“I’m definitely in for the carriage ride.” Noah maneuvered the truck through a hole big enough to mess up a tire. “Let me take something to the Henderson family, then we’ll be on our way.”
As Emma tapped her foot to the radio and wondered where her plan to avoid Noah had derailed, he drove a few miles east to another set of dirt roads. He pulled into the rutted driveway of a single-wide trailer, where three large dogs with aerodynamic tails roused from the wooden ramp leading to the front door.
“I’ll be right back.”
He hopped out, and a blast of cold air filled the truck before he shut the door. Noah dropped the tailgate and carried two children’s bicycles to a nearby shed. A man in a ball cap and coveralls stepped out of the house, threw his hand up in a wave, and joined Noah. Emma watched the man fling open the crooked door to the shed, then take one bicycle and disappear inside. Noah handed him the other before the man locked the building with a padlock and patted Noah on the back. The two men laughed over something then chatted for a few minutes more. A utility light illuminated the yard, and Emma could see the man’s smile from her seat in the truck.
“You ready to go?” Noah asked as he climbed back inside, smelling like wood stove and outdoors.
Emma’s smile stretched her warm cheeks.
“What?” Noah stared at the dirt road ahead of them.
“Did you just drop off a few early Christmas presents to that family?”
He drove past a well-lit barn where one of the town veterinarians looked to be paying a call. “Are you hungry? Luis’s taco truck has excellent carne asada.”
“You’re not going to answer me?”
Noah tapped the steering wheel to the beat of a radio song. “Let’s just call it a Christmas secret.”
“You’re a good man, Noah Kincaid.” She was nearly undone with the urge to touch him, to place her hands in his and assure herself he was this kind, this real.
Emma could recall the exact moment she’d known she was in love with Noah. Then less than a year later, she’d given back his ring.
But had she ever gotten back her heart?
***
Heaven was some authentic Mexican food— shared with the most handsome man in Sugar Creek.
Emma bit into her carne asada street taco and didn’t bother to squelch her moan. “So good.” She found Noah watching her lips, and Emma’s skin beneath her coat warmed, despite the cutting wind. “Do I have something on my mouth?”
He reached out and rubbed his thumb over her bottom lip. “No,” he said roughly.
“Mr. Kincaid, ready when you are!”
A horse whinnied behind the couple, breaking the magic cocoon that had spun around them.
“I’ll be your driver tonight.” Coley Biler patted his chestnut’s neck. “Kanye here is a fine horse. He’s ready for his debut. And Jay-Z will be back in tip-top shape next week, I know it.”
Noah pulled his eyes away from Emma and shook the man’s hand. As the two traded niceties, Emma zipped her coat and wondered if Noah had been about to kiss her. Definitely not on her plan to keep her distance. But when Noah Kincaid looked at her like that, she was ready to surrender anything he wanted. It was getting harder and harder to tell her heart no.
Did she even want to?
“Emma?” Noah held out his hand, and she realized he’d called her name more than once.
“Oh, right. Here we go.” She placed her gloved fingers in his and stepped into a beautiful covered carriage that could seat four people in its cushioned seats behind Coley’s driver’s box.
Noah settled in beside Emma and pulled a red tartan blanket over their laps. Coley shouted a command to the horse, and the carriage lurched into motion. They drove for a few moments in silence, the wind blowing against them. Occasionally their jovial driver would offer a piece of trivia about a landmark, pointing out the location for the tree-lighting ceremony or the spot where a famous Civil War general had been born.
Though Emma wore her heavy winter clothing, the cold still pressed in. The nightly temperatures had been falling, and tonight’s low was in the thirties. Sherman Turner had told them he believed from watching his cattle that the forecasted rain would turn into snow. As much as Emma loved a good snow, she found she didn’t want even one of Sugar Creek’s Christmas activities cancelled.
“You’re shivering.” Noah curled his strong arm around Emma’s shoulders and pulled her to him. “Do you want my coat?”
