by Cara Colter
And it was that awareness—of her aloneness, of how close to tears she had been—that made him tease her.
About the size of her tree, and the rather large size of the striped sock she put on the mantel for herself, about her selection of treetop star, a gaudy creation of pink-and-green neon lights.
He teased her until she was breathless with laughter, until the last remnants of sadness had left her face, and the sparkle in her eyes was not from tears. He was heartened when she began teasing him back.
Together, they put up the lights, ornaments way too scanty for such a big tree, tons of tinsel that she demanded, in her schoolteacher voice, get added to the tree a single strand at a time.
By the time they were done, it was close to midnight.
She insisted on making more hot chocolate. She turned off all the other lights in her house, and they sat on her purple couch in darkness made happy by the glow of the Christmas tree lights.
Nate had not realized how on guard he was against life, until now, when his guard came down.
He felt as relaxed as he had felt in years. And
exhausted. Keeping a guard up that high was hard work he realized, it required constant vigilance. And that was the last thing he thought.
He was still sitting up, but Nate Hathoway had gone to sleep on her couch, Morgan noted. Another woman might have thought it wasn’t a very exciting end to what had turned out to be a wonderful evening.
But, staring at him mesmerized, Morgan thought it was perfect.
Sometime during the night—around the time she had made that announcement about spending Christmas alone, intended to solidify in her own mind and his her independence, but somehow turning pathetically maudlin instead—he had let go of some finely held tension in him.
Now, she loved watching him sleep. She could study him to her heart’s content without the embarrassment of him knowing.
And so she indulged in the guilty pleasure of just looking at him: the crumple of dark hair against his collar, the lashes so thick they could have been inkencrusted, and cast soft shadows that contrasted the hard angles of his face, cheekbones, nose, chin.
His jaw was relaxed. And he didn’t snore.
Sighing with the oddest contentment, she got up, finally, moved the hot chocolate from where he had set it on the ottoman and unplugged the Christmas lights. She fetched a blanket.
Her intention was to toss it lightly over him and tuck it around him.
But his head was tilted at an odd angle, so she gently leaned over and put pressure on his shoulder. He sighed, leaned, and she tucked a pillow behind his head.
Better, except that she felt reluctant to remove her hand from his shoulder.
He reached up and took her wrist, yanked gently. “Lie down beside me.”
She knew he was sleeping, or in that groggy state between being asleep and being awake where he didn’t really even know who she was or what he was asking.
His guard had come way down tonight. Now he was in a really vulnerable state, admitting something he would probably not normally admit.
He did not want to be alone.
Just like her.
She knew she should disengage his fingers one by one from her wrist and tiptoe off to her own room. Probably he would wake sometime in the night, be embarrassed to find himself asleep on her couch and disappear.
So she knew what she should do. But it seemed all her life had been about shoulds. The one time she’d rebelled and not put her own life on hold because she should defer to her fiancé’s more lucrative career it had ended rather badly.
So, maybe she’d become even more attached to shoulds than before.
For all its talk of the joy of freedom, wasn’t Bliss: The Extraordinary Joy of Being a Single Woman just another book of shoulds? It was a desperate need for an instruction manual to guide her through life, to make the rules for her. Hadn’t the book just provided another excuse not to rely on herself, not to risk following her instincts, not to risk taking control of her own life?
This was the truth: there was no instruction manual for life.
No one was going to grade her on what she did next. It was possible no one even cared. Her mother was in Thailand. Her father had long ago replaced his first family.
So why not do what she truly wanted? Why not do what would give her a moment’s pleasure, even if that pleasure was stolen?
She didn’t have to stay tucked into Nate’s side. She could just see what it felt like, enjoy it for a few minutes and then go to bed.
With a sigh of pure surrender, Morgan sat on the edge of the couch, leaned tentatively into him. He was so solid it was like leaning against a stone, except the stone was deliciously sun-warmed.
He let go of her wrist, but his arm, freed, circled her waist and pulled her deep into his long leanness. For a moment, she felt as if she couldn’t breathe.
What was she going to say if he woke up suddenly and completely?
She held her breath, waiting, but he didn’t wake up. If anything his breathing deepened, touched the sensitive skin of her ear, felt on her neck exactly as she had always known it would, heated, as textured as silk.
She willed herself to relax, and as she did, she noticed her awareness of him deepening. Her own heart seemed to rise and fall with his each breath. He was not all hard lines as she had first thought. No, he radiated warmth, and his skin, taut over muscle, bone, sinew, had the faintest seductive give to it.
There, she told herself, she had felt it. She could get up and go to her own bed now, satisfied that she had followed her own instincts.
Except it was harder than she could have imagined to get up, to leave the warmth and strength of him, to walk to her lonely room and her cold bed.
It was harder than she could have ever imagined to walk away from what was unfolding inside of her. A brand-new experience. A very physical feeling of connection. Closeness. Awareness.
A physical experience that had a mental component…
For as she snuggled more deeply into him, Morgan felt the moment begin to shine as if it had a life of its own.
Her mind struggled to put a label on the level of sensation she was experiencing. And then it succeeded.
Bliss.
