“You rode here?”
He smiled. “Mmm. I take it you’re staying at Oak River Plantation?”
She nodded.
“Enjoying yourself?”
“It’s beautiful.”
“But are you enjoying yourself?”
She laughed and admitted, “Well, yes. So far.”
“It’s quite remote,” he commented.
She smiled shyly, and nodded again. “Very remote.”
He rose suddenly, abruptly, realizing that she was still sitting on the cold ground and he had been leaning over her—preventing her from rising. He helped her to her feet, brushing pine needles from her hair and clothing. Then he stepped back, not at all awkwardly. He looked her over from head to toe, dark eyes alight with a mischief that brought a smile to her lips. Oh, God, she was flirting. She didn’t mean to be flirting. This guy was very good-looking, and she was glad to find a friend near her own age here—okay, so he was probably more of an adult, but…
“What’s your name?” he asked her.
“Christie. Christie Radcliff.”
He swept his hat from his head and bowed deeply. “How do you do, Christie. Christie Radcliff. I’m Aaron Wainscott. And now that I know your name, let’s see what else I can tell you. Umm… you’re here with your folks. You’re not terribly pleased to be here with your folks because it’s Christmastime and you should be with your friends. Ah… a special friend. Are you engaged to be married?”
Christie laughed. “You must be joking. I can’t even get my folks to acknowledge him.”
“Ah, but to you, he’s very important. It’s quite serious.”
“And I’ll be eighteen before too long.”
“And you think that will solve everything?”
Christie frowned. “It will give me my independence.”
He crossed his arms over his chest, and his look was just a bit superior then.
He couldn’t possibly have been more than three or four years older than she was, and she resented his air of patronizing maturity, no matter how cute and charming he might be.
“The heart is never really independent,” he said.
“No, but when the heart and the mind have made the right choice, being an independent age is important,” she assured him with firm dignity.
His lashes lowered over his eyes, then he looked toward the gravestones once again. “Well, Christie, I can tell you that even being right doesn’t always mean you’re going to feel good about your choices.” He looked at her again.
Christie arched a brow to him. “You’ve got great parents, Aaron. I can’t imagine fighting with either of them.”
“That’s because they’re not your parents. But trust me, turning your back on people you love isn’t the answer. Compromise is the better way. Understanding is best.”
“Oh?” she queried. “And what dire mistake did you make? I mean, you and your folks must get along, since you’re here. I take it that you grew up at your parents’ own Oak River Plantation?”
He smiled. “I did. But I left Oak River Plantation. And the circumstances weren’t good. And now… well, sometimes you don’t have the time to make things up the way you’d like to.”
Christie was puzzled by the depth of emotion that seemed to dwell beneath the lightness of his speech.
“It’s Christmastime, and you’re here,” she told him softly. “With your folks.”
“It’s Christmastime, and I’m here,” he agreed. “I’m always home for Christmas. Hey, I guess you’d better get going. I hear them calling you,” he said.
“I don’t hear—” she began, but then she did. She heard her mother’s voice.
Concerned.
“Mothers!” she sighed.
He laughed, and whistled. To Christie’s chagrin, Shenandoah meekly trotted over. “Let me give you a hand,” Aaron Wainscott said, and smiling again, he helped her up. “Go on, catch up,” he told her.
Seated atop Shenandoah, she looked down at him. “Why don’t you come ride with us?” she asked.
He shook his head. “Can’t right now.”
“Will you be around?”
He offered her a crooked grin. “Well, I’ll be in this general vicinity tomorrow. And I’m always at the Christmas Eve dance.”
“The dance?”
He nodded gravely. “We have a huge ball every Christmas Eve, and everyone comes. You’ll enjoy it. But if you want to talk… ride out tomorrow,” he invited.
Christie nodded. She heard her mother calling again, and started Shenandoah moving along the trail.
Julie, her face drawn with concern, was riding toward her. “Christie, sweetheart, are you all right?”
“Of course!” Christie said. She felt slightly embarrassed; Jesse Wainscott was riding right behind her mother. She felt like a small child. She forced a smile for their host, thinking all the while that she should have recognized his son right away—they looked incredibly alike. “I just met Aaron, Mr. Wainscott.”
“Ah!” Jesse said.
“Aaron?” Julie queried.
“My son,” Jesse told her.
“Oh,” Julie murmured. “How nice. How old is he?”
“Twenty,” Jesse said.
“I tried to get him to join us,” Christie said.
“But he couldn’t,” Jesse told her.
“Right.”
“Well, we should get on,” Jesse said.
“Perhaps we should look for your son—” Julie began.
“He’ll be around,” Jesse said firmly. “We need to be getting on back. Darkness comes quickly here.”
They started riding again. Julie fell back next to Christie. She glanced at her daughter speculatively.
“Is he attractive?” she whispered to Christie.
“Very,” Christie assured her.
Christie could almost see the wheels turning in her mother’s mind. Get Christie interested in another boy. Let her see that the sun doesn’t rise and fall on Jamie Rodriguez.
“Nowhere near as attractive as Jamie,” Christie said pleasantly; then she couldn’t help but smile at her mother, “Still, I did enjoy meeting him.”
