Christmas at the End of Main (A Nestled Hollow Romance Book 2)

by Meg Easton

  “When did it snow this much?” one of Macie’s sisters-in-law asked.

  “Look at how much it’s still coming down, too,” Nicole said. “The forecast said it would only be a couple of inches!”

  Macie gazed across the lawn, a look of wonder and disbelief on her face. “This has to be up above our knees.”

  “Well,” Zach said, “I guess we’ll be swimming to the playground then.” He dove off the patio into the snow, like he was diving into water to swim laps.

  “Zach!” his wife yelled. “You’re going to be frozen down to your bones!”

  “Especially if I can’t figure out how to swim any faster than this,” he said as he made motions that mimicked freestyle, but didn’t make him move forward at all.

  They all made their way back into the house, including Zach, whose wife made him brush all the snow off him before entering. Macie’s oldest brother pulled his phone out of his pocket and furrowed his brow at the screen. Then another brother pulled his out. Aaron had felt a ding from his about the same time, so he pulled his out, too.

  Alert: Heavy snowfall and avalanche warning in the Clear Creek area; I-70 is closed from Mountain Springs to Copper Mountain.

  “Oh. I guess I need to...Oh.”

  All around, everyone pulled out their phones and showed it to the people nearest them. Aaron just kept staring at his, trying to make his head work through the implications, then he hurried into their living room and looked out the front window at his car. It was covered so deeply in snow that he could barely tell what color it was anymore. And with the roads closed, he wasn’t going to be going home. “I guess I should probably go before I can no longer find my car and see if I can get a room at the hotel.”

  “Nonsense, son,” Joseph said. “We’ve got a guest room right here you can use. Even if we got your car unburied, you wouldn’t make it two feet until they plow these roads.”

  “Of course we’ll put you up here,” Emeline added. “I’ll go get the bed made up.”

  As they walked back toward the family room and kitchen, one of the older kids said, “With this much snow, Grandma, I don’t think we’ll be able to make it home either. It’s probably deeper than Brighton! If we go home, we’ll lose him in the snow and he’ll be gone forever. I think we’re all snowed in, and our only option is to have a giant sleepover like we do on Christmas Eve.”

  “The boy has a point,” Macie’s dad said.

  Before Aaron knew it, it was no longer just him sleeping at Macie’s parents. It was everyone. All thirty-five of them, all sleeping at the same house.

  “You know the rules,” Emeline called out. “Mine and Grandpa’s bedroom is off limits, and so is the guest room. Anywhere else is free game.”

  “But not the bathtub,” Larissa said, giving Brian a pointed look.

  “Oh, don’t worry, I learned my lesson last year when I had to get up and leave every time someone had to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night.”

  As Aaron and Macie helped all the kids get their beds set up in all corners of the house, Aaron thought about all he’d witnessed this crazy, unexpected night. He’d never known a family like this in his life. His parents had always said that family was important, and they supported his swimming and Aliza’s dancing every step of the way, right up until the end. But they never cared about each other the way that this family did. Strangely, during Joseph’s talk about the family and the links that connect them, it made him miss Aliza. His parents, even. He called them every six months or so, and visited occasionally, but usually out of a sense of obligation. Missing them was new.

  Some of his friends were closer with their families than he was with his, but none of them had families that were anywhere close to this either. He didn’t even hear people talk about families like this. It had to be a show. A front that Macie’s parents were putting on, just like the front his parents put on. Like his ex-fiancée had.

  But even so, as he and Macie worked side-by-side, he couldn’t deny the attraction he felt toward her. She was one of the few people he had ever met who looked just as beautiful when she was working through the flu as she was in a ball gown. And as much as he wanted to reach a hand out and run his fingertips along her cheek and neck, it was more than just her looks. He was drawn to her because of everything she did. Because of everything she was.

  When they finished with the beds, and a group of nieces and nephews started climbing on Macie to have her read them a story, he excused himself to go get his own bed set up, since he’d stopped Macie’s mom from doing it.

  As he worked, he realized how much his heart was getting tied up in this. Just like it did back with Sabrina when he was twenty. And if he ever needed a reminder of how painfully that turned out, all he had to do was Google his own name. He couldn’t invest his heart in something again that could turn out to be just a front. And there was no way a family like this wasn’t.

