remembered a lot of things about Amy that he’d liked. Maybe Jake was right. Maybe they could...
She stood, cutting off the thought he shouldn’t be thinking.
“Worked late. Mom had something to do tonight.” Her nose was red, her eyes sparkling from the outdoor chill. She looked energized, the way she always had when she’d been outside in the winter. The same way he felt now that she was here.
When she rubbed her reddened hands together, Rafe resisted the urge to warm them as he used to. He wondered if she remembered.
“Let me take your coat,” he said, not wanting to let her get away but not knowing what else to say.
“You don’t have to.” She unsnapped the down anorak and slid it from her shoulders.
Rafe took it anyway. The scent of fresh, frigid air and Amy’s warm perfume wafted from the thick jacket. “Cold outside.”
Amy gave him a slight smile as if to say, “This is Montana in the winter. Hello! It’s always cold,” but she didn’t say anything. Still, he felt a little schoolboy stupid.
“I’ll put this in the back with the others.” He was gratified when she followed him through the jostling crowd.
Friends stopped them along the way to say hello, joking, and making merry. Amy hugged Todd, the birthday boy, and teased him about getting old. Rafe had a moment of wishing she’d be that warm and friendly with him, not that he deserved anything except the polite reserve he got.
He didn’t know why he couldn’t give it up. Guilt, he supposed. He owed her.
“It feels good to be home for Christmas, doesn’t it?” he asked when they were alone, just for a minute, in the hallway.
“Yes, it does. What’s to eat? I’m starving.” She looked back toward the kitchen as if regretting her decision to follow him toward the coat room.
“No time for dinner?”
“No. This is the busy season.”
He tossed the coat on Katie’s bed with a stack of others and steered her back through the crush. “I highly recommend those kabob things and the hot cheese dip and the pizza and those whirly pinwheel things over there.”
Amy’s eyes widened. “You tried all those?”
“Just getting started, too. What’s your pleasure?” He handed her a red paper plate decorated with a smiling reindeer. “There’s dessert but you need sustenance first.”
“Sustenance. Good word. How about the fruit dip and some of those veggies?”
“Girl food, but okay. Beats MREs.” Rafe popped a cookie in his mouth, having a better time than he’d expected. At least Amy was talking to him. She was cool but conversant.
The need to discuss the past pushed in. He pushed back. Don’t mess up the moment. This time last year he’d been lying in a dirt sleeping hole in the barren outposts of Afghanistan. He’d daydreamed of home, of Christmas parties like this, of good friends and good times, and if Amy occupied a lot of those dreams, it was only natural. They’d been together since junior high.
“Amy. Rafe.” Katie appeared next to them. “This is awesome. I wasn’t sure you’d both come, but seeing you together again just makes my day.”
Amy made some light remark before Katie moved on, but Rafe felt her withdrawal. She went from friendly Amy to a stiff stranger who quickly wandered away. And Rafe was left out in the cold.
* * *
The party was great. The food was delicious. The Dirty Santa game hilarious. Watching grown men finagle and fuss over a pair of snow goggles proved to be the hit of the night. Amy was having fun. Truly. She’d reconnected with her high school friends, including Mack Jennings, who showed more than a passing interest in her homecoming.
“I’m going for more punch,” Mack, standing at her elbow, said. “Want some?”
“Sure, if you don’t mind.”
With a wink, he took her cup and disappeared through the crush. She took an olive from a tray and swiveled around on the bar stool. The first person she spotted was Rafe. She started to turn away but curiosity got the better of her. He hadn’t seemed the least bothered by her avoidance of him. That was good, she supposed. They were both going on with their lives, dealing with the past the way mature adults should.
Katie’s comment, her insinuation that Rafe and Amy were together, had bothered her. So much so that she’d slipped away from Rafe at the first opportunity. No matter what well-meaning friends thought, painful experience had taught her to protect her heart. Sure, Rafe was the hometown hero, the nice guy who delivered food baskets and taught disabled kids to ski, but that didn’t make him trustworthy.
She watched him now, sitting across the big living room in an armchair sharing laughs with his brother and Gabby Ralick. The Westfield brothers, in her opinion, were the best-looking men in the room, and Gabby, a divorcée with two kids, seemed to be thrilled with the attention.
Mack returned with her refilled cup of punch and slid onto the stool next to her. “It’s not polite to stare.”
Amy lowered her gaze to the paper cup and nonchalantly sipped the sweet liquid. “I wasn’t staring.”
“He was.”
“No, he wasn’t! Why would he be?”
“Maybe he still has a thing for you.”
“I certainly hope not,” she said hotly, but a flutter of...something...stirred beneath her rib cage.
Mack lifted his cup in a toast. “I’ll drink to that.”
They bumped cups.
“The clinic is having a party next Wednesday afternoon. Want to come over and hang out with us medical types?”
The invitation caught Amy off guard. Mack was a radiology tech at the local medical clinic, and she knew practically everyone else who worked there, too. At least, she used to know them. While she was considering her reply, the growl of Katie and Todd’s karaoke machine interrupted.
“Karaoke Christmas, everyone!” Todd shouted into the microphone, which caused a feedback squeal that killed any notion of conversation.
Amy pressed her hands to both ears, laughing.
Todd kicked off the karaoke by barking a hilarious rendition of “Jingle Bells,” and others followed, singing the silliest holiday tunes they could find. Mack brought the house down when he sang “I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas” in a girly soprano, and not to be outdone, Jake warbled and acted out “Randolph, the Bowlegged Cowboy.”
When he finished and the stomps and claps subsided, Jake shot an ornery grin toward Amy and then toward his brother. Amy got a funny feeling in her stomach and slid down on the bar stool.
“Who wants to hear Rafe and Amy sing?” Jake shouted. “Just like old times. A duet.”
Amy’s
