A Coldwater Warm Hearts Christmas

by Lexi Eddings

  Angie tucked her arms into the long sleeves of his jacket and zipped it closed.

  Maybe the jacket’s scent was working and she was warming up to him. Maybe she was just cold and wanted anything that would warm her up. He really couldn’t tell.

  “Let’s follow Fergus’s example and head into the house,” George suggested. “A little coffee’s what we need to warm up.”

  “Me too, Grandpa.”

  “Not for you, Riley,” George said. “It’ll stunt your growth.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  George took her by the hand. “It means you’ll never grow up.”

  “Daddy musta drinked a lot of coffee when he was a kid. Mommy says he never growed up.” As they walked around the corner of the house to the front door, Riley suddenly noticed her grandmother’s lawn art. It was a small windmill, whirling like a dervish in the brisk breeze. “Oh! Miss Holloway, look. That’s where all the wind is coming from. Grandpa should put it up in the attic and you won’t be cold no more.”

  * * *

  Shirley Evans plied them with ginger snaps and fended off George’s attempts to pour coffee to go with them. She gave Riley a coloring book and a can full of dull crayons and let her color up a storm on the coffee table.To Seth’s surprise, his aunt didn’t ask a single question about how the pageant was going.

  High marks for Aunt Shirley.

  When they finished their refreshments, Seth carried the tray back into the kitchen for his aunt and managed to pull her aside for a moment.

  “What’s the deal with Crystal and Noah?” he asked. “Are they splitting the sheets?”

  “Hush! George doesn’t know anything about it and I’m hoping he won’t have to,” Shirley said in a furious whisper. “In fact, Crystal doesn’t even know I know they’re having trouble, but someone put an unspoken request on the prayer chain for them, so I figured something was up. That’s when I did a little digging on my own.”

  Chalk one up for the Methodist prayer chain. It distributed information faster than the speed of Twitter and involved a lot more than one hundred and forty characters.

  “Do you know where Noah and Ethan are?” Seth asked.

  “He’s taken the boy to the Addleberrys’ ranch.” The wealthy family owned a spread about a mile out of town that would put Dallas’s Southfork to shame.

  “But he left Riley?” Seth asked.

  “Ethan’s the easy one. Put an iPad in his hand and you’d never know the boy was around. Riley is . . . oh, dear, I just love her to pieces, but she’s a caution and no mistake,” Shirley said. “I’m so in hopes this whole thing will blow over. It’ll be hard on Crystal if it doesn’t. She’s never failed at anything, you know.”

  Maybe that was Crystal’s trouble. She was always the perfect one, and she expected everyone around her to be perfect, too. It was a tough standard to live up to. Seth didn’t want to assume the break up was his cousin’s fault, but more than once, he’d felt sorry for Noah Addleberry when Crystal was on a tear about something he’d done or failed to do to her exacting standards.

  “Seth, what’s Angie’s story?” Shirley asked. “Her background, I mean.”

  The abrupt change of topic caught him off guard. “Danged if I know.”

  “Well, don’t get me wrong. She’s a perfectly lovely person, but . . . there’s a sadness about her.”

  Seth snorted. “And here I thought it was just pure cussedness.”

  “No, it’s sadness,” Shirley said with certainty. “You have to find out about her.”

  “Why me?”

  “Because someone needs to, and I’ve seen how you look at her.” Shirley scraped the crumbs from the cookie plate and loaded it into the dishwasher. “You’re sweet on the girl, Seth. That’s plain as mud.”

  “Plain as mud, huh? Ah, Aunt Shirley you always were a romantic.”

  “Of course I am,” she said, putting a smile into her tone as Uncle George lumbered back into the kitchen with a full carafe of coffee and three cups that had seen no use at all. “After all, I’m going ’round the world on the Love Boat, aren’t I?”

  Seth frowned in puzzlement at her.

  “Oh, you’re too young to remember that old TV series, but your uncle and I are going to have the time of our lives, you mark my words.”

