Their Christmas Carol (Big Sky Hathaways Book 2)

by Jessica Gilmore

  “They wanted more of the same for the second album and it was easy to do but, since I’ve been back, I’ve been writing something different. And it’s made me wonder what I’m doing, what the right path is. I’ve never written anything this intense before, this personal. It makes everything that much more real—before, if people didn’t like a song or a lyric then it didn’t affect me. But this? It feels a little like I’ll be singing a piece of my heart and I really don’t know how I feel about that.”

  Her forehead crinkled as she listened. “I thought all song writing was like that?”

  “Some is, but writing commercially is the same as any other kind of creative work—all you need to do is feel the emotion for as long as you need it to get the notes, the lyrics down. It doesn’t have to be authentic. It’s easier if it isn’t.”

  “What’s happened to make you change the way you write?”

  “Being back here. The memories. The ties. You.”

  Linnea set her glass down, her hand shaking a little, slopping the beer over the side.

  She grabbed a napkin, all her focus on the liquid. “Me?”

  Sometimes honesty wasn’t always the best policy. What on earth had made him admit that?

  “You, being back here. Here I am and here you are and it’s as if senior year is so close, that if I turned around a corner I’d be back there, it’s almost tangible. That’s what I’m writing about. Youth and desire and dreams and hope and what-ifs.” He exhaled. “I’ve never really looked back on that time before. There was a lot of emotion there.”

  Linnea looked down at her glass. “I owe you an apology.”

  “What for?”

  “For shutting you down when you suggested staying in touch, suggested seeing what happened if we didn’t split up. It’s a hideous cliché, but it wasn’t you, not at all. It was all me. I was scared. No, more, terrified. Terrified by how much I had fallen for you, by how much I wanted to set all my plans aside for you, follow you anywhere.”

  “You don’t have to apologize, I understood.” But he hadn’t.

  He’d taken her adamant refusal to even discuss staying together as confirmation of all he’d believed about himself. Had he been wrong all that time?

  “I do. I know you left before prom because of what I said. When I first went to college, I wondered what would have happened if I’d been braver. If I hadn’t insisted that we keep our relationship secret, hadn’t put an end date on it, asked you to wait until prom before you left. Told you how I felt? But then what would have changed? I was early admittance to Yale. You were meeting your parents in Europe. It was what it was. I guess it just wasn’t our time.”

  “No. And yet, here we are, ten years later. Funny how life goes.”

  “And this isn’t our time either.” She didn’t look up, her focus on her drink.

  “No,” he said again as time seemed to slow and all he could see was her. “Maybe it isn’t. But maybe that doesn’t matter. It doesn’t have to be our time forever, but can’t it be our time for now?”

  Chapter Seventeen

  The arrival of the food was a welcome interruption. Linnea didn’t know what to say, what to think.

  Didn’t know what she wanted.

  That wasn’t true. She wanted Nat. Wanted to feel his mouth on hers, his hands on her, wanted to lose herself, forget her worries in him. To indulge herself, knowing it would all end in a few weeks before anyone could get hurt. But was that fair, to him or to her?

  She waited until they had finished the delicious food and ordered another drink before summoning up her courage to try and explain her disjointed thoughts. “You’re right, Nat. The way you make me feel, the way I feel with you is real. It was then, it is now. But I’m not free. I have to consider Elsie and Betsy. You know how Elsie is finding the transition to life here difficult. Betsy, well, with her it’s the opposite. I don’t want her getting too attached to you.”

  “I’m not suggesting moving in together, but a few more evenings like this might be nice, while we’re still both here. No pressures, no expectations, just two old friends seeing where things go.”

  “Maybe,” she admitted. “I can see how that makes sense, but I never did think that straight when I was with you. I just don’t want to put my needs first, to be selfish…”

  His laugh surprised her. “Linnea, you’re the least selfish person I have ever met. You’re a wonderful mother, a great daughter. You spend your whole life thinking of other people. Look, if it’s too soon for you to date, then I understand.”

