by Kacey Linden
That won her a brief chuckle. “I’m sure George will be thrilled to find out that he’s moving.”
Silence fell, and the mood grew tense until even the crackle of the fire seemed too loud in Willow’s ears. Why didn’t he say anything?
Cale finally sighed and dropped his chin. “Willow, a lot has happened since we’ve had a chance to talk. I want to clear things up between us, but if you’re not ready for that right now, I understand. You’ve been through a lot, and this can wait as long as you need to.”
“Then…” Willow didn’t know quite where to go with that. “You’re not upset?”
His brow furrowed in confusion. “Why would I be upset? It’s you that has every right…” He couldn’t quite finish the sentence, and his lips pressed tightly together as his dark eyes filled with anguish and uncertainty. “I know I’m the one who messed everything up between us. After all my mistakes, you should be angry with me, but I thought I heard you say that you…” He broke off and ran a hand through his hair. “I can’t ask anything of you right now. But I hope you’ll decide to stay, no matter how you feel about me. I also hope you’ll eventually be willing to let me try again, but even if you aren’t, I want you to know that I meant what I said.”
“What you said? When?”
“At Rory’s. I don’t remember much, and I might have been hallucinating, but I’m pretty sure I remember telling you that I love you.”
Willow felt the words hit her like a tidal wave. She replayed them in her head, wanting to make sure they were real. A rush of joy and relief swept over her, and the tight knot in her stomach dissolved into a fluttering warmth that spread through her chest and made it difficult to remember how to breathe.
This, she realized, was the answer she’d been looking for. The solution to all of her doubts and fears.
Cale loved her. He was choosing to put her needs before his own. He’d found her because he trusted her to keep her word, and he hadn’t given up on looking for her even when he had every reason to believe she’d left him. And now, when he must have wanted desperately to know what she was thinking, he was still willing to give her time.
She crossed the room, put her arms around him, and rested her cheek against the soft flannel of his shirt. “Thank you,” she said. “But I don’t need any more time. I know what I want, and it’s you, Cale.”
His heart beat strong and steady under her ear as his arms came around her and his chin came to rest almost reverently on her hair. “Thank you for forgiving me,” he said softly. “I don’t deserve it. But I promise I will do everything I can in the future to make decisions with you, instead of for you. I do trust you, Willow. It just took a moment of crisis for me to realize how much.”
“I understand why you did it,” she told him. “And you need to know that trust will be hard for me, too. I’ve never had anyone I could count on, so I’m going to make mistakes. I’m going to be scared and try to protect myself from disappointment, so I hope you can be patient with me while I learn how do this.”
He pulled back and cupped her chin in his fingers. “Does that mean you’re staying?”
“I’m staying.” Happy tears filled her eyes until they ran over and spilled down her cheeks. “This is my home now, Cale. I want to stay at my job, help Rory rebuild, watch Marcia learn to love life again, and find out whatever the future might hold for us.”
“Find out?” he echoed, smiling faintly. “What do you mean, ‘find out’?”
“I mean that I want to spend time with you and see where we go from here.” She shrugged. “You might change your mind. We might decide it’s best to just be friends.”
“You can have all the time you need”—Cale reached down to clasp her hands tightly in his—“but you let me know as soon as you decide, because I already know what I want, too.”
“And what’s that?” she said softly, held captive by the warmth and intensity in his gaze.
“I want a life with you,” he said simply. “I want to see your face on the pillow next to me every morning, and look into your eyes across the dinner table every night. I want to forgive you and beg you to forgive me. I want to laugh together, cry together and mess up together, every day for the rest of our lives. I know we haven’t known each other for long, but sometimes it doesn’t take years to figure out whether something is right or wrong. I choose you. And if, someday, you choose me back, I’ll consider myself the luckiest man on earth.”
Willow’s hand flew up to cover her mouth, holding back a sob of pure joy. She had no idea how this could have happened, but it had. From a desperate flight across the mountains, to a fire-lit living room filled with the peace and beauty of Christmas—she had come so far since the day she left Seattle with nothing more than whatever she could carry and a vow to never go back.
Now she was truly, finally home. “I love you, Cale Matthews.” She gazed into his dark brown eyes and let her happiness warm her all the way to her toes. “Merry Christmas.”
“The first of many,” Cale promised, bending his head to capture her lips with a kiss that left her starry-eyed and breathless. He kissed her until Willow lost track of everything except the warmth of his arms and the feeling of his lips against hers.
“I told you it would work.”
Willow and Cale jerked apart, startled by the sound of a man’s voice coming from the other side of the kitchen.
