I couldn’t speak, unable to describe the joy that was flooding through me; it was almost terrifying to feel it so blatantly. In that moment I understood that Tess had been lying.
And then he said, “I also came to ask you if you’ll go on a date with me Monday night.”
“Matty Carter! Are you drunk?” Grandma bitched, coming up behind me. She had the afghan from the couch wrapped around her shoulders.
“No ma’am,” he said at once. “I apologize for waking everyone, but I had to ask your granddaughter something.” And then his blue eyes came back to mine and he asked quietly, “So, will you?”
“I will,” I said softly, and his dimple appeared as he smiled at me, his relief nearly palpable.
“Can I…is it all right if I hug you?” he asked and Grandma snorted. But I nodded and then absolutely leaped into his arms. He smelled of snow and winter, and of himself. He crushed me against his chest, which was almost twice as big with all of his winter gear in place. My feet came off the ground. My lips were just at his left jaw, and I kissed him there, where his skin was warm and prickling with stubble. He rocked me side to side and then let my feet back to the ground.
“It’s freezing with this door open,” Grandma scolded then. “Camille, you’re in your bathrobe for heaven’s sake. Come inside.”
We couldn’t take our eyes from one another. My heart was crashing against him and I asked, “Can you come over tonight for awhile too?”
“Nothing would make me happier,” he said. And then to Grandma, “I would love to come in right now but I have to finish my plow route.”
His arms were still locked around me. I reached up and cupped his cheeks, our breath making clouds in the freezing air. His blue eyes flashed directly into mine and his grin sent trails of heat pulsing through my body. I wanted to kiss his lips but was too chicken with Grandma right behind me.
I implored, “Be careful on the rest of your route.”
He hugged me tightly one more time, with exuberance, and then caught my hands into his and brought them to his lips, kissing the back of each. His face was chilly but his lips were warm and I shivered at the contact. He said, “I will, and I will see you later.”
“Yes,” I said, all tingling and mushy-gushy and not caring one bit.
“Here, for heaven’s sake, take this,” Aunt Ellen said, bustling to the door with a thermos. “It’s fresh coffee.”
Mathias accepted it and then kissed Aunt Ellen’s hand too. He said, “Thank you kindly.”
And then he climbed back into his truck. The engine growled as he reversed and cranked it around. He rolled down his window and called back to us, “Merry Christmas!”
“Crazy,” Grandma muttered, wrapping her arm over my shoulders.
“Crazy for Camille,” Aunt Ellen corrected, and then my face about split with my smile, even as tears fell over my cheeks. Aunt Ellen put her arm around me from the other direction and squeezed.
***
I was so buoyant that morning that Millie Jo said twice, “Mama, sit still! You gotta watch me open my pwesents!”
Grandma and I traded off with the camera, snapping Millie tearing into her Santa Claus gifts, eating pancakes shaped like Christmas trees. At least, that’s what Aunt Ellen had been aiming for. Mathias texted me around 9:00, and for a moment I thought about how it was almost like getting a telegram, only without the word ‘stop’ in place of end punctuation.
Merry Christmas. I can’t wait to see you later. I have a present for you.
A present? I wrote back. I mean a present, exclamation point!!!
Haha. It’s a good present. If I do say so myself. But I can’t show you until Monday.
I can’t wait that long.
I’ll be over around 5:00. I’ll bring us a picnic.
A picnic?? If you say so.
I could hardly wait until then, practically stalking the windows. Millie Jo fell asleep in the late afternoon and was still snoozing when I saw the plow pickup, its plow attachment down to remove the snow from our driveway. I watched as he spent minutes backing up and driving forward, in a rhythm, displacing the snow to the side. At last he parked and I swung open the door as he came hurrying over the snowy path through the darkness of this winter’s twilight.
“Merry Christmas,” I said. “And thank you.”
He stopped just in front me and replied softly, “Merry Christmas. And no problem.”
