Everyone nodded.
“And we’re getting that today, so hooray for us and our priorities.” Maggie turned to Kyle. “Will you get the tree decorations down from the attic after breakfast?”
He gave her a salute. “Yes, ma’am, diminutive captain.”
Melinda wiped her eyes with her napkin. “Thank you, everyone. Yes, we’ll make it work, and next year, maybe I could start decorating a little earlier. That’s the nice thing about family traditions, isn’t it? You can make adjustments as needed.”
“Exactly.” Austin put his arm around her shoulders and gave her a squeeze. “To me, the most important part of Christmas is just being together, and here we are, so I already feel like we’ve celebrated.”
“So, you don’t want your presents anymore?” Shawn turned to Melinda. “Hear that, Mom? Austin wants the rest of us to have his presents.”
“Yes, I’m sure that’s what he said.” Melinda shook her head, trying to hide her smile. “All right, you big baboons, help me clean the kitchen and then we’re going to pull out the inflatable Rudolph. I might be willing to skip the candy canes this year, but I want my Rudolph.”
When Angela reached the Mayhew ranch a few minutes before eleven, she parked her truck off to the side, hoping it would be out of the way of whatever project was going on. Boxes littered the porch, some in stacks and some tossed haphazardly. A piece of ribbon fluttered off the top of one, and she grinned. Christmas ribbon. Now she understood—it was decorating time.
But where was everyone?
She hopped out of the truck and closed the door. A sudden shout caught her attention and she followed the sound to the side of the house, where she had to stop and watch. Austin and his brothers were obviously taking a break from helping with the decorations and had started a game of football—except that looked like Frosty the Snowman’s head rather than a football, and Austin had mud up to his knees as he tried to defend his position.
It looked like the four other Mayhew brothers versus Austin, and they were hunched low, ready to tackle.
“Give it up, Austin,” Chad warned, his hands spread wide. “We need that snowman head.”
“Never!” Austin planted his feet and shifted his weight. “You’ll have to come get it.”
“Don’t think we won’t,” Shawn said.
Austin’s eyes darted back and forth, accessing each brother’s movements. Angela did the same. Chad and Kyle were off to the right, Trevor was to the left, and Shawn was in front. No matter which way Austin went, he was sure to get tackled—unless he retreated, but Angela knew him better than that. He would never retreat.
She pulled her phone from her pocket and turned on the video feature, thinking this would make a great addition to her piece. Her phone wasn’t as nice as the camera Mr. Wiltbank had sent along with her, but that was in her truck, and this would have to do.
“You’ll never get past us,” Chad taunted. “We have the spirit of Christmas on our side.”
“Ha!” Austin scuffed his feet in the mud. “You think this snowman head is the spirit of Christmas? He’s nothing but a decoy! The prize you really want is the wooden Grinch, but I’ve hidden that away, and you’ll never find it!”
“I’m just so glad they aren’t punting the Baby Jesus head from the nativity,” Maggie whispered at Angela’s elbow, coming up beside her. Angela grinned. That really would be awful.
Austin shifted his weight from side to side, obviously trying to figure out his best move. He feinted right, then drove left, almost making it past Trevor, but Shawn tackled him, and they rolled several times before coming to a stop.
“I have the head!” Trevor held it aloft. “Christmas is saved!”
Chad gave a slow clap. “Nice try, Austin, but you’re no match for us.”
Austin pulled himself to his feet, even more slicked with mud than he was before. “I’ll never stop trying. Someday . . . someday I will be victorious.” He turned just then and saw Angela and Maggie standing there. “Oh, hi.”
“Hi,” Angela replied. “I think I’m a few minutes early.”
“Um, maybe.” He looked down at himself. “You mind if I take a quick shower?”
She raised an eyebrow. “You want to take a shower before we go slogging through icy swampland to look for frozen amphibians?”
He grinned. “Actually, I wanted to take you for a quick lunch first, if that’s all right.”
“I could eat.”
“Great. I’ll be ready in ten minutes.” He trotted off toward the house, leaving Angela shaking her head.
“Ten minutes … sure.” Maggie shook her head too. “Anyone needs me, I’ll be untangling lights in the family room. Why we can’t store them better . . .” She was still muttering as she walked away.
“Austin still gets all goobery when it comes to you,” Chad said, coming up and leaning against the fence where Angela had been watching. “Just thought you should know that.”
Angela looked away. She didn’t know if she could meet Chad’s eyes—he had an uncanny way of seeing right through people, and she wasn’t sure she wanted him to see how confused she was. “It was a long time ago. We’re both so different now.”
“Not really. Not at heart.” Chad nodded toward the house. “He’s the kind who sticks with it—you know that. Once his mind’s made up, it can’t be budged, and he made up his mind about you in high school.”
“But . . . I didn’t even know who I was in high school,” she argued.
“You didn’t, but he did. And it was enough.”
Angela slipped her phone back into her pocket, trying to avoid Chad’s gaze. As the oldest brother, he carried a certain amount of weight in the Mayhew clan, and they took his advice almost as faithfully as they did their father’s. Austin sometimes called Chad “Todd in training.”
