Read Countdown To A Kiss (A New Year's Eve Anthology) Page 47

  Chapter One

  Dear Lord, let me finally kiss Lewis Kampmueller.

  Darcy Bennett sent the thought out to the Universe, to the Heavens…really, to anyone or anything that would listen and help make her biggest—and oldest—wish come true.

  This was her year. She could feel it. It would begin at midnight with the kiss she’d imagined ever since her brother, Brooks, brought Lewis home from school when the boys had been in the third grade. Darcy wasn’t even in kindergarten yet, but she knew with absolute certainty that Lewis Kampmueller would one day kiss her and they would live Happily Ever After.

  After The Kiss (though usually a practical person by nature, she had always thought of her future with Lewis in capital letters), she and Lewis would spend the rest of the evening and beginning of the new year—Their Year—talking, dancing, laughing, maybe a bit more kissing, and generally falling in love.

  He was sure to spout an “I can’t believe how much you’ve changed” or “You’re so grown up” or perhaps, dare she hope? maybe even a “What a beauty you’ve become.”

  Her friends and parents had told her as much, but Darcy had been the proverbial ugly duckling too long to accept her swan feathers just yet.

  But if Lewis gave her even half the look he’d been giving Grace Devine forever, she’d finally believe.

  And after all, swans mated for life, didn’t they?

  Darcy almost pulled out her smartphone to Google that fact for confirmation, but stopped herself. She was already making this into a Cinderella analogy, with the stroke of midnight and all. No need to mix her fairy tale metaphors and add in The Ugly Duckling.

  Besides, no gadgets of any kind tonight. Not even a quick text to her girlfriends back in Boston, apprising them of her progress.

  She was unplugged, unwired, and ready to finally kiss the man she was going to marry.