He was clean-shaven, his eyes bright as blue stars, wearing a black parka instead of his usual Carhartt work gear. The sight of him, the immediacy of him here before me, took my breath away. He’d left his gloves in the car, as his hands were bare and warm, and he reached and cupped my face, tenderly.
“I’m so glad you came this morning,” I told him, my body responding wildly to this point of contact.
“I would have come right away,” he said, tracing his thumbs over my chin. It felt so good. He added, “But I needed to gather my thoughts. And you needed to gather yours.”
I nodded, acknowledging this, and whispered, “Come inside.”
“Aw, did Millie have a fun morning?” Mathias asked, catching sight of the mountain of wrapping paper piled around the tree. It looked like the aftermath of a tiny tornado.
I smiled. “Yes, it was fun. She got a new train set that she wanted. And lots of doll clothes.” I saw that he was still wearing his coat and said, “Here, let me take that.”
“Wait, the northern lights,” he said, and I tipped my head at him, slightly mystified. He grinned and explained, “They’re gorgeous. I saw them on the way over here. Plus I have a picnic for us. You want to get bundled and come see them with me? Is that terrible to ask? I mean, I know it’s Christmas Day—”
“No, it’s not terrible at all. Let me tell Gram and get my coat,” I said, interrupting him and five minutes later we were heading back down the driveway. At the end he turned the truck around, shifted into first and then second and the engine growled as it took us over the snowy lake road.
He said, “I’m just so glad to have you right there on the seat beside me, you don’t even know.”
I studied his profile, crisply defined against the driver’s side window. The sky was nearly pitch black even this early in the evening and my heart thumped harder as he looked right and held my eyes in his. I said, “I do know. I was so happy to see you this morning.” I paused, but then said softly, “I don’t believe Tess. I want you to know that. She just caught me off guard.”
He said, “She’s jealous. But that was cruel even for her. God, I’m so sorry that she said that. Please know it’s not true.”
“I do. I just…the whole thing was so surreal, with Noah…”
“Yeah, what exactly happened there? I thought he hurt you and I was ready to kill him.”
“He actually stopped me from launching myself at Tess,” I said. “She called me a slut.”
“God, I’m sorry, Camille.”
“It’s not your fault.”
“After you left White Oaks on Friday night, I drove around for hours. I almost came to Shore Leave about a hundred times. Camille…” he paused and drew a breath, before continuing, “I want you to trust me. I want that so much. I’m not Noah and I know you probably can’t help comparing us. When I tell you things I mean them and I want you to know that.”
“I do, I do know it,” I whispered, so moved by his words. I was trembling all through my thighs and along my ribs, but I reached my left hand across the seat. He caught it within his and then lifted it to his lips, where he gently used his teeth to free my hand from the thick woolen mitten. Once bare, he curled his warm fingers through mine and then settled our hands between us on the seat. I sat there, struck to my core at how very much such a small gesture had the power to affect me. I tightened my fingers around his, loving how his hand felt within mine, hard and strong, and so warm.
“You look gorgeous, by the way,” he said then, tightening his fingers in response. “Shit. I wish I was better at giving you complim
ents. Like the way your eyes are green and golden at the same time. I can’t stop thinking about your eyes.”
I said, my voice still soft with shyness at speaking my thoughts so openly, “I think about you all the time too.”
“You do? What parts of me?” he teased, with so much eagerness that I giggled again.
“Your hands,” I said at once. “You have such strong hands. They drive me crazy.”
“Really?” he marveled, caressing the back of my hand with his thumb. I shivered.
“And your dimple,” I whispered and then couldn’t believe that I had spoken the thought aloud. And then, because I had already dug myself into a hole and also because I wanted to really badly, I added, “I was hoping I might kiss it later.”
He said, “Hold on,” and then braked the truck so that it skidded to a stop on the shoulder, before throwing it into neutral. He started to ask, “How about—”
But I was one step ahead and had already unbuckled. I slid across the seat and before I lost my nerve, caught his jaws in my hands, my right still clad in its mitten, and kissed his right cheek, soft as the brush of a bird’s wing. I was shaking with the contact, shocked at how much I wanted to straddle his lap and keep right on kissing him, though my intent had been to dart back to my own side of the cab.
