The Christmas Cookie Collection

by Lori Wilde

  “I want to wipe all other men from your mind,” he said. “I want you to forget about your ex and anyone else who ever hurt you or treated you badly.

  “Nate,” she whispered, surprised by the strength of emotion closing off her throat. “There is no one else but you.”

  She’d never experienced a need like this. Such insatiable wanting. It was as if everything she’d ever felt before was nothing but amateur hour. It scared her because it was so strong, so powerful, so easy to just let go and fall into his arms.

  Nate stepped to the bed, pulled back the green comforter with a patterned print of flying fish jumping up from streams, and turned down the sheets. They crawled inside together, him on one side, her on the other. The crisp covers smelled of cedar and sandalwood and man. Had he put on fresh sheets that morning? Had he been that confident of himself that they would wind up here?

  You’re the one who suggested that he bring you here. Stop worrying. Stop second-­guessing. Just enjoy the moment.

  She kissed him, hungry for his taste. Night after night she’d lain in her bed above the Horny Toad Tavern, imagining this happening. Dreaming of being in his arms, feeling his hot lips on her cool body. She closed her eyes, memorizing every detail of his taste, the way he was touching her, and the things he was doing to her. She never wanted to forget this. The moment they joined for the first time.

  She traced her fingers along his scratchy beard. He ran his knuckles over her belly and stopped to draw a heart over her navel before sliding his hand down to slip below the waistband of her panties, touching her in a place he’d never touched before.

  “Me too.” She giggled and slipped her fingers through the opening in his boxer briefs, strumming over the hard length of him. He wrestled off his underwear, made short work of hers.

  Then he took his time, luxuriating over each dip and curve of her body. Stroking her until she was moaning softly in the back of her throat. He touched his tongue to her, running it over tender places she never knew were so sensitive. The sheets whispered. Pillows tumbled off the bed. Condoms came out of the bedside drawer.

  She did her own exploring, eager to discover just what made him whimper and groan with ecstasy. He made beautiful sounds that raised delicious goose bumps on her arms.

  “Sweetheart,” he panted. “I gotta have you. You’re killing me with that wicked little mouth of yours.”

  His hand touched her knees, and she dropped them open, fully exposing herself to him. He slipped both hands under her hips, pulling her close to him. She arched her back, looking up into his eyes. What she saw reflected in those dark depths stole all the air from her lungs.

  Then he was inside her, and they gasped in the same breath as their bodies joined, her femininity fully embracing his masculine thrust.

  “Shannon,” Nate said. “Sweet Shannon.”

  He sunk deeper and deeper into her until all separation was gone. They were one, moving like currents on the river, pulling and swaying, urgent and swift, running faster and faster toward the wide-­open sea.

  Sometime later, Shannon woke in the darkness, Nate’s big body beside her. Instant elation grabbed hold of her, and she slipped a hand between her legs, beautifully sore from their vigorous lovemaking. In that moment, she savored the wonder of being here with him.

  What if? she wondered. What if this could be more than just lovely sex? What if this could be forever?

  The sweet daydream tapped on her brain. What if she could finally have a happily-­ever-­after? She wanted it so much that she was truly scared to hope. Scared because she couldn’t bear to have it taken away.

  I want. I want.

  The need was so strong, so insistent. She wanted him. Wanted a happy life. Wanted a place to belong. Was it so hard to believe she could have such happiness?

  She knew the answer even as she posed the question. Before she could fully open her heart up to the possibility of Nate, there was one essential thing that she had to do first.

  Settle her issues with her mother.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Unable to bear the thought of going home to an empty house, Raylene went to the Horny Toad. She felt closest to Earl there. It was scary the way she was starting to imagine things now. Supposing that the white poinsettias had come from him, thinking that he was the town Santa. She was hoping against hope. Grasping at straws.

  Sooner or later she was going to have to face the fact that Earl was not coming back. She’d lost him forever.

