by JoAnn Ross
“I just need to know two things.”
“I’m afraid to ask.” Matt blew out a long breath and shook his shoulders, like a boxer shaking off a punch. “And those would be?”
“How serious do you think she is about the teacher guy?”
“Principal,” Matt repeated.
“Whatever.” Cole shrugged.
“Like I said, I don’t know. But Meredith says he’s dull as dirt, so, if I have to venture a guess, I’d say he’s just a temporary deal until some guy more to her liking comes along.”
“Okay. The second question is whether you’d have a problem with that guy being me.”
Matt rubbed his chin as he thought that over. “Depends. Are you going to hurt her like you did last year?”
“Hey, in case you’ve forgotten, she was the one pissed at me.” He certainly hadn’t thrown that stupid ring box against his own chest.
“Yeah. That’s what I thought at the time, though I damn well couldn’t figure out why. Then Meredith told me you broke her heart.”
Hell. “Thanks for sharing.”
“You’re the one who brought my sister up in the first place,” Matt reminded Cole. “Seems when you pulled that ring out of the box, she thought it was for her.”
“Get out. You’re jerking my chain.”
“Nope. She told Meredith. Over a bottle of wine and a quart of Ben & Jerry’s while I wisely took the kids to a Disney flick to avoid exposing them to female tears and estrogen poisoning.”
Could things get any worse? No wonder she’d been so frosty at the parade and then had gone out of her way to ignore him at the program. That was why he’d bailed right after her students’ performances. No point hanging around and watching her cozy up to a guy who wouldn’t even know what to do with a woman that vibrant and filled with life.
“I swear I never did anything to give her that idea. I always treated her like a little sister. It would’ve been weird to think of her like, well, that.”
Which wasn’t precisely true. Because there’d been that out-of-the-blue moment, which had freaked him out as much as it seemed to be doing to her brother.
“There’s also the fact that when she turned sixteen and you noticed, I told you that if you so much as looked at her in that way, I’d break every bone in your body,” Matt reminded him.
“There is that,” Cole agreed, remembering the fraternal lecture all too well. Not that he’d needed the warning. The eight-year age difference had been major back then. Now that she was a very desirable twenty-five, not so much.
“She hasn’t said anything to me, but you know how women talk to each other about everything. Meredith says the principal’s probably on the way out,” Matt divulged. “Though she may wait until after New Year’s because hey, who wants to break up at Christmas?”
“You still haven’t answered my question,” Cole said. “About how you’d feel about her and me getting together.”
“That’s because I don’t know. Let me think about it.” He paused as Cole continued along the coast road. The rain was blowing in from the steely white-capped winter ocean. “Okay. I’ve thought about it.”
“And?”
“Since I don’t want her to end up an old maid—”
“I may not be married, but even I know you’d better not share that description with your wife,” Cole said.
“Yeah. PC can be a bitch, but I hear enough of that at home that I don’t need a lecture from you about it. My point is, I want Kelli to be happy. Which, for her, means marriage and kids. So, since that means her getting involved with some guy, I guess I’m okay with the idea of that guy being my best friend. With one caveat.”
“I’d expect nothing less.” Negotiating was, after all, woven into Matt Carpenter’s DNA. “What would that caveat be?”
“You may be my best friend, and I love you like a third brother. But if you make my baby sister cry again, man, I’m going to have no choice but to rip out your lung and stomp all over it.”
Mission accomplished, Cole spun the leather-covered steering wheel, making a wheel-squealing illegal U-turn to head back to the dealership. “Makes sense to me,” he agreed.
10
Kelli’s mother bustled around the homey kitchen, brewing tea and cutting a coffee cake that smelled so good Kelli could picture the calories attaching to her hips before she’d even taken a bite.
“I’m so glad you were able to stop by before you left town, darling,” Laura Carpenter said as she placed a red and green plaid linen napkin next to the Spode Christmas tree plate.
Kelli knew that people thought she wore all those flashy holiday sweaters for her students, but the truth was, when you grew up in this woman’s home, you viewed the calendar as twelve months of holiday-themed opportunities. With Christmas like a living Advent calendar, each day brought a new surprise for the Carpenters all the way into the next year’s Epiphany.
“I’d never leave without saying good-bye,” she assured her mother. “And it’s not as if I’m heading off to Timbuktu.”
“I know.” Her mother offered a bright but slightly wobbly smile. “It’s just that however grown-up you’ll become, in my heart you’ll always be my baby, and this will be the first Christmas since you were born that you haven’t been at the table for dinner.”
“I’m sorry. I just need a break. To recharge my batteries,” she quoted Adèle.
“You’ve been working very hard,” her mother allowed. “But then again, you do every year.” She got up from the table when the kettle whistled and poured the water over loose leaves in a pot shaped and painted like a gingerbread house. “Does Cole Douchett have anything to do with this sudden urge to leave town?”
Kelli was glad her mother’s back was turned as she steeped the tea, because she feared her expression would give her away.
“Not really.”
“But he’s one of the reasons?” Laura brought the pot to the table on a reindeer trivet and poured the fragrant tea into a cup that matched the tree plate.
