The Secret of Santa

by Liz Isaacson

  Yep, he responded. Nothing else.

  Holly Ann sighed and pushed her hair off her face and forehead. She pressed her eyes closed, and they burned as if someone had rubbed sand in them. She was so tired, and she had another full day tomorrow, what with the Christmas movie in the park, and then Wassail Weekend coming up in just three days.

  She didn’t know how many more times she could apologize. She didn’t know how many more dates she could break or leave early. Some had been because of real crises surrounding the festival. Some had been because she needed to get over to the mall and wear the suit.

  Hope you got your elf problem sorted out, he said.

  I did, Holly Ann sent back.

  Too bad you couldn’t come back to the ranch for dinner.

  Yeah, I got stuck over at the mall.

  I’ll bet. That place is insane.

  Holly Ann relaxed a little bit at the texting, because it meant Ace wasn’t too upset with her. Her father and sister had both texted her about how great Ace was. That he’d come to the party and stayed, that he was articulate and kind, easy to talk to, and in Daddy’s case, “the best man you’ve ever dated.”

  “No pressure or anything,” Holly Ann said to herself. She finally zipped up the suit and hung it in the closet. With that locked and the key in her pocket, she turned to leave the mall. Finally.

  She didn’t remember last year being quite so exhausting, but she hadn’t been in charge of the entire festival and playing Santa Claus.

  I went after dinner, Ace said in his next text. Too bad I didn’t run into you.

  That is too bad, she said. We could’ve gotten ice cream or something.

  Did you get to eat at all?

  Holly Ann had not eaten, and her stomach threatened to claw itself inside out. She leaned her head back, stretching the ache in her neck, and wondering what to do. She didn’t want to lie to Ace, but she’d seen him twenty minutes ago, standing on the other side of the ropes. He could very likely still be at the mall.

  If she told him she hadn’t eaten, he might suggest they get together. While Holly Ann wanted to see Ace and make sure they were okay, she really just wanted to go home and go to bed.

  He’ll let you do that too, she thought, and because she was so tired and her brain so soft against any defenses she might have had against Ace, she tapped the phone icon to call him.

  “Hey,” he said, but she couldn’t tell his mood with the single word.

  “Hey,” she said. “I didn’t eat, but I’m so exhausted. Do you think this could be one of those nights where you meet me at my house with something delicious? I’ll eat it, and we can talk for a minute, and then you’ll stay with me until I fall asleep?”

  “I’d like that,” he said quietly.

  “Where are you?” she asked, putting one hand on her back and leaning into it to stretch her hip.

  “I just left the mall. How about you?”

  “I’m finishing up with Rachel, and then I’ll be on my way.” She hated that she’d skirted her physical location, but she told herself it wasn’t a lie. She left the private room and went down the hall. Rachel had an invoice for her to sign, which Holly Ann did while Ace said he’d stop and get fried chicken and be at her house in no less than twenty minutes.

  She beat him there, glad she could pull into her garage now and close the door behind her. It was supposed to snow this weekend, and Holly Ann had contingency plans for the outdoor events at the apple cider mill should the weather ruin their planned wassail tastings, dried apple wreaths, and apple carving.

  She let Snickers out to take care of his business, and she changed out of her clothes into her pajamas. Ace knocked on the door a few minutes later, and Holly Ann called for him to come in.

  He did, bending down to kiss her forehead before continuing into the kitchen. He put her food on a plate and brought it to her, settling himself onto the couch beside her. She took the fried chicken and French fries from him with a grateful smile.

  “Thank you, baby.” She leaned toward him to kiss him, glad when he received the kiss well. He pushed his hands into her hair and deepened the kiss, and Holly Ann went with him, because she knew how very much he missed her.

  She missed him too. Very much, and she really wanted him to know she hated that life wasn’t perfect. That schedules didn’t always match up. That she had a secret she hadn’t told him.

  He pulled away and sighed as he leaned back against the couch.

  “Long day?” she asked.

  “Yes,” he said. “You?”

  “The longest yet.” She picked up a piece of fried chicken and bit into it.