  “It’s not too soon. And, honestly, we’re already there, aren’t we? I think we were there when we ran into each other at the orchard. If I wasn’t worried about Elsie then I wouldn’t hesitate. You’re right, there’s unfinished business between us. I’m proud to be seen with you.”

  “Unlike back then?” he teased and her cheeks heated.

  “I didn’t want to be another in your list of groupies. I thought if no one saw us, if we didn’t acknowledge that we were together, if I called it friendship, then I was different…”

  “You were different.” Nat looked down, his expression rueful. “I was an ass back then, thought never dating anyone more than a few times was a cool way to be. Insufferable jerk.”

  “You were a little.” She smiled to show she was joking—partly at least. “But I was an ass too, so proud, too proud to let people see I was like any other girl. I always had to be the best, at everything I did. If I couldn’t count on being with you at the end of senior year, then I didn’t want anyone to know I was with you at all. I’d like to go back and tell that girl to get over herself, to spend less time trying, more time having fun. Which”—she looked up and met his gaze—“Is why I want to say yes. I want to show my daughters it’s okay to have fun. That life is about taking chances, and enjoying yourself. That’s what their dad would have wanted them to know.”

  “What happened, Linnea? To your husband?”

  Normally, the last thing Linnea wanted was to rehash Logan’s death, but Nat deserved to know more. “It was a climbing accident. He’d gone to the Rockies for a week with his friends. He liked extreme sports. The rope gave and he fell.”

  So few words for such a life changing event.

  “I am so sorry.”

  “It was nearly three years ago. Betsy barely remembers him and, in a couple of years, I’ll have been widowed as long as I was married.” It was easier to think that way, rather than to dwell on what might have been.”

  “What was he like?” Nat put his beer to one side and propped his elbows on the table. “He must have been pretty amazing to have tempted you away from your studies. When Lacey told me you married so young, I have to admit I was taken aback. And a little jealous.”

  “Jealous?”

  “You chose your studies over me.” He grinned, that confident lazy grin Linnea was beginning to understand masked a host of real feelings. “It hurt my pride a little. Despicable, I know.”

  Was it wrong to heat up a little, knowing he had still cared? “It wasn’t a deliberate decision. I absolutely didn’t intend to marry so young. I was still trying to decide between eventually going on to law school, or whether I wanted to go into publishing. In a way, it was all your fault…”

  He sat up at that. “My fault?”

  She smiled over at him, enjoying the indignation in his voice. “Thanks to you, confident, blond, blue-eyed guys became my type. Logan and I should never have met. He was a junior and I was a freshman. He was legacy Yale, several generations back, part of the rich, privileged set and I was on a scholarship. But I saw him a few weeks after Christmas and he just reminded me of you, the way he was walking, the way he looked. I smiled at him as if I knew him. I was so mortified when I realized what I had done, but he just smiled back and asked me if I wanted to get a coffee. And that was it. I was smitten. Young, naïve, and ready to fall in love.”

  “And he felt the same way?”

  “Surprisingly, he seemed to. We dated casu
ally that spring and he got me an internship that summer at his family firm—they own business motels and hotels right through the Northeast. I went back to school as part of a couple, a member of that privileged group. It was everything I had ever wanted, I was making great contacts, great friends, the future seemed just the way I had planned it—and then I got pregnant.”

  “Not part of the plan I guess.”

  “No.” Linnea reached for her beer, the old guilt and panic rising back up, just for a minute. “Some people thought it was, thought I had been very clever, but I never wanted to marry into money and success, I wanted to make it on my own. The first thought I had was for Mom and Dad, that I was letting them down. That perfect daughters don’t get knocked up before they turn twenty, two years before graduation.”

  “What did Logan say?”

  She blew out a breath. “Logan was a real seize the day kind of guy. There wasn’t a mountain he didn’t want to scale, a lake he didn’t want to swim, a challenge he didn’t want to overcome. Life was an adventure to him. He thought marriage and fatherhood would just be another adventure. It was hard not to get caught up in that enthusiasm and optimism, such a relief that one of us didn’t see the positive test and think disaster.”

