“Seriously?” she said, and took his hand again.
He hid his smile below his zipped-up coat collar. This time when they skated around the tree, he threw in a wobble or two. They saw a single guy lapping the perimeter so fast that his blades cut a harsh, static noise, and a teenage couple. The girl shrieked and squealed at every bump in the ice, and her boyfriend swept to the rescue every time.
Bridget sighed. “She’s doing that to get his attention.”
“Pathetic,” Jack said and stumbled.
They’d skated a little way from the tree, but he could still make out the flash in her eyes. “Are you telling me you purposely—”
His expression must’ve told the story because she tried to pull back. Not this again. He held on, squeezing her hands in their pink mittens. “Yes. I’m telling you. If my public-service announcements these past two days haven’t convinced you, then let me tell you here and now that I want you. I want for us to be more than business partners. I said that from the start and nothing has changed. We haven’t had the time or the energy since I’ve come back to act on it, but it’s there. It’s always been there.”
“If it’s always been there,” she said, “why did it take you twelve years to act on it?”
“I’d already decided three years ago,” he said. “When I came back for Dad’s funeral. You were there with Penny at the service, and afterward serving lunch. I caught glimpses of you all afternoon. And, Bridge, all I wanted was this, like we are now, you at my side, holding me up, getting me through that painful day. But I couldn’t. I’d given up my right.”
“If you’d asked, I would have.”
“I know. But I wanted more than your sympathy.”
“I would’ve given it,” she whispered.
By it, what did she mean? “Losing someone you love can make you rethink your life. I saw you across the room and I made up my mind that I would wrap up my dealings with the agency and get back to you. But—”
“But you changed your mind.” She spoke lightly enough, but he could hear the bitterness.
“I didn’t change my mind. That was the thing. I went there originally to make a difference, and after nearly a decade, I still felt I hadn’t. I didn’t want to come back having nothing to show for it. It seemed like a waste of our years apart. Like I’d let you down all over again. So this opportunity to create a charity came up, and a few more months became a year, a year and a half and then more money, more promises. In the end—” He broke off. “In the end, I screwed up big-time.”
“But you came back with the girls,” Bridge prompted. “You made a world of difference for them.”
“With Penny’s—my mother’s—help,” he said. “And yours, though you didn’t know it.”
“True, but I’m glad Auntie Penny did it.” Bridget chipped the ice with her blade tip. “I wish she hadn’t snuck behind my back. I wouldn’t have stopped her.”
“But for me to have the girls, you’ve had to sacrifice. The restaurant is at risk, and that’s your livelihood. I don’t want to cause you more pain.”
She shook her head, the pom-pom on her toque bobbing madly. “Believe me, you’re not causing me pain. Other than—” she stretched her fingers in his grasp “—a bit here.”
He relaxed his hold but didn’t release her. “You know that I don’t have much. That doesn’t make me proud, believe me. I know that for the next few months we’re threading the needle to get through this mess, but I know we can—” he tugged on her hands and she glided close, toe-to-toe “—together.”
He hesitated, giving her the chance to push away. But she didn’t, and he touched his mouth to hers. Their lips were cool at first, but as he held still and she deepened the contact, coolness shifted to the heat of a long, dreamy kiss. Thirteen years, but their lips had not forgotten.
When their kiss ended, he drew her into a hug, not wanting their contact to end. “I’m not going to screw it up this time, Bridge,” he whispered. “I promise you.”
* * *
WEDNESDAY FLEW BY for Bridget with hardly a second to herself, much less with Jack. The night’s event of tree decorating at the house was the closest they’d come to being together all day. Bridget fastened the lights on the tree, while he fed her the strand.
“I could’ve done this yesterday on my day off,” Krista said from her station with Mara setting up the Christmas village on the mantel. “You made it out that there was this big secret to putting up lights. Once I had to put lights on twelve Christmas trees for this store display. They were huge. And I had to do them by myself. I didn’t have an assistant, like you do.”
“If I’d known what an exhausting experience this is,” Jack said, “I would’ve been there for you, Krista.”
His experience was to hold coils of light while Bridget fixed them to the branches. She paused to face him. “Flown halfway around the world to put up Christmas lights?”
“Seeing how absolutely riveting it is to circle this tree a hundred times, of course I would’ve dropped everything.” Definite sarcasm, but there was warmth behind it that made her own cheeks heat up.
She glanced away to catch Deidre studying them with open speculation. Deidre was in charge of setting out the Christmas books Auntie Penny had saved from when she was a girl.
Deidre made a soft exclamation. “I’d forgotten all about this one!”
She held up a Little Golden book with its classic golden embossed spine. Walt Disney’s Santa’s Toy Workshop. “Our mother read this to us, and then when we could read, Penny and I read it to each other. Penny always fussed about why Santa and his wife had to rely on elves instead of their kids helping.”
“That’s easy,” Krista said. “The kids grew up and moved away and never came back.”
“Like sisters,” Bridget couldn’t help mumbling.
“We’re back now, aren’t we?”
They were. To stay.
