by Mimi Wells
She sat bolt upright. Christmas! She needed to get home. Then she groaned to herself. Rand had promised to bring her when they left the church last night. Everyone probably assumed he meant sometime before midnight. How could she explain the drive of shame, even if they’d done nothing shameful, to her parents?
She slid out of the warm circle of his arms and tiptoed over to where she’d laid her bag on the bench next to their coats. Sitting on top of her scarf, wrapped in gold paper, was a small box that hadn’t been there the night before. Ivy flipped up the tiny card attached beneath the tartan bow and read “Happy Birthmas” in neat, architectural handwriting. She sighed. Oh, Rand.
She slipped the box inside her bag—she’d save this to open later—and extracted her phone. With a little shiver, she sent an exploratory text to Laurel and waited.
And waited.
And got so chilly she returned to the love seat.
Rand reached an arm around her waist and pulled her alongside him once more, resting his chin against her hair.
She melted a little on the inside. She’d love nothing better than to spend all morning cuddled up here exploring more of each other. But today was a big family day. Christmas and birthday—birthday! She nearly groaned aloud. How could she have forgotten? Today was the big family celebration. The double zero birthdays. Thirty for her and sixty for her mother.
Mama is going to be so disappointed and what in the hell was I thinking and Laurel will never let me live this down because she will love being right and…
Ivy blinked.
Laurel was right.
Ivy gasped then slapped her hand across her own mouth. Rand stirred a little in his sleep, but he didn’t wake.
She loved looking in Rand Cooper’s blue-green eyes, making those eyes crinkle at the corners in laughter. She loved his springy curls and wondered if they’d hug her fingers when she was finally able to slide them through his hair. She loved the back and forth of their conversations, the feel of his lips on hers. The anticipation of more, which she knew would be spectacular. And then her heart sank.
They lived separate lives and it could never work. This couldn’t be love. This was just Christmas magic and curiosity being fulfilled, nothing more. Right?
Ivy gulped again, a little hiccup of regret, and forced herself to breathe. Calm down, girl. What’s the next step?
Get home. Plan.
She wiggled around until she could look into Rand’s sleeping face. She couldn’t wake him. With still no response from Laurel, that meant Violet.
Hey, Vi, you up?
It took a moment, but three gray dots appeared. What’s wrong?
Ivy rolled her eyes. Vi always jumped to the worst possible scenario.
Not wrong, exactly, but… can you come get me? I’m at the Cooper House.
A GIF of an entire theater rising to its feet in an ovation appeared.
Ivy blew out an impatient breath. She expected this from Laurel, but Violet? She tapped back, Well?
Give me ten minutes.
Ivy exhaled. Okay. She gently wiggled out of Rand’s arms, slid a throw pillow into their embrace with a pang, and got off the sofa again. She walked as quietly as she could to the front desk to look for paper. In a flat cubbyhole she found a piece of stationery emblazoned with emerald-green engraving announcing The Cooper House Inn and picked up the pen laying across the top of the register book.
Rand—
Didn’t want to wake you. Violet’s going to sneak me back home. Talk later?
xoxo
Ivy
She left the note on the low table beside the love seat and kissed his hair softly, then crept toward the door, boots in her hand. She hesitated at the stairs.
She’d suspected since she arrived home that Julian Wolf was hiding at the Cooper House. All of the dead ends she’d encountered seemed to back up that hunch. Rand, with his mile-wide ethical streak, would never disclose that information himself. But he never said Ivy couldn’t find out for herself.
Now or never, right? She crept up the stairs in her sock feet, pausing every time she hit a noisy tread, until she reached the third floor. She walked around the corner past the table with the Closed sign and laid a hand on the doorknob of the Azalea suite. It turned. She peeked inside and found the furniture broken down and the rug rolled back to reveal an ugly-looking black stain across the floorboards. Interesting. She turned to look across the hall and, dangling from the knob of the Dogwood suite, was a Do Not Disturb placard. And was that? She sniffed the air and nodded in confirmation. Barbecue.
