Kitabı oku: «His For Christmas», sayfa 6

He reached up and took her wrist, yanked gently. “Lie down beside me.”

She knew he was sleeping, or in that groggy state between being asleep and being awake where he didn’t really even know who she was or what he was asking.

His guard had come way down tonight. Now he was in a really vulnerable state, admitting something he would probably not normally admit.

He did not want to be alone.

Just like her.

She knew she should disengage his fingers one by one from her wrist and tiptoe off to her own room. Probably he would wake sometime in the night, be embarrassed to find himself asleep on her couch and disappear.

So she knew what she should do. But it seemed all her life had been about shoulds. The one time she’d rebelled and not put her own life on hold because she should defer to her fiancé’s more lucrative career it had ended rather badly.

So, maybe she’d become even more attached to shoulds than before.

For all its talk of the joy of freedom, wasn’t Bliss: The Extraordinary Joy of Being a Single Woman just another book of shoulds? It was a desperate need for an instruction manual to guide her through life, to make the rules for her. Hadn’t the book just provided another excuse not to rely on herself, not to risk following her instincts, not to risk taking control of her own life?

This was the truth: there was no instruction manual for life.

No one was going to grade her on what she did next. It was possible no one even cared. Her mother was in Thailand. Her father had long ago replaced his first family.

So why not do what she truly wanted? Why not do what would give her a moment’s pleasure, even if that pleasure was stolen?

She didn’t have to stay tucked into Nate’s side. She could just see what it felt like, enjoy it for a few minutes and then go to bed.

With a sigh of pure surrender, Morgan sat on the edge of the couch, leaned tentatively into him. He was so solid it was like leaning against a stone, except the stone was deliciously sun-warmed.

He let go of her wrist, but his arm, freed, circled her waist and pulled her deep into his long leanness. For a moment, she felt as if she couldn’t breathe.

What was she going to say if he woke up suddenly and completely?

She held her breath, waiting, but he didn’t wake up. If anything his breathing deepened, touched the sensitive skin of her ear, felt on her neck exactly as she had always known it would, heated, as textured as silk.

She willed herself to relax, and as she did, she noticed her awareness of him deepening. Her own heart seemed to rise and fall with his each breath. He was not all hard lines as she had first thought. No, he radiated warmth, and his skin, taut over muscle, bone, sinew, had the faintest seductive give to it.

There, she told herself, she had felt it. She could get up and go to her own bed now, satisfied that she had followed her own instincts.

Except it was harder than she could have imagined to get up, to leave the warmth and strength of him, to walk to her lonely room and her cold bed.

It was harder than she could have ever imagined to walk away from what was unfolding inside of her. A brand-new experience. A very physical feeling of connection. Closeness. Awareness.

A physical experience that had a mental component…

For as she snuggled more deeply into him, Morgan felt the moment begin to shine as if it had a life of its own.

Her mind struggled to put a label on the level of sensation she was experiencing. And then it succeeded.

Bliss.

Morgan fell asleep in the circle of his arms. And woke in the morning to winter sunshine pouring through her windows.

For a moment, she felt it again, bliss.

But then she realized why she had awoken. It was because he was awake. Oh, God. Why hadn’t she just enjoyed the sensation for a moment and then gone to bed as she had originally planned?

It would have saved them both the terrible embarrassment of this situation.

Now it felt horribly awkward. He hadn’t even been fully awake—maybe not even partially awake—when his hand had encircled her wrist and he had asked her to lie down with him.

What was he going to say now?

What the hell do you think you’re doing?

Morgan could feel her whole body stiffening, bracing itself for his rejection.

Instead, his fingertips brushed her cheek.

“Hey,” he said softly, something of discovery in his voice, “you have a print on your cheek again.”

He didn’t kiss it this time, though, just put her away from him, got to his feet and stretched.

The rumpled T-shirt lifted as he stretched his arms over his head, showing her the taut washboard of his stomach.

Her gaze drifted upward to his face. He was smiling. He didn’t seem to find the situation awkward or embarrassing at all.

“Hmm,” he said thoughtfully, “I guess now I know what’s so great about sleepovers.”

He was not sorry. It occurred to her that he hadn’t been asleep at all when he’d invited her to cuddle with him. It hadn’t been an accident. Or a case of groggy mistaken identity.

