16. Sophie
SOPHIE
Yup. I was kissing Captain Competent.
And I liked it.
Correction.
I liked it far, far more than seemed remotely sensible for a woman who’d known him all of… what? Two days? Two and a half if you counted all the time I’d spent accidentally thinking about him, which unfortunately, my brain insisted qualified as a meaningful relationship.
His hand slid around my waist, warm and steady, drawing me a fraction closer like it was the most natural thing in the world. Then he kissed me back.
Really kissed me back. Not the polite sort of kiss that said, Well, this seems socially acceptable. The sort that said he’d wanted to do it too.
Or maybe that was just me.
When my lips parted and his brushed against mine again, every coherent thought abandoned ship without so much as a polite goodbye.
My brain didn’t explode, exactly. It simply packed a suitcase, wished me luck, left a forwarding address, and wandered off into the sunset while my common sense stood on the platform waving a tiny white handkerchief.
Heat rushed from my face all the way to my toes, and I felt the tiniest, completely involuntary sound escape my throat.
Yikes.
That was embarrassing.
His kiss wasn’t rushed or careless. It was slow, confident, and patient enough to make me forget an entire festival was happening only a few yards away.
He kissed me like a man who’d thought about doing it before and had finally stopped talking himself out of it.
I leaned into him before I even realized I was doing it, breathing him in and losing myself in the clean scent of soap, cedar, and whatever impossible ingredient made Sheriff Walker smell unfairly good.
One of his hands tightened ever so slightly at my waist, and a delicious little shiver raced straight through me.
Somewhere nearby the band kept playing, children laughed, and a dog barked, but they all sounded impossibly far away.
The entire town could’ve packed up and relocated to another county, and I genuinely don’t think I would’ve noticed.
Damn. I’d been kissed before. Technically.
This, however, felt like discovering I’d previously been eating instant mashed potatoes and only now realized actual potatoes existed.
Or believing frozen pizza was perfectly acceptable until someone handed you a slice from a tiny family-run pizzeria in Italy.
There was simply no going back after this.
I pulled back first. Mostly because another five seconds and I was genuinely going to forget we were standing in the middle of a festival with half the town nearby. Also because there was an extremely real possibility I’d do something completely unreasonable.
Like kiss him again. Or worse. Start planning our wedding because he’d complimented my leadership skills.
I could already picture it. Our first dance.
Bandit somehow eating the wedding cake. Theo serving as ring bearer because he’d already decided we were family.
Lola crying dramatically in the front row while flirting with my uncle.
Dottie insisting she’d bake gluten-free goat cookies for the reception.
Damn. We hadn’t even gone on one date. “Well…” I said a little breathlessly. “That escalated.” I gave a tiny, disbelieving laugh.
He looked at me, his eyes still warm. One corner of his mouth lifted. “Yeah.”
The music continued drifting across the square. People laughed. The festival carried on as though my entire universe hadn’t just rearranged itself.
And I, Sophie Hartwell, had just kissed the sheriff.
Captain Competent. The man responsible for enforcing the law.
There was probably a bylaw somewhere about not randomly making out with law enforcement officers during public events.
If not, I was fairly certain the town council would be drafting one and naming it after me.
The Hartwell Amendment: No spontaneous kissing of municipal employees while on duty.
When I made bad decisions, I didn’t just dip a toe into poor judgment. I cannonballed straight into the deep end while waving enthusiastically at everyone on the shore. Go big or go home. Right?
Silence settled between us again, like we’d both accidentally walked through a door neither of us had intended to open. Neither of us seemed entirely sure whether to step farther inside or back out and pretend we’d been looking for the restroom all along.
“I…” I pointed vaguely between us. “That…”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t usually…”
“I know.”
“I mean, I don’t just kiss people.” I frowned. “I should probably make that clearer because that sentence somehow sounded like I occasionally do this as a hobby. I don’t. I don’t wander around kissing random sheriffs. Or accountants. Or mailmen. There’s no list. No punch card. No loyalty program.”
“I didn’t think you did.”
“Good.” I nodded quickly. “Because that would’ve been embarrassing. More embarrassing. I feel like we’ve already achieved a fairly impressive level of embarrassment.”
He looked at me. “Sophie.”
“I’ve made this weird. Haven’t I?” I winced. “Please don’t answer that because I feel like you’re going to.”
He raised a brow. “A little.”
I closed my eyes. “Fantastic.” I rubbed both hands over my face.
“I’ve been an event planner for what… barely two days?
” I sighed dramatically. “And now I’ve chased a goat through Main Road and kissed the sheriff.
When you hear it out loud, it does sound like the beginning of a psychological evaluation.
” I frowned thoughtfully. “Actually, if I told this story to a therapist, they’d probably ask me to slow down around the goat chapter because that’s where things really start going off the rails. ”
For the briefest moment, the corner of Eric’s mouth twitched again. Sheriff face. With another crack in it. It was becoming my new favorite expression. Unfortunately, I suspected it was also becoming addictive.
His thumb brushed lightly against my back before he seemed to realize he was still touching me. Then he let his hand fall away.
The sudden absence of it was ridiculous. It shouldn’t have mattered. It absolutely mattered. My body noticed before my brain did, which felt both inconvenient and slightly traitorous.
“I wanted to kiss you,” he said.
I had a brain fart moment. “What?”
His expression stayed calm. “I have for a while.”