Curiouser and curiouser. So she hadn’t imagined that male shadow the other day. She filed away the information, smiled to herself, and headed downstairs to meet Violet.
*
Much later that morning, after their Christmas brunch, the Macpherson family sat scattered around the living room. As Alex had predicted, snow had fallen during the night. The fence rails and all the apple trees looked like they’d been frosted by a master baker. The pasture out the front windows was an even blanket of white. Ivy turned from the window to regard the blizzard of wrapping paper covering the floor around the twinkling, popcorn-garlanded tree. It had been a successful morning of gift-giving.
“Girls, I’m beat,” her mother said. She placed her coffee mug on the table before her and stood and stretched. “Naptime! Happy birthday to me.”
Violet looked up from the chair where she’d curled up with her new annual read. “When should we wake you?”
“No earlier than two,” Alex put in. “This was a long season.”
Holly wandered over to Ivy, kissed her on the head, and whispered, “Happy birthday to you, too.” Then they headed upstairs, and the click of their bedroom door sounded.
Laurel sighed and stood. Bark Ruffalo jumped to his feet, tail wagging, to follow her. “I don’t know about you two losers, but I’m going to go break in the sofa in my new place.” The big surprise of the morning had been Laurel’s new tiny house, fashioned out of the former smokehouse. A tiny house designed by Rand Cooper, as it turned out. Ivy had been impressed and a little jealous. She wondered what magic Rand might conjure from her equally tiny apartment.
Laurel stopped at the kitchen door and regarded her sisters. “Y’all coming?”
Violet, engrossed in her book, shook her head. “I’m good.”
“Later,” Ivy said.
“Suit yourselves.” Laurel went through the kitchen to the back door, and Ivy watched her trudge through the new snow, Bark Ruffalo dancing around her feet, then disappear around the corner of the barn.
Ivy padded upstairs to fetch her phone. She hadn’t checked it since she and Violet had arrived that morning, weird for someone whose job relied on social media. Dogwood Mountain was rubbing off on her more than she realized. Tomorrow morning, she vowed, she would pitch camp in the upstairs hall at the Cooper House until Julian finally emerged and she got what she came for.
She was pulling the phone off its charger when she remembered she still had one present to open—Rand’s little gold box, stuffed deep in her tote bag.
She thumped back downstairs, phone in her hand, and went to retrieve the gift.
“What’s that?” Violet had folded her book closed and was watching her with a knowing look.
“Rand left it for me to find last night.”
“Did he, now.”
Ivy ignored her sister’s arch tone and sat down nearby. She pulled the tartan bow loose, then lifted the lid. Inside was a folded piece of thick, cream-colored paper, and under that, a polished oval cabochon ruby of striated pinks and whites ranging from cream to deep rose. The stone was wrapped in delicate silver wire and attached to a fine rope chain.
“Interesting.” Violet leaned over and brushed the stone with a fingertip.
“Yeah.” What in the world? She lifted the necklace from the box and palmed it. Then she unfolded the note.
Ivy—
Saw this and thought of you, a gem from our mountains. Don’t
forget it.
Happy birthday,
R
Sudden tears stung her eyes. All this time she’d been looking to get out, she never thought about what Rand had been looking at. Her.
“What is it?” Violet asked.
“Nothing.” Ivy refolded the note and tucked it in her pocket. “Maybe everything. I have to go.”
“Ivy—”
She waved off her sister’s frown. “I’m fine. More than fine, actually.” She shrugged on her coat and stuffed her feet into her old boots.
Violet eyed her. “And just where are you going?”
“Where do you think?” Ivy said.
Her sister nodded, turning her attention back to her book. “Dinner’s at four. You should bring him.”
“You’re impossible, you know?”
Violet smiled. “What are sisters for?”