  “He sounds like quite the guy.”

  “He was.” She paused, remembering the look in Logan’s eyes when she had told him she was pregnant. The hope and happiness. Enough hope and happiness for both of them. “I was really worried his parents would think I was taking advantage of him, you know, the only girls with babies that look like me in their world are the nannies. But they welcomed me into the family. Encouraged me to come to work in the family business and get my degree at the same time. I was really lucky.”

  “Not at all, they knew a good thing when they saw it.”

  “I hated taking the girls away from them. They’re the last link they have to Logan. And I loved my work there too. But they understood, encouraged me, promised me there will always be a place there if I ever change my mind.”

  Nat picked up his beer and took a long drink. “Was it a good marriage?”

  She didn’t hesitate. “At times. It wasn’t perfect, it wasn’t always easy. We both worked full-time and had babies or small children the whole time. Even with all the privilege of wealth and his family close by that left us tired. I was finishing my degree, while working with a small child. He liked his sports at weekends. It didn’t leave us a lot of time for each other.” A nostalgic smile curved her mouth. “He would be so angry that the first thing I did when I got to Marietta was organize this concert. He’d say that it was so typical of me, that I always bit off more than I could manage, that I needed to learn to relax.”

  “He would have had a point.”

  “Maybe. Truth was, there were times when I felt we were becoming a partnership rather than a couple before our time. Old and settled while still in our early twenties, so different from our unmarried friends who lived in the city and had no responsibilities beyond climbing the career ladder. And I know he felt the same way, that he loved me and loved the girls, but felt stifled at times. That’s why he would go away with the guys, take risks, act as if he had no responsibilities at all.” Linnea hesitated. “I was so angry when he died. That he died so needlessly, that he put his sport before his family, that he left us. But I’m over that now. I’m just glad that he gave me two beautiful girls.”

  “What would he say about me?”

  She didn’t hesitate. Hadn’t she asked herself the same thing just the other day? “He’d tell me to go for it.”

  And there was her answer.

  *

  Neither of them wanted dessert. The freezing air was a shock as they exited the building and Nat cast a knowing look at the starry sky. “Snow soon.”

  “Just in time for Christmas,” Linnea said with an anticipatory shiver. “The girls will be pleased.”

  “So…”

  “So?” Linnea summoned all her courage and took Nat’s hand, slipping her own gloved fingers through his. He froze momentarily, before tightening his grip. “We don’t have to head back. It’s still early and I no longer have a curfew…”

  “We could go back to the Summer House,” Nat said. “But Lacey and Zac are both there, and I don’t want to sit and make conversation with them, I just want to be alone with you. But nor do I want to face their knowing looks if we go up to my room.”

  “And my parents will still be up, and although they’ll give us our privacy, they’ll do it in such an ostentatious way, it’ll be more awkward than if they supervised us.”

  Nat laughed. “This is worse than high school. At least it was warm then. Remind me to only conduct romances in the spring and summer next time.”

  “Perfect for hiding out in the orchard,” Linnea agreed.

  “I should have got my own place. It didn’t seem worth it for just a few weeks. Fool that I am. I’ll tell you what, let’s go and grab a drink at the Graff, like a proper date, and then one day next week, I’ll make you dinner. There will be one night when Lacey will be away and Zac in San Francisco. Biscuit will be there to chaperone us though, so you don’t need to worry for your virtue.”

  “That’s a shame,” Linnea said with as saucy a smile as she could manage. “I hope he doesn’t take his duties too seriously.”

  Nat’s grip tightened even further. “I’m sure I can bribe him with a bone.”

  “The Graff?” she teased as they began to walk slowly down the road. She was trying not to focus on the feel of her hand on his, on how every nerve seemed to be drawn there, her whole body tingling with every step. “Trying to impress me?”

