by Jessie Evans
“Lula, please, don’t go,” he called out. “Come back!”
But Lula was already halfway down the street. She ran until she reached the front gate of Tea for Two and rushed through her small front garden, letting herself into the dark shop and locking the door behind her. Upstairs in her apartment, she threw herself on her bed and cried until her eyes felt like they were turning inside out, waiting for Carter’s voice to sound from below her bedroom window. But he never came, and eventually Lula fell into a restless, miserable sleep.
The next morning, she woke to the sound of the phone ringing. It was her mother, telling her that Aunt Louise had suffered a heart attack on her porch the night before. She’d passed away en route to the hospital. Apparently, catching the Gnome Thief in the act had been too much for the old woman’s heart.
Sick with guilt, Lula hung up and called Carter, needing to share the terrible news with him, no matter how angry or hurt she was. But Carter didn’t answer the phone, and when she drove to his apartment near the highway, his roommates said he’d packed his things and blown out of town, leaving no forwarding address.
By the time Lula took her seat at Aunt Louise’s funeral a few days later, she’d given up hope of seeing Carter again. He’d abandoned her, taking all the enchantment with him and leaving her to shoulder the shame and guilt of killing her poor aunt all on her own.
As she watched Louise’s casket being lowered into the cold ground, Lula made a solemn vow. From that moment on, her wild side was a thing of the past. There was no room in her life for magic or whimsy or handsome men who made her believe in forever, only to disappear without a trace. She was done with that nonsense.
The foolish, flighty, naïve part of her was going into the grave with her great aunt, and it would never be seen or heard from again.
CHAPTER ONE
Present Day
Lula
It was the holiday season again in Lonesome Point, and the sunny world outside Lula’s window sparkled in the cool winter air. Garlands of bright red and green hung across Main Street, The Blue Saloon Hotel was decked out in giant wreaths and bright red bunting that made the old building look like it was smiling, and people were already setting up chairs in the square to watch the Lonesome Point Elementary School Christmas Pageant, due to start in an hour.
Mothers and fathers cuddled their toddlers, bundled up against the unusually cold day. Older folks cupped mittened hands around their coffees, and young couples stole kisses under the mistletoe when they thought no one was looking. The scene begged Lula to break out into “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas.” Instead, she drew her curtains with a shwoop and returned to icing the cookies on her kitchen counter with a scowl.
Christmas. Bah. Humbug.
If she were a less driven business owner, she would close down Tea for Two from December twenty-first to January second and disappear to an isolated island in the Pacific, where nothing would remind her of her least favorite time of year. But Lula wasn’t the sort who tucked tail and ran. She was the kind of woman who kept her chin up, her upper lip stiff, and soldiered through the misery of the holidays without flinching. She planned a cookie exchange that grew larger and more involved every year and threw herself into preparations for the annual gathering with the enthusiasm of a holiday-a-holic.
No one in Lonesome Point realized that she loathed every minute of icing cookies and decorating the three Christmas trees that graced the corners of Tea for Two, and that’s the way it was going to stay. Lula’s misery was private, like the rest of her emotions. Let her flighty younger cousin, Mia, run around, spreading holiday cheer, and crying every time she heard a choir sing “Oh Holy Night.”
After applying the finishing touches to her sugar cookies, Lula placed the treats neatly into twenty-five identical holiday tins, washed her hands, and dressed in her dark green drop waist dress and black tights. She took a moment to spray a few flyaway hairs back into the chignon at the nape of her neck, brushed on the mascara she wore only on special occasions, and picked up her tube of First Blush lipstick, only to put it immediately back down again.
There was no point in putting on lipstick, only to spend time scrubbing it off of her best china later. She’d waste enough time cleaning up the rest of the ladies’ lipstick smudges after they left. Besides, no one noticed the way Lula looked. She faded into the background like the antique rose wallpaper downstairs, adding to the complete picture of Tea for Two, but taken for granted as a piece of the whole.
