Home for Christmas (3 page)

Hunter followed, not sure how to broach the subject of a walk, when she clearly wanted to attend the program. Was it fair to ask her to change her plans?

Dallas picked up the snowshoes Hunter had brought for Miranda. “I want to walk over with you. I don’t want to sit on Billy’s lap.”

“You’re walking?” Miranda had seen the second pair of snowshoes. “You’ll be late. Come pile into the sleigh. There’s room enough.”

“I hadn’t planned to go.” His pulse bounded against his veins and his coat felt suddenly too warm. His shirt stuck to his back. He felt like a youth again, craving a bit of attention from Miranda, hoping she’d notice him, and just maybe, see him for who he was.

Miranda’s oldest brother, Del, extinguished the last lamp inside the house and shut the front door behind him. “Come on, you two, Jessie’s first on the program and we’ll miss her solo if we don’t hurry.”

“You didn’t plan to go?” By light of the rising moon, Miranda’s eyes seemed clouded. “Why’d you come by? Is there a problem?”

Miranda’s dad took the porch steps two at a time and offered her a hand. “The yard’s slippery. Take my hand, dear.”

Hunter saw the others had loaded up. He ought to go along and pretend it didn’t matter one way or the other that she’d see Warren.

The mere thought made his stomach burn with indigestion. He couldn’t risk it. Not yet. He reached for her arm. “I came to ask you to walk out with me. I brought the snowshoes.”

Her brows drew together, ever so slightly. “You always go to the Christmas program. Your family’s there every year.”

“I know.” He glanced toward the sleigh, finding her parents watching them.

The children started to bicker. One of the adults shushed them. Hunter turned his back on Miranda’s nosy family, fighting to keep his thoughts together, wanting to sound coherent and not too hopeful or desperate. “We won’t go far.”

She fell silent. The kind of silence that spoke of too many thoughts and emotions--not the good kind.

He should have kept quiet. Should’ve climbed into the sleigh and gone along with the Finlays. Now, he’d blown it.

Miranda stepped closer, looked up to meet his gaze. “You’re very kind to come rescue me.”

“I didn’t think you needed rescuing. . . . I only meant--”

She laughed softly. “It’s taken me awhile, but I’m ready to face everyone. I’m ready to move on.”

The notions sounded good, really good, but--she wasn’t going there
looking
to see Warren, was she? His brows drew together with the possibility Miranda might still be in love with Warren. A most aggravating thought, that.

With his chest aching, his shirt sticking to his skin and knowing the Finlays collectively listened in, he took a step closer still to Miranda and whispered in her ear. “You don’t need to prove anything to anyone. Especially to me.”

She giggled. The sound, rich and melodic, drained the tension from him.

“Miranda?” Her dad sounded impatient. “Are you coming?”

“Go on without me. I’m going to take a walk with Hunter,” her gaze met his, seeming to glitter like emeralds with an inner light, “and set him straight on a few things.”

<><><><>

After an hour walking on snowshoes beside Miranda, Hunter’s feet had frozen solid, but he was in no hurry to see her home and say goodnight. He listened to her chat pleasantly about the scenery. The full moon’s light turned the snowdrifts a silvery shade of blue, lying smooth and undisturbed before them. Her breath showed in a mist of white before her face.

“Did I guess right,” she asked, “when I figured you came to save me from going into town?”

“Maybe.”

“I’m right.”

“Probably.”

“And you came to Denver to save me from spending Christmas away from my family.”

“I won’t admit to any such thing.”

Miranda chuckled. “You were kind to attempt both rescues.”

Somehow, he found her constant reference to his kindness a bit disappointing. “It wasn’t my intention to show you neighborly kindness.”

“What did you intend?” She touched his arm and stopped walking.

His stomach felt weightless. He couldn’t very well confess everything. She wasn’t ready to hear it. He needed time to let her become familiar with him, like they used to be. So he settled on a white lie. “I’d hoped we could be friends.”

She shivered. “Just friends?”

No, much more.
“Yes.”

“Good, because I’m comfortable with my life the way it is.”

