by Cara Colter
He swung around to her, and her sense of being too aware of how beautifully he was made, intensified. The shadow of whiskers on his cheeks and chin had darkened even more. His features were honed and masculine and perfect.
She knew she had been traveling, and her appearance was probably disheveled. She had been so eager to see him she had not even stopped to run a comb through her hair or dab a bit of lipstick on her lips. She put a hand to her tangled hair. His eyes followed her hand, his gaze so dark and direct it sent a delighted shiver up and down her spine.
Stop it, she ordered herself. They had things to say to each other. Or at least, she had things to say to him. But the awareness that hissed in the air between them, like static, like the coming of a storm, was distracting.
A blackened, smoldering chunk of something was dangling from a fork in his hand.
“Is that on fire?” she asked, dragging her eyes away from the piercing gray-blue of his eyes to the welcome distraction of what he held in his hand.
He looked down at the chicken breast, turned quickly and tossed it into the sink before swiveling back to her. “Of course not.”
She sniffed the air and raised an eyebrow at him.
He frowned. “Smoldering.”
“Ah.”
“Prefire, at best.”
“Of course.”
“The smoke detectors didn’t even go off.”
“Maybe they aren’t working properly,” she said, and that earned her a scowl. “Have you tested them recently?”
He was silent.
“I’ll add it to my list of things to do,” she decided out loud.
“Your things to do?” he sputtered.
“How did the photo shoot go?”
“Swimmingly,” he bit out.
She hazarded a few steps in, stopped at the kitchen island and lifted the upside-down muffin tin with cautious fingers. Gluey strings tried to hold it to the counter top, but she succeeded at flipping it over. She stared down. The openings were filled with half-cooked batter that had evidently risen over the confines of the wells provided for them.
“What on earth were you trying to accomplish?” she finally managed to ask him, lifting her eyes to his.
“I had a sudden inexplicable need to lower my sodium intake,” he said, crossing his arms defensively over his chest and glaring at her as if this was all her fault.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry I went away.”
He lifted a shoulder as if he didn’t care. “You can go away again,” he said, his voice hoarse, his posture so stiff it looked as though the tiniest nudge would break him in two. “Clearly, I don’t need you.”
“Clearly,” she agreed softly.
He glared at her with suspicion. He nodded at his mess as if it were a success. “Your presence is unnecessary,” he said, lifting his chin in defiance of the wreckage all around him. “I am quite capable of looking after myself.”
“Yes,” she said soothingly. “Yes. I can clearly see—”
A terrible little giggle escaped her. She tried to stifle it by putting her fist to her lips. It didn’t work.
“I wanted the chicken like that. Blackened.”
She swallowed hard and spoke over her fist. “Of...course...you...did.” Between the words were the strangled remnants of suppressed laughter. She really had said quite enough, but she felt compelled to add, “And the desire to cook...muffins came from?”
“Men,” he informed her proudly, “are extremely suggestible animals, particularly when it comes to food. I wanted a muffin, I saw no reason I should not make one for myself.”
“A statement of independence,” she said.
He looked annoyed at her deduction.
Laughter. It had become, until a few weeks ago, as foreign to her as a forgotten language. Her life had been so strained. She had lived with the extreme tension of feeling hunted and not safe. All that had changed. Her laughter died when she realized that Jefferson was not in any way, shape or form sharing her enjoyment. In fact, Jefferson Stone looked downright grim.
“I wasn’t laughing at you,” she said, contrite. “It’s just that it feels so good to be here. And so right.”
Jefferson frowned at that. In case she mistook his silence as an invitation to exchange confidences, he looked long and hard at her, and then gave his head a shake. “I can’t see how this is possibly going to work,” he muttered.
“We could give it a free trial,” she suggested softly.
“I already told you. I don’t need you.”
“If you decide it’s not what you want, I’ll refund your misery.”
“I told you,” he said, “I don’t need you.”
“What if it’s not about need, Jefferson? What if it’s not about what either of us needs?”
He didn’t say anything.
“What if it’s about want? About wanting a different kind of life, not needing it?”
He looked unimpressed. How he reminded her of the man who had first stood in his doorway, arms folded over his chest, his one word—nope—hanging between them.
She hadn’t let his attitude stop her then, and she wasn’t going to let it stop her now. Just like then, it felt as if her life depended on changing that nope to something else. “Can I tell you what I see?”
“Please don’t,” he said, his voice hard and cold.
She smiled, because she had already seen beyond that mask. She had already seen the strength and the decency that were at his very core.
“I see a man,” she said quietly and firmly, “who despite his dizzying career and financial success, lives with an abject sense of failure. I see a man who viewed himself as helpless when it counted the most, when he most wanted to be powerful.
“I see a man who has suffered way too much loss, and all that loss has left him feeling guarded about love, unwilling to risk such terrifying powerlessness and loss again.
