He held her and she listened to his heartbeat, knowing she didn’t want to be anywhere else in the world except right here. “You are the right man, Ruben. Good, decent, caring. The kind of man I think I’ve finally managed to convince myself I deserve. More than that, the kind of man I need.”
This time, she kissed him and the fierce emotion in his eyes was all the answer she needed.
They kissed for a long time, until they were on the sofa, wrapped together under the throw she had brought over. The snow was falling gently outside the window and she could see the Christmas tree he had helped set up gleaming through the night from her house next door.
He had brought light and color to her world, in so many ways.
“I can’t stay,” she said with deep regret. “I have to get back to the girls.”
“I know.” He kissed her again then stood up and pulled her to her feet, rearranging the sweater he had been in the process of tangling.
He wrapped the woven throw back around her shoulders with a soft tenderness that stole her heart all over again. “I love you, Daniela Capelli.”
She laughed a little. “Nobody calls me Daniela. How did you even know that’s my full name?”
“My dad mentioned it long before you came here. He told me years ago he had met a lovely veterinary student with a beautiful name to match. I could never have imagined during that passing conversation that one day I would be completely enamored with that woman—and with her daughters, I should add.”
What would her girls think about the idea of her and Ruben together? She felt a tiny flutter of misgiving but pushed it away. Silver and Mia both loved him and would be thrilled.
“I’ll walk you back,” he said.
“You don’t have to.”
He raised an eyebrow in answer, grabbed his down coat from the closet by the door and reached for her hand.
Ollie and Yukon came with them, their advance guard, sniffing every patch of the sidewalk as Dani walked hand in hand through the falling snow toward her little house along the lakeshore with the man she loved.
Epilogue
Ruben started up The Wonder, the thrum of her motor familiar and beloved to him now after the past year.
“Here we go.” Beside him, Dani gave a smile that was even more familiar and beloved.
“Last chance. Are you sure you don’t want to stay on dry land and watch the parade with the girls and my parents? I still feel a little guilty that you haven’t seen the whole Haven Point Lights on the Lake boat parade in all its glory.”
She shook her head. “I’ll have other chances to see it. Right now, I’m exactly where I want to be.”
Though it was almost time for the parade to start, he couldn’t resist stealing a moment to kiss his beautiful bride of three months, there at the Haven Point marina on a cold December night.
“I’m glad you’re here with me.”
“So am I. I’ve been looking forward to it for weeks. I still can’t believe everybody bailed at the last minute and it’s just the two of us.”
After the big party of the previous year, everybody in his family had ended up staying on shore for various reasons. Angie had obligations with the Haven Point Helping Hands booth, Silver had been invited to ride on a friend’s boat and his parents had been persuaded by Mia to watch the whole parade from the park in town.
He didn’t mind. Between his job, the girls and her increased responsibilities at the clinic now that his father had officially retired, these moments alone together were as rare as they were cherished.
“The dogs are ready,” she said, laughing at their trio of canines who were sprawled out on the foredeck, waiting for the fun to begin.
Okay, they weren’t completely alone. Ollie, Yukon and Winky—who had formed their own little pack over the past year—never missed a chance to go out on The Wonder.
The dogs, like Dani and the girls, had become seasoned sailors after a summer spent out on the water every chance they could find.
The past year had been the happiest of Ruben’s life. Every moment seemed an adventure, from cross-country skiing the previous winter, to helping Dani and the girls plant and nurture their first garden in the springtime, to the gorgeous September day when they all had merged their lives together in a beautiful ceremony in the little church in town.
Each week seemed better than the one before.
Ruben had always loved the changing seasons along the lake—the new life in the spring, the recreational opportunities of the summer, the quiet and peace of the fall.
He had a feeling this season, Christmastime, would always be his favorite. This was the time of year when he had found the woman beside him, the one who filled his life with more joy than he ever could have imagined.
“You don’t think they’ll be too cold out there, do you?” she asked, with a worried look at the dogs as the parade started and Ruben guided the boat behind the watercraft in front of The Wonder.
“It’s at least twenty degrees warmer out there with the radiant heat off all the lights the kids strung around,” he assured her.
His poor boat looked like a floating casino at this point, with Christmas lights dangling from every possible spot. A floating casino from the South Pole, he amended. The two giant light-up inflatable penguins from last year had been joined by one more and all three bobbed around maniacally as The Wonder churned through the water.
He never would have guessed when he bought the cabin cruiser a little more than a year ago that the boat could end up changing his life. Without it, or more accurately, without a night of mischief by three teenage girls when they spray painted her, he wasn’t sure he and Dani would have found their way to each other.
As he thought about how empty his life would be without her and the girls, thick emotion welled up in his chest.