*
Ivy sang as she drove into town. Last night’s luminarias looked a little the worse for wear thanks to the weather, but the whole town glittered in its overcoat of fresh snow. A few kids were building a snowman in the park. Across the street from them, she saw Reverend Hunter’s girls dragging a sled up the hill to the sidewalk. Judging from the runner tracks, they’d been playing for a while.
She smiled, full of happiness. Her family was safe and whole, she was going to get the story that would make her career—she was sure of it—and she was finally seeing the light where Rand Cooper was concerned.
Ivy ignored the shadow attached to that thought. Sure, Rand lived in Dogwood Mountain now, but long-distance relationships were a thing, right? With her promotion, she’d have more control over her schedule, and she’d be able to afford more frequent flights home. She laughed. When she was fighting her way through the Atlanta airport just a few days ago, she never would have believed the ideas running through her brain right now.
She worried the ruby pendant against its shiny silver chain while she waited for the stoplight and then blinked. She could swear the dinosaur on the old Sinclair sign outside the Brontosaurus had just winked at her.
Smiling, she headed down the highway, inordinately pleased at everything she saw. The rough bark of the pine trees. The scarlet flash of a cardinal on a snow-covered branch. Even the soft gray of the clouds overhead earned a happy grin. She passed the Upsy-Daisies—she hoped that Idris Elba-looking guy and the lady with him were having as good a Christmas as she was today—and continued to sing, loudly and exuberantly, until she threw on her blinker to make the turn toward Coopers Notch.
It had been years since she’d been to the top of this particular mountain. Most of the time when she had to work with Rand on something for school, they’d worked at the old enamel table in the kitchen of the Cooper House Inn or at the library, since they could walk there easily from school. The year they graduated, his grandparents had hosted a party at their house up the mountain. With the Coopers out of town, it was logical that Rand would be staying there.
The paved road wound and dipped. Smoke drifted up from the chimneys of the modern-looking ranches and stone cottages along the way. She recognized several of them from her rental house investigations with Rand. Across a ditch bordering the two-lane road, a field spread back to the tree line. The pond at one end was silvered with ice. Two bay horses with quilted blankets draped over their backs pawed at the snow to snatch at the grass beneath.
The paved road ceded to gravel and pitched more steeply uphill right where she and Rand had turned around. All of these houses had year-round residents, so they didn’t appear on her real estate map. She spotted a big house perched on a stilted foundation, a rustic-looking cabin with a state-of-the art tennis court blanketed in undisturbed snow across its gravel drive, and a cluster of houses that looked like tiny fairy cottages.
The road forked ahead of her, and a vague memory told her to go right. She followed an old split-rail fence and nosed forward under an apple tree planted by its final post—a Maiden Blush, like the ones in the south forty—and spotted the house. Long and low, it spread across the clearing facing an amazing view. Unlike the other houses dotting the mountain, its chimney was silent. Curtains covered the windows. No lights shone behind them. Pallets of tile sat in the carport, which was empty.
Ivy frowned. That didn’t make sense. Then she noticed the fresh tire tracks leading up a drive to the left. So she followed them. The Jetta strained a little at the steep angle of the drive, so she dropped the gear down and pushed on.
When she crested the ridge, a new house filled her view. Unlike the Coopers’, this house had two stories and was built to accommodate the uneven land where it sat. Stone and wood had been used to create a cottage feel that was at once modern and timeless. She noticed it was angled away from the house down the hill so it would have an unobstructed view of the sweep of trees along the ridge and the wide blue valley.
She crept forward, unsure of what to think until she spotted the cars in the double carport. The blue Volvo wagon she knew. She’d seen it parked next to Jessica’s little Nissan behind the Cooper House Inn.
The other was a gray Subaru Outback with North Carolina plates.
That was important for some reason, but her brain was swirling. The lightness she’d carried in her chest since that morning solidified and grew heavier by the second. She didn’t know what it meant, but her next movements were automatic. Kill the engine. Get out of the car. Cross the pea gravel to the front door. Stare at the glossy plum paint. Lift her fist and knock.
