Twelve Dates of Christmas: The Ballad of Lula Jo (Lonesome Point) (3 page)

Mia moved deeper into the room, red curls bobbing as she hurried to embrace another guest.

Lula was left to move Mia’s duffle bag full of cookies out of the way before another guest tripped over them on their way inside. With a sigh, she lugged the bag to the cookie table, wrinkling her nose in distaste when she saw that Mia had tied up the cellophane on her cookie packages with red and green G-string panties. Her cousin
did
run a lingerie shop, but it was disgusting to put panties and food so close together, even if the panties had never been worn.

She was considering
accidentally
losing Mia’s bag of peanut butter fudge cookies behind one of the Christmas trees, when the delivery door buzzer rang. She frowned. She never scheduled deliveries on Saturday, but maybe one of the guests had decided to come in through the back door.

Leaving Mia’s embarrassing offering on the table—it was her cousin who would have to deal with the raised eyebrows after all—she hurried through the stockroom toward the rear of the shop.

She plastered a welcoming smile on her face, but on the inside she was mentally counting down how many minutes she would have to wait before starting the games. She wasn’t thinking about long-forgotten hurts or men with broad shoulders and melted chocolate eyes. She wasn’t thinking about dreams placed on a shelf or love letters locked away in a box with no key. She wasn’t expecting anything out of the ordinary, but that’s why unexpected things are called surprises.

Though
surprised
was a pale word to describe the way Lula felt when she opened her door to find one of Aunt Louise’s holiday garden gnomes sitting on her back stoop, with a sticky note on its chest that simply read, “For L.J.”

Lula’s stomach bottomed out and her mouth filled with a sour, bitter taste like a lemon drop dipped in battery acid.

No one had ever called her L.J. but
him
, the man she’d never expected to see again. Carter was part of her past, as dead and buried as Aunt Louise and her favorite gnome, “Santa’s Little Helper,” who had gone into her casket with her.

Now, Lula felt like she was being pulled from her own grave, kicking and screaming, begging to be allowed to rest in peace. She didn’t want this to be real. She couldn’t imagine what it would be like to have
him
back in town after eleven long years.

It was too much, so overwhelming she couldn’t seem to draw in a deep breath, couldn’t stop her heart from slamming frantically against her ribs or her head from spinning.

Tallulah Josephine Watson was not the sort of woman who swooned, but on that bright and sunny day in December, she did just that, crumpling to the ground outside her back door, one long arm coming to rest inches from a Christmas gnome’s feet.

CHAPTER TWO

Carter

Carter Bryce wasn’t the man he’d been eleven years ago—the
boy
he’d been, a stupid kid who thought he had the world figured out.

After the hell he’d been through in Somalia, the sickness that had almost killed him, and the last year and a half in Alaska—burning through the last of his savings to cover his dying father’s medical bills—Carter was smart enough to realize he didn’t know shit. The world was a big, complicated, sad, and beautiful place and he was never going to get the best of it. The most he could hope for was to come to peace with it, to make the most of the life he’d been given, and to have the strength to admit when he was wrong.

And he’d never been more wrong than the dark winter night he’d packed up his old Ford Bronco, driven out of Lonesome Point, and left Lula behind.

He’d been all over the world, kissed women in the shadows of the pyramids and in the secret tunnels beneath Paris, where there was still treasure and danger to be found if a man knew where to look. He’d even played at being in love once or twice. But play was all it had been—a pretty lie to keep him from admitting he’d screwed up his one chance at the real thing.

Some people fell in and out of love a hundred times, but for Carter there was only one girl who had ever had his heart, one girl with mysterious green eyes, graceful hands, and a laugh that danced through his dreams, making him wake up longing to hear her voice one more time.

And now, he’d hurt her all over again.

Carter raced to Lula as she crumpled to the ground, her head hitting the concrete with a dull thud. He’d worried that she would slam the door on his offering or kick it down the steps. He’d never imagined she would faint.

As he lifted her gently in his arms, turning her over to reveal a red trail trickling down her temple, staining her pale cheek, a wave of self-hatred swept through him. He’d thought he was finally finished making mistakes. Clearly, he was only getting started.

But at least now he wasn’t too proud to ask for help.

Scooping Lula’s limp form into his arms, he hurried through the sparsely furnished office room and stock area into the tea shop where he and Lula had first met. He expected customers would be seated at the tables and had planned to ask one of them to call 911 since he’d left his phone at the hotel. But he burst into the room to find a crowd of enthusiastically chatting women, dressed for a party.

The moment the women spotted unconscious Lula, the conversation came to a screeching halt and twenty pairs of incredulous female eyes turned to take his measure, obviously trying to sort out whether he was the hero in this scene or the villain.

In truth, he was both, but confessing he was the reason Lula had fainted wasn’t going to get her help any faster.

“She passed out when she answered the back door,” he said. “She hit her head on the concrete. Can someone call 911?”

“Lay her down on the counter,” said a deep, feminine voice from the back of the room. A moment later a woman in a reindeer sweater separated herself from the crowd. “I’m a doctor. I’ll check her out while Mia calls the ambulance.”

Carter hurried to the counter, laying Lula gently on the shining white tiles as the other women moved canisters of cookies and biscotti to make room for her legs. She looked beautiful but so thin and frail, like the girl he’d known had been squeezed between two brick walls until all the softness was pressed out of her. She was more than pale. She was bloodless—a statue made of marble that would never breathe, laugh, or love again.

Carter was trying not to take the sight of the woman he loved, lying still as a corpse, as a bad omen when the doctor—a petite woman whose head barely reached his bicep—shot him a stern look and shooed him out of her way.

“You shouldn’t have moved her,” she said as her fingers felt along Lula’s pale throat. “Never move an unconscious person unnecessarily.”

