by Wendy Knight
Cleo laughed, stroking Brave’s soft head. “I can imagine. Take a break, I’ll hang out with the cats for a while.”
Red smiled over at her from where she and Greyson were talking to a couple about adopting one of the dogs.
Hopefully not Mozzie, Cleo thought, surprised at herself. She always got attached to the animals they rescued, but she’d always been happy when they found homes. Without even realizing it, she’d become attached to the mischievous husky intent on eating all her shoes.
Kayne wandered up, appearing through the crowd like a prince among his subjects. Cleo smiled as he climbed the fence into the enclosure. “How were the swans?”
He rolled his neck on his shoulders and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Loud.”
Cleo giggled. Swans were majestic and beautiful and romantic, but they were not made for winter carnivals with so many people. They were probably stressed and in situations of stress, swans got… loud.
“Well, well, well,” Red said, leaning on the fence between them. “Interesting place you both chose to stand.”
Cleo frowned in confusion, looking down at her feet and wondering if she’d somehow stepped in something that she’d regret.
Red laughed, nodding toward the string of lights above them.
Kayne followed her gaze and his dark eyes widened.
“Oh dear.” Cleo laughed, confused by the way her entire body had suddenly started to tremble in anticipation. “That’s such an old tradition.”
A couple walking by froze, both turning to her in horror. “Trust me,” the girl, a beautiful brunette with waist-length hair and huge green eyes, put her hand out toward Cleo. “You never ignore the mistletoe. Right, Crew?”
The man she was with nodded gravely. “Azura is right. There’s a curse. A year’s bad luck if you turn down a kiss. Unless you find everyone you rejected and give them the kiss they deserve by midnight.” He tipped his head, considering them both. “Mistletoe should definitely come with a warning.”
Kayne started to smile, but they both looked so serious the smile died abruptly on his lips and Cleo could only nod in agreement. “Good to know, thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” Azura said cheerfully and they moved on to the dogs Grey was playing with, cooing happily.
“I—I mean, we don’t want to mess with a curse,” Kayne said slowly. Cleo looked up at him, wondering when he’d gotten so close. So close she could feel the warmth of him and could see the flecks of gold in his dark eyes. She could see that he had a light dusting of snow across his nose and that his dark hair had escaped from his hat and curled across his forehead again.
Absently, she reached out and tucked it away. “No—no, I guess we don’t,” she whispered.
Kayne slid his hand up to cup her cheek, his thumb brushing across her cheekbone, and he lowered his head toward her. Fire seemed to erupt from his fingers, warming her very soul, and Cleo’s eyes fluttered shut as his lips pressed against hers.
The butterflies that had made their presence known earlier woke again, sending delicious shivers up her spine. Cleo’s hands reached for the front of Kayne’s coat, as if she could hold him there forever. And everywhere he touched her, warmth unlike anything she’d ever felt exploded, traveling across her skin.
She never wanted it to end.
“Mommy, look at the kitties!” a little girl cried, and Kayne pulled back, his eyes hooded and his cheeks flushed. Cleo struggled to rein in her erratic breathing before she passed out and smooshed all the cats twining around her feet.
She’d been kissed before, but it had never felt like that.
“Can I see the big grey one?” the little girl asked, probably for the second time and Cleo tried her best to comprehend words like a normal person. She peeked at Kayne to see if he’d also been affected the way she had, but he was already moving toward the tiny little blond, whose dark eyes were solely fixed on Brave. Brave leaped and struggled from Kayne’s arms, finally escaping. Cleo started forward to help catch him, but Brave bounded toward the little girl, stretching up on his back legs to reach for her.
She squealed and scooped him out of the enclosure. Cleo had never believed in love at first sight until that very moment, as Brave lifted his little face up to the girl’s, pink nose to pink nose.
“Brave is a very special kitty,” Cleo said, her voice still breathless. She bent so she was eye-level to them both. “He always shows up when you need him most. But he also enjoys catching mice and grasshoppers and sometimes birds, so you have to watch him close.”