  “Duly marked,” Uncle George said grumpily. “But let the record show, if we founder on the shore of some Godforsaken Gilligan’s Island, I was against this thing from the beginning.”

  Aunt Shirley clasped her hands around George’s waist from behind him and laid her head between his shoulder blades. “But you went along with it because you love me, didn’t you?”

  “Guilty as charged.” He patted her hands and then headed back to living room. “Gotta make sure Riley’s confining her coloring to the book and not the couch.”

  “See?” Aunt Shirley said once he was out of earshot. “Grumps aren’t that bad to live with once you get used to them. You just need to find out what’s ailing your little grump.”

  My little grump. Seth had to admit the nickname suited Angie to a T.

  “It’s like I always say,” his aunt went on to say. “Every single one of us has a secret that would break your heart if you knew it. If you want to know Angie Holloway, find out what happened to make her so sad.”

  “I doubt she’ll let me.”

  Shirley swatted his chest. “Seth Parker, you were not raised to shy away from a fight. It’s like I said the first time you brought her over here. I like her. She’ll do.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  His aunt’s smile was as enigmatic as the Mona Lisa’s. “If you don’t know, you don’t deserve her.”

  Chapter 16

  If you ask Riley Addleberry what she wants to be when she grows up, she’ll tell you. “A star,” she says. Riley doesn’t mean a celebrity. She means one of those twinkly dancing lights in the night sky. She says it with such conviction, I half believe she could do it.

  —Angela Holloway, who despite being all grown up still isn’t sure what she wants to be sometimes

  “You wanna grab a bite to eat?” Seth asked once Angie climbed back into the cab of his big truck.

  Angie put a hand to her belly. “Between the ice cream and cobbler and your aunt’s cookies, I probably shouldn’t eat again for a week.”

  “Something simple, then,” Seth said. The sun had set over an hour ago, but the sky was still faintly gray instead of inky black. “Maybe a burger?”

  “Too heavy. How about a grilled cheese sandwich and tomato soup?” she countered.

  “Great. Where do we go for that?”

  She snuggled deeper into Seth’s jacket. He’d insisted she put it on again when they left his aunt’s house. Of course, she was swimming in it, but it was so warm. And for some strange reason, she really loved the way it smelled.

  “Well,” Angie said, stretching out the word so that it sounded like it had two syllables. Part of her wanted to spend more time with Seth, to listen to him talk in that gravelly drawl of his, to sneak glances at his profile. The man’s strong jaw really was a work of art. Another part of her wanted to shove those thoughts to the furthest reaches of her mind. No good could come of needing to be with someone.

  But she couldn’t stop herself from saying, “We could go to my place.”

  “I didn’t mean to invite myself to supper,” he said.

  “I know that.” The hidden part of her that leaned toward him decided it wasn’t that big a deal, just supper together and not even a very fancy one at that. There was no danger of a cheese sandwich being mistaken for a romantic dinner. “You’ve been such a good sport all day, what with the auditions and going to the college with me and all. I bet your guys miss you at the construction site.”

  “I try to give them Saturdays off as long as the project we’re working is on schedule, which we are. Hey—” He shot her a sidelong glance. “Is this your way of talking me into building a bunch of extra sets for you?”<
br />
  She hadn’t laid out everything for him yet. In fact, her new plan for the pageant was still taking shape in her mind. Until it did, she’d keep exactly how many more sets she needed to herself.

  “This has nothing to do with the pageant. In fact, if you come over, I think we should make pageant talk completely out of bounds.” Why didn’t he just say yes? Couldn’t he see this was her way of trying to apologize for being so negative earlier? “Besides, a grilled cheese sandwich is the best thing I make.”

  “Well, all right then.” He turned off Oak Street and headed toward the Square. “Never let it be said I turned down a lady’s best.”