Dani, always in tune to his mood, gave him a concerned look. “Are you okay?”
“Perfect,” he said. “I was just thinking about how my world has changed since we did this last Christmas.”
Her features softened with a tender look that humbled him. “What a gift this year has been.”
He reached a hand out and she rose to join him at the wheel. He kissed her briefly but didn’t want to take his attention too far from the boat controls when there was so much traffic on the water. He also didn’t want to let her go so he tucked her in front of him, his arms on either side and her back nestled against his front.
Keeping his eyes on the water illuminated by his boat lights, he kissed the back of her neck and was rewarded with a shiver. That was one of her most sensitive spots—and how lucky was he to have discovered most of them over the past year?
“Careful, or you’re going to make me wish we weren’t in this parade at all,” she murmured. “Are you sure we can’t sneak off and dock at home for a bit while the girls are gone? Nobody would know.”
He grinned. “In case you missed it, Doc, we have three eight-foot-tall light-up inflatable penguins aboard. I think they might draw a little attention, parked at our dock for a few hours.”
“Too bad.”
Ruben tightened his arms around her and whispered a suggestion for later, something that made her laugh and the dogs look over at them with a resigned sort of curiosity.
They had plenty of time.
They had forever.
* * *
Keep reading for a sneak peek at A Soldier’s Return, New York Times bestselling author RaeAnne Thayne’s next book and part of her beloved Women of Brambleberry House series, coming February 2019!
New York Times bestselling author RaeAnne Thayne invites readers to Cape Sanctuary, where she weaves together the stories of three women—two sisters and the young aunt who raised them—each facing her own crossroads. Can they let go of past mistakes and welcome joy and love into their lives?
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“[Thayne] engages the reader’s heart and emotions, inspiring hope and the belief that miracles are possible.”
—#1 New York Times bestselling author Debbie Macomber
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A Soldier’s Return
by RaeAnne Thayne
1
Some days, a girl reached a point where her best course of action was to run away from her problems.
Melissa Fielding hung up the phone after yet another unproductive discussion with her frustrating ex-husband, drew in a deep, cleansing breath, then threw on her favorite pair of jogging shoes.
Yes, she had a million things to do. The laundry basket spilled over with clothes, she had bills to pay, dirty dishes filled her sink and she was scheduled to go into the doctor’s office where she worked in less than two hours.
None of that mattered right now. She had too much frustrated energy seething through her, wave after wave like the sea pounding Cannon Beach during a storm.
Even Brambleberry House, the huge, rambling Victorian where she and her daughter lived in the first floor apartment, seemed too small right now.
She needed some good, hard exercise to work off some of her energy or she would be a stressed, angry mess at work.
She and Cody had been divorced for three years, separated four, but he could still make her more frustrated than anybody else on earth. Fortunately, their seven-year-old daughter Skye was at school so she didn’t have to witness her parents arguing yet again.
She yanked open her apartment door and headed of the outside door when it opened from the other side. Rosa Galvez, her de facto landlady who ran the three-unit building for her aunt and a friend, walked inside, arms loaded with groceries.
Her friend took one look at Melissa’s face and frowned. “Uh oh. Bad morning?” Rosa asked, her lovely features twisted with concern.
Now that she was off the phone, the heat of Melissa’s anger cooled a degree or two but she could still feel the restless energy spitting and hissing through her like a downed power line.
Melissa took two bags of groceries from Rosa and led the way up the stairs to the other woman’s third-floor apartments.
“You know how it goes. Five minutes on the phone with my ex and I either have to punch something, spend an hour doing yoga or go for a hard run on the beach. I don’t have a free hour and punching something would be counterproductive, so a good run is the winner.”
“Run an extra mile or two for me, would you?” Rosa asked.
“Sure thing.”
“What does he want this time?”
She sighed. “It’s a long story.” She didn’t want to complain to her friend about Cody. It made her sound bitter and small and she wasn’t, only frustrated at all the broken promises and endless disappointments.
Guilt, an old, unwelcome companion, poked her on the shoulder. Her daughter loved her father, despite his failings. Skye couldn’t see what Melissa did—that even though Skye was only seven, there was a chance she was more mature than her fun-loving, thrill-chasing father.
She ignored the guilt, reminding herself once more there was nothing she could do about her past mistakes but continue trying to make the best of things for her child’s sake.
Rosa opened the door to her wide, window-filled apartment and Melissa wasn’t surprised to find Rosa’s much-loved dog, an Irish setter named Fiona, waiting just inside.
“Can I take Fiona on my run?” she asked, after setting the groceries in the kitchen.
“That would be great!” Rosa exclaimed. “We were going to go on a walk as soon as I put the groceries away but she would love a run much more. Thank you! Her leash is there on the hook.”