The girl’s mother smiled, brushing a stray blond strand away from her little girl’s face. “What do you think, Cali?” To Cleo and Kayne, she said, “I actually had no plans to adopt a pet today. We were just going to pet the kitties. But this—” she motioned toward Cali and Brave “—needs to happen.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” Kayne said as Cali squealed again, crouching to the ground with Brave so she could pet him. Red took over from there so they could fill out adoption papers, and Cleo stood next to Kayne, watching. “This is why I do what I do,” Kayne said quietly. “That bond. It’s pretty rare.”
Cleo could only nod, fighting happy tears while also wondering how they were having such a normal conversation. He must not have felt the butterflies and the goosebumps and the heart-pounding that she had, because he seemed completely unfazed.
Until he turned to her and smiled. “By the way, I’ve wanted to do that since high school.”
Screaming and the distinct trumpeting of several swans erupted from across the carnival, out of sight but definitely not out of earshot, interrupting whatever Cleo would have come up with as a response.
Grey hurdled the enclosure, running toward the source of the commotion. Cleo and Kayne took off after him just as Mrs. Stradley came running back.
“The swans are on the loose!” she cried.
Cleo sprinted next to Kayne, grateful she hadn’t worn her heeled snow boots. “How many swans are there?” she asked as they rounded the corner.
Kayne sent her a look. “Seven.”
CHAPTER TEN
Kayne could hardly think straight, and trying to hear anything over the roar of blood in his ears was next to impossible.
He’d kissed her.
After all these years, he’d finally kissed her.
And now he was celebrating by chasing angry, hissing swans through the winter carnival while little kids screamed and cried, and their parents tried to rescue them.
“What’s the plan?” Cleo called to Grey, who sprinted ahead of them.
Grey skidded to a stop, Kayne and Cleo nearly crashing into the back of him. The swans were in the middle of the square, whacking people with their wings and nipping with their beaks.
“We need to get them away from people. Red,” Grey said into his phone, “Can you send someone for the swan jackets?”
“I’m on it,” she responded breathlessly.
Kayne searched the square. “We need a pen or a net or something—”
“—and some food,” Cleo finished.
“I’ve got duck food back at the booth,” Grey said, and Cleo turned and raced back the way they’d come, dodging throngs of people and disappearing into the bright lights. Kayne caught sight of netting over the children’s boutique, wrapped around a colorful mermaid. He took off, leaving Grey to try to corral people away from the angry swans.
Seven angry swans.
He was starting to believe in Cleo’s Twelve Days of Christmas.
“Can I borrow this?” he asked before he ripped it off their booth. The two teenage girls working the booth nodded, helping him tear it down and untangle the mermaid. Then he raced back to Grey.
“Good, good. That’ll work.” Grey was systematically sending people one way while he herded the swans in the other direction, away from the booths. They’d left behind quite a mess, feathers and droppings and spilled food and drinks all across the square. Malen’s family watched from their booth where they�
��d been using live swans as decoration but made no move to help.
Not that Kayne blamed them. Swans were terrifying.
They didn’t have a swan call handy, so Grey made weird clucking noises with his tongue that seemed to encourage the swans to try their best to escape him—either that or just the fact that he was big and a lot less afraid of them than everyone else.
Kayne caught sight of Cleo racing alongside them but two aisles over. She emerged ahead of them, sprinting past the startled swans. Several yards ahead of them, she finally stopped and thrust her hand in the bag she held, throwing duck food all over the ground by the handful.
The swans immediately abandoned Grey and hurried toward Cleo, webbed feet slapping against the stone walkway. “Here swanny swanny,” Cleo cooed, throwing out more food. “Are you so hungry? Did those people not feed you?”
“We fed them bread,” Malen said from behind Kayne. He hadn’t even heard her abandon her booth and follow them. “They should be grateful.”
Grey shook his head without looking at her. “You can’t feed birds bread. It’s bad for them.”
Malen didn’t have a response, and Kayne ignored her to focus on the swans that were now happily snapping duck food off the ground at Cleo’s feet. She backed away just as Kayne threw the net over the swans.