  “Always. Also, I wanted to catch up with Shane Knight, she tends bar there. Do you know her?”

  For one second, jealousy ran hot through Linnea’s body. “I don’t think so.”

  “She sings and plays the upright bass. I was thinking it might be fun to round the concert off with a bit of a gig—you on piano, me guitar, Lacey on her violin, and if Shane’s up for it then she can do the bass. She’s got a great voice too. I heard her a couple of weeks ago when Lacey and I were there. What do you think?”

  “I think you’re taking this concert very seriously, Mr. Hathaway.”

  Nat stopped and turned so he was facing Linnea. He moved forward slowly and she backed up until she was pressed up against the wall, his arms either side of her as he leaned in, the heat in his eyes a smolder threatening to set her alight. “Oh, I am,” he said, his eyes focused on her mouth. “There’s a girl I need to impress.”

  “Oh?”

  “She has high standards, you see. I want everything to be perfect.”

  “I’m sure she appreciates your efforts.” Linnea wouldn’t have moved if her limbs had been able.

  He wasn’t touching her and yet she was so aware of him, her body pulled toward his, her pulse hammering so loud it was providing its own soundtrack to the evening.

  “You think?”

  “I know.” She arched toward him, unable to hide her aching need any more. “Nat Hathaway, are you going to keep talking or are you planning on kissing me soon?”

  “I think that can be arranged,” he murmured, moving closer until finally she could luxuriate in the hardness of his body against hers, sliding her arms around his waist to pull him even closer, raising her face to his, ready for his kiss. This was right, this was what she needed, and she was going to savor every single moment.

  Chapter Eighteen

  “Okay, girls,” Linnea whispered. “Are you ready?”

  Betsy stifled a giggle, but Elsie nodded seriously.

  Linnea stepped back and regarded her eldest daughter, pride swelling through her. “Let me take a photo before you go to send to Grandad and Grandma in Milchester. Maybe we should invite them over next year, they would love to take part.”

  “Can I be the Santa Lucia next year?” Betsy asked and Linnea nodded.

  “I think you can take it in turns. It doesn’t seem fair if you never
get a turn just because you weren’t born first.”

  Both girls were dressed in long white dresses with green wreaths around their heads, but Elsie’s wreath was stuck through with candles. Traditionally real candles were used, but Linnea had no intention of allowing her small daughter to walk through the house with flames so close to her hair and so she had bought LED candles instead. They still looked very effective, blazing out in the dim predawn light.

  “Okay, Elsie, can you manage the tray? Betsy how about this plate?”

  Linnea had stayed up late the night before to make cinnamon rolls and decorate the tray with holly and other greenery, putting dainty cups and saucers and a milk jug out ready so all she had to do this morning was make the coffee, add the milk to the jug and heat the rolls. Traditionally lussekatter, raisin-filled saffron buns, were eaten on Santa Lucia’s day, but Linnea was far more confident with her cinnamon roll making skills, consoling herself with the reflection that they were still traditional Swedish breakfast pastries.

  Betsy took the plate of rolls carefully, her tongue poking out as she concentrated on holding it straight. Linnea picked up the tray and carefully placed it into Elsie’s hands. “Take it slowly.” She cautioned.

  Carefully, the girls walked the hallway, up the wide front staircase and along the landing until they reached the master bedroom, pushing open the door. Linnea stood at the bottom of the stairs listening to her parents’ surprised—and then delighted—squeals as the girls wished them “Happy Santa Lucia’s day!”

  “What a lovely surprise,” her mother said when Linnea joined them in the bedroom for an early breakfast. “What on earth made you think of it?”

  “I heard Aunt Pernilla talking about being the Lucia when she was a girl and saying what a shame the custom had died out in the family so I decided to revive it. Tonight we’ve been invited to Crooked Corner for a procession along Bramble Lane followed by a Swedish style feast. I believe Patty Hathaway has asked Aunt Pernilla and the cousins as well.”