The Bachelor’s Christmas Bride (4 page)

They spent the next half hour going room to room,
with Dag explaining a complete plumbing overhaul that would leave all three bathrooms like new, a kitchen that sounded like it would be a chef's dream come true, and even ideas for accent colors of paint here and there that left Shannon surprised by his good taste.

When they reached the upstairs bedroom where she'd stayed on her visits here, Shannon said, “Have you found the secret cubby?”

Dag's eyebrows shot up in curiosity. “There's a secret cubby? Whatever that is…”

“I'll show you.”

Shannon knelt down in front of a section of flowered wallpaper a few feet to the right of the closet. It didn't look any different than the rest of the loud pink tea-rose print but when she pressed inward and then did a quick release, that particular section popped open to reveal a two-foot-by-two-foot hole in the wall.

Dag laughed. “I'm sure I would have found that when I stripped off the wallpaper, but I had no idea it was there.”

“It makes a great hiding place,” Shannon said, peering inside to see if the things she'd hidden in it long, long ago could still be there.

They were.

“Let's see,” she said as she began pulling them out.

Dag hunkered down on his haunches beside her to have a closer look.

“This is the notebook I brought with me on my last trip—I was going to write a novel in it. An entire novel that I would write in secret and then surprise everyone with when I was finished.”

“At eleven?”

“Uh-huh. I believe I wrote about two paragraphs…” she said as she turned the notebook upright and unveiled
the first page. “Yep, two paragraphs. That was as far as my career as a great American novelist went. And I think it's for the best,” she added with a laugh after glancing at what she'd written.

Then she set the notebook down and reached back into the cubby.

“Let me guess—those were from your great American artist period?” Dag teased when she pulled out several pages cut from a coloring book.

Shannon flipped through the sheets. “Not a single stroke outside the lines—I was proud of being so meticulous. I think I was six.”

“And this? You were going to be a chess master?” Dag said, picking up a carved horse's head chess piece that had come out with the coloring book pages.

Shannon grimaced. “
That
was me being a brat.”

“You were a brat?” he said as if the idea delighted him.

“I was five,” she said. “You have to understand, my parents were so close, so devoted to each other, so happy just to be together, that sometimes I felt a little left out. Not that I actually was,” she defended them in a hurry. “I was actually about as spoiled as I could be with their limited resources. But at five, when they were talking and laughing over a chess game…” Shannon shrugged. “One of those times I tried to interfere by—”

“Stealing one of their chessmen so they couldn't play?”

“And hiding it,” Shannon confessed. “I was leaving to come here the next day and I stuck it in my suitcase, so I ended up bringing it with me. By the time I was supposed to go home, I didn't want to bring it back and admit I'd taken it and get into trouble, so I put it in the cubby.”

“Shame on you,” Dag pretended to reprimand, but it came with a laugh.

“I know. Of course as I got older, the kind of relationship my parents had was what I realized I wanted for myself, but as a very little kid, there were times when I resented it because they were just so content being together no matter what they were doing—watching their favorite TV show or movie, or doing puzzles, or just talking or—”

“Playing chess?”

“Or playing chess.
I
wanted to be the center of their universe—and I was—but they were also the center of each other's universe, if that makes any sense…” Another shrug. “I think maybe I was a little jealous—it wasn't rational, I was a kid.”

“And now have you found that kind of relationship for yourself with the potential future-Governor?”

There was no way she could answer that and luckily at about that same moment, she spotted one more thing in the cubby and reached in to retrieve a very ragged stuffed dog.

“Oh, Poppy! I'd forgotten all about you,” she said as if she hadn't heard Dag's question.

She didn't know if he recognized that she didn't want to answer him or just went with the flow, but he didn't push it. Instead he said, “That is one ratty-looking toy.”

“I know. I carried him around with me, slept with him, played with him—he was my constant companion. When I got too old for that I couldn't stand the thought that he might get thrown away, so I brought him here with me and put him in the cubby for safekeeping.”

She checked out the old toy, saying as she did, “Poor Poppy, I never sucked my thumb, but I chewed off both
of his ears, he lost an eye and his nose, and my mom had to sew the holes. His tail is gone, and his seams split and had to be fixed more times than I can remember—he's kind of a mess.”

