The Pretty Lady and the Cowboy (Songs from the Heart)

by Lee, Dana

By that time the snow was beginning to cover the grass. I grabbed the ice scraper out of the trunk, brushed off the snow, and then cleaned the windshield. Old Ray was pretty good in the snow, and I’d just had new snow tires put on, so we made it to the store with no trouble.

  I had an old thirty-cup coffee urn in the back, and I decided to fill it with some hot chocolate and put it out for the last-minute Christmas shoppers. I found a stack of small paper cups and put those next to the pot, which I plugged in on a small table near the rear of the store. If customers wanted hot chocolate, they were going to have to come all the way into the store to get it. Of course, I hoped they’d find something they wanted to buy as they sipped.

  Jess and Dan arrived, shaking the snow off their polar bear caps. Even Ally got there early. She knew this was the last big push. She had mentioned that she had her eye on a particular GPS and told me that she planned to start training for a marathon. I already had that wrapped up for her under a tiny, two-foot tall Christmas tree that stood in a corner of my living room.

  Light snow continued to fall through the afternoon. Santa himself must have been orchestrating the weather because there was exactly enough snow falling to make the whole town feel festive and Christmas-like, but not enough to keep the last-minute shoppers home. In her spare time, Jess had somehow managed to make dozens of cookies shaped like running shoes (what spare time, I wondered!) and the shoppers happily nibbled on those while they sipped their cocoa.

  Since it was Christmas Eve, we were only scheduled to remain open until 5:00 p.m. The crowds started thinning around 3:00, and I was thinking for a while we might even shut our doors a bit early. I was looking forward to the Christmas Eve dinner that Ally, Jess, Dan, and I had planned. They were all coming to my apartment and each of them was bringing a dish. I had thought about roasting a turkey, but in the end decided to get a take-out bird from my favorite health food store. With gravy. And stuffing. Yum! The season had been spectacularly good for us and had put The Finish Line solidly in the black, but I was more than ready for a little rest.

  So when I looked out the window at 4:30 and saw crowds gathering in the street in front of the store, I had mixed feelings.

  “Wow, guys, look out for the last of the last-minute shoppers!” I called out. Jess and Ally joined me in looking out at the crowd while Dan finished up with a customer.

  Several people in the crowd looked in our window and waved. They chatted with each other, stamped their feet to keep warm, a few started singing Christmas carols… but no one headed into The Finish Line. Clearly the excitement—whatever it was—was outside.

  “I think maybe Santa is going to make an appearance,” Ally said.

  People were leaning out over the curb looking up and down the street. I tried to remember whether the Chamber of Commerce announcements included anything about a visit from Santa. I honestly couldn’t remember. The season had been a happy, busy blur. But clearly people were expecting something.

  Dan finished ringing up his sale and then joined us at the window. Looking out at the happy shoppers and the gently falling snow made me feel as if we had stepped into an old-fashioned Christmas movie. I smiled, thinking of my own little Charlie Brown Christmas tree at home. I linked arms with Jess, and then she reached out to Dan, who in turn offered his arm to Ally with a small secret wink.

  “Merry Christmas, everyone!” Jess said. We were all quiet for a few seconds, savoring this special moment, the first Christmas with our Finish Line family.

  And then suddenly there was a roar of applause outside the door. We looked out the window but couldn’t see that anything was happening. From our perspective inside the store, everything looked just the same. But everyone now seemed to be looking down the street in the same direction. People were digging cell phones out of their purses and pockets, getting ready, it seemed, to take photos of this event.

  Whatever it was.

  “Shall we go out and get a look at Santa in person?” I asked my crew.

  “I’ll grab some cookies for the reindeer,” Jess said.

  So we hurried into our coats and polar bear caps, locked the front door, and dashed out to join the crowd. It was growing dark and you could see halos of snow in the glow of the street lights.

  “I believe!” Ally said. “Honest, Santa, I believe!” With the snow falling on her cheeks, she looked like a child. I felt a tug at my heartstrings when I saw Dan put his arm around her waist and saw her lean toward him.

  And just at that moment, through the darkness, the shape of a large vehicle rolling down the street came into view. I heard the teenage girl standing next to me tell her friend that she had just gotten the tweets, but didn’t know whether to believe them or not, what with all the rumors that had been going around. Then the friend said she’d heard there might be a permanent deal with the casino in the works so maybe they’d be able to see him more often. The girls hugged each other in anticipation.

  And then my heart almost stopped beating as I saw that the snow-covered vehicle pulling up in front of The Finish Line was a bus. And not just any bus—Levi McCrory’s tour bus. The girls had been talking about Levi. Maybe planning to stay in Connecticut?

  The top of the bus was open, like the top level of one of those British double-decker buses. And there was a roar from the crowd as Levi, guitar in hand, appeared there, smiling and waving. Snow was falling gently on his jet-black Stetson and on the soft, grey suede of his jacket. To the complete delight of the crowd, he put his hand up to the brim of his hat as if in greeting, but then yanked the hat off and sent it sailing down to the fans, where it was caught by a young man who immediately put it onto his own head. With all eyes on him, Levi pretended to be struggling to get something out of his jacket pocket, and then bent over and pulled on a red and white Santa cap. A cheer went up. It seemed Santa had arrived after all.

  And then, Levi struck a chord on his guitar. He riffed for a while as the crowd grew quiet, then started talking about how he had the perfect thing to get everybody warmed up on a cold, snowy evening: a country line dance. You could see people getting into makeshift lines, some linking elbows. The sidewalk was a little slushy, but no one seemed to care. They were on a Christmas Eve high, part of a magical surprise mini-concert that Levi had tweeted about to his followers.