“I see a man who doesn’t need love but who wants it desperately. And yet he’ll say no to that—to rediscovering the richness of his emotional life, to learning to laugh again—because the risk of pain seems like too great a risk.”
“It is. Too. Great. A. Risk. And I don’t want to talk to you about risks. How could you have done that? Put yourself in the path of that psychopath?”
“I had to.”
“But why?”
“Because I was like the Cowardly Lion, I had to find my courage.”
He snorted.
“Because there is no love without courage. To choose love? Even though it has wounded you? That is the greatest courage of all.”
Angie heard the firmness in her voice, the new strength of a woman who had found the courage to face down her own fears—all of them. “It’s the only risk worth taking. The tremendous payoff is worth the risk. The payoff is love.”
* * *
When Angie had laughed he had known the gig was up. The minute he had let her in that door, all those weeks ago, he had opened up a whole world of danger to himself.
Her laughter had shown him, all too clearly, who she really was.
And who she really was? Vivacious and fun, alight with life. Smart. Capable. And now this added element: pure, unadulterated courage. What could be more dangerous to his shut-down world than someone like her who was willing to grow and change, to let life teach her all its lessons, both easy and hard? What could be more threatening to the comforting darkness he had come to live in, than her promise of light?
Still, he tried. He cleared his throat.
“Let’s look at the facts,” he said.
She wrinkled her nose at him. He hated it that she did that. It made her look so adorably cute.
He cleared his throat. She had been back in his house less than three minutes and he was already reacti
ng to her.
“That moment of madness when I decided I was capable of making muffins?”
“You totally miss me,” she said.
He scowled at her. “It is the result of your intrusion on my world, influencing me, filling me with a desire to prove things that did not need proving a mere month ago!”
He had thought, when she had first arrived, that it was only for two weeks. That was all. He’d been clear about that. A man could handle anything for two short weeks.
She moved toward him. He had plenty of opportunity to move away. Plenty. But he did not.
She came and stood before him. Everything she was, was before him. It was in her eyes, sparkling with unshed tears, and in her posture and in her exquisitely beautiful but tentative smile. She was courage and she was delicacy. She was strength and she was tenderness. She was tears and she was laughter.
She was offering him a world that would go from black-and-white to full color; she was offering him a world that would go from bleak to glorious. All of that was in her as she reached out her hand and cupped his jawline, her fingers stretching out to touch his cheekbones.
He froze. He could feel the utter tenderness of her touch. In her shining eyes was love and acceptance. He understood every man dreams of such a thing, without knowing that it was his greatest longing.
Jefferson Stone’s strength completely failed him, crumbled like rock from an ancient wall.
Or maybe that was not it. Maybe that was not it at all. Maybe it was that his strength was replaced with the courage she had talked about. And that courage unfurled within him like a flag that had felt the wind.
The wind was her love, showing him all that he could be and all that they could be and all that their world could be.
Because, instead of moving away from the promise of her touch, he moved toward it. He covered her hand with his, and then he guided her hand to his mouth and kissed her fingertips with the reverence of recognition.
Of who this amazing woman was and what she was offering him.
She felt his moment of surrender. Her eyes widened, and the tears were finally freed. Her mouth formed the most delectable little O. And then she was crying, and laughing at the same time.
He gathered her in his arms and felt the pure homecoming of his heart finding its way back. He whispered his thanks to her and to the universe and to whatever forces had guided them toward this moment.
This exquisite moment, when all the world stopped, when every other single thing fell away in insignificance, when all the world bowed before the glory of it.
When all the world acknowledged that there really was only one truth.
And that one truth was love.
EPILOGUE
JEFFERSON STONE WENT and stood at the window for a moment. The moody waters of the main body of the lake were swathed in the chill gray cloud of winter, but the water at the edges of the sheltered bays was freezing up nicely.
The wind howled under the eaves of the house and tossed pebbles of slanting snow against the window. Here, inside, the contrast was sharp and delicious. The house was warm and cozy. He could smell pumpkin pie cooking. December would not be everyone’s favorite time to be on the lake, but it was his.
Had December always been his favorite month, with its mercurial weather changes, and with skating on the lake and Christmas right around the corner? Probably it had not been. Once, he had wandered away, like a man lost, from the magic of all those things.
He and Angie had married on Christmas Day. He had offered her the big spring wedding, knowing that dream had been yanked from her once without warning.
But Angie had said no, that wasn’t her dream anymore. She said a big wedding was about a day, but loving each other was about a lifetime. And she had been so impatient! She was not about to wait until spring.
So, instead of a church and a dinner, instead of all those traditions she had once longed for, they had done as his grandmother had once done, and sent out a blanket invitation to spend Christmas with them. It had been like the days of old, the house filled to overflowing with joy and love. The wedding had been a surprise for most of their guests. A few, like Maggie, had been in on the secret.