Carter opened his mouth to apologize, but before he could explain that he’d been too worried to think clearly, Lula began to stir.

Her smooth forehead furrowed, and a moment later her green eyes flickered open. “What happened?” she asked in that same, velvety voice he remembered, making his heart jerk in his chest.

“You fainted and hit your head,” the doctor said, laying a hand on Lula’s shoulder when she tried to sit up. “Lie still for a little longer and let’s make sure you’re okay. Were you having chest pain or shortness of breath before you lost consciousness?”

Lula made an incredulous sound. “No, nothing like that.”

“I’m still on hold with 911.” The curvy redhead Carter was surprised to realize was Lula’s much younger cousin, Mia—the gangly teen he’d met a few times when he and Lula were dating—held up her phone. “Do we still need the ambulance?”

“No, don’t call the ambulance. I’m fine.” Lula blinked, her long lashes feathering against her cheeks. “I don’t know what happened. I had the strangest…” She trailed off, paling further until the only vestige of color on her face was the pale pink of her lips.

Carter’s pulse hammered as he watched Lula’s head turn in slow motion. His eyes finally connected with hers across the crowded room and the air grew so thick with shock and pain that Carter couldn’t pull in a deep breath.

He’d been a fool to think he could fix this with a simple explanation. He would have to humble himself completely to have a shot at getting past the shields he could see dropping into place behind L.J.’s eyes. Before he could second guess his instincts, Carter crossed the room in three long steps and took Lula’s slim hand in his.

“I’m so sorry for leaving, Lu. Sorry doesn’t even begin to cut it. It’s my biggest regret, and I’ve done a lot of things worth regretting,” he said, pushing on when her eyes widened in disbelief. “Obviously, I’m off to a terrible start with this, but if you give me a second chance, I’ll prove to you I’m not the fool I was before.”

He leaned down, pressing a kiss to her cheek, his heart breaking when he smelled her sweet, wild rose and smoky tea scent; the smell that had haunted him his entire adult life. Every time he passed a tea shop or a rose garden, Lula danced through his mind, her long arms twisting above her head the way they had when the two of them used to go dancing. She had been so beautiful back then, so uninhibited and full of joy and so
his
.

And he’d let it all slip away, putting himself through hell instead of clinging tight to the piece of heaven he’d been lucky enough to hold in his arms.

But now Lula was here, so close, her breath warming his cheek as she exhaled. It couldn’t be too late for them, not when every cell in his body was crying out that this was where he belonged.

He pulled back to look into Lula’s eyes, his pulse pounding and his chest aching, silently praying that she’d felt the surge of connection, too. “What do you say?” he asked softly.

Lula’s lips parted, then pressed together, parted and pressed together again. But she didn’t say a word, and her cloudy green eyes remained closed against him, keeping her secrets. Meanwhile, the stunned silence that had followed in the wake of his declaration stretched on, making Carter increasingly aware of their audience.

He cleared his throat. “Maybe I could come back tonight and talk some more? When you’re feeling better?”

Lula blinked up at him before slowly nodding her head yes, loosening the vice that had been crushing his ribs.

“Thank you,” he said, breath rushing out. “I’ll be back at six, and I’ll bring supper. I’ll see you then.” He turned, touching the brim of his Stetson to the other women, before bolting for the front door at what he hoped was a reasonable speed.

As he stepped out into Lula’s front garden, the urge to flee abated, but he didn’t stop to admire the poinsettia display or examine the faces of the garden gnomes peeking from the bare rose vines. He needed to get back to his hotel room and regroup before tonight.

Obviously, Lula’s heart was as raw and unhealed as his own. He’d hoped she’d be in a place where she could look back on their failed romance with nostalgia, a nostalgia he could use to his advantage as he fought to win her love all over again. But clearly her soul still hurt, too. It simultaneously gave him hope—she must have loved him as deeply as he’d loved her—and made his own pain even worse. He hadn’t suffered alone these past eleven years. Lula had suffered with him, all because he’d been too stupid to realize that the greatest treasure in the world was the heart of the woman who had cared for him so deeply he would have never reached the end of her love.

He vowed, as he crossed the sunny street beneath the Christmas garland bobbing in the wind, that he would find a way to take her pain away, no matter what the cost.

CHAPTER THREE

Lula

Lula lay on the counter, blinking up at the ceiling, too shocked to care that half the influential women in Lonesome Point had just witnessed Carter’s plea and the kiss that followed.

The kiss…

It had only been a fleeting moment, the barest press of his warm skin against her cheek. But their entire love affair had flashed before her eyes, filling her with so many conflicting emotions that she still couldn’t form words long minutes later. It wasn’t until Mia’s wild red curls popped into sight above Lula’s head that she finally felt life returning to her shell-shocked lips.

“Tallulah Josephine Watson,” Mia said, her eyes wide in her flushed face. “Who the hell was that?”

“Don’t curse, Mia.” Lula pushed into a seated position on the counter and took the glass of orange juice Dr. Kemp pressed into her hand. “Carter is just…an old friend.”

“Why don’t my old friends look like that?” Dr. Kemp asked, summoning murmurs of agreement and giggles from the rest of the women.

“Seriously,” Mia agreed, still looking like she couldn’t be more shocked if Lula had given birth to a muskrat in the middle of the cookie exchange. “That man was gorgeous, Lula. It was so romantic
I
almost passed out.” Mia let out a dreamy sigh. “What’s the story with you two? I never knew you had a serious boyfriend, let alone a tall, hunky—”

“You met him when you were younger,” Lula said, voice trembling. “But you clearly don’t remember and I don’t want to talk about Carter Bryce.”

“Oh, come on,” Mia pressed. “You have to tell us something. Are you going to let him have a second chance? I hope so, because the poor man looked—”