12 Stocking Stuffers
Page 43
“But?” She waited, draining her cocoa, then putting her cup on the floor.
He shrugged. “But nothing.”
“Come on, Jason, don’t hold back. You’ve been pretty instrumental in my reaching a lot of the conclusions I have. Don’t stop now.”
He pursed his lips in thought, then finally nodded. “Okay. I’ll give it to you straight.” He set his cup down, got out of his chair and took her hands to pull her to her feet.
For a moment he simply looked at her, really looked, deeply into her eyes. Then he cupped her head in his hands, and he kissed her. Dori’s eyes fell closed as his lips covered hers. His fingers spread through her hair, and one hand slid lower, to the small of her back and eased her closer, and still closer, until her body was pressed to his. His hand stroked her hair, a sensual massage as his lips moved over hers. Gentle suction, constant motion. His body molded to hers a little harder, his hand at her back drawing her tighter. Fingers splayed at the back of her head as the kiss deepened. He played her the way a master played a violin. He made her body sing. He always had.
Dori gave in to the music, sliding her arms around his waist, parting her lips to let him in. She wasn’t cold anymore.
They kissed, standing near the fire, for a long time. And when he finally lifted his head, his eyes glittering as they stared into hers, he said, “I want you to stay.”
She blinked at him. “But…Jason, this is…”
“What? So sudden? So new? It’s not, you know. I’m just picking up where we left off ten years ago, Dori.” He let his arms fall to his sides from around her. She felt lonely without them. “I didn’t want to do this, not until I was sure you’d decided to stay. I didn’t want to lay my heart out there on the platter again, just waiting for a cleaver to whack it in two. But maybe…maybe you just need a reason to make that decision. Or maybe not. Maybe I’m dead wrong here. It could be that this incredible thing I feel between us is all in my head. God knows I thought it must have been when you walked away the last time. But then…you came back. And I know it wasn’t for me, but I can’t help wondering if…it was fate that brought you back here. Back to me.”
The lights flicked on, off, then on again. They stayed on this time. He smiled at her. “Guess that would be the return of the light you were talking about in the boat, huh?”
“Not even close,” she said, but she knew he was only joking, trying to lighten up what had become an intense and heavy moment. He wanted an answer from her, a decision. A commitment.
A repetitive beeping sound distracted her and she couldn’t stop the phrase saved by the bell from whispering through her thoughts. Frowning, she spotted the answering machine, its light flashing insistently.
“Talk about timing,” Jason muttered. Then he sighed again. “Maybe we needed a break anyway. Go ahead, get your messages. I’ll put out all these candles before we burn the place down.”
“Thanks, Jason.”
He wandered into the kitchen with their cocoa cups, blowing out candles on the way. Dori went to the machine and poked the Play button.
“Hi, Doreen. This is your old boss, Marie Brown, from Mason-Walcott. We’ve acquired another publishing company and we’d like to offer you a position—as publisher. You’d be making significantly more than you were the last time you worked for us, but we have to hear from you soon. Call me and we’ll discuss the details.”
Dori stood there staring at the machine as Marie’s voice recited her telephone number. “Wow,” Jason said.
She jumped, because she’d been so distracted she hadn’t heard him come up behind her, and turned to face him. He had two fresh mugs of cocoa in his hands, and a sad look in his eyes. “This is what you’ve been waiting for, isn’t it? The job offer of your dreams?”
She nodded slowly.
“So you’re going to take it?”
“I don’t—Jason, I don’t—”
He shook his head and bent to set the mugs down. “Don’t. It’s okay. I get it.” He walked past her to scoop up his pile of clothes from the floor.
“No, you don’t get it. Goddess, one minute you’re telling me all these things I never knew, and the next minute I get what I thought I always wanted handed to me. My mind is still spinning. Can’t you even give me time to sort this out?”
He looked at her, and the emotion in his eyes was so powerful it made her throat close up. He looked heartbroken. As if he already knew what her decision would be. But he didn’t say that. Instead, he gave her a sad smile, came to her, touched her face. “Sure I can, Dori.” Leaning closer, he kissed her cheek. “I’m gonna clear out of here, let you sleep on all of this. Okay?”
She swallowed hard. “Okay.”
Walking with him to the door, Dori found herself fighting the ridiculous impulse to throw her arms around him and beg him to stay. But she couldn’t do that to him. Not until she sorted things out.
He stomped into his boots, pulled on his coat, opened the door.
“Good night, Jason.”
“Goodbye, Dori.”
Then he was gone.
Chapter Ten
Dori didn’t go to sleep. She turned off the lights and sat in front of the fire, staring into the flames and searching them for help.
What had she lost by leaving the city? Money, yes, she’d lost a lot of that. Friends? Well, maybe not. Friends weren’t friends if they vanished so easily. She’d sold her precious crystal ball. But the Witches of old hadn’t needed four-hundred-dollar gazing balls to see into the future. They hadn’t needed much at all. A bowl of water. A dark mirror. A leaping flame.
She relaxed her mind, let her vision blur, her body go slack. One by one, she opened her chakra centers, felt them fill with energy. She focused her thoughts on her life, her future; saw herself picking up the phone and returning Marie’s call; heard herself accepting the offer; and let herself sink into the future.