“Is my hair standing straight up?” she asked him.

He cocked his head. “No. More sideways.”

That’s what wasn’t so great about sleepovers. And what now? Did she offer him breakfast? Did she show him the door?

He had his cell phone out of his pocket, scrolling through it. “No calls from Ace,” he said with relief.

It was the mark of what kind of man he was that Morgan had not even known he had a cell phone until that moment.

Karl’s had been more than a cell phone: it could practically start his car on command, and she realized now that Karl’s cell phone had been like a third party in their relationship.

And that it would never be like that with Nate Hathoway.

“But I think I better go get her. Saturday is our day. She’s pretty fussy about that.”

“Okay.” Was she being dismissed? That made her feel so bereft she couldn’t even tease him about not going shopping this time.

“You want to spend our day with us?”

Her mouth fell open.

“I promised Ace a sleigh ride.”

A sleigh ride?

She had to say no. Look at how she had just spilled the beans to him last night about her whole life history! Look how she had reacted when she thought she was not going to be included in his plans for the day!

Bereft.

No, throwing out the rule book did not mean leaving herself wide-open to hurt. And to get involved with this man had the potential to make her redefine hurt.

On the other hand, a sleigh ride?

Morgan nearly sighed out loud. It was the kind of family outing her childhood dreams had been full of. Despite her mother creating a picture of a perfect Christmas, there had never been the connection of a perfect Christmas. Christmas activities had involved entertaining, not playing.

Morgan had dreamed of tobogganing and skating and sleigh rides. She had dreamed it in such perfect detail that she could picture it already, with startling clarity. The three of them—her, Nate, Ace—nestled in a sleek red sleigh, their legs covered in a soft, plaid blanket.

He would be holding the reins of a spirited white stallion. The horse would snort, throw up clouds of snow with each prancing footfall. The air would be full of diamond ice crystals and the sound of bells.

There was an old-fashioned romance about his invitation that was irresistible.

“I’d love to join you and Ace on a sleigh ride,” Morgan said.

Even though it was against her better judgment, this thing was unfurling inside her, like a flag. More than happiness. More than excitement. More than anticipation.

This time it was familiar to her, so Morgan identified it much more quickly.

“Happy,” Nate said.

She preened that he had recognized her mood so quickly.

“That’s Ace’s pony’s name. It’s kind of like when people name a Great Dane Tiny. He’s not that great with a sleigh.”

Okay, so he hadn’t recognized her mood. And the white steed was out. Still, gliding across snow-covered fields was gliding across snow-covered fields.

“I’ll come back for you in an hour or so,” he promised.

And he was gone, which was good, because she had been gravely tempted to lean forward, close her eyes and offer her lips as a form of goodbye.

“You’re dreaming,” she warned herself as she heard his vehicle roar to life outside.

In fact, it would have been too easy to dismiss the whole thing as a dream, except that her coat hangers were hung and her Christmas tree was up. Except lights winked from the branches, and the star, that age-old symbol of hope, shone bright from the very top of that tree, a pinnacle she could not have reached without a ladder.

It would be easy to dismiss the whole thing as a dream, except that when Morgan looked in the mirror, her hair was standing up sideways and her cheek held the perfect imprint of his shirt.

Chapter Six

“MRS. MCGUIRE, this is Happy.” Ace patted the Shetland pony vigorously, kissed his nose. Ace’s lips were stained an unnatural shade of red as if she had smeared them with raspberries.

“You were right about the lipstick,” Nate had told Morgan, rolling his eyes, when they had picked her up.

“And you were wrong about—”

“Everything,” he admitted. “No hazards of any kind. Don’t ask me to admit I was wrong ever again. It unmans me.”

He was teasing her, and Morgan was coming to enjoy the growing ease between them so much. But she liked the underlying message, too. That somehow their lives were linked, and ever again suggested it might be staying that way.

Even this outing suggested that. By inviting her to this Christmas-card-pretty farm—red barn, snow-covered fields, cows behind white fences—that belonged to his and Ace’s family, weren’t the links that connected them growing stronger?

Now Nate was trying to get a harness on the uncooperative, chunky brown-and-white pony. So far his hand had been stepped on twice. He had said something—both times—quite a bit stronger than “damn,” then shot Morgan looks that dared comment.

