Evelyn didn’t move or look away. Noelle held the tray closer to her. “That one at the edge has strawberry filling.”
Evelyn took it between two fingers. “Daddy?”
“Sure.” If only he could give her some of Margaret’s exuberance and share some of Evelyn’s instinct to think before she acted with Margaret. “Don’t forget to say thank you.”
“Thank you,” they chorused around mouthfuls of the delicious pastry Noelle had made since Harold and Doris Wright adopted her from the Children's Home where they met. Doris and Noelle had bonded in the Wright family kitchen, and David had benefitted most from the fruits of their labors. Those hours, spent on the periphery of a loving family had made him determined to make other forgotten children safe. Never adopted, he’d left the Children’s Home when he turned eighteen and headed to Boston, and eventually law school and family law practice.
Noelle had followed and made him all the pastry he could ask for in Boston while they were in college. He searched her drawn face for some hint of that night long ago when he’d begged her to stay, and she’d pleaded with him to see Christmas Town through her eyes.
But there was nothing in her eyes now except sincerity. “Good to see you, David.”
“You, too.” With the girls staring at him – Margaret snatching another donut off the tray while Evelyn chewed a dainty bite – he struggled to look normal. “The shop’s doing well?”
“I’m always busy.” She glanced back at the store, as if she were taking stock and liked what she saw.
She’d done more than well since she’d left him.
But when he opened his mouth to ask her how she was, or something about whether she was happy, she looked away from him. “Have you girls seen Santa yet?” She passed the tray to Evelyn again, but his shyer daughter shook her head.
“That guy in the sleigh isn’t Santa. There isn’t a real Santa,” Evelyn said.
Noelle blinked, but lifted the tray, and Margaret took another bite-sized donut this time.
“Do you believe Santa’s real?” Evelyn asked again, an interrogator, warming up lights and some lead pipe.
“I sure do. My mom and dad told me about him, and I always trusted them.”
Margaret and Evelyn froze. Noelle clutched her tray with a frown at David, who tugged the twins close. His girls no longer believed in Santa, and they weren’t that sure about him. He’d let them down too many times, a trait that wouldn’t surprise Noelle. Neither he nor Santa could bring back their mother.
Last year, they’d hoped Santa might work a miracle. David had tried to explain. He’d tried to give them the kind of Christmas their mother would have given them, but his instincts for family celebrations were off. His spartan townhouse and few Christmas decorations only made their holiday sadder.
He’d hoped to make this spur of the moment trip back to Christmas Town a new beginning for his girls, but it wasn’t starting with unadulterated joy.
“I’ve said something wrong. I’m sorry. Can I do anything?”
Maybe fate had brought him to her shop door for his first stop in Christmas Town. If he was trying to make up for the wrongs he’d done, he could start with Noelle.
“You can let us buy something to drink and a bite to eat from you,” he said.
~*~
“I heard you’d bought Frosty’s.” David held the door for her and his daughters.
Noelle eased past him, uncomfortable being so close, unwilling to look him in the too-blue eyes that had always mesmerized her, but unable to look completely away. This man had once been her future, but the moment she’d left Boston, he’d found someone else.
“I bought it a couple of years ago. The Lavoies helped me with financing.”
“You must have worked hard,” he said.
Was he trying to imply she’d become as focused on work as he was? He might have been the reason her work had been a safe harbor, but she’d never give up on the people she loved the way he did.
“I worked here, and then Mr. Lavoie let me intern for my senior business project in college. It was a good fit, and I guess they wanted someone who loved the business to carry on with it.”
“You’re like family to them,” he said as if it they were just any friends, catching up with each other.
Noelle resented his control. After eight years with not one word from him, nothing about seeing him now felt normal.
“Sit down.” Her voice trembled, embarrassing her. “I have milk for Margaret and Evelyn and coffee for you.” Because, didn’t every woman offer the man who’d shattered her a nice cup of coffee?
“I think we’d enjoy that,” he said.
Noelle turned to hide her shock. She’d left him because he’d been so distracted by school and then work, she’d felt alone even when they were together. After all this time, his detachment still had the power to hurt.
Margaret ignored the grown ups as she peered into the display cases. Her sister pulled back a little. They were the same when they chose their donuts. Margaret chose a chocolate cake with chocolate glaze. Evelyn looked as if she wanted one with raspberry jam, but she wouldn’t put out her hand. Noelle put it on a plate, and then added a plain glazed one for David, looking away before he could thank her.
“Choose any table.” She only had eight. The place was small but perfect in her eyes. Her own, and as long as she and the bank played well together, no one could take it from her.
She went to the back and put two glasses of milk and a cup of coffee on another tray. From the other room came the sound of chairs scooting over the wooden floor.
“Don’t forget to say thank you,” David instructed his girls in a lowered voice.
He sounded like any dad. Noelle grabbed the edge of the counter and leaned, hard, squeezing in her emotions to keep them from spilling into sound. She’d pushed his marriage to another woman to the edge of her mind. She hadn’t pined over him, but knowing he’d found someone else who’d loved him enough to live in a big, impersonal city and give him babies had hurt.
