Holiday Wishes (7 page)

With their hands linked, they walked up the stairs. He pushed away all thought of the other man she’d chosen, of the other life she’d lived. He, too, would block out ten years of loss and take what was offered.

Night came early in the winter so the light was dim. In silence she lit candles so that the room glowed gold and shifted with shadows. When she turned back to him she was smiling, with all the confidence and knowledge of a woman in her eyes. Saying nothing, she came to him, lifted her mouth and offered everything.

Her fingers were steady as she reached for the buttons of his shirt. His trembled as he reached for hers. Murmuring, she waited for the brush of his hands against her skin, then sighed from the sheer glory of it. They undressed each other slowly, not tentatively, but with the quiet understanding that every moment, every instant would be treasured.

When he saw her, as slim, as lovely, as unexplainably innocent as she’d been the first time, his head spun with needs, with doubts, with desires. But she stepped to him, pressed her body against his and dissolved all choices. She was stronger than she’d been. He could feel it, not in muscle but in spirit. Perhaps she had changed, but the longings that were racing through him were the same as they’d been in the boy on the brink of manhood. As heedlessly as the children they’d once been, they tumbled onto the bed.

They didn’t relive the experience. It was as fresh, as wildly thrilling as the first time. But they were man and woman now, more demanding, hungrier. She drew him closer, running her hands over him with an urgency just discovered, with a turbulence just released. She’d waited so long, so very long, and wouldn’t wait a moment longer.

But he took her hand and brought it to his lips. He quieted her tumbling breath with his mouth.

“I hardly knew what to do with you the first time.” Gently he nuzzled at her throat until she moaned in frenzied anticipation. Raising his head, he smiled at her. “Now I do.”

Then he took her places she’d never been. Higher, still higher he drew her, then just as suddenly plunged her deep where the air was thick and dark. Trapped in the whirlwind, she clung. She’d wanted to give, but he left her helpless. Tender, soft, easy, his fingers caressed until her body shuddered. He drank in her sigh with lips abruptly urgent, ruthlessly demanding, then patiently soothed her again. Sensations rocketed inside her, leaving no room for thought, for reason or even for memories.

When they came together it was everything for both of them. Time didn’t slip back but trapped them and held them close in the here and now.

He kept his arms tightly around her and they were quiet. With her eyes closed, she absorbed the unity. She loved, and for the moment there was nothing else. For him both ecstasy and contentment were troubled with questions. She was so warm, so free with her emotions. She loved him. He needed no words to know it and never had. But the loyalty he’d always understood as an intrinsic part of her had been broken. How could he rest without knowing why?

“I have to know why we lost ten years, Faith.” When she said nothing, he turned her head toward him. Her eyes glistened in the shifting light but the tears didn’t fall. “Now more than ever, I have to know.”

“No questions, Jason. Not tonight.”

“I’ve waited long enough. We’ve waited long enough.”

On a long breath, she sat up. Bringing her knees to her chest, she wrapped her arms around them. Her hair cascaded down her back. He couldn’t resist taking a handful. She’d been his once, completely. No one else had ever touched her as he had. He knew he had to accept her marriage, and that her child belonged to another man, but he needed to understand first why she had turned to someone else so soon after he’d gone away.

“Give me something, Faith. Anything.”

“We loved each other, Jason, but we wanted different things.” She turned her head to look at him. “We still want different things.” She took his hand and brought it to her cheek. “If you had let me I would have gone anywhere with you. I would have left my home, my family, and never looked back. You needed to go alone.”

“I didn’t have anything for you,” he began. She stopped him with a look.

“You never gave me a choice.”

He reached for her once more. “If I gave you one now?”

She closed her eyes and let her forehead rest on his. “Now I have a child, and she has a home I can’t take away from her. What I want doesn’t come first.” She drew back far enough to look at him. “What you want can’t come first. Before somehow I never thought you’d really go. This time I know you will. Let’s just take what we have, give each other this one Christmas. Please.”

She closed her mouth over his and stopped all questions.

Chapter 8

Christmas Eve was magic. Faith had always believed it. When she awoke with Jason beside her, it was more than magic. For a while, she simply lay there, watching him sleep. She’d imagined it before, as a girl, as a woman, but now she didn’t need the dreams. He was here beside her, warm, quiet, and outside an early morning snow was falling. Careful not to wake him, Faith slipped out of bed.

