I let her go, wishing I could believe that. “Guess we’ll see.”
There was a knock on the door, and she opened it to Colin. He’d changed clothes from earlier. He had traded his plaid button down for a nice gray sweater, covered with a gray wool coat. Even his face was freshly shaven. My heart skipped a beat, and I smiled. He looked so different.
Colin?
??s brows furrowed when he saw Brianna. “Still here?” he asked her.
Brianna opened the door all the way, and that was when he saw me. “I was just leaving,” Brianna replied. “Layla needed my help.”
Colin stepped inside and cleared his throat, his attention solely on me. “Wow, you look …”
“Beautiful?” Brianna added, winking slyly at me. “Yes, she does.”
Colin rubbed the back of his neck, a trait I’d noticed when men were nervous. “Actually, I was going to say different, but definitely beautiful as well.”
My cheeks burned. “I could say the same about you,” I said.
Brianna snickered and stepped outside onto the porch. “All right, you two, I’m heading out. I’ll see you at the ceremony.”
Colin turned to face her. “You don’t want to ride with us?”
With a twinkle in her eyes, she shook her head. “Nah. I’m riding with Mom. See you there.” She winked at him and took off for the inn.
Colin glanced at me over his shoulder. “I think she’s up to something.”
I chuckled. “I’d say so.” And we both knew what it was.
“Are you ready to go?” he asked.
“I am.” Brianna had let me borrow one of her coats, so I slipped it on and stuffed some money and my phone into one of the pockets. Colin locked the door behind us, and we walked slowly to his truck. The smell of snow lingered in the air as it crunched beneath our feet. Brianna’s boots kept my feet warm, not like my designer heels.
We stopped at his truck, and he opened the passenger-side door for me. I held up my hands. “So, what do you think? Could I pass for a local?”
Colin’s smile made my heart melt. “You could, actually. Sometimes it’s hard imagining a celebrity like you being normal.”
“But I am,” I murmured. “I’m hoping you’ll see that.”
He smiled again. “Working on it. You’re doing a good job making me believe it, especially with how nice you’ve been to Brianna. She looks up to you.”
“And I admire her. She’s been nothing but kind to me. I owe her big time for the clothes. I’m going to see if she’ll do a trade-off with me. My clothes for hers.”
He burst out laughing and helped me into his truck. “You won’t have to twist her arm for that. Half of her closet is nothing but your designs.”
“I know,” I said with a giggle. “She said it’s all she wears when she’s away at college.” I hopped in the truck, and he shut the door. My palms were sweaty, and my heart raced. It’d been so long since I’d gone out with someone who didn’t want anything from me, but yet, deep down, I wanted something from him, something real.
It was so magical driving down Snowflake Lane and looking at all the twinkling lights. I felt like a kid at Christmas, mesmerized by the beauty of it. “I bet every Christmas was amazing for you as a kid, wasn’t it?” I asked.
Colin glanced out his truck windows and then over at me. “For the most part. It takes a lot of work to keep all those Christmas lights going. When I was young, my grandparents would make me replace all the burned-out bulbs.”
“I wish my parents would’ve decorated the outside of our house. I used to be so jealous of our neighbors. They always had such cute Christmas displays.”
We turned off of Snowflake Lane and onto the darkened street. I wasn’t used to seeing everything around me pitch-black. Living in a big city, pretty much everywhere you went was lit up with some kind of streetlight. If your headlights didn’t work here, you’d be in some serious trouble.
“Why didn’t your parents ever decorate?” he asked.
I shrugged. “Probably because we were never home. They love to travel. Guess they thought taking me places all the time was what I wanted.”
“What did you want?”