“No.” She nestled into his side and watched the lights go by. “I’m feeling warmer already.” Good gosh, she was weak. But moonlight, a carriage ride, and Noah holding her close? There was no way she could resist.
“Are we showing you the better side of Christmas yet?” Noah asked.
She smiled at that. “The lights and carriage ride have been nice.”
His hand stroked up and down her arm. “Would you like to tell me how it is you’re thirty-one years old and still go violent when you hear that song of your dad’s?”
“I hadn’t heard it in so long.” Emma sighed. “My job doesn’t exactly lend itself to me celebrating traditional holidays. I try not to go in stores during this time. I avoid holiday parties, and I pretty much just work and hibernate for the two month fest of tidings and joy.” Except now Christmas practically started the day after Halloween, so she’d really had to up her avoidance strategy.
“It obviously still hurts.”
“It’s just this visceral reaction, you know?”
“Oh, I know. I saw it.”
“I don’t understand how something that celebrates my mother’s death could be held up as a holiday hymn. It disgusts me.”
“The song . . . or your father.”
“Yes,” Emma said. “All of it.”
“Melissa tried to get your dad to headline our gala.”
“The benefit?” She had read about the late-December gala in Melissa’s notes. It was the third year they’d had a formal evening of dinner and a concert to raise money for the events for the following Christmas. Emma had seen the budget report. Turning Sugar Creek into a holiday oasis was not cheap.
“Your dad said he regretfully declined.” Noah silently pointed out a house outlined in pink lights. “I take it the agreement is still in place.”
“He still honors it.” When Sylvie had taken legal custody, part of the settlement had included a signed promise by her father that he would never perform in Sugar Creek. “I’m sure the agreement is now a worthless piece of paper, but my dad has stood by it. I am grateful to him for that.”
“Do you ever see him?”
“No. He still travels all the time. And of course I was always busy with—”
“Work.”
“Right.” Her dad had his theme song, and apparently she had hers.
“I used to call him on Father’s Day, but now I just send him a card. The last few years he’s asked to visit me in Manhattan, but I’ve put him off. He’s remarried now. He sent Sylvie pictures.”
“So now he’s making an effort.” Noah’s hand massaged her shoulder, as if trying to calm and comfort. “And you think it’s too little, too late. Are you ever going to forgive him?”
“It’s not just about what he did when I was a kid—dragging me across the country, forgetting to be my parent, using me as a show prop.” Noah knew how hard her life had been growing up. She hadn’t talked about it much when they’d dated, but it had come up the few holidays they’d been together. “It’s that he’s never tried to be anything but that guy. He knew how much all that upset me, yet he chose his music over me.”
“He’s made a career out of one single song?”
“That one crappy song has made him a very wealthy man.” Wealthy by sensationalizing the worst time in Emma’s life.
A strong gust of wind hit them as the carriage turned a corner. Noah pulled her closer. “Has he ever said he was sorry?”
“No.”
He looked down, and his eyes were a little too honest, a little too intense. “D
o you need that to forgive him?”
“Yes,” Emma said. “I think I’ve been waiting a long time for that.”
“And if it doesn’t come?”
She tucked her head into Noah’s side. “He and I go on like we always have.”
“Em, your dad walked away from something incredible. I hope one day he realizes what he gave up.”
Emma’s pulse seized and stopped.
Because those words could just as easily apply to her. Just like her father, Emma had walked away from something incredible, chasing her own dream.
And what had she given up?
Sugar Creek.
Noah.
They would’ve had children by now. A house that he’d restored.
But she’d have given up her enviable career. A beautiful apartment in New York. The house she was about ready to make an offer on in Connecticut.
Yet what if she’d chosen Noah? What if she’d shoved away her fears and ran straight to the life he’d offered?
Nobody had loved her like Noah.
But would it have been enough?
Chapter Nine
Saturdays were for sleeping in.