Kelli knew better than to lie to her mother. “I’ve loved him forever, Mama,” she said, scooping some sugar from a bowl and stirring it into the tea. “I thought that after last Christmas I’d gotten over him. I mean, I certainly tried hard enough this past year—”
“Including dating a man who, while very nice, was so wrong for you.”
“True. But that’s over.”
“So Adèle told me. She also said you’d fixed him up with a new girlfriend.”
Kelli shrugged. “Like you said, Brad’s a nice guy.”
She could’ve done worse. But he wasn’t the man she wanted. Sometimes she wondered if any man could ever live up to the masculine perfection of Cole Douchett shimmering in her mind. What if she was destined to spend her life alone, playing doting auntie to her brothers’ children?
Wasn’t that a depressing idea?
She added another, larger scoop of sugar to her tea.
“Anyway, it was obvious that Patty, from the school, is in love with him. And from the way he seemed to be floating on cloud nine last night when he told me about the two of them going out for a late supper at the Sea Mist after the program, I’d say it’s reciprocal.”
“That’s lovely. But it doesn’t address your relationship with Cole.”
“I know. And it’s honestly another reason I want to get away for just a few days. I need to decide what to do about him.”
“Do you want him?”
“Like I want to breathe. But it’s complicated.” She might be in love. But she did, after all, still have her pride. Not to mention it had taken a very long time to put all those shattered pieces of her heart back together again.
After polishing off the piece of coffee cake and allowing herself to be talked into taking the rest of the cake to the cabin, she exchanged gifts with her mother, promising to open one on Christmas Eve. A cherished family tradition, going back to when she and her brothers were young, was that each of them could open a single gift before going to bed
after midnight Mass.
“It’ll be as if we’re all together in spirit,” her mother said as she handed her that special Christmas Eve gift in a box wrapped in the familiar Dancing Deer Two silver Christmas foil.
• • •
The snow on the road up into the mountains to Rainbow Lake was fresh, wet, and slick, and it appeared Kelli was ahead of whatever plows the county might be sending out.
“Are we having fun yet?” she muttered as she cautiously maneuvered around a particularly nasty curve, trying to stay in tire ruts that were getting filled by the moment as the snow fell faster and thicker. Although she’d turned on her headlights, the beam merely bounced against the wall of snow.
Deep purplish black shadows, cast by the towering, shaggy fir trees lining the road, had her feeling as if she were driving through a narrow white tunnel. She could have been the only person in this wooded world, which wasn’t the least bit encouraging.
The only sound was the crunch of the snow beneath the tires and the voices on the radio, which kept announcing road closures all over the western part of the state.
“Well, you’ve always wanted a white Christmas.” Heavy white flakes had started to pile up on her windshield, and her wipers were losing a valiant struggle to keep up as outside temperatures plummeted, turning the snow to ice. “Maybe this will teach you to be careful what you wish for.”
By the time the GPS showed her half a mile from the cabin, her jaw was aching from having clenched her teeth for the past ten miles and her fingers had been gripping the steering wheel so tightly she feared it would take a crowbar to release them.
“Almost there,” she assured herself as the GPS counted down to three-tenths of a mile.
One of the best things about the cabin was the bubbling hot spring on the property, which Bernard and Lucien had tapped into when they built the cabin. Providing them with a seemingly endless supply of heat and hot water.
Since Adèle had assured her the place was stocked with everything she could need, the very first thing Kelli planned to do when she reached the cabin was pour a huge glass of red wine. Then she was going to drink it while soaking away the stress in that deep, lion-footed tub she remembered so fondly.
She was enjoying that warm mental image when her left front wheel slid off the road’s shoulder.
A moment later there was an ominous crunching sound as the car came to an abrupt, bone-jolting stop.
11
“Damn, damn, damn!”
Kelli slammed her gloved hands onto the steering wheel. Wasn’t this the last thing she needed? Taking a deep breath, which was meant to calm but didn’t help at all, she put the car in reverse and tried backing up. But the tires only spun, and after two more tries, it was readily apparent that all she was going to do was get herself even more stuck.
Heaving a sigh, she pocketed the key, took her overnight bag from the backseat, and left the car. She wasn’t going to worry about the gifts in the trunk right now. If anyone did manage to make it all the way out here, they were free to try to steal them.
As she trudged through the snow, bent against the wind, Kelli couldn’t help wishing she were lying on a warm, sun-drenched beach sipping a mai tai while a deeply tanned cabana boy catered to her every need.
With the forest draped in snow, nothing looked familiar, making her uncertain exactly how much farther she had to go and remembering everything she’d learned about always staying with the car in situations like this.
Then, just was she began to fear she was lost, she turned a corner and there, surrounded by towering fir trees, was the Douchett cabin.
That was the good news.
The bad news was the fire-engine red pickup parked in front.
“Well, there’s no turning back now,” she muttered. Rather than use the key Adèle had given her, she knocked on the heavy wooden door.
A moment later it was opened by Cole, who was dressed in sweatpants, a soft, well-washed black sweatshirt with a Tun Tavern emblem, and thick black socks. Kelli knew, because Cole had told her when he’d signed up for ROTC, that the Philadelphia tavern had been where the Marines had held their first recruitment meeting in 1775, even before the Declaration of Independence.
