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In that moment, I was sixteen again, worry and stress filtering away until all I knew was the joy of being held and spun, the pure ecstasy of possibility. Sly was holding me. I was the sole focus of his attention, and it was the best feeling I’d ever known.
We slowed, spinning gradually to a stop, and I stayed where I was, pressed tightly to his body, my arms around the firm solidity of his back. The exhilaration slowly faded, until I pulled my face from his chest and looked up into his face.
Sly wore a soft smile, his eyes deep and dark and full of something that looked a lot like desire. Without intending to, I licked my lips, my eyes dropping to focus on his full mouth.
He leaned in closer, our faces just centimeters away from one another, and then his lips met mine. Softly, carefully. He brushed my mouth like a whisper, tentative and sweet.
My arms tightened around him and I pressed myself closer, wishing for something I couldn’t even name.
A soft low groan escaped him, and he deepened the kiss, sending heat pooling in my belly and lower. I wanted to climb inside his clothes, to ask him to take me here on the ice, to—
“Mommy! I’m driving!”
I wrenched myself from Sly’s embrace, my breath coming too fast as I looked around to find Katie.
She and Arnold were perched atop the Zamboni at the end of the rink, and she waved triumphantly as the big machine moved slowly around the edge of the ice.
“Is that safe?” I asked Sly, trying to push away the intensity of the moment we’d just shared. I couldn’t think about it now. I’d save it for later. When I was alone.
“With Arnold it is.” I could feel his eyes on me as I watched my daughter happily moving around the ice on the Zamboni. “Let’s get our skates off, yeah?”
“Okay,” I said, and trailed him off the ice to put my street shoes back on. In some ways I still felt like I was spinning. Sly Remington had kissed me—held me. It was the realization of every teenaged dream I’d ever had about him, since my dreams were pretty chaste at that age. And I didn’t know what happened next now any more than I would have then.
We returned our skates, thanked Arnold, and followed Sly out of the rink to stand in the damp heat of the parking lot. It had been easy to forget how hot it was outside when we were in the ice rink. It had been easy to forget a lot of things.
I looked up at him, squinting slightly in the late afternoon sunlight. I wasn’t sure what to say, how to behave. There was no question that he had kissed me in there.
So why did it feel a bit like I made the whole thing up?
He smiled down at me, calm and casual as ever, that easygoing demeanor covering for any second thoughts or nerves he might have. All of which made it even easier to feel like maybe I’d imagined the tense moment between us at center ice. The kiss.
“Want to get some dinner before we head back?” Sly asked us.
“Hot dogs!” Katie had moved straight past the required yes or no and directly into negotiating for her favorite food.
Sly nodded like he was considering this, and looked to me. “Do you have time?”
“Yeah.” Relief seeped through me that he’d been willing to take the lead, along with happiness that we’d be spending more time together.
“There’s a place over here that probably has hot dogs. They have other things too, though.”
Katie stomped her foot as if the very idea that a restaurant might dare to carry anything besides hot dogs was an affront to any self-respecting hot dog lover.
“That sounds good,” I said. “Should we just follow you?”
Sly’s lips lifted on one side and his nose wrinkled a bit. “I mean. You can, if you just like the view from behind, I guess. But I’m okay with you walking next to me too.”
For one second, I was confused, but then I realized we were going to walk. “Funny.”
Sly shrugged, and said, “let’s go.”
We did follow him, but only because the afternoon’s excitement was hitting Katie, and she was having trouble getting her land legs back after wearing the skates.
“My legs feel funny.”
“Your muscles are tired. You worked hard.”
Luckily, we didn’t walk far. The restaurant, Benny’s Burgers, was practically next to the rink, and soon we were ensconced in a corner booth, and Katie had a set of crayons and an activity sheet in front of her.