Julie smiled ruefully. “Good. Too bad he wouldn’t come with us. And how strange. I wonder…” Her voice trailed away.
Christie leaned toward her. “You wonder if maybe the Wainscotts may not be somewhat dysfunctional, just as it seems we are?”
“All families have their problems, Christie.”
“Yeah, but…”
“But what?”
Christie shrugged. “But even when the Wainscotts aren’t together, it seems…”
“What?”
Christie shrugged, remembering what Aaron had been telling her. Understanding was best, he had said. Not just independence.
When she turned eighteen, she’d have the legal right to tell her parents to go to hell. But was it something that she really wanted to do?
Sometimes, yes.
When they were so pigheaded.
“Even when the Wainscotts aren’t together, what?” Julie repeated.
“I think they love one another,” she said. Then she felt awkward. She hadn’t meant that she didn’t love her mother. It was just that the obstacles in her family all seemed immense. No one understood anyone else. They all just lived separate lives.
And waited.
For what?
Time. Time to take care of all the ills among them.
“Ashley’s up there kind of alone,” she muttered, feeling her mother’s eyes on hers. She couldn’t express anything that she was feeling.
She nudged Shenandoah and moved on ahead.
As she did so, she had to smile. Ashley. That little rascal. She was laughing at something JesseWainscott had said. Her laughter was fresh and light and real.
It sounded like silver bells and almost made it feel like Christmas.
It was a different kind of vacation, because they didn’t just dismount from their horses and go running back to the house
for cocktail hour or hot cocoa.
Jesse showed them all around the stables, pointing out where saddles, blankets, and bridles went, and where brushes and grooming equipment were kept.
He gave Julie a hand, showing her how to brush down her horse, then went on to Christie and Ashley.
Julie had to admit to being a little bit surprised by the task—it was a bed-and-breakfast, but she’d rather assumed there might be more help about—but after five minutes of brushing her horse, she discovered that she was talking to the animal. Soothingly.
And the grooming movements, repetitious, physical, slow, were somehow as soothing as the ridiculous sound of her own voice. In her own little stable with her own fairly large horse, she realized that she was happy. No distant sound of traffic could be heard; she could hear her kids—each with his or her mount—apparently enjoying the task as much as she was.
Ashley and little Midget were having one hell of a conversation. Ashley, who carried on with her dolls frequently enough, had no difficulty at all carrying on quite a dialogue with a creature that at least snorted in reply now and then.
Julie smiled, listening, and finished brushing Strawberry. The roan tossed her head and gazed at Julie with her big brown eyes, as if contemplating her with curious concern.
Julie patted her neck and came out of the stall. Darkness had fallen; she didn’t see Jesse Wainscott anywhere, but she could hear the children still busy in the different stalls.
“Ashley?” she called.
“She’s with me, Mom,” Christie replied.
Ashley giggled.
“We’re braiding Midget’s mane,” Ashley told her.
“I don’t know if Mr. Wainscott would appreciate that,” Julie warned.
“He said it was okay,” Jordan said, sticking his head out from the last stall, where the kids were together now with Midget. Jordan wasn’t braiding; he’d doled out grain, and now he was just sitting in the hay in the corner, watching his sisters.
“Well, I’m going up to the house to take a bath,” Julie said.
“Sure, Mom,” Christie said.
“Come back soon; you’ll need to wash up for dinner.”
“Right,” Christie said.
“Don’t forget and leave Ashley out here alone,” Julie said.
Christie eyed her. “Mom, I won’t.”
“I’ll be with them both,” Jordan informed her.
Julie nodded and turned to leave them at last.
She was glad to see her offspring getting along so well together.
Yet it was strange to feel…
As if they didn’t need her at all. As if they could be complete with just themselves.
“Much better than them fighting like cats and dogs,” she muttered aloud as she headed back for the house.
And still…
A heaviness weighed her down. A guilt.
They had banded together with one another because their parents were so miserable they had no other choice.
She shook off the thought.
The night could be incredibly dark way out here.
The light from the house beckoned with a warm glow and she hurried for it, moving faster with every step. When she reached the porch, she ran up the stairs, feeling just a little bit like a fool for spooking herself.
She opened the front door and stepped into the foyer, stamping her feet on the rug and slipping from her jacket and gloves, stuffing her gloves into the jacket pocket. “Hello?” she called, coming into the house.
There was no response, but when she moved into the parlor, a fire was burning away in bright, cheerful yellows, gold, and oranges. A pleasant smell pervaded the room, and Julie smiled. In a pot cast over the fire by an iron arm and hook, wine was mulling. The scent of cinnamon in the air was incredibly inviting. Stoneware mugs were set upon a little covered stool right by the fireplace, along with a dipper and tray.
It appeared she was welcome to help herself to the wine. She did so, thinking it would be delightful to sip the brew while sinking into a hot tub.
Mug in hand, she called out another Hello, but no one seemed to be about, so she took her wine upstairs, laid out some clean clothes, and fixed the hot bath she’d been contemplating. She set the mug of wine next to her, sank into the water, and luxuriated.
