Making Christmas

by Patricia McLinn

  “Don’t worry, Molly. We’ve got more decorating to do. We’ll use those snowflakes. And the stars we’re going to make next.”

  “Stars?”

  “Yes. And since Kiernan and Eric and Dan are done, they can make them, too.”

  “I hear Pauline in the kitchen—”

  But before Eric could accompany his words with a departure to assist with taking out and putting in more cookies, Dan beat him to the doorway. “I’ll help her. Check on Bobby, too.”

  His sisters dented his play for Brother of the Year by gaping at his departing back.

  Eric grinned and followed after the teenager. “Maybe there’ll be a spare cookie for me.”

  Reclaiming the attention of her helpers, Bexley instructed, “First, we need more paper. Gramps will help you.”

  “I’m not—”

  “Or you can go without him and bring back whatever you find.”

  He levered up out of his chair, muttering.

  With them gone, she reached across the table, sweeping the cutaway bits into piles. Kiernan’s hand came into her field of vision, pushing a pile from his part of the table.

  “That’s quite a story about your name.”

  “Thanks.” She didn’t look up. “It’s the truth. If it bothers you—?”

  “Bothers me? Not a’tall. Why would that be bothering me?”

  Her mouth opened, then closed. “No reason.” She gathered the piles into one.

  “You plan to throw that out? Hold on to it. Might be of use.”

  Bexley looked down at the colored bits of paper, then up and right into Kiernan’s face that for no reason at all made her chest ache.

  “Good idea, Kiernan. I’m not sure exactly what we’ll use it for, but you’re right. There might be something.”

  “Confetti,” he said with a glint in those green eyes that had a lot to do with her chest aching. “We can use it to celebrate if we’re still here for New Year’s. Eve.”

  New Year’s Eve.

  Midnight.

  Kiss.

  She looked away.

  “Don’t even kid about that. It would be a nightmare.”

  *

  Kiernan watched Bexley making another star.

  Why would that be bothering me?

  No reason.

  For all she’d denied it, there was a reason she’d thought the history of her name would bother him. He couldn’t imagine the reason, but she could.

  “Next, turn it over and fold that triangle back to the top side. That’s right, Lizzie. Good, Molly. Turn it over again—”

  “Hold up,” Eric said. “I’m a couple folds behind.”

  Lizzie reached over and helped him catch up.

  Bexley had led them through two previous stars, remembering what she’d seen on a video.

  Her hands moved deftly, quickly, yet now and then slowing down for a stroke across the surface of the paper, as if she were fond of it. As she had—

  Something poked into his side.

  He looked over and down. It was Molly’s elbow.

  “You’re not folding.” He looked into the girl’s accusatory disapproval. “You’re just staring at Bexley.”

  “Watching how she’s making the stars,” he protested.

  “No, you’re not or you’d be making a star,” the other twin tormentor announced.

  “I am making a star.”

  “Not a very good one.” Surprisingly, that came from Dan, who’d returned with Eric, Pauline, and another plate of cookies.

  “Hey,” Kiernan objected.

  The girls giggled. Pauline, Eric, and Bexley grinned. Even Dan’s mouth turned up.

  “You’ll have to put that one on the back of tree,” Dan said.

  Kiernan felt Bexley’s gaze instantly come to him. He shifted so their eyes met and held.

  We have to get these kids a tree.

  I know. Ideas?

  Not yet. But we’ll come up with something.

  Then she broke the look and he knew she’d tripped on the concept of we.

  No reason that should bother him. Though, in reality, they were a we. Temporary, of course. As long as this trip lasted. Was supposed to be one long day of driving. Extended now for who knew how long — through Christmas Day more than likely. Perhaps the following day as well.

  Beyond that?

  Well, they couldn’t stay here forever. Wouldn’t stay here.

  “That was your ornaments Mommy put on the back of the tree,” Molly told her brother. “She kept ours on the front.”

  “Yeah, along with Bobby’s red finger-painting blob. It was just pity made her hang those decorations.”

  “Enough.” Pauline’s sternness earned obedience, though Molly huffed in outrage.

  “I’m hungry,” Lizzie said abruptly. “Are we going to have dinner?”

  “Yeah,” Dan said.

  “Fine. We’ll finish these after dinner,” Bexley said. “Not potluck this time.”

  “Pot-what?”

  “Salad first and then pizza.”

  That drew the first overt enthusiasm from Dan. “Pizza — all right.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Five months and two days ago

  Bexley had never before in her life tumbled into bed.

  Not figuratively. And not literally.

  Who knew how limbs and hands and skin and shoulders and bellies could tangle, glide, connect and reconnect in the glorious moments of a tumble.

  Removing clothes wasn’t quite as glorious, but it provided other benefits. Like getting naked. Fast.

  Between kisses and dispatching her top and bra, she panted, “This is… crazy.”

  He mmm’d agreement as his mouth covered her nipple. She arched with the sensation.

  “Too soon,” he ground out as he levered his hips up to let her pull down his underwear.

  “Way too soon.” She kissed flesh she’d just exposed and he held her head to keep her from going lower.

  “It’s been a while,” he said.

  “Me, too.”