“Oh no,” he said then, as I made as though to move away. He caught me around the waist and whispered, “I get to kiss you back now, it’s only fair.”
“Fair’s fair,” I tried to whisper, aiming for flippant though my blood was pounding so fiercely that I could hardly speak coherently at all.
“Come here,” he whispered back, and I could smell his breath and feel his hands against my body. Everything within me was sensitized, responding to him; I could see the blue of his eyes in the lights from the dashboard. He said softly, “Right here,” and leaned forward and pressed his lips to the corner of my mouth, just lightly, scarcely touching my skin. “And then right here,” doing the same thing to the other side, and I made a small sound, I couldn’t help it, as he touched a final kiss to my bottom lip.
Oh my God.
“Camille,” he whispered and there was so much heat flaring between us that I felt a trickle of sweat between my breasts.
Headlights beamed at us then, from the opposite direction, and the driver of the other car honked the horn with two angry beeps, as though we were doing something illegal. Mathias blinked and then refocused his attention to the road. He said, “Shit, we better move.”
Once we were driving again, I asked, “So you made a picnic?”
“I did. A winter picnic,” he said, catching my left hand back into his right, linking our fingers. He added, “I stole the idea from my sister Glenna’s husband, I admit it. But it’s a really great idea. I brought all sorts of good stuff. I have hot chocolate and another thermos of chicken noodle soup, and a whole Tupperware of those sandwich cookies you make with Ritz crackers. And I thought we could eat in the truck and watch the northern lights. They’ve been really amazing the past few nights. I saw them last night before I talked to you, and all I could think of was how I wish you’d been with me. And now you are.” He paused and then said in a rush, “Shit, it’s probably silly—”
“Not at all,” I assured him, interrupting him neatly. “Honestly, I think it’s the most romantic thing I’ve ever heard of.”
He looked over at me as though unsure I was serious. He said, his voice teasing me again, “I even have a box of mint chocolate truffles.”
I lifted his hand to my lips and kissed the back of it, as he was so fond of doing to mine. Then I tucked our joined hands on my left thigh. I said, “I’m so glad to be here now.”
He squeezed my fingers again.
“What’s your middle name?” I asked him then. “And when is your birthday?”
“James and May 12th. Taurus is my sign. Stubborn, bull-headed, quick-tempered.”
I was smiling long before he ordered, “Now you.”
“Anne, like my mom’s, and December 27th. Capricorn. I don’t know much other than that.”
“The archer,” he said assuredly. And then, “As you know, Elaine reads horoscopes for people, which is how I know this. Cool, calm, collected. Slow to anger. We’re both earth signs. Wait, so your birthday is in just two days.”
“It is,” I affirmed, before asking him, “What’s your favorite song?”
“I honestly couldn’t pick just one. I love country music, always have. When I was little I had a huge crush on Dolly Parton.”
“I like her too,” I said, even though I was laughing at his words. “I love that one movie she’s in with Burt Reynolds…you know…”
He was already laughing, filling in with, “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas you mean,” and then broke into the first lines of ‘A Lil’ Ole Bitty Pissant Country Place.’
“How do you…have that memorized?” I was laughing so hard I could hardly ask the question, bending forward over my lap. I was so happy to be here with him that my heart was about to burst apart, nearly unable to contain such joy.
“I grew up in a house with sisters, might I remind you?” he said in response. “So there was a lot of watching of musicals and singing of dumb songs. And there was always make-up and curling irons and talk about boyfriends. And periods. Jesus, I know all about PMS. Don’t get me started.”
I couldn’t reply, as I was laughing too hard, and he continued the song, totally off-key, taking Dolly’s part. I was breathless, rocking back and forth like a drunk following along with a song in a pub.
