by Maisey Yates
“Are you having a revelation?” McKenna asked.
“You know,” he said. “Having a sister really is overrated.”
“It’s a weird thing, to go from looking out for yourself to having a whole bunch of people look out for you. Believe me, I get it. But in the end it’s worth it.”
“So what do I do?”
“It’s not easy. But something my husband did... All those years ago and we were working out our stuff, it has stuck with me ever since. It’s informed a lot of what I’ve done, and the ways that I worked out my own issues. Because it’s ongoing. I love Grant more than anything in the world, but I’m still scarred from the way that I grew up. And sometimes I lash out. Sometimes I’m not the best to be around. Sometimes I’m insecure. He used to wear this wedding ring. Around his neck. And it was a symbol. Of his grief more than anything else. And one that he chose to set down. He left it at her grave. And it doesn’t mean that all the feelings went away. But it’s just that... The act of it. Putting it down. Rather than carrying it. That has stuck with me. So every time an issue from my past comes up, I ask myself... McKenna are you just carrying this around? Are you still holding on to it? Why don’t you put it down?”
“And that works?”
“Like I said. Not perfectly. But I can picture myself doing it. And walking away. And being happier for it. Just because the world gave you grief doesn’t mean you’re obligated to carry it on your back forever.”
“I don’t want to.”
“Then don’t. I choose to carry around love in the greater measure. And my arms aren’t big enough to hold everything. So, mostly, I try to make room to hold that.”
“Still sounds like it’s work.”
She shrugged. “So is being miserable.”
And she had a damn good point. She really did.
“What do I do?”
She smiled and took another bite of that cinnamon roll. “Grovel.”
Thirteen
By the time Honey got back to the winery that night, she felt gritty. Tired. She was glad she had persevered through the entire holiday, but she hadn’t always been the best company, and... She hadn’t minded.
She had spoken her piece. And she had been honest about how she felt, and from her perspective that was some pretty decent growth.
Good for her. She had emotional growth. She did not, however, have the love of her life.
She saw headlights, and her heart stopped. She looked out the window of her little house, and she stared.
Was it Jericho?
It was a big ass truck.
He would go to the house. He wouldn’t come talk to her.
Except he pulled right up out front, and he turned the engine off.
Like he intended to stay a bit.
She paced back and forth for a second, and then she decided to take action.
She flung the door open. “Have you come to cause more damage? Because I warn you, I am not in a space to make stupid men comfortable by minimizing my feelings.”
“You sound like my sister,” he said.
“Your sister?”
“Yeah. McKenna.”
That made something in her chest tighten. “Oh. So that went well.”
“Yeah. I’m going to have to see them again another time. Because I realized that I needed to get back here.”
“Why?”
“I realized I needed to get back to you.”
“Back to me?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Because I realized that I was being a coward. You said that you love me and I couldn’t handle it. Because it reminded me of grief. You know why I hated Christmas so much? Because it almost made me feel happy. And it gave me this terrible sense that there was joy out there in the world, and all these people were feeling it. And I felt like I was standing on the outside of it. Able to feel just the edges of it. But never the whole thing. Like I could see the light in this dark winter, but I could never really... I can never really stand in it. It reminded me of that. You offering me your love. Like I was standing on the edge of something beautiful but I didn’t know how to take it.”
“Jericho...”
“I want it. I want all of it. I want you and me and I want to love you. And I want you to show me. And I need you to have all your emotions, Honey. I need them to be as big and bright as Christmas Day. I need them to be bigger and brighter than the sun, because I need to feel them. Because I need... I need that joy. I need more than the darkness.”
Her heart expanded, full to bursting. “I need it too,” she said, flinging herself into his arms. “I love you.”
“You’re not even going to make me suffer?”
“We’ve both suffered enough,” she said.
And that was the damned truth. It truly was. They had both suffered enough.
And what he found was that even though it filled his chest, love wasn’t heavy. Not really. It wasn’t light, but it didn’t weigh them down. And it lit up the dark corners of his soul with all the brilliance of midday.
With the promise of Christmas. And joy to the world. But most especially and finally, to him.
They had been caught in the storm, but the biggest storm had been raging inside of him all this time. And now it was like the sun had come out from behind the clouds. And everything was gold.
Gold like Honey.
“I love you,” he said. And while he did, he imagined himself setting his fear down on the floor and leaving it there. Dropping bits and pieces of grief, of doubt. Because all he wanted to carry was her. He wanted to fill his arms with her, fill his chest with her. Forever.
“I love you too,” she said. “I’m really glad I didn’t burn this place to the ground.”
“What?”
“You know, just something I considered. When I was furious at you and convinced that I couldn’t have everything that I wanted.”
“And what do you think now?”
“That I’ll take everything I want and then some. Because why should we settle? That’s what we’ve been doing. Deciding that people like us—who have experienced a measure of tragedy—that we don’t get to have the full measure of happiness. But I say we do it. I say we claim it.”
“That sounds like a great idea.”
And he kissed her. With no doubt or shame, and a whole lot of love.
And he knew that he would be doing it for the rest of his life.
