Love Inspired December 2014 - Box Set 2 of 2: Her Holiday FamilySugar Plum SeasonHer Cowboy HeroSmall-Town Fireman

by Ruth Logan Herne

“Oscar worked hard. Long hours. Alice was pregnant, so she mostly stayed home. Your grandmother would help her out, keep her company and such, seeing how Oscar was gone so much...” Grandpa drew a deep breath, then went on. “One night Oscar was at the store during a big storm, worried about the new roof he’d just put on. Alice was home, but she got nervous so she decided to drive to the store and spend the night there with him rather than being home alone. That was back when Tyler Street ran down right close to the river.”

  There was a levee now between Tyler Street and the river, and for good reason. Karla felt her hand stray to her throat. “No.”

  “She missed the turn and the car slid into the river. Current took it almost a hundred yards they say, before it lodged under the bridge. They wanted to put a plaque there, but Oscar wouldn’t let them. Never seen a man come unglued like that, and I hope to never again.”

  Suddenly Grandpa’s coffee discount seemed like a quiet kindness. Only they never spoke like the old friends Grandpa made them out to be. “That’s so sad.”

  “Margaret and I tried to be there for him, to help him along, but it was as if our happiness just made his tragedy worse. Three’s hard to manage comfortably, you know? By the time Margaret passed away, there’d been too much water under the bridge—literally—to pick up the friendship. He comes in for breakfast, I serve him coffee and listen to him complain.”

  Grandpa let out an enormous sigh. “And I remember this dollar back here and why I’m glad I never wanted to own a chain of restaurants.” He returned the dollar to its place on the wall, one finger touching the edge of the frame. Karla noticed one corner was worn down, as if he touched it often.

  Sadness pinched her heart and a lump rose to her throat. How easily she’d dismissed Oscar as just a grouch without wondering what had soured him so. She looked back at her grandfather. “Why did you want me to know this now?”

  Grandpa’s hand moved from the frame to clasp her own hand. “Because I know you have big dreams. And big dreams are great things, but only if you don’t let them get in the way of what really matters. Don’t let anyone tell you your dreams are too big, but don’t let your plans get so big that they don’t leave room in your life for someone, either.”

  Did he know? Had Dad told him? She looked at a yellowed newspaper clipping on the wall above the dollar. Brittle around the edges, it showed a grinning Karl and Margaret Kennedy behind the cash register, a tenth anniversary special written on the chalkboard behind them. Karla felt tears sting her eyes. “You and Grandma made a great team.”

  “I think it’s time you became part of that team, Karla. You’ve done a fine job here. A fine job. That’s made me realize it might be time for me to start letting go. Maybe do more fishing. Let the next generation of Kennedys show how they can do.”

  Karla thought her heart would twist in half. She couldn’t put it off any longer. “I’ve loved working here, Grandpa—really I have.” She knew her tone conveyed what she was going to say next, and the sight of the glow leaving his eyes broke her heart. “But this is your dream. It’s not mine.”

  He said nothing, just slowly returned his gaze to the framed dollar on the wall. He touched the corner with his finger again, and the gesture had the feel of a goodbye. Karla’s throat tightened and tears stung her eyes. “You’ve heard me talk about Rooster’s, Grandpa. That’s my dream.” She put her hand on his, but he did not turn his palm over to clasp her hand the way he usually did. “I’m hoping Rooster’s leads me to someone as good for me as Grandma was for you.”

  “You and that chicken place.” That’s what he’d taken to calling her plans. It was her fault that out of pity, she’d always couched her plans for Rooster’s as something far-off and long-term.

  “Yeah,” she said, wiping one eye. “Me and that chicken place. I have a great internship at a fancy hotel in Chicago that starts on July 16. I’ll need to be back in Chicago by then, Grandpa. It will open a lot of doors for me, but it will work because of everything I learned here.”

  “You’ve done so well here.” Grandpa sounded dangerously close to pleading, twisting the knife in Karla’s heart even further. “Even Oscar likes you.”

