His Holiday Heart (12 page)

“We’ve had a taste of that in our family when Jonas was wounded.” His baritone dipped intimately, full of honesty. “It was hard on the munchkins. Madison was too little to understand, but Tyler knew. They were away from us for the holidays, living in a hotel and seeing Jonas when they could. It’s a good thing you do, Lucy. You make a difference.”

“Not such a big difference.” She cut into her burrito. “I wasn’t the one who was Santa Claus. You brought a lot of joy to some little people who really deserved it.”

“It was a sacrifice to my dignity wearing that hat.” He unwrapped his first taco, fighting not to reveal the truth in his heart. “I see what you must have gone through, Lucy. My dignity is nothing when compared to that.”

“Don’t start being nice to me, please.” She smiled but kept her focus on the swipe of her knife and fork cutting the burrito in little bites. She probably thought she was hiding her pain, but he could see it.

“Why? You’re afraid you’re going to start liking me more? I’m nicer than you think, Lucy.”

She didn’t say anything, cutting away. She was going to run out of burrito, but he understood what she couldn’t say. He could see how she had been like those mothers in the children’s wing, attentive and devoted, frazzled and worn and fighting not to let it show. “How could he have let you go?”

Pain creased her forehead, creating cute little lines—lines he wanted to rub away with the pads of his fingers. He fought the urge to reach across the table. The overwhelming need gripped him to right things for her. He wanted to make sure she never hurt like that again.

“When Jim lost his son, he lost his heart, too. There was simply nothing left. I did everything I could, but in the end he had closed off too much of his heart. He stopped being able to love. He didn’t want me. There was nothing I could do.”

She was the tragedy of it. He could see without words what had happened, maybe because he closed down his feelings, too, when he had to. It was his way of dealing.

“It had to kill a part of you to know you couldn’t do anything for him.” He could see that, too. “How long did you wait for him?”

“Ten years.” Lucy stabbed a piece of burrito with her fork but left both fork and food on the plate. She reached for her straw and took off the bit of paper. “For the first few years after Christian’s death, I stood by Jim even when he pushed me away. And he was harsh. He was hurting. I was hurting, too. I knew that if I hung in there, the Jim I knew and loved would come back to me. That was the first book I sold. I set the story in 1865 Montana, but it was a story about a man who came home from the Civil War changed and the woman who loved and waited patiently for his soul to return.”

The secret to Lucy having been revealed, he set down his taco. “Her story ended happily, but yours didn’t.”

“True.” She took a sip of iced tea, more beautiful for all that he knew about her. “Jim never returned to me. I think it was safer for him.”

Safer. Wasn’t that the word he often used? He reached for his tea, giving him time to think. Safe was simply being smart. Safe was prudent and wise and cautious. It’s better to be safe than sideswiped by a broken vow or love falling apart.

“That’s why you write?” he asked.

“It’s my way to dream.” She took another sip of tea. “How about you, Spence?”

“I don’t approve of dreams.”

“I could have guessed that.” She rolled her eyes, and he loved the way she did it. She was adorable. “I meant, I’ve told you mine, now it’s your turn to tell me about your hurt.”

The air wheezed out of his lungs. “Are you sure we can’t keep talking about yours?”

“Have mercy on me.”

How could he refuse? He felt helpless to do anything but what she wanted. It was a definite warning sign, but he didn’t seem alarmed. He ought to be, but he was sliding deeper into love with her every moment. He picked up his taco and took a bite. “I don’t have any romantic tragedies to share with you.”

“That’s because you have never let anyone get that close to you.” She pushed a stray curl out of her eyes. “Do I dare mention something must be wrong with a man your age who has never had a serious relationship?”

“Sure, go ahead and say it. Everyone else has.” He took another bite. “I’m disagreeable enough that no decent woman will have me, which basically means I don’t want the kind of woman who would be interested in me.”

“You are impossible.”

“I’ve heard that before.” He dragged a Mexi-fry through the salsa. “I don’t know how it happened. I had a few less than serious girlfriends when I was younger—”

“Less than serious?”

“I was the one who wasn’t serious.”

“Ah, so you were that kind of man. You never were going to love those poor girls. Not really.”

“Yes, but I didn’t know that. I thought—” It was his turn to roll his eyes. “I don’t know what I thought. Dad had been able to make his second marriage work. Dorrie is great. I know there are decent women out there. I just panicked. Just because someone says they love you doesn’t mean it’s true. Or that it will turn out to be true.”