“He looks well loved,” Dag decreed, and Shannon appreciated that that was the perspective he took when she knew that Wes would have been impatient with her sentimentality over it.

But Dag even waited while she hugged it for a moment before she set it down and took the last few items out of the cubby.

“Love notes,” she confided as if they were a deep, dark secret. “This was from the summer I was ten—I was at camp just before I came to see Gramma and I had a sizzling romance with one of the boys there….”

“How sizzling could it have been at ten?”

“Hot, hot, hot!” Shannon said with a laugh. “He sat next to me on movie night and held my hand when the lights went out. And look at these notes—he thought I had nice teeth. And my woven pot holder was the best in the whole class. And he liked my eyes because they match! How much more sizzling do you want it?”

“Oh, yeah, it doesn't get better than that!” Dag agreed facetiously. “This cubby-thing is a treasure trove.”

“Ah, but it looks like that's it,” Shannon complained after poking her head into the cubby to make sure. “Now the place is all yours.”

Which struck her with a sudden, unexpected sadness that made her think that maybe she had a few more attachments to her grandmother's house than she'd originally thought.

But it was done and she knew from the way Dag had talked about his plans for the remodel that he loved the place, so she comforted herself with that—and by petting
her old stuffed dog the way she had when she'd needed solace as a kid.

“I'll get a box for this stuff,” Dag suggested then, as if he knew she could use a minute alone with her things, with the cubby, with the house. She was grateful for that, and once he'd gotten to his feet and left the room, she swiveled around to take one last glance at it.

The wallpaper was gaudy and overwhelming but she still had fond memories of being here with her grandmother on those few visits, of the fact that despite not spending much time here, it had still felt like an extension of home.

“I think he'll take good care of your house, though, Gramma,” she whispered as if her grandmother might be listening.

Then Dag came back with a cardboard box.

“It must be late—it's starting to get dark,” Shannon said with a glance out the window as she accepted the box from Dag. “We should probably be going.”

“Probably,” Dag confirmed, holding out a hand to help her to her feet once everything was in the box.

She could have stood without aid but she didn't want to offend him by refusing, so she accepted the hand up.

“Thanks,” she said, wishing she wasn't quite so aware of how big and strong and warm his hand was. And how well hers fit into it.

But wishing didn't make that awareness go away and as soon as she could, she took her hand back. Somehow regretting it when she had—another of those crazy blips, she decided.

Dag seemed completely oblivious to the odd effects he could have on her and once she was on her own again, he bent over and picked up the box. He tucked it
neatly under one arm and motioned for her to lead the way out.

“I have a favor to ask you,” Shannon said as they went back downstairs.

“Sure,” Dag responded without hesitation as he set the box from upstairs on top of the two boxes of things he'd been keeping for her in the entryway and picked up all three as if they weighed nothing.

“I can take one of those,” she said before saying more about the favor.

“They aren't heavy. Just lock the door and pull it closed behind us.”

Shannon did, returning to the subject of the favor as they went toward her car.

“What if the favor I have to ask is something you'll hate? Shouldn't you hear what it is before you say
sure?
” she teased him, having no idea where the flirtatious tone in her voice had come from.

“I think I can handle whatever you dish out,” he flirted back. “What is it?”

As Shannon unlocked the trunk of her car, she said, “When the wedding is over, could you spare some time to go Christmas shopping with me? I bought Chase and Hadley's wedding gift at a store in Billings where they'd registered, but Christmas gifts are different. I thought I might get an idea what to buy after being with them, and then it occurred to me that since you're here and you know everyone better than I do, you'd also know what they might like.”

“I could probably do that,” Dag said as he put the boxes in the trunk. “We can go on Sunday—ordinarily not all the shops in town are open on Sundays, but this close to Christmas everything is.”

“I would be eternally grateful.”

“No problem.”

And there would be no scheduling conflicts or meetings or public appearances or other obligations that prevented him from accommodating her request—the things that would have kept Wes from doing it at all. Shannon had become so accustomed to Wes putting her off if she did ask something of him that Dag's ready agreement seemed unusual to her.

But she didn't say that. Instead she closed the trunk and headed for the driver's side of the car. Dag managed to reach it at the same time and leaned around her to open her door.