“You did?” My heart attempted to leave my body. It didn’t simply skip a beat. It packed a lunch, climbed over my ribcage, and made a determined run for freedom.
“But…” he continued.
There it was. The responsible but.
“We probably picked the worst possible time,” said the sheriff.
“Right.” Right? Did he regret kissing me? Was that what he meant? After what was probably the best kiss of my life?
“You’re running the festival,” the sheriff went on.
“And you’re the sheriff,” I added.
He nodded once. “So…”
“So…”
I sighed. “This was probably a bad idea.” Saying it out loud felt strangely disappointing. I hadn’t realized how much I’d wanted him to disagree.
His eyes stayed on mine. “It was.”
Yup. And that was when my ego died.
I nodded, not trusting myself to speak right now.
The sheriff watched me. “Doesn’t mean I regret it.”
Okay? Was that better or worse? Definitely better. Dangerously better. The sort of better that encouraged extremely poor decision-making and entirely too much smiling for no medically justifiable reason.
I laughed once. A tiny, disbelieving laugh. “You’re just not sure if you want to do it again.” There. Now let’s see what he says.
“No,” he shook his head. “I didn’t say that.”
“See?” I gestured to his face. “How can I tell? You’ve got sheriff face all over again.”
“It’s the only one I’ve got.” The sheriff smiled, a real one, and it transformed his face from handsome to uber hot. The man smiled like it was some sort of secret weapon he only took out under special circumstances.
“I should…” I pointed toward absolutely everything. “The festival.”
He nodded. “You should.”
With my face flaming, I took one step backward.
Then another. Neither of us looked away.
This was becoming increasingly difficult to exit with dignity.
Honestly, nobody ever told you this part in romantic movies.
They always fade to black after the kiss.
They never show the awkward human shuffle where both people silently negotiate who leaves first without looking like they’re fleeing a crime scene.
“I’ll just…” I turned, walked exactly six steps, and stopped.
Because my brain, determined to maximize the embarrassment, chose that exact moment to replay the kiss in perfect high-definition.
It wasn’t even giving me the highlights.
Oh no. It had clearly invested in the deluxe director’s cut with surround sound and bonus commentary.
His hand on my back. His mouth. The way he’d kissed me back. The fact that he’d wanted to.
Heat flooded my face all over again. I could practically feel my ears glowing. If someone had tried to toast a marshmallow beside my head, I genuinely think it might have worked.
But then he agreed that it wasn’t a good idea.
What the hell did that mean? And what did I do with that? Did he mean not now? Or not ever? Or terrible timing but excellent execution? There were so many possible interpretations.
Focus, Sophie.
I was still on the clock, so to speak. I didn’t have time to kiss handsome sheriffs and start imagining our wedding. Or our honeymoon.
Nope. Not going there.
The festival. Focus on the festival. I had vendors.
Guests. Responsibilities. I did not have time to develop a schoolgirl crush on the sheriff.
I especially did not have time to wonder whether he was a cuddler, what his morning coffee order was, or whether he’d always smelled that ridiculously good.
Those were tomorrow problems. Or preferably next year’s problems.
“I can’t do this now.” I marched toward the information booth with considerably more determination than emotional stability.
A volunteer smiled and waved as I passed.
I smiled back with what I hoped looked reassuring and not like the expression of a woman who’d just accidentally derailed her own nervous system.
If anyone asked whether I was okay, I was fully prepared to lie with impressive confidence.
I felt eyes on me and turned to see Lola still on the dance floor.
Judging by the grin stretching across her face, she’d seen everything.
Every glorious, humiliating, life-altering second of it.
She was swaying lazily between her two dance partners, somehow still dancing with both men at once without either appearing remotely concerned by the arrangement, but the second our eyes met, she pointed dramatically at me.
Then at the sheriff. Then back at me. Then she clasped both hands beneath her cheek, closed her eyes, and mimed the world’s most exaggerated Awww…
true love. She even sighed dramatically enough that I could practically hear it over the music.
My stomach dropped. “Don’t.”
Lola pointed at her lips and made an exaggerated kissing motion. Then she puckered dramatically, fluttered her eyelashes, and hugged herself.
Shoot me now.
“Oh my god… how old are you?” I muttered.
And then Lola blew me a kiss while making a little heart with her fingers.
Heat exploded across my face. I was going to kill her later. Good thing I knew where she lived.
I risked one tiny glance toward the sheriff.
Big mistake.
His gaze was on Lola. Oh, yeah. He’d seen all of it. All of it. Every ridiculous gesture. Every imaginary kiss. Every heart. Every second of her enthusiastically narrating my romantic life through interpretive dance.
“She is never going to let this go,” I growled under my breath. Not tomorrow. Not next week. I could already picture myself at eighty-three, peacefully knitting in a rocking chair, only for Lola to wander by and ask, “Remember when you attacked the sheriff at the festival?”
The sheriff’s head turned toward me, and I spun around.
Was I acting like a fool? Maybe. But I knew if I looked at him again, I’d start spiraling and overthink what had just happened between us.
My heart still hadn’t settled down. My stomach was still doing whatever weird thing it had decided to do tonight, and my brain had already started asking about seventeen questions I definitely didn’t have answers to.
Tomorrow. I could have my complete nervous breakdown tomorrow. Just not right now.
I could dissect every look, every word, every microscopic facial expression, and probably build an entirely inaccurate psychological profile based on one kiss and half a smile. My anxiety would undoubtedly appreciate the project.
Because tonight.
I had a festival to finish.