“What do you mean, you told me, Peter Parrish?” Marcia objected, flipping on the light and putting her hands on her hips. “It was my idea in the first place. You don’t get to claim responsibility for any of this.”
“Now Marcia,” Pete soothed, “the whole town is celebrating you as the woman who captured an infamous criminal while armed only with a broom. Can’t you let someone else have a little credit?”
“When you’ve earned it,” she insisted sternly, winking at Willow. “If it wasn’t for me having the brilliant idea to make these two help me decorate the house, they might never have realized they were perfect for each other.”
Pete wasn’t having it. “But if it wasn’t for me talking Cale into giving his heart another chance, he might never have had the nerve to ask her out.”
Willow leaned back against Cale’s chest and began to laugh as he wrapped his arms around her. “They’re kind of adorable, aren’t they?”
“Their timing is terrible, but yes,” he conceded. “They are.”
“They’re about the same age too,” Willow mused thoughtfully. “You don’t suppose…”
“It could work.” Cale seemed to consider her proposal for a moment. “It might take some effort though. They’re both pretty set in their ways. Determined to fix everyone else up while remaining strictly alone themselves.”
“Well, Christmas is still five days away,” Willow reminded him. “There’s plenty of time for another miracle.”
“So there is,” Cale agreed softly, resting his chin on her hair with a contented sigh. “So there is.”
Epilogue
The sunset was breathtaking. Rays of pink, orange, yellow, and even shades of purple, shot into the sky and illuminated a swell of clouds to the east, while the waves glowed with color and the sand turned to gold in the fading light.
The bride walked across the beach barefoot, wearing only a white sundress and a faint blush of anticipation and joy. The groom wore khakis and a blue buttoned-down shirt, with both his pant legs and his sleeves rolled up. He, too, was barefoot, and awaited his bride with a tremulous smile while the lei-bedecked minister beamed proudly at them both.
“We are gathered here, in the presence of some of God’s most glorious creation, to celebrate the union of two souls,” the minister began, once their hands were joined. “It is only fitting that we should take a moment for a prayer of thanks—both for the beauty around us and for the beauty that has brought us here; for love, in any season, is a beautiful and priceless gift.”
Willow bowed her head, but sneaked a look from under her lashes at Cale. He stood besi
de her, looking almost unbearably handsome, and she shivered for a moment as she reminded herself that soon, he would be hers. Forever.
He squeezed her hand, and when she looked up, his eyes rested on her face. His thoughts appeared to be similar to hers, and if the warmth in his gaze was any indication, that moment couldn’t come any too soon.
“We are reminded,” the minister was saying, “that love is patient.”
“I hope they told him to keep it short,” Cale whispered in her ear. “I’ve been waiting all day to find out what it feels like to kiss my fiancée on a beach.”
“You kissed me on the beach yesterday,” Willow whispered back.
“That was a different beach. I like this one better.”
“Love does not insist on its own way,” the minister continued, “nor is it irritable or resentful. It does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices with the truth.”
“Rejoice,” Cale said under his breath, “because it’s true that you look amazing in that dress. Sometimes you’re so beautiful, I look at you and forget to breathe.”
“It’s also true that you’re incredibly distracting,” Willow muttered, blushing and nudging him with her elbow.
“I bet they don’t even remember that we’re here.”
“…love bears all, believes all, hopes all, and endures all.”
“But this is such a beautiful moment, and they chose us to share it with,” Willow insisted.
“They just felt bad for upstaging our plans,” Cale whispered with a grin, “so they let us tag along. As soon as this is over, we’re on our own.”
“…Love never ends.” The minister glanced back at them with one eyebrow raised, but the bride and groom had eyes only for each other.
Willow felt her eyes mist over as she watched Marcia and Pete exchange their vows. Marcia had become both mother and grandmother to her in the months since she first arrived in Echo Creek, and Pete was both friend and confidant to Cale. Seeing them finally recognize that their friendship had turned to something more had been both joyful and bittersweet.
Life would change. Again. But it would change for the better, and soon enough, she and Cale would have their own ceremony at the little church in Echo Creek.
“What are you thinking?” Cale leaned closer and drew her hand under his arm.
Willow tucked her bouquet under her elbow and brought her other hand up to join the first, glancing in renewed wonder at her ring finger where it rested on the dark material of his sleeve. The setting sun reflected off the square-cut diamond he’d given her on the first day of summer, when they’d hiked up into the wilderness near the Three Sisters and eaten their lunch on the shore of a peaceful mountain lake.
“I’m thinking that I don’t understand how I could’ve come to this moment, in this place, with these people,” she said, gazing out over the waves and letting her toes sink deeper into the sand. “My old life seems so strange and far away, and yet all of this is, in many ways, still so new.”
