Same Time, Next Christmas (The Bravos 0f Valentine Bay Book 3)

by Christine Rimmer

  She drifted off to sleep around two in the morning.

  Matt stayed awake, planning what he would say before she left tomorrow, trying to think of just the right words that would make her agree they were ready for more than the holidays together.

  * * *

  By noon New Year’s Day, he still hadn’t said anything. Apparently, he was a complete wimp when it came to asking for what he wanted the most.

  At a little after one in the afternoon, she said she had to get her stuff together and get on the road. He helped her load up the Outback, as he had the year before and the year before that.

  And then, way too soon, long before he was ready, they were standing by her driver’s door and she was saying goodbye. She knelt and made a fuss over Zoya, and then she rose and moved in close, sliding her hands up over his chest slowly, the way she loved to do, hooking them at the back of his neck.

  “I hate to leave.” She kissed him, a quick brush of those soft lips across his.

  He stared down at her, aching inside. She was getting away from him and if she left now without him opening his damn mouth and saying what he needed to say, he would have to break their agreement and track her down in Portland. Either that, or he wouldn’t set eyes on her for another damn year—maybe never if something happened and one of them didn’t show up next December.

  He’d been waiting for the right moment, the right moment that somehow never came. And now here they were and she was going and it was this moment.

  Or never.

  “Matthias?” Her sleek eyebrows drew together in concern. “What’s the matter? What’s happened?”

  He clasped her shoulders—too hard, enough that she winced. “Sorry.” He forced himself to loosen his grip. “I...” The words tried to stick in his throat. He pushed them out. “Sabra, I want more.”

  She stared up at him, her eyes growing wider. “Um, you want...?” He waited. But that was it. That was all she got out.

  He tried again. “This, you and me for Christmas. It’s beautiful. Perfect. Except that it’s not enough for me, not anymore. I want to be with you, spend time with you when it’s not Christmas. I want to see you in February, in June and in the fall. I want, well, I was thinking we could just start with phone numbers, maybe? Just exchange numbers and then try getting together soon, see how it goes.”

  She only stared up at him, eyes enormous in her suddenly pale face.

  Was this going all wrong?

  He kind of thought it might be.

  Should he back off?

  Probably.

  But he’d been such a damn coward for the last ten days. He needed to go for it. Now that he’d finally opened his mouth and said what he wanted, he needed to take it all the way. “Sabra, I—”

  She silenced him by putting up her hand between them, pressing her fingers to his lips. “Oh, I just, well, I thought we understood each other, we agreed that we—”

  “Stop.” He caught her wrist. “Let me finish.”

  With a shaky sigh, she nodded, carefully pulling free of his grip, stepping back from him—one step. Two.

  He got on with it, because no way could he wait another year to tell her what was in his heart. “I’m in love with you, Sabra.” A tiny cry escaped her, but she caught herself, pressing her hand to her mouth, swallowing down whatever she might have said next. He barreled on. “I want the rest of my life with you. But I know I’m never going to get it if I don’t tell you how much I want you, want us, you and me, together. In the real world. I want to meet your friends and introduce you to my family. I want to show you my hometown and get the tour of your farm. I don’t want to push you, I—”

  “That’s not fair.” She spoke in an angry whisper.

  He blinked down at her. “Excuse me?”

  “You are pushing me, Matthias. You’re asking me for things that I don’t know how to give.”

  Okay, now. That kind of bugged him. That made him mad. He said, way too quietly, “How am I going to have a prayer of getting more from you if I don’t ask for it?”

  “Well, it’s just that we have an agreement. And yet, all of a sudden, you’re all about forever.”

  “Sabra, it’s been two years—two years and three Christmases. That is hardly ‘all of a sudden.’”

  Her soft mouth twisted. “You know what I mean.”

  “Uh, no. I guess I don’t.”

  “Well, um, last year, for instance?”

  “What about it?”

  “Last year, I was kind of thinking the same thing.”

  Hope exploded in his chest. “You were? Because so was I. I wanted to ask you then, for more time, for a chance, but I didn’t know where to start.”

  “Yes, well, it was the same for me.” She didn’t look happy. Shouldn’t she look happy, now they’d both confessed that they wanted the same thing?

  He didn’t get it. “Well, then?” he prodded. “Sabra, what is the problem? You want more, you just said so. You want more and so do I.” He dared a step closer.

  She jerked back, whipping up a hand. “You don’t understand. That was last year. Everything’s different now.”

  “Why? I don’t get it. We’re still the same people.”

  “No. No, we’re not.” She shook her head wildly. “Everything’s changed for me, since my dad died.”

  “Sabra...”

  “No. Wait. Listen, please. I see things so differently. I understand now that I’ve been kidding myself, thinking someday I would find love and happiness with someone, with you.”

  “But you have it. You have me. I love you.”

  “Oh, please,” she scoffed. “Love and happiness? They just end, Matthias. They end and they leave you alone, with nothing. They leave you a shell of who you were, leave you just getting through the endless days, waiting for the time when it doesn’t hurt anymore. And I, well, I can’t. I just can’t.”