But she did not want to be the schoolteacher today. Just a woman enjoying the extraordinary bliss of not being alone, of sharing a wonderful winter day with a glorious man and his adorable little girl.

“This is the meanest horse ever born,” Nate grumbled. “Keep your face away from his teeth, for God’s sake, Ace. He might mistake your lips for an apple.”

“He loves me,” Ace said with certainty. “He won’t bite me.”

“I don’t know why he doesn’t bite her,” Nate told Morgan, apparently not convinced it was love. “He’s bitten me at least six times since our unhappy first meeting. Mostly, now I can manage to outwit him.”

“But not the time he bit you on the bum,” Ace said. “Remember, Daddy?”

“Speaking of being unmanned,” he muttered with a sigh. “That’s kind of a hard one to forget. I couldn’t sit down for a week.”

She shouted with laughter.

The sleigh ride might not be turning out quite as she’d expected, but Morgan loved the feeling growing inside her. It was blissful. She didn’t just feel as if she was being included in this little family outing. She felt as if she belonged.

If she contemplated it, she might find it just a little bit frightening that she was feeling something right now, in this very moment, that she had been waiting her whole life to feel.

But she determined not to contemplate it, not to wreck these precious moments by trying to look into that foggy place that was the future. For once, she would just enjoy what she had been given, no worrying, no analyzing, no planning, no plotting.

“He’s going to be good today,” Ace predicted. “Be good, Happy.”

“Ace thinks he’s going to pull the sleigh. I think he won’t. Unless there’s a cliff nearby that he can pull us all off.”

“I don’t think horses are that…devious, are they?” Morgan asked. The stocky miniature steed trying to sidestep the traces was so different from the stallion of her imagination she laughed out loud again.

Or maybe the laughter had nothing to do with the surprise of the pony. It was the day. And being with him. Them. The very air seemed to be tingling with merriment, with joy.

Snow was beginning to fall gently. The little horse stamped his feet and shook his mane, and a lovely smell drifted up from him. In the background was a redbrick farmhouse, snow drifts in the front yard, a cheery wreath on the front door.

Ace had told her that was her aunt Molly’s house, and that she wasn’t home right now. Happy had been her Christmas gift from her aunt last year.

Morgan thought it took a pretty special aunt to know what a hard time Christmas would be for this child, and to come up with a gift good enough to make a dent in all that sadness.

In fact mischief and merriment seemed to dance in the air around the pony. Finally, Nate loaded her and Ace into a red sleigh. The pony did have bells on, and as it set off, their music filled the air.

And that was about the only part of Morgan’s fantasy that had been realistic. Nate wasn’t even cuddled under a blanket with her and Ace. He walked to one side of the pony, trying to persuade him to keep up a forward motion.

An hour later, Morgan thought she had never laughed so hard in her entire life. She was doubled over she was laughing so hard.

“You have to stop,” Morgan gasped. She was begging.

“We are stopped,” Nate pointed out, not sharing her amusement. “That’s the problem. Unhappy hasn’t moved for ten minutes.”

It was snowing, but it was no longer big, gentle flakes floating down around them. It was coming down hard now, the wind whipping it up in gusts around the sleigh. But even the freezing cold could not dampen Morgan’s enjoyment.

Nate stood in front of Happy, pulling on the pony’s obstinate head, trying to get him to move.

The pony had pulled the little sleigh, with Ace and Morgan in it, only in stops and starts, mostly stops. Ace held the reins, and jiggled them and shouted encouragement, while her father walked slightly behind and to the right of the pony.

Forward movement was accomplished sporadically when Nate slapped the pony’s ample brown-and-white rump with his gloves.

Now, a mile from the house, Happy was no longer startled by the rather frequent popping across his rump with the gloves. Apparently he had decided against forward motion and was not going to be persuaded with glove smacks.

“I think he likes it,” Morgan said, watching the pony sway his rump happily into the pressure of Nate’s hand after every increasingly vigorous smack with the gloves. Happy turned his head just enough that she could see the pony’s decidedly beady eyes half shut in an expression that Morgan had to assume was pure pleasure.

Nate had his hands firmly planted on either side of the pony’s headstall and was leaning back hard on his heels, pulling with all his might.

“Come on, you dastardly little devil.”