So, after dinner, with only a few in the know, they had gone outside and lit a bonfire against the gathering darkness. Jefferson stood at the bonfire, down by the shores of the freshly frozen edges of the lake.
He still smiled with remembered delight as he thought of the surprised faces of their friends and neighbors when Maggie’s granddaughter had begun to play the wedding march on her flute. The notes had been so clear and beautiful on the crisp air that it had stunned their guests into silence. And then Pastor Michael had appeared, on cue, in his full vestments.
And then, the music had fallen away, and a pregnant sense of waiting had filled the gathering with a delightful sense of anticipation. Snow had fallen from the limb of a tree and landed with a poof of magic that had drawn all eyes there.
And there Angie had stood, at the edge of the old-growth forest, looking like an enchantment, looking every inch the angel he had always known she was, splendid in a white dress and a beautiful fur cape. Those curls had been sewn with tiny snowdrops, and she had come to him, through a path in the snow, her eyes never leaving his face, holding promises he could not have ever anticipated for himself.
They had spoken their vows on the shores of the lake, and now that spot was, forever, the most sacred of places. He could see it from where he stood at the window, now.
They had lit torches around the lake and strapped on skates, and that was where he had had the first dance with her. That year, the lake had frozen like glass, and they had been able to see the dark water far beneath them as they glided along. They had fire-roasted marshmallows instead of cake, and one of their friends had brought a guitar. They had sat by the fire singing and listening to the guitar and the flute dance with each other as the stars came out. He could not think of that day without his throat closing with pure emotion at how real every single moment of it had been.
Could it really have been three years this month? Sometimes he longed to stop the race of time, to hold each moment in his hand so that he could feel it more deeply, savor what he had been given.
He heard a shriek of laughter and grimaced good-naturedly. He turned back to what he was doing: painting this room a delicate shade of white that had the faintest blush of pink in it.
“It’s the very same color,” he had groused to Angie when she had shown it to him.
“No,” she had said, “it’s not,” and so that had become the color of the nursery. He slid a little glance at the crib he had assembled yesterday and he gulped.
Were they ready for this? Could you ever be ready?
Angie had said to him once, on the most important day of his life, that there was no love without courage. She had said that to choose love, even though it wounded, was the greatest courage of all.
But in a month, they were going to have a baby in this room, in that crib with its bumpers and blankets with vivid pink monkeys cavorting across the fabric as if it was all fun, somehow. Fun? A real, live, breathing, cooing, little girl. He was not at all sure he had the courage for this.
Not just for bringing the baby home, but for the first day of kindergarten, and for wiping away tears because some boy had been mean to her, and for deciding whether she should be in hockey or ballet.
Was he ready to be a daddy? So much potential for love. And so much potential for loss. And so much potential for the place where those two things met.
Because even now, with his baby girl still safe in the womb of her mother, Jefferson ached with awareness.
That there would come a day, when she might want a long, dress of white or she might not, but there would come a day when she would stand in a place of sanctuary, looking at a man who
was not her daddy, with an aching love in her eyes.
The laughter came again, floating up the staircases as if the house was overflowing with it.
Jefferson contemplated that. His house, once a lonely fortress on a rock, was filled with the sounds of his friends and neighbors, gathering from far and wide to celebrate Christmas here at the Stone House. It was remarkably easy to breathe new life into an old tradition. But then, really, Angie made so much look remarkably easy.
Angie had never returned to teaching home economics in high school. Instead, after they had married, she had started an organization called Prom-n-Aid.
She remembered, so clearly, being the child of a single parent, unable to afford what other girls could have. Trust Angie to turn this into her gift to the world. She proudly headed an organization that did not give girls dresses, but showed them how to create them.
“I don’t just want to give them a dress,” Angie had told him in that earnest way of hers. “I want them to discover the power of their own creativity—their ability to use the force of creativity to make the world match their dreams.”
But really, for all those words, it was just a variation on love.
It had grown unbelievably. Angie taught seminars to teachers and clubs all over North America, showing them how to get sponsors to donate everything from thread to tiaras, how to reach out to the girls who needed this the most.
“There you are!”
Jefferson turned slightly. His wife—would he ever get accustomed to those words in relation to Angie—was glowing. For some reason, pregnancy had made her hair even curlier. How he loved the wild chaos of her hair. The maternity dress was of her own design, proudly hugging the huge roundness of her belly. She had been talking lately about starting a maternity division of Prom-n-Aid.
“It’s beautiful,” she whispered of the color.
“It’s the same as it was before,” he said, just for the sake of argument, even though he could clearly see it wasn’t. The new shade had a delicacy and warmth that the old one had not had.
“Are you hiding?” she demanded, ignoring his invitation to argue with him, her eyes twinkling with the knowledge that she had his number.