  To keep herself occupied, she worked on the staffing schedule for January. Even as she tapped Shannon Nagud’s name into the spreadsheet, she couldn’t help wondering if the woman would be here in the new year. Shannon was a good worker. Surprisingly, one of the best she’d ever hired. But there was something about the woman, something enigmatic and untouchable beyond those golden brown eyes that told Raylene she had a hidden agenda, and, once her purpose in Twilight had been satisfied, she would be on her way.

  That saddened her, too.

  The aching in her chest that had started during the tree-­decorating event was back. Raylene took some Maalox and rested her head on the desk. She’d go home in a bit when her stomach settled.

  She must have fallen asleep, because she jerked away just before dawn, her neck stiff and achy. She sat up, rubbing her sore muscles. The computer was still on, the cursor blinking on the spreadsheet. The name Shannon Nagud.

  It might have been her blurry vision. It might have been her penchant for word-­find puzzle books. But in that moment, Raylene saw what she’d missed before.

  Now she knew why Shannon had struck her as familiar. Why she often caught the younger woman watching her with an odd expression on her face.

  Her name wasn’t Nagud. It was Dugan.

  Shannon Dugan.

  The woman she’d given a job and a place to stay. The woman who was the same age as the daughter Raylene had given away.

  The realization hit with the force of a bomb, leaving her with absolutely no doubt about the truth. Raylene plastered both hands over her mouth, as a cry of distressed joy leaked from her lips.

  Shannon Dugan was her daughter!

  In the creeping light of dawn, Nate stirred, and his first sleepy thought was of Shannon. He reached across the sheets, searching for her and came up with empty covers.

  He cocked his head, listening for sounds of her in the bathroom, but heard nothing. He sat up, threw back the covers. “Shannon?”

  Silence greeted him.

  He got up, padded through the house. She was nowhere to be found. He put on his pants, stepped out onto the porch. His truck was gone.

  Maybe she went for breakfast, a hopeful part of him suggested. Maybe. But maybe she’d just gotten scared and taken off.

  He’d moved too fast. They’d made love too soon. They’d only known each other two weeks. A guy couldn’t fall in love in two weeks.

  And yet, he had.

  Stupid. Stupid.

  But calling himself names didn’t change the fact that he’d fallen head-­over-­heels for her. Unfortunately, he had no idea how she felt about him.

  Obviously, she’d regretted having sex with him. She’d booked the hell out of here before he woke up. Face it. The woman had issues to work out, and until she did, he’d be waiting on the sideline.

  Question was, how long could a man be expected to wait?

  Shannon sat in Nate’s truck, staring at the front of the Horny Toad Tavern just as she had on the day she’d arrived. Raylene’s Cadillac was in the parking lot. What was Raylene doing here at six-­thirty in the morning?

  Maybe she’d gotten drunk the night before and called someone to take her home.

  Maybe. But maybe she was inside.

  Go on. You can’t create a new future until you make peace with the past.

  She blew out her breath, no closer to knowing what she
was going to say than she’d been two weeks before when she’d started this ill-­conceived charade.

  Just go in there, say whatever comes to mind, get it off your chest, then take Nate’s truck back to him and see where you stand.

  Yes. Right. Okay. The time for avoidance had past.

  Except that now, she liked Raylene. Two weeks ago, she’d come here with a chip weighting down her shoulder and now . . . well, she felt sorry for Raylene. For all the things she’d missed out on. For all the things she’d lost. Any bitterness and anger had completely dissipated. She let it all go. Just as she’d let her hurt and betrayal over Peter go.

  And it was all because of Nate.

  In two short weeks he had taught her more about herself than she could ever unearth on her own. He’d shown her she was resilient and that she was desirable and that she deserved happiness. But she had to take the first step. She had to ask for what she wanted. She was responsible for herself and no one else.

  She should have told Nate about Raylene. He would have given her good advice on how to handle it. Why had she been so secretive with him? Was it because she was afraid that if she let down her guard she could never get it back up again?