Considerable as Nate’s might was, the pony outweighed him by several hundred pounds. Happy planted his own feet, and showed Nate he wasn’t the only one who could lean back!

“There’s a dog-food factory waiting for you!” Nate warned the pony darkly. “One phone call. The meat wagon comes by here on Monday.”

“Please stop,” Morgan begged again. All this cold, all this jolting and all this laughter was having the most unfortunate effect on her kidneys.

“He’s just kidding,” Ace whispered. “He says that every time.”

The pony stepped back instead of forward, pulling Nate with him.

“On second thought, dog food is too good for you,” Nate muttered. “Bear bait. The bear-bait wagon comes by on Wednesday.”

The pony cocked his head, as if he was actually considering this, then stepped back again, yanking Nate backward with him.

“Please,” Morgan moaned.

“It’s time for the apple,” Ace yelled. If she was enjoying her sleigh ride any less for its lack of forward movement it didn’t show in her shining face.

“I am not bribing him to move. I’m just not. It’s a matter of pride with me. Hathoways are renowned for their pride, Morgan.”

But after another few minutes of unsuccessfully playing tug-of-war with the four-hundred-pound pony, Nate sighed and produced an apple, apparently kept on hand for just this purpose.

With a sigh of resignation, he held it at arm’s length. Happy opened one eye, caught sight of the apple and lurched forward.

A terrible move for a suffering kidney.

“Greedy little pig,” Nate muttered, keeping the apple carefully out of the snapping pony’s reach and breaking into a jog.

Morgan howled with laughter as the fat pony stirred himself into a trot, stretching his neck hard to get the apple. The sleigh jolted along behind him, as Nate wisely looped back toward the barn while the pony was moving!

They finally got back to the barn, Happy’s only true ambition demonstrated when that building came back into view and he broke into a clumsy gallop that had Nate running to keep up.

“Give him the apple, Daddy,” Ace insisted when they arrived at the barn door.

Panting, Nate obliged, yanking back his fingers when Happy tried to devour them along with the apple.

Morgan decided then and there you could learn a lot about the true nature of a man from how he bargained with a pony—and from the lengths he was willing to go to make his daughter happy.

Nate helped Morgan out of the sled with a rueful grin. He gave a little bow. “I see I have entertained you.” And then more solemnly revealed, looking at her so intently her face burned, “I like it when you laugh, Morgan McGuire.”

“I like it, too.”

“I’m sure that this was not exactly what you pictured when I promised you a sleigh ride.”

“The truth?” she said. “It’s not. And it was so much better! Except for one thing.” She leaned forward and whispered her urgent need to him.

“Ace? Take Miss McGuire up to the house.”

The door of the farmhouse opened just as they arrived. An attractive wholesome-looking woman with dark hair and a Christmas sweater smiled her welcome at them.

“Aunt Molly!” Ace cried.

“You must be frozen,” Molly said, as she gave Ace a huge hug.

“Actually,” Morgan said awkwardly, “if you could point me in the direction of—”

Thankfully she didn’t even have to finish the sentence, because Molly laughed. “Right there. I’ve jounced around in that sled, too.”

When Morgan joined them again, Molly explained she had been out Christmas shopping when they arrived.

“How was Happy today?” she asked her niece.

“Happy was extra bad for Daddy today,” Ace declared gleefully.

“Oh, good,” Molly said, and they all shared a laugh that made Morgan feel, again, that deepening sense of family, of being part of a sacred circle. She had a sense of ease with Molly that usually she would not have with a person quite so quickly.

“I’m Morgan McGuire, Ace’s teacher,” Morgan said, extending her hand.

“Oh, the famous Mrs. McGuire.”

“It’s Miss. I can’t get that through to the kids. I’ve stopped trying.”

“Miss. Oh,” Molly said, and she turned and looked down to where Nate was taking the harness off the pony. Her eyes went back to Morgan full of soft question.

Questions that Morgan was thankful had not been spoken out loud, because she would have had no idea how to answer them.

There was something happening between her and Nate, there was no question about that. But it was ill-defined and nebulous. Were they becoming friends? Morgan thought it was something more. Possibly a lot more. But did he?

“Ace’s mom, Nate’s wife, Cindy, was my sister,” Molly said, leading Morgan through to the kitchen.

