The Pretty Lady and the Cowboy (Songs from the Heart) (22 page)

And I felt the cold of the snowflakes melt as they met with the warm tears that were streaming down my cheeks.

“I have found the other half who makes me whole,” Levi sang. And then I heard the words again as he repeated the last chorus.

Jess gave me a long hug after the song ended. And then I dashed back inside the store. There was something I needed to get. Snow or no snow.

When I came back out, Levi was strumming a few chords and chatting in the wonderful intimate way he has with his audience.

“… needs just one more thing to make it perfect,” he was saying. And through the snow, through the dark, I knew that somehow he had spotted me. From my position in the doorway of The Finish Line, I looked up at him.

For several seconds, he didn’t say anything else. We just looked into each other’s eyes across the distance. And then a voice in the crowd said, “So what else do you need to make the moment perfect?”

And Levi answered softly, “The girl of my dreams, of course. Katharine Addison.” He smiled down at me. “Or Just Kitty to her friends,” he confided to the crowd. And then, “Help her up here, would you, Jim?”

Somehow Levi’s driver Jim was at my side, gently steering me toward the bus, and then on through the bus, and finally up the stairs to where Levi stood waiting. As I walked slowly toward him, he handed the guitar to Jim. And then I was in his arms and I felt his lips on mine. And suddenly there was no crowd, there was no traffic, there was only Levi.

“Hey,” he said, after a long moment. “Miss me?”

“Hey, yourself,” I said softly. “What took you so long?”

He held me close. “I had a couple of songs I had to write,” he whispered in my ear.

And he reached for his guitar again and began to play a melody I had never heard before. And as he strummed, he spoke to the audience.

“Now I haven’t seen Just Kitty in quite a while, so there are a couple of songs I need to sing to her.” While he hummed a few bars, I could hear the audience murmuring. He kept strumming and addressed the audience again. “Y’all are welcome to listen in if you want to, but I need you to be very quiet.”

A hush fell over the crowd. Levi McCrory magic, once again.

And then Levi was softly singing a ballad that was unlike anything I’d ever heard him sing before. The Levi McCrory trademark was optimism; his songs were upbeat and happy and when you listened to them you felt upbeat and happy, too. But this was a song of longing, self-doubt. I felt my heart breaking as he sang the lines, “Can a man who ain’t perfect be perfect for you?”

And I felt tears on my cheeks again as I listened to the second verse.

The crowd was still hushed as he played the final chords. I wanted to shout out that I loved him, too, that I had been too blinded by fear to understand how perfect he was—how perfect we were for each other. But even as the last notes of the song were fading in the cold December air, he struck a new chord and instantly he was the old Levi again. And he was singing a song I knew, one that I thought of as my own song.

“I was falling for a girl I never wanted to lose, I was falling for a girl wearing princess shoes,” he sang, looking at me. And as he sang, he glanced down and I could see the corners of his eyes crinkle with silent amusement as he noticed them. Yes, when I had gone back into the store I’d taken those lonely shoes off the shelf where I had tossed them the day after I saw Levi’s bus disappearing down the highway. Now my princess shoes were on my feet, and even in the snow, in the dark, they sparkled like crazy.

He looked back into my eyes as he started singing a second verse, one I’d never heard before.

And on the last note, Levi dropped down on one knee and said, “I love you, Just Kitty. Will you marry me?”

I smiled at him through my happy tears. “Yes,” I said simply. It was all I could manage to say.

Then he reached into a pocket and held out a gorgeous antique diamond engagement ring. “My grandmother’s,” he whispered, slipping it onto my finger.

Then the crowd went wild with cheering. “Kiss! Kiss!” they chanted. Levi pulled me into the warm circle of his arms again, and his lips were on mine. The applause that erupted in the audience seemed a very long way away.

Then suddenly I felt as if the ground under me was moving. And it was—the bus was slowly pulling away from the curb.

“Ready?” Levi asked.

“For anything,” I said, “as long as we’re together.”

With Levi’s arm around my waist, we both waved and called out, “Merry Christmas!” And the cries of the crowd calling back “Merry Christmas!” and “Happy New Year!” gradually faded in the cold, snowy air.