by Janet Dailey
“Well, you’re not eating this,” she said firmly. Then she smiled. “You can fix some cheese and crackers if you like.”
Robbie made a plate of both and they munched as they studied the simple instructions. Jacquie got down a cutting board and set it on the table, along with a butter knife. “Here goes.”
She opened the tub of frosting and used the knife to smear some on the sides of a gingerbread slab, then did the same to another slab, setting them together at a right angles on the board. Two more slabs and the walls were up.
“Can I put candy on it now?” Robbie asked through a mouthful of cracker.
“No. We have to wait for the frosting to get hard. Then we put on the roof, piece by piece.”
“How long do we have to wait?”
She looked at the instructions again. “It doesn’t say.”
He shrugged and finished his snack. Jacquie poked the frosting with a fingertip—it still seemed soft to her. She looked up at the clock. Five minutes had passed. She thought about the few times she’d helped her mother with holiday baking and remembered that tub frosting never did get all that hard. But a gingerbread house didn’t have to pass a building inspection. They could take a few shortcuts.
“Okay,” she said. “Now for the roof.” She followed the same procedure, pleased when the thin slabs of gingerbread stayed in position on top of the walls.
“Now can I put candy on it?” he begged.
“Let’s do the snow on the ground first,” she replied. Jacquie gave him the butter knife and let him spread oodles of white goo around the little brown house, licking his fingers afterward. He handed the tub and the knife to her so she could cover the roof with more frosting.
Robbie was already undoing the wire ties that closed the bags of candy. One by one he tipped them over and ribbon candy, red hots, lemon drops, and peppermints rolled out onto the table.
“Go for it,” she told him.
With surprising patience, he stuck every single piece of candy onto the house in a totally random way. It took him an hour. Then Robbie sat back and admired his handiwork. The end result was a glorious, colorful hodgepodge that looked nothing like the illustration on the box. Just as she’d thought, he didn’t care.
Then he shook his head.
“What’s the matter?”
“There’s no Christmas tree,” he said. He looked at her hopefully.
“Hmm.” Jacquie’s gaze moved around the kitchen and stopped above the sink, on a new green sponge still in its cellophane wrapper. She got up to get it, found some scissors and cut the wrapper, then cut the sponge into two triangles, sticking both upright in the frosting snow. “How’s that?”
“Awesome,” he said happily. “Now it’s perfect.”
“Yes, it is,” they heard Choya’s deep voice say. Both Jacquie and Robbie turned around to see him standing in the doorway between the kitchen and living room, looking weary but glad to be home. “Hello, you two.”
“Daddy!” Robbie scrambled out of his chair and raced toward him. The chair wobbled, then fell hard against the edge of the kitchen table, knocking the kit box to the floor.
The thin slab walls shook. The frosting parted. The gingerbread house collapsed.
Jacquie looked at it in shock, then at Robbie and Choya. The little boy hadn’t seen what just happened—his face was buried in Choya’s shirt and his father was patting him on the back, laughing.
Then Choya saw too. Jacquie reached for the fallen house as she nodded toward the living room. Choya understood. “I’ll just start cleaning up, Robbie,” she said quickly. “You pick out a book and your dad will read to you.”
“But I want to show the house to Gramps,” Robbie said, his voice growing slightly distant as Choya carried him away.
“Shh,” she heard Choya say to his son, “he dozed off. You can show him later. How about I read you a chapter book?”
“A whole chapter?”
“Sure.”
“Bet you won’t finish, Dad. You drove all the way to Tucson and back. You were gone for hours and hours.”
“Not that long. And I’m not that tired. Now hush and listen.”
There were vague sounds of the two of them settling in on the sofa and then Choya began to read. It was nice to have backup, Jacquie thought as she examined the gingerbread catastrophe. By no stretch of the imagination could it be called a house. And it wasn’t going to be easy to take it apart and start over.