It could have been an awkward moment, but it wasn’t.

Molly laid her hand on Morgan’s. “We love him very much. We just want him back. Sometimes,” she mused, sighing, “I feel as if I lost all three of them.”

“Three?” Morgan said.

“Never mind. It’s a long story. And maybe it will have a happy ending someday. I could have sworn when I looked out the kitchen window a few minutes ago, I saw Nate smiling. A rare enough occurrence in the last two years, and even rarer after he’s had to deal with the pony!

“Oh. Here’s Keith, my husband. Keith, this is Morgan. Nate brought her out to have a sleigh ride with Ace.”

No mention of her true role in their lives, as Ace’s teacher.

“And how was that?” Keith asked her.

“One of the most deliriously delightful experiences of my life.”

He watched her for a moment, and like his wife, seemed satisfied.

Silly, to be so pleased that Nate’s family by marriage liked her. They hardly knew her.

Though that seemed to be a circumstance they were determined to change, because after Nate came in, stomping the snow off his boots, they were all invited to share the pot of chili that had been heating on the stove.

“Morgan?” Nate asked. “Does that fit with your schedule?”

Schedule? Oh, a woman more clever than her would probably at least pretend to be busy on a Saturday night. But somehow, there was no way you could play games with a man as real as Nate.

Or not mind games. Not flirting games. Other games? He proved to be enormously good at them.

Because after the feed of chili in the warmth of the kitchen, with banter going back and forth between the two men, there was just an expectation they would stay. The kitchen table was cleared of dishes and a worn deck of cards came out.

They taught her to play a game called 99 that she was hopeless at. But two late night’s in a row soon proved too much for Ace, and despite her winning streak at 99 she finally went and laid down on the couch and fell asleep.

And then the adults gathered around the fireplace, and Molly made hot rum toddies, though Nate refused and had hot chocolate instead.

Morgan wished she had refused, too. The drink filled her with a sense of warmth and well-being as the talk flowed around her. About the farm and the forge, the coming production of The Christmas Angel.

“Did you hear they were deciding who gets to go by a lottery system?” Molly asked.

Morgan confirmed that. There were only three hundred seats available in the auditorium, so the seats would be given away by a lottery system. But she told them that there would be a live feed to the community center and one of the local churches so that everyone who wanted could see it.

“And have they chosen the Christmas Angel yet?” Molly said, casting a worried look at her sleeping niece. “She’s called me several times about it. Tonight’s the first night I haven’t heard her mention it.”

“I understand Mr. Wellhaven will announce the choice at his welcome party. It’s a skating party at the pond, a week from tonight. He’s been sent video of some of the rehearsals.”

“I’d like it to be over with,” Molly said.

“Me, too,” Nate said. “I hate to think how disappointed she’s going to be.”

“Who knows?” Morgan said. “Maybe she won’t be disappointed. Maybe it will be her.”

Molly’s and Nate’s mouths fell open in equal expressions of shocked disbelief.

“Ace?” they said together.

“I’ve told all the girls they have an equal chance of being chosen.”

“But that’s not true,” Nate said grimly. “Ace can’t sing a note, and she doesn’t look like anyone’s idea of an angel.”

“Her singing has actually improved quite a lot under Mrs. Wellhaven’s tutelage.”

“She sings all those songs around the house all the time. I haven’t noticed any improvement.”

“Well,” Morgan said firmly, “there has been. And I think anyone with a little imagination could see she would make a perfectly adorable Christmas Angel.”

“I don’t want her getting her hopes up for something that doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of happening.”

It was the first grim note in a perfect day, so Molly quickly changed the subject, but the mood had shifted.

A few minutes later, saying goodbye on the doorstep, Nate cradling the sleeping child against his chest, it seemed to Morgan as if she had never had a more perfect day. She realized it was not the toddy alone that allowed her to feel this sense of warmth and well-being. It had only allowed her to relax into the feeling instead of analyzing it.

“Nate,” she said, as they drove through the snow, “it’s so nice that you still are so connected with them, with Cindy’s family.”

He shot her a surprised look. “Family is family. They became my family the day I married Cindy.”

Morgan shivered. She had always known he was a forever kind of man. Not like in her own family, where loyalties shifted with each new liaison. She could feel herself longing for what he represented.