“You sound like you’re asking me to give things another chance,” she said after a minute. “That surprises me. I expected you all to hate me, not welcome me back like you have.”
“I’m going to be honest with you, Angela.” Chad rested his foot on the bottom rung of the fence. “When you first left Frogwater, we were all pretty upset. Mom had basically planned out your wedding in her mind—shoot, she was even tasting different cakes down at the bakery. I think we felt just as lost as Austin did. But the fact is, you were like our sister, and you can’t let go of family that fast.”
Angela reached up and wiped at the tear she hadn’t meant to let escape. “Thank you, Chad. I really needed to hear that.”
He gave her a nod. “Now, I’m not going to get myself in the middle of whatever happened with the two of you, but I will say this—if you can get it worked out, I’d do it. Even if it doesn’t lead to romance again, having the air cleared will make both of you so much happier. No sense in walking around carrying the burdens from your past.”
She wiped her eyes again. “You’re right. I need to talk to Austin and see if we can get everything out in the open. It’s just . . . it’s complicated.”
“That’s not a thing—that’s a Facebook status. Sit down and figure it out.”
She smiled. Chad did have a way of putting things into perspective.
Shawn walked up and slapped Chad on the shoulder. “Are you going to invite her in or make her stand outside all day?”
“I was just trying to decide.” Chad shook his head good-naturedly. “Come in, Angela. Austin should only be another minute or two, but sometimes he gets distracted making his hair do that little flippity-doo-dah thing in front.”
She laughed. “All right, I’ll come in. I know I can’t compete with hair.”
The brothers all kicked off their boots inside the door and walked around in their stocking feet, the cuffs of their pants damp, but nowhere as muddy as Austin’s had been. She had the suspicion that they enjoyed making him take the brunt of the hits.
Austin came downstairs just a minute or two later, his hair doing that little flippy thing, and Angela smirked. Chad had called it.
Angela shook her head. “I lost track years ago. The diner’s great.” She tried not to think about the calories. Between dinner the night before and whatever lunch was going to be . . . She did have some stretchy dress pants she could wear in front of the camera. Maybe paired with a slimming jacket . . .
Austin led her over to his truck with a grin. “Can’t tell you how glad I am to be driving this thing again,” he said as he opened the door for her. “I took it for a spin first thing this morning and ran it through the car wash while I was at it. I didn’t expect to miss it so much while I was gone.”
Angela smiled as she looked around the cab. Exactly as she remembered it—the place where she and Austin had shared their first kiss. Not their second or third, though—he’d told her that he didn’t believe in making out in cars. At first, she’d thought he was nuts, but she’d grown to appreciate his stance on things, then value it. She’d never met another guy who felt as strongly as Austin did about personal morals.
Austin hopped in the driver’s side and slammed the door—the only way to make it shut. “How’s your mom doing?” he asked as he started the engine.
“She’s all right. She’s my mom.” Angela looked out the window, trying to hide the sudden surge of emotion she felt. She’d gone from remembering her first kiss to feeling black, aching resentment in ten seconds, and the contrast was painful.
“My mom says she runs into her at the store once in a while, but she doesn’t seem to go out much beyond that.”
“Yeah, she’s kept to herself since Dad died, near as I can tell. She doesn’t talk a lot about what she’s up to.”
“Does she talk a lot about anything?” Austin asked, his voice soft.
“No. Things are still pretty strained. They always will be—I don’t expect that to change.” Angela shifted on the seat to face Austin better. “We’ve never gotten along. I don’t think we’d know how to be any different with each other than we are. I’ve actually always envied the relationship you have with your mom.”
Austin cleared his throat. “I don’t know what to say about that,” he replied after a moment of silence. “I don’t want to agree with you too fast and make you feel even worse, and I don’t want to say anything disrespectful about your mother, but I also don’t want to sound ungrateful for my mom . . . Shoot. What am I supposed to say right now?”
She chuckled. “Sorry. I know my situation’s awkward. I shouldn’t have said anything.”
He glanced over at her. “You should say whatever you feel like saying. We’ve always been able to talk to each other, haven’t we?”
“Yeah, I guess we have.” Until she left and ruined it all. She swallowed. “When should we start the interview? Before or after we find some frogs?”
“Oh, we could start talking now, I guess. We have a few minutes to kill before we get to the diner.”
She reached into her bag and pulled out the small video recorder tucked in there. “All right, let’s get started. Now, I’ve known you for years and I already know a lot about you, but the audience doesn’t. I’m going to ask some of these questions like we’ve never met, okay? Pretend we’re just getting to know each other for the first time—that way, the audience will get to meet you from the ground up.”
“Sounds fine.”
She pressed the record button on the recorder and held it up with her left hand, balancing her elbow on the back of the bench. “Why don’t you start by telling us where you were born and how you grew up?”
He glanced at her again. “Is it all right that you’re just getting the side of my head while I’m driving?”
“Yes, that’s perfectly fine.”