“Is there anything you would change?”
“Oh yes,” she said softly, smiling at Marcia and Pete as they placed rings on one another’s fingers. “I would have run away from that life sooner.” She leaned in and rested her head on Cale’s shoulder.
“Is that all?”
“No.”
The minister pronounced the pair to be husband and wife, and their brief kiss was both gentle and sweet.
“But are you happy?” Cale sounded anxious.
She shifted to look up at him. “Cale, I’m so happy, it’s almost frightening.”
“Well, if you get too scared, you could always throw yourself into my arms,” he suggested. “And that would make me happy.”
“You’re not happy now?” she queried, eyes wide and innocent.
He draped an arm around her shoulders and pressed a kiss to her forehead, just as Pete and Marcia embraced, tears running down both their faces.
“Willow, you’ve made me happier than I ever imagined I could be. I really do believe I’m the luckiest man on earth.”
She had no words, but could only lean against him and wrap her arms tightly around his waist.
The newly married couple turned towards them and waved before strolling hand in hand into the surf and watching the last glowing curve of the sun sink into the ocean.
“What else would you change?” Cale whispered into her hair.
“I would have asked for a fall wedding and not decided to wait until Christmas,” Willow confessed, wiping tears of joy from her eyes and laughing as Cale picked her up and spun her around in a circle.
“You know,” he said, setting her down and breaking off an enthusiastic kiss, “there is a minister here. Maybe he wouldn’t mind doing one more ceremony.”
“Cale Matthews, your mother would kill us both.”
“But we would be married. Would being dead really bother you all that much?”
Her laughter rang out across the sand as he evaded a swipe from her bouquet and took off running. She chased him into the waves and splashed him from head to toe before he returned the favor, leaving her dripping and breathless as they made their way back to the hotel through the warm tropical night.
Pete and Marcia, predictably, were nowhere to be seen.
“Do you think they’ll be happy?” Willow asked, trailing her toes in the sand and wishing the evening didn’t have to end.
“I believe they’ll choose to love each other, whether their lives bring happiness or not.”
“And that will be enough?”
“Yes.” Cale gazed down at her and took her hand in his. “Love is the greatest miracle, Willow. No matter what happens, it will always be enough.”
She stood on tiptoe and kissed him. “You are so much more than enough, Cale. Thank you for being the miracle I would never have dared to ask for.”
“The only miracle here is that you said yes.” He narrowed his eyes. “And I know what I said about respecting your decisions, but I’m not letting you change your mind about that one. You’re stuck. With me. Forever.”
“Promise?”
“Cross my heart.”
“I’ll hold you to that,” she whispered, as they strolled down the beach hand in hand, on a starlit night that was almost as magical as their first Christmas together. And when the sand turned white as snow under a rising moon, Willow couldn’t help but shiver a little in anticipation of the coming day when she and Cale would finally begin their life together—in a little church, at Christmas, in Echo Creek.
Thank You
Thank you so much for reading the first in my Echo Creek Romance Series! If you enjoyed spending time with these characters, please consider leaving a review on Amazon or Goodreads.
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http://KaceyLinden.com
About the Author
Kacey Linden is a coffee-fueled romance author from Oklahoma. She grew up in the Pacific Northwest and still misses the trees, the mountains, and yes, even the rain. She believes in the power of a good story, and loves the holidays almost as much as she loves horses, kind-hearted heroes, and happily-ever-afters.
When she’s not dreaming up her next romance, you’ll probably find Kacey reading, baking, or enjoying the outdoors with her family. Kacey also publishes fantasy and science fiction novels under the pseudonym Kenley Davidson.
kaceylinden.com
[email protected]
Acknowledgments
I’ve loved Christmas for as long as I can remember. Ever since I published my first book, I’ve thought about writing a holiday-themed happily ever after, so when these characters appeared on the page, I couldn’t wait to tell their story!
I owe an enormous debt to my friend and editor, Janie, who, instead of laughing hysterically when I told her I’d started this book, forced me to finish it and begged me for new chapters as fast as I could write them.
This book would also never have happened without the creative talents of my designer, Jeff, and the administrative genius of my assistant, Tiffany, who put in many hours to ensure that the finished product is beautiful and all the behind-the-scenes details are perfect. I would be horribly lost without the two of you.
I also want to give a shout out to the incredible ladies of my author’s group—Kitty, Brittany, Shari, Aya, and Melanie. It’s been an encouragement and a joy to get to know you and to be a part of supporting each other on this journey.
To all of my readers—thank you for making it possible to do what I love. This career is a dream come true and I’m so grateful to everyone who’s given my books a chance.