The swans panicked again, but held under the net as they were, they couldn’t escape. Now they just had to keep them there until Red could show up with the swan jackets.
Unfortunately, the sanctuary was clear on the outskirts of town, past the bed and breakfast.
“How far away are you?” Grey asked into his phone. Kayne didn’t know if he’d been on it the entire time so Red had gotten to listen to all the screeching and hissing or if Grey just kept calling her and she readily picked up, but she responded right away.
“Five minutes. I’m driving like a crazy person.”
Kayne nodded. Five minutes. They could keep the swans under the net for five minutes.
Cleo circled the frightened, angry birds, cooing and clucking and emitting the kind of calm warmth that Kayne had seen her use on countless other animals. He wondered if she remembered that she was terrified of birds, because she seemed to have forgotten.
Not that her fear had stopped her before.
“You know what comes tomorrow,” she said quietly as she passed him in her circle. He gave her a quizzical look but didn’t dare speak for fear of breaking the spell she had over the swans. “Geese a-laying.”
Kayne ran through the song he’d learned as a child. “No,” he whispered back, only mildly startling the swans. “Geese were day six. I think tomorrow is lords a-leaping.”
Cleo breathed a sigh of relief, throwing another handful of food at the increasingly restless swans. “Thank goodness. I can’t handle more birds yet.”
So, she did realize these were, in fact, part of the bird family.
And yet, there she was, holding a hand out to the particularly aggressive one, murmuring nonsense under her breath as it calmed under her touch.
“They mate for life,” she said, “But I see no females. They’re probably upset because they were taken from their mates.”
“That and the noise and the people and the unfamiliar place and the lack of food,” Kayne agreed. Watching her, he felt like he, too, was falling under some kind of spell.
“I’m here,” Red said. “Where are you?”
Grey explained where they were and she showed up less than a minute later, arms full of swan jackets. They looked like straight jackets but were specifically to protect swans during transport so they didn’t get injured.
Wrestling the swans into the jacket proved painful, but luckily, they had Red, and Mrs. Stradley also showed up to help. Kayne only got bit a few times, and only once actually drew blood. Somehow, Cleo escaped unscathed, even though she wrangled more of the swans into their jackets than the rest of them.
After they loaded the swans into the van and Red drove away, she and Kayne made their way back to the carnival. “You have feathers in your hair,” Kayne said quietly, reaching up to untangle them from Cleo’s soft waves. She stilled under his touch, her big brown eyes searching his. “Thank you,” she said quietly.
Kayne would have killed for a mistletoe excuse right then.
Cleo, seemingly remembering herself and where they were, backed away from him, ducking her head. Kayne slowly became aware of the dozens of bystanders watching them curiously. “Have you eaten yet?” he asked as an excuse, mostly to keep her there with him because she was on the verge of running for cover.
Cleo raised an eyebrow, since he’d been with her almost the entire day and knew full well she hadn’t eaten. “No…” she drawled with a smirk.
“Can I buy you dinner? It’s the least I can do, since you saved us from the swan attack.”
Cleo laughed. “I saved us? I’m pretty sure you’re the one who caught them in the net.”
“Yeah,” Kayne agreed. “And you kept them there. So I owe you dinner.”
Cleo tucked her small hand in the crook of his elbow. “All the yummy smells are making me quite hungry.”
Kayne hadn’t really expected her to agree. She was always friendly but with walls so high no one could break past them. Always keeping her distance while being just within reach.
But maybe the walls had come down, just a little?
They wandered up and down the aisles, trying different foods, many traditional Swiss dishes. They window shopped and Christmas shopped, and she kept her hand on his elbow the entire time.
He didn’t realize his family watched them until it was too late and his mother, who knew all too well of Kayne’s long-standing feelings for Cleo, hurried over to them with all of his brothers and his dad behind them.