“I’ll read it to the girls tomorrow night,” Bridget said. Jack had pushed up the girls’ bedtime tonight by a half hour by eliminating storytime, with the promise that tomorrow they’d wake to a Christmas miracle in the living room.
On the sofa, Deidre flipped through the pages. “I cared more that Santa got to travel the entire world in a single night. Penny spun stories about how Santa discovered his long-lost parents. Something to do with how the cookies laid out for him tasted exactly like those when he was a little boy.”
Krista was setting down a church with a rickety steeple as she observed, “That’s ironic, considering how she sort of turned Jack into the same kind of Santa.”
Bridget felt Jack tense. Rejection sucked, whether it hit you at six years of age, or as an adult. She unlooped a coil of lights, her fingers skimming his, and he visibly relaxed.
“Honestly, I can’t even wrap my head around the fact that Penny is my mother. That you two are my cousins.”
Krista pointed playfully at Bridget. “You three.”
“No kissing cousins here,” Deidre said. She raised her hands at Bridget’s glare. “What? It’s true. You two are dating, aren’t you?”
Krista and Mara looked on as if Bridget was about to declare the last number on their near-to-winning lottery ticket. “We had a date yesterday, yes. You all know that.”
“After twelve years, the first of many more,” Jack agreed. “And we’re having another soon.”
“We are?” Bridget said.
“We are,” he confirmed. “A romantic dinner for two at the restaurant,” he informed the rest of the room.
“Then you are dating again!” Krista said.
“Let’s hope it turns out better than last time,” Deidre said.
“Mom!” Krista said. “That’s not the kindest thing to say.”
“I’m not saying it to them.” She fixed Jack with a pointed look. “I’m saying it to him. He knows exactly wha
t I mean.”
The engagement.
“What? What?” Krista said.
“They might as well know,” Jack said quietly to Bridget. “I don’t think we can exactly keep this a family secret.”
He was right. Might as well pop it open like a Christmas cracker. “Back when Jack and I broke up, we were more than dating. We were...engaged.”
Krista turned to Mara. “Didn’t I tell you that there was more to it?”
“You did,” Mara said, using a wet wipe to clean the doors of a miniature school. “And didn’t I say that it was none of our business?”
“Of course, it’s our business. What happened?”
Deidre, Bridget noticed, was back to reading children’s books, knees crossed, as if she had nothing to do with setting off her daughters.
“Jack went overseas and then a year in, he called and—”
“We agreed that it wasn’t working out,” Jack said quickly. He was trying to save face for her.
Bridget worked the lights on the tree, Jack silent as he fed them to her. The whole room was silent. Nothing seemed to segue nicely from the fact that two people who’d once been engaged were decorating a tree together.
But leave it to Krista to find a connection. “I understand about long-distance relationships having a low rate of success.”
Right, her social-media breakup with Prince Philip wasn’t much more than twelve days ago, much less twelve years. Bridget left the tree and hugged Krista hard. “I’m so sorry.” And then because she didn’t want Krista to feel alone, she said, “If truth be told, Jack was trying to soften the fact that he was the one who dumped me. And, hey, I’m okay.”
Krista pushed free of Bridget, her hurt expression hardening into anger. She whirled on Jack. “You dumped Bridget? Were you out of your mind?”
This was unexpected—and loud. “Krista,” Bridget said, “don’t wake the girls.”
Jack stood with lights coiled around his arms and shrugged. “Looking back on it, I think I was. I mean, I’d have to be, right?”
His admission took the wind out of Krista’s sails, so she tacked back to Bridget. “Why didn’t you tell us? Mara, did she tell you?”
Mara shook her head. “No, but we were teenagers ourselves. And I’m sorry, Krista, but you were a full-blown teenager. I don’t think we would’ve been much support.”
Krista didn’t sound convinced. “I would have so kicked your butt, Jack Holdstrom.”
“Need I remind you,” Mara said wearily. “that he was on the other side of the world?”
Krista gripped Bridget’s arm. “He broke off your engagement...over the phone?”
“Yes, but how else could he have done it?”
Jack answered, his eyes on Bridget. “I could’ve flown home and said it to your face. I could’ve seen how you looked when you said ‘I get it.’”
Bridget didn’t want him to be like this. Him against a room of females, against his own flesh and blood because of something that he’d already apologized for and she’d already forgiven.
She slipped another length of lights from his arm. “Sure. Now, how about we all get back to creating a Christmas miracle here?”
Krista took Bridget’s lead, but not before rounding on Jack one last time. “You are officially on cousin probation. One more incident and I swear—” Krista clamped her mouth shut, then frowned. No doubt conjuring up suitably heinous retribution.
“But there won’t be another incident, will there?” Deidre said to Jack.
“No, Auntie Deidre,” Jack said, his eyes on Bridget, “there won’t be.”
Bridget ducked his relentless gaze. She couldn’t escape how much her family wanted them together. Or how much she wanted to be his one and only. His kiss last night had torn apart all the careful stitching over her heart. And she’d woken to him still here, in the same house as her, living and working with her. Exactly as she’d once planned, and as he seemed to want again.
There was nothing on earth to hold her back from taking what Jack seemed so eager to give her. And yet...she was.
