3.5 Roasted in Christmas River (3 page)

He smiled and slid his arms around my waist.

“Probably am,” he said. “Which is too bad for you, being that you married an unsavory type such as me.”

He leaned down and planted a slow burner on my lips. I fell into his arms, noticing too late that the paper bag that had been safely tucked away under my arm had been snatched and was now firmly in his hands.

He’d pulled a fast one on me.

But I could have cared less.

He pulled away, smiling, the whites of his eyes gleaming against his tan skin.

“Gotcha,” he said.

“Don’t kid yourself,” I said. “I
let
you win.”

I smiled back.

“How are things at the office this morning, Sheriff?”

“Been quiet,” he said. “Like a grave. I’ve been bored stiff.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

He shrugged.

This summer had been anything but boring, between the long hours Daniel spent working on cases and the time he spent in the hospital after getting busted up by a runaway horse. The season had been long, hectic, and there had been times when I’d been half out of my mind with worry. But thankfully, things had simmered down. We’d even finally taken that long-delayed honeymoon to Maui earlier this month. It had left us both with dark tans, a sense of giddy happiness, and for me at least, a sadness that it had gone by so quickly.

Two weeks of pure bliss had gone by faster than a coconut down a waterfall.

“It’s not the boredom at the office that I’m concerned about,” Daniel said. “It’s just a feeling that we’re in the quiet before the storm. Like they’re all just saving it for the holiday, you know? The drunk drivers and the thieves and the ruffians...  

“How are things at the pie shop?”

“Good,” I said. “I just… I miss Maui. I miss being with you all day.”

I rested my head on his shoulder.

“I miss those turtles just floating there like they didn’t have a care in the world.”

I let out a short little sigh, thinking about the way the two of us had floated right along, like we were one of them.

“I miss ‘em too, Cin,” Daniel said, leaning his chin on the top of my head.  

We were both quiet for a moment. I thought about those lovely two weeks in the sun. How at peace I’d felt. How wonderful it’d been that it was just the two of us there. No customers, no law breakers, no co-workers, no sheriff’s cars or aprons or bills to pay.

Just the two of us in the deep blue ocean.And those turtles.

It had been a magical time. We got up early and went snorkeling every morning. We took long, lovely afternoon naps as the tropical sun filtered through the drapes. We spent the rest of the afternoon bobbing in the salty ocean. Then at night, we danced to soft ukulele music and ate seafood and drank flavored rum cocktails, the cool Hawaiian breeze rustling through the palm trees around our Lanai.

We lay in each other’s arms until daybreak. Then we did it all over again.   

It had been a dream.

But as with all dreams, you had to wake up sometime.

I’d woken up to a backlog of pie orders, a busted oven at the shop, and below-freezing weather that came as a shock after the pristine 82-degree, breezy weather of the islands.

Still, I couldn’t complain all that much. I liked being back in the kitchen, doing the thing I had been born to do – baking pies. Plus, there hadn’t been any Huckleberry in Hawaii. And besides, I was looking forward to Thanksgiving, despite all the work that lay ahead.

“It is beautiful here, though, isn’t it?” Daniel said, as if reading my mind. Knowing that I wasn’t quite as sad about being back as I was pretending to be.

He took in a big breath of fresh forest air.

“Maui’s beautiful and all. But this?” he said nodding in the river’s general direction. “This is in our blood, Cin. This is where we belong.”

“You wouldn’t trade it all for palm trees and a Lanai if you could?” I said.

He shook his head.

“I’d miss this air, here,” he said. “I’d miss the history.”

“The history?” I said.

Christmas River had a past like any other Western town, but I’d never known Daniel to be all that interested in it. That was more my grandfather’s department.

“Yeah,” he said. “I mean, I’d miss
our
history. For example this here bridge? This was where I almost lost you three years ago. You remember that?”

I smiled because I could now, looking back on that dark day. At the time, it hadn’t been something to smile about. Daniel said goodbye to me on this bridge then. He said he was leaving town, that there was something inside of him that wasn’t any good. That he wasn’t what I wanted – a former cop who’d been through the emotional ringer.