She’d only recently celebrated her thirty-third birthday—with a snifter of brandy and a small splurge on crafting supplies. But Lula had been a fixture downtown for thirteen years. People were so used to seeing her puttering in her garden or bustling around in her shop that they took her for granted. She had been the spinster who served tea and made dolls long before her thirtieth birthday, and to the town of Lonesome Point, that’s who she would be until the day she died.
And that was just fine. Lula had stopped longing for a young woman’s life or dreaming a young woman’s dreams years ago. She was content with being overlooked, and rarely felt rancor about being branded a workaholic with a creepy doll fetish.
It was only at Christmas that resentment rose inside of her. It was only when sleigh bells rang and carolers sang that discontent whispered inside her heart, telling her it wasn’t too late to make a change.
“Hmph,” she grunted softly as she stepped into her sensible black boots, ignoring the heeled Mary Janes she’d bought a few days ago, when she’d been browsing in the shoe store and listening to the voice of temptation.
She didn’t really want to change; she wanted her simple, steady life, and as soon as the holiday nonsense was over, everything would be back to normal. She could stop sulking over her morning coffee, stop staring out the window at the bright winter days with a weight on her chest, and stop waking in the night with tears on her cheeks and the memory of one man’s kiss on her lips. She would forget all the pain and longing for another year, and the world would keep on turning, one day weaving its way into the next in the tightly knit, sensible tapestry of her life.
With a final glance around her apartment, making sure the stove and lights were off, and the miniature Christmas tree was twinkling in the living room window, assuring passersby that no Scrooges were in residence here, she started downstairs to finish her last minute preparations for the party.
By the time the guests began to arrive, Lula had cider warming in the Crock-Pot, carafes of hot chocolate and coffee on every table, old-time Christmas music piping through Tea for Two’s speakers, and a smile fixed on her face. No one would ever guess that she secretly loathed this event with a passion she usually reserved for people who let their dogs poo on the sidewalk.
“Lula, so good to see you!” Her cousin Mia set down her overflowing duffle bag and pulled Lula into a hug.
Lula went stiffly, embracing her shorter cousin efficiently, trying not to cringe at the feel of Mia’s softly rounded stomach pressing against hers.
Of course, Mia would get pregnant within a few months of getting married to a man she’d met barely six months ago before she had any idea if this romance was going to last. Her cousin had more enthusiasm than sense, but Lula didn’t try to reason with Mia anymore. Some people were a lost cause, and all you could do was include them in your prayers before you went to sleep.
“Merry Christmas, and thank you again for hosting the exchange,” Mia said, brown eyes shining as she took off her coat and hung it on the coat tree. “I look forward to it every year, but especially this year. My sweet tooth is as out of control as my hormones.” She broke off with a wide grin and waved at someone over Lula’s shoulder. “Betty! How are you, sugar?”
Mia moved deeper into the room, red curls bobbing as she hurried to embrace another guest.
Lula was left to move Mia’s duffle bag full of cookies out of the way before another guest tripped over them on their way inside. With a sigh, she lugged the bag to
the cookie table, wrinkling her nose in distaste when she saw that Mia had tied up the cellophane on her cookie packages with red and green G-string panties. Her cousin did run a lingerie shop, but it was disgusting to put panties and food so close together, even if the panties had never been worn.
She was considering accidentally losing Mia’s bag of peanut butter fudge cookies behind one of the Christmas trees, when the delivery door buzzer rang. She frowned. She never scheduled deliveries on Saturday, but maybe one of the guests had decided to come in through the back door.
Leaving Mia’s embarrassing offering on the table—it was her cousin who would have to deal with the raised eyebrows after all—she hurried through the stockroom toward the rear of the shop.
She plastered a welcoming smile on her face, but on the inside she was mentally counting down how many minutes she would have to wait before starting the games. She wasn’t thinking about long-forgotten hurts or men with broad shoulders and melted chocolate eyes. She wasn’t thinking about dreams placed on a shelf or love letters locked away in a box with no key. She wasn’t expecting anything out of the ordinary, but that’s why unexpected things are called surprises.
