Heart of Grace (Return to Grace Trilogy Book 1)

by Abigail Easton

  The bell had her rushing to the door. The moment she swung it open Sophie leaped into her outstretched arms with a shriek, nearly knocking both of them down. Michael came in behind her with their suitcases and a stack of presents. He pulled his sister into his free arm and Angela held on, thankful their relationship had been made whole again.

  If that was the only good thing to come from her time in Grace, it gave value to every tear.

  Sophie bounced beside them, waiting for her chance to hug Angela again. “I can’t believe this place! It’s amazing!” she squealed as they hugged once more. Angela squeeze tightly, grinning so much her cheeks began to hurt.

  Angela and Michael shared a secret glance. Michael patted his shirt pocket and winked. They were the only two who knew there was an engagement ring for Sophie in that pocket. ****

  “That’s it,” Sophie declared as they set down their loot after a day of shopping, “I’m moving in.”

  Angela laughed and unknotted her scarf. “You are welcome to move in, of course, but you know you’d hate it here.”

  “Yeah, probably.” Sophie grinned and plopped onto Angela’s white slip-covered sofa. “But you love it.”

  “I do.” Angela knelt in front of the Christmas tree and arranged their gift wrapped packages.

  “It suits you,” Sophie decided.

  Angela looked up at her friend, and felt silly for that warm feeling of approval that washed under her skin.

  “I miss Grace,” Angela admitted. She spent entirely too much time straightening a silver ribbon on a package she’d bought for Sophie. “So…how is he?”

  “I wondered when you’d get around to asking. Word around town is he’s miserable.”

  Angela sat back on her heels. “It is awful that it makes me happy to hear that?”

  “Nope.” Sophie dug into a bag and pulled out a box of chocolates, holding it out to Angela. “Love is crazy like that.”

  Angela shook her head. “It was never like that with us.”

  Sophie shook her head and opened the box. “Yeah, and I’m the queen of England.”

  “We’ve been over this, Sophie. I’m home now. I’m happy.”

  “And the suit…Mr. Jeffrey…is it like ‘that’ with him?” Sophie made a stately pose, pantomiming Jeffrey’s businesslike stature.

  In spite of herself, Angela chuckled. Her friend’s impression was spot on. Angela walked on her knees to where Sophie sat and took a piece of chocolate from the box.

  “I don’t want to talk about him,” she said. “Or Cole. I have a feeling you and Michael are both going to have a fabulous time tonight. Let’s talk about that.”

  ****

  Angela glided on the ice and looked up at the gray sky, smiling as the cold air nipped her face. The sun had settled behind the towering buildings. The fading light dispersed across an overcast sky, slowly slipping into the darkness. The glow of lights on the eighty-foot Christmas tree loomed over the ice rink at Rockefeller Center. Somewhere in the distance bells chimed in tune with Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas.”

  She was on her third lap and Michael still hadn’t convinced Sophie to brave the ice.

  “This is insane,” Sophie sputtered as Angela came to a snowplow stop at the wall beside them. “Why would anyone think to put dangerous weapons beneath their feet and then try to use them to walk on ice?”

  “You don’t walk,” Angela said, laughing, “that’s why you’re having such a hard time with it.”

  “I really just wanted to see the tree,” Sophie said apologetically, clutching onto the low wall. “Can’t we just get some hot cocoa and watch?”

  Sophie took a step in retreat, off the ice and onto the padded floor surrounding the rink. Michael’s face fell as his romantic plans for the evening crashed and burned. He followed his girlfriend off the ice as Sophie shot an envious glance back over her shoulder at the skaters gliding by. Michael pulled her to a stop and spoke into her ear. Sophie narrowed her eyes. She looked at the ice again and then back at Michael. He said something else, she smiled, and the two of them started to make their way to the rink.

  Angela pushed off again as Sophie and Michael took those first tentative strides, wondering what he said to convince her.

  Whatever it was, Sophie was obviously glad she gave in. She beamed and giggled like a little girl. Michael laughed, struggling to keep himself upright as Sophie clung to him, her feet slipping every which way.

  After a few laps Sophie managed to skate on her own, even daring to use the push-glide method, instead of the teeny baby steps she had used at the start.

  Angela pushed at Michael’s back. “Go on ahead. There’s girl talk to be had here.”