When he rolled over, he smelled her—the springtime scent her hair had left on the pillowcase. For a few minutes, he lay still and let it seep into his system. Content, he lay back and looked at the room he hadn’t been able to see in the dark.

The walls were papered, ivory, with little sprigs of violets. At the windows were fussy priscillas. There was an antique rosewood bureau cluttered with colored bottles and boxes. On a vanity was an old-fashioned silver-handled brush and comb. He watched the snow fall and smelled the potpourri on the stand beside the bed. The room was so like her—charming, fresh and very, very feminine. A man could relax there even knowing he might find stockings draped over a chair or a blouse mixed with his shirts. He could relax there. And he wasn’t letting her go again.

He smelled the coffee before he was halfway down the stairs. She had Christmas music on the stereo and bacon frying. He hadn’t known it would feel so good just to walk into a kitchen and find your woman cooking for you.

“So you’re up.” She was wrapped from head to foot in a bright flannel robe. Desire dragged quietly at his stomach muscles. “There’s coffee.”

“I could smell it.” He went to her. “I could smell you the moment I woke.”

She rested her head on his shoulder, trying not to think that this was the way it might have been—if only. “You look as though you could have slept for hours. It’s a good thing you didn’t or the bacon would be cold.”

“If you’d stayed in bed a few more minutes, we might have—”

“Mom! Mom! It’s snowing!” Clara burst through the door and danced around the kitchen. “We’re going to go caroling tonight in the hay wagon and there’s snow all over the place.” She stopped in front of Jason and grinned. “Hi.”

“Hi, yourself.”

“Mom and I are going to build a snowman. She says Christmas snowmen are the best. You can help.”

She hadn’t known just what reaction Clara would have to finding Jason at the breakfast table. With a shake of her head, Faith began to beat eggs. She should have known Clara would be willing to accept anyone she’d decided to like. “You have to have some breakfast.”

Clara fingered the plastic Santa on her lapel, tugging on the string so that the nose lit up. It never failed to please her. “I had cereal at Marcie’s.”

“Did you thank her mother for having you?”

“Yeah.” She stopped a minute. “I think I did. Anyway, we’re going to build two of them and have a wedding and everything. Marcie wanted the wedding,” she added to Jason.

“Clara would prefer a war.”

“I figured we could have that after. Maybe I should have some hot chocolate first.” She eyed the cookie jar and calculated her chances. Slim at best.

“I’ll fix it. And you can have a cookie after the snowman,” Faith told her without bothering to turn. “Hang your things by the door.”

Scrambling out of her coat, she chattered at Jason. “You’re not going back to Africa, are you? I don’t think Africa would be much fun at Christmas. Marcie’s mother said you’d probably be going to some other neat place.”

“I’m supposed to go to Hong Kong in a few weeks.” He glanced at Faith. She didn’t turn. “But I’ll be around for Christmas.”

“Do you have a tree in your room?”

“No.”

She gave him a wide-eyed look. “Well, where do you put your presents? It’s not Christmas without a tree, is it, Mom?”

Faith thought of the years Jason had grown up without one. She remembered how hard he’d tried to pretend it didn’t matter. “A tree’s only so that we can show other people it’s Christmas.”

Unconvinced, Clara plopped into a chair. “Well, maybe.”

“She used to say the same thing to me,” Jason told Clara. “In any case, I don’t think Mr. Beantree would like it if I left pine needles all over the floor.”

“We’ve got a tree, so you can have dinner with us,” Clara declared. “Mom makes this big turkey and Grandma and Grandpa come over. Grandma brings pies and we eat till we’re sick.”

“Sounds great.” Amused, he looked over as Faith scooped eggs onto a plate. “I had Christmas dinner with your grandparents a couple of times.”

“Yeah?” Interested, Clara studied him. “I guess I heard somewhere that you used to be Mom’s boyfriend. How come you didn’t get married?”

“Here’s your hot chocolate, Clara.” Faith set it down. “You’d better hurry. Marcie’s waiting.”

“Are you coming out?”

“Soon.” Grateful that her daughter was easily distracted, she set the platter of bacon and eggs on the table. Ignoring the half-amused lift of brow from Jason, she took her seat.