That it would never have worked between us.

I felt the gold band on my finger.

He’d been so wrong back then.

“Of course I remember,” I said.

“Or that place in the woods behind your shop where I ended up that night in the storm,” he continued. “I saw the lights of the kitchen and saw you in there working. And I thought to myself,
That woman’s got something I want.
”

I cracked a smile.

“Yeah,” I said. “A big ‘ol slice of pie.”

He grinned.

“All right, you got me.” he said. “Maybe food was my first motivation. But I had a change of heart shortly after.”

He put his arm over my shoulder and we started strolling down the bridge.

“You see, I wouldn’t give up any of that for the world,” he said. “Not for all the turtles in the South Pacific.”

I smiled.

We walked for a little ways along the east bank of the river. But it wasn’t long before Daniel’s lunch break was up and he had to get back to work.

And I knew I should probably be getting back to the shop too.

I kissed him goodbye and watched as he walked through the woods back to the Sheriff’s Office, holding the paper bag of Cranberry Apple Walnut Pie in his hands as if it was a prisoner he’d been put in charge of.

That man sure loved his pie.

I made my way slowly back to the shop, letting Huckleberry explore the woods as much as he wanted to along the way, lost in the memories Daniel had stirred with his talking.

I smiled.

He was right.

I wouldn’t have given up what we both had here in Christmas River for all the turtles and snorkeling and sunny, warm tropical blue days in the world.

This was where we belonged.

This was our home.

Chapter 6

“I swear, Cin, it was the most hideous thing you’ve ever seen,” Kara said, shoveling another overflowing forkful of pumpkin pie into her mouth. “It was painted this putrid color of pea soup. And not just pea soup, the most vile, rotten pea soup you can think of. I did my best to be gracious, but goodness. That had to be the
ugliest
crib I’ve ever seen. I don’t think I was able to keep the look of horror off my face.”

I cupped my hands around a steaming mug of pomegranate tea and tried hard not to break out in childish giggles.

Kara had just finished telling me about her morning. About how the mother of her soon-to-be husband, John, had stopped by Kara’s ornament store that morning, telling her that she had a giant present for her sitting in the car. Kara had been touched by the gesture, which was saying something, given Kara’s well-known dislike for John’s mother.

That is, until she saw what was stashed in the trunk of Mrs. Billings’ car.

“I’m sure it can’t be
that
bad, Kara,” I said. “She’s probably just excited about having a grandchild on the way, and since you don’t know if it’s going to be a girl or a boy yet, she was probably trying to go with a neutral color.”

Kara let out a stiff, skeptical laugh.  

“I’m pretty sure the woman knows exactly what she was doing,” she said, inhaling the last half of her pie slice like she hadn’t eaten anything in weeks. “That’s Mrs. Billings all over. But it shocks me that she’d be so cruel to her own grandchild. I can only imagine the emotional damage being in a crib that color would cause the baby.”

I could only shake my head.

Kara had a way of exaggerating things wildly.

Which was one of the reasons I loved her so much. There was never a dull moment in my best friend’s life.

Plus, she was right about John’s mother. I knew that Mrs. Billings wasn’t an easy person to deal with. I’d found that little fact out last Thanksgiving. After inviting her to my dinner table, she’d spent most of the night berating the butter and sugar content of my most delicious dishes, warning that heart trouble was in store for everyone at the table if they ate what I’d made.

Luckily, no one listened to her. She spent the rest of the night scowling bitterly in the corner, snacking on green beans.

And somehow, despite that terribly rude showing, I had yet again invited Mrs. Billings and her son, John Billings, to my table Thanksgiving Day. I’d done it because I saw no other way around it: I wanted Kara and John there, and excluding his mother would have been downright rude.

Sometimes that’s just how Thanksgiving was. You had to take the baggage that came along with your loved ones, no matter how many bitter old ladies that baggage contained.  

The timer beeped, and I got up and checked on the double-crusted Whiskey Apple pies that were baking in the oven. The tops weren’t quite the color of rich caramel brown that signified being fully cooked, so I reset the timer for another ten minutes and then went back over to the kitchen island, where Kara and I had been sitting.