A muffled female voice inside yelled, “I’ll get it!”
The door opened and once more, Ivy stared into the friendly, freckled face of Katy Daniels.
“Oh, hey!” Katy said. Dressed in casual pants and an oversized red fleece pullover, she stood in her stocking feet and tossed over her shoulder, “Rand, honey, guess who’s here.”
Comfortable as if she lived there, Katy waved Ivy inside. A massive diamond solitaire that Ivy hadn’t noticed at the festival winked on her left hand. Or when she’d been spying on Katy through the shop window just yesterday. No, this diamond was brand new. The heaviness in Ivy’s chest began spreading to her limbs. Apparently, she wasn’t the only woman who’d gotten jewelry from Rand this Christmas.
Rand rounded the corner and stopped dead. The tartan scarf she’d seen Katy buying yesterday was draped around his neck. Confusion flashed across his face, then a mixture of horror and embarrassment filled his blue-green eyes. “Ivy. I didn’t expect—”
“I’ll bet you didn’t,” she managed to force through her dry mouth. She imagined herself gulping helplessly on the slates of the front porch as if she were a trout tossed onto a riverbank. There’s never been anyone but you, he’d said. And yet here she was for the second time, watching him try to explain another woman in his house.
“It’s not what it looks like,” Rand stammered.
“It isn’t?” It looked exactly like she thought. Her happiness going up in flames. Again. She stared at Rand in misery, hating how vulnerable she felt, how stupid, how betrayed.
And that was when she saw Julian Wolf.
Chapter Fourteen
Disaster didn’t always look like a tornado. Or a category five hurricane, or an earthquake, or even a volcanic eruption.
Sometimes disaster was just a woman on a porch with a glare that could turn someone to stone.
“You lied to me.” She was looking past him, her gaze flat and hard, watching Katy as she retreated out of the line of sight.
“It’s cold out there,” Rand said. “You should come in.”
“I should do a lot of things,” she returned icily. “Lucky for you, my shotgun is back at the farm in the gun safe.”
“Ivy,” he pleaded. “Come inside.” He reached for her arm, but she jerked it away. The slight felt like a stab to the chest.
She stepped across the threshold and halted in the entryway. He closed the door, but the cold lingered as if it were coming off Ivy in waves.
She looked to the left, through the k
itchen to the dining room, at the remains of the gourmet meal Daphne Broussard had brought up the mountain earlier that morning. Daphne had nearly dropped one of the trays she’d been carrying when she spotted Julian on the deck. She’d been delighted to find out her special Christmas dinner had become an engagement party and was dying to tell BeBe everything, but Julian charmed her into secrecy. He had that effect on everyone he met.
Except maybe Ivy.
She still hadn’t moved. He felt the frost on his heart thickening. He had to do something. Katy and Julian could hear everything they were saying. But, right now, that didn’t matter.
“I couldn’t tell you.” He willed her to listen to him, to forgive him.
“Tell me what?” she said, her voice flint. “About what’s really going on between you and Katy? You had time. She was standing right there in front of me, and you let me think—” Tears glinted in her brown eyes, which were no longer the warm chocolate he loved, but the flat, cold umber of the last crayon in the box anyone ever used. “You let me, Rand.”
“I’m sorry.” The words were so inadequate next to her pain. Rand, who could normally explain everything in precise terms, flailed for the right thing to say and failed.
“I did this once already,” Ivy said, dashing the tears off her face. “Five years ago, I made a fool of myself for a man, and I swore I’d never do it again. Shame on me, huh?”
He reached out to her again, and again she jerked away, her back making contact with the door with a thump. She rebounded and reached for the doorknob. “Have a nice life, Rand. Congratulations.”
What she was saying finally sank in. He might have hidden Julian from her, but everything he’d said about how he felt was the bone-deep truth. She had to see that at least if he had even a chance at keeping her.