“So what’s your favorite song?” he asked me when he’d finished singing and I had caught my breath.
“I liked when my dad would play his old Journey records,” I said. “I like a lot of classic rock, like Boston and Led Zeppelin and those guys. But I love country music too. It’s always on at our house.”
“Do you like living with Joan and Ellen?” he asked.
I nodded. “I don’t live with Mom since I wanted my own space, and we still see each other all the time anyway. I really miss seeing my sisters at night though. I was so used to talking about stuff after we went to bed, with Tish especially.”
“That’s hard to get used to,” he agreed. “When I lived in Minneapolis I missed my sisters so much I couldn’t stand it. Even though they used to baby me and treat me like the little shit I was.”
“They love you like crazy,” I told him. “As you well know. You should hear them worry over you.”
“Glenna told me the first night I was back that I should date someone more like you,” he informed me. “They all like you and that’s some pretty heavy-duty praise. They can be real bitches.”
I giggled again. I said, “I’m glad they approve.”
“So you’re close with your sisters then?”
“It was really hard on Tish when I got pregnant,” I said, studying the snowy road as it appeared in the headlights. Mathias tightened his fingers around mine as he listened. I went on, “She felt betrayed, like I was leaving her behind. She couldn’t believe that I had been so stupid and told me so. She didn’t like Noah from the first, to be fair.”
“Yeah, I pretty much hate him too,” Mathias said. “I was ready to snap his neck on Friday.”
“You were?” I scoffed. “But then I remembered that I don’t give a crap what he thinks, or what he does. It’s embarrassing that I ever cared. Now I just hate that he won’t be part of his daughter’s life. What will I tell her when she’s older?”
“Does she ask about him?” I could tell he was keeping his voice neutral with effort.
“Never yet,” I said. “She knows her grandparents. And they’re good to her, I can’t say they aren’t.”
“God, I could just kill him,” Mathias said heatedly. “For hurting you and for lying to you and for being such a shitty father to your little girl. And mostly because—and this is so selfish, I’m sorry, Camille—mostly because you loved him once.”
My heart stuttered in my chest
at that and for a second I didn’t know exactly how to respond. Finally I said, “I thought I did.”
Mathias turned to look at me for an instant before his gaze went back out the windshield. He said softly, “But you said that to him and he used it and I hate him for it.”
“Don’t waste one second hating Noah, please don’t,” I told him, holding tightly to his hand. “He’s not worth it, and I already wasted too much time on him.” I considered a moment before saying, “You know, Mom told me once that she had the best part of our dad in us, Tish and Ruthie and me. And I finally understand that. Millie is the best thing that ever happened to me, no matter how hard it’s been to be a mom. But I haven’t been single, not truly. I have Grandma and Aunt Ellen, Mom and Aunt Jilly. They all help me so much. I’ve always had help.”
“I’m glad,” he said. “I’m so glad. You deserve that.” And then he added, “I’m sorry that Tess even showed up on Friday.”
“It’s not your fault,” I assured him. “I’m sorry I was so unreasonable.”
“Camille, you weren’t unreasonable. Shit, you don’t think all this caught me off guard too? I’m reeling. But all I know is that being apart from you is wrong. It’s just wrong.” And then, “We’re here.”
Mathias slowed and turned right, over a wide, smooth field that appeared frosted with creamy snow. He drove us to the center and then put the truck in neutral, leaving it running. I unbuckled and scooted over to him at once, my shyness burning away in a flame of need and tenderness and pure, simple wanting. I got my arms around his neck from the side and hugged him hard, and his arms locked around my waist, pulling me over his lap. He pressed his face against my neck and held me like I had never known I needed to be held, until him. I hadn’t realized a great number of things until Mathias.
I whispered, “Thank you for bringing me out here. It’s perfect.”
“Because you’re here,” he said back, his voice slightly hoarse. He added, “I’ve imagined you with me so many times. Even before I knew who you were.”
“How do you mean?” I whispered.
Winter at the White Oaks Lodge Page 17