And she…was totally fooling herself. Why would they want her around? To get into Pauley’s Island restaurant and the White House Chocolate Shop. To have a story to tell in the cafeteria.
She wouldn’t fit in at any of their lunch tables. Everything they’d built this weekend was just about this weekend. Dilya wasn’t dumb enough to believe there was a future here. She’d enjoy the day, but that would be the end of it.
They finished the giant crossword, scooting it onto a big silver platter she found in the butler’s pantry. A shallow silver bowl with FDR’s family crest stamped into the side was filled with the lettered cookies while Val wrote “A First Family Christmas” across the top of the puzzle. In the bottom corner, she wrote “Thanks for having us.” Below that they each signed their names with piped royal icing.
Dilya looked at the five names together. For a weekend they’d come together just like one of Emily’s teams. She liked that. It gave her ideas for the future. Someday she’d have a team. More importantly, someday she’d have friends. Maybe like these.
It was hard leaving the kitchen. Chef Klaus actually did smile when he saw the finished project. He promised to make sure it was delivered this evening with after-dinner tea. He came around and shook each person’s hand and gave them a personalized signed copy of his White House cookbook. Dilya peeked at her own, it simply said, “Niemals aufhören!” Thankfully, beneath that he’d written, “Don’t stop!” As if.
When they neared the exit, Kimberlee slipped a brown paper bag to her. Dilya peeked inside; it contained all of the failed and broken cookies.
“I’m too nervous to try and smuggle it out through security. But you can do it. Everyone likes you.”
Dilya looked down at the bag and back at Kimberlee. “I don’t understand.”
“They taste awesome. We can’t let these go to waste. You smuggle them out of the White House tomorrow and we can share them during lunch.”
Then with a wave, they were all gone.
Dilya stood inside the East Wing entrance as she weighed the cookies in her hand. There would be plenty to share at a lunch. It was silly, it was just a place to sit. A place to sit…with people. With friends! And she could feel the smile tug at her cheeks once more.
As she walked back through the White House, she looked upon the shining winter wonderland of plastic icicles dripping from high ceilings and fake snow sweeping under brightly lit Christmas trees.
Emily was right. There were teams and there were friends. And she’d make sure that her life was filled with both of them.
Be sure not to miss the companion story: Emily’s Christmas Gift, a Henderson’s Ranch story.
Emily’s Christmas Gift (excerpt)
If you liked this, you’ll love the companion story.
Emily’s Christmas Gift Excerpt
Emily watched Mark being as calm as could be and tried not to resent it. When the heavy Montana snowstorms of December kept them indoors at the main ranch house, he was content to slouch low on the couch and watch a Disney movie with the girls in the cozy family area off the kitchen.
If they wanted to build a fort—Emily always thought of it as a fort, though the girls kept insisting they were tents—Mark would reconfigure the family sitting area off the kitchen no matter what inconvenience it caused the adults.
Between the three of them, they made sure that each construction looked unlike any prior effort. A tropical paradise one time, decorated mostly with one of the ranch hand’s awful Hawaiian shirt collection. Another time, a Cheyenne teepee built with Mark’s mother’s lovely weavings. She’d particularly liked that one. Being in Montana, and especially if Julie was around to help, Western themes were common, often with horse tack or some of her rodeo trophies for decoration.
In the summers Mark lived to fly tourists around in his helicopter and fish, but in the winter his one joy was keeping his girls happy.
That she herself was one of “his girls” always made their daughters giggle with delight. And she was happy. All she had to do was watch her daughters and she let their constantly bubbling joy wash over her. They might build their forts—tents with their father. But it was never considered complete until she had joined them for the final tour. Mark often left some final task for her to do so that she’d at least feel included. Then they would all lie in it together—Mark at the center with all three of “his girls” clinging happily to him.
Those were the best moments of her life. Perhaps a close second to waking in his arms on the long quiet winter mornings before Tessa and Belle sprang to life like a pair of Jill-in-the-boxes.
She’d known he was a good man and a great commander, but his daughters had never met “The Viper” who used to scare the shit out of everybody, including her. His steel gray eyes had rarely been revealed from behind his mirrored shades. He’d even proposed to her while wearing them—after dark. Which was perhaps the only thing that had kept her from turning into a complete empty-headed mush in that moment.
But his daughters only saw the sky gray that his eyes shone when he was happiest—and the mirrored shades were now worn only in the strong Montana sun. It was impossible for her not be happy while she watched the stern, taciturn, demanding Major Mark “The Viper” Henderson (retired) have no compunction about acting as the total goofball with his girls. He was a better father than she was a mother, but she didn’t know what to do about that. When they were upset, it was her they came to, so she still had something. But it often meant she got the tears and Mark earned all the cheers.
Emily didn’t resent it…much. She mostly just wished it was somehow different.
She turned to the fire and watched what she could see of the flames. They were partially blocked by a great bulge in this week’s fort, which was huge by any previous standard.
This room was where the family lived during the day when they weren’t out on the ranch. The high-timbered main room and the dining room with its forty-person pine table was for the guests. In the long, bitter, off-season months, it was also where all the locals gathered for the occasional party to break the monotony of winter.
That was for others. The family lived in the kitchen. The kitchen itself was a full commercial setup, decorated like in ranch-house warm timber and cool granite stone. At the near end stood a large plank table of Douglas fir where the family and the ranch hands ate their meals together.
