“Right. Great. I can’t seem to win with my brother lately.”
Josephine floated over to us, rescuing me. “What’s wrong? You both look like a storm’s hovering over your heads.”
“Theo and Louisa,” Flynn said.
“Oh, that,” Jo said.
“She asked me why I hadn’t answered her letters,” Flynn said. “Right in front of Theo.”
“How insensitive,” Jo said.
“Agreed,” I said.
Shannon Cassidy appeared. With her hair fixed and wearing a beaded green dress, she looked like a different girl than the one I’d seen a few days before at the farm.
Flynn lit up like the Christmas tree at the sight of her. He took both her hands. “You look…just…beautiful.”
She smiled and made a little curtsy. “Thank you. I feel like the queen of England tonight.”
“You look like it was made for you,” Jo said.
“Thank you for the dress and all of this.” Shannon’s eyes glimmered with tears. “I won’t ever forget this night for as long as I live.”
Fiona started a waltz on the piano.
“Dance with me?” Flynn asked Shannon.
“Yes, sure.”
He took her hand and they went out to the floor, joining a half dozen other couples.
I looked over at Josephine. “May I have this dance?”
“Yes, you may.” Her smile weakened my knees. Hopefully I’d be able to remain on my feet.
I escorted Jo onto the dance floor, then tucked one arm around her slender waist and took her hand in the other. I’d not felt the whole of her against me before. It was all I could do not to scoop her into my arms and carry her upstairs. “Have I told you how beautiful you are tonight?” I asked close to her ear.
“Not yet.” She peeked up at me. I missed a step.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m a clod when it comes to dancing.”
“You’re not.”
“It’s that
your presence causes my legs to go slightly numb.”
“Isn’t that only in romantic books?”
“I can tell you with certainty that it is not.”
“Oh, Phillip, I adore you.” She sighed as she rested her cheek against my chest. “I could stay this way forever.”
“Some nights should last forever,” I said.
“But they won’t, will they? The morning will come whether we want it to or not.”
“When a moment’s shared between two people, it can always be resurrected. One day, we’ll be sitting on the porch, old and gray, and I’ll say, ‘Jo, do you remember the night we first danced together?’”