Epilogue
Their whole family was practically a town gathering. Between the Daltons, the Maxfields and the Coopers, Cowboy Wines was absolutely full tonight for Christmas. They had decided in the end to rotate around the Christmas festivities, because it allowed everybody to have the kind of Christmas they loved the most. And no, they didn’t do it once a year, they had three Christmases. And everyone was invited.
And when the Daltons hosted, the festivities included the Dodges, Luke and Olivia Hollister, and hell, they might as well just have invited the whole town.
If there was one thing Honey had learned, really learned in the last few years, it was that love grew to accommodate. To expand around all your joy, all your sorrow. And she was sure that their joy was only going to expand more as they added to their family. She hadn’t told Jericho yet.
But she would. Christmas morning.
She smiled thinking of the onesie wrapped beneath the tree.
And she felt tears sting her eyes. Just for a moment.
As she thought of the ones they wouldn’t have with them for the birth of their first child.
And then she realized, with absolute certainty. But they did have them. In their hearts. Always. Because all the people they’d lost, whether it was her and Jericho or even the members of the Dalton family... Their losses had brought them to this place. Of loving with fierce abandon. Of loving as if it was the most important thing on earth. The only
thing on earth.
Because it was.
She looked over at her husband, and she smiled.
She was quite certain that their love was the biggest and brightest of all.
And the next morning when he took that small box from beneath the tree and unwrapped it, it was a moment shared just between the two of them.
“You’re kidding me,” he said, his eyes filled with wonder. Joy. And she realized that all those years before, she had never seen him look quite like that.
“I’m very serious. And very happy. I hope you are too.”
“I didn’t have a father growing up,” he said, his voice sounding strangled. “And I never imagined I’d be one. I didn’t think that I would ever get to be so damned blessed.”
“We both are. We both are.”
And he kissed her. In that way that she had grown to love so very much. That way that meant forever. That way that always reminded her of Christmas and field guides to birds and love.
Always and forever love.
* * *
In Gold Valley, Oregon, lasting love is
only a happily-ever-after away. Don’t miss any of Maisey Yates’s Gold Valley tales, available now!
Gold Valley Vineyards
Rancher’s Wild Secret
Claiming the Rancher’s Heir
The Rancher’s Wager
Rancher’s Christmas Storm
Gold Valley
Bad Boy of Redemption Ranch
The Hero of Hope Springs
The Last Christmas Cowboy
The Heartbreaker of Echo Pass
Rodeo Christmas at Evergreen Ranch
Keep reading for an excerpt from Christmas in Rose Bend by Naima Simone.
Welcome back to Rose Bend for the next book in Naima Simone’s irresistible new series where a happy holidays could also mean a happily ever after for one woman.
The holidays have never been ER nurse Nessa Hunt’s thing, but Christmas in Rose Bend has more than one surprise in store…including meeting a ruggedly handsome innkeeper
WE HOPE YOU ENJOYED THIS BOOK FROM
Luxury, scandal, desire—welcome to the lives of the American elite.
Be transported to the worlds of oil barons, family dynasties, moguls and celebrities. Get ready for juicy plot twists, delicious sensuality and intriguing scandal.
6 NEW BOOKS AVAILABLE EVERY MONTH!
Christmas in Rose Bend
by Naima Simone
CHAPTER ONE
Nessa Hunt didn’t do Christmas.
As an ER nurse, she’d seen the worst humanity had to offer during the holiday season. Electrocution injuries from plugging one too many Christmas lights into a single outlet. Shoppers with broken noses and blackened eyes from Black Friday fights that erupted over the newest must-have toy. Dads with busted backs from attempting to mount inflatable Frosties and reindeer-drawn sleighs on porch roofs.
And then there’d been that one memorable sex toy mishap—Santa had boldly gone where no Santa had gone before.
So, no, she was not a fan of Christmas.
Which meant the town of Rose Bend, Massachusetts, was her own personal version of hell.
“It looks like Santa Claus just threw up all over this place!” her sister, Ivy, whispered from the passenger seat.
Now, there was a nice visual. But slowing to a halt at a stoplight, Nessa had to admit the twelve-year-old had a point. Who knew that three hours north of Boston and tucked in the southern Berkshires existed a town straight out of a Thomas Kinkade painting? It seemed almost…unreal. If any place had that everybody-knows-your-name vibe, it was Rose Bend. Brick buildings housing drugstores, boutiques, a candy store, an ice cream parlor and diners lined the road. The long white steeple of a church towered in the distance. A colonial-style building stood in the center of town, the words Town Hall emblazoned above four columns. And everything was decorated with lights, garland, poinsettias, candy canes and big red bows. Even the stoplights sported huge wreaths decked out with miniature toys and elves—and the biggest pine cones she’d ever seen in her life.
Mom would’ve lost her mind over all this.
The thought snuck out of the steel door in her mind where she’d locked away all wayward, crippling memories of Evelyn Reed. A blazing pain stabbed Nessa in the chest, and she sucked in a breath. Briefly, she closed her eyes, blocking out the winter wonderland beyond her windshield.