Again she thanked him.

“I'll see you back at Chase and Logan's place,” she said then.

“Right behind you,” he answered, closing her door with that same big hand pressed to the panel that had been wrapped around hers a few minutes earlier.

That same big hand that her eyes stuck to when he waved it at her and even as it dropped to his jean pocket to dig out his keys.

It had felt so good….

Shannon yanked her thoughts back in line and started her engine, putting her car into gear and heading for the road that led away from the house just ahead of Dag.

Dag, who did stay right behind her all the way home, making it difficult for her to keep from watching him in her rearview mirror.

Dag, who she was thinking about seeing again tonight during the rehearsal dinner.

Dag, who she knew she shouldn't let cloud her thinking at all.

And yet somehow he seemed to be anyway.

A
fter the wedding rehearsal Friday evening, the dinner was in the poolroom section of a local restaurant and pub called Adz. The pool table had been removed and replaced by dining tables to accommodate what was a large wedding party. The lighting was dim and provided mainly by the candles on each table and there was a roaring fire in a corner fireplace made of rustic stone. The entire place reminded Shannon of an English pub she'd visited on a recent trip to London.

Shannon knew very few people there, and those she did know—Chase and Hadley, Logan and Meg—were busy mingling. Dag was the only other person she knew and he ended up being a godsend because while he was not her formal date to the event, he stayed by her side as if he were, as if he recognized that she was an outsider and had taken it upon himself to make sure she didn't feel that way.

Not that Shannon hadn't become accustomed to being in rooms full of strangers during the past three years. Dating a politician made that a common occurrence and she'd frequently been either expected to stand beside Wes, smile and say nothing, or had been left alone among strangers while Wes glad-handed and networked and basically scoured the crowd for votes or endorsements or funds. But still she appreciated that Dag kept her company. It was a nice change.

And it came in particularly handy when Dag's other brother and sisters headed their way.

“Oh, I'm not going to remember which of your sisters is which,” she said quietly to Dag as they approached the spot in front of the fire where Dag and Shannon stood.

“We just wanted to tell you how happy we are that Chase found family,” Tucker said as he and his sisters joined them.

Tucker was easy—he was the only other McKendrick male. But even though Shannon had been introduced to the sisters earlier, she'd been introduced to so many people tonight that she couldn't remember which was which.

“I'm happy about it, too,” Shannon answered the third McKendrick brother.

“I was just telling Shannon about our names,” Dag lied then. “About how with me and the girls, Mom filled in the birth certificates and chose the names when Dad wasn't at the hospital so he wouldn't have a say. How Dad knew the game by the time Tucker was born and made sure he got to pick Tucker's name. But the rest of us—” Dag pointed to each sister as he explained “—Isadora, Theodora and Zeli—those were all Mom.”

Shannon was so grateful to him for making that easy for her that she could have hugged him. Instead she just
cast him a smile and went along with the ruse that they'd been discussing the names before. “I like unique names, and they give you all something to talk about right off the bat.”

“That's true,” Zeli agreed with a wry laugh that insinuated that she never got away without talking about her name the minute it was mentioned.

“We all saw you on the news, Shannon,” Issa said then. “You looked so shocked—you must not have had any idea that you were going to be proposed to.”

“It was a surprise,” Shannon agreed, hating that Wes hadn't yet taken her off this hot seat.

“What about a ring, though? You don't have one,” Tessa contributed.

“I noticed that, too,” Dag commented.

“I'm not a big jewelry person,” Shannon said as if the lack of an engagement ring were nothing. Then, desperate not to talk about this, she said, “Speaking of jewelry, Tucker, you did get your cuff links for tomorrow, right? I don't know how they got mixed in with my wedding things, but Chase said he'd get them to you.”

“Got 'em,” he confirmed. Then, to Dag, he said, “So there was a last-minute change and now I'm walking Tessa down the aisle tomorrow and you're walking Shannon?”

It was news to Shannon that Tucker had ever been set to walk with her and she glanced at Dag to find an expression on his face that said he wasn't pleased that his brother had mentioned this.

“Yeah, I guess it was something to do with height or something,” Dag obviously hedged.

“I'm half an inch shorter than you are—how much difference can that make?”

