“Make it up to me by telling me about this heat between you and Dominic.”
Absentmindedly Waverly pressed her hand to her lips. Then she panicked. Had someone told her about last night? “Huh?”
“The kiss at the Christmas Advisory Council.”
“Oh, yeah.” Waverly breathed a sigh of relief. “Dominic was just being nice and saved me from Anson.”
The mention of the mayor’s name evoked a drastic eye roll from Lexi.
“Yes, the re-emergence of Dominic Crowne sent this man into several states of insecurity,” said Waverly. “Not like Anson had a chance. But you’d never know, the way he cornered me at the cookie table.”
“Which one?”
“Which table?” Waverly asked.
“Which cookie?” Lexi clarified.
“Miss Annie’s,” Waverly answered. She decided to ask Lexi later about the little shoulder shimmy Lexi did over the cookies. One should not be so excited about a cookie. “Anyway, so Anson was going on about how we’d be such a great couple.”
“Ugh.”
“I know. And did you know Dominic sent him an email over the weekend, asking to be on the agenda for a few minutes, and Anson acted like he never received it?”
“Yet Dominic shared his plan for the parade and the floats?” Lexi inquired.
Waverly went on to tell Lexi about the events from yesterday with the Harveys and the Christmas tree, but made it a point not to mention anything else.
“So Dominic’s back in town for twenty-four hours and you’re getting all googly-eyed.”
“What?” Waverly clamped her hand over her mouth to keep from laughing at Lexi’s terminology. “I’m not having this conversation with you.”
“So if I were Jolene, you would tell me how you wouldn’t mind if he crammed his tongue down your throat?”
Jolene would get the whole tea, but she wasn’t, so Waverly needed to figure things out on her own. For a bad boy, Dominic didn’t appear to like leaving what happened on the side of the road for what it was—a moment in time for them. One hot, passionate moment. Beads of sweat began to gather at the nape of Waverly’s neck. She lifted her l
ong hair and twisted it into a bun at the top of her head.
“Jesus, girl.” Lexi fanned Waverly’s cheeks with her hand. She hopped up, jogged over to the kitchen and returned with two glasses of tea. “I haven’t seen you so fevered before since... Geez, I don’t know when. Who was the motorcycle boy you were in love with when you were sixteen?”
“Why you gotta bring up the past?” The sugary beverage brought down the temperature in her body. Waverly tilted the glass further until she captured an ice cube.
“You lost your chance to compete in a pageant.”
Waverly didn’t need the reminder. It was her spiral down toward the big dethroning. “History won’t repeat itself. The Morality Committee made quite the impression.”
Even though Waverly captured another ice cube, she caught Lexi’s eye roll. “The committee can’t keep you from having a social life, Waverly. You just can’t go out and have hot sex on the hood of a car in a park.”
Waverly choked on the piece of ice in her mouth. She leaned forward and coughed.
Taking the hint, Lexi sighed and changed the subject. “Fine. Just remember what I said—you’re still allowed a social life. Even when you win Miss Georgia or Miss USA, you’re still going to want to have a personal life once it ends.”
“Not if I go on to Miss Universe.”
Lexi snatched the material from Waverly’s hands. “Don’t make me hurt you, girl. Don’t be like me and wait until it’s almost too late.”
“Let me get through this runoff.”
Lexi patted Waverly’s thigh. “What’s your plan?”