Love Finds You in Hershey, Pennsylvania (38 page)

The grand opening of Just Desserts was a smashing success, and to both Sadie’s pleasure and chagrin, she found her profit margins rising each week following the dessert café’s opening.
No wonder hindsight is so much better than foresight,
she thought.

She and Dmitri kept close tabs on their restaurants and each other as they exchanged business scenarios and assorted recipes. They shared many laughs and several prayer requests as they learned what it meant to be friends rather than rivals. The females on staff at Suncatchers were thrilled with the arrangement, as they got to see more and more of the handsome, dark-haired Russian. Sadie even made a few matchmaking attempts, which harried Dmitri considerably until he told her to stop.

She had seen Yuri and Petrov only once more after the night they threatened her. The pair was standing in front of Just Desserts when she exited Suncatchers through the front entrance one evening. She froze, feeling very much like a deer in the crosshairs of a hunter, fearful to move or breathe and confirm her own presence to them. But they had certainly recognized her, and she relaxed as they bowed, each offering her a salute of respect. She breathed again and moved on with a curt nod of greeting. She told Dmitri about it later, and they had a good laugh.

She was thankful for Dmitri’s friendship. It was good to have someone to talk to, to confide in, even if he was no replacement for Jasper.

But Sadie did all right, and the weeks slid by with deceptive speed. She made it through Thanksgiving—the first spent without Jasper since Ned’s death—and laughed at Belva’s e-mail containing a recipe for pumpkin pie, declaring that neither Russians nor Yankees could possibly create a pumpkin pie better than a distinguished Southern belle.

Sadie took advantage of the holidays by rewarding Glynda with a day at the Hershey Hotel’s Chocolate Spa, complete with Cocoa Massage and Chocolate Fondue Wrap. She also made a few changes at the restaurant, promoting Glynda from evening and weekend manager to general manager. The promotion included a substantial pay raise, but Sadie recognized that Glynda was worth every penny. For her part, she began to spend more time in the kitchen, working and exchanging barbs alongside Karl as they began to create a new level of cuisine. Following Jimmy’s return to work after the “pinkie” incident, Sadie and Glynda decided to demote him to busboy and dishwasher. Jimmy actually didn’t mind. But he had saved all his extra wages from his time as a line cook and bought a ring from the corner jewelry shop. He planned to ask Annie to marry him, come Christmas.

With one big exception, Sadie’s life had never been sweeter. And as the holidays drew near and snow coated the ground, she began to think she could go on like this forever and learn to live with the permanent ache shadowing her heart and happiness.

She did indulge in one weakness, however.

She wrote Jasper letters. Reams of them. She sat down every night, after putting Kylie to sleep, and poured her heart out on paper. She told him about her everyday life and filled him in on Kylie’s antics and stories about first grade. She explained how she and Dmitri had come to an understanding and how their friendship had grown out of their diverse backgrounds but with the common love of food and business. She informed him of the gems of wisdom Belva constantly gave her through letters, e-mails, and phone calls…and how she had never known what a treasure her mother-in-law was until recently. She thanked him for believing in Mac until she could believe in him too, and she told him how solid their relationship was now—how good things had become between them. She mentioned local gossip and how she had called to check on Aunt Matilda a few times and related each of the insults Matilda had flung at her during their chats. And when the time came that she ran out of things to tell him, she told him the one thing she wanted to say most of all:
I love you. I miss you. Please come back to me. My life is full, but it’s hollow without you in it.

And she always signed it:
Love, your best friend, Sadie

She never sent a single one of these letters to Jasper, although Mac had given her his address several times. But she piled them in a box and kept them tucked away back in her closet, saving them for reasons she couldn’t fathom.

And then came the holidays, when the rush of the season didn’t allow her enough energy to write the letters anymore. While a part of her was relieved at this, a part of her mourned it as well. Writing to Jasper had been her only connection to him. Now she fell exhausted into bed each night, falling asleep as her head hit the pillow and sleeping a dreamless sleep where she did not see Jasper’s face nor hear his voice.

She felt him slipping further and further away, and while she ached inside, there was no help for it.

