“I don’t care,” Elissa declared, boldly adding, “as long as I know you’ll come back.”

“I promise I’ll do my best to,” he said, reaching for her hand.

Elissa was kneeling in front of Nick helping him lace his skates; she could feel him gazing down at her. Securing the laces in a knot, she glanced up past his elbow to the edge of the park. Just then, a familiar 1936 Ford Tudor pulled into a parking spot on Sixth Street facing the ice rink, positioning itself so that the spruce and maple trees studding the park didn’t obscure the driver’s view of the rink. The car was a good twenty yards away, but Elissa recognized her father behind the wheel. Her astonishment negated anger and bashfulness both. “Good heavens!” she said, and told Nick. “He’s enough to drive me crazy, sometimes!” she added.

“He doesn’t give a guy much of a chance,” Nick acknowledged.

“If he had his way, I’d never even be allowed to leave the house.”

“Well, maybe he’ll keep all them other fellows from you while I’m gone.”

When she looked up at him, he was smiling that little smile she loved. Then his smile deepened into a grin. “I might should kiss you,” he said. “And see what he does.”

Elissa blushed. “He might not like that.” She tied the second of Nick’s laces in a double knot.

“Would you?” Nick said.

Elissa stood, turned, skated a fish hook. Stopped and looked at him. Nodded. Couldn’t keep from grinning.

“I don’t mind one bit,” Nick said, the third time she tried to help him to his feet and they landed together on the ice in a laughing heap. “I mean, I’d roll around in the snow with you all day.”

“Nick!”

“But—I’m worried your daddy might get the wrong idea,” he said, sobering. “He might think I’m doing this on purpose. Heck, I wouldn’t trust me, either, pretty as you are.”

She glanced toward where her father still sat in the car. Nick was right: Too much more of the two of them landing in each other’s arms and he was bound to explode out of that car and send Nick packing. “We could go to Emory’s,” she said. “Want to?”

They unlaced each other’s skates, and he rubbed her sock-feet between his hands to warm them.

The warm smells of pie and coffee hung in the air at Emory’s, and the place felt cozy after the white chill of the outdoors; they’d walked the nine blocks from the ice rink, after Elissa had stopped to talk to her father. To her relief, he had agreed not to follow them to Emory’s.