“What are you doing here?”
“Merry Christmas to you, too,” she shot back, her nerves and temper frayed.
“Hell, I’m sorry.” He ran a hand over that too-short hair she was actually starting to get used to. It definitely defined those razor-edged cheekbones. Which was so not what she should be concentrating on right now! “It’s just that I wasn’t expecting you.” He glanced past her. “Where’s your car?”
“It’s down the road about a quarter of a mile. I slid off the shoulder and got stuck. Hopefully nothing’s broken.”
“You walked all that way? In this storm? Didn’t your dad teach you to stay with the car?”
“Yes. But it wasn’t that far, and weighing the options, I decided to risk being eaten by bears or getting lost rather than spending the night all alone out there.”
He shook his head, but didn’t argue her point. Instead he took the overnight case out of her hand and moved out of her way. “Come in and warm up.”
After stomping as much snow off her boots as she could, she walked into the cabin, nearly weeping with relief at the warmth of the fire, which cast a glow over the walls of logs she knew had been milled by the Douchett men from trees grown on the property.
He skimmed a look over her. Her jeans, which she’d worn instead of waterproof ski pants because she hadn’t planned to be wading through snow, were soaked nearly to her knees. “You’ll want to get out of those wet clothes. Maybe take a hot bath.”
“I’ve been imaging that tub for the last hour,” she admitted, unzipping her parka.
He helped her out of it, hanging it on a hook by the door. “Lucky for you, we’ve unlimited hot water.”
She smiled at that idea. “I was thinking about that, too.”
He smiled back, and for a suspended moment, it was almost like old times. Just two friends enjoying the same thought. “Did you leave anything else in the car?”
“A larger suitcase and gifts from my family in the trunk.”
“Give me the keys.” After she’d handed them over, he walked into the kitchen area and retrieved a heavy black garbage bag, which she assumed he intended to use as waterproofing against the snow, from beneath the sink. “I’ll go get them.
“Would you like some coffee, brandy, or wine before I go? My grandmother wasn’t kidding when she said the place was well stocked. We’ve got enough booze to open our own bar.”
Her nerves were already so jangled from the drive, Kelli knew if she drank any more coffee, she’d never get to sleep. And brandy might be more than she could handle right now. “As it happens, wine was involved in that fantasy,” she said.
“Red or white?”
“Red.”
“You’ve got it.”
He pulled a bottle from the cupboard and deftly opened it with an attachment on a black folding knife.
“That’s very MacGyverish of you,” she said.
“We Marines pride ourselves on making the most with the least. And, hey, this Leatherman is Oregon made.” He smiled at her as he poured the ruby wine into a glass. “Here you go.”
His fingers brushed hers as he handed her the fat, stemless glass. At first she’d thought he might have done it on purpose, but his friendly, harmless expression gave nothing away as he sat down on a bench by the door and began pulling on his boots.
“So, I’ll retrieve your stuff while you run your bath,” he said. “Unless you’d rather I hang around and warm you up myself.”
Surely he was kidding. Wasn’t he?
“The wine and bath will be fine,” she said mildly. “But thank you for the offer. It was very generous of you.”
“Always happy to help out,” he said cheerfully. But there was a devilish gleam in his brown eyes she’d never seen from him before. “Let m
e know if you change your mind.”
With that, he was out the door, leaving her wondering if she might have actually been safer staying in the car.
12
“Think of it as another mission.” Cole mimicked his grandmother’s voice as he carried the bag of presents and the bright polka-dot suitcase that matched the smaller one she’d shown up with back to the cabin. Although the car was definitely stuck, from what he could tell, she hadn’t broken the wheel, so he should be able to pull it out in the morning.
“Don’t go rushing in without taking time to plan your strategy,” he continued. “Give her time to realize she misses you. . . .
“Thanks a bunch, Grandmère.”
It was an obvious setup. Thinking about it, both families had to be in on it. At least some of them. Matt had seemed oblivious—though, since they were tight, it was possible the others had been afraid he’d spill the beans.
Cole was not alone in his thinking.
“We were set up,” Kelli announced the moment he entered the cabin. She was standing in front of the fire, the wineglass cradled in her hands.
“That’d be my guess.” She hadn’t changed, but he could hear the water running in the oversized tub. “Which room do you want?”
She shrugged. “It’s your family’s cabin. I don’t care.”
“I’ll move my stuff out of the master and you can have it.”
“There’s no need.”
“It looks out onto the waterfall. Which, by the way, is starting to freeze.”
“Really?” She followed him into the bedroom, which had always been his parents’, then stopped in front of the French doors to stare in wonder at the view. He had to admit it was pretty freaking incredible.
“Oh, wow. How cool is that?” Her blue eyes widened with pleasure, reminding him of a child who’d just been informed it was a snow day.
“It’s got to get pretty cold to freeze that much water,” he said.
He went into the adjoining bathroom and got a large beach towel from the linen closet, which he put on the floor so the snow from the suitcase and trash bag wouldn’t dampen the rag rug his grandmother had hand hooked decades ago.