  Stop sitting here and act.

  It was time. She’d come to break the chains of the past, and she couldn’t have a future with Nate until she took that final step. Feeling shaky but determined, Shannon opened the door of Nate’s truck and got out.

  The cold morning air frosted her breath and sent a shiver down her spine. The front door would be locked, so she tracked around the side of the building to the rear entrance. She put a hand to the knob just as the door jerked open.

  “Yips!” Raylene screeched at the same time Shannon staggered backward, her momentum unbalanced by the opening door.

  Raylene gasped, placed a hand to her heart. “Oh, it’s you. You scared me to death. I was just coming to find you.”

  “We must be on the same wavelength, because here I am.”

  Shannon met her mother’s gaze and turned it into a stare.

  Raylene’s mouth dropped, snapped shut, and dropped again. “Come inside,” she said finally. “You’re shivering.”

  She was shivering, and her pulse was ticking behind her eyes like a time bomb. This was it. The showdown she’d been working toward.

  “Would you like some hot tea?” Raylene asked, leading the way inside. “I’m going to make you some hot tea.”

  Hot tea. It sounded so civilized on the surface.

  “It’s a little too late to be nurturing don’t you think?”

  Raylene stopped walking. Her shoulders sagged. Slowly she turned around to face Shannon. Her eyes looked stricken, haunted. This was where the showdown was going to happen—­in the cramped kitchen of the Horny Toad Tavern.

  “I finally figured it out,” her mother said. “Nagud. Dugan. I should have put two and two together sooner. You have your father’s eyes.”

  Shannon had waited a year for this confrontation. Had built it up big in her mind as a dramatic face-­off. But now that it was underway, it felt so . . . anticlimactic. Raylene was just an aging woman with a heart-­load of regrets. And Shannon was a woman who needed to let go of the past in order to build a new future. Nothing could be changed or rearranged. They had to start from here. No going back. No mulligans.

  “My grandparents, Lance, all led me to believe you were dead,” Shannon said, surprised by the lack of anger.

  “Nope,” Raylene said. “Not dead. How’d I die?”

  They stared at each other, tension tight as a guy wire stretching between them. “I was told that you got pregnant during a one-­night stand with my father. That you abandoned me on their doorstep. A few months later you died of a drug overdose.”

  “Lance never told me that,” she mused.

  “You contacted my father?”

  “I wasn’t supposed to. It was my deal with your grandparents. But every once in a while, I’d call, and he’d tell me how you were doing. He wouldn’t even tell me your name, though. I didn’t realize they’d killed me off.”

  Shannon cocked her head. She’d thought about this a lot. “I suppose it was to keep me from trying to find you. Looking back, I supposed they were terrified you’d show back up and try to claim me.”

  Raylene shook her head, despair plucking down the corners of her mouth. “I imagine your grandparents and your father did what they thought best.”

  It also surprised her that Raylene did not decry the lie that Shannon’s family had told her.

  “I hated you,” Shannon admitted. “For years. My whole life really. Until last Christmas.”

  “Wh . . . what happened last Christmas?”

  “A man came to see me. He told me you were alive and that you were hurting because of what you did all those years ago. He told me why you’d given me away and my grandparents’ role in your decision to do so. He also told me that you needed my forgiveness and that I needed to give it to you in order to free myself. But I was in no shape to process that information. I needed time. Time to stop hating you. Time for it fully to sink in that you weren’t dead. That you’d been living a whole, full life here in Twilight without me.”

  Raylene’s back was against the sink. She gripped the stainless steel counters with both hands, moistened her lip with her tongue. “I never stopped thinking about you, Shannon. Every day. Every day I thought of you. Not a single day went by that you weren’t on my mind. But I truly believed you were better off without me.”

  “How could you believe that?”

  “At the time, I had nothing. My family was dirt poor. Your grandparents could offer you a life of wealth and luxury. I couldn’t compete with that.”