  “I found out my sister is dating Noah Johnson,” he said. “Another secret I can’t keep to myself anymore. Since you’re my secret keeper, I figured you’d be safe to tell.’

  “Etta?” Holly Ann asked, plenty of surprise in her tone.

  “Yep.” He looked at her. “Why the surprise?”

  “Noah Johnson is what? Forty-five years old?” She picked up a couple of fries and bit off half of each.

  “Is he?” Ace asked. “I don’t know. He did seem older than her. I saw them a couple of days ago at the holiday fair.”

  “That was just yesterday, baby.” She smiled at him. “You’re so tired you don’t even know what day of the week it is.”

  He chuckled and closed his eyes. “Maybe it was yesterday.”

  “It was, because you texted me about the peppermint squares, and you went right after you finished checking in kids for the cookie decorating class.”

  “Mm hm.” He sure seemed like he was going to be the one to fall asleep first, but Holly Ann didn’t mind. She finished eating while Ace breathed in and out, in and out, and then she lay down so her head was in his lap.

  One big, rough, warm hand started to stroke her hair, and Holly Ann sighed at the tender touch. She let her eyes drift closed too, and she asked, “Ace?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Have you ever been in love?”

  His hand stuttered for a second, then evened out. “Once,” he said. “I asked Jeanie Penship to marry me.”

  Holly Ann wanted to be shocked, but she honestly didn’t have the energy. “Oh?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “She said no, though. I’d read the signs all wrong, and she actually wanted to break up.”

  “Wow.”

  “Yeah.” He chuckled. “I don’t know if I was in love with her. Maybe I was. Maybe I wasn’t. I felt like a fool, but I started dating Windy Lyson only a month later. So maybe I wasn’t.” His voice trailed off, but he said again, “Maybe I wasn’t,” real quiet.

  “Why would that mean you weren’t?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” he said, his fingers getting caught in her hair. He gently worked them through and started again. “If I was really in love with her, and she rejected my proposal of marriage, shouldn’t I have been utterly devastated? Heart-broken? Angry and then horribly sad? I didn’t feel any of those things. I was embarrassed. That was it.”

  “Hmm.”

  “When Cactus’s marriage ended, he retreated to the Edge Cabin. He’s lived out there for over ten years, and it’s only been the past couple of years that he’s even gone to town.”

  “Everyone deals with loss differently,” Holly Ann said. She knew that much, as she’d seen Daddy and Bethany Rose’s reactions to her mother’s disappearance.

  He didn’t say anything else, and Holly Ann’s mind turned soft as she drifted into blissful sleep.

  “I don’t actually like wassail,” she said on Friday afternoon. She and Ace stood in front of a folding table at the apple cider mill. Mother Nature had blown in a cold wind, but there was no precipitation—yet.

  “Blasphemy,” Ace said with a grin. She had no idea when he’d left the other night. She’d awakened sometime in the middle of the night, and she had a pillow under her head and a blanket covering her body. The food he’d brought sat in her fridge, and Snickers had been asleep on her hip. All the lights
were off, and the house was locked up tight.

  Ace had been gone, and she hated that he had such a long drive back to Shiloh Ridge Ranch. She also missed the ranch, and she really wanted to get back up there.

  She watched him try the spiced wassail and make a face. “Way too much clove,” he said, tossing the sample cup into the garbage can under the table. The wind picked up as if in protest to what he’d said about the wassail, and Holly Ann hunkered down in the collar of her coat.

  “Can I come to lunch at the ranch on Sunday?” she asked.

  Ace looked at her, his eyebrows up. “Of course,” he said. “You’re welcome any day.”

  “Is that so?” She led him to the next table, where they had a cinnamon wassail.

  “That’s so, Miss Broadbent,” Ace said in a proper Texas drawl that made her smile. He tipped back another tester of wassail and smacked his lips. “Yes, this one’s good.” He smiled at the two women setting out cups, and they moved on.

  Holly Ann took in the magnificence of the Texas sky above the orchards and mill. A new tasting table had been set up along the walking path that went along one of the three rivers for which Three Rivers was named. In the summertime, the grass here shone like emeralds, and families brought picnic baskets and Frisbees.