  Best might be overstating things. “Maybe I shouldn’t have set the bar so high. It’s hard to think of grilled cheese as a best of anything. They’re just sandwiches after all. It’s difficult to mess them up. And anyone can open a can of soup.”

  “Angie, I’m sure it’ll be great,” he said as the truck pulled into the Square and they rounded the courthouse. “Besides, I’m coming for the company, not the food. And I don’t mean your dang cat.”

  She laughed. “Poor Effie. No one wants her company.”

  Seth turned on the radio and caught the end of the evening news. According to the local weather man, the mercury was heading south in a big way and the cold snap was likely to continue.

  “That’s the good thing about grilled cheese and tomato soup,” Seth said as he pulled into the small parking lot behind her building. “They warm you up on the inside.”

  Chased by the wind, they double-timed it up the iron stairs and into Angie’s snug little apartment.

  Another good thing about grilled cheese and tomato soup was that it was quick. By the time Seth set out their plates and flatware and filled a couple of glasses with ice, Angie had the soup heating and the first sandwich ready to come off the griddle.

  She hadn’t burned it a bit.

  * * *

  Seth tried not to slurp his soup and wondered how best to follow his aunt’s advice. Knowing he needed to discover Angie’s secret and actually doing it were two different things.

  Sometimes, when he got stuck on a construction problem, he needed to change his frame of reference and look at it with fresh eyes. It usually worked. Maybe that strategy would transfer to people too. He decided to approach the Angie problem sideways.

  “Guess my cousin and her husband are separated.”

  “I got that impression,” she said between sips of sweet tea. “I’m sorry, but more for Riley than Crystal and her husband. Is that bad?”

  “No, I agree with you. Kids suffer most when adults don’t act like adults. I wonder what happened.”

  “I don’t think it’s any of our business,” Angie said primly; then she slanted her big brown eyes at him. Instead of feeling chastised, Seth just thought she was outrageously cute. “Besides, I never figured you for a gossip, Seth Parker.”

  “Hey, to quote Marjorie Chubb, it’s not gossip if you pray over it afterward.”

  “That’s a mighty fine knife you use to slice your conscience.” She slid off her barstool. “Want another sandwich?”

  He shook his head and she climbed back onto her seat.

  “Do you pray?” she asked softly.

  “Sure. I used to pray for a pony every night when I was a kid. Now I pray about other stuff.” He didn’t tell her he’d been praying about her lately. “Don’t you?”

  “Yeah. Some. Not as much as I probably should,” she admitted. “I used to pray when I was a kid, too.”

  This seemed like a pretty good opening into her past. “What did you pray for?”

  “Well, it wasn’t for a pony, that’s for sure.”

  “What then?”

  She drew a deep breath. “For a mom and dad. Real ones.”

  Seth was thankful once again for the intact family he’d grown up in, and realized afresh just how much of a rarity that had become. “I know it’s none of my business, but I’m only asking because I can see it’s left a hurt on you that hasn’t gone away. You have no family, you said.What happened to them?”

  She stared into her soup bowl for a heartbeat or two. “I don’t really remember. I was nine months old when it happened, but my caseworker told me about it when I was old enough to ask.”

  Seth held his breath when she stopped. He only released it when she started talking again.

  “There was an accident. A bad one. I was in the back seat, but my car seat lived up to its safety rating.” Her voice was flat, as if she’d been through this information countless times in her head. Seth would bet she hadn’t told many people though. “All I had was a concussion and a few cuts and bruises.”

  Seth waited, afraid if he interrupted with a question, she’d stop for good.

  “My dad was pronounced dead at the scene, but my mother lived.”

  “Well, that’s good.”

  “You’d think so, but no.” Angie shook her head. “She was in a coma for the next six years. They were both only children and none of my grandparents were living. The state of Texas tried to find a relative to take me, but there wasn’t anybody. So I was parked in foster care.”

  “You must have been adopted,” Seth said, thinking he’d figured out her secret. She was pining for the parents she never knew. “They always say babies get adopted right away.”