It had been eight long, lonely, bitter months since she’d lost her mother to uterine cancer. Since she’d last heard her mother’s pragmatic but affectionate voice that still held a faint Southern accent, even though she’d lived in Boston for over thirty years. Since she’d inhaled her mother’s comforting roses-and-fresh-laundry scent.
Since her mother had rasped a devastating secret in a whisper thick with regret, edged with pain and slurred from morphine.
Maybe the well-meaning friends who’d advised Nessa to see a grief counselor could also counsel her on how to stop being so goddamn angry with her mother for lying to Nessa for twenty-eight years. Maybe then Nessa could start to heal.
’Til then, she had patients to care for. Now she had a sister to raise.
And secrets to keep.
“Oh wow!” Ivy squealed, jabbing the window with a finger. “There’s a real town square and over there is the biggest Christmas tree I’ve ever seen! Can we get out and walk around? Please?”
Nessa glanced in the direction Ivy pointed, taking in the square, and in the distance, a massive tree. The idea of strolling around in the freezing weather to stare at a Douglas fir wasn’t exactly her idea of fun. But when she’d agreed to make this trip with Ivy, Nessa had told herself to make an effort to connect. This was supposed to be about bonding with the sister she barely knew.
Emptiness spread through her and the greasy slide of guilt and pain flooded into the hole. She glanced at Ivy, Nessa’s gaze lingering over the features they shared…but didn’t. The high cheekbones that dominated a face Ivy hadn’t yet grown into. The thin shoulders that had become even thinner in the last six weeks, since her father had died.
A scream welled up inside Nessa, scraping her throat raw. Ivy’s father—Isaac Hunt—was the man who had raised Nessa until he and her mother divorced when she’d been about Ivy’s age, and then he’d been more out of her life than in it. He had named Nessa as his daughter’s guardian. He had trusted Nessa to care for Ivy, because she was his oldest daughter and Ivy’s half sister. And though she and Isaac hadn’t shared a close relationship when he’d been alive, she couldn’t let him down. And Ivy…
Ivy had lost her mother as a baby, and now her father. Nessa knew what it was like to be alone. She couldn’t take Ivy’s sister away, too.
Even if Ivy resented the hell out of Nessa and begrudged her guardianship with every breath she took.
But God… Months of bearing a secret weighed on Nessa’s shoulders. And they ached. These last six weeks had been a special kind of hell.
She was so damn tired.
Inhaling a deep breath, Nessa forced herself to push past the soul-deep ache.
She could do this.
One of the first things she’d had to learn when entering the nursing field was how to compartmentalize hurt, grief and anger. Not allowing herself to be sucked down in a morass of emotion. If she hadn’t acquired that skill, she wouldn’t have been any good to her patients, their families, the doctors or herself. So what if some people called her Nurse Freeze behind her back? She got the job done. Besides, as she’d learned—first, when her father left the family; second, when her ex had traded their relationship for a job in Miami; and third, when her parents died—loving someone, caring for them, was a liability. Feelings were unreliable, untrustworthy. Parents, lovers, friends, patients—everyone always left. Only fools didn’t protect themselves.
And her mother hadn’t raised a fool.
“Let’s wait on that,” she said, answering Ivy. “We need to find Kinsale Inn first and get settled. Then maybe later we can come back and do the tourist thing.”
“Right.” Ivy dropped against the passenger seat, arms crossed over her chest. The glance the preteen slid Nessa’s way could only be described as side-eye. Paired with the curl to the corner of her mouth, Ivy’s expression had gone from wide-eyed excitement to Eff you, big sister in three-point-five seconds flat. “In other words, no.”
“Did I say no?” Nessa asked, striving for patience. She’s a grieving preteen. You can’t bounce her out of your car. CPS frowns on that. With the mantra running through her head, she tried again. “Check-in at the inn was at twelve, and it’s now one thirty.” She hadn’t expected to hit so much traffic leaving Boston. Or to take the wrong exit halfway to the Berkshires and have to retrace her route. “We need to make sure they still know we’re arriving. The square and the tree will be there in a few hours.”
“Uh-huh.” Ivy snorted. “And as soon as we get to the inn, you’ll find another excuse not to do anything. Especially with me. It’s not like you wanted to come here anyway.”
“First off, kid, I’m not the kind of person who does anything she doesn’t want to do. Second, if I give you my word, I mean it. And third, what does ‘especially with me’ mean? Who else would I be up here with?”
“Whatever,” Ivy muttered.
Nessa breathed deep. Held it. Counted to ten. Released it. Then tried again. “Is this how the next month is going to be? You angry and me taking the brunt of it? Because I have to tell you, we could’ve done this dance back in Boston without carolers and hot chocolate stands.”
“Don’t pretend like you did this for me. You don’t even like me. This is all for your guilt over Dad’s letter. Fine with me if we go back to Boston. I don’t care.”
Nessa tightened her fingers around the steering wheel, not replying. Anything she said to Ivy at this moment would only end up in an argument. That’s all she and Ivy had seemed to do since the funeral. Nothing Nessa did could make Ivy happy.