  Michael skated ahead and Angela hung back with her friend.

  “How did he get you to do it?”

  “He said I should trust him to not let me fall.” Sophie didn’t look up from the ice. She concentrated on her movements. “That the hardest part is letting go of the control and once you learn to just go with the motion, it’s easy.”

  Angela slowed to a stop.

  Realizing Angela was no longer beside her, Sophie tried to stop and turn, but she slipped and lost her balance. Michael hurried back and grabbed hold of Sophie, steadying her before she crashed to the ice.

  “Angie?” Sophie asked once she was secured in Michael’s arms. “What’s wrong?”

  Angela thought of Cole holding her in Grace as the memories broke through, his confession beside the pond, and dancing with him beneath fireworks.

  “Trust him to not let me fall.”

  “Angie?”

  Angela looked at her brother and Sophie. Snow fell in the space between them.

  “He refused to say the words,” Angela said, her mouth barely able to get the words out. “But everything he did…he was begging me to stay.”

  Standing in the middle of the rink, with skaters hurrying past them, Angela lifted her face to the snow. She thought of the miracle of those tiny crystals, each one uniquely crafted and so perfectly white. She held her hand up to catch a few on her glove. The snow could be cold and dangerous, but at the core it was made up of these crystals, which were purposely designed to be unique and beautiful. And in the storms of Angela’s life, there was the beauty of redemption, forgiveness and love. She knew now that she would never have been able to see the intricacies of grace, nor the way it was all woven together so perfectly, if not for the pain.

  She smiled at her companions, who looked at her as if she’d grown an extra head. “I have been such a complete moron,” she laughed and took each of their hands.

  They skated together for a few minutes, and then Angela winked at Michael. She let go and slowed, allowing him and Sophie to move ahead. Michael stopped and lowered to one knee, pulling the ring box from his pocket. Sophie covered her mouth with her hands as Michael confessed his love and asked her to marry him.

  “Let it Snow” played over the sound system. Angela let the tears come, laughing as Sophie leaped into her new fiance’s arms and sent them both flailing onto the ice.

  ****

  The Montana landscape surrendered to the gentle assault of snow. Cole hiked up his collar and entered the stable to add another log to the furnace. Horses whinnied and scuffed their hooves. They were already tucked into turnout coats to wait out the cold night.

  He walked out of the stable, his boots crunching through six inches of fresh snow beneath the clear night sky. Stars winked through the darkness. He picked out Orion, the hunter constellation hovering above the horizon and facing east.

  Cole faced the same direction, thinking of Angie in New York. He remembered her walking along these same fences in her stilettos and a business suit. She had been ready to run even before she had taken that first step back to Grace. She may have stayed for a time, but he had known from the beginning he’d have to let go.

  He hadn’t counted on falling in love with her.

  He sighed and walked up the porch steps, kicking snow from his boots
. The house greeted him with the twinkling lights of the Christmas tree, the warmth of the heater prickling his exposed fingers. He rubbed his hands together. Remnants of the day still lingered in the living room: empty cups and halfeaten meat trays, torn giftwrap and a petered out fire. It was evidence of a gathering of friends, and of a home wellaccepting of them.

  Now it was empty.

  Cole wandered to the tree and smiled at the angel ornament his mother had made from pipe cleaners and construction paper during a blizzard one year. “Merry Christmas, Angie,” he said, thinking of the little girl named for an angel and dragged through hell, and then the woman who had emerged from the ashes, and somehow ended up in his arms. He thought of her on his doorstep at the beginning of the summer, when he’d barely recognized her, and then her terrified cries as she recalled everything that had been done to her.

  She’d been the girl no one had wanted, but he had wanted her…then and now. Yet, he hadn’t been able to bring himself to ask her to stay.

  The ornament twisted on its branch. Cole reached up to steady it, but he knocked the angel off the tree. It bounced off the branches and fell beside the sofa. He bent to pick it up, his hand coming into contact with a velvet box.

  ****

  Angela’s boots crunched over the fresh layers of snow, a million stars blinking above her in the crisp Montana sky. She’d had the heat on full blast, but her toes, fingers and nose were frozen. Bundling in her coat, her scarf useless in the wind, she looked up at the eves of the house and contemplated getting back in the car.