What was the matter with her?
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“ARE YOU WAITING UP for me?”
She was. Bridget had left all the Christmas lights ablaze, the tree in full glitter. Colored lights trailed through the fireplace garland, up and around the front windows, through the bookcase, across the entrance and then descending back into the tree boughs. It was cozy, glittery...and romantic.
She shut the cooking magazine she was flipping through. “I might have been.”
Jack stretched out on top of her quilt and she tossed him one of her pillows, which he propped his head on. She wondered if he remembered when—
“You remember us doing this when you were in high school? We’d pull out this sofa bed, heap it with pillows and eat popcorn and watch bad movies until your aunt would come down halfway through the night and tell me to get on home.”
Bridget experienced a stab of sorrow. “She won’t tell you that anymore.”
Jack covered her hand with his and squeezed. “True,” he said softly, “but I think that if I stay down here for too long tonight, my aunt will send me back to bed.”
“Deidre? She’s a free spirit.”
“Free.” Jack flipped to his side, raised himself up on his elbow. He let go of her hand and she instantly missed the contact. “She’s a mother bear around you girls.”
Bridget was about to tell him that mother bears didn’t leave their cubs for months on end to be raised by their aunt. But Deidre had changed. She was there for them all now. She had taken over much of the organizing of the Brigade and the household. In the past two weeks, she’d become a fixed part of their lives. “Good to hear,” Bridget conceded.
“And after tonight, I have my cousins on my case. Krista will kill me if I break up with you. Not—” he reclaimed her hand “—that I intend to.”
“You did once,” she murmured.
“I did but this time there’s no one to interfere. In fact, everyone in your family is now very pro-Jack.”
“What do you mean now? My family always liked you.”
She wore pajamas patterned with reindeer—right, she still needed to get this year’s Christmas pajamas from Cozy Comforts—and he began to walk his fingers from one reindeer to the other up her sleeve in a slow, meditative stroll. “Between dealing with spreadsheets and lost mittens, I’ve been thinking about how I didn’t realize back then how...upset you were.” He jumped to a reindeer at her elbow and rubbed its nose, which lined up with a muscle in her arm. A tense muscle that began to soften under his touch.
“That was my fault,” Bridget said. “I wish I’d come up to you the first time you came back for your fundraiser, walked onto the stage, grabbed the mic and told everyone out there what a jerk you were. Dumping me over the phone after I’d waited for a year to marry you. A year secretly flipping through magazines and checking out engagement rings at the jewelers and drawing up an invitation list. Told them you weren’t a good cause at all.”
His fingers stopped moving on her muscle. His eyes sparked. “I wish you had. Because that’s my point. Did you tell Penny how you felt?”
“I didn’t have to. I was a mess for weeks after your call. I bawled in front of a customer. Auntie Penny ordered me into the kitchen and told me to shape up or I wasn’t coming back. That scared me.” Bridget suddenly remembered what else she’d said. “She said I should be glad that you hadn’t left me pregnant.” She met his gaze. “I see now why she said that.”
Jack gave a soft grunt in agreement. “Explains, too, why she kept us apart.”
“You mean...?” Bridget gave a wave at their present positioning on the bed.
“No, I mean our engagement.” Jack pulled himself up into a full sitting position. “Bridge, after we broke up, I called Penny. It was a
month to the day. I wasn’t doing so well, either, and I was kind of hoping that—that we could have another go at it. I asked her how you were. She said you moped a little the first week or two, but you were fine now. I remember her exact words. ‘You could talk to her yourself, but she’s out with Quinn Jenkins.’”
“Quinn? We never dated. He was into short blondes. He married one and has three kids.”
“I know. I assumed it didn’t work out between you two, proving once again that you could move on from any relationship.”
“No. I—I never really moved on from us. She never told me that you’d called.”
Bridget tracked the lights around the room. She and Auntie Penny had sat in the same living room last year, cozied up watching Christmas movies, love stories about family and holidays. Cheesy and irresistible. Every year, Bridget had thought of Jack while snuggling with the woman who had connived to break them up. No, no, it didn’t make sense. “And you think it’s because she was afraid you would get me pregnant and leave me? Ever since finding out you were her son, I thought she kept us apart because we were kinda related.”
“I figure she didn’t trust me,” Jack said. “A few times I’d call for you when we were still together and you weren’t in. She’d talk about all the things you were involved in. I think she was testing to see how loyal I was, how much I’d stick by you. And in the end, I proved her right. I let you down. I let her down. I was no better than my blood father.”
Bridget raised herself up to look him in the eye. “Listen to me. She loved you.” Then it hit Bridget, swelled in her stomach like she’d swallowed an entire warm, sticky blob of dough. She fell back. “Oh, I see. I was the one who wasn’t good enough for you.”
“What? No. The exact opposite. I wasn’t good enough for her darling Bridget.”
But Bridget couldn’t deny that unbaked lump in her gut. “You were her son. She always talked about the good things you did. I ran the restaurant by myself while she organized those fundraisers for you. She saw you as the real savior of the world. Me, I was just someone who needed saving.”
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