by Naima Simone
“Remi?” She frowned. “Whatever are you talking about?”
“Maybe at this point you’ve become so used to criticizing me that you don’t notice. And I don’t know which is worse—doing it on purpose or being so accustomed to taking my inventory that it has become habit. The problem is, with you, I always come up short. I’ve never been enough.”
“Remi, honey,” she whispered, tears glistening in her eyes. “That’s not true.”
“It is. I don’t doubt you love me, Mom. But you have a lousy way of showing it. And if you don’t change it, I won’t be coming around as much. I can’t accept that toxicity in my life anymore. I won’t.”
She crossed the space separating them, cupped her mother’s arms and kissed her cheek.
“I love you, and I love myself. I need you to accept that.”
Tears pricked her own eyes and her pulse pounded like a snare drum. She turned and exited the kitchen, moisture blinding her.
“Hey, I got you.”
She didn’t hesitate. Didn’t question. She wrapped her arms around Declan, burying her face against his hard, welcoming chest. And when his arms closed around her, she sighed, relaxed into him. Feeling home.
“Come on, sweetheart,” he murmured.
She didn’t really pay attention to where he led her, but then the cold air brushed over her face. The backyard. Inhaling a deep breath, she pulled her hand free of his and paced several feet away. His earthy cloves-and-cinnamon scent clung to her nose, and she longed to roll in it, bathe in it. She had to move away, because yes, in a moment of weakness, she’d leaned on him, but she couldn’t depend on that. Couldn’t depend on him.
“What are you doing here, Declan?”
He studied her for several long moments, his lilac gaze piercing. “You did good, Remi. And I’m damn humbled by you.”
She blinked. And blinked again. Stupid tears. Not now. Not in front of him.
“What?”
“I overheard what you said to your mom. That was incredibly brave, and I want to live up to you. Be worthy of that courage.” He paused. “I should’ve never left your house last week. I should’ve told you no, I wasn’t leaving, that I would fight for me, for you. For us.”
If she could move, she would’ve stumbled backward.
Or run to him.
But fear, doubt—hope—kept her frozen.
“You called me out, and I was afraid. Was, Remi. I knew as soon as I drove away that I made the hugest mistake of my life. Over the last month you have become my friend, my confidante, my lover, my delight, my...freedom. You’ve helped me free myself from my past simply by being you. By showing me bravery, hope and faith. I want to take that leap with you, Remi. And I’m sorry that I hurt you, that I might’ve been one more person to make you doubt how beautiful, special and precious you are. If you can trust me with your heart again, I promise never to break it.”
He reached into the inside pocket of his suit jacket and withdrew a folded sheet of paper and extended it to her.
As if her arm moved through water, she reached for that paper, accepted it. Her breath whistled in and out of her parted lips, and she tried to tamp down the hope that seemed determined to rise within her, but it welled too big, too huge.
She unfolded the sheet and scanned it. Once. Twice. After the third time she lifted her gaze to him. That hope she’d tried to stifle soared, and she didn’t try to control it. Not when love surged with it.
“You’re moving here full-time?” she rasped, the paper trembling in her hand.
“Yes.” He moved closer to her, paused, but then eliminated the space between them. His hand rose, hovering next to her cheek, but he didn’t touch her. “I’m leasing the building next to Cole Dennison’s law firm. Of course, I’ll still need to go back to Boston for some meetings, but I can run my business from anywhere. And I choose for it to be here. With you. Because I love you.”
She cupped her hand over his, turned her face into it and pressed a kiss to the palm. Then rose on her toes and pressed another to his lips. On a groan, he took her mouth like a man deprived of water, of breath. And she was his oxygen.
God, she knew the feeling.
“Does this mean you’re giving me your love again?” he asked, resting his forehead against hers.
She cradled his face between her palms, brushing her thumbs over his cheekbones. Smiling, she brushed a soft kiss to his mouth.
“You never lost it.”
* * *
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.
Read on for Chapter One of Christmas in Rose Bend.
Christmas in Rose Bend
by Naima Simone
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 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 Cole. 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.” Nessa saw Ivy drop against the passenger seat, arms crossed over her chest. The glance the preteen slid her 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 teen. 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 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 an argument. That’s all she and Ivy had seemed to do since the funeral. Nothing Nessa did could make Ivy happy.
And as much as Nessa hated to admit it, there was some truth to Ivy’s accusation. Because a part of her—Jesus, she hated admitting it even to herself—didn’t like Ivy. Was jealous of her. For having more of Isaac’s love. For having him when Nessa hadn’t, even when she’d needed him.