He was helping the girls put their coats on the backs of their chairs as Noelle came back. David was only thirty, but with his back turned, she noticed a few glints of silver in his dark blonde hair. She set down the tray and put the milk glasses in front of the girls and a Santa-emblazoned mug of coffee in front of David. Then she added a sugar bowl and a small cream pitcher.
“I forgot how you like it,” she said.
“Just black.”
After his impromptu family breakfast, David would head back to the house that they’d both loved, and he’d bought, but rarely used. She’d never understood his buying that place. But she didn’t need to understand. She needed him to go back to Boston so she wouldn’t have to pretend she felt nothing.
She didn’t know what she felt.
Then his phone rang.
He looked trapped and his glance at the girls was guilty. Margaret’s expression didn’t change at all, but Evelyn shook her head, sighing. It was all so painfully familiar. David hadn’t changed his priorities.
“Go on,” Evelyn said. “Talk all you want.”
He shook his head. “Evvy, you’re my priority. You and Margaret. You don’t have to worry that I’m leaving you for work.”
“You always do.” She plucked off a piece of donut and popped it into her mouth.
“I’m not going,” he said. “We came here for Christmas. We’re staying.”
Noelle smelled something burning. A good excuse to exit their personal conversation. “Shout if you need me,” she said. “I’d better see what’s on fire.” She looked over her shoulder at David, willing him to move on with the little girls whose hurt snaked out and made her feel all involved. “Snacks are on me.”
Chapter 2
After slogging through snow and visiting the booths in the Christmas Town market area, the girls were exhausted that night. By eight, David tucked them into beds that would soon be too small for them. When he and Claudia had vacationed here before the
divorce when the girls were toddlers, they'd refused to sleep in separate bedrooms. They’d loved their own little space over the eaves, but they hadn’t recognized their junior-sized beds tonight, and the retro metal frames only reminded him of the marriage and family he’d lost.
“My feet almost reach the end, Daddy.” Margaret stretched as far as she could. Even Evelyn giggled, wiggling her toes under the lamb-print comforter.
“We’ll search for new bedroom furniture, and you can choose your own bedrooms, like at home.” He ached a little for the sweet bond he’d believed unbreakable when they were two.
“We need our privacy, Dad.” Evelyn sounded so grown up he swallowed an urge to beg her to remain his little girl.
“Night, pumpkins.” He pulled the door shut and eased down the narrow hall to the stairs. This house had been home in his head from the moment he’d seen it as a filthy little kid with no home and very little hope. He’d walked past it, ridden past it on a bike he’d built from parts, and dreamed of it in his own narrow bed in the Children’s Home on the outskirts of Christmas Town.
A little patch of horror over which Santa barely tipped his sleigh runners.
He’d bought this house the moment he could afford it after a case he’d won for an elderly woman whose greedy sons believed they could commandeer her fortune. She’d been quirky, but David appreciated quirky, and together they’d given the judge the proper amount of show and simple honesty, and David had finally won his own home.
He’d fought for the house with Noelle in mind, because she’d wanted a place for them back in the Maine town that did Christmas better than even the elves at the North Pole. They were already in trouble as a couple, but he’d thought he could win her back with the gift of a home they could refurbish together, where they’d vacation often and someday live, when their careers allowed them free time.
He’d never had a chance to tell her about the house.
By the time he’d had their future in the title he’d held in the palm of his hand, she’d already packed to leave. He wasn’t home often enough. She’d said she wasn’t waiting beside a door ever again for anyone to turn up. They’d parted like the strangers they’d become because of his actions.
And he hadn’t stopped with just letting Noelle down. Now his girls expected the worst of him. One of the last things Claudia had said to him before the accident was that he talked a good game, but he’d never commit.
He was committed now. He wouldn’t keep failing the girls. He’d make sure Evelyn and Margaret knew how much he loved them.
His cell phone rang in the pocket of his jeans as he started down the stairs. He pulled it out and read the notification on its screen. His assistant, Violet? At this time of night?
He hit the answer icon and lifted the phone to his ear. “I told you. No interruptions until New Year’s.”
“It’s Milo.” Violet spoke fast, to keep him from hanging up on her. “He’s shoplifted a whole Christmas list.”
Shoplifting. David closed his eyes, seeing his daughters as they’d looked at him this afternoon – Evelyn resigned, and Margaret taking his job-first attitude as normal.
But Milo… The thirteen-year-old boy never learned. He'd provided most of David’s pro bono work before Violet adopted the kid nobody else wanted. He was getting too old and too experienced with one petty crime after another, to get by on the “poor kid who needs a chance” defense.
But he really was the boy no one had ever wanted, and David knew too well how that felt. “I thought he’d change after you became his mother.”
“I have the title, but neither of us can feel the bond yet. I think we’re farther apart than we were before the adoption, when we were getting to know each other. He stole Christmas gifts for me.”
A familiar weight of youthful guilt expanded inside David’s chest because he’d done things just as ludicrous. He’d suffered horrible moments of “Why can’t I take that one second back?”