  For the Christmas Festival, a few vendors had brought in food carts, and she really wanted one of the savory waffles from Waffled Up. They’d been assigned the spot the farthest from the entrance to the tasting tables, because then people would walk all the way down to the end of the route, and have to walk all the way back.

  Holly Ann had learned a thing or two over the years of serving on the festival committee.

  “I just remembered that our family gift exchange is this Sunday,” he said. “If you’re okay sitting through that, you can definitely still come to lunch.”

  “It’s this Sunday?” she asked. “There’s still quite a bit of time until Christmas.”

  “Nine days,” he said. “Not that I’m counting down until you’ll be free from this.” He grinned at her as they arrived at the next table, which boasted pumpkin wassail.

  Holly Ann could admit she was ready for the Christmas Festival to be done. She even thought she’d take a break from it next year. Pass the baton, so to speak, and just go back to wearing the suit.

  “This is a no,” Ace said, dropping his cup in the trash. “And yes, we do our gift exchange early. Usually on a Sunday, because it doesn’t interfere with other holiday things, or much ranch work. Then, on the actual day, we can relax, get together with each other or not, and basically have a nice, relaxing Christmas.”

  “I bet things will get harder and harder as your family gets bigger.”

  “Yes,” he said. “We’re already seeing that. Ranger and Oakley want to have their own traditions, and yeah.” He didn’t say anything more about that, and Holly Ann let the topic drop.

  In her pocket, her alarm went off, and she quickly stopped the vibrating.

  “What was that?” Ace asked anyway.

  “Nothing,” she said.

  They walked to the next table, and he sampled the rum raisin wassail. “Nope,” he said. After stepping away from that station, he added, “If you have to go, Holly Ann, it’s fine.”

  “We’ve only been here for a little bit,” she said, eyeing the waffle cart up ahead. “I want a waffle. Whoever it is can wait.”

  She thought of the children who would have to wait for her to arrive, and guilt pinched in her stomach.

  “All right,” he said, the words full of doubt.

  She’d snoozed the alarm, so it went off again while she ordered her waffle. She pulled her phone out of her pocket to turn off the alarm, and quickly shoved it back into her pocket. Her heart thrashed against her ribs at the words that had just imprinted on the backs of her eyelids.

  Santa time!

  She’d put that reminder on the alarm, as if she didn’t know where she was supposed to be from six to eight p.m. every Friday night.

  She told herself that that note could mean anything. It didn’t mean she had to go dress up like Santa and hold children on her lap. Ace probably hadn’t even seen it.

  They got their waffles, and Holly Ann ate hers quickly. She tipped up on her toes and kissed Ace, tasting his pulled pork and provolone cheese before saying, “I have to go. I’m so sorry.”

  “Go,” he said, lifting his waffle grilled cheese sandwich back to his mouth. “I’ll call you later.”

  She gazed at him—this gorgeous, kind, good-hearted, amazing cowboy—for an extra-long moment. What would life be like with him as a husband? Could she be a wife and mother if Ace was the one at her side?

  She turned away from him and from the thoughts, hurrying to her car now. After all, she had to transform herself from Holly Ann into Santa and put on a show for the waiting children at the mall.

  The whole way there, she fantasized about what her life would be like at Shiloh Ridge Ranch. She dreamt of a big house with a whole wall of windows looking out over the valley where the town sat, and little boys with the same deep eyes that Ace had, and plenty of dark hair like her. Sometimes he’d take them out to work with him, giving her a break, and she’d make cupcake towers for their birthdays.

  Everyone was so happy, and they all loved one another. There would be no sneaking off to play Santa Claus, because there’d be no secrets between them.

  “If that’s the life you want,” Holly Ann said to herself. “Why can’t you tell him about the suit right now?”

  He’d have to find out sooner or later. Why not sooner?

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Ace sat on the bench at Cider Mill Park, the last of his toasty waffle sandwich long gone. Holly Ann was long gone too, and Ace looked up into the sky as the thunder rolled through the clouds.