  She tried to laugh, but the threat of tears squelched the sound. “Gosh, you’d never know. I was thinking he found me a pretty poor substitution.”

  “That’s the thing about some people. You have to look down past the parts everyone else sees. And if you can do that, well, then, that’s a gift.” Grandpa started to drag himself up out of the chair. “Everyone says they come here for the pie, but it’s about how you look them in the eye. You remember that.”

  Karla hugged her grandfather tight. “When I open Rooster’s, will you be my first dollar?”

  The resignation in Grandpa’s eyes pressed on her shoulder like a hundred pounds. He poked her nose the way he used to when she was a tiny girl swinging her legs at the shop counter while he made her a cherry cola, but it had such an air of farewell to it that tears slid down one cheek. “I’ll be your first ten dollars.” He held her at arm’s length. “’Cause that’s what one of your fancy coffee’s gonna set me back, isn’t it?”

  “Nah,” she replied, hugging him and pressing her wet cheek to his. “Yours will always be free.” She nodded at the frame on the wall. “Except the first one, and that’ll cost you a dollar. And an autograph.”

  She watched him make his way to the front of the shop, unable to follow him. Instead, she opened the back door that led out into the alleyway, sat down on the loading dock and quietly cried.

  * * *

  Dylan pushed the back door of the coffee shop open to find Karla sitting on the loading dock with her back to him. “Karl said you were out here.”

  She sniffed, straightened her shoulders and turned toward him with a weak wave. She’d been crying.

  He moved to sit next to her. “What’s wrong?”

  She looked up with a deep breath, settling her shoulders. “I just told Grandpa I’m not taking over Karl’s.”

  “But you’ve never been taking over Karl’s. I thought he knew that.”

  “I think he knew that, too. I just finally had to come out and say it. That, and that I’m leaving on the sixteenth, if not before. It’s been as if we’ve been in a little bubble pretending that isn’t going to happen, and I just popped that bubble.”

  “You had to tell him.”

  She flapped her hand in the air as if to shoo away the fresh tears that appeared in her eyes. “I know that. I just didn’t count on it being so hard. He looked so hurt.”

  “He had to know, and the sooner the better. It will get better from here, I think. He’ll come around.” He risked putting a hand on her shoulder. “We’ll get him hopelessly busy with anniversary celebration tasks so he won’t have time to pout.” She looked like a change of subject would do her good. “How did the picnic planning go?”

  She took the lead he offered. “Great. Everyone will be invited to picnic on the riverfront before the boats go by. Dellio’s diner is going to cater fried chicken and all the fixings for the guys in the department, and Jeannie Owens is organizing a cake competition that the firemen will get to judge, so dessert’s covered, too.”

  “Wow. You managed all that since Saturday?”

  Karla managed a weak smile. “Chad took care of the picnic paperwork, Jeannie came up with the idea on her own and I sent Violet Sharpton down to Dellio’s. No one says no to Vi.”

  “Don’t we all know that.”

  An awkward silence fell between them. Dylan tried to think of more to say, but came up empty. “I can’t go back out there,” she moaned. “Not yet.”

  That gave him an idea. He hopped down off the loading dock. “No one’s at the firehouse at the moment—why don’t you come over for a few minutes to see something?”

  “Um, sure.” She seemed glad of the diversion.


  “I’ll have to swear you to secrecy, but I need someone to know this wasn’t my idea.”

  They slipped out into the alleyway and across the street to the side door of the empty firehouse. He led her through a pair of hallways until they opened out to a shedlike structure in back of the firehouse. Sliding the bolt, Dylan opened the shed’s double doors to reveal the workshop they’d used for the float construction. Four log cabin “walls” leaned against the side of the shed in various stages of construction. A set of plans and an artist’s rendering done by Charlotte were tacked up on the wall.

  She looked surprised. “This is the firehouse’s float?”

  “Yep. They’re using my boat, but I didn’t put them up to this.”

  Karla peered at a second sketch, one that showed the same log cabin consumed in flames. “Wait...you’re setting your float on fire?”