Hands in his pockets, Jon ambled back along the path to the house. He looked up at the sky, observing the various constellations. It was a very pretty night sky, the heavens like a backdrop of black satin, the stars twinkling against it like so many diamonds. The snow, too, remained crystalline and beautiful, having piled and drifted in various areas and cleared completely in others, without becoming muddy or dirty as it did in the cities.
He passed by an old oak at the front of the property and was surprised to see two men standing beneath it. They were in heavy winter coats and their hats were pulled low. One was lighting a worn-looking clay pipe.
“Evening,” the gray-bearded elder of the two greeted him.
“Good evening,” Jon replied. The two looked at him somewhat expectantly, so he paused. “Nice night.”
“Fine night, yessir,” the younger said. “Getting closer to Christmas. Closer and closer. It’s going to be a perfect one.”
“I agree,” Jon said. “A little powder-white snow on the ground, crisp and cool without being killer-cold.”
“Yep,” the older man said.
“You men from hereabouts?” Jon asked.
The older man arched a brow to the younger. “Well,” he said to Jon, “not originally, but then, it feels as if I’ve been here quite some time now.”
“Where are you from, friend?” the younger man asked.
“Miami area,” Jon said. To his surprise, they both stared at him blankly.
Surely with its recent reputation for things both bad and good, everyone had heard of Miami.
“South Florida,” Jon said.
“Southern boy,” the older man said to the younger.
The younger nodded.
“Well, if you can consider South Florida Southern,” Jon said dryly. The men just stared at him, not seeming to comprehend his comment in the least. “Well, you know, we’ve a great percentage of Latin Americans in the area, and so many snowbirds you wouldn’t believe it.”
“Snowbirds?” the older man queried.
Jon had to smile. Okay, so they were out in the sticks. “Snowbirds—northerners transplanted to the South,” he explained.
“Oh.” The men looked at one another with sudden understanding.
They were definitely a little weird, but he found them entertaining after his solitary day.
He hadn’t imagined he’d be quite so alone. He’d assumed that Clarissa Wainscott would eventually appear. Or a housemaid.
A gardener.
Anyone.
But the early afternoon had come and gone, and finally, he’d started out walking. He’d walked a very long way, and it had been great; it had felt wonderful just to walk outside and keep on going and going. He thought once about encountering a car or a mugger—which he didn’t have to worry about in the gym, but then, there was no fresh air in the gym, either. And it wasn’t that he didn’t love his home; he did. Except that, of course, it seemed they never had time for the things they loved. He wanted a boat in the worst way, his own. And if he didn’t get his own, he’d like to at least get out on the water more often. Play in the sun. Sun, of course, being among the millions of things that were bad for you these days. But that was all right; he didn’t mind bathing in lotion first. It just seemed that he never did the things he wanted to do at home, never took the time.
Yes, walking was great. Seeing his breath before his face.
But walking hadn’t been everything that he’d hoped. Plenty of time to think, but the same thoughts just kept revolving around and around. It seemed that he was a fool, just trying to hold on, when he and Julie were at an impasse. Still, he’d been right about Christmas, right about this time for the kids. They hadn’t even bee
n here twenty-four hours, but this morning, just this morning, had been special. Making a snowman with his kids. Such a simple thing.
Lots of guys living in the North would have that opportunity all the time. And they wouldn’t take it, he reflected. They’d be like him at home. Caught up in the rat race, a rat like all the others. So it was good to be here. Even if, walking in the snow, as glad as he was of the air and the trees and just moving and being alive, he realized it didn’t always mean so much to have quiet, and peace. Talking would be nice. Having someone to listen to him.
And since he hadn’t seen another living soul all damned day, meeting the two somewhat strange fellows by the oak tree was at least contact with other human beings.
But maybe somebody was back at the house by now. He had a sudden craving to see someone he knew a little better.
His kids.
Julie.
Maybe Julie’d had a great time with the kids as well. And maybe she’d be even colder to him, more convinced than ever that it was over.
It wouldn’t be so bad, he told himself. If they both took a big step backward, maybe all the anger and bitterness could fade away.
“Well, it was nice meeting you—” Jon began, even if they hadn’t actually met.
“You staying at Oak River Plantation?” the older man asked.
“Yeah.”
“Then we’ll see you again. Christmas Eve.”
“Really?”
“The Wainscotts throw a great party. Every Christmas Eve. We all get together,” the younger man said.
“And let bygones be bygones,” the older agreed.
“Well… great,” Jon said. “See you then.”
He dug his hands into his pockets and started on down the last of the trail toward the house.
Her bath was great.
The water was very hot.
The tub was a huge, old, deep thing.
No one was yelling.
No music blared.
She was very tired and sore, but in a wonderful way. The hot water worked over weary muscles. The wine seemed to ease into her blood. It was heaven. It was peace.
Yet as the water cooled at last, it was suddenly a bit too lonely.
How strange. She craved time alone so often. Now she had it. In complete comfort. And she wanted people. Her family.
She emerged from the tub, dressed, brushed her hair, and still heard no activity upstairs. Freshly clad in a denim jumper, she came down the stairs, knowing she’d feel just a bit spooked if the house was still empty.
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