Morgan fell asleep in the circle of his arms. And woke in the morning to winter sunshine pouring through her windows.
For a moment, she felt it again, bliss.
But then she realized why she had awoken. It was because he was awake. Oh, God. Why hadn’t she just enjoyed the sensation for a moment and then gone to bed as she had originally planned?
It would have saved them both the terrible embarrassment of this situation.
Now it felt horribly awkward. He hadn’t even been fully awake—maybe not even partially awake—when his hand had encircled her wrist and he had asked her to lie down with him.
What was he going to say now?
What the hell do you think you’re doing?
Morgan could feel her whole body stiffening, bracing itself for his rejection.
Instead, his fingertips brushed her cheek.
“Hey,” he said softly, something of discovery in his voice, “you have a print on your cheek again.”
He didn’t kiss it this time, though, just put her away from him, got to his feet and stretched.
The rumpled T-shirt lifted as he stretched his arms over his head, showing her the taut washboard of his stomach.
Her gaze drifted upward to his face. He was smiling. He didn’t seem to find the situation awkward or embarrassing at all.
“Hmm,” he said thoughtfully, “I guess now I know what’s so great about sleepovers.”
He was not sorry. It occurred to her that he hadn’t been asleep at all when he’d invited her to cuddle with him. It hadn’t been an accident. Or a case of groggy mistaken identity.
“Is my hair standing straight up?” she asked him.
He cocked his head. “No. More sideways.”
That’s what wasn’t so great about sleep
overs. And what now? Did she offer him breakfast? Did she show him the door?
He had his cell phone out of his pocket, scrolling through it. “No calls from Ace,” he said with relief.
It was the mark of what kind of man he was that Morgan had not even known he had a cell phone until that moment.
Karl’s had been more than a cell phone: it could practically start his car on command, and she realized now that Karl’s cell phone had been like a third party in their relationship.
And that it would never be like that with Nate Hathoway.
“But I think I better go get her. Saturday is our day. She’s pretty fussy about that.”
“Okay.” Was she being dismissed? That made her feel so bereft she couldn’t even tease him about not going shopping this time.
“You want to spend our day with us?”
Her mouth fell open.
“I promised Ace a sleigh ride.”
A sleigh ride?
She had to say no. Look at how she had just spilled the beans to him last night about her whole life history! Look how she had reacted when she thought she was not going to be included in his plans for the day!
Bereft.
No, throwing out the rule book did not mean leaving herself wide-open to hurt. And to get involved with this man had the potential to make her redefine hurt.
On the other hand, a sleigh ride?
Morgan nearly sighed out loud. It was the kind of family outing her childhood dreams had been full of. Despite her mother creating a picture of a perfect Christmas, there had never been the connection of a perfect Christmas. Christmas activities had involved entertaining, not playing.
Morgan had dreamed of tobogganing and skating and sleigh rides. She had dreamed it in such perfect detail that she could picture it already, with startling clarity. The three of them—her, Nate, Ace—nestled in a sleek red sleigh, their legs covered in a soft, plaid blanket.
He would be holding the reins of a spirited white stallion. The horse would snort, throw up clouds of snow with each prancing footfall. The air would be full of diamond ice crystals and the sound of bells.
There was an old-fashioned romance about his invitation that was irresistible.
“I’d love to join you and Ace on a sleigh ride,” Morgan said.
Even though it was against her better judgment, this thing was unfurling inside her, like a flag. More than happiness. More than excitement. More than anticipation.
This time it was familiar to her, so Morgan identified it much more quickly.
“Happy,” Nate said.
She preened that he had recognized her mood so quickly.
“That’s Ace’s pony’s name. It’s kind of like when people name a Great Dane Tiny. He’s not that great with a sleigh.”
Okay, so he hadn’t recognized her mood. And the white steed was out. Still, gliding across snow-covered fields was gliding across snow-covered fields.
“I’ll come back for you in an hour or so,” he promised.
And he was gone, which was good, because she had been gravely tempted to lean forward, close her eyes and offer her lips as a form of goodbye.
“You’re dreaming,” she warned herself as she heard his vehicle roar to life outside.
In fact, it would have been too easy to dismiss the whole thing as a dream, except that her coat hangers were hung and her Christmas tree was up. Except lights winked from the branches, and the star, that age-old symbol of hope, shone bright from the very top of that tree, a pinnacle she could not have reached without a ladder.
It would be easy to dismiss the whole thing as a dream, except that when Morgan looked in the mirror, her hair was standing up sideways and her cheek held the perfect imprint of his shirt.
Chapter Six
“MRS. MCGUIRE, this is Happy.” Ace patted the Shetland pony vigorously, kissed his nose. Ace’s lips were stained an unnatural shade of red as if she had smeared them with raspberries.
“You were right about the lipstick,” Nate had told Morgan, rolling his eyes, when they had picked her up.
“And you were wrong about—”
“Everything,” he admitted. “No hazards of any kind. Don’t ask me to admit I was wrong ever again. It unmans me.”
He was teasing her, and Morgan was coming to enjoy the growing ease between them so much. But she liked the underlying message, too. That somehow their lives were linked, and ever again suggested it might be staying that way.