Even though Nessa had called Isaac Hunt Dad all her life, he was more or less a stranger to her...just like the silent, stiff twelve-year-old hunched on the seat next to her. He’d been an absentee parent since his divorce from her mother sixteen years ago, and Nessa had met her half sister maybe five times before their father died from pancreatic cancer. Hell, she hadn’t even known he’d been ill until the final time he’d ended up in the hospital. She hadn’t even had a chance to say...what? Goodbye? Where the hell have you been as a father for sixteen years? Why didn’t you love me as much as you loved your other daughter?
I love you.
Dammit. Damn damn damn.
She fisted her fingers to keep from pounding the steering wheel.
So yes, guilt had pushed her into taking a previously unheard-of short-term leave from the hospital. It’d goaded her into going up to Ivy’s school and letting them know the girl would be missing the last two weeks before Christmas break to take an extended vacation.
She swallowed a sigh, and as the light changed, pressed on the gas pedal. A tense, edgy silence filled the car. Nothing new there either. Nessa snuck another look at the girl, noting the sullen expression turning down Ivy’s mouth down and creasing her eyebrows into a petulant frown.
Maybe their time in Rose Bend would give Ivy her smile back. Or at least rid Ivy’s lovely dark brown eyes of the sadness lurking there.
And maybe Santa really did fly around the world.
Yeah, Nessa had stopped believing in miracles and fairy tales years ago. Better Ivy learn now that life dealt shitty hands, and you either folded or played to recoup your losses.
Soon, they left the downtown area and approached a fork in the road. As she turned her Durango left onto a paved road bordered by trees...
“Oh wow,” Ivy breathed.
“Good God,” Nessa murmured at the same time, bringing her vehicle to a halt in the driveway that circled in front of the huge white inn.
Oh Mom. You would’ve so loved this.
A short set of stairs led up to a spacious porch that, according to the brochure, encircled the building. The wide lower level angled out to the side, with the equally long second floor following suit. The third, slightly smaller story graced the building with its dormer window, and a slanted roof topped it like a red cap. A broad red front door with glass panes along the top and dark green shutters at every window—and, damn, there were a lot of windows—and large bushes bordering the front and sides completed the image of a beautiful country inn. But it was the wreaths and bows hung on the door and walls, and the lights that twinkled along every surface, that transformed the building into a fairyland. A Christmas fairyland.
Shaking her head, Nessa thrust the gear into Park. There she went. Being silly and whimsical. It was a place that masterfully catered to the tourists who visited just to be wowed by the holiday splendor. That’s it. Nothing magical waited for them on the other side of that door other than a hot meal and maybe cookies for Ivy and coffee for Nessa in front of a fireplace.
“Let’s go sign in,” she said, exi
ting the truck. “We can come back for our bags once we’re done.”
“Okay.”
They hurried through the cold to the steps and onto the front porch. Nessa pushed the door open, stepping into warmth and peppermint-scented air. Absently closing the door behind Ivy, Nessa scanned the lobby and the wide, spacious living room that opened off the entry. Flames leaped and crackled in the huge fireplace, and she ordered herself not to stride over there and sink down into one of the chairs bracketing it. More bows, garland and pine cones decorated the mantel and walls. A gigantic Christmas tree stood in one corner before the windows, its lights reflecting off the glass.
“This place is amazing. Like Santa’s workshop,” Ivy whispered beside her.
Nessa blinked, emerging from her Christmas-induced stupor, and glanced down at Ivy. Her brown eyes glowed, and for the first time since they’d come back into each other’s lives, wonder and pleasure momentarily replaced the sadness in her gaze.
Nessa’s chest tightened, a combination of relief and sorrow swirling behind her sternum. Relief because in this moment, she glimpsed the girl Ivy had been before her father’s death. Sadness for the same reason. No twelve-year-old should be touched by so much tragedy and loss. Losing both parents and being stuck with a sister she barely knew.
Shoving aside the thoughts and emotions, Nessa cleared her throat and walked toward the small desk tucked next to a curving wooden staircase. A sign-in book and pen sat on the top, but no one manned it. She tapped the bell perched on the corner and waited, but still, no sign of anyone.
“Does this mean we have to go back home?” Ivy asked, disappointment darkening her voice.
“No, of course not.” Nessa shook her head. “Maybe they just had to sneak out for a moment. We are late for the twelve-o’clock sign-in.” She summoned up a smile, although from the arch of Ivy’s eyebrow, maybe Nessa fell short of the reassurance she’d aimed for. “I’ll go back out and get our bags. Then we’ll just sit by the fire and wait for whoever to return. It probably won’t be that long.”