Heart pounding he finally pulled away. “If you were talking about us, we were awfully young, Jo. And we had so many strikes against us.”
“Is that what it was?”
“Were you really ready to settle down? When I told you that I wasn’t, you looked so relieved, I thought I’d made the right choice for both of us.”
She searched his eyes. “We were young,” she said at last.
“We aren’t that young anymore.”
“But we tried this once, and it wasn’t exactly a rip-roaring success.”
“We can take it a step at a time.” He smiled. “Baby steps.”
“I have a life and a job and a condo across the country.”
“And who knows what kind of Christmas tree is waiting for you this year? Neon? Goth? Are you really in a hurry to go back and find out?”
With an audible sigh she cupped his cheek, her fingers threading into his hair. “This is so crazy. We can’t just pick up where we left off, Brody. Ten years have gone by.”
“And I’ve missed you for every one of them.”
“You could have found me.”
He heard the hurt, and it tore at his heart. He almost blurted out the truth, that he’d had nothing to offer except poverty and death. But he didn’t want sympathy.
He wanted love.
“Can we just start over?” he asked. “Get to know each other? Have fun together? Will you stay through Christmas and spend it in Kanowa Lake?” He didn’t add “With me,” although that was perfectly clear.
He thought she was going to refuse, then she smiled, and her fingers burrowed deeper in his hair. “Friends, then, but just friends. On one condition.”
“What’s that?”
“You get a real Christmas tree, and we decorate it together.”
“And if I put up a sprig of mistletoe?”
“You’re doing fine without it,” she said, right before she leaned forward to kiss him again.
CHAPTER SIX
From [email protected]: Sounds to me like you’re having quite the adventure at Hollymeade, Jo. Rachel and I are shivering through your emails, and they make me sorry we didn’t try harder to stay in touch all these years. I’m in the mood for an adventure, too, but I think I’ll take mine without all that snow. I’m practicing my appliqué stitches, by the way, in preparation for my border. Aunt Glo would have encouraging words to say, I’m sure. And she would also have reminded you to slow down and have a wonderful Christmas. So even though I’m the youngest cousin, I’ll do it for her.
JO WASN’T SURE how Christmas Eve had arrived so quickly. Ten days had passed since the potluck, and she and Brody had spent large chunks of each one together. While now she was working an hour each morning, she was still officially taking vacation time. She’d become skilled at cutting off her boss’s telephone rants by citing in boring detail the reasons why her presence wasn’t required until the New Year.
Sophie was even more of a challenge, but surprisingly her spirit guide agreed with Jo. Ocelot Lee had issued a decree that demanding attention from her daughter was not a step forward for Sophie’s personal growth. Sophie needed more time with him. Jo just hoped her stepfather was watching how much money was flowing to the medium who channeled ol’ Ocelot.
The moments with Brody were by far the best. She woke up every morning anxious to see him again. For a quiet little town in the frozen north, they had found plenty to do, especially after she bought a down jacket.
She was learning to cross-country ski, and for the first time since her childhood, she had strapped on ice skates and, with Brody’s help, taken her first tentative glides along the frozen lakeshore. They’d Christmas shopped together at the Trading Post, baked Christmas cookies for his friends, and added a couple of snow people to his collection so that now they had a fleet of carolers on his lawn.
Twice more they had unsuccessfully searched the Grants’ attic for the box with Eric’s baby things. Since searching was the perfect excuse to see Brody earlier in the day, Jo managed that guilty little secret just fine.
Brody had taken his time getting a new Christmas tree, but the tree they had hauled into his house yesterday was a real beauty, cut from a hillside destined for vineyard expansion. As it turned out there were ornaments in the attic from his childhood, and he had promised to bring them down tonight. Jo was making a gourmet dinner, and afterward, they would decorate together.
Tomorrow morning she would join him at his house to open presents. Join him, that is, if she actually left tonight.
So far she and Brody had, as she had requested, just enjoyed each other’s company. While they never talked about the past, they did talk about everything else. They had similar views on politics, and while he was more inclined to be a churchgoer than she was, their views on religion were similar, too. Their reading tastes were different—his tended toward thrillers, she was a fan of biographies—but they loved some of the same television shows. He was surprised she avoided trendy nightclubs, and she was surprised he never watched football but couldn’t be pried away from the set when the World Series was in play.
Through all this, he had rarely touched her. He always kissed her good-night. That was a given, and she could tell he was reluctant to let her go afterward. She was reluctant to go, so she understood. But somehow they had taken the time to build trust, to push aside the powerful physical attraction between them and reforge the bond they had severed a decade before.
She was so glad they had waited. Weren’t they mature? But now she was ready to toss maturity out the window.
