by Cara Colter
“He’s just kidding,” Ace whispered. “He says that every time.”
The pony stepped back instead of forward, pulling Nate with him.
“On second thought, dog food is too good for you,” Nate muttered. “Bear bait. The bear-bait wagon comes by on Wednesday.”
The pony cocked his head, as if he was actually considering this, then stepped back again, yanking Nate backward with him.
“Please,” Morgan moaned.
“It’s time for the apple,” Ace yelled. If she was enjoying her sleigh ride any less for its lack of forward movement it didn’t show in her shining face.
“I am not bribing him to move. I’m just not. It’s a matter of pride with me. Hathoways are renowned for their pride, Morgan.”
But after another few minutes of unsuccessfully playing tug-of-war with the four-hundred-pound pony, Nate sighed and produced an apple, apparently kept on hand for just this purpose.
With a sigh of resignation, he held it at arm’s length. Happy opened one eye, caught sight of the apple and lurched forward.
A terrible move for a suffering kidney.
“Greedy little pig,” Nate muttered, keeping the apple carefully out of the snapping pony’s reach and breaking into a jog.
Morgan howled with laughter as the fat pony stirred himself into a trot, stretching his neck hard to get the apple. The sleigh jolted along behind him, as Nate wisely looped back toward the barn while the pony was moving!
They finally got back to the barn, Happy’s only true ambition demonstrated when that building came back into view and he broke into a clumsy gallop that had Nate running to keep up.
“Give him the apple, Daddy,” Ace insisted when they arrived at the barn door.
Panting, Nate obliged, yanking back his fingers when Happy tried to devour them along with the apple.
Morgan decided then and there you could learn a lot about the true nature of a man from how he bargained with a pony—and from the lengths he was willing to go to make his daughter happy.
Nate helped Morgan out of the sled with a rueful grin. He gave a little bow. “I see I have entertained you.” And then more solemnly revealed, looking at her so intently her face burned, “I like it when you laugh, Morgan McGuire.”
“I like it, too.”
“I’m sure that this was not exactly what you pictured when I promised you a sleigh ride.”
“The truth?” she said. “It’s not. And it was so much better! Except for one thing.” She leaned forward and whispered her urgent need to him.
“Ace? Take Miss McGuire up to the house.”
The door of the farmhouse opened just as they arrived. An attractive wholesome-looking woman with dark hair and a Christmas sweater smiled her welcome at them.
“Aunt Molly!” Ace cried.
“You must be frozen,” Molly said, as she gave Ace a huge hug.
“Actually,” Morgan said awkwardly, “if you could point me in the direction of—”
Thankfully she didn’t even have to finish the sentence, because Molly laughed. “Right there. I’ve jounced around in that sled, too.”
When Morgan joined them again, Molly explained she had been out Christmas shopping when they arrived.
“How was Happy today?” she asked her niece.
“Happy was extra bad for Daddy today,” Ace declared gleefully.
“Oh, good,” Molly said, and they all shared a laugh that made Morgan feel, again, that deepening sense of family, of being part of a sacred circle. She had a sense of ease with Molly that usually she would not have with a person quite so quickly.
“I’m Morgan McGuire, Ace’s teacher,” Morgan said, extending her hand.
“Oh, the famous Mrs. McGuire.”
“It’s Miss. I can’t get that through to the kids. I’ve stopped trying.”
“Miss. Oh,” Molly said, and she turned and looked down to where Nate was taking the harness off the pony. Her eyes went back to Morgan full of soft question.
Questions that Morgan was thankful had not been spoken out loud, because she would have had no idea how to answer them.
There was something happening between her and Nate, there was no question about that. But it was ill-defined and nebulous. Were they becoming friends? Morgan thought it was something more. Possibly a lot more. But did he?
“Ace’s mom, Nate’s wife, Cindy, was my sister,” Molly said, leading Morgan through to the kitchen.
It could have been an awkward moment, but it wasn’t.
Molly laid her hand on Morgan’s. “We love him very much. We just want him back. Sometimes,” she mused, sighing, “I feel as if I lost all three of them.”
“Three?” Morgan said.
“Never mind. It’s a long story. And maybe it will have a happy ending someday. I could have sworn when I looked out the kitchen window a few minutes ago, I saw Nate smiling. A rare enough occurrence in the last two years, and even rarer after he’s had to deal with the pony!
“Oh. Here’s Keith, my husband. Keith, this is Morgan. Nate brought her out to have a sleigh ride with Ace.”
No mention of her true role in their lives, as Ace’s teacher.
“And how was that?” Keith asked her.
“One of the most deliriously delightful experiences of my life.”
He watched her for a moment, and like his wife, seemed satisfied.
Silly, to be so pleased that Nate’s family by marriage liked her. They hardly knew her.
Though that seemed to be a circumstance they were determined to change, because after Nate came in, stomping the snow off his boots, they were all invited to share the pot of chili that had been heating on the stove.
“Morgan?” Nate asked. “Does that fit with your schedule?”