He watched her uneasiness and his heart constricted. She didn’t sound comfortable--her words sounded like excuses. Reasons and justifications that pointed toward her choice to stay away for nearly three years. And emphasized the miserable fact that she saw him only as a neighbor. And Warren’s little brother at that.

Hunter didn’t want to believe it, didn’t want to admit his brother had broken her heart irreparably. Worry tugged at his throat, making it harder to breathe. There had to be a way to convince her to let him get anywhere near her heart.

Warren had left her with scars that kept her from trusting, from taking a single chance.

Hunter figured he’d have to work with whatever was left.

“Boy, am I glad to hear you say you like your life as it is.” He saw the surprise on her features and hoped he’d said the right thing. His pulse tripped, racing toward an uncertain fate. “I’d like to spend time with you while you’re home. So no one’s feelings get hurt,” he added, “Let’s set some ground rules.”

“Ground rules? Hmm. I don’t know that I could trust you to follow them. You’re the one who sat behind me in school. You inked the ends of my braids. Twice.”

Hunter couldn’t help but smile at her argument. He was glad to see she didn’t want to keep him at a distance. “I’d hoped you’d agree to keep things simple between us.”

“Simple.”

“Yes. No guessing games, no wondering, no doubts.” He watched the amusement fade from her features, crowded too quickly by concern. A moment’s panic clutched his innards. To her ears, his words must have sounded like he intended to pursue her with the intention of marriage. He should have planned his words more carefully and found another way to let her know he had the patience of Job and left it at that.

Miranda walked beside him for a few minutes, the sigh of the wind and the crisp brush of show shoes against the drifts the only sounds. “Just good friends? Your idea sounds refreshing. I think I’ll like not having to wonder what you’re thinking.”

“And you’ll be completely honest with me, too?”

She nodded. “I can agree to that. No guessing games. No wondering.”

“Good. Honest communication is precisely what I need.” He walked beside her for a moment. A few snowflakes filtered through the sky, lending an ethereal magic. “I loved a girl once. I loved her with all my young heart, but it didn’t work out like it should have.”

“Who?”

“You’ll have to figure that out for yourself. I wager you will, eventually, if you spend enough time with me.”

Miranda walked quietly for a few paces. “From your talk of ground rules, I see she burned you badly.”

“She didn’t do it on purpose. She couldn’t help it that she didn’t feel a thing for me.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I won’t have you pity me.”

“All right.” He liked the way she looked him squarely in the eye. This woman had pluck, and he’d always found that appealing.

Her quick smile struck him in the heart. “I suppose you can empathize. So you’ll understand I want no pity, either. It rankles to admit I loved a man who didn’t love me in return.”

Hunter considered defending his brother. She was wrong. Warren
had
loved her. But the time wasn’t right for that conversation. So he answered her simply, “You’re in good company.”

He knew just the thing to distract her from thoughts of Warren, from looking too closely at his past, and from her troubles altogether. Nothing worked quite like the medicine of helping someone else, to forget any number of things. “I want to spend time with you, enjoying your company as I do. So be ready tomorrow morning at ten. I’ll call for you in the sleigh. Dress warm.” Hunter headed through the trees.

Miranda hurried to catch up. “Why?”

“Secrets great and secrets small, at the time of Christmas.”

“I’ve got to help my mom cook the Christmas Eve supper. Harold’s coming with his family by noon. I couldn’t possibly get away.”

He took her arm, aiming for an air of teasing. The tact had worked before. “Are you opposed to doing something nice for someone else?”

“No, of course not.”

“You be ready by ten. We can’t be late. Timing is everything. We’ve got a special Christmas delivery to make.”

Moonlight illuminated her face, her eyes shining with what he wanted to believe was excitement. “You sound like one of the children, waiting for Santa.”

“Waiting? Yes, I’ve been waiting a long time.”

CHAPTER THREE

<><>

Miranda sat in the rocking chair nearest the hearth, sewing the last few gold beads on Noelle’s green satin skirt and necktie.