She dressed carefully for the night’s adventure. She hadn’t brought X-rated lingerie, but she was fairly certain that lingerie of any kind wasn’t going to be much of an issue. She washed her hair, shaved her legs, took a little extra care with her makeup and pulled out the new green sweater she had found at the Trading Post. By the time she left, she was satisfied. She had even pinned a twinkling Christmas wreath to the sweater, to make Brody smile. Luckily it had an off switch, because this was no night to give the man a headache.
She packed the ingredients for dinner and took them out to the car, then she packed a few toiletries and a change of underwear in a bag, too, and hid it under the front seat.
Just in case...
Snow was falling, a pillowy snow that was spreading softly over older drifts like icing on a cake. As she drove toward his house she thought about Olivia’s wedding quilt. As hoped, she had found several helpful books upstairs. After looking carefully at every pattern, she had settled on a Friendship Star block, a four-pointed star that would, in partner with its neighbors, dance across her border. It was, as star blocks went, simple enough for her to stitch by hand, although the first two had varied wildly, and neither of them had been the exact size she needed.
The third, though, had been perfect, her stitches even and small enough to suit her. She had decided to use the royal blue background of the center block as the background for each block. Then the stars themselves could be a variety of different fabrics, and that was where she planned to incorporate some of the bride and groom’s childhoods. She had also decided on smallish stars, so that none would stand out and take away from the perfect center block. That meant she had to sew even more of them to stretch around the quilt. In the past week she had made enough for two sides, and she was pleased at the way they had turned out.
Still, she hoped that quilt-making would be on hold tonight.
On the snow-sprinkled walk up to the house she smiled at the wreath on the front door. She had bought it on sale yesterday in the grocery store parking lot, a steal, since most people already had their decorations completed. Brody had hung it immediately. As she raised her hand to knock she noticed something new had been added. Little flags that looked like they had been made from Post-it notes and toothpicks were tucked in between the pine
cones and plastic sprays of cranberries adorning the wreath.
She pulled one out and read the message out loud. “The weather outside is frightful.” She frowned, and pulled out another. “If you’ve no place to go.” Now she smiled as she looked at the rest. He had carefully penned, then pinned, all the words to the familiar Christmas song, “Let It Snow.” Even out of order, she recognized them.
“All the night long we’ll be warm.”
Oh, it was going to be a good night, she was sure of it.
Let it snow and snow some more!
By the time Brody answered the door, she was almost dancing with delight.
“It’s so Christmassy!” she said, throwing her arms around him. “I love the wreath.”
He kissed her soundly, until she was breathless. Then he stepped back. “I would have bought one and put it up weeks ago if I’d known the results.”
“I have lots to bring in. Want to help?”
They finally got all the food into the house, despite pelting each other with snowballs.
She set the last of the bags on the counter and took a deep breath of cinnamon-scented air. “Something smells fabulous.”
“I’m heating cider. I knew you’d be ready for a mug when you got here.”
She threw her arms around his neck again and kissed him. “You’re so thoughtful.”
Brody slipped his arms around her waist and held her there. “Seems to me you’re making me dinner. Little enough to do in return.”
“Cooking in this wonderful old kitchen is a treat. I love it. I can almost taste all the amazing meals that have been cooked here.”
“Doubtful. My mother loves her vegetable garden. Then she boils the heck out of every harvest. My father used to sneak behind her and turn off burners.”
“I know you miss him. I miss mine.”
He kissed the tip of her nose, then released her. “Having you here makes all the difference.”
“For the record, this is the best Christmas I remember in a long time.”
“Because?”
He was clearly fishing for a compliment. “I’m not working, of course. At least not very much.”
“And?”
“And I guess I love winter. The snow and the cold remind me of my childhood, before we pulled up stakes and headed for California.”
“And?”
She cocked her head. “Well, being with you is nice.”
“Nice?”
“Maybe that’s a bit of an understatement.”
“It had better be.” He pulled her close again, and this time the kiss went on and on—and the man did know how to kiss. When she finally stepped away, the room was cartwheeling around her.
She shook her head. “You expect me to cook after that?”
“You promised me dinner. And I just hauled in at least a ton of groceries.”
She sent him her most seductive smile, then she turned away before he could respond to the message in it. “No problem, I’ll just boil the heck out of everything in these bags and you’ll feel right at home.”
* * *
OF COURSE SHE didn’t. She had gone into debt for the rib roast, and she cooked it with potatoes, simmering them first so they would crisp up in the oven nestled against the roast. She served both with a spinach and artichoke casserole, fresh green beans, a cranberry, apple and walnut salad, and yeast rolls she had baked at Hollymeade that morning. For his part Brody opened a bottle of Merlot from a friend’s vineyard on Long Island.
When she set everything on the table, decorated with a red tablecloth from Hollymeade, evergreen boughs and white candles, Brody looked like a man who had died and reawakened to his first heavenly banquet.
“I’m going to be rude and ask if there’s dessert,” he said.
“Doesn’t this look like enough?”
“I have to know how much I can eat. If there’s dessert, too, I might be able to rein myself in, just a bit, in preparation.”
