by Cara Colter
As they got closer, it got better. Ty pulled the big horses to a halt at the wide steps that went up to the front door. There was actually a hitching post there, and he got down from the sleigh, fastened the horses, and then came back and took Jamey before helping her down.
The wreath on the door was thick, lush with different types of boughs all woven together. It had a huge plaid bow on it, and country ornaments—rocking horses and snowmen with cowboy hats—peeked out from under the boughs. There was a little wooden word buried in the bows.
Wish.
As they went up the steps, she could smell the fragrance of the wreath. It reminded her of how close it was to Christmas. Despite the tree at Ty’s house, she had not been able to achieve any kind of Christmassy feeling there.
The door opened before they knocked, and Amy’s sense of somehow coming home was complete. A woman stood there, diminutive, white-haired, her face etched, not with surprise, but with kindness.
Behind her wood floors glowed with the patina of age, and a fireplace, hung with socks, crackled with bright welcome. Wish. This was exactly what Amy had always wished for.
“Ty!” the woman said, “what a nice surprise.”
“Beth.”
Amy turned to him, taken aback by something cold in his tone and in his eyes. This is what she should have known all along: Ty was not interested in being part of Amy’s picture of perfection.
“Oh, my word,” Beth said reverently, holding out her arms. If she had noticed Ty’s coldness, she did not acknowledge it. “You’ve brought us a baby.”
Ty handed off the baby into the eager arms, turned around and clattered back down the steps.
“Hunter, look! Ty’s come and he’s brought company. Come in. Come in.”
Amy stepped in the door. And saw Ty’s father. She would have known it was him instantly, not so much because they looked alike but because of the way he held himself. He was extraordinarily handsome even though his hair was white as snow and his features were weathered. He was in a wheelchair, but even so, he exuded power, his energy was like a brilliant light in the room.
His features were stern, and there was wariness in his dark eyes, but when he saw the baby it melted. Beth brought Jamey to him, and he held out his arms and took him. Amy had never seen a man so at ease with a baby. Certainly Edwin had never acquired this ease, and her father-in-law was like a stick man when he found Jamey in his arms.
But Ty’s father was obviously a man who knew a great deal about babies.
My mother left when I was about that age.
Ty came back in the door and set the box of supplies inside of it. “I thought you might be needing a few things.”
Their eyes locked, the young man and the old.
Hunter spoke, his tone proud. “We were just fine.”
The tension was raw in the room, and Amy suddenly understood why Ty had not phoned and had acquiesced so easily to her coming.
His offer to help would have been refused. And he had brought her because she would provide the distraction.
“I’m Amy Mitchell,” she said, kicking off her boots. Her hand was taken by Beth.
“Amy, I’m Beth, and this is Hunter.”
She went over to Ty’s dad. She loved how he was with the baby. He was already engrossed in removing the snowsuit, and Jamey was enthralled with him.
“Papa, papa, papa,” he crowed as if he had met a long-lost love.
She extended her hand, and it was swallowed in one that was rough textured and as strong as his son’s. His eyes searched her face, and then he let go of her hand, a small smile playing the stern line of his mouth.
“I’m Hunter Halliday.”
“Tea or coffee?” Beth called.
Ty was still standing at the door, holding the first box of supplies. He looked as if he planned to just drop it off and leave!
“Tea,” Amy said. She wasn’t leaving this place for as long as she could help it. The sensation of coming home had intensified, not diminished, since she had come in that door.
Ty made a growling noise deep in his throat. “I’ll see to the horses.” And then he turned and went back out the door.
Amy loved it at the old homestead. She loved the handmade throw rugs on the wide-planked floors, the scarred centuries-old harvest table, the crackling fire in the fireplace. She loved the worn furniture and the paned windows. She loved the cat curled up on the hearth. She loved the smell in the air, the tart scent of the pine boughs, a hint of wood smoke, the delicious aroma of something baking.
She shrugged off her coat, and Beth made a fuss about her bandaged hand and clucked sympathetically when Amy told her what had happened.
“I was a nurse before I retired. Do you mind if I look at it?”
Baby in his lap, Hunter wheeled over to the table. So, while he found a set of keys and entertained the baby with them, Amy sat down and Beth looked at her hand.
“Ty did a great job on this. It looks fine. I’ll just change the dressing.”
Amy was aware she was in the company of strangers, and yet she felt safe and loved and entirely at home.
Ty stood in the doorway, surveying the scene, his face impassive. “What do you need done?” he said to Beth.
His father answered. “I can do it myself.”
Ty blew out an impatient breath, went back out the door. A few seconds later they heard an ax thumping into wood. It managed to sound quite angry.
“So,” Beth said, setting a teapot on the table—most likely antique—and scones steaming from the oven, “what brings you to Halliday Creek Ranch, Amy?”
And while Hunter broke scones into bits and fed them to Jamey, who opened his mouth and cooed like a small eager bird, she found herself telling them. And not feeling the least ashamed of her ineptitude with the GPS device.