  “It wasn’t fair of them,” Shannon’s voice caught, hitched. She had to pause a moment. “To cut you out of my life like that. For the longest time I thought something was wrong with me, that my own mother didn’t want me.”

  “Oh no,” Raylene said. “You were perfect. It was me. I was the defective one. I was trailer trash—­your grandmother’s exact words—­and I had no business being married to a Dugan.”

  It didn’t matter who was to blame. The past was gone. “We can never have a regular mother-­daughter relationship,” Shannon said.

  A single tear slid down Raylene’s cheek. “I know,” she whispered. “I know what I did was unforgivable.”

  “I didn’t say I couldn’t forgive you,” Shannon said, tears running over her own cheeks. “Just that we have to start from here to define what our relationship is going to be.”

  Raylene’s eyes rounded. “Wh . . . what? You want to have a relationship with me?”

  Shannon nodded. “More than anything in the world.”

  Tentatively, Raylene raised her arms, but looked braced for certain rejection.

  Shannon didn’t hesitate. She stepped across the tiled floor to embrace her mother. “I forgive you,” she whispered. “I forgive you.”

  Raylene squeezed her hard, her thin body quaking. They stood hugging for a long, long time. Emotions rising and falling like ocean waves as the implications of the future welled up inside them. Then they were laughing and crying and dabbing at each other’s eyes with a plain, white industrial kitchen towel that smelled faintly of onions.

  “You’ve given me the greatest Christmas gift ever,” Raylene said. “A gift I don’t deserve, but thank you, Shannon. Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome, Mother.”

  “Mother,” Raylene repeated, starting to cry all over again. “You called me mother.”

  “That’s what you are.”

  Raylene put both hands to her mouth, and it was several minutes before she could speak. “This man who came to see you last Christmas. What was his name?”

  Shannon met Raylene’s gaze. “It was your husband, Earl Pringle.”

  Earl.r />
  Earl had gone to see Shannon after their big fight the year before. He’d told Shannon to come to Twilight and forgive her.

  Raylene’s heart skipped several beats. She laid a hand over her chest, felt the erratic rhythm.

  A sudden tightness knifed through her ribcage, spread straight through her back. Emotions had a hold on her. The lies she’d told. The secrets she’d kept. She was being forgiven for all her sins.

  It was more than she ever dared hope for. It seemed, after all these years, that God had finally decided she’d suffered enough and he would answer her prayers.

  Joyous bliss exploded in her at the same time a vicious stab of pain gripped her. Sweat popped out on her forehead, and she was instantly sick to her stomach.

  “Raylene?” Shannon sounded very far away.

  Her breath shot out in quick, hot pants. The pain intensified, dropping Raylene to her knees.

  Shannon grabbed her under her arms. “What is it, Mother? What’s wrong?”

  Mother.

  A smile tugged at Raylene’s lips as her eyes slid slowly closed. Her daughter had come home. She could die a happy woman in spite of the unrelenting pain twisting through her chest.

  All except for Earl. There would be no closure there.

  “Mother!” Shannon cried out. “Mother, can you hear me?”

  Raylene tried to speak, but it hurt too badly. The pain radiated into her neck, through her jaw and up into her ear.

  Shannon had her under the arms and was dragging her somewhere.

  Where were they going?

  Vaguely, she was aware of being in the main room of the bar. Shannon was fumbling at the locks on the door. “Hang on, Mother. Hang on. I can get you to the hospital faster than an ambulance can get here.”

  The cold air was a bracing slap. Somehow Raylene managed to stand, as Shannon half-­dragged her toward Nate’s pickup truck. What was she doing with Nate’s pickup truck?

  Shannon wrenched open the passenger door and struggled to boost Raylene inside. Her hands were shaking, and tears were rolling down on her face. “Don’t die, you can’t die. Please don’t die before we really get to know each other.”