Just when she didn’t need any more stress in her life, having Cole bring her that cupcake had sent Kelli’s emotions on a roller coaster. She’d already made up her mind that as tempting as the man was, she was not going to allow him to break her heart again. Unfortunately, her heart didn’t seem to be listening to her head, because every time she just happened to look at the back of the room, where he was leaning against the wall, arms folded across his broad chest, it began tumbling like a snowball rolling down a very steep hill.
She was a grown woman, respected by both her peers and her students’ parents. And, as Brad was always telling her, loved by her students. She was smart, creative, and accomplished.
So how was it, she wondered, as Cole smiled and sent her rebellious heart tumbling yet again, that he could make her feel like an insecure, love-struck teenager?
As the stage lights came on and the music cued the beginning of her class’s part of the program, she dragged her attention back to the stage.
As predicted, her young actors’ performances weren’t perfect.
Unsurprisingly, when it was Allison’s turn to take the stage, she added a pirouette to her entrance that hadn’t been in Zelda’s choreography.
“C is for Christmas, the Christians’ big morn,” she sang out in a voice as clear as the bell in the tower of St. Andrew’s church. The stage lights hitting all those rhinestones and sparkles made her appear to twinkle. “When they celebrate the December night baby Jesus was born.” Adding a bit more choreography that hadn’t been in the original plans, she mimed rocking an infant, her expression as beatific as a Madonna.
Oh yes, Kelli thought with a blend of humor and emotion. Whatever the girl decided to do with her life, she was going to prove unstoppable. That was one of the things she loved most about her job. The chance to see the natural, ingrained sparks in children before other life expectations would come along to dampen them.
Johnny Duggan struggled for a moment over the pronunciation of Hanukkah’s dreidel for the letter D, and Denisha Lincoln’s Kwanzaa costume headdress had teetered a bit dangerously as she’d spun like a colorful top onto the stage to announce the letter K, but neither slips were all that noticeable—and they didn’t come anywhere near last year’s reindeer collision.
They got through the rest of the alphabet with no serious hitches. When Jami Martin, looking darling in a blue snowsuit covered with white snowflakes, declared Z for “zero, a really cold day, the end of the alphabet and the end of our play,” Kelli let out a long, heartfelt sigh of relief as the children bowed and curtsied the way Zelda had taught them to a standing ovation from the audience.
Unable to resist, as she wildly clapped her hands, Kelli glanced over her shoulder toward the back of the cafeteria, wanting to share this moment with the one person who still, despite all her resolve, mattered most. And discovered that sometime during the performance, Cole had left the building.