Beth and Hunter seemed to think her descending by accident on Ty was one of the most hilarious stories they had ever heard.
When Ty came back through the door, his arms loaded with freshly split wood, he found them all laughing. Looking like thunder, he dumped the wood in the wood box by the fireplace and went back out the door.
They heard the angry bite of the ax blade into wood again.
The next hour was a delight of laughter and easy conversation. But in the background Amy was aware of Ty’s seething presence. Ty chopped wood and filled the wood box to overflowing. Then he climbed up on the porch roof and cleared snow. When he was done that, they could see him out the window, heaving snow off the path to the garage.
When he finally came back in, he had worked himself into such a sweat that steam rose off him.
“Amy, we should go.”
“I was hoping you’d stay for lunch,” Beth said.
“Maybe another time,” Ty said. Polite. Terse.
His father glanced at him.
And Amy saw clearly a whole gamut of emotions going through the elder Halliday’s eyes. Pride. And something deeper than pain. Sorrow.
How could Ty be like this? So stubborn? So indifferent to the pain he was causing people?
What had happened between this father and son? And was there any chance, any chance at all, that maybe she could help fix it? So that they all could experience a Christmas miracle?
CHAPTER SEVEN
“WHAT happened to your dad?” Amy asked.
The horses were more eager to get home than they had been to leave, and it was necessary to have a firm hand on the reins to keep them in check. The snow was falling lightly again, too.
Ty glanced at her. He was aware that she hadn’t wanted to leave his dad and Beth, aware of the reproving look she had cast at him when he’d refused lunch.
His father had worked his charm on her. The old bastard could be charming when he set his mind to it. He�
�d never been short of female companionship.
“He’s an old-style cowboy,” Ty said, stripping his voice of any emotion. “They bronced out horses. Throw a saddle on a green colt, let him buck it out, put it to work right away, work the knots out as you go. It’s dumb. And dangerous. But you could never tell my dad anything. He knew it all. And then one day he met a horse who had more buck than he had stick.”
“It must be very hard on a man who lived like that to make the adjustment to being in a wheelchair,” Amy said.
Her voice begged him to show some sympathy.
Instead, he just shrugged.
“What’s wrong between you two, Ty?”
Her voice was so soft, her eyes so warm. Inviting him to lay it at her feet. Inviting him to share his burdens.
He had seen that word wish peeking out from the dark green of Beth’s wreath.
And he was aware, in a very short time, that’s what Amy had done to his world. Breathed life into a wish he thought he had managed to kill a long time ago.
With her Christmas tree and her filling his house with the smells of baking, with her enthusiasm to try new things, with her soft voice, and her wit and her intelligence, and her unguarded tenderness toward the baby, she was making him wish for a different life.
But he’d done that when he was a kid. Wished and wished and wished.
Around Christmas, he had wished even harder. There was magic in the air. And joy. Unexpected gifts. In these country communities, Christmas was a big deal. Community events, baking marathons, sleigh rides, home decorating contests, neighbors gathering, tables groaning under the weight of food.
He and his father had always been included in everything. They had so many invitations for Christmas dinner they were always left with a hard choice of where to go.
But instead of soothing him, being included in other people’s family Christmases had only made Ty more aware of his own lack, so aware of the warmth and good cheer that other people’s families brought them.
And so he had wished harder.
But his wishes had never come true. And then, the night his father had given him that pack of letters, when he was seventeen, that place in him that had fostered hope had died.
Or at least he thought it had.
Now he could clearly see that an ember of that hope had remained. He could clearly see that Amy could fan it back to life.
But he had no desire to have it live again, to be open to the world of pain and disappointment that empty wishes brought.
“Amy,” he said, his voice deliberately cold, “don’t go there.”
She flinched as if he had slapped her, and he wanted to take it back. He wanted to tell her everything.
But it felt like a weakness.
And there was no room for weakness in a world without hope. None at all. And yet he found the recrimination in her eyes hard to bear. Maybe if he showed her those letters and told her all of it, maybe then she would get it.
He hazarded a glance at her. Jamey was fast asleep, snuggled into her breast.
Amy was a picture of softness.
She was looking at the world, snow falling again, the steam coming from the horses’ nostrils in giant puffs, with a certain rapt attention, as if it was all miraculous.
“There’s absolutely no chance I’m going to get away before Christmas, is there?” she asked, worried.
Maybe she was getting it after all, figuring out she was going to be spending Christmas with him, and that he was hard-hearted and a Christmas grinch, and it wasn’t going to be much fun at all.
“It doesn’t look like it,” he said.
“Then I have a lot to do to get ready,” she said. “Tomorrow is Christmas Eve!”
He saw he had misread her worry. It wasn’t about having Christmas with him. It was about making Christmas what she wanted it to be. She was determined to have Christmas wherever she was.
“Don’t get too uptight about it,” he said. “It’s just another day.”