  He should get up and get under some type of shelter. His mind felt encased in cement, and every thought moved in slow-motion. The first drops of rain fell before he stood, and while others ran for the barn, Ace just walked.

  He eventually made it to his truck and got behind the wheel. Cold water had soaked his shoulders and his cowboy hat, so he took that off and tossed it onto the seat next to him.

  Santa time!

  The note in Holly Ann’s alarm made no sense.

  The fact that it was her alarm buzzing and not Rachel or some other assistant calling to tell her about an emergency made no sense.

  He heard Santa’s giggle from the other night, and he closed his eyes, trying to see Holly Ann wearing a Santa Claus costume.

  “It makes no sense,” he said, opening his eyes. He started his truck and got out of the dirt parking lot at the cider mill. He had to drive all the way across town to get to the highway leading south, and then he had thirty more minutes to get home.

  He didn’t want to go back up to Shiloh Ridge. He didn’t want to be alone with his thoughts.

  He needed to know where Holly Ann had gone, and why.

  Without a decision, Ace kept driving. He finally pulled over and tapped a couple of buttons on his screen to connect a call.

  “Ace,” Bishop said. “What’s goin’ on?”

  “Do you have a minute?” Ace asked, watching the rain drive down on his windshield. Every other second, the wipers cleared it away with a squelch-squelch sound.

  “Yep.”

  Ace didn’t know how to start. He thought of Bishop’s mother holding the fire chief’s hand. He thought of Duke asking for Bear’s blessing to marry Arizona, and Bear’s response about something that had happened almost twenty years ago.

  He thought about Etta dating Noah Johnson, and Ida asking Ward to walk her down the aisle, not Ranger.

  He thought about Holly Ann potentially being Santa Claus.

  “Ace?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Sorry, I—it’s nothing.”

  “It’s obviously not nothing.”

  “It’s Holly Ann,” he said. “What if she…what if you found out Montana had been keeping a secret from yo
u? A big secret?”

  “Oh, boy.” Bishop exhaled heavily. “I don’t know, Ace. Secrets are hard, and I obviously don’t know what’s going on.”

  “I don’t either,” Ace said. “That’s the problem.”

  “Have you asked Holly Ann?”

  “No.”

  “I’m no expert,” Bishop said. “But it seems to me that if you want to know something, you should ask her.”

  “Yeah.” Ace’s truck shook as a gust of wind blasted into it. He suddenly did want to return to Bull House, make another sandwich, and hide behind a computer screen. He could waste hours with his flight simulator, and he wouldn’t have to talk to anyone.

  “Bishop, what if it’s a secret that isn’t hurting anyone?”

  “Well.” Bishop paused for a few seconds, and Ace appreciated that his cousin didn’t jump to tell him exactly what to do. “Does it really matter if no one is getting hurt?”

  “I’m just tired of secrets,” Ace said, reaching up and pressing his hand to his eyes. “I’m carrying so many secrets, and this just feels like one too many.”

  “Go slow and think,” Bishop said. “You sometimes jump before you need to, and I know you really like this woman. Don’t do anything without thinking it through first.”

  “I’ll try,” Ace said, because Bishop was right. He did sometimes react instead of taking time to think and ask questions and then make an informed decision.

  “Hey, call me again if you need to,” Bishop said. “I’ll talk you off the ledge.”

  “Who are we talkin’ off the edge?” Ward asked in the background, and Bishop said, “Ace.”

  “Oh, you’ve got Ace? Tell ‘im we need eggs for dinner tomorrow night. Is he on his way back?” Halfway through the sentence, Bishop put the call on speaker, and Ace could hear Ward just fine.

  “I can get eggs,” he said. “What else? I’m not coming to town tomorrow.”

  “We need more coffee creamer,” Ward said. “And paper plates.”

  “Got it.” Ace thanked Bishop again and ended the call, trying not to be jealous that Bishop and Ward had gathered to work together on Two Cents. He didn’t have to be involved in everything and yet, with all the secrets he currently held for other people, he felt like they’d placed a huge burden on him.