Even this outing suggested that. By inviting her to this Christmas-card-pretty farm—red barn, snow-covered fields, cows behind white fences—that belonged to his and Ace’s family, weren’t the links that connected them growing stronger?
Now Nate was trying to get a harness on the uncooperative, chunky brown-and-white pony. So far his hand had been stepped on twice. He had said something—both times—quite a bit stronger than “damn,” then shot Morgan looks that dared comment.
But she did not want to be the schoolteacher today. Just a woman enjoying the extraordinary bliss of not being alone, of sharing a wonderful winter day with a glorious man and his adorable little girl.
“This is the meanest horse ever born,” Nate grumbled. “Keep your face away from his teeth, for God’s sake, Ace. He might mistake your lips for an apple.”
“He loves me,” Ace said with certainty. “He won’t bite me.”
“I don’t know why he doesn’t bite her,” Nate told Morgan, apparently not convinced it was love. “He’s bitten me at least six times since our unhappy first meeting. Mostly, now I can manage to outwit him.”
“But not the time he bit you on the bum,” Ace said. “Remember, Daddy?”
“Speaking of being unmanned,” he muttered with a sigh. “That’s kind of a hard one to forget. I couldn’t sit down for a week.”
She shouted with laughter.
The sleigh ride might not be turning out quite as she’d expected, but Morgan loved the feeling growing inside her. It was blissful. She didn’t just feel as if she was being included in this little family outing. She felt as if she belonged.
If she contemplated it, she might find it just a little bit frightening that she was feeling something right now, in this very moment, that she had been waiting her whole life to feel.
But she determined not to contemplate it, not to wreck these precious moments by trying to look into that foggy place that was the future. For once, she would just enjoy what she had been given, no worrying, no analyzing, no planning, no plotting.
“He’s going to be good today,” Ace predicted. “Be good, Happy.”
“Ace thinks he’s going to pull the sleigh. I think he won’t. Unless there’s a cliff nearby that he can pull us all off.”
“I don’t think horses are that…devious, are they?” Morgan asked. The stocky miniature steed trying to sidestep the traces was so different from the stallion of her imagination she laughed out loud again.
Or maybe the laughter had nothing to do with the surprise of the pony. It was the day. And being with him. Them. The very air seemed to be tingling with merriment, with joy.
Snow was beginning to fall gently. The little horse stamped his feet and shook his mane, and a lovely smell drifted up from him. In the background was a redbrick farmhouse, snow drifts in the front yard, a cheery wreath on the front door.
Ace had told her that was her aunt Molly’s house, and that she wasn’t home right now. Happy had been her Christmas gift from her aunt last year.
Morgan thought it took a pretty special aunt to know what a hard time Christmas would be for this child, and to come up with a gift good enough to make a dent in all that sadness.
In fact mischief and merriment seemed to dance in the air around the pony. Finally, Nate loaded her and Ace into a red sleigh. The pony did have bells on, and as it set off, their music filled the air.
And that was about the only part of Morgan’s fantasy that had been realistic. Nate wasn’t even cuddled under a blanket with her and Ace. He walked to one side
of the pony, trying to persuade him to keep up a forward motion.
An hour later, Morgan thought she had never laughed so hard in her entire life. She was doubled over she was laughing so hard.
“You have to stop,” Morgan gasped. She was begging.
“We are stopped,” Nate pointed out, not sharing her amusement. “That’s the problem. Unhappy hasn’t moved for ten minutes.”
It was snowing, but it was no longer big, gentle flakes floating down around them. It was coming down hard now, the wind whipping it up in gusts around the sleigh. But even the freezing cold could not dampen Morgan’s enjoyment.
Nate stood in front of Happy, pulling on the pony’s obstinate head, trying to get him to move.
The pony had pulled the little sleigh, with Ace and Morgan in it, only in stops and starts, mostly stops. Ace held the reins, and jiggled them and shouted encouragement, while her father walked slightly behind and to the right of the pony.
Forward movement was accomplished sporadically when Nate slapped the pony’s ample brown-and-white rump with his gloves.
Now, a mile from the house, Happy was no longer startled by the rather frequent popping across his rump with the gloves. Apparently he had decided against forward motion and was not going to be persuaded with glove smacks.
“I think he likes it,” Morgan said, watching the pony sway his rump happily into the pressure of Nate’s hand after every increasingly vigorous smack with the gloves. Happy turned his head just enough that she could see the pony’s decidedly beady eyes half shut in an expression that Morgan had to assume was pure pleasure.
Nate had his hands firmly planted on either side of the pony’s headstall and was leaning back hard on his heels, pulling with all his might.
“Come on, you dastardly little devil.”
Considerable as Nate’s might was, the pony outweighed him by several hundred pounds. Happy planted his own feet, and showed Nate he wasn’t the only one who could lean back!
“There’s a dog-food factory waiting for you!” Nate warned the pony darkly. “One phone call. The meat wagon comes by here on Monday.”
“Please stop,” Morgan begged again. All this cold, all this jolting and all this laughter was having the most unfortunate effect on her kidneys.