At the word leash, Fiona loped to the door and did a little circular dance of joy that made more of Melissa’s bad mood seep away.
“Let’s do this, sweetheart,” she said, hooking the leash on her collar.
“Have fun.” Rosa opened the door for them and the strong dog just about pulled Melissa toward the stairs.
The April morning was one of those rare and precious days along the Oregon coast when Mother Nature decided it was finally time to get serious about spring. Sunlight gleamed on the water and all the colors seemed saturated and bright from the rains of the preceding few days.
The well-tended gardens of Brambleberry House were overflowing with sweet-smelling flowers—cherry blossoms, magnolia, camellias. It was sheer delight. She inhaled the heavenly aroma, enjoying the undernote of sea and sand and other smells that were inexorable scent-memories of her childhood.
Fiona pulled at the leash, forcing Melissa to pick up her pace. Yes. A good run was exactly the prescription she was writing herself.
As she headed down the path toward the gate that led to the water, she spotted Sonia, the third tenant of Brambleberry House, working in a bed of lavender that hadn’t yet burst into bloom.
Sonia was an interesting creature. She wasn’t rude, exactly, she simply kept to herself and had done for the seven months Melissa had lived downstairs from her.
Melissa always felt so guilty when she watched her make her painstaking way up the stairs to her second-floor apartment, often pausing to rest on the landing.
She didn’t know the nature of Sonia’s health issues but she obviously struggled with something. She walked with a limp and Rosa had told Melissa once that the other woman had vision issues that precluded her from driving.
Right after moving in, Melissa had offered to switch apartments with the other woman so Sonia wouldn’t have to make the climb, but her offer had been refused.
“I need...the exercise,” Sonia had said in her halting, odd cadence. “Going upstairs is good...physical therapy...for me.”
Melissa had to admire someone willing to push herself out of her comfort zone, all with the expectation that she would grow from the experience.
That was a good life lesson for her. She wasted entirely too much energy allowing in the frustrating reality that life hadn’t turned out exactly as she planned, that some of her dreams were destined to disappointment.
Like Sonia, maybe it was time she stopped being cranky about things she couldn’t control and took the chance to force herself to stretch. She needed to learn how to make the best of things, to simply enjoy a gorgeous April day.
“Beautiful morning, isn’t it?”
“Lovely,” Sonia said with a smile. “Hello... Melissa. Hello... Fiona.”
She scratched the dog under her chin and was rewarded with one of Fi’s doggie grins. While Fiona technically lived with Rosa, the cheerful dog seemed to consider all the occupants of Brambleberry House her particular pack.
That shared pet care worked out well for Melissa. Her daughter had been begging for a dog since before the divorce. Skye had been in heaven when they moved into Brambleberry House and discovered Rosa had a dog she was more than willing to share. This way, they got the benefits of having a dog without having the onus of being responsible for one all the time.
She had been so blessed to find an open apartment in Brambleberry House when she and Skye came back to Cannon Beach after all those years of wandering. It was almost a little miracle, since the previous tenant had only moved out to get married the week before Melissa returned to her hometown.
She didn’
t know if it was fate or kismet or luck or simply somebody watching out for them. She only knew that after years of wandering, she and Skye had finally found a place to throw down roots.
She ran hard, accompanied by the sun on her face, the low murmur of the waves, the crunch of sand under her running shoes. All of it helped calm her.
By the time she and Fiona made it the mile and a half to the end of the beach and she turned around to head back, her frustration had abated, replaced by familiar aching regret.
A mile from home, she paused for a moment to catch her breath, looking out at the rock formations offshore, the towering haystacks that so defined this part of the Oregon coast.
It was so good to be home. Her mom was here, her friends. She had missed it so much in the years she had spent following Cody around as he pursued a career as a professional surfer.
She had loved the man once. He was her one and only boyfriend from the time she was sixteen. The child they had together was the center and joy of Melissa’s life. Now, nearly fifteen years later, they couldn’t even have a phone call without her wanting to break all the china in the house.
It made her sad, wondering if she should have tried harder to make things work, even though she was fully aware both of them had left the marriage long before they finally divorced.
Now wasn’t the time to obsess about her failures or the loneliness that kept her up at night. She sighed and gripped Fiona’s leash.
“Come on, Fi. Let’s go home.”
An odd wind danced across the sand, warmer than the air around it. She almost thought she could hear laughter on the air.
She was hearing things again. Once in awhile at the house, she could swear she heard a woman’s laugh when no one was there and a few times she had smelled roses on the stairwell, for no apparent reason.
Maybe the ghost of Brambleberry House had been in the mood for a run today too. The thought made her smile and she continued heading home.
Season of Wonder Page 24