Unless you had spent the last six years getting up at an hour when most college kids went to bed. Emma might’ve been on a sabbatical from the show, but no one had told her internal alarm clock. Fortunately, Sylvie didn’t believe in snoozing away the morning either, so the two of them met at a downtown diner for breakfast. And just when Emma thought bacon would be the highlight of her day, Sylvie coaxed her into going to Crystal Bridges Museum to see a contemporary art collection titled The Government is Watching.
By two p.m., Emma was back home and enjoying one of her favorite rare indulgences. A nap.
At the first thud, Emma rolled over and burrowed deeper into the couch Frannie had loaned her from her safe room.
At the second rrrreeeeek, Emma opened her bleary eyes.
But when she heard footsteps on the roof, she leapt from the couch and wished she had taken Sylvie up on her offer of dueling pistols.
What in the world?
Peeling back the curtain, Emma looked out the window pane and came face to face with a metal ladder. Christmas lights littered the ground, and muffled cursing drifted to her ears. Either this was a burglar doing it the hard way or Noah Kincaid was on her roof decking out her house in lights.
After a trip to the bathroom to apply some gloss, straighten her ponytail, and rub out the pillow crease in her cheek, Emma grabbed her coat and walked outside. Dark clouds mottled the gray sky, and the wind rattled with a vicious attack on the thermometer. It had to be at least twenty degrees colder now than it had been that morning.
“You know,” she said, walking out far enough to get a good look at Noah, “if Sylvie found a man tip-toeing on the top of her house, her self-designed security system would put on a laser light show big enough to zap large men and small countries.”
Noah swiped his sleeve across his forehead and peered down. “I’ve never tiptoed in my life.”
Emma smiled. “You’re right. What I heard inside that house was more like angry stomping.”
He angled his head with a crooked grin. “Were you sleeping in there, Miss New York City?”
She slipped her hand into a glove. “Did the pillow crease give it away?”
“I could hear you snoring from up here.”
Emma laughed. “Take that back.”
Noah tacked something to her chimney. “Did Sylvie wear you out today?”
“It wasn’t enough that we had to go to the museum, but she had to quiz various employees on their security system. Did they have a Marx 332 or a Zettergeist M-11?” Sylvie got more than a little miffed when a manager asked if he could escort her to her car.
“Doesn’t she usually drag Frannie to those things?”
“Frannie’s getting back tonight from Egypt from a quick ‘family reunion.’ But you know what? Every one of Frannie’s relatives lives in the Pacific Northwest.”
The wind caught Noah’s hair as he laughed. “Why don’t you come up here and tell me more?”
Emma shook her head. “You know I’m scared of heights.”
He peered down, those chocolate brown eyes hot on hers. “I guess some things are still the same.”
Yes, like her galloping heart and the fact that the air in her head seemed to thin whenever he was around. Still the same. It had been nearly a week since their sleigh ride, and something between them had shifted.
“You don’t have to decorate my house.” She knew he wanted it taken care of though. Yesterday, Noah had informed her a fancy magazine on Southern life was supposed to be coming to Sugar Creek any day to check them out and write an article or two. “I scheduled someone to come out and hang the lights on Monday.”
Noah chewed on his lip as he took a wire out of his pocket and applied it to a section of the lights. “Cancel it.”
“Did Sylvie pay you to do this?”
“No.” He walked down a slope of the roof, and Emma felt her stomach wobble. “Nobody’s paying me.”
Noah looked six kinds of beautiful up there, like a man battling the elements to stand atop his castle.
“I can’t let you do this for free,” Emma said.
“Why don’t you invite me in for dinner afterward instead.”
Emma didn’t think she heard him right. “Can you repeat that?”
“I work. You make me something hot.”
Was offering up herself the least bit appropriate? “I can do that. A hot dinner it is.”
Noah gave her one of those smiles that still set her cheeks to blushing.
“What exactly is it you’re working on there?” Emma backed up a few paces to see the roof better. “Is that supposed to form a word?”