“We need carrots and scarves and stuff.”

“I’ll take care of it.”

With a grin Clara gulped down chocolate. “And hats?”

“And hats.”

A snowball hit the kitchen window. Clara was up like a shot. “There she is. Gotta go. Come soon, Mom. You make the best.”

“Soon as I’m dressed. Don’t forget your top button.”

Clara hesitated at the back door. “I’ve got a little plastic tree in my room. You can have it if you want.”

Moved, he only stared at her. Just like her mother, he thought, and fell in love a second time. “Thanks.”

“’Sokay. Bye.”

“She’s quite a kid,” Jason commented as the door slammed behind her.

“I like her.”

“I’ll give her a hand with the snowman.”

“You don’t have to, Jason.”

“I want to, then I’ve got some things to take care of.” He checked his watch. It was only Christmas Eve for so long. When a man was being offered a second chance, it wasn’t wise to waste time. “Can I get an invitation for tonight?”

Faith smiled but simply pushed the food around on her plate. “You’ve never needed one.”

“Don’t cook, I’ll bring something.”

“It’s okay, I—”

“Don’t cook,” he repeated, rising. He bent to kiss her, then lingered over it. “I’ll be back.”

He took his coat from the hook where it had hung beside Clara’s. When he was gone, Faith looked down at the toast she’d crumbled in her hand. Hong Kong. At least this time she knew where he was going.

The snow people in the side yard grinned at him as he struggled past. Boxes balanced, Jason knocked on the back door with the toe of his boot. The snow hadn’t let up a whit.

“Jason.” Speechless, Faith stepped back as he teetered inside.

“Where’s Clara?”

“Clara?” Still staring, she pushed back her hair. “She’s upstairs getting ready for the hayride.”

“Good. Take the top box.”

“Jason, what in the world have you got here?”

“Just take the top box unless you want pizza all over the floor.”

“All right, but . . .” As the enormous box in his arms shifted, she laughed. “Jason, what have you done?”

“Wait a minute.”

Holding the pizza, she watched him drag the box into the living room. “Jason, what is that thing?”

“It’s a present.” He started to set it under the tree, then discovered there wasn’t enough room. With a bit of rearranging, he managed to lean the box against the wall beside the tree. He was grinning when he turned to her. If he’d ever felt better in his life, he couldn’t remember it. “Merry Christmas.”

“Same to you. Jason, what is that box?”

“Damn, it’s cold out there.” Though he rubbed his hands together now, he hadn’t even noticed the biting wind. “Got any coffee?”

“Jason.”

“It’s for Clara.” He discovered that feeling a bit foolish didn’t dim the warmth.

“You didn’t have to get her a present,” Faith began, but her curiosity got the better of her. “What is it?”

“This?” Jason patted the six-foot box. “Oh, it’s nothing.”

“If you don’t tell me, you don’t get any coffee.” She smiled. “And I keep the pizza.”

“Spoilsport. It’s a toboggan.” He took Faith’s arm to lead her out of the room. “She happened to mention when we were building the snowman that some kid had this toboggan and it went down Red Hill like a spitfire.”

“Spitfire,” Faith murmured.

“And snow like this is just made for going down Red Hill like a spitfire, so . . .”

“Sucker,” Faith accused and kissed him hard.

“Put that pizza down and call me that again.”

She laughed and kept it between them.

“Wow!”

Faith raised a brow at the noise from the living room. “I think she saw the box.”

At full speed, Clara barreled into the kitchen. “Did you see? I knew there’d be one more, I just knew. It’s as tall as you are,” she told Jason. “Did you see?” She grabbed his hand to drag him back. “It has my name on it.”

“Imagine that.” Jason picked her up and kissed both cheeks. “Merry Christmas.”

“I can’t wait.” She threw her arms around his neck and squeezed. “I just can’t wait.”

Watching them, Faith felt her emotions tangle and knot until her bones ached with it. What should she do? What could she do? When Jason turned with Clara, the lights from the tree fell like wishes over their faces.

“Faith?” He didn’t need words to recognize distress, pain, turmoil. “What is it?”

Her hands were digging into the cardboard of the box. “Nothing. I’m going to dish out this pizza before it’s cold.”