“Speaking of the baby,” I said, smiling, tickled a little at the idea – it was still a relatively new bit of news for me. Kara had only found out in September that she was pregnant. “How’ve you been feeling lately?”

Kara cleaned the gingersnap crumbs off the back of her fork like a starved grizzly bear licking every last drop of honey off a honeycomb. Then she stared down at her empty plate.

She glanced back at the half-eaten pie in the middle of the kitchen island. I could see food lust dancing in her eyes.

It seemed like plenty of hungry folks were populating my pie shop today.  

I didn’t ask. I grabbed her plate and pushed another slice of Gingersnap Pumpkin onto it. She went for it like a ravenous cannibal.

“Oh, Cin,” she said, in between bites. “I’m getting
so
fat. Yesterday I busted two buttons on my favorite shirt. I can only imagine what else is in store for me these next few months.”

She sighed, feigning a somewhat depressed attitude. But I didn’t buy it for a second. The tone of her voice didn’t sound depressed at all.

The past month, Kara had started getting used to the idea that she was going to be a mother. And I could tell by the way she spoke now that she wasn’t scared anymore, the way she had been when she’d told me in September that she was expecting.

She seemed to actually be excited about the prospect now, and that made me happy to see.   

“Well, you might feel like you’re getting fat, but you certainly don’t look it,” I said. “You’re hardly showing.”

“Aw, Cin,” she said, her words muffled on account of her inhaling the slice faster than the first. “You’re just trying to be nice.”

“No, really,” I said.

She waved her hand at me.

“Don’t lie,” she said. “You’re no good at it. And I know I’m gaining weight faster than a fat cat trapped overnight in a Petco.”

I shrugged and smiled.

“You’re looking great, Kara,” I said. “I’m not lying about that.”

She leaned back on the kitchen stool and let out a long sigh.

“I don’t know about that either,” she said. “But I can tell you one thing. I’m pretty happy these days.”

I smiled.

That meant all the world to me. Especially after how unhappy and unsettled she’d been this summer.

“Even more so after that pumpkin pie,” she said. “Did you change the recipe for that? I don’t remember it being
so
good.”

“Same old pumpkin pie recipe I’ve been using for ages,” I said.

“Well, I guess it’s just my newfound love for food talking, then,” she said, standing up from her stool with some difficulty. “Well, Cin, this quickly expanding lady had better go back to the ornament shop and get some work done ahead of Black Friday.”

“If you must,” I said sadly, taking her plate away and putting it in the dishwasher.

I guessed that was one of the ways you could tell when you were best friends with somebody. It just never seemed like you had enough time to talk to each other.  

“Oh, I was gonna ask,” she said, pulling on her jacket and draping a silk orange scarf around her neck. “Is there anything I can help you with cooking-wise ahead of turkey day?”

I shook my head.  

“Nice of you to offer, but get out of town, pregnant lady,” I said. “All I want is for you and John to enjoy yourselves that evening. You just leave the cooking to me.”

She smiled appreciatively.

“You’re an angel, Cin,” she said. “I’ve also been meaning to thank you for inviting
you-know-who
to Thanksgiving this year. Especially after she was such a pain in the behind last year. But it means a lot to John. I can tell.”

“Of course,” I said, as if I was actually looking forward to having Mrs. Billings at my table again. “But if you could, just let her highness of health know that I’m not holding back on the butter on her account. She can stick to the green beans and peas if it offends her so.”

Kara grinned.

“I’ll let her know,” she said. “But, you know, I do think she’ll be perfectly content sticking to the peas. It is her favorite color after all.”

We both started laughing.

“Oh, Cin,” she finally said. “What am I getting myself into with this marriage? Can you believe I’m signing myself up for a lifetime of playing daughter-in-law to that woman?”

“Aw,” I said. “That’s a small price to pay for what you’re getting.”

“I suppose that’s one way of looking at it.”

She was trying to be sarcastic, but it didn’t come out that way.

She was smitten with her soon-to-be husband. And she couldn’t hide it.