The images came floating like bits of a dream, one following another. A beautiful apartment. A new Mercedes. Respect and admiration. The Wiccan community gathering around her once again. It all seemed lovely. Except that in each of those flashes, she saw herself alone. She saw the longing in her eyes, the loneliness. The same heartsick loneliness she’d been feeling since she’d come back here—no, for even longer than that. She felt herself wishing she were somewhere else. With someone else.
Drawing a breath, she closed her mind to the visions, cleared them away and began again. This time she started by clearly visualizing herself phoning Marie and refusing the offer. It was a difficult visualization to manage—saying no to something for which she had been waiting an entire year. But then she relaxed again, and again the images came to her. Stubbornly, slowly. But they came.
She saw herself on the boat in the summer, taking tourists around the lake, telling them all Uncle Gerald’s old Champ stories. Smiling. She saw herself expanding the business, adding an inn, maybe a restaurant, a bigger gift shop. And smiling. And in every picture that came, Jason was with her.
She saw him sitting across a candlelit table from her, at Sister Krissie’s Bar and Grill, the best restaurant in Crescent Cove, holding her hand. And she nearly gasped at the matching gold bands they wore. She saw him get up and come around the table, lowering his hand to rest it on her belly—a belly that was huge and round and filled with new life.
Dori gasped and her body went rigid. The visions faded.
She tried to ground and center, but couldn’t quite make it work. But she did know one thing. There had been no sense of loneliness in that second vision. No sadness in her eyes. There had been bliss, pure joyful bliss.
She reached for the phone, snatched it up and dialed Jason’s number.
His voice, when he answered, wasn’t sleepy. Maybe he’d been lying awake, too? He didn’t say, “Hello.” He said, “Dori?”
“Come back, Jason. Please, come back to me.”
There was the briefest pause. Then he said, “I’m on my way.”
Fifteen minutes late
r his headlights bounced into the driveway. She was waiting for him, outside, bundled, a hood pulled up around her head. She took his hand when he got out, ignored the questions in his eyes and tugged him toward the lake.
The storm had eased. The wind still blew, but the sky was clearing. Stars peeked from between the clouds now. Standing there on the shore, she faced him, clasping both his hands in hers. “I have something to say.”
He nodded, and she could see in his eyes that he was expecting her to break his heart again. “I’ll try not to interrupt.”
“All right. Here it is. All this time, I thought I was being punished for something. Or that I’d been laid so low in order to learn some kind of a lesson. I turned my back on my own beliefs.” She shook her head slowly. “But the whole time, all that was really happening was that the clutter was being cleared out of my life, so I could find my heart’s desire. Everything I had—those were just things—just obstacles standing between me and the life I was really meant to lead. Once they were gone, I could finally find my way through my own darkness, to a gift more precious than anything I ever had or ever will. I found my way back to where I belong. To the light. To Crescent Cove. And to you, Jason.”
His eyes filled with wonder and dampness. “You’re staying?”
“I’m staying.”
“But…the job offer…”
“I had a better offer. The one where you asked me to stay. And marry you. And bear your children.”
He stared so intensely at her she thought he must be able to see straight through her, and into her heart. “I didn’t ask you those things…not yet.”
“But you will, won’t you, Jason?”
He swallowed hard. “Is that what you want? Are you sure, Dori, that you won’t change your mind and want to go?”
“How could I go?” she asked with a smile. “It’s taken me a while to figure it out, Jason, but I’m in love with you. Madly, deeply, completely in love with you. I think I have been for a long, long time.”
He gathered her into his arms and kissed her as if there were no tomorrow. When he came up for air, he said, “Do you know how long I’ve been waiting for you to say those words to me, Dori?”
“Too long. I’m sorry I made you wait.”
“I’d have waited forever.” He kissed her again, deeply, tenderly, and she knew down deep in her soul that she had made the right decision. She was home.
When Jason lifted his head, they both turned to see the sun rising slowly over Lake Champlain. “And this is what you meant by ‘the return of the light.’”
“This is what I meant,” she whispered. And looking at the sky, she added, “Thank you.”
Star Light, Star Bright
By Anne Stuart
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter One
First Week of Advent
It was snowing again. Angela McKenna navigated the icy roads with her usual panic, driving her old Jeep at a snail’s pace. At least it had all-wheel drive. But even that wonderful invention wasn’t foolproof when it came to ice. This was her second winter spent on the shores of Lake Champlain, and she would have thought she’d have gotten used to the driving by now. After all, she could navigate the heart of Chicago, the insanity of New York, the freeways of L.A. without breaking a sweat. But let a few flakes of snow start drifting out of the Vermont skies and she was swamped with a tightly controlled terror. It was a good thing she didn’t have to go anywhere for work—she would have been hopeless. Except, maybe that would have forced her to learn how to drive in the snowy vicinity of Crescent Cove without courting a heart attack.
She usually avoided going out entirely when the weather was bad, but right now she was driving home from Burlington Airport after spending Thanksgiving with her parents in Chicago, and the sooner she got back the better. It was only going to keep on snowing.