All those memories surged into his brain. He had to do something for the kid. Except he’d been working to save Milo for a couple of years, and he was getting nowhere. Violet only met Milo because of him, and now her heart was breaking.
He scraped his hand across his stubbled chin. He had his own children, and they’d begun to look at him with the same disappointment that had led their mother to divorce him. They were as fed up with him and hurt as Noelle had been when she’d walked away.
“Violet, this Christmas is make or break with the girls. I can’t leave them. I don’t even have anyone to look after them. You know how they’re handling the holidays. I won’t abandon them.”
He’d done it so many times because some other child or family needed him, and he couldn’t stand to ignore anyone who was suffering from feeling unwanted. Everyone who’d loved and left him claimed he had a need to rescue people. Now he had to rescue his daughters. Evelyn and Margaret had to know they came first with him. They could trust him.
“But that judge will keep my son over Christmas.” Tears soaked Violet’s voice. Milo owned her with his lost, blank gaze and his unfortunate tendency to want everything he could get his hands on, though nothing was ever enough for the boy. David would have done anything at Milo’s age to keep a foothold in a home, or to know he was loved the way Violet loved her son.
Milo was too familiar, lonely, demanding to be loved, but unwilling to let anyone in. An image of Noelle floated through David’s mind. But she’d stopped being like that after she’d found her family. She deserved the love she’d asked for. He’d promised her that love, but he’d had other jobs to do, too.
“Please help me, David. No other attorney will understand. They’ll see his record and give up on him.”
“Who can I ask to babysit? I haven’t even been here in years. I don’t know anyone well enough to ask.”
But obviously, he knew Noelle, the one woman who should never agree to look after his little girls.
“Bring the twins. I’ll look after them while you go to his hearing. David, he took too much. They’ll put him away.”
“Too much? Violet, taking anything is too much. We’ve got to get that through his head.”
“We’ll try again, if you just come. A public defender won’t care enough to try for him. We’ll lose him.”
“He’s not mine. I don’t mean to be unkind, but I’ve tried my best for Milo.” And he was terrified of losing his own children to the past and to the antipathy toward him their mother had been so happy to share. He couldn’t let other people’s problems come between him and his daughters.
“Please, David?”
He wanted to say no. The word hovered on his lips. Violet had been his friend since the day she’d come to work at his chaotic office and begun to put his life in order. Violet was Milo’s mother. She’d always known how to commit.
He swore in his head, where the words wouldn’t hurt her. If his own past would get out of the way, maybe he’d know how to say no. “I’ll think of something. Stall the hearing until I get there.”
“Thank you.”
She hung up before he could change his mind.
Eyeing the phone, he thought of taking the girls with him. To sit in the jail or a courtroom while he dealt with Milo’s problems? Violet couldn’t look after them and be Milo’s caring mom in the gallery at the same time.
He couldn’t drag them out of bed and drive them three hours to sit alone in a cold hall filled with frightening people.
A moment of self-awareness gutted him. Noelle and Claudia and his daughters had a point. If he hadn’t been so busy with work, so certain his priorities were the ones he shouldn’t ignore, he might know someone in his own hometown well enough to ask for emergency childcare.
Noelle’s face swam in front of his mind’s eye. Smiling, as if their past wasn’t bitter. Kind even when he deserved the silence of a long-held grudge.
He’d asked her to wait for him to finish law school, and then he’d give her the life they’d planned since they’
d fallen in love as teenagers. She’d waited. She’d tried living in Boston, but she’d missed her sisters and her parents and Christmas Town, itself.
Boston was not for Noelle, and she was not for Boston. Finally, she’d had enough of him, too.
There wasn’t a chance in the world she’d be eager to spend time with his children. He had no right to ask.
Except Milo was only thirteen. Thanks to Violet, the boy finally had a chance, but not if he was in jail. If the girls were old enough to understand, they wouldn’t want him to let another child spend Christmas in a jail cell.
The Noelle he’d known and loved deeply would have told him to help the kid who was as lonely and alone as they had both been at his age.
~*~
Driving past the wedding chapel her parents had owned, she waved at her sister, Marnie, who was walking through the darkness, from the house Noelle had inherited from their father.
He’d left each of his three girls a gift. Chloe, an entrepreneur, had received the grist mill that had been lying unused, and Marnie, who’d worked in the chapel with their parents since they were children, had received the business that had always been as much hers as their mom and dad’s. Marnie had been spending a lot of extra time in the chapel lately, remodeling it. Sam Collins, her best friend and a local handyman, was helping her.
Noelle held her breath as the driveway curved through a stand of pines toward the rambling, white farmhouse that now belonged to her. She was still learning to accept the house as her home again.
She’d hardly been back here after their father, Harold, lost his long, brave fight with cancer, but a few days ago, Chloe and her new husband, Ted, had taken over the apartment above the shop, and Noelle had come home to face the house that seemed empty since her father’s death.
Even with Marnie still coming and going, it didn’t feel like hers without their parents.
She parked in front of the detached garage and leaned into the back seat to get her coat and her work tote.
A Heartwarming Christmas: A Boxed Set of Twelve Sweet Holiday Romances Page 17