She used the butter knife to lift a wall up but it wobbled in the gooey white frosting and fell. So did the next, and the next. The last wall stood, then fell too. The green sponge trees were buried in white. Jacquie sighed. The roof tiles lay in the middle of the mess, heavily weighted with candy. She would have to pick it off piece by piece and start over.
“Jacquie, what are you doing in there?” Robbie called.
“Oh—just putting things away.”
Choya admonished Robbie to sit back and listen again.
“Okay,” he said reluctantly. “But can you do the voices, Dad? Please?”
“Sure.”
Choya became one character in the book, then another. He was buying her time. Jacquie used her fingernails to get up the candy, then lifted the roof tiles with a spatula and set them aside.
She heard Sam’s awakening cough and bit her lip, looking worriedly toward the living room.
“Gramps, go look at the gingerbread house! Me and Jacquie built it while you were sleeping!”
There was a pause. “How about that,” Sam yawned, making slow progress toward the kitchen. “Be right back. You stay with your dad.”
Choya must have given him some kind of sign, because he didn’t seem shocked when he saw the wreck. He lifted an acknowledging hand to Jacquie, who gave him a sticky-fingered wave back, clutching the spatula.
“Robbie, that is the finest gingerbread house I ever did see,” he called to the living room.
Robbie’s mumbled thank-you told them he was engrossed in the chapter book his dad was reading to him. For the moment.
Sam walked more quickly, though the effort made his knees creak. He went to the pantry and found a box of baking soda.
“This might do it,” he said in a low voice. Jacquie wasn’t sure what he meant until he held the box over the center of the fallen house. It would fit. “Yep,” he said. “Exactly right.”
“That’s cheating,” she whispered, smiling at him.
“No, it ain’t,” he whispered back.
She used globs of frosting to stick the walls to the box and then Sam added tightly crumpled wads of paper towels to help hold up the roof pieces. She positioned them carefully, using the last of the icing, and she and Sam decorated the whole thing with candy again in the same random way. She hoped Robbie wouldn’t notice.
“I think we did it,” she said in a low voice when she heard Robbie laugh at a funny part of the story. “Except for the trees.” She fished them out from under the snow frosting and set them upright again.
“Hey, I was saving that sponge,” Sam murmured with mock indignation.
“And now you know why.”
Choya finished the chapter and Robbie’s feet hit the living room floor. He came running into the kitchen, followed by his father. “Do you like it, Gramps? It was really fun to make—I don’t even want to eat it! Not yet, anyway,” he amended.
“It’s wonderful,” Sam said with a wink at Choya and his grandson. “And built right.” He thumped the table and Jacquie threw him a shocked look, then held her breath.
The patch job had worked. The candy-laden roof didn’t fall in.
“They don’t make gingerbread houses like that anymore,” the old man said with satisfaction.
Robbie got close to it and studied it with wide eyes. “It looks different,” he stated.
“Not to me,” his father said.
“You didn’t see it enough because I was hugging you, Dad,” the little boy said patiently. “But it is different. There’s snow on the trees
now. Did you do that, Jacquie?”
“Um—yes, I did,” she answered quickly. “I thought they looked better that way. More like real Christmas trees.”
The two older Barnetts grinned at her over Robbie’s head, amused by her instantaneous alibi. The little boy touched one of the trees with a fingertip and savored the dab of frosting. “Yeah. Can we make another house?”
She stiffened for a second, then breathed a sigh of relief. “No, we can’t. We bought the last kit in the store, remember?”
He nodded, admiring his creation a little longer. “Can we put the house on the mantel for a decoration, Dad?” he asked.
“Of course. That’ll keep you from nibbling at it.”
“I was just tasting the frosting,” Robbie protested. He slid his small hands under the board that held the house, but his father moved swiftly to intercept it.
“Let me help,” Choya said.
Robbie didn’t argue and the four of them went into the living room together.