They’d put the holiday decorations up in the middle of town while she’d been gone. Reindeer danced from every streetlight, and the big tree at the end of the main street was ablaze with lights. Wreaths were on every one of the white clapboard houses she passed. Just after four and already growing dark, the sidewalks of Crescent Cove were empty.
She had to get home and off these snowy roads, she thought as she made her way through town with single-minded concentration, past the stores and restaurants, heading north, breathing deeply as she listened to the New Age holiday music on her car’s CD player, when for some reason she hit the right turn signal. She took the turn, half in a daze. In all the time she’d spent in Crescent Cove she’d never gone down this particular narrow road, never even noticed its existence, and why she’d do so in the middle of a raging blizzard made no sense at all. Nevertheless, that was exactly what she had done.
Well, it wasn’t actually a raging blizzard—more a flurry or two. And maybe she’d just been daydreaming—forgetting where she was, and taken the wrong turn. It would be easy enough to stop and head back the way she’d come. She’d never been gifted geographically, and if she kept going in a strange direction, God knows where she’d end up. Her safest bet was to turn around.
The street was packed with the early snow, and she pulled into a driveway beside a small store, then backed out again. Not into the street, but into a parking spot just outside the tiny shop.
Crescent Cove was too small a place, especially in the winter, for Angie not to have known every single side street, every shop, every restaurant. Nevertheless, this tiny shop was entirely new to her, and the warm light spilled out onto the sidewalk.
On impulse she turned off the car and climbed out. She never could resist a mystery, and the appearance of a new street, a new store, was unimaginable. Of course the street wasn’t new—that would be impossible. She just hadn’t seen it before—the snow made everything look different.
And once she could read the faded gilt sign over the front door she breathed a sigh of relief. Christmas Candles by Mrs. Claus, it read. The very cuteness of it should have been cloying, but Angie was in a generous mood. No wonder she’d missed it—it was a seasonal business. No one would be buying Christmas candles in the busy summer.
The snow was falling gently on her shoulders, and she realized she should return to the car and get her butt safely home, but something kept her rooted to the sidewalk. After all, she’d decided this would be the Christmas she would go all out, and it was important to support local businesses. Buy Vermont First, they said, and she opened the old oak door, listening to the silvery laughter of bells as she stepped inside.
She was expecting to be assaulted by artificial perfumes, but instead the place smelled warm and delightful, like Christmas cookies. Candles of various shapes and sizes were arranged on a number of tables, decorated with festive tablecloths and sweet-smelling greenery, and Angie felt a surge of happiness that hadn’t been there in a long, long time. Christmas always did that to her.
“Merry Christmas, dearie.” The woman seemed to materialize out of the shadows, and Angie would have laughed, except it seemed so right. The owner of the shop had dressed the part—rosy cheeks, wire-rimmed glasses, a red-velvet mob cap atop her soft white hair.
“Merry Christmas,” Angie replied automatically. “I don’t really know why I’m here…”
“You’re here for a Christmas candle,” the woman said in a comfortable voice.
“Well, I suppose I am,” Angie admitted. “I just hadn’t realized…”
“We seldom do,” the so-called Mrs. Claus said. “I’ve got just the one for you, Angie.”
Angie was startled. “How did you know who I was?”
“This is a very small town in the winter, dearie. Everyone knows everyone.”
Angie was about to point out that Mrs. Claus was a complete stranger to her, but she was polite enough to keep quiet. Besides, it wasn’t strictly true. There was a familiarity about the old lady that was u
nmistakable.
“I’m not sure what I’m looking for. Whether I want some kind of Christmas scent or—the candles are unscented,” she said suddenly, just realizing it.
“No, they’re not. They only release their fragrance when they’re lit. And I promise you, there’s nothing artificial about the scent. If you smell cinnamon and apples, then that’s what’s in the candle.”
“Well, maybe a nice big red pillar,” Angie said, always a sucker for cinnamon and apples.
“No, dearie. I’ll get yours.” The woman disappeared into the back of the store with a swirl of her red velvet skirts, then reappeared holding a wide, slightly conical shaped candle. It was deep gold, with Florentine scrolling around the top and bottom, and a line of angels dancing. It was a work of art, undeniably beautiful, and not in Angie’s budget. If she had any money to spare it was earmarked for presents, not her own pleasure.
“I don’t think I can afford it,” she said.
“Oh, you don’t have to pay for it,” the woman said. “It’s already been taken care of. You notice there are three angels dancing on the side of the candle? One is for Christmas past, one for Christmas present and one for all the Christmases of the future. It will last just until Christmas morning, and when the candle burns down completely everything you need will be yours.”
Angie would have objected, but the old woman put the pillar in her hand. It felt heavy, warm and oddly comforting. “But who…?”
“Does it matter? Think of it as a gift from Santa Claus. Or are you going to tell me you don’t believe in him?”
She had been about to say that very thing but something stopped her. Certain things were meant to be accepted, not scrutinized, and she accepted the gift as she accepted the existence of Santa Claus. Unlikely, but very nice anyway.
“I guess I’ll have to find out on my own,” she said.