“I know that for sure.” She was pure understanding. “It happened to me. Love is a perilous journey.”

“Which is why I’ve never set foot on that path.”

“What happened to your mother?” She took a bite of her burrito, watching him carefully as if she thought she could figure out his truths.

This meant it was a good idea to shield his heart a little more. “Linda took off when I was thirteen. She took off in the family car with Lauren, who was about two at the time.”

“She didn’t just abandon you, she tore your family apart.”

“That she did.” Spence tried to shield away the memories of the adolescent boy who had been crushed. Linda had been one to share her unhappiness. He remembered that unhappiness now, still aching after all these years.
You ruined my life, Spencer, not just my figure. With you, it was one selfish demand after another.
“Linda forever broke my belief in happily ever afters. They are not as common as you might think.”

“True, but they aren’t unheard of either. Your family is full of them. Look at your sisters.”

“I try not to.” He didn’t know how to explain that he feared even a good marriage was simply doom waiting to happen. “My sisters defy logic.”

“You really are a glass-is-half-empty kind of man.”

“I try to be.” It was safe. It was smart, which was why he was busy sectioning off his softer emotions, the ones he had no right feeling for Lucy. This was all happening way too fast. He could not be carried away by the fairy tale of love.

And he was panicking just a little. But when he gazed at sweet Lucy, he wanted more than anything to open his heart and let her in.

“O
h no. Look at my car.” Lucy waded into the parking lot in the knee-deep snow. “What is with the weather this winter? We had maybe six inches of snow last year.”

“That was an usually warm winter. This is Montana. We used to get snow like this all the time when I was a kid.” He hiked through the accumulation as if it were nothing.

Sure, because he had longer legs, the snow wasn’t proportionally as deep. “I can’t drive in this. Look. Snow is up to the car door. Half the tires are buried.”

“You are the city slicker who thought it would be a good idea to relocate here, right?” He beeped his truck remote and the locks popped. “See why I think your car is ridiculous?”

“What’s wrong with my car?”

“It high centers on speed bumps.” He opened his truck’s passenger door, presumably for her. “Notice how my truck doesn’t? I can drive home in a snowstorm.”

“All I have to do is get out of the parking lot. The street is plowed. I can see the snow berm from here.” She unlocked her door and tossed her purse onto the seat. “Where did I put my ice scraper?”

“Pop the trunk.” Spence closed the door and walked to the back of her car, waiting as she hit the lever. “I put it there when I dug out your car.”

“I don’t think you should have to scrape my windshield since you paid for dinner.”

“As long as we don’t make this a habit, I’ll be fine with clearing off your car tonight.” He started scraping her back window. “Go ahead and start up the engine. Let it get warm.”

No wonder your sisters love you so much, she thought as she complied. The engine turned over, icy air blew out of the vents and she adjusted the settings. Two feet had to have fallen while they had been eating. How long had they been talking? She checked the clock in the dash. Two and a half hours! It was nearly eight o’clock.

No, that couldn’t be right. Could it? She pulled out her cell phone and checked the screen. Yikes. Time had evaporated. Then again, she had been having fun talking with Spence. The trip to the hospital seemed to have opened him up. Maybe it was the power of the Christmas season or perhaps she had been wrong about Spence all along. He might be very effective at putting up walls, but he had let them down for her tonight.

Interesting. She watched the man in her rearview mirror, working at sweeping the snow off the car roof. His face was set with grim determination, but he had the spirit of a generous and giving man. Maybe it would be all right to let herself fall in love with him—just a tiny bit.

It wasn’t as if she could sit around and let him do all the work. She felt under her seat for something that might work like an ice scraper. There was no telling what she might come up with. Her car wasn’t messy, but things did tend to slip beneath the seat when she wasn’t paying attention.

She stretched as far as she could reach and bumped something straight-edged with her fingertips. She seized it and gave a good yank. How about that—a Tupperware lid. That should work.

“What do you think you’re doing?” He demanded the instant she stepped out of the car. He was working on the driver’s side windows.

“I’m helping.”

“With a food container lid?”

“Why not? I might as well make myself useful.” She shivered as the wind gusted and drove right through her goose down coat. “Besides, it’s my car.”

“I don’t care. You’re not standing around getting chilled. This will only take a minute.” He stole the lid from her gloved hands, as if he thought he were the boss of her.

Should she be indignant? It felt as if he had crossed a line. She swiped snow out of her face and gazed up at the towering man who glared down at her with unmistakable affection.

