by Anna Adams
“I was wrong about so much,” she said, “but I felt I had the right to expect my husband would put me before his business. He thought he was giving me his success. He should have asked me if that was the happiness I wanted. We made unspeakable mistakes, and we lost our forever.”
“I won’t do that,” Jason said. “I won’t see a child of mine watch me drive away to a new life. Fleming expects the promise of a future without that ending.”
He reached for the card and handed it to his mother. She read the words, Fleming’s hope for a happily ever after. She read it again, and her eyes were moist when she looked up.
“It could be that simple.”
He shook his head.
“I wish it could,” he said. “But I care about her too much to pretend I trust myself. No one stays.”
“But what if you work on today and just let the future show up?” Teresa balanced the card on top of the locomotive. “If your father had come home on time for dinner three nights of the week and paid attention to me for an hour, I could have tried to understand. I didn’t require much. Just a little laughter. Some affection that reminded me I was special to him. If I had understood then that he was showing me his love with every new win he had at the office, maybe we’d still be working on our forever. Every day. One day at a time.”
“You know it’s not that easy.”
“I remember a night when we shared a sandwich after I set the kitchen on fire, cooking dinner. I literally set the place ablaze. And while we ate the sandwich, your father said he could build more kitchens, but there was only one me.” She laughed through tears. “That was happiness. That would have kept me from looking at any other man.”
“You looked because that’s who you are,” he said. “Like Dad is. But I won’t be that person.”
“Let me finish. I had three amazing years, and I’ve had so many more to live with regret and pain I can’t describe to you, but I wouldn’t trade one minute of those three. I’ve never known love like that again. I broke it as much as Robert did, and if I could somehow go back, I wouldn’t look anywhere but straight into our future.”
Jason couldn’t imagine his mother’s imbalanced scales defined a good life.
“I believe that if you protect those good days by not allowing distractions—anyone or anything—to chip away at the love between the two of you, you can be happy.”
He stared at her. Leaps of faith were not his first instinct.
Because of fear? He hated fear. If his mother and father hadn’t been afraid of being alone...
Teresa stood. “Maybe I have no right to say these things to you.”
“I asked.” He smiled. “And I listened.”
“Learn something from the mistakes your father and I made.”
He’d thought he had learned all those years ago—that he was not lovable. That love wasn’t possible. But his mother hadn’t mentioned one thing about that. She’d described a marriage two angry, unbending people had destroyed with their own selfish inability to share a life.
And he believed in her regret.
“Goodbye, son. Merry Christmas.”
“Goodbye.” He walked her to the front door. “Come back if you want. I’ve hired a contractor, and the house will be repaired. You’re welcome to come and see the progress.”
She turned with a smile that looked utterly real. “I would love to watch this house come back to life.”
She seemed to mean more than he’d meant. Jason watched her drive away and then he returned to the living room.
He picked up the card Fleming had left in the box.
“This could be our train, around our tree, every Christmas morning for all our years.”
How hard had that card been for her to write, when the one thing she feared was being left behind?
If she could imagine him staying, maybe he could comprehend making one really good day with the woman he loved, and then another, and some more.
He still didn’t let himself count on all the next days they might be lucky enough to have, but he knew he would never be unkind to her, and she didn’t know how to be unkind.
He could do a day at a time, if only Fleming would give him a chance. If she could forgive him for not trusting her, not trusting love. This could be the beginning of their future.
If he loved her, why couldn’t he give her his best? A better version of himself than he’d ever believed he could be?
* * *
FOR THE FIRST time in her adult life, Fleming lurked at home, a Scrooge-like kind of hermit. Her mother tried to persuade her that letting Jason know how he’d hurt her only gave him power over her.
Fleming didn’t care. The power was in the love she couldn’t smother, like a fire that wouldn’t stop burning. The passing of time might help, but for now she didn’t trust herself to see him again.
On Christmas Eve, he called. Fleming refused to answer the phone her mother brought her as she and Hugh shared a bowl of popcorn while watching their favorite holiday movie.
It would be all right. Jason would leave town soon, and life would go back to normal. The thought made Fleming want to cry.
Early on Christmas morning, her cell phone woke her, vibrating on her nightstand. She lifted it, but when she saw Jason’s name on the screen, she set it back down and silenced it.
She ignored his voice mail message for a few minutes before curiosity got the better of her.
She braced herself for Jason’s reasonable tone. No doubt he’d offer some sensible reason they should forget their last conversation had ever happened.
But his voice sounded different, richer, urgent. “I love you,” he said without preamble. “I was wrong. Come to the house this morning before everyone else is awake. I love you, Fleming. I can’t imagine how to stop loving you.”