  “But you said—”

  “This.” She talked right over him, lifting both hands out to her sides in an encompassing gesture, one that seemed to include him and the cabin, the clearing, the forest, the whole of the small world they shared over Christmas. “This is all I have in me. This is all it will ever be. I can never give you anything more and if you need something more, well, then you need to go out and get it.”

  * * *

  Sabra glared at Matthias. And he just stared at her—a hurt look, and angry, too.

  Well, fine. Let him stare. Let him be angry, as angry as she was—that he’d done this, that he’d sprung this on her. She couldn’t take this. She didn’t know how to deal.

  At the same time, deep within her, a small voice chided that she was way overreacting, that her emotions were knocked all out of whack by her grief over her dad.

  She felt so much for the man standing in front of her, felt desire and affection, felt love. Yeah. She did. She felt love, deep and strong. She didn’t want to lose him.

  But she was losing him. She would lose him. That was how life was—shining moments of joy and beauty, followed by a loneliness that killed.

  Considering a future with him right now? It was like trying to decide what to do about the farm. She couldn’t go back there and she couldn’t let go of it. It was all mixed up together—the farm, Matthias, her dad.

  Her dad, who was gone now. She missed him so much and she despised herself for that, for daring to miss him, when she hadn’t been there for him during the last, lonely years of his life.

  She’d left him to waste away on his own when he needed her most.

  And this, with Matthias, well, what more was there to say? “I really do have to go.”

  * * *

  Matt got the message. He got it loud and clear.

  She’d cut him off at the knees, wrecked him but good. She had to go?

  Terrific. He wanted her out of there, wanted not to
be looking into those big, wounded eyes.

  He reached out and pulled open the door to the Subaru. “Drive safe, Sabra.” The words tasted like sawdust in his mouth. Still, he did wish her well. “You take care of yourself.”

  She stared at him, her eyes bigger than ever, her face much too pale. And then, slowly, she nodded. “You, too.” She got in behind the wheel.

  This is how it ends, he thought. No goodbye kiss, no hope that there ever might be more.

  Not so much as a mention of next year.

  There probably wouldn’t be a next year—not for the two of them, together. Somehow, he was going to have to learn to accept that.

  After this, well, what was there to come back for? He wanted more and she didn’t. Really, where did they go from here?

  He shut the door, called to his dog and went up the steps to the cabin without once looking back.

  Chapter Ten

  Sabra, the following March...

  She didn’t know what had come over her, really.

  A...lightening. A strange sense of promise where for months there had been nothing but despair.

  On the spur of the moment, she took four days off work in the middle of the month and drove up to the farm. Nils and Marjorie were at their house when she pulled into the yard. They ran out to greet her, grabbing her in tight hugs, saying what a nice surprise it was to see her. Meaning it, too.

  Marjorie took her out to see the lambs. She also met with Nils for a couple of hours. They went over the books, discussed the upcoming market season. Soon, they would be planting blueberries, raspberries, blackberries and strawberries. They talked about the huge number of turkey orders for Thanksgiving—so many, in fact, that they’d already had to stop taking them. Next year, Nils planned to raise more birds.

  Sabra joined Marjorie and Nils for dinner. Later, alone in the main house, she wandered the rooms. A cleaning team came in every three weeks to keep things tidy, so the place was in okay shape. But the greenhouse window in the kitchen needed someone to put a few potted plants in there and then take care of them.

  And really, when you came right down to it, a kitchen remodel wouldn’t hurt, either. In time. And a paint job, definitely. The old homestead could do with a general freshening-up if she ever intended to live here again.

  Live here again?

  Where had that idea come from?

  She shook her head and put the thought from her mind.

  That night, she slept in her old room, a dreamless, peaceful sort of sleep—or mostly dreamless, anyway.

  Just before dawn she woke and realized she’d been dreaming of Matthias, a simple dream. They were here, in the farmhouse, together. In her dream, they went out to the front porch and sat in the twin rockers her dad had found years ago at a yard sale and refinished himself. Zoya snoozed at their feet.

  Sabra sat up in bed, stretched, yawned and looked out the window where the pink fingers of morning light inched across the horizon. Shoving back the covers, she ran over there, pushed the window up and breathed in the cool morning smell of new grass and damp earth.

  Spring was here. Already. And leaning on the sill she felt...close. To her mother and her father, to all the generations of Bonds before her.

  The idea dawned like the new morning.

  She didn’t want to sell the farm.

  She wanted to move home to stay.

  Sabra, that July...

  “So just track him down,” insisted Iris. “You blew it and you need to reach out, tell him you messed up, that your head was all turned around over your dad dying. You need to beg him for another chance.”

  “I can’t.” Sabra dropped a stack of folded clothes into an open box.

  “Can’t?” Iris scoffed. “Won’t. That’s what you really mean.”

  “It wouldn’t be right to him,” said Sabra.

  “Oh, yeah, it would. It’s the rightest thing in the world, telling a man who loves you that you love him, too, and want to be with him.”

  They were at Sabra’s apartment—Sabra, Iris and Peyton, too. Sabra was moving home to the farm and her friends were pitching in, helping her pack up to go.