  By some miracle, he found the protection he hadn’t needed since—

  And then his mind lost that thread, his mind lost every thread as she shifted against him.

  He tore the wrapper.

  There was nothing elegant, nothing practiced about this. There was the drive, the want, the need.

  Inside her, he stilled. His hands holding her hips, hers on top of his, as if to deepen the hold.

  For a suspended instant they looked at each other.

  Their bodies didn’t allow any longer. They were moving.

  Fast.

  Way, way too fast.

  “Sorry.” His throat felt raw getting the words out. “Not going to last. Give you the time you need— Not going to last.”

  “Oh, yes, you will.”

  And, sputtering between laughter and pain, he did.

  *

  Kiernan rolled off her where he’d collapsed, flinging the arm away from her wide as he went on his back, his other arm under her back.

  How her body held together when she didn’t have a single bone left, Bexley couldn’t imagine.

  She didn’t work at imagining it, because her brain was blank.

  He slid his arm free and got out of bed. She moved her eyes to watch him go into the bathroom. Then tracked his return, because that was all the movement she could manage.

  He opened the drawer beside the bed and took out another condom.

  She groaned. “I don’t have a single working muscle left.”

  He put one knee on the bed. Giving her an interesting and interested angle on his putting on the condom. But only academically interested, because, truly, boneless. No muscles operable.

  She couldn’t even move to cover herself.

  That surprised her. She’d certainly covered herself in that last year and more of Nigel. When you love someone, you believe what they say, verbally or otherwise. Even — or maybe especially — when it’s something bad about yourself.
>
  Fine time for insights.

  Especially when she couldn’t even muster the muscles to protect herself now.

  “Sorry. I can’t possibly.”

  Repeating her earlier words, he grinned down at her.

  “Oh, yes, you can.”

  And she did.

  *

  Later, much later, they ate cookies in bed from the stash Dave kept in a desk drawer the way old detectives kept whiskey.

  She wore one of his t-shirts. He didn’t bother with clothes, but kept the covers up to his lap to avoid crumbs.

  “You’ve a piece of cookie, there on your cheek,” he told her.

  She brushed at the cheek closer to him.

  “Other side.”

  She brushed there but felt nothing.

  “Closer to your mouth.”

  She reached up again, but he caught her hand before it made contact.

  Instead, he leaned over and took the crumb from the corner of her mouth, making her nerve-endings shiver. Then he took her mouth.

  Coming up for air, he tossed the cookies he still held onto the bedside table past her. She heard a couple fall to the floor, and didn’t care.

  “You have far too many clothes on. Need to fix that.”

  “I’m a little chilly,” she said with a flicker of a grin.

  “We can fix that, too.”

  With his hands free of cookies, he used one to hold the V of the shirt’s neck so low the edges rode across her breasts, while his other hand gathered in the extra fabric at the hem, twisting it around and around to draw it up on her abdomen, drawing his knuckles and the back of his hand against her skin, his touch leaving sparklers in its wake.

  The rising hand met the lowering hand, which took hold of all the material under her breasts.

  She drew in a sharp breath. He kissed her quick and hard, then backed up enough to look down at what he’d revealed.

  His free hand drew one side down over the edge of her shoulder. He shifted his other hand, stretching the V wide. So wide, any movement — from him, from her would slide the material off her breasts completely.

  “Your skin’s so soft, so white.” He rested his hand on her upper arm, where a line showed she had picked up a bit of tan in her time at the Slash-C.

  “I hadn’t been in the sun at all since last summer.”

  She’d barely started to reach for him — more an intention than a movement.

  The continuation of her movement slid her arm away from his hold.

  He stilled abruptly.

  Did he misunderstand? Think she’d meant to pull away, when it was an accidental side effect?

  She leaned forward and kissed him softly on his cheek, trying without words to say she was still here with him, in this moment, in this bed.

  He went from still to stiff.

  “Kiernan?”

  He opened his hands, releasing the shirt, swung away, his back against the headboard, not looking at her. As if she weren’t even in the same room, much less in this bed with him.

  Not again.

  She knew this distance.

  She knew this diminishment.

  Never again.

  She scrambled out of the bed, feeling the mattress dip as she pushed off it. Holding the stretched t-shirt to her chest, she yanked up her jeans one-handed, crammed her feet into still-tied shoes.

  Vaguely, she was aware of stirring behind her.

  “Bexley…”

  His voice trailed her.

  But she was already gone.

  *

  Matty and Dave sat side by side on their darkened back porch, watching the stars tickle the Big Horn Mountains, his arm around her shoulders, her head in the angle of his neck.

  Until Bexley Farber came flying out of the ranch office, holding her jeans up with one hand and adjusting an oversized t-shirt with the other.

  Matty sat up, watching the younger woman.

  “Problem?” Dave asked his wife.

  “Not one you need to deal with. They’ll have to sort this out themselves. I wasn’t sure when Val brought it up, but looks like she’s right. There might be something to this.”

  “Wasn’t Bexley heading the wrong direction for there to be something going on with her and Kiernan? Not that I’m against it, mind. I’m all for Kiernan getting past the Felicity mess from last summer.”