Morgan realized tonight had been the kind of night she had always dreamed of.

A simple night of family. And connection. A feeling of some things not being temporary.

“I still think it’s nice,” she said.

“We had already lost Cindy. It would have just made everything so much worse if we lost each other. Ace is what remains, she’s what Cindy is sending forward into the future. I could never keep her from her aunt, from her mom’s sister.”

But Morgan thought of all the people—including her own family—that when something happened, like a divorce, that’s exactly what they did.

“When my mom and dad divorced,” she told him, “it was like my dad’s whole side of the family, including him, just faded away.”

“You didn’t have any contact with your dad?”

“A bit, at first. Then he moved for a job, and then he remarried. So, it was a card and some money on my birthday. He always paid my mother support, though.”

“Yippee for him,” Nate said darkly. “There’s a lot more to being a dad than paying the bills.”

“Yes,” she said. “I can see that in the way you parent.”

“Now you like my parenting?” he teased her. “What about the notes?”

“You haven’t gotten one for a while!”

“I kind of miss them.”

“You do not.”

They were in front of her house now, but he made no move to get out of the truck. “What your dad did? That was wrong,” he said, after a long time. “And sad.”

She liked that about Nate Hathoway. He had a strong value system. He knew what was right and what was wrong, and he would never compromise that.

“Nate, tell me if it’s none of my business, but did someone else die, besides your wife? Molly said something.”

For a long moment he didn’t answer. Then he said gruffly, “There were three of us who grew up together. Me, Cindy and David. Cindy and David had been in love since they were about twelve. I mean really in love. The head-over-heels kind. Some people outgrow things like that, other people don’t. They didn’t.”

He was silent for a long, long time. “David joined the army. Before he left he made me promise I’d look after her. If anything happened.”

“Something happened,” Morgan guessed when he was silent for a long time again.

He cast her a look that said it all, that confirmed that strong value system.

“David was killed in Iraq,” he said roughly. “And I looked after Cindy, just like I promised.”

She wanted to ask if he loved her, but it was so evident from the agony on his face that he had loved her. Loved both his friends.

“You are a good man,” she whispered. She wanted to ask, Did she love you? The really-in-love kind? The head-over-heels kind? But she could tell by the set of his face he already felt he might have said too much.

He shrugged it off uncomfortably, and they pulled up to her house. He shut off the truck, and leaped out, not wanting to discuss it anymore. Still, he walked her up to her front door, helped her with the key.

“Thank you, Nate,” she said softly. “It was such a perfect day.”

“You’re welcome.” He turned to go down off her stoop.

Maybe it was the hot rum toddy.

Or maybe it wasn’t. Maybe it was that he was a good, good man, who had made a vow to his best friend and kept it. Maybe it was because she thought he deserved to be really in love and suspected that he had sacrificed that feeling in the name of honor.

“Nate?”

He turned back to her.

Something else had been between them all day, too.

Awareness.

She crossed the small distance between them, stood on tiptoes and did what she had wanted to do from the moment she had met him.

She tasted him. She touched her lips to his own.

He tasted exactly as she had known he would.

Of mysterious things that made a woman’s heart race, but underneath that, of strength and solidness. Of a man who would do the right thing.

Of things made to last forever.

She stumbled back from him, both frightened and intrigued by the strength of her longing.

He was a man, she knew, who had been tremendously hurt.

She held her breath knowing that everything between them had just shifted with the invitation of her lips.

So far everything had been casual and spontaneous.

Now their kiss changed that.

It asked for more. It demanded some definition, it asked where things were going. It asked if he was ready to really fall in love.

The head-over-heels kind.

Because despite it all, despite her determination to be independent, to not give her life away, she felt ready to surrender to the tug inside her.

To love him.

Morgan held her breath, thinking he would walk away, perhaps never to look back.

But he didn’t. He regarded her solemnly, and then said, softly, “Wow.”

Then he walked away, leaving her feeling as if things were even more up in the air and ill-defined than they had been before.

“Mr. Hathoway?”

Nate glanced at the clock. It was just a little after 7 a.m. Morgan must have assumed he was up getting Ace ready for school. The truth was he had the process down to a science. He could get her ready, including hair, breakfast and bag lunch in under fifteen minutes.