  She tried to make Iris understand. “It wasn’t our deal to go looking for each other, to go butting into each other’s regular lives. If I want to change the agreement, I need to do it when I see him, at Christmas.”

  “Who says you’ll see him at Christmas?”

  “Well, what I mean is that next Christmas would be the time to try again, if that’s even possible anymore.”

  Iris shook her head. “Uh-uh. Not buying. You’re just making excuses not to step up right now and get straight with the man you love.”

  Peyton emerged from the closet, her arms full of clothes. “Honey, I’m with Iris on this one.” She dropped the clothes on the bed for Sabra to box up. “You screwed up. You need to fix it.”

  “And I will. At Christmas. I still have the key. I’ll show up, as always, and I’ll pray that he does, too.”

  Iris put both hands to her head and made an exploding gesture. “Wrong. Bad. You need to act now. He could find someone else in the next five months.”

  “He could have found someone else already,” Sabra said, something inside of her dying a little at the very thought. “I told him to find someone else. I can’t go breaking our rules and chasing after him now. If he’s found someone new, I’ve got no right to try to get in the middle of that. I’ve got no right and I won’t.”

  Iris opened her mouth to argue some more, but Peyton caught her eye and shook her head. “It’s your call,” Iris conceded at last. “But just for the record, I think you’re making a big mistake.”

  Matt, early August...

  Friday night at Beach Street Brews was as crowded and loud as ever. Matt was glad to be out, though. Sometimes a guy needed a beer, a bar full of people, and some mediocre rock and roll played at earsplitting levels.

  The noise and party atmosphere distracted him, kept him from brooding over Sabra. It had been seven months since she’d made it painfully clear that they were going nowhere. Not ever. He needed to get over her, to get over himself.

  It was past time for him to stop being an emo idiot and move the hell on. Life was too damn short to spend it longing for a woman who would never give him more than a holiday hookup. He was ready, after all these years, for a real relationship.

  And damn it, he was through letting the important things pass him by.

  Jerry, across the table from him, leaned in. “Someone’s been asking to meet you.” Jerry tipped his red head at two pretty women, a blonde and a brunette, as they approached their booth. “The blonde,” said Jerry. “Mary’s her name...”

  The two women reached the booth. Jerry scooted over and patted the empty space next to him. The brunette sat down.

  The blonde smiled shyly at Matt. “Matt Bravo,” he said.

  Her smile got brighter. “Mary Westbrook.”

  He moved over toward the wall and Mary slid in beside him.

  They started talking, Matt and Mary. She’d gone to Valentine Bay High, graduated the same year as his sister Aislinn. Now Mary worked as a physical therapist at a local clinic. She had sky-blue eyes, a great laugh and an easy, friendly way about her.

  No, she wasn’t Sabra.

  But Matt liked her. He liked her a lot.

  Early November...

  Matt sat on the sofa in his brother Daniel’s study at the Bravo family house on Rhinehart Hill. Across the room, beyond his brother’s big desk, the window that looked out over the front porch framed a portrait in fall colors, the maples deep red, the oaks gone to gold. Daniel’s fourteen-month-old twins, Jake and Frannie, were upstairs with their latest nanny. Sometimes it was hard to believe how big those kids were now, and that it had been over a year since they lost Lillie.

  A glass of scotch in each hand,
Daniel came and sat in the armchair across the low table from Matt. He handed Matt a glass and offered a toast. “To you, Matt. And to the new woman in your life.”

  “Thanks.” Matt touched his glass to his brother’s and sipped. The scotch was excellent, smoky and hot going down.

  Daniel took a slow sip, too. “I’ve been instructed to inform you that we all expect to be meeting Mary at Thanksgiving.”

  Matt chuckled. “Instructed, huh?”

  Daniel didn’t crack a smile. But then, he rarely did. “We have four sisters, in case you’ve forgotten.”

  “Sisters,” Matt kidded back. “Right. I vaguely remember them, yeah.”

  “They’re all pleased to learn you’ve met someone special. They want to get to know her. Connor and Liam do, too.” Connor and Liam were third-and fourth-born in the family, respectively. “And so do I.”

  “Well, Aislinn has already been after me to bring Mary.” The truth was, he’d hesitated over inviting Mary. “I was kind of thinking it was too soon, you know?”

  Daniel said, “It’s never too soon if you really like someone.”

  An image took shape in his mind. It wasn’t of Mary and he ordered it gone. “Well, good. I did invite her. She said yes. Mary’s looking forward to meeting the family.”

  “I’m glad. And I’m happy for you...”

  Two days later...

  Unbuttoning his uniform shirt as he went, Matt led the way into his bedroom, Zoya hopping along behind. She stretched out on the rug by the bed and panted up at him contentedly as he finished getting out of his work clothes and stuffed them in the hamper.

  That night, he was taking Mary out to eat and then to a stand-up comedy show at the Valentine Bay Theatre. He grabbed a pair of jeans from a drawer, tossed them across the bed and went to the closet for a shirt to wear under his jacket.

  When he grabbed the blue button-down off the rod, he caught sight of a corner of this year’s Wild and Scenic Oregon calendar still tacked to the wall. The hangers clattered loudly along the rod as he shoved them back, hard.