  “Not really.” Dylan pointed to the mechanical detail on one of the drawings. “Jesse and Charlotte are rigging some kind of special effect with thin fabric and fans.”

  She glanced back at him, smirking in the sunlight coming in through the shed windows. He was glad to see some of the light come back to her eyes. “That’s crazy. You know that, don’t you?”

  “Well, I think it’s a bit overdone, yeah. But they’re having fun, and it’s not as if my boat’s in any danger.”

  Karla peered back at the plans. “Are you sure about that?”

  He laughed. “I trust Jesse. I wouldn’t fight fires with him if I didn’t. Or any of them. These guys always have my back. Always.”

  “It’s nice to know there are still people like that in the world.” She leaned against the wall, hugging her chest. “Why’d you start? With the firehouse, I mean?”

  “I told you. I needed something bigger than me when I came here.” He picked up one of the paper tube things stacked up against the wall and thumped it on the ground. “I suppose I needed somewhere to belong, silly as that sounds.”

  “I don’t think that sounds silly at all.” She waved her hand around the room. “Honestly, I think you’ll win. I don’t know about all the floats, but I haven’t heard of anything as elaborate as this.”

  “That’s just it—I don’t want to win. The whole weekend’s already about the firehouse, I don’t think we should take over the parade as well when it’s supposed to be a whole community thing.”

  She stared at him. “Why shouldn’t you want to win the prize? I’d think the firehouse would consider its honor at stake here and go all out to win. I don’t need to know that this wasn’t your idea because it wouldn’t bother me if it was.”

  “I’m not the grandstanding type. I just wanted you to know.”

  “Okay, point taken,” she said. “You’re going along with this for the good of the firehouse, but it wasn’t your idea. Got it.”

  “Good.” He turned toward the door.

  “Dylan?”

  “What?”

  “Ambition isn’t a bad thing, you know. Not if you hold it in balance.”

  He didn’t answer.

  Chapter Twelve

  Karla sat at Max Jones’s wedding reception the following Saturday night feeling sad, awkward and out of place. Why had she ever thought coming would be a good idea? She wasn’t really part of this community; she’d only been invited as a courtesy to Grandpa. And right now, Karl was sulking.

  The party should have proved a welcome distraction, but it wasn’t. The love story between Max Jones and Heather Browning was a fabulous tale that should have made anyone happy—a young man in a wheelchair finding love with the local high school guidance counselor—yet she still felt a heavy weight pressing down on her.

  The back deck of the Black Swan, one of Gordon Falls’ nicer restaurants, had been transformed for the joyous couple. Max was a Karl’s Koffee regular, despite all the accommodations it took for him to enter the shop using his wheelchair. Max was one of Grandpa’s favorite “personal policies”; if Grandpa had to move you to another seat so that Max could use the only table that would accommodate his wheelchair, your coffee was on the house. Grandpa had scores of “personal policies”—they were part of what made Karl’s the homey place it was. Could Perk achieve that kind of personal service? She’d want to find a way at Rooster’s, that was sure.

  Even though he hadn’t looked her in the eye all night, Grandpa was trying to make the best of his first true social outing, shaking hands and shouting hello. Karla tried to cheer herself by watching everyone be so happy for two people who looked happier still. She finally managed to shed most of her doldrums by the time Max and Heather had their first dance. A pretty impressive feat since Max used a wheelchair. The tender moment left barely a dry eye in the house, Karla included.

  The night’s biggest surprise, however, was the sight of Dylan in full dress uniform. Max wasn’t a fireman, but his sister JJ was, and evidently Max had “borrowed” the knees of the entire department to propose to Heather since he couldn’t get down on one knee himself. To honor their role in the engagement, all the invited firemen—which was practically the entire department—wore their dress uniforms to the ceremony.

  Karla didn’t need anyone to point out how well the uniform suited Dylan—even though Violet, Tina, Marge and several other of the other knitting circle women went out of their way to do so. Karla’s inclination had been correct: Dylan MacDonald was handsome in casual clothes, but he was downright stunning in formal attire. The navy of the uniform doubled the intensity of his eyes, and while she preferred his hair messy and just shaken out of a baseball cap, it gave him a whole other kind of appeal tamed and combed.