Schedule? Oh, a woman more clever than her would probably at least pretend to be busy on a Saturday night. But somehow, there was no way you could play games with a man as real as Nate.
Or not mind games. Not flirting games. Other games? He proved to be enormously good at them.
Because after the feed of chili in the warmth of the kitchen, with banter going back and forth between the two men, there was just an expectation they would stay. The kitchen table was cleared of dishes and a worn deck of cards came out.
They taught her to play a game called 99 that she was hopeless at. But two late night’s in a row soon proved too much for Ace, and despite her winning streak at 99 she finally went and laid down on the couch and fell asleep.
And then the adults gathered around the fireplace, and Molly made hot rum toddies, though Nate refused and had hot chocolate instead.
Morgan wished she had refused, too. The drink filled her with a sense of warmth and well-being as the talk flowed around her. About the farm and the forge, the coming production of The Christmas Angel.
“Did you hear they were deciding who gets to go by a lottery system?” Molly asked.
Morgan confirmed that. There were only three hundred seats available in the auditorium, so the seats would be given away by a lottery system. But she told them that there would be a live feed to the community center and one of the local churches so that everyone who wanted could see it.
“And have they chosen the Christmas Angel yet?” Molly said, casting a worried look at her sleeping niece. “She’s called me several times about it. Tonight’s the first night I haven’t heard her mention it.”
“I understand Mr. Wellhaven will announce the choice at his welcome party. It’s a skating party at the pond, a week from tonight. He’s been sent video of some of the rehearsals.”
“I’d like it to be over with,” Molly said.
“Me, too,” Nate said. “I hate to think how disappointed she’s going to be.”
“Who knows?” Morgan said. “Maybe she won’t be disappointed. Maybe it will be her.”
Molly’s and Nate’s mouths fell open in equal expressions of shocked disbelief.
“Ace?” they said together.
“I’ve told all the
girls they have an equal chance of being chosen.”
“But that’s not true,” Nate said grimly. “Ace can’t sing a note, and she doesn’t look like anyone’s idea of an angel.”
“Her singing has actually improved quite a lot under Mrs. Wellhaven’s tutelage.”
“She sings all those songs around the house all the time. I haven’t noticed any improvement.”
“Well,” Morgan said firmly, “there has been. And I think anyone with a little imagination could see she would make a perfectly adorable Christmas Angel.”
“I don’t want her getting her hopes up for something that doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of happening.”
It was the first grim note in a perfect day, so Molly quickly changed the subject, but the mood had shifted.
A few minutes later, saying goodbye on the doorstep, Nate cradling the sleeping child against his chest, it seemed to Morgan as if she had never had a more perfect day. She realized it was not the toddy alone that allowed her to feel this sense of warmth and well-being. It had only allowed her to relax into the feeling instead of analyzing it.
“Nate,” she said, as they drove through the snow, “it’s so nice that you still are so connected with them, with Cindy’s family.”
He shot her a surprised look. “Family is family. They became my family the day I married Cindy.”
Morgan shivered. She had always known he was a forever kind of man. Not like in her own family, where loyalties shifted with each new liaison. She could feel herself longing for what he represented.
Morgan realized tonight had been the kind of night she had always dreamed of.
A simple night of family. And connection. A feeling of some things not being temporary.
“I still think it’s nice,” she said.
“We had already lost Cindy. It would have just made everything so much worse if we lost each other. Ace is what remains, she’s what Cindy is sending forward into the future. I could never keep her from her aunt, from her mom’s sister.”
But Morgan thought of all the people—including her own family—that when something happened, like a divorce, that’s exactly what they did.
“When my mom and dad divorced,” she told him, “it was like my dad’s whole side of the family, including him, just faded away.”
“You didn’t have any contact with your dad?”
“A bit, at first. Then he moved for a job, and then he remarried. So, it was a card and some money on my birthday. He always paid my mother support, though.”
“Yippee for him,” Nate said darkly. “There’s a lot more to being a dad than paying the bills.”
“Yes,” she said. “I can see that in the way you parent.”
“Now you like my parenting?” he teased her. “What about the notes?”
“You haven’t gotten one for a while!”
“I kind of miss them.”
“You do not.”
They were in front of her house now, but he made no move to get out of the truck. “What your dad did? That was wrong,” he said, after a long time. “And sad.”
She liked that about Nate Hathoway. He had a strong value system. He knew what was right and what was wrong, and he would never compromise that.
“Nate, tell me if it’s none of my business, but did someone else die, besides your wife? Molly said something.”
For a long moment he didn’t answer. Then he said gruffly, “There were three of us who grew up together. Me, Cindy and David. Cindy and David had been in love since they were about twelve. I mean really in love. The head-over-heels kind. Some people outgrow things like that, other people don’t. They didn’t.”
He was silent for a long, long time. “David joined the army. Before he left he made me promise I’d look after her. If anything happened.”
“Something happened,” Morgan guessed when he was silent for a long time again.
He cast her a look that said it all, that confirmed that strong value system.
“David was killed in Iraq,” he said roughly. “And I looked after Cindy, just like I promised.”