Then came a day shortly before Christmas when she was sneaking a box full of presents for Kylie into her bedroom closet that she noticed the letter box was missing. She searched for it like a woman possessed but couldn’t locate it anywhere.

In the end, she determined it had gone to Goodwill with the other items she had sent—her donation for the holidays. She only hoped the pages had been incinerated rather than read. Most of her lesser moments had been the stuff of public observation—she hardly wanted her letters to Jasper to be more of the same.

But even her prayers that the letters be burned filled her with agony. They had been her link, her lifeline. To lose them was as devastating a loss as giving up on Jasper entirely.

She heard nothing, however, as to their fate…and in the days leading up to the holiday, she put them out of her mind as best she could. Instead, she began to wonder how Jasper was spending his first Colorado Christmas and wondered if the winter weather was worse there than it was here.

On Christmas Eve, both Just Desserts and Suncatchers closed—a move Dmitri and Sadie had decided on together. Dmitri had flown home for the holidays, but not before bringing her and Kylie a week’s supply of sugar cookies, Russian teacakes, and eggnog-flavored cream puffs. Mac came for dinner, and they gorged themselves silly on sweets as Kylie serenaded them with several rounds of “Jingle Bells.”

They exchanged presents—a sweater Kylie had chosen for Mac all by herself, a new set of measuring cups and hot pads in the shape of ladybugs for Sadie, and a tea set and a book about volcanoes for Kylie from her mother.

Sadie drew a proud smile from Mac as she related Smith and Jones’s stunned reception of her Christmas gift to them—lunch on the house for the entire month. A lingering case of cynicism left her reflecting that Smith and Jones would take full advantage of her offer by upping their weekly visits to daily ones, but the expression of surprise on their faces had been worth every penny of such an eventuality. The old adage of the holidays held true—it really was better to give than to receive.

As their evening with Mac drew to a close, both Sadie and Kylie kissed him under the mistletoe before sending him off into the night, and then Sadie announced bathtime for Kylie.

Kylie balked. “In the morning,” she declared, but Sadie shook her head.

“You’ll be too interested in those other presents under the tree in the morning. Better to have bathtime
now
.”

With a defeated sigh, Kylie climbed the stairs and entered the bathroom. She soon regained her holiday spirit, and by the time Sadie had cleaned things up downstairs and made it into the bathroom, Kylie was happily splashing away, muttering dire predictions for the “canninabals” and offering Barbie’s new shoes as a sacrifice to the volcano.

Sadie shook her head. “What kind of daughter did I raise? Not only are you a little pagan, but you should know better than to
ever
sacrifice shoes.”

She rolled up her sleeves and knelt by the tub to begin shampooing Kylie’s hair. Kylie began a lusty chorus of “We Wish You a Merry Christmas,” and Sadie joined in with a fair share of joy. But a part of her felt removed from the Christmas spirit as she wondered where Jasper was tonight and who he was with. Colleagues? New friends? Was he alone?

She shuddered a little at each thought until a particularly boisterous turn in the tub splashed a substantial amount of bubbles onto her face.

Kylie giggled with delight. “Mommy looks like Santa Claus!”

Sadie wiped the bubble beard from her cheeks. “Mommy is
not
amused,” she declared. But Kylie’s laughter soon had her smiling.

She had just placed the final rinse on Kylie’s hair when the doorbell rang. She sighed with a glance at her watch.

“Ten thirty. That’s awfully late for carolers. Maybe Grandpa forgot something, huh?” She helped Kylie out of the tub and placed her on the mat. She wrapped her in a towel.

“Okay, you stay here,” she instructed. “I’ll be right back.”

“Don’t worry, Mommy,” Kylie called as she left the room. “The volcano will keep me company!”

Sadie shook her head as she headed downstairs, muttering in a singsong voice, “That’s exactly what I’m afraid of.”

The doorbell rang a second time as she stopped to check her reflection in the hall mirror to make sure all the bubbles were wiped from her face. Her cheeks were flushed from the effort of Kylie’s bath, and several strands of wet hair clung to her neck. Oh well, it was Christmas Eve, and she was the mother of a five-year-old. What did people expect?

