Read Countdown To A Kiss (A New Year's Eve Anthology) Page 61

  Chapter Nine

  So, he’d made his choice, Darcy thought, half an hour after Lewis had left. She’d waited hopefully for a few minutes, thinking he might come back. But no. He was on his way to Grace. To the kiss he’d designed a damn app around.

  When the doctor came in, Darcy had been embarrassed, but had also been flying high, knowing that what she and Lewis had just shared was a real connection. Not some schoolgirl fantasy of hers, or a kiss claimed through deceit—as was his annual kiss with Grace.

  She’d never been more certain in her life that she and Lewis truly had a future together. Until the doctor examined her and she realized Lewis’s phone was still in her lap. She started to give it to him—his back still to her. But when she touched the screen, the picture of the lips zoomed out to show the entire face of…no big surprise…Grace Devine.

  Okay, she could handle that. Though the thought of Lewis testing the app on Grace’s picture fueled a fire in her, she really couldn’t blame him. She had designed the lead in Mirth to look, sound and act like Lewis. Then she touched the game to escape and saw the working title card.

  “A Kiss of Grace.”

  And it was just like a few hours earlier when she’d watched Lewis see Grace in her beautiful gown—something inside her snapped. She wanted Lewis desperately, but not if he still wanted Grace.

  Set a caged bird free and if it returns…oh whatever the hell that saying was, Darcy knew she had to do it.

  So, she set Lewis free to fly. Being the stand-up guy he was, he didn’t want to leave her stranded at a hospital, but she’d convinced him she didn’t need him.

  She wasn’t sure if she’d done a great job, or if it was easy for him to believe, but he left. The memory of their kiss, of their bodies fitting together so perfectly, stayed with her. And she hoped maybe Lewis would return to her after all.