  A light flickered in the window. He had a fire going, and the promise of warmth drew her toward his door.

  He opened the door before she was even up the porch steps, stopping in his tracks when he saw her.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, coming up the last step. “You’re going somewhere. I don’t mean to…I mean, I don’t want to intrude. I just...”

  She took a step closer, the warmth of the fire escaping out of the open door and into the frigid night. Cole wore a thick jacket, his cowboy hat traded in for a wool fisherman’s cap.

  “I had to come home.” She closed her eyes and drew her eyebrows together. “I wanted to come home,” she corrected. “My choice is to be here. To be with you, Cole.”

  He continued to stare at her, his stance solid.

  “You were right,” she continued. It was convenient that Jeffrey gave me a reason to leave. I was afraid to stay, so I took the out he gave me. Please, say something.”

  Nadine walked through the door and onto the porch, her gaze on a plastic container in her hand. “Thank goodness you haven’t left yet and I caught you. My, it’s a chilly one, isn’t it? I fixed you a late supper, in case you get hungry on the plane.”

  She shoved the container at Cole and looked up, gasping when she noticed Angela in her peripheral. “She’s here!” the maid said to Cole, and then turned to Angela. “Isn’t it funny? You’re here, and he was just going to go-”

  “Nadine,” Cole said, “can you give us a minute?”

  Nadine said nothing more. She quietly took her container back and smiled widely at Angela, and then disappeared into the house.

  The moment the door closed Cole crossed the distance between them and pulled Angela into his arms, lifting her feet off the ground as he swung her around.

  She let out the breath she’d been holding and laughed as he set her down and kissed her forehead, her teeth chattering.

  “You’re freezing,” he said, “come inside.”

  He ushered her through the door and brought her to the chair beside the fire. Lights twinkled on the Christmas tree and other pieces of holiday cheer littered the room. She slipped out of her jacket as Cole settled onto the ottoman and took her hands.

  “Where are your gloves?”

  “I don’t know. I forgot them.”

  He reached behind her to grab an afghan from the back of the chair, wrapping it around her shoulders. Taking her face in his hands, he leaned his forehead against hers.

  “When we were kids,” he said, “you always had to one-up me. Like the time you swore you could swing higher on the rope over the pond. And you did. You almost landed on the other side of the pond instead of in the water, but you did swing higher than me.”

  She shook her head as he leaned away. “What are you talking about?”

  “I was on my way to see you, Ang. I was going to come riding up on my white horse – or in a yellow cab, I suppose – and tell you I was an idiot not to ask you to stay.”

  “Cole, I-”

  “And I was going to give you this,” he interrupted, reaching inside his jacket pocket for a red velvet box. “And I was going to tell you that I don’t care if the coalition gets the arena. We’ll fight it together, or we’ll let them have it. Either way, if you promise to marry me, to be my wife, I’ll have everything I’ve ever wanted.”

  He opened the box to reveal a perfect diamond solitaire flanked by two rubies, but he kept it close to his chest and did not offer it to her.

  “And I don’t care if it’s not your choice, because I’m going to be selfish about this. I love you, Angie. I need you. Please come home.”

  Then he closed the box and slipped it back into his pocket, leaned over and folded his hands between his knees.

  “Anyway,” he shrugged and looked away, “that’s what I was planning to say on your doorstep in New York.”

  She let out a shaky, watery laugh and held her left hand out. “Just give me the stupid ring.”

  He stared hard at her for several seconds, and then the joy broke through and he couldn’t hold the ruse any longer. Laughing, he took the ring back out and held it to her.

  “I didn’t ask you to stay in Grace when I first had the chance,” Cole said, slipping the ring on her third finger, “but I’m asking you now. Come home, Angie. I retired from rodeo. I don’t want either of us to run anymore. We’ll make a life together, you and me. With or without the arena. Come back to Grace.”

  The memories of the summer streamed through her consciousness like the reels of a movie on fast-forward. Every tear, every frustration and heartache, and each and every moment of confusion were all part of the journey that led them here; to this new beginning and a life lived out in faith, trusting in the man who would fight the storms to keep her.

  Angela kissed him amidst the glow and crackle of the fire. “Yes,” she whispered, “I will stay. And I will marry you. I love you, Cole.”