“Good save.” Choya was still amused by the incident. He had her tucked under his arm and gave her a squeeze that warmed her through and through. They were in the living room, cuddled up on the sofa and watching the fire.
“I had to try,” she murmured. “And I had help.”
“Sam’s quick on the draw,” he laughed. “But that has to be the first gingerbread house he ever built or fixed. And I’ll tell you a secret.” His gaze rested on the mantel a little longer and she lifted her head to follow it.
“Go ahead.”
“It’s another hard-luck story,” he warned her. “I promise not to get maudlin.”
“Stop it. Just tell me.”
“I always wanted one of those when I was a kid. And I’m sure Sam would’ve obliged if he’d known that. But I never asked.” The jumbled candy on the little roof gleamed and sparkled in the firelight, casting specks of color on the white icing. “Worth waiting for,” he chuckled.
He rubbed her upper arm with his big hand, and Jacquie settled back down. The fire blazed up, warming them both. Choya had used desert wood, sinewy and hard, that burned hot. The scarlet flames danced with twists of blue and green.
“Okay,” he said in a low voice. “I did some thinking about the way I acted last night—I mean overreacted. I’m sorry. It was the wine, I guess.”
She felt a wave of relief. “We both had too much. And I asked one too many questions.”
“Can we let it go? I want the past to stay in the past.”
“I understand. And thank you for explaining. I know it was hard for you but I—I needed to know.”
They were quiet together for a minute or more.
“Thank you for doing that for Robbie.” He nodded toward the gingerbread house.
“He loved making it,” she said. “Putting it together really was fun.”
“Where’d you get the kit? I forgot to ask.”
She nestled closer. “In the souvenir shop, of all places. It was an impulse buy. I saw it and I had to have it. But Robbie thinks I bought it for him.”
He stroked her blond hair in a deliberate way. “So we both went shopping today, huh? I’m glad you did. You seemed kind of blue this morning.”
“I was,” she admitted honestly. “No big deal. It’s over.”
The sound of slow footsteps came into the living room, and she felt Choya half-turn to acknowledge his father’s presence. “Dad—come on in and relax. We got a great fire going.”
“So I see. I’ll look at it from here, thanks. If I get too comfortable, I won’t get up until morning. I don’t want to fall asleep in the armchair.”
The old man stood for a minute, looking into the fire and not at them.
Choya thought of something he’d forgotten. “Don’t go to bed yet. I stopped by the lawyer’s office in Tucson. There’s some new developments.”
Choya shifted to one side, then rose, letting Jacquie adjust her position so she was upright without him. The empty space where he’d been felt suddenly chilly. She reached for an afghan and drew it around her, looking at the Barnett men, old Sam leaning on his cane and Choya, tall and strong. He rested a hand on his father’s shoulder.
“New developments, eh?” Sam asked. There was a sharp twinkle in his eyes. “Fill me in.”
“The lawyer gave me some documents you need to look over. They’re in my study. Be right back,” Choya said to her.
Jacquie smiled politely, though she felt a little out of sorts at being left to herself while the men went off to talk. The Barnetts traveled the short distance to the study at Sam’s slow pace and Choya closed the door behind them.
She leaned back into the sofa cushions, trying not to listen in. But Choya’s deep voice carried, even through walls. Still, the occasional words she could hear didn’t connect. He was saying something about specified share and assigned rights . . . legal terms that didn’t make much sense to her. It all had something to do with Barnett land and minerals.
Jacquie dozed off.
Behind the study door, Sam set the legal documents and geological surveys his son had given him back on Choya’s desk.
“Well, things are moving right along,” he said. “I just hope they won’t tear up the land too much.”
Choya shook his head. “The deal and the survey both specify vertical drilling, straight as a plumb line. Which means minimal impact on the surface.”
“What about the groundwater?”
“That won’t be affected.”
Sam crossed his arms over his chest and leaned against the desk. “My father always thought those mines weren’t played out, but he couldn’t get anyone to believe him.” He straightened with a sigh. “I guess we oughta sign on the dotted line and get the rest of that bonus.”