That last convinced her, though she could barely hear over the rush of her pulse in her ears. Jason would have tried very hard to stop loving her. He’d convinced her of that. If he couldn’t, she’d better find out what he had to say.
She dressed quickly and slipped out of the house, leaving a note for her mother and Hugh on the kitchen counter to say she was all right and she’d be back.
In the dark Christmas morning, she drove up the mountain, but she knew the way to Jason’s home.
There were lights. New ones, twinkling from the porch roof and the doorways. When Fleming got out of her car, she heard the low growl of a generator.
“Jason?” She ran up the porch steps. They were totally steady now beneath her feet. Still, it was like running through quicksand in a dream, where the harder she ran, the slower she went.
“Jason?” She called him again, and anyone who heard her voice would have known she was desperate. She pounded on the newly hung front door. If he left Bliss without her, he’d be taking the best parts of her with him.
“I’m coming,” he called. She heard a clatter from inside. As if someone had dropped an old-fashioned sewing machine down a set of stairs.
She tried the big, heavy glass knob, but the door was locked. “Are you all right? I can’t get to you.”
“Hold on.”
She heard him release the dead bolt and the door swung open. Snowflakes swirled in with her as she entered. She stumbled to a halt as she saw a typewriter that had to be a hundred years old lying on its side in the wide foyer, and Jason leaning over to pick it up.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
“Sorry about this. I was almost ready for you.”
“We can’t wait for you to be ready. I can’t wait.” Those weren’t the right words, but she couldn’t find better ones. Blurting “I love you” hadn’t been right the other day. “Can you love me?” had been even more wrong.
“I have something for you,” he said. “Come upstairs with me.”
>
“I got your message.” For some reason, she’d started to cry. She brushed at the tears on her face.
“Don’t say anything,” he said, “at least not until you see what I have for you.”
“You already gave me a gift.”
“Which you left behind.” He straightened, letting the typewriter thump to the floor. He took her hands and pulled her close, holding her with heart-shattering tenderness. “I want to give you what makes you happy.”
“You make me happy. Even when you frustrate me and upset me and scare me.”
“Scare you? Because of the store, you mean?”
“I’m not talking about the store.” She was getting this wrong. She pulled away. “Losing you scares me. You don’t want to be attached. You don’t see the need for it, but I need you, and I want you to need me. That’s everything I dream of. Us, being part of each other.”
He stared down at her, his gaze indulgent, his smile a little stunned.
“You’re happy?” she asked, because she couldn’t quite tell. He’d said he loved her.
“Will you please stop talking and come upstairs with me?”
She gave him her hands again. He turned, pulling her behind him up the wide staircase until they reached the spacious landing.
She stared.
“It’s yours,” he said. “Your space, where you can make all your dreams come true.”
“What did you do?” she asked, sounding harsh when really she felt grateful and happy and best of all, loved.
He’d turned the landing into an office. A small desk and comfortable chair waited for her in front of the round window overlooking the beautiful mountains—the landscape that owned her, body and soul.
Sunlight had faded the secondhand rug that created the boundaries of the little office area, but fat cabbage roses and leaves wound in a woolen circle of welcome. There were small wooden filing cabinets, scratched and bruised and well-loved, that she would always cherish. She couldn’t wait to file her printed manuscripts. And even her rejections.
“Look at this.” He went to an old-fashioned turntable and moved its needle onto a record. Slowly, the strains of Massenet’s “Thaïs” filled the landing and the stairwell, and echoed through the house.
“We’ll all hear the music that inspires you,” he said. “While you’re working we’ll be with you.”
“We?” She thought she knew what he meant, but she needed to hear him say it. “You were so certain we didn’t have a future.”
“You told me once that I didn’t stay because I hadn’t found the place that tied me.”
“Or the people.”
“The woman,” he said, pressing his forehead to hers, warming her skin with his. “You said your life here was a suit of clothes that fit. Well, you are my place. My place will always be with you.”
Her breath caught, and she wrapped her arms around him.
“I may have to build my own cell tower on this mountain so I can work from here, but this is our place now, if you’ll have it and me.”
“And maybe when you travel, I can drag myself out of these mountains I love.”
“That I love, too.”
She laughed with unadulterated, perfect joy. “I’m still interested in how you define we.”
“That’s you and I. With our sons and daughters. We’ll make meals while you write, and we’ll wash the dog and change the cat litter...”
“So many chores.” She took shelter in the warmth of his body. In her belief in his love. “Shouldn’t I help? You and these children and the dogs and the cats can’t do everything.”
“But you won’t be shouldering the whole load,” he said, “and you won’t be responsible for anyone else’s happiness.”