She opened the door to a gust of wintry air, but the frigid blast didn’t serve to startle her half as much as the occupant of her doorstep did. There, in living, breathing color—his nose tipped with red and snowflakes melting on his eyelashes—stood Jasper, shivering against the cold despite his boots, jeans, and heavy winter coat.

Common decency dictated that she invite him in, but the sight of months of longing and confusion staring at her with enough heat to melt several inches of snow only served to strike her immobile. She couldn’t move, she couldn’t speak—she wasn’t even sure she was breathing.

It was only when she expelled enough air to talk that she realized she was still drawing breath.

“You came back,” she murmured softly.

And with these words, she found herself swept backward into her own hallway as Jasper drew her into his arms and planted the warmest, tingliest kiss ever flat against her lips. Her reflexes were really in poor shape, she reflected, because it took her a full fifteen seconds to begin kissing him back.

Warmth flooded her face, replacing the coolness of the winter air, and by the time they pulled apart, she felt heated to the core. Jasper kept his arms around her as he drew back, holding his face within several inches of hers.

“I got your letters,” he murmured breathlessly. “All three hundred and eighteen pages. I read them twice—and then read them again on the plane here.”

She laughed softly, more than a little breathless herself. “It was that many pages? I knew that box was filling up fast…but, Jasper, they just went missing on their own at some point. I didn’t send them.”

Jasper shrugged. “I didn’t really think you did. But you wrote them, didn’t you? That’s what counts.”

She couldn’t help herself. She planted a kiss square on his mouth and lingered there for some time, trying to convey without the help of words just how much she’d missed him. When she pulled back again, she thought she must have done a pretty good job, if the light in Jasper’s eyes was any indication.

“I was such an idiot,” she whispered. “You were right about so many things—about everything—except about me not caring for you. You were absolutely wrong on that. I love everything about who you are.”

“As long as you remember that,” he breathed, “about me being right nine times out of ten, then I think we’ll do just fine.”

She laughed, a sound of pure, undiluted joy. It was complete now. Her heart felt whole. But then, after they’d spent several more moments under the mistletoe, she began to consider a few things.

“But what about the academy—and your job? You can’t be thinking of moving back, can you?”

“Of course I’m moving back,” he declared. “Staying away this long has been torture enough—don’t make me go through any more. Do you realize not a single one of the boys at that academy knew what the sub-definition for a volcano was? I need to come back to civilized society, where people are more practical.” He kissed the tip of her nose. “
My
people.”

She wasn’t going to argue with him. She may have had her moments, but she wasn’t
that
stupid. There was a familiar thunder of footsteps on the stairs behind her.

“Speaking of your people…,” she murmured with one last brush against his lips.

“JASPER!”

Kylie rocketed from the stairs and into Jasper’s outstretched arms, her bath towel wrapped in a regal toga around her form. Sadie leaned on the doorjamb and let them have their moment, whispering secrets she’d never share in. But she didn’t mind. That was the way it should be with a father and daughter.

She thought of Mac and smiled, wondering if he had known all along that Jasper was flying back from Colorado tonight. And what about her letters? Had it been Mac who sent them to Jasper? Somehow she didn’t think so. It didn’t strike her as something Mac would do. And Kylie was too young to have taken care of it on her own… unless Dmitri had helped her… .

Sadie finally shrugged. She didn’t need to know—she didn’t even want to. It would be her own Christmas miracle, a gift from God she hardly deserved. But she looked upward anyway and silently thanked Him.

Thank You…for not giving me some of the things I justly deserve… and blessing me with others that I don’t.

Jasper sent Kylie back upstairs to put on some pajamas while he returned to Sadie’s side. He rested a palm against her cheek, and they just stood there drinking in the sweet taste of their own happiness.

“I’ve got presents,” he finally whispered to her.

She immediately frowned. “Oh, Jasper…I didn’t know. I don’t have anything for you… .”

He winked at her. “Well, you might,” he cryptically said, before disappearing outside to retrieve the presents from his car.

By the time he returned, Sadie and Kylie were snuggling together on the couch, tickling each other and giggling, completely content and perfectly happy and not needing a single thing more to make this Christmas any better.