Though surprised was a pale word to describe the way Lula felt when she opened her door to find one of Aunt Louise’s holiday garden gnomes sitting on her back stoop, with a sticky note on its chest that simply read, “For L.J.”
Lula’s stomach bottomed out and her mouth filled with a sour, bitter taste like a lemon drop dipped in battery acid.
No one had ever called her L.J. but him, the man she’d never expected to see again. Carter was part of her past, as dead and buried as Aunt Louise and her favorite gnome, “Santa’s Little Helper,” who had gone into her casket with her.
Now, Lula felt like she was being pulled from her own grave, kicking and screaming, begging to be allowed to rest in peace. She didn’t want this to be real. She couldn’t imagine what it would be like to have him back in town after eleven long years.
It was too much, so overwhelming she couldn’t seem to draw in a deep breath, couldn’t stop her heart from slamming frantically against her ribs or her head from spinning.
Tallulah Josephine Watson was not the sort of woman who swooned, but on that bright and sunny day in December, she did just that, crumpling to the ground outside her back door, one long arm coming to rest inches from a Christmas gnome’s feet.
CHAPTER TWO
Carter
Carter Bryce wasn’t the man he’d been eleven years ago—the boy he’d been, a stupid kid who thought he had the world figured out.
After the hell he’d been through in Somalia, the sickness that had almost killed him, and the last year and a half in Alaska—burning through the last of his savings to cover his dying father’s medical bills—Carter was smart enough to realize he didn’t know shit. The world was a big, complicated, sad, and beautiful place and he was never going to get the best of it. The most he could hope for was to come to peace with it, to make the most of the life he’d been given, and to have the strength to admit when he was wrong.
And he’d never been more wrong than the dark winter night he’d packed up his old Ford Bronco, driven out of Lonesome Point, and left Lula behind.
He’d been all over the world, kissed women in the shadows of the pyramids and in the secret tunnels beneath Paris, where there was still treasure and danger to be found if a man knew where to look. He’d even played at being in love once or twice. But play was all it had been—a pretty lie to keep him from admitting he’d screwed up his one chance at the real thing.
Some people fell in and out of love a hundred times, but for Carter there was only one girl who had ever had his heart, one girl with mysterious green eyes, graceful hands, and a laugh that danced through his dreams, making him wake up longing to hear her voice one more time.
And now, he’d hurt her all over again.
Carter raced to Lula as she crumpled to the ground, her head hitting the concrete with a dull thud. He’d worried that she would slam the door on his offering or kick it down the steps. He’d never imagined she would faint.
As he lifted her gently in his arms, turning her over to reveal a red trail trickling down her temple, staining her pale cheek, a wave of self-hatred swept through him. He’d thought he was finally finished making mistakes. Clearly, he was only getting started.
But at least now he wasn’t too proud to ask for help.
Scooping Lula’s limp form into his arms, he hurried through the sparsely furnished office room and stock area into the tea shop where he and Lula had first met. He expected customers would be seated at the tables and had planned to ask one of them to call 911 since he’d left his phone at the hotel. But he burst into the room to find a crowd of enthusiastically chatting women, dressed for a party.
The moment the women spotted unconscious Lula, the conversation came to a screeching halt and twenty pairs of incredulous female eyes turned to take his measure, obviously trying to sort out whether he was the hero in this scene or the villain.
In truth, he was both, but confessing he was the reason Lula had fainted wasn’t going to get her help any faster.
“She passed out when she answered the back door,” he said. “She hit her head on the concrete. Can someone call 911?”
“Lay her down on the counter,” said a deep, feminine voice from the back of the room. A moment later a woman in a reindeer sweater separated herself from the crowd. “I’m a doctor. I’ll check her out while Mia calls the ambulance.”