This sitting area to the side had a big stone fireplace, and a scattering of couches and armchairs enough for the entire staff…or there had been until the kids started showing up. Once they graduated from lap-sized, they would have to squeeze in some more furniture. The bookcases that lined the river stone walls already had more shelves added to accommodate the girls’ picture books.
Of course more furniture couldn’t happen with their latest fort in place—she could only see half the fire from her favorite end of the couch.
It was like a mighty Christmas igloo, its walls built high with pillows raided from all of the guest cabins that were closed for the winter. Mark had waded out into the freezing dawn this morning to cut down and drag home a ten-foot larch to stand at its center. Now, with the tree up and their pillow-wall built, the three of them were madly working away inside. Only the tree’s single uppermost branch was visible above the domed roof, like a wide smoke hole escaping the dome of pillows.
Whenever there was a newborn about, either Chelsea’s or Julie’s boy, their father was instantly abandoned without further thought—which made her feel a little better. Of course, then Emily had to keep a close eye so that the girls didn’t smother the two infants with affection. How in the world she’d raised two such…girls was a mystery to her. At five, Tessa was an utter extrovert who had all the ranch hands completely wrapped around her tiny pinkie. Belle at three was the steadier one, but only by comparison.
Emily didn’t pace when the heavy snow and the biting cold winds forced them to remain indoors, but she wished she’d taken up watching sports on television or something. B
ut after a career of flying helicopters first to war and then to wildfire, watching a bunch of guys chase a football up and down a chunk of AstroTurf in little one- and two-yard spurts couldn’t be called exciting.
“I’m absolutely hiring Mark for the next seventeen years,” Chelsea plummeted down into the big armchair beside Emily’s end of the couch, then had to drag her fingers through her long hair to toss it over her shoulder so she could see. Her cheeks were brilliant red after crossing the snow from where she and her husband, the ranch manager, lived on the other side of the barnyard. Maybe Emily should grow her gold-blonde hair as long, the way Mark kept hinting, but it had been chopped dead straight to her shoulders for her entire life.
Emily saw Mark now sitting on the braided rug with Chelsea’s three-month old boy Christopher cradled in his arms—whose hair was already as red as his mother’s. Tessa and Belle were leaning on his thighs from either side and reaching over to inspect the infant who watched with such wide, serious eyes. Her own fair hair hadn’t been passed on to either daughter, having no chance against Mark’s genes from his brown-haired father and Cheyenne mother.
“Or maybe I’ll just knock you off and get two husbands, keep Doug for me and have Mark for the kid.” Chelsea extended her feet toward the fire.
“I’m notoriously hard to kill.” Emily’s specialty had been black-in-black missions. Black ops so sensitive that they were talked about with no one, ever. And so dangerous that each one was a curse of its own. Mark accompanied her on or referred vaguely to four—she’d stopped counting as she neared ten.
“Oh, don’t worry, Emily,” Chelsea slouched lower. “I’d like, uh, get Julie to do it for me. She was raised a cowgirl and knows how to do the icky stuff.”
“I’m a horsegirl now. And do what?” Julie settled very slowly on the couch beside Emily, careful not to wake Jared asleep in her arms. Like her own children, Jared had his father’s dark hair and eyes rather than Julia’s wheat blonde and blue. If he’d slept through the snowy trek down the hill from their cabin, then it would take far more than a small bump to wake him, but Emily knew better than to say such a thing to a new mother. She had to smile at her own worries about Tessa in the beginning.
She did scoop up Jared and hold him while Julie shed her thick coat and tossed it over a maple wood chair. Then she settled back on the plaid sofa and took Jared back, again with infinite care.
Like the toddler-magnets they were, Tessa and Belle appeared on either side of Julie. Tessa sat on Julie’s far side, but Belle pushed and squirmed—with plenty of bumps that Jared never noticed—until she was sitting between Emily and Julie. Emily looped an arm around her daughter, not as if there was anywhere else to put it, and kissed her on top of the head.
“I need you to…uh,” Chelsea glanced at the two young girls before answering Julie, “…remove Emily for me. Kinda permanently so I can have Mark as a full-time babysitter.”
“Too late,” Julie gently blocked Belle reaching over to wake Jared. Belle was completely enamored of Jared’s big eyes and the two of them could stare at each other for hours. “I’ve already got dibs. Besides, I thought we liked Emily?”
“We do. But where has that gotten us?”
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About the Author
M.L. Buchman started the first of over 50 novels and even more short stories while flying from South Korea to ride across the Australian Outback. All part of a solo around-the-world bicycle trip (a mid-life crisis on wheels) that ultimately launched his writing career.
Booklist has selected his military and firefighter series(es) as 3-time “Top 10 Romance of the Year.” NPR and Barnes & Noble have named other titles “Top 5 Romance of the Year.” In 2016 he was a finalist for RWA's RITA award.
He has flown and jumped out of airplanes, can single-hand a fifty-foot sailboat, and has designed and built two houses. In between writing, he also quilts. M.L. is constantly amazed at what can be done with a degree in geophysics. He also writes: contemporary romance, thrillers, and SF. More info at: www.mlbuchman.com
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Also by M. L. Buchman
* also sweet version / + also audio
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* * *
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www.mlbuchman.com
Copyright 2018 Matthew Lieber Buchman
Published by Buchman Bookworks, Inc.
All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission from the author.
Receive a free book and discover more by this author at: www.mlbuchman.com
Cover images:
Snowy forest © IgorPylBO | DepositPhotos
Homemade Brown Gingersnap Cookies © bhofack2 | DepositPhotos
White House Hall decorated with snowmen © White House
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Dilya's Christmas Challenge Page 4