“You are too important to the Christmas project,” he said softly and set her lid on the top of the roof beneath the ice scraper.

“Me? If you catch a cold, then we are out a Santa. The kids would be terribly disappointed.”

“There’s no replacing you, Lucy.” He shook the snow off his leather gloves and cradled her chin in both hands. “You are one of a kind.”

Why did he have to be like this? He made it impossible to resist falling. Love seeped into the broken places within her, wiping out a decade of loneliness and loss. Love for him glowed like new life within her, and as they both hesitated, her pulse beat with fear.

He was going to kiss her. They both knew it. She watched his gaze settle on her mouth before his lips slanted over hers. Ever so slowly, his lips met hers in a sweet, soul-tingling kiss. She curled her fingers into the fabric of his coat, holding on. It could have been the battering push of the ruthless wind that had her losing her balance, but the truth was harder to face.

Spence ended the kiss and did not move away. He gazed down at her, letting her know that he meant what she had felt. He also was debating about kissing her again.

Panic lashed at her, and she held on to him tightly. As long as she didn’t move, then she wouldn’t have the urge to leap into her car and race off, despite the depth of the snow and her uncleared windshield. It was scary thinking about taking a step onto a romantic path. The last time she loved a man, he had left her devastated.

“Please get into the car where it’s warm so I can finish up the windows.” He handed her the lid. “Let me do this for you.”

His tenderness melted her fear. She complied, but only because she was in love with him—completely, foolishly, one hundred percent in love.

He was just about done with women he had to worry about, Spence thought as he shoveled the walkway. Why did he have to go and kiss Lucy? Now there was another woman he was worried over. He leaned the shovel against the hedge, pulled his coat cuff back and angled his watch toward the porch light. Nine minutes after nine. Lucy should have called by now to tell him she was safely home.

He thought of the roads out in her direction. Fear nibbled at his gut. He should have put his foot down and made her stay in town. Anything could have happened out there on those roads—a slide off, a fallen tree or power lines, wildlife in the roadway. And that was all if the county had managed to plow the road. Her little car was going to high center and then she would be stuck. He did his best not to imagine other vehicles slamming into her and all sorts of injury and horrible outcomes.

If his momentary lapse of judgment in kissing her wasn’t proof enough, then this was. He only worried about people he loved. Love could do him in, render him vulnerable in a way there could never be any protection against.

He grabbed the shovel, mad at himself. He didn’t want to be in love with Lucy. He stomped down the walkway, which was already accumulating more snow, and grumbled all the way into the garage. His truck stood like a silent reminder of all he had done tonight. He had shoveled Lucy’s car out of the deep accumulation, drove a path for her the short distance to the main road and then cut down the central lane between the tires with the shovel he had borrowed from the restaurant. That way she could make it onto the plowed road.

Oh, he was in love with her, about as in love as a man like him could get. He tossed the shovel against the wall and hit the button. As the door cranked down, he kicked the snow off his boots, wishing he hadn’t kissed her tonight. Then he wouldn’t be tied up in knots wondering what could have happened to her. It wasn’t smart to care this much.

He kicked off his boots and marched into the kitchen, shedding his gloves and coat as he went. He hung them to dry over the kitchen chairs and bumped up the thermostat. Another minute had passed and there was still no call.

I’m calling her, he decided. He couldn’t take waiting. He was an impatient man—or, at least that’s what he told himself. Fear stuck in his stomach. He had to know she was okay.

The phone rang in his hand. Lucy’s name and number flashed on the screen. He punched the answer key. “Yep?”

“Spence, it’s me. I’m home safe and sound.”

Whew. Talk about relief. The starch went out of his knees, and he put a hand on the edge of the counter. “Good. How were the roads?”

“The plow was in front of me, so I followed it until I hit my driveway. My car got stuck about two feet in so I had to walk, but I’m here. Bean was glad to see me. Her bowl was halfway down.”

“Tragedy adverted.”

“Exactly. She says hi, by the way. I think she’s a teeny bit fond of you.”

“I can say the same about her.” He wasn’t talking about the cat, but it was the best he could do at saying what he meant. She was safe. She was an adequate driver. Why wouldn’t she be safe? But it wasn’t logic that had him worrying over her. It was love—undeniable, unstoppable love.

“I want to thank you again, Spence. I had a surprisingly nice time.”

“Glad to hear it. I’m sure it was the Mexi-fries, not the company.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that. It’s not every girl who can say she had dinner with Santa Claus.”