  “Not me,” she said. “Because my mother was still alive, I couldn’t be adopted. She might have woken up and recovered, so her parental rights had to be preserved. By the time she died, I wasn’t a baby anymore. I was a scrawny seven-year-old with attachment issues.”

  “Attachment issues?”

  “That’s what the state psychologist called it,” she said. “I was shuffled around to a number of different homes when I was growing up. Sometimes, I was moved because my foster parents got divorced, sometimes there were problems with other kids in the home. Because I’ve always been small, I was an easy target.”

  Seth’s fingers balled into fists. He wished with all his heart he could go back in time and be there to protect her.

  “Each time a kid gets moved, she has to make new connections. It’s not just with the new family. Lots of times, I changed day care, too. Later, it meant changing schools. It was hard,” she said. “After a while, I couldn’t make connections at all.”

  “Did you get help?”

  She nodded. “Some. Not early on. My last foster mom was also a psychologist. She helped me see what was happening inside me. I knew I was different. After talking with her about it, I knew why.”

  He met her gaze. “Well, I think you’re someone special.”

  She blushed.

  Who does that anymore?

  “I mean it, Angie. You’re smart. You’re sensitive and you’re really pretty.” He wanted to go on, but she cut him off.

  “Okay, that’s enough. A girl can only take so much.” She scooped up both their empty plates and carried them to the sink. When she turned back to face him, she frowned. “What? You look so serious, it’s like you’re trying to cure cancer or something.”

  No, but he’d give a lot to be able to help her. “I was just wondering if that attachment thing is what makes it hard for you to form relationships now.”

  She bristled, but then conceded his point. “It’s still not easy for me, but I manage. Once I got to college, I had a circle of friends. And then here in Coldwater, I got to know Heather and she introduced me to a ton of people. I know more folks now than I ever have.”

  “But how many know you?” he asked.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “How many of them know you were a foster kid?”

  “Everybody deserves a little privacy.” She dumped the plates in the sink and came back to sit down before her still cooling soup. “Do you tell everyone you meet about your childhood?”

  “Don’t have to. Most folks around here watched me grow up.” More than a few of them had had a hand in seeing that he learned his manners, too.

  “
You are a lucky guy, Seth Parker.”

  “I’d be the first to agree.” He laid a hand lightly on her forearm. She flinched a little, but didn’t move away. “I’m really lucky Heather talked me into doing the pageant with you.”

  “I thought we said no pageant talk.”

  “We’re not talking about it. We’re doing it. And the important thing about doing it is that I’m doing it with you.” He slid his hand down to her wrist and covered her hand with his palm. “We haven’t known each other very long, but I really do want to know you better, Angie.”

  She slipped her hand away from his and let it drop into her lap.

  Too fast. Slow down, Parker.

  She toyed with her spoon, making little figure eights in her soup. “I don’t know if getting to know each other better is such a good idea.”

  He got it. Manning had taught her men couldn’t be trusted to stick around. “I’m not going to let you down.”

  “You might not mean to,” she said. “I’m sure my real parents didn’t intend to die and leave me alone either.”

  Seth drummed his fingers on the counter. “Okay, this isn’t a perfect metaphor, but I want you to know I understand a little bit about attachment issues.”

  “You? Mr. Lived-Here-All-His-Life?”

  “Except for college.” Seth raised his soup bowl to his lips and drained the contents. “Don’t forget I wandered the wide world for a few years.”

  “Yeah, I’m sure that qualifies you to understand about attachment issues.”

  “No, actually, I learned about it from my dog.”

  Chapter 17

  Limeberger’s Mortuary . . . a better funeral experience . . .

  You’ll be satisfied with our service or your second one is free!

  —The Coldwater Gazette classifieds

  “Your. Dog?” Angie was ready to spit tacks. He thought he understood how she felt because he’d had a dog? She’d opened up to him, shared things she hadn’t talked about with anyone for years. And he wasn’t taking it seriously at all.