Dag shrugged. “There must be a reason. Maybe for pictures or something. What do I know?”

Shannon couldn't help wondering if Dag had done some backstage rearranging in order to walk with her.

Then with an enormous grin and in a tone that goaded his brother, Tucker said, “Is this another Dag-gets-a-dress-for-Christmas?”

“Oh, cheap shot!” Dag muttered with a laugh.

But that was as far as the confusing exchange went because just then three waitresses bearing dessert trays came into the room and all eyes turned toward them.

“Chocolate Crème Brûlée,” Dag announced rather than saying any more to his brother. “Hadley says we're all gonna love this. And you know Hadley knows chocolate.”

“She really does,” Issa assured Shannon just before Tucker and the sisters moved back to the table they'd all been sharing so they could be served the dessert.

“Looks like that tiny corner booth is empty—what do you say?” Dag suggested then.

They'd had dinner at Hadley and Chase's table, after which everyone had begun to mingle and table-hop. Now some—like Tucker, Issa, Zeli and Tessa—were returning to their original spots, some remained standing and some were taking new seats.

Shannon had no problem with the idea of taking a new seat. In the corner. With Dag.

Not because she wanted to be alone with him, she told herself. But merely because talking to Dag always seemed to come easily, and after a long evening of trying to remember names and relationships and make conversation with a whole lot of people she didn't know, she was more than ready to sit back and relax a little.

“The tiny corner booth it is,” she agreed, moving the
few steps required to get there and sliding in from one side just as Dag was waylaid before he could slide in from the other.

Shannon had been introduced to the man who had stopped to talk to Dag and thought she remembered him to be Noah Perry, Meg's brother. He was intent on talking hockey with Dag—a subject that had cropped up several times tonight. Shannon didn't know much about Dag beyond the fact that he was Logan's half brother, but she had gathered here and there that for some reason he had a serious interest in the sport.

But rather than eavesdropping on the conversation the two men were having tableside, Shannon instead fell into studying Dag.

Dress had been decreed casual for the rehearsal and the dinner, so she was wearing charcoal gray pinstripe wool slacks and a white fitted shirt she'd left untucked.

But Dag had gone more casual still. He—and several other men—had on jeans. Dressier jeans than Shannon had seen him in before, jeans that fitted him to a tee, but jeans nonetheless.

And with the jeans he wore a bright pink shirt that he'd taken some ribbing for from Logan and Chase before they'd all left home. But if any man was masculine enough to wear a pink shirt, it was Dag. In fact, somehow the pink shirt topped off by a dark sport coat seemed to lend even more depth to his nearly black eyes, and both shirt and jacket were so expertly tailored that they accentuated the pure massiveness of his shoulders, leaving nothing at all feminine about the way he looked.

Noah Perry didn't keep Dag long and about the time one of the waitresses came to the corner table with the
crème brûlées, Dag slid into the booth the way he'd initially intended.

“We need three, Peggy,” he told the waitress.

If the teenager wondered why, she didn't ask, she merely left them three of the confections with three spoons and fresh napkins to go with them.

“Hadley isn't the only McKendrick who likes chocolate?” Shannon guessed.

“Maybe I got the extra for you.”

“Or maybe you got the extra for you,” Shannon countered with a laugh.

“I'll share,” he tempted.

“I think I'll be fine with one.”

Shannon had cause to rethink that after her first bite of the rich, creamy delicacy lying beneath a crusty shell of caramelized sugar. But she kept her second thoughts to herself even as they agreed that Hadley had made an excellent choice of desserts.

Then Shannon opted for giving Dag a tad more grief and said, “So, between the Dag-gets-a-dress-for-Christmas and the pink shirt, I'm beginning to wonder if there's something I should know about you….”

That made him laugh boisterously. “The shirt is salmon-colored—that's what the sales guy said. Salmon,
not
pink.”

Shannon leaned slightly in his direction. “The sales guy lied, it's all pink.”

Dag just laughed again. “Hey, I like this shirt.”

Shannon did, too, but she didn't tell him that. Or that Wes could never have worn it or been able to look the way Dag did in it.