Carter hurried to the counter, laying Lula gently on the shining white tiles as the other women moved canisters of cookies and biscotti to make room for her legs. She looked beautiful but so thin and frail, like the girl he’d known had been squeezed between two brick walls until all the softness was pressed out of her. She was more than pale. She was bloodless—a statue made of marble that would never breathe, laugh, or love again.
Carter was trying not to take the sight of the woman he loved, lying still as a corpse, as a bad omen when the doctor—a petite woman whose head barely reached his bicep—shot him a stern look and shooed him out of her way.
“You shouldn’t have moved her,” she said as her fingers felt along Lula’s pale throat. “Never move an unconscious person unnecessarily.”
Carter opened his mouth to apologize, but before he could explain that he’d been too worried to think clearly, Lula began to stir.
Her smooth forehead furrowed, and a moment later her green eyes flickered open. “What happened?” she asked in that same, velvety voice he remembered, making his heart jerk in his chest.
“You fainted and hit your head,” the doctor said, laying a hand on Lula’s shoulder when she tried to sit up. “Lie still for a little longer and let’s make sure you’re okay. Were you having chest pain or shortness of breath before you lost consciousness?”
Lula made an incredulous sound. “No, nothing like that.”
“I’m still on hold with 911.” The curvy redhead Carter was surprised to realize was Lula’s much younger cousin, Mia—the gangly teen he’d met a few times when he and Lula were dating—held up her phone. “Do we still need the ambulance?”
“No, don’t call the ambulance. I’m fine.” Lula blinked, her long lashes feathering against her cheeks. “I don’t know what happened. I had the strangest…” She trailed off, paling further until the only vestige of color on her face was the pale pink of her lips.
Carter’s pulse hammered as he watched Lula’s head turn in slow motion. His eyes finally connected with hers across the crowded room and the air grew so thick with shock and pain that Carter couldn’t pull in a deep breath.
He’d been a fool to think he could fix this with a simple explanation. He would have to humble himself completely to have a shot at getting past the shields he could see dropping into place behind L.J.’s eyes. Before he could second guess his instincts, Carter crossed the room in three long steps and took Lula’s slim hand in his.
&n
bsp; “I’m so sorry for leaving, Lu. Sorry doesn’t even begin to cut it. It’s my biggest regret, and I’ve done a lot of things worth regretting,” he said, pushing on when her eyes widened in disbelief. “Obviously, I’m off to a terrible start with this, but if you give me a second chance, I’ll prove to you I’m not the fool I was before.”
He leaned down, pressing a kiss to her cheek, his heart breaking when he smelled her sweet, wild rose and smoky tea scent; the smell that had haunted him his entire adult life. Every time he passed a tea shop or a rose garden, Lula danced through his mind, her long arms twisting above her head the way they had when the two of them used to go dancing. She had been so beautiful back then, so uninhibited and full of joy and so his.
And he’d let it all slip away, putting himself through hell instead of clinging tight to the piece of heaven he’d been lucky enough to hold in his arms.
But now Lula was here, so close, her breath warming his cheek as she exhaled. It couldn’t be too late for them, not when every cell in his body was crying out that this was where he belonged.
He pulled back to look into Lula’s eyes, his pulse pounding and his chest aching, silently praying that she’d felt the surge of connection, too. “What do you say?” he asked softly.
Lula’s lips parted, then pressed together, parted and pressed together again. But she didn’t say a word, and her cloudy green eyes remained closed against him, keeping her secrets. Meanwhile, the stunned silence that had followed in the wake of his declaration stretched on, making Carter increasingly aware of their audience.
He cleared his throat. “Maybe I could come back tonight and talk some more? When you’re feeling better?”
Lula blinked up at him before slowly nodding her head yes, loosening the vice that had been crushing his ribs.
“Thank you,” he said, breath rushing out. “I’ll be back at six, and I’ll bring supper. I’ll see you then.” He turned, touching the brim of his Stetson to the other women, before bolting for the front door at what he hoped was a reasonable speed.