“No, Ty,” she said firmly. “It isn’t.”
He dropped her off at the house, carrying the baby in for her. And then he took the horses down to the barn. It didn’t take him long to get them unharnessed, and to do his evening chores.
It didn’t take him long at all, and yet when he came back the transformation of his house had already started.
“Ty, before you take your coat off, could you go cut me some boughs? I’d love to bring the scent in here. I can make a simple centerpiece for the table with tree boughs and a candle.”
Tell her no, Ty ordered himself. But he found he couldn’t. It wasn’t as if it was her choice to be here. She was stuck here. She wanted to make the best of it. For her baby.
Heaving a big sigh, Ty went back outside and began cutting boughs.
“I didn’t need that many,” she said when he came back in.
Nonetheless, she looked delighted as she spread out the boughs on the kitchen counter and began to sort through them.
“Do you smell them, Ty?” she asked, smiling over her shoulder.
“Yeah.”
“Take off your coat. Come help me. Darn this burned hand. I can’t do anything.”
Again, he knew he should say no. For his own self-preservation, it seemed imperative.
But he didn’t want to be the one to put out the light in her face. And it was true. She was going to need his help.
If she had enough time with him, he would eventually manage to snuff out her light, he was sure. But for right now, why not just be the better man? Reach deep inside and make it not about him, but about her and Jamey?
“Okay,” he said gruffly. “Show me what to do.”
And as she showed him, something in him relaxed. He allowed her enthusiasm to touch him. And then, he gave himself over to it.
They decorated the house with boughs until the scent filled every corner. Then they ate, bathed the baby, read bedtime stories together, the baby between them on the narrow bed in the guest room grabbing at pages.
When Jamey was finally in bed, she started ticking things off on her fingers. “So, Christmas Eve. I want to make a gingerbread house. I want that to be one of Jamey’s and my traditions. His grandmother, Cynthia, makes the most gorgeous gingerbread creations. Last year, we did a little village together. Maybe I should start the gingerbread tonight.” She glanced at the clock, worried that she was running out of time.
“I am pretty sure there is nothing in my kitchen to make a gingerbread house, never mind a gingerbread village.”
“Oh, I brought everything I need.”
“Where the heck did you hide the trailer you must have hauled behind that car to get all your stuff here?”
“I’m very organized. I have a talent for spatial relationships. I bet I could figure out how to get an elephant inside that car if I had to.”
“Let’s hope you never have to,” he said deadpan.
“We could be done in an hour. The cookie part. And then it will be cool enough to cut it and make the house tomorrow.”
“I don’t want to make gingerbread.” A man had to put his foot down, or he’d be swept up in her world before he quite knew what had hit him. The truth was, he didn’t want to make gingerbread tonight. Or tomorrow, either. A gingerbread village? No thanks to that much Christmas hokiness.
“I could probably do it myself,” she said, but doubtfully, glaring down at her wrapped hand with accusation. “I will do it myself.”
“Oh, never mind. I’ll give you a hand.” It was a surrender.
“You will?”
“One house. No village.” But not a complete surrender.
They were not done in an hour. His cranky oven burned the first batch of gingerbread black. Finally, the gingerbread, perfect and golden-brown, was coolin
g on his kitchen counter.
“There,” Amy said, satisfied. “I’m out of your hair. Do whatever you would normally do. Pretend I’m not here.”
Good idea. He went into the living room, settled in his chair and picked up his book.
His house smelled overpoweringly of pine boughs and gingerbread. There was a Christmas tree in his living room. And baby toys all over the floor.
And then there was Amy, sitting across from him, looking out the window. “Still snowing.”
“Uh-huh.” He scrunched lower in his chair, furrowed his brow. But try as he might, he could not pretend she wasn’t there. And who knew when he might have an opportunity like this again?
“What the heck is a dactylic hexameter?”
She looked thoughtful. “I have no idea.”
And then they were both laughing.
“I always read two books at once,” he told her. “One that’s really hard, and one for pure enjoyment.”
She came and sat beside him, and he read a few passages of the epic poem to her.
She wrinkled her nose. “Could we try the pure enjoyment one?”
“I’m so happy you asked,” he said, and then he went and got Lonesome Dove and read her his favorite part of that. And somehow they were talking and talking and talking, and they fell asleep on the couch with her head nestled against his chest.
He woke up to her stirring against him.
She opened her eyes, looked at him groggily, and then smiled the most beautiful smile he had ever seen.
“It’s Christmas Eve,” she said, as round-eyed and full of wonder as a child.
“Technically, that would be tonight.”
She thumped him on his chest with her small fist, a good-natured reprimand.
“We have so much to do! We have to make the gingerbread house. Jamey will love helping with that.” Suddenly, she went very still. “Do you have a turkey? That should come out of the freezer today.”
“I don’t have a turkey. Sorry.”
“A chicken, then?”
“Sorry, my freezer is full of what I raise, which is beef.”