  She did her best to stay on the other side of the gathering, but it was a lost cause. Karla wondered if Dylan could sense the unease in her expression—after all, she had told him on the fishing expedition that her departure would be soon. She could certainly see the tension in his broad shoulders. A wedding must be a hard thing to watch for a man who’d had his own near engagement go so painfully awry. They kept catching each other’s eye from opposite sides of the happy crowd until, finally, just as Max and Heather were feeding each other slices of wedding cake, Dylan walked over to stand next to her.

  “They look so happy.” His voice was stretched tight with regret as he stared at the couple.

  “Is it hard to watch?” She was sorry for the question, but there was no mistaking an edge of pain in Dylan’s eyes. He said he’d been about to propose to Yvonne—surely he’d imagined what their wedding would have been like.

  Dylan didn’t speak, but simply nodded. Karla watched him clench his jaw, keenly aware of the wound Dylan still carried.

  “Want to get some air?”

  “Yeah.” He snickered, realizing at the same moment she did that the comment was ludicrous on an outdoor patio. He tilted his head toward the riverbank. “Or water.”

  They walked in silence down toward the riverbank, hearing the boisterous party noises fade behind them to be absorbed in the quiet sounds of the river on a summer evening.

  Dylan stuffed his hands in his uniform pockets. “Sorry about that.”

  She didn’t think he had anything for which to apologize. “You’re far from over her, huh?” Some things didn’t go by practical timetables.

  “Oh, no,” came his quick reply, “I’m over Yvonne. The only feelings left for her are—” he shook his head “—well, not terribly honorable, let’s just leave it at that.” The night was warm, and he undid the gold buttons that closed the dark double-breasted uniform jacket. “I don’t quite know why that was so hard. I wasn’t expecting that.” He sat down on the low stone wall that faced the river, undoing the top button on his shirt and loosening his tie.

  “Makes sense to me.” She sat down close beside him, drawn in by his soft tone and somber mood. “Woulda, shoulda, coulda, you know?”

  He cracke
d a forlorn smile. “I shoulda seen her for what she was, then I coulda left her alone and I woulda avoided all this hurt.”

  “Hey, we can’t always see what’s coming down the road.”

  He turned to her, moonlight casting his face into stark features. “Yeah, well look at you. You know just where you’re going, are honest about it, and you’re just about off on your way to get there.” He pushed out a breath. “I just hope it lives up to your expectations.” It wasn’t sour grapes, more of a gentle warning.

  “I’ve really liked being here,” Karla felt compelled to say. “It’s not where I belong, but I can see why Grandpa loves this place so much. Why you love it so much. I can see how it could become hard to leave.”

  He gave a low laugh. “You didn’t think much like that when I first met you.”

  “Yeah, well, I wasn’t cochair of the big anniversary bash and catcher of the town’s prize fish back then.” Karla kicked her feet out to cross her ankles in front of her, a bit surprised at the wave of affection that flooded over her as she remembered the fuss over that fish. “Serious résumé booster, the lot of it.”

  “Glad to know we enhanced your credentials.” There was just the slightest edge to his words.

  “It was more than that. You know it was.”

  He turned to look at her. “Was it?”

  She owed him honesty, the knowledge that a woman could be straight with him. “This isn’t the place for me. Everyone’s wonderful, and I know what people are thinking. Goodness knows it’s crystal clear what Grandpa was thinking, but it’s not...” She couldn’t find the words for what she wanted to say that didn’t sound dismissive, or worse yet, city-snobbish.

  “It’s not Chicago,” he finished for her. “Funny,” he said sourly, “that’s precisely why I love it.” He straightened up, pulling his tie from his collar. “If I’d stayed, if we were sitting on a high-rise balcony in Chicago instead of on a stone wall in Gordon Falls, would we even know each other?”

  That was easy to answer. “I hope so.”