Читать книгу His For Christmas - Michelle Douglas, Cara Colter - Страница 13

“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.

“Yes, Miss McGuire?” he asked. Nate hadn’t called her since the sleigh ride, since her unexpected kiss and the clear invitation in it.

He hadn’t called her because he had told her things he had not expected to tell her. She was proving she could take chinks out of armor that not a single other person had even dented.

But Morgan McGuire wanted things that Nate could not promise. After that night with Molly and Keith, playing games, laughing, everything easy and light, he was aware of a deep longing in him, too.

To have a life like the one he’d had before. A stable life, where you woke up in the morning and trusted the day would go as you planned.

The truth? He wasn’t even sure he could be the man he had been before, a man naively unaware how quickly things could go wrong in the world, naively believing his strength would be enough to protect those he loved from harm.

He was aware how vulnerable answering a longing like that made a man.

“I’d like to discuss my last note with you.”

But here was another truth. Despite his desire to harden himself against Morgan McGuire, her temptations and invitations, he could feel a smile starting somewhere in the vicinity of his chest. He relished it, that he was lying in bed under the warmth of his blanket, the phone to his ear, listening to her.

He relished when she used that snippy, schoolmarm tone of voice on him. He wondered when that had happened, exactly, that he had started enjoying that schoolmarm tone.

“I sent you a request to send cookies for Mr. Wellhaven’s welcome party at the skating rink at Old Sawmill Pond.”

“I sent the damned cookies.”

Silence. “We’ve discussed cussing.”

“Ace is still in bed.”

He could tell she was debating asking how he could get her ready for school in time if she was still in bed, but she wisely decided to stick to one topic at a time.

“All right,” Morgan said, after a pause. “Let’s discuss the damned cookies, then.”

The smile was turning to laughter. He bit it back.

“I’m in charge of cookies for the welcome party for Mr. Wellhaven. He’ll be arriving Saturday.”

“The note said that.” Plus, Ace was in excitement overdrive about the skating party to be held at the pond in Mr. Wellhaven’s honor. Nate was going to have to give her the gift he had planned to give his daughter from Santa—the new skates—early.

“You said you missed my notes,” she pointed out.

“Hmm,” he returned, noncommittally. “I did say that.” He realized what he missed was her.

“After she received my note, Mrs. Weston sent four dozen sugar cookies decorated individually like giftwrapped Christmas parcels.”

“Good for Ashley.”

“Mrs. Campbell sent three dozen chocolate-dipped snowmen. Sharon McKinley sent melt-in-your-mouth shortbread, shaped like Christmas balls, with icing ribbons.”

“How did you know they were melt-in-your-mouth? Are you sampling the cookies, Miss McGuire? Tut-tut.” He heard her bite back laughter.

Why were the simplest things such a joy with her?”

“Mrs. Bonnabell sent—

“Look, it sounds like you have plenty of cookies. You won’t even need the box of Peek Freans I sent over.”

“That is hardly the point, Mr. Hathoway.”

“What is the point?”

“Everyone else made the effort.”

“Fine. I’ll ask Molly to whip me up a batch of brown snowmen, with ribbons around their necks, holding Christmas parcels. Individually decorated.”

“Your listening skills are very good, Mr. Hathoway.”

“Thank you.” Ridiculous to feel pleased that she had noticed how closely he listened to her every word. However, he guessed.

“However,” Morgan continued, “I don’t really think it’s fair to ask Molly to contribute to our class project.”

“I don’t know how to make cookies.”

“Well, yes, I understand that. It is a situation that can be remedied. I mean, a few short weeks ago, I didn’t know how to hang a coat hanger.”

“You’re not exactly ready to start building furniture.”

“No, I suppose not.”

Said a bit doubtfully, as if she might actually be considering trying to build some furniture. He reminded himself he’d have to follow up on getting her a new hammer before she wrecked something else trying to use the one she had.

“The point is,” Morgan said, “I was willing to learn. If you and Ace would like to come over this afternoon after school, I would be happy to teach you how to make Christmas cookies.”

His schedule had become insane because of the volunteer hours he was putting in on the set of The Christmas Angel. He still had special orders he had to get out for Christmas, as well as the gate commission.

Plus, he was avoiding Morgan. And her lips. And the clear invitation he had seen in her eyes the other night after the disastrous sleigh ride. Boy, if a sleigh ride like that couldn’t scare a girl off, what would?

And there was the other disastrous thing, too. Telling her about Cindy and David had poked a little hole in the dam of feelings walled up within him…He was all too aware that he might be like the little boy hoping his finger poked in that hole was going to be enough to hold it back.

The thing was, her voice on the other end of the phone was like a lifeline thrown to a man who had been in the water so long he didn’t even know he was drowning.

The thing was, he knew it had cost her to make the move, and he could not bear to hurt her. It seemed she had experienced quite enough hurt in her life. Not at the hands of fate, either, but at the hands of the very people who should have loved and protected her.

Though there was probably a far more sensible way of looking at that. Hurt her a little now. Or a lot later.

He didn’t feel like being sensible. Or maybe, closer to the truth, he was not as sure as he had been a few weeks ago about what sensible was.

“Sure,” he said, as if he grabbed lifelines every single day. “What time would you like us to come make cookies?”