“Cleo, you looked absolutely stunning at the pageant,” Amaya gushed, taking Cleo’s free hand in hers. They had stopped in front of the Merry-Go-Round, its multi-colored lights splashing vivid colors across the snow and Cleo’s fair hair. “And you were such a pro catching those swans. What would we do without you?”
“Oh, I—” Cleo started, her cheeks flushing scarlet, but Jayden interrupted.
“Glacier’s doing so much better, Cleo. You should bring Mozzie by to reintroduce them.”
“Oh yeah,” Cleo said, visibly relaxing. “Are you bringing her to the sanctuary tomorrow?”
Good call, Jayden, bringing up the animals. Kayne’s little brother was smooth.
“We haven’t met Mozzie yet,” Reuben, Kayne’s second-to-youngest brother, piped in. He was eighteen and far too aware of Kayne’s soft spot for Cleo. “Why don’t you bring him by the house and they can play in the backyard?”
“You can come for dinner,” Casey, the twenty-year-old, added with a sly grin toward Kayne.
“And we can supervise the dogs, so they don’t get too rough,” Jayden finished as if the whole thing had been perfectly rehearsed ahead of time. Amaya looked hopefully at Cleo, and Wayne, Kayne’s father, and the only one who had thus far not interjected in Kayne’s love life, winked at him.
“I—sure?” Cleo said. “I would love to, if it’s not an inconvenience.”
“Not at all!” Amaya exclaimed, still holding firmly to Cleo’s free hand. “I am always so overjoyed to have another female in the house.” She rolled her eyes and gave Cleo a conspiratorial wink, much like the one Wayne had given Kayne seconds before.
Kayne just kept praying the ground would open up and swallow him whole.
Cleo’s fingers tightened on his arm, her fingers digging softly into the bulk of his coat, but she hid her anxiety well, smiling so beautifully she instantly had his entire family under the same spell Kayne had been caught in for so many years. “Then I would love to. What time?”
“Six,” his family said in unison. Kayne gave them all a suspicious once-over. He strongly suspected they had actually rehearsed this.
Cleo laughed, bright and intoxicating. “Perfect. Mozzie and I will be there. What can I b
ring?”
“Just you.” Amaya gave her a one-armed squeeze. “That’s all we require.”
“Kayne can pick you up,” Reuben offered. “It’s supposed to snow. Dangerous roads, you know.”
Cleo’s smile widened. “I have a jeep. Dangerous roads are afraid of me.”
Kayne blew out a breath. He had to get them out of here before they ruined whatever tentative friendship he’d built so far. “We were just on our way to the Ferris wheel.” He shooed them in the opposite direction, but it was about as successful as herding swans. “So, I’ll see you all tonight.”
“Oh, I want to go on the Ferris wheel—” Jayden started, but Casey elbowed him, effectively shutting him up. For once, Kayne was grateful for his brother’s slightly violent tendencies.
Cleo followed him with a smirk. “I didn’t realize we were going on the Ferris wheel.”
Kayne couldn’t quite keep a straight face. “We’re at the winter carnival and you didn’t think we were going on the Ferris wheel? What’s wrong with you, girl?”
“Silly me. What was I thinking.” Cleo’s lips twitched and Kayne settled her hand back in the crook of his elbow. He wanted to twine his fingers with hers, but that might alert her to his true intentions. He couldn’t have that.
Not yet.
Not until she realized she felt the same way.
They wandered through the rides and the midway games toward the Ferris wheel. She looked like a Christmas angel with the light dusting of snowflakes across her hair and the soft glow of the lights shimmering in her eyes, and Kayne had a hard time even focusing on the ground in front of him. So he noticed when her eyes lit up at the stuffed animal in one of the booths.
It was a unicorn. He knew she loved animals, but he’d never known she also loved the mythological creatures. By the way her eyes shone, though, that was clearly the case.
And all he had to do to win it was throw a football through a tire.
Something he’d done a thousand times at practice.
He grabbed her hand, thrilling at the way it fit perfectly in his, and dragged her over to the booth. Cleo followed, laughing. “This isn’t the Ferris wheel.”