“Except that loving each other makes us happy,” she said. “What changed your mind?”
“I talked to my mother, believe it or not, and she told me that she wouldn’t trade the good times she had with my father even to erase all the bad years. She asked me to consider the future in increments of days instead of all at once.” Jason kissed Fleming, his touch loving and sweet and certain, spreading warmth through her whole body. “And I know you. I forgot that I know who you are. I believe in you.”
“And I can believe in you?” she asked.
He grimaced in silent acceptance of the pain in her question. “I promise you can believe in me. I won’t hurt you.
“But why did you push me away?”
“Maybe I was running, like my dad did, like my mom did the day she drove away from our apartment in New York. They couldn’t make something work, so they moved on to the next thing. They kept moving forward, as if the detritus they left behind didn’t matter to anyone. But I won’t move without you, Fleming, and you will always matter most to me. I’m sorry I didn’t know how to accept the gift of your love, but if you offer it again, I’ll make sure you know every day of our lives how precious you are to me.”
She was afraid, but he was different. She felt the change in him in the hoarse strength of his voice. “If you were to give up and leave me, I’d make sure you see it matters, and you should come back.”
“I told you—I’m staying. I’ll find a way to continue with my business from here, and if I ever say a word about giving up, you remind me of this day and this moment. I’ll stop and wait for you.”
“If you run, you’ll find me running with you, along with our houseful of children and all the dogs and cats.”
“Houseful?” he asked, pushing his hand beneath the hair at her nape. “How many children?”
“How many bedrooms are there?” she asked, tracing the line of his jaw with kisses, reveling in her right to touch him. Her Jason. Her love. “I assume you put my office here because we’re going to fill these rooms with sons and daughters?”
“We can do that,” he said, looking slightly bewildered, instead of totally in charge. When she laughed, he stopped speaking to stare at her as if he needed to imprint her face on his mind. “When you sound so happy, you make me happy,” he said. “I think hearing you laugh is what first made me want to believe the world was different than I’d known it to be.”
“I should have laughed more often.”
“You were perfect,” he said, and lowered his head to brush her mouth with his. “Perfect for me, always. And I put your office right here because I knew you’d work best in the center of things. Because you’re my center, Fleming, my reason to believe. You’re the reason I believe I can live up to loving you the way you deserve, with all that I am.”
She kissed him, and with her kiss, she offered him all her dreams. Because he embodied her dreams now. He’d become everything to her, family, friend, the love of her life, her future, and the only past she’d ever want.
“You are my Christmas gift,” she said. “You are my happiness.”
EPILOGUE
ONE YEAR LATER, on Christmas morning, Fleming got up early and started her husband’s train on the track beneath their Christmas tree. She plugged in the tree’s lights and hurried to the kitchen to start coffee.
When she turned, Jason stood in the doorway, his hair rumpled, his cheek creased with lines from their pillowcases.
“Why’d you get up so early?” he asked.
“Because it’s Christmas, and Santa left a little something for you.”
He turned to the living room. “You always get your gift in first.”
“‘Always’ meaning last Christmas and this?” she asked, pulling him toward the tree. She leaned down and picked up a box. “I had to wake you early because your grandparents will be up soon, and everyone else will arrive for breakfast, but I wanted you to be the first to know.”
His grandmother and grandfather had spent the night upstairs in the new g
uest suite. Both sides of their family were joining them for their first holiday meal in the home they’d made together during the past year. Their memories had replaced any old ones that his mother or father might hold, and even they had promised to coexist through one meal per year.
Fleming had married the man she loved in front of the living room fireplace on Thanksgiving Day. He’d built a climbing tree for their new orange kitten, while the winter winds had gathered outside their newly glazed windows. Cooper, the kitten, was clinging even now to the top shelf of his own personal jungle gym while Fleming handed Jason a small box wrapped in Santas he’d never believed in before.
“Open it in a hurry,” she said.
“It can’t be another car for the train.” He paused to distract her with a kiss that made her bones feel all warm and liquid. “Or another of my favorite cartoon characters.”
“You’d know if you opened it.” She glanced up the stairs. No one seemed to be stirring. The sound of ripping paper brought her gaze back to Jason.
He pulled the top of the box off and then his breath caught as he looked inside. With one hand, he pulled out a tiny red T-shirt printed with white script: Daddy Loves Me Every Day.
The box hit the floor, but not before Jason drew Fleming close with so much tenderness she ached.
“Merry Christmas,” she said.
“I love you. I love our family.”
She lifted her face and willingly drowned in his eyes. “I love us, together. So much, Jason. Always.”
* * * * *
Keep reading for an excerpt from HER SOLDIER’S BABY by Tara Taylor Quinn.
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