“Okay.” He swallowed. “Well, I grew up right here in Frogwater, Wyoming. It’s a pretty small community—we have to get a couple of nearby towns together just to make enough people for a high school. We have a sheriff rather than a whole police department, but that’s okay because not a lot happens out here. We get some pranksters from time to time, an occasional domestic dispute, maybe a car accident once in a while, but there’s never been a murder in my whole lifetime, and everybody knows everybody else’s name and their business, but not exactly in that order.”
Angela smiled as she noticed that the longer he talked, the more his soft Wyoming drawl came out.
“So, my parents own a ranch here in Frogwater, and they raise horses for the rodeo. In fact, three of my brothers are riders, and if you follow the sport, you might recognize their names—Chad, Trevor, and Shawn Mayhew. Chad was a national champion before he got injured a few years back and had to retire, and Trevor and Shawn are working their way up the ranks too. I have another brother named Kyle and a sister named Maggie. Neither of them ride, but they’re indispensable on the ranch.”
“So, your family’s pretty close?” Angela asked. She already knew the answer, of course, but wanted to get his response on tape.
“We’re about as close as you can get without living in each other’s back pockets. My parents raised us to treat each other like our own skin, and I guess they did a good job of it because they’re my best friends.” He said that without any embarrassment at all, and Angela knew the viewers would eat that up.
“You’re the youngest of the boys in your family, aren’t you?”
“That’s right. It goes Chad, Kyle, Trevor, Shawn, me, and then Maggie.”
“Is your family particularly religious?”
“We go to church and we read the Bible, but I’d say our biggest religion is doing what we know is right. My dad always called that ‘putting the gospel in action,’ and I like that. Means I’m not just saying it or reading about it, but I’m doing it too. And those times when I forget? Well, I can always count on my mother to swoop in and set me straight again.”
Angela needed the answer to the next question, but she didn’t want to ask it. Taking a deep breath, she plunged in. “Our audience has been curious to know if you’re dating anyone right now.”
He laughed. “Me? No. I’ve been busy playing football.”
“But you can play football and have a girlfriend at the same time, can’t you?” she asked teasingly.
“When I date someone, I want to be able to give them my time and attention,” he replied. “She deserves my focus, and if I can’t give her that, I shouldn’t be in a dating relationship.”
“Our viewers have noticed that they’ve never even seen you bring a friend to a party.”
He shrugged. “Once you bring someone, even if you’re just friends, the media has you married off with four children before the night’s even over. No offense, Ms. Hathaway, but sometimes it’s hard to live a simple life when the spotlights are so big.”
She was touched that he’d called her by her on-camera name. That meant a lot to her.
“I have one more question along these lines, Austin, posed by over one thousand viewers when we took a poll over the weekend.” She tried to keep the cringe out of her voice as she said, “Our viewers want to know if you’re still a virgin.”
Austin didn’t answer for a moment. Instead, he pulled the truck over and turned so he was facing the camera directly. “There’s a kind of forever that goes along with physical intimacy,” he said. “A promise from one person to the other that they’ll be there for each other through thick and thin, hell and high water—the whole nine yards. Until I’ve found the person I can spend forever with, I don’t want to be making promises I can’t keep.”
She blinked. “So your answer is yes, you are a virgin?”
“Yes, Ms. Hathaway, I am, but I’m pretty sure you already knew that.” He held her gaze until she had to look away.
“Yes, I did know,” she replied, turning the recorder off. “I’ve known what kind of man you are for years. But the viewers wanted to know . . .”
“And
it’s all about the viewers.” He nodded, looking away with that muscle twitching in his jaw. “I get it.”
“No, it’s not all about the viewers. Maybe I just wanted to hear you say it. Maybe I needed to hear that somewhere in the world was one person who hadn’t gotten carried away with their own self-importance, who still believed what they said they believed, who wasn’t taking everything they could get right and left, grasping with both hands.”
“I don’t want things I have to take,” Austin replied. “I want things I’ve earned, and if I haven’t earned a woman’s trust, I don’t deserve any of the rest of her either.”
Angela turned away so quickly, she almost dropped the camera. She fumbled with it for a minute, wishing she could be anywhere else at the moment, wishing she could disappear or that the ground would open up and swallow her. Anything. Anything but what was happening right now.
“Who was he, Angela?”
Austin’s question was so quiet, she almost thought she’d imagined it. But she could feel his gaze on her cheek, and she finally turned back.
“I thought I was the one asking questions.”
“I thought you put the camera away and we were done with the interview for a little while.”
She looked out the window. When Austin had first pulled over, she’d thought it was so they could talk more seriously, but now she realized they’d actually reached the diner and he’d stopped because that’s where they were going. She watched the lights surrounding the menu board blink on and off, the pattern almost hypnotizing.
“Broadcasting class, freshman year of college,” she said at last. “The anchor was a senior, and I studied his every move because I wanted that spot. He picked up on my focus, told me he’d work with me until I understood the whole process start to finish, and then one night after the cameraman left the studio . . . I never turned him in. He was one of those untouchable ones, and I was just a freshman—they wouldn’t have believed me.”
“That was when you came home and broke up with me.” Austin’s voice sounded thick, heavy.
Her Second Chance Hometown Groom Page 6