorcycle, his hair ruffled. Who rode a motorcycle in December? And with panache, besides? That day, school had been over, and she had been late coming out.
“Detention, my little Elfie?” he’d asked incredulously, his dark eyebrows lifting over those soft-as-suede eyes. Strangely, he had not seemed amused. In fact, his eyes had narrowed to slits, as if he would personally go take on anyone who had treated her unjustly, even if it was a teacher.
There had been no other students around, the parking lot empty of vehicles, the buses gone for the day. Maybe that was why Hanna hadn’t ignored him or ducked her head, and grasped her books tighter to her chest and scurried away. Or maybe it was the protective look in his eyes that had made it feel safe to stop.
She had said, with all the dignity she could muster, and over the hard beating of her heart, “I am not your little Elfie.” And then, in the interest of seeming very adult and perhaps even sophisticated, she had added in her haughtiest tone of voice. “I was, in fact, discussing iambic pentameter with Miss James.”
The dangerous glitter of amusement had left his face. For a moment, Hanna thought she had succeeded. Sam had been totally silent, expressionless.
But then he had bitten his bottom lip. His shoulders had started to shake.
And then he seemed unable to contain himself. He had thrown back his head and roared with laughter.
Other than the fact Sam’s laughter was about the most beautiful thing she had ever experienced—and it was an experience on so many levels—the fact that he was laughing at her had felt unbearable.
She had thrown down her school books and stalked over to him. So close. So close she could smell the leather of his jacket and the heady scent of his soap, and the faint engine and exhaust smells of the motorcycle.
He stopped laughing, but the amusement was back in his eyes, dancing, as they both waited to see what she would do.
Obviously, she should have smacked him.
But she didn’t. Obviously, she had failed, utterly, to convince him of her maturity by opening a discussion on iambic pentameter.
This close to him, she felt intoxicated. Iambic pentameter was the furthest thing from her mind, even if this was the kind of moment that had probably driven poets to create since the beginning of time.
Hanna felt a need to let him know she was not a dull little scholar who had temporarily enlivened his world, provided amusement for him by putting on an elf costume and trying to engage him with discussions of poetry.
She felt a need to let him know her days of being an amusement to him were over.
She had needed to let him know she was not the child the elf outfit had implied that she was.
And so, seeing the astonishment in his eyes, she had leaned closer. And then she had taken the lapels of that leather jacket and pulled him into her.
There had been the slightest resistance to her tug.
But she had ignored it.
And she had, in one moment of misguided boldness, done what she had done a million times in her dreams.
She had kissed Sam Chisholm.
She, who had never kissed anyone, had taken his lips with her own, and covered them. For a moment he had been stunned into stillness, but only for a moment.
Then his hand had rested, lightly, as lightly as though he were stroking a bird, on the back of her neck, and he had brought her gently and more fully into him. Any illusions that she’d had that a kiss was merely a chaste meeting of the lips were swept away.
The initial frosty chill on his lips melted into warmth, and then warmth became heat, and then heat became fire.
Sam explored her, discovered her with a leisurely thoroughness. What he didn’t know, and she didn’t know either, was until that moment she had not been fully alive. Sam had breathed his life into her.
And then, way too soon, he reeled back from her, and stared at her, and the chill crept back across her lips and into his eyes, that were narrow again, darkly angry.
“Look, mistletoe girl—”
Mistletoe girl? Hanna thought furiously. It was another dig at her family’s Christmas tree farm, and it made her feel as if she was standing in front of him in the elf costume once again.
“—don’t play with a fire you can’t put out,” he warned her, his voice stern and flat, and his brown eyes turned black. “You are heading for all kinds of trouble that you don’t have the first clue how to deal with.”
The anger at what she perceived as his rejection—as him acting like her father, instead of a potential boyfriend—chased the chill away again, for a far less satisfactory reason. Anger flared, white hot and consuming, inside her.
It was made worse by the fact he pushed off from his bike, and gathered her fallen books, held them out to her casually, as if nothing at all of importance had happened between them.
As if he, the town bad boy, was a gentleman who had spurned her kiss for her own good.
“As if I would ever start a fire with the likes of you,” she had snapped, grabbing her books from his outstretched arms and holding them like armor against her heaving chest.
She could have and should have left it there, but he had cocked his head at her, unperturbed by her anger, forcing her to go on.
“I know where you live, Sam Chisholm, and I know what your father does.”
It had been so childish, proof really that he was entirely correct, that she was not in the least ready for what his lips had just told her existed in the world.
Looking at the man now, she could still remember the look on his face back then.
It was about the furthest thing from the look he had now: of confidence and composure, a man in control of his world.
No, that afternoon, her words had hit him hard, dashed that self-assured look from his face. He had momentarily looked completely stunned. And then his face had gone cold as he had leaned once again, his rear against his motorbike, regarding her with those turned-earth eyes narrowed to dangerous slits.
Because here was what she knew about his father, since her own father hired him sometimes to work on their farm.
Sam Chisholm’s father was a drunk, who took work as a farm laborer if anyone was desperate enough to hire him.
The school’s sexiest boy lived in the most dilapidated trailer on the worst road in Smith, the one right by the railway tracks and the shut-down flour mill.
His face had gone cold as ice, and he’d looked at her hard enough and long enough for her to feel ashamed, but not to take back words that could not be taken back.
And now he was back in Smith, and she was back in Smith, and he wanted her family’s farm and presumably had the means to buy it.
Was it a moment of vindication for him?
“So, what do you want my farm for?” Hanna asked.
My farm? Where had that come from? Hanna had not thought of the farm as hers, or even as home, since she had left here—in disgrace that it seemed Sam might have been predicting that afternoon all those years ago when he had admonished her so sternly not to play with fire.
“I own Old Apple Crate. Maybe you’ve heard of it?”
It was a moment that should have brought Sam great pleasure, because Hanna struggled to hide her awe. Old Apple Cratewas