“And the Dag-gets-a-dress-for-Christmas?” she prompted only because she was curious about his broth
er's earlier comment. And because she was enjoying giving Dag a hard time. “That was
me
being a brat as a kid,” he answered, referring to her remark that afternoon about herself. “The Christmas I was eight I asked for a fancy dump truck. It had all the bells and whistles—lights that lit up, a switch that made the bed of the truck rise on its own, it even beeped when it backed up. It was great!”

“Uh-huh,” Shannon said indulgently.

“I'd been asking for that truck since Thanksgiving and two days before Christmas, Tucker started saying he wanted it, too.”

“And you were afraid he would get it and you wouldn't?”

Dag pointed a long, thick index finger at her. “Exactly! My mother was always making me hand something over to Tucker when he asked for it because he was
The Baby
. I figured the truck could be another one of those things, only she'd just give it to him herself.”

“You didn't believe in Santa Claus and that Santa would come up with two of them?”

“I was on the fence about Santa by then—you know, hoping he was real, but skeptical. And with the dump truck, I didn't think I could take any chances. It was just that cool,” he continued to gush, making Shannon smile as she finished her crème brûlée.

“So what did you do?” she asked, inviting a confession.

Dag had finished his first brûlée, too, and he replaced it with the second, pointing to it with his spoon before he answered her or dug in. “Want to share?”

It was tempting. But Shannon shook her head. “It's so rich—I don't know how you can eat two of them.”

“Nothin' to it,” he assured.

Then, after cracking the sugar shell to begin his second helping, he went on with his story. “Here's how Christmas was done—presents from Santa weren't wrapped, they were set up and waiting for us. Presents from our parents and other relatives were wrapped. But the presents from our parents never had tags on them. So when we came out in the morning there was a pile for each of us, some with tags from the relatives letting us know which pile was ours.”

“And in each pile there were some untagged gifts—I think I'm getting the picture,” Shannon said.

“So I snuck out of bed before dawn Christmas morning that year, before any of the other kids, hoping the truck would be set out like a Santa present. But no luck— Tucker and I both had some building blocks and a couple of puzzles—I think—from Santa. Then I checked out all the wrapped packages for Tucker and for me but I couldn't tell what was what—”

“No two were the same?”

“Hey, I was eight, there was no logic to this. Anyway, I found a package in Tucker's pile that I was convinced was the truck. So I took it. Then, in my pea-sized eight-year-old brain, I got the brilliant idea that if I mixed up a few more packages, no one would know I was the one who did it. So I did some of that, never paying any attention to what I was putting where or if I was only switching girls to girls, boys to boys—”

“Oh what a tangled web we weave…” Shannon said with yet another laugh.

“Right.”

“And somewhere along the way you ended up with a dress,” Shannon concluded, laughing yet again.

Dag made a face. “I think it was called a jumper—it was kind of like a plaid apron with a frilly blouse that
went underneath it. Logan encouraged the folks to make me wear it but luckily my dad didn't think that was such a good idea.”

Once more Shannon laughed. “Did you get the truck?” she asked sympathetically.

“Tucker and I both got them—in packages I hadn't switched at all. But that was what he was talking about—it's been known ever since as the Dag-gets-a-dress-for-Christmas Christmas.”

Funny how Tucker was drawing a comparison between Dag making this secret switch and the change in who was walking her down the aisle tomorrow. So Dag must have done some manipulating to make sure he was her groomsman….

Shannon had no desire to tease him about that. Maybe because she was just pleased that he had done it. Although there certainly wouldn't have been anything wrong with walking with Tucker, she told herself. She was just more familiar now with Dag.

At the head of the room, Logan stood up then to draw everyone's attention. He made a toast to the last night of single life for both Chase and Hadley, joking at their expense before he wished them well and suggested that everyone get home to bed so they could all be well-rested for the wedding the next day.

His advice was unanimously taken and the party broke up.

Shannon had ridden to the church with Chase and Hadley, while Dag had driven his own truck. But because Chase and Hadley were the center of things, when Shannon was ready to go, Chase and Hadley were still saying good-night to people.

“Why don't you just ride with me?” Dag asked with
a nod toward the exit after they'd both put on their coats.

It was late, Shannon was tired and wanted to get things organized for the next day, so she accepted the invitation, ignoring the fact that she just plain liked the idea.