  I had been telling myself that I would probably never see Levi again, at least never in person. But here he was. My heart was pounding so hard I could hardly hear him sing. Why was he here? Could I dare to hope what every fiber in my body was hoping?

  I caught a line as he sang,

  “When it’s right, you just know it! You can feel it in your heart and in your hands.”

  My heart was crying out that yes! I had felt it. When Levi kissed me, held me, touched me with his gentle hands, even when he just looked at me. I had felt it with my whole body.

  People were dancing in the streets and on the sidewalk. I saw some drivers simply leave their cars and join in the dancing since there was no way they could get through the crowd on this street anyway.

  And now I heard, “This is right, and I know it. I can feel it in my heart and in my soul.”

  And I felt the cold of the snowflakes melt as they met with the warm tears that were streaming down my cheeks.

  “I have found the other half who makes me whole,” Levi sang. And then I heard the words again as he repeated the last chorus.

  Jess gave me a long hug after the song ended. And then I dashed back inside the store. There was something I needed to get. Snow or no snow.

  When I came back out, Levi was strumming a few chords and chatting in the wonderful intimate way he has with his audience.

  “… needs just one more thing to make it perfect,” he was saying. And through the snow, through the dark, I knew that somehow he had spotted me. From my position in the doorway of The Finish Line, I looked up at him.

  For several seconds, he didn’t say anything else. We just looked into each other’s eyes across the distance. And then a
voice in the crowd said, “So what else do you need to make the moment perfect?”

  And Levi answered softly, “The girl of my dreams, of course. Katharine Addison.” He smiled down at me. “Or Just Kitty to her friends,” he confided to the crowd. And then, “Help her up here, would you, Jim?”

  Somehow Levi’s driver Jim was at my side, gently steering me toward the bus, and then on through the bus, and finally up the stairs to where Levi stood waiting. As I walked slowly toward him, he handed the guitar to Jim. And then I was in his arms and I felt his lips on mine. And suddenly there was no crowd, there was no traffic, there was only Levi.

  “Hey,” he said, after a long moment. “Miss me?”

  “Hey, yourself,” I said softly. “What took you so long?”

  He held me close. “I had a couple of songs I had to write,” he whispered in my ear.

  And he reached for his guitar again and began to play a melody I had never heard before. And as he strummed, he spoke to the audience.

  “Now I haven’t seen Just Kitty in quite a while, so there are a couple of songs I need to sing to her.” While he hummed a few bars, I could hear the audience murmuring. He kept strumming and addressed the audience again. “Y’all are welcome to listen in if you want to, but I need you to be very quiet.”

  A hush fell over the crowd. Levi McCrory magic, once again.

  And then Levi was softly singing a ballad that was unlike anything I’d ever heard him sing before. The Levi McCrory trademark was optimism; his songs were upbeat and happy and when you listened to them you felt upbeat and happy, too. But this was a song of longing, self-doubt. I felt my heart breaking as he sang the lines, “Can a man who ain’t perfect be perfect for you?”

  And I felt tears on my cheeks again as I listened to the second verse.

  There is nothing impossible when I’m with you,

  everything I could wish for is easy to do.

  It’s a fairy tale love that’s as true as can be—

  I know magic is real when you’re here next to me.

  I can do anything when I’m holding your hand,

  So I’m hoping and praying that you’ll understand

  that I love you—that’s something I’d never undo.

  I pray this man who ain’t perfect…

  this man with a past…

  this man who ain’t perfect… will someday…

  someway…

  be perfect for you.

  The crowd was still hushed as he played the final chords. I wanted to shout out that I loved him, too, that I had been too blinded by fear to understand how perfect he was—how perfect we were for each other. But even as the last notes of the song were fading in the cold December air, he struck a new chord and instantly he was the old Levi again. And he was singing a song I knew, one that I thought of as my own song.

  “I was falling for a girl I never wanted to lose, I was falling for a girl wearing princess shoes,” he sang, looking at me. And as he sang, he glanced down and I could see the corners of his eyes crinkle with silent amusement as he noticed them. Yes, when I had gone back into the store I’d taken those lonely shoes off the shelf where I had tossed them the day after I saw Levi’s bus disappearing down the highway. Now my princess shoes were on my feet, and even in the snow, in the dark, they sparkled like crazy.

  He looked back into my eyes as he started singing a second verse, one I’d never heard before.

  And every day after that I knew I wanted you near me,

  wanted your hand in mine—I could see it all clearly—

  How our life now could be, girl, for you and for me.

  Because there’s nothing can stop us, not a care, not a worry,

  And we’ll take it all slow—we’ve got no need to hurry—

  Because time’s on our side, and life’s a beautiful ride.

  And I know deep in my heart the love I’m sharing with you

  we’ll be feeling ever after, when we both say “I do.”

  At the altar I’ll await the pretty lady who’s

  Coming toward me down the aisle in her princess shoes.

  And on the last note, Levi dropped down on one knee and said, “I love you, Just Kitty. Will you marry me?”

  I smiled at him through my happy tears. “Yes,” I said simply. It was all I could manage to say.

  Then he reached into a pocket and held out a gorgeous antique diamond engagement ring. “My grandmother’s,” he whispered, slipping it onto my finger.

  Then the crowd went wild with cheering. “Kiss! Kiss!” they chanted. Levi pulled me into the warm circle of his arms again, and his lips were on mine. The applause that erupted in the audience seemed a very long way away.

  Then suddenly I felt as if the ground under me was moving. And it was—the bus was slowly pulling away from the curb.

  “Ready?” Levi asked.

  “For anything,” I said, “as long as we’re together.”

  With Levi’s arm around my waist, we both waved and called out, “Merry Christmas!” And the cries of the crowd calling back “Merry Christmas!” and “Happy New Year!” gradually faded in the cold, snowy air.