“Homemade gingerbread, and there’s maple whipped cream to go with it.”
He looked up from his plate. “Thank you. More than I can say.”
She heard so much in his voice. Thanks for the food. Thanks for cooking for me. Thanks for making a holiday special that would have been lonely and desolate.
If there was more, she didn’t want to think about it.
The food was as good as she had hoped. Clearly Brody thought so, too.
“You ought to be a pro, a chef,” he said, as he reached for another helping of potatoes. “This is better than any restaurant meal I’ve ever had.”
She was flattered. “Cooking’s my only real hobby. I would hate to ruin it.”
“You haven’t talked much about your job.”
She found herself telling him more about the man she worked for. “I know it’s not just my fault when things go wrong,” she said, “but it’s hard to remember that when Frank crowns me scapegoat of the year.”
“Do you have to stay there?”
She didn’t know. She did know she would be in demand if she ever looked for another job. She had a large network of leads and a standing offer or two. That sounded like bragging, though, so she just shrugged. “I’ve invested a lot in this job. I would hate to walk away.”
“You like what you do?”
“I love helping companies become more efficient. That’s my main function. If we can get just the right system in place, their productivity soars and everybody’s happy. It’s a great feeling.”
“You work with the big guys, I guess.”
“Usually, but the right system, computers, software, et cetera, customized for small businesses, can make all the difference, too. And sometimes it’s the difference between closing up shop or opening up markets.” She pushed back from the table a little, because she couldn’t eat another bite. “I’m sure you have a good system here, tailored to your needs, right?”
“I don’t have the time to fool with anything new.”
Or the money, she thought. The more time she spent with Brody, the more she suspected Ryan Vineyards was, at best, holding its own. Most of the land was planted with Concord grapes for juice, and Brody’s passion for making wine was on a back burner. She had seen his equipment, and California girl that she was, she knew what he had wasn’t state-of-the-art, as it should be to compete. The house needed attention inside and out, and one day, when she had dropped by unannounced, the temperature inside hadn’t been much different from the one outside.
“I could fix you up.” She said this as casually as she could, as if having a highly paid consultant revamp his entire business strategy wasn’t any big deal. “Get the right technology in place without a lot of fuss and bother. And with my contacts, I could do it in a way that wouldn’t break the bank. I could set up everything you need. Invoices, purchasing orders, follow-ups with potential clients, analysis of marketing campaigns. How’s your website?”
She had asked the last question in her most innocent tone, but she already knew the answer. The Ryan Vineyards website, if it could be called that, was pathetic, one page that looked as if it had been constructed by a middle school student for his first computer class.
“I can tell you’ve seen it already,” Brody said.
She nodded sheepishly. “I think I could do a thousand percent better with a minimum of work.”
He didn’t answer directly. “It’s a lot to think about tonight, and we ought to be celebrating. Would you like to try some of Ryan Vineyards’ own ice wine with dessert?”
Last week she’d had a glass of Ryan’s best Reisling, and it had compared favorably with German Reislings she’d been served on business trips. She said an enthusiastic yes.
They cleared off the table together and stacked the dishes in the ancient dishwasher. Then, while she di
shed up the gingerbread with generous dollops of whipped cream, Brody opened the wine.
They took both to the small table near the fireplace and sat together on soft cushions, watching the flames and working on the gingerbread.
The wine was wonderful, with notes of peaches and honey, a wine to be proud of, and she told him so.
He looked pleased. “The grapes have to freeze before we pick them, which means we have to leave them on the vine and hope a freeze is on the way before they rot. Then, of course, there’s not as much liquid after they freeze, so we make less wine. It’s a risky business, but good ice wine can sell for five times what a bottle of the Reisling brings.”
“That would make a great blog, updating people day by day on the state of the weather, the grapes, the work involved. Wine fanatics would hang on every word. They’d be standing in line for your wine when it was ready.”
“If I could just be two or three people at once, I could manage something like that.”
“I bet you like all the challenges.”
“It’s the darnedest thing. I do like challenges, always have. Take finding Eric’s baby quilts, for instance.”
Surprised at the nimble change of subject, she took another sip of her wine and waited.
“It’s the strangest thing, Jo, but I think I may have found them.”
“Really? You were in the Grants’ attic without me?”
“I’m still monitoring their roof for a possible leak.”
That surprised her, but she didn’t let on.
“Anyway, I went upstairs, and you won’t believe what I found.”
She raised a brow. “Won’t I?”
“The right box was there in front. Exactly where we looked that first day. Are you surprised?”
She set her plate on the table. “Not so much.”
“Well, I was. Really, really surprised. Stunned, in fact. Because...” He paused dramatically. “I had moved that box to the back row before you ever went up there in the first place.”
The Christmas Wedding Quilt: Let It SnowYou Better Watch OutNine Ladies Dancing Page 6