All around her, the noises and aromas of Christmas Eve filled her senses. Although they’d barely dried the breakfast dishes, her mom and sisters bustled about the kitchen, cooking the Christmas Eve meal. Mouth watering aromas of cinnamon and cloves mingled with apples, pumpkin and vanilla. Upstairs, the running footsteps told her the children were wound tighter than a buggy spring.

Noelle wiped a big circle on the windowpane clean of frost. “I hope they bring a fir. They smell the best.”

“They won’t be back for awhile yet.” Miranda snipped her thread. She needed one more length of thread to finish the task. She looked beside the chair for her sewing basket, remembered setting it on the kitchen floor. “I’ve left the thread in the kitchen. I’ll be right back.”

Inside the kitchen, Miranda heard Mary Beth’s voice lower. “I don’t see how we can keep it from her any longer.”

Miranda paused, peeking around the door frame to see her younger sister brush a bit of flour off their mother’s chin.

“I won’t be the one to spoil her holidays, Mary Beth, and neither will you.”

“She’ll find out,” Mary Beth insisted in a husky whisper. “If not from one of us, then from someone else.”

Miranda strained to hear, intuitively knowing they talked about her. There must’ve been some speculative gossip making the circuits last night at the Children’s Program. She hadn’t thought her family would make a big deal of her choice to walk out with Hunter instead of attend. Perhaps they suspected one brother had shattered her heart and the other now tried to pick up the pieces.

Mary Beth mumbled something unintelligible. “You heard what Reverend Gilbert said. He
knows
she’s home.”

“He’s not the kind to cause trouble.” Mother walked toward the sink, moving out of Miranda’s line of sight. “So what if he knows? Let’s leave the matter well enough alone.”

“Has Hunter told her? All of it, I mean.”

“I don’t think so. Surely if he had, we’d have noticed. That isn’t the kind of news one can ignore or take lightly.”

“If she spends any appreciable time with Hunter, she’ll run into Warren. And if she has to see Viv beside him....”

“Chances are she won’t leave her own home anyway, not this close to her confinement. Second babies can come so quickly.”

Viv? Miranda swayed in a moment of dizziness. Viv, Warren’s
wife.
Expecting their
second
child--how long ago had they wed? Likely within months of him calling off his wedding to her. Why hadn’t her family told her long ago? Why hadn’t Hunter said something? He’d had ample opportunity. Instead, he avoided the subject altogether.

Miranda closed her eyes and leaned her throbbing head against the wall, clutching it for support.

How could Warren pledge love strong enough to last a lifetime, ask her to be his wife, set about planning their lives together--then abandon it all? She’d asked herself the question often in the months following his unexpected betrayal. She might never know the truth of it.

Yet everyone in town knew. Bits and pieces, perhaps, but they knew.

Warren lived nearby, somewhere in Mountain Home, with his wife and child. Soon, children. Miranda pressed her hands to her heated cheeks and choked back the humiliation.

“If he shows up without Viv, it’ll be worse, Ma. She might say something to him, seek him out, ask questions. We can’t let that happen.”

Miranda moved back down the hall, away from the kitchen, away from the well-intended conversation. They meant to protect her, to safeguard her first holiday back in the fold.

Telling them she’d overheard would serve no purpose but to hurt them. She had no desire to ask them for more information. She didn’t want to know anything more.

Hunter and her family all behaved as if she didn’t have the strength to face the fact Warren had married someone else. She wondered if they were right, and hoped she wouldn’t have to see Warren and Viv together.

Everyone in town had known about the scandal for some time. She’d have to remember it wasn’t fresh news to them. No one had mentioned it when she was in town yesterday. She doubted any of them would be cruel enough bring up the embarrassing incident.

Relieved to find Noelle had left the parlor, Miranda stared out the frosted window into the blinding mid-morning light. A vague image of pretty, soft-spoken Vivian Channing formed in her mind. She’d only met Viv a few times since her family had moved into the area and couldn’t say she knew her.

Miranda pictured Warren with Viv, a faceless toddler on Warren’s arm and Viv’s middle rounded with child. In her imagination, they seemed happy and well-matched.

She let the image linger, turned it over to examine all sides, tried to allow the feelings of betrayal and jealousy to surface past the embarrassment.