“It’s substantial. More than we were expecting at first. They upped it by a lot.” Choya flipped through the pages of documents and named the new figure he’d negotiated.
Sam whistled under his breath. “Good work. Now you can go ahead and marry Jacquie.”
Choya’s mouth quirked in an odd smile.
Sam studied him. “Did I say something wrong? I thought that was why you went to Dallas to get her. Has there been a change in plans?”
“No.”
“Choya,” his father wagged a finger at him, “I was glad to see you two all hugged up on the sofa just now, but you two were giving each other odd looks this morning, not to mention all that circling around and polite talk. I wasn’t going to say anything but—what happened?”
“You told her where I came from. We started talking about it and it got intense. That’s all,” he added firmly.
“She asked me. Everyone knows that story.”
“Not all of it.”
“Son, why wouldn’t you want her to know? She’s curious as a cat, that’s all.”
“Then I told her what happened to Rosemary.”
“I see,” Sam said after a long pause. “It was right that you did. Jacquie should know.”
Choya shook his head and sighed. “She shouldn’t feel like she has to stay and be Robbie’s mama because she feels sorry for him and me.”
“I very much doubt she’d do that.”
“How do you know?” Choya shot back.
“I know a few things about women. She has strong feelings for you, and pity ain’t the uppermost one.”
Choya didn’t reply to that. He changed the subject. “Let’s get back to spending the money we haven’t made yet. Should I mention that when I propose?”
“Might as well.” Sam gave him a scornful look, but the corners of his eyes crinkled with humor. “Why wouldn’t you let her know what your prospects are? A woman needs to know she’ll be taken care of. In every way,” he added.
The last three words seemed to rankle Choya, but he didn’t respond specifically to them. “You’re old-fashioned,” was all he said.
“I’m experienced,” Sam snapped. “Mind if I ask what the hell you’re waiting for?”
Choya leaned ba
ck in his swivel chair, gripping the arms and looking thoughtful. “I have to know if she’s going to be happy here. Life on a ranch like this is very different from Dallas.”
“She does all right for a city girl,” Sam pointed out. “Jacquie has a lot of spunk. Nothing fazes her. And Robbie just about worships the ground she walks on.”
Choya gave an agreeing nod. “I almost wish he didn’t. If she changes her mind and leaves again, he’ll be heartbroken.”
“She won’t. Listen to what I’m tellin’ ya. Besides, no matter what happens, he’ll still have us,” Sam insisted. “He always has. And weren’t you the one to tell her it was over that first time? That was a damn fool thing to do.”
His son glared at him. “She’s just so young and inexperienced. And after Rosemary”—he shook his head—“I apologized.”
“Damn straight. She didn’t mean no harm and you know it.”
Choya softened his tone but only a little. “It still worries me that she went off like that. I can’t raise her and Robbie. I have to protect him.”
“Hmph. You ain’t protecting Robbie. You’re protecting yourself. Jacquie won’t cut and run if you ease up some. Anyone can see that she loves the boy. She even loves you,” he added tartly.
“Yeah, well, she told me on the way back from Dallas that love didn’t guarantee anything,” Choya said quietly.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You oughta know, Sam.” He gave the old man a wry look. “How come you never married when you were raising me?”
“I put you first.”
“Same goes for Robbie.”
His father scowled. “Son, I never found anyone that had what it took to keep me in line and bring up a boy at the same time. But Jacquie’s different. Don’t let her get away.”
“I can’t stand in her way either. She wants to go back to college and her father will tar-and-feather me if she doesn’t.”
“That’s a fine old remedy for many things. He sounds like a man after my own heart,” Sam pronounced.
“Would you be serious? We live way the hell out in the back of beyond.”
“So?” Sam shot him a look of disbelief. “You just bought an SUV with automatic everything and cruise control,” he said. “Tucson is less than two hours away. She can go to college there.”