“I can say the same thing about sharing tortilla chips with Santa’s helper.” She charmed him when no other woman had been able to get close. Why? He paced down the hallway, turning on lights on his way to the living room. “Speaking of which, I’m assuming you got down what every kid wanted from Santa?”

“I did. Tomorrow I’ll start contacting parents and working out the details. A few siblings were visiting so I was able to get them in my list, but we don’t want to leave anyone out.”

“I’ll have one of my employees go through the store and pick out anything on your list, if that will help.”

“I know it’s your busy time of year, and I’d hate to bother one of your employees. Why don’t I do that after hours?”

“Sure. I won’t even hide in my office. How’s that for having the Christmas spirit?”

“A definite improvement.” She chuckled, rich and low.

The feelings rolled through him, making it impossible to keep a tight rein on his heart. He was walking on dangerous ground, but did it stop him? No. He had never wanted anything as much as the chance to see Lucy again and to simply be alone with her taking in her smile, her laugh and her sweetness.

“What about the rest of the shopping?” he asked. “Christmas is getting closer.”

“Yikes. I know. We’re running out of shopping days fast. I was going to sort through my list tonight and split it up. I had planned to have our volunteers do at least half of the shopping. Why shouldn’t they have fun, too?”

He expected as much. He hit the switch for the gas fireplace and dropped into his recliner. He felt relaxed and content. “Why don’t you and I take the other half?”

“Do you have time?”

“In the evenings, sure.” He had a crammed full schedule, but none of that was stressing him out.

“It sounds perfect. I have a lot of work this week, too. I also have the McKaslin bake-a-thon on Wednesday night.”

“Then we had better make the most of our free time this week. Give me a call after church tomorrow, and we’ll figure out where to meet.”

“Sounds good to me. Hey, Spence?”

Uh-oh. He recognized that tone. “What?”

“I’m glad to see you caught a little bit of Christmas cheer. It looks good on you. Well, good night.”

“’Night.”

He hated that she was hanging up. It was late and getting later. Saying goodbye was the sensible thing. But he wanted to talk with her some more…hear how she grew up…amusing family stories…that kind of thing.

He sat staring into the dancing flames for a long while, thinking over the day with Lucy. It was funny how thinking of her made the house feel less lonely and his life less empty.

If only she could get their kiss out of her mind. Lucy scowled in frustration as she pulled her car to a stop in the plowed lot. It was Sunday afternoon, and the bookstore was closed. She was the lone car on this side of the lot. The rest of the shopping center, newly renovated, was bursting with shoppers. Folks walked to and from stores, loaded down with their purchases.

You can’t sit here and watch them forever. She huffed out a breath and took her key from the ignition. Although sitting in a cold car forever would be easier than facing the man who had kissed her with such tenderness, she could not stop dreaming of it. It was scary trusting someone with her heart again, but what was the alternative?

A shadow moved in the store. Spence was striding her way. He wore a black long-sleeve T-shirt and jeans. He unlocked the front door and poked his head out. He certainly looked glad to see her.

That was how she felt, too, brimming with happiness from simply seeing him. She grabbed her purse and was hardly aware of how she got to the door, only that she was with him.

“Thanks for coming this late.” He waited until she stepped inside to lock the door after her. “I want to leave the lights on low, if you don’t mind. I don’t want one of my sisters driving by and noticing the two of us here together. The next thing you know, my phone will be ringing off the hook.”

“I understand.” She felt the same way. What was happening between them was private. There was nothing more personal than matters of the heart. She slipped out of her coat. “I caught sight of you in church, but you were with your grandmother so I didn’t intrude. Did you get her home all right?”

“Sure did.” He took her coat and slung it over the back of a chair. “I worry about her in this weather. It wouldn’t take much for her to slip in the ice and break a hip. I shoveled and deiced her walkways, but more snow is forecast for tonight.”

“You take good care of your family.” This was one of the things she loved about him.

“Family is the most important thing on this earth.” His voice rang with sincerity.

He had always been deeply committed to those he loved, always faithful and serving. Nothing could be more attractive in a good man. She swooned, just a little, praying he didn’t notice. “I agree. I’m deeply-committed to everyone I love.”

“We’re more alike than I ever would have thought.”

She pulled the list out of her pocket. “We both like Mexi-fries. I never would have pegged you for a Mexi-fry eater.”

“I can be surprising. When I first met you, I couldn’t have guessed you devoted a lot of your time to helping others.”