  “Hmm. I don’t know.”

  She was quiet so long he felt his eyelids getting heavy.

  “Dave — Dave?” She nudged him to full alertness. “When you and Jack and Kiernan went to the courthouse in Jefferson last week, did you take him anywhere special?”

  From drowsy, he came fully awake.

  “Special?”

  She put a hand up to his cheek, as if consoling him for being easy to see through — or listen through. At least for her.

  “Flower Power, the shop across from the courthouse?”

  He looked down at her, though it was too dark to see details of her expression. “I guess we did.”

  “What did she say?”

  “She?”

  “Dave,” she warned.

  This would be like feeding gasoline to a fire to her matchmaking, but he didn’t mind.

  “She tried to get Kiernan to buy some flowers. Pasque flowers. He wasn’t interested. She tried a little harder and he left the shop, said he’d wait for us in the truck.”

  “Oh.”

  Then she didn’t say more. Thinking.

  “Want to hear what she told him before he walked out?” His assumption of innocence wouldn’t fool a defense attorney, much less a wife.

  She thunked his arm. “Of course I do, you big lug.”

  He chuckled. “She told him that after a long, hard winter, pasque flowers are the first to bloom in Wyoming. Course Jack and I knew that. Cheerful little things, see ’em sticking out of the snow sometimes.”

  “Did you tell Kiernan that?”

  “Might have mentioned it. Along with getting your wedding bouquet of Indian Paintbrush at the shop, and a few, uh, interesting encounters there.”

  “How’d he react?”

  “Not interested. I’m not sure he even heard what we said.”

  Another silence filled with thoughts. “Sometimes winter comes in July. I think there’s a lot of reason to hope.”

  He ducked his head and kissed her thoroughly, with her complete cooperation. “You should have been Mrs. Noah, putting everybody two by two.”

  “No. I should be Mrs. Dave Currick.”

  He raised his head, miming being deeply struck by her point. Then he laughed. “Damn straight, Mrs. C.”

  But Matty remained thoughtful. “It will take time, though. Kiernan’s not the only one rebounding from a mess last summer. Val’s doing her best to help Bexley, but… Yes, I think it will take time. You know Bexley’s ex hurt her…”

  He cursed. “He hit her? If he ever comes near her again…”

  Matty kissed his cheek gently. “Never hit her that I know of. But there are all kinds of abuse. There’s the inability to see the other succeed. When that’s dished up by the one who’s supposed to be your champion, that can be real hard to recover from. Slow, methodical, mean-spirited tearing down of confidence that comes from a shriveled heart.” She tipped her head. “Likely something else shriveled, too.”

  He shuddered.

  Then he invited her inside to their bed for a demonstration that no such calamity had befallen them.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  December 23

  Dinner wiped out the salad makings and put a major dent in the pizza supply. Remembering a childhood treat, Bexley split the bananas, sprinkled them with brown sugar and lemon, then broiled them, serving them with dollops of vanilla pudding for dessert.

  By that time Bobby was yawning so wide and so hard, he practically fell over.

  Molly and Lizzie prepared him for bed with the ease of practice, tucking him into a corner of the oversized recliner in their grandfather’s bedroom, which they would
share with him later.

  The good reception for tonight’s meal didn’t hide that the intersection of nutrition and what the kids liked dwindled from here.

  Pauline put it in words as they did the minimal cleanup around the microwave. “We can make more cookies, but real food…”

  “I know. We’re going to need to think outside of the box.”

  “But first we have to build a box,” she said grimly.

  “What if—?”

  “Bexley? Pauline?” Molly called from the bar room. “We need your help. Will you come here?”

  They entered to sounds of a dispute, though that didn’t wipe out Bexley’s moment of pleasure at the threshold to take in how much the atmosphere had improved from when they arrived.

  The room clean and lit and warm. Everyone gathered around two tables in the center, satisfied from dinner.

  “Don’t you think we need more decorations?” Molly demanded of the two women the second she spotted them. “Lots more decorations so it’ll really be Christmas.”

  Her grandfather argued, “You already got those stars and snowflakes you been making all afternoon. They’re all over the place.”

  Molly rolled her eyes in a fair imitation of her brother. “We’ve hardly got any. We need lots more decorations. There’s nothing in the store or the bedroom or the kitchen or the—”

  “Let’s hold off on decorating everywhere,” Bexley warned. “We’re spending most of our time here, together, so let’s concentrate on this area.”

  The girl gave in after a moment’s thought. Sort of. “But even in here it’s not really decorated.”

  “It’s clean,” Pauline said. “That’s a start.”

  Bexley looked around. The snowflakes on the wire were fun. The stars made so far gathered on the bar top for now, waiting a place to be hung. The spray-painted paper trees were still in the store. Beyond that, zip.

  Molly had a point.

  She turned to Gramps. “You have no holiday decorations at all?”

  “Does it look like I’ve tricked this place out with frou-frou bits and pieces?”

  Pauline answered, “Doesn’t look like you’ve made any effort at all for several decades. That, however, doesn’t mean you don’t possess decorations. Perhaps from some past time.”

  A shadow passed over the portion of Gramps’ face visible above the overgrown beard.