“I don’t have enough to spell out Scrooge, so I’m just going with E-M-M-A.”
“Very funny. You know, we could simplify this and just forget the lights. I could be the bare house that symbolizes the unwillingness to roll over for the commercialism of Christmas?”
“Not in this town. We love commercialism. We roll all in it.”
“Okay, well, what if—”
“Go inside, Emma.” Noah drew himself up to his full height and held onto the chimney. “It’s cold, you’re a distraction, and you have my dinner to make.”
“I see.” She meant her words to sound sarcastic, but they just came out sharp. “Sorry for annoying you.” With that, Emma went back inside and shuffled to the kitchen. Let him work out there in the cold. She had things to do as well. He could just entertain himself.
She pulled up her recipes on her laptop, turned on some music, and went to work. By the time Noah rang the doorbell three hours later, the sky had darkened, Emma had burned a million calories dancing to some classic Motown, and a pot of something good simmered on the stove.
Opening the door, she reminded herself to be nothing more than polite. “You probably don’t want to stay. I’ll pack up your food in a nice to-go bag.”
Noah stretched his arm against the doorframe and leaned. “Em?”
“Yes?”
“When I said you were a distraction, I didn’t mean you were annoying me.”
“What did you mean?” She studied a shriveled leaf on the porch.
“That I’d rather have stood there and looked at you all day than hang sparkly things from your gutters.”
Oh.
Noah slid his finger beneath her chin and lifted her gaze to his. “You gonna invite me in?”
She could think of so many things she’d like to offer. “Are you going to say yes if I do?”
His rough palm brushed against her cheek as he lowered his hand. “Try it and see.”
“I think I like this new truce we have.” Emma’s heart did a curious pirouette.
“Just trying to be professional.” He followed her into the house and sniffed appreciatively. “Chili?”
“My mom’s recipe.” Emma rarely had time or energy to cook,
and it had been nice to putter around the kitchen today, knowing she had someone to share it with. “You’re still a carnivore, right?”
“I eat anything fixed by someone else’s hands.” Noah pulled out a bar stool at her kitchen island as Emma ladled up some chili. She sprinkled cheese on it, added a dollop of sour cream, and handed it to him. Just the way he’d always liked it.
Emma nervously watched as he took his first bite. A trivial thing, but for some reason it mattered that he enjoyed her cooking, something she had made with her own hands.
“It’s good, Em. Really good.”
She wanted to be humble and contain her smile. But it slipped out anyway. “My mom used to make it on snowy days. They were some of my favorite times—waking up to a blanket of snow, school cancelled, and my mom and I having the whole day together. She’d bake, make something hot to eat, and we’d play in the snow for hours, then come back in for hot chocolate.” Her eyes watered, and Emma had to look away. God, sometimes life was painful, even the good memories. Even the sweet could hurt so badly.
“You still miss her.”
Emma nodded, blinking the unexpected tears away. “Something about being here in Sugar Creek—it brings so much back. The memories just come and go at their own leisure. When I was cooking today, I could feel her—my mom. I think she would’ve been smiling. Maybe looking over my shoulder, wishing I’d add a little more paprika.”
“She’d be proud of you.”
“Would she?” The words tumbled from her lips, unbidden and born from doubt. “I mean, I know career-wise, I’ve done okay.”
“You’ve done more than okay. Isn’t it enough?”
Something had been so off the last few years, but coming back to Sugar Creek, she felt that void even more. People in this town knew one another. There was a sense of community that had always been there, but was so pronounced now. Sugar Creek was a place where you left your screen door unlocked, you walked your children to school, and waved at your neighbor on the square. It was a town to raise a family, put down roots.
“Sometimes I do want more,” Emma admitted. “It’s easy to block it out back home, but not here. I think how full of life my mom was. I tend to walk around like an over-caffeinated, sleep-deprived zombie. My mom lived each day to the fullest. She was vibrant, fun, wringing every drop out of every minute.”
Sugar Creek Christmas Nook Page 6