She wanted to ask if he loved her, but it was so evident from the agony on his face that he had loved her. Loved both his friends.
“You are a good man,” she whispered. She wanted to ask, Did she love you? The really-in-love kind? The head-over-heels kind? But she could tell by the set of his face he already felt he might have said too much.
He shrugged it off uncomfortably, and they pulled up to her house. He shut off the truck, and leaped out, not wanting to discuss it anymore. Still, he walked her up to her front door, helped her with the key.
“Thank you, Nate,” she said softly. “It was such a perfect day.”
“You’re welcome.” He turned to go down off her stoop.
Maybe it was the hot rum toddy.
Or maybe it wasn’t. Maybe it was that he was a good, good man, who had made a vow to his best friend and kept it. Maybe it was because she thought he deserved to be really in love and suspected that he had sacrificed that feeling in the name of honor.
“Nate?”
He turned back to her.
Something else had been between them all day, too.
Awareness.
She crossed the small distance between them, stood on tiptoes and did what she had wanted to do from the moment she had met him.
She tasted him. She touched her lips to his own.
He tasted exactly as she had known he would.
Of mysterious things that made a woman’s heart race, but underneath that, of strength and solidness. Of a man who would do the right thing.
Of things made to last forever.
She stumbled back from him, both frightened and intrigued by the strength of her longing.
He was a man, she knew, who had been tremendously hurt.
She held her breath knowing that everything between them had just shifted with the invitation of her lips.
So far everything had been casual and spontaneous.
Now their kiss changed that.
It asked for more. It demanded some definition, it asked where things were going. It asked if he was ready to really fall in love.
The head-over-heels kind.
Because despite it all, despite her determination to be independent, to not give her life away, she felt ready to surrender to the tug inside her.
To love him.
Morgan held her breath, thinking he would walk away, perhaps never to look back.
But he didn’t. He regarded her solemnly, and then said, softly, “Wow.”
Then he walked away, leaving her feeling as if things were even more up in the air and ill-defined than they had been before.
“Mr. Hathoway?”
Nate glanced at the clock. It was just a little after 7 a.m. Morgan must have assumed he was up getting Ace ready for school. The truth was he had the process down to a science. He could get her ready, including hair, breakfast and bag lunch in under fifteen minutes.
“Yes, Miss McGuire?” he asked. Nate hadn’t called her since the sleigh ride, since her unexpected kiss and the clear invitation in it.
He hadn’t called her because he had told her things he had not expected to tell her. She was proving she could take chinks out of armor that not a single other person had even dented.
But Morgan McGuire wanted things that Nate could not promise. After that night with Molly and Keith, playing games, laughing, everything easy and light, he was aware of a deep longing in him, too.
To have a life like the one he’d had before. A stable life, where you woke up in the morning and trusted the day would go as you planned.
The truth? He wasn’t even sure he could be the man he had been before, a man naively unaware how quickly things could go wrong in the world, naively believing his strength would be enough to protect those he loved from harm.
He was aware how vulnerable answering a longing like that made a man.
“I’d like to discuss my last note with
you.”
But here was another truth. Despite his desire to harden himself against Morgan McGuire, her temptations and invitations, he could feel a smile starting somewhere in the vicinity of his chest. He relished it, that he was lying in bed under the warmth of his blanket, the phone to his ear, listening to her.
He relished when she used that snippy, schoolmarm tone of voice on him. He wondered when that had happened, exactly, that he had started enjoying that schoolmarm tone.
“I sent you a request to send cookies for Mr. Wellhaven’s welcome party at the skating rink at Old Sawmill Pond.”
“I sent the damned cookies.”
Silence. “We’ve discussed cussing.”
“Ace is still in bed.”
He could tell she was debating asking how he could get her ready for school in time if she was still in bed, but she wisely decided to stick to one topic at a time.
“All right,” Morgan said, after a pause. “Let’s discuss the damned cookies, then.”
The smile was turning to laughter. He bit it back.
“I’m in charge of cookies for the welcome party for Mr. Wellhaven. He’ll be arriving Saturday.”
“The note said that.” Plus, Ace was in excitement overdrive about the skating party to be held at the pond in Mr. Wellhaven’s honor. Nate was going to have to give her the gift he had planned to give his daughter from Santa—the new skates—early.
“You said you missed my notes,” she pointed out.
“Hmm,” he returned, noncommittally. “I did say that.” He realized what he missed was her.
“After she received my note, Mrs. Weston sent four dozen sugar cookies decorated individually like giftwrapped Christmas parcels.”
“Good for Ashley.”
“Mrs. Campbell sent three dozen chocolate-dipped snowmen. Sharon McKinley sent melt-in-your-mouth shortbread, shaped like Christmas balls, with icing ribbons.”
“How did you know they were melt-in-your-mouth? Are you sampling the cookies, Miss McGuire? Tut-tut.” He heard her bite back laughter.
Why were the simplest things such a joy with her?”
“Mrs. Bonnabell sent—
“Look, it sounds like you have plenty of cookies. You won’t even need the box of Peek Freans I sent over.”