  He walked out of the guest room and paused. Macie’s parents were right across the hall, standing in the doorway of their darkened room—the one place they thought they had to themselves, their back to him and oblivious of his presence.

  “Every time I think I can’t love you more,” Emeline said, “I look at this family we created together and the way you love them, and my heart just bursts.”

  “Forty-one years,” Joseph said. “Forty-one years, and my heart still leaps every time I see you. Life has been heaven on earth with you in it, my dear Emeline.”

  Aaron stepped back into the guest room, stunned at what he just witnessed. They weren’t putting on a show for their kids or for anyone else. They were completely alone, and that was how they spoke to each other when they thought no one was looking.

  It was all true then?

  Everything he witnessed in this family tonight. It was real? Genuine? The last time he truly believed that love like that was possible, he was just a kid.

  Now he understood what Macie wanted. He finally grasped why she was searching so hard to find the perfect spouse. She wanted this—a marriage like her parents had. And he finally learned why. This was what he wanted too. Deep down inside, it was what he had always wanted; he had just never known it before now.

  When he got back to the family room, Macie and a couple of her siblings were tucking the last few kids into bed. She looked up at him and smiled, then stepped over the sleeping bodies and made her way toward him as her siblings went to other rooms, probably to check on other kids.

  As she neared, he whispered “You’re even graceful when you’re stepping over sleeping kids.”

  “You haven’t seen me trying to do the same thing after being woken in the middle of the night to ward off monsters when a kid needs to go to the bathroom.”

  “True.” The moonlight bounced off the snow, making outside unusually bright for eleven p.m. The moonlight spilled through the kitchen window and lit up the side of Macie’s face. This entire night, something inside him had been building and building—a connection to the heart of Macie that pulled him to her. He reached out and put a hand on her cheek, needing to feel its silkiness against his skin, and she responded by putting her hand on his chest. He closed his eyes as the electricity from his whole body rushed to meet her hand.

  Snow fell cold and beautiful just outside the window, but Macie stepped close enough that he could feel her warm breath against his neck. It wasn’t just him who felt the connection, then. It was as if the two of them were forces being drawn together by something unconcerned about whatever protests they had. And maybe nothing else beyond showing Macie how much he cared about her did matter. He moved his hands to her waist, and she brought her second hand up next to the first on his chest. Her eyes shifted to his lips, and suddenly her lips were all that he could focus on as the snow fell all around them.

  Macie leaned into him, a hand slipping up to the back of his neck, her fingers in his hair, and he brought his lips to hers. Her lips were soft and moving on his carefully, testing to see if this was okay. He responde
d, his kisses being just as careful and questioning. After a few moments, her second hand flew to the back of his neck, and she pulled him in closer. He pulled her in tight and kissed her with an urgency that matched hers, pouring everything into it that he had felt not only in the past few hours, but since the day he’d met her.

  Macie broke contact first and whispered, “Wow.”

  Aaron tried to steady his ragged breathing enough to whisper back. But before he did, he heard, “Smoochie smoochie! Mwah, mwah, mwah.” And then more kissing sounds followed by a whole lot of giggling.

  “Trevor! And Janet, Mindy, and Sophie! You all are supposed to be sleeping!”

  “But we’re not,” Janet said, “and we caught the whole show.”

  “I’m not asleep either,” three-year-old Katie said.

  Aaron felt heat rushing to the back of his neck, and Macie’s blush was visible in the moonlight. She motioned to them and then the general vicinity of his room and then somewhere else, like she wasn’t quite sure where to direct her focus, then said, “We better, um—”

  “Yeah, we should,” Aaron agreed, and they both went off to their own separate parts of the house.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Macie was in her office, studying spreadsheets and brainstorming, when the bell at the front door chimed. Reese and Lola, who had been lying at her feet, jumped up and ran to the main room. School wasn’t out yet, and she didn’t have any events planned, which meant it was a walk-in customer. Those were some of her favorites! Sometimes she got tourists, or just stressed out adults who needed a mid-workday boost. Since she’d been spending more on advertising, it was happening more and more frequently.

  She walked out to the main room and saw her dad crouched down next to her dogs, trying to give them both equal attention, when both wanted his undivided attention.

  “Dad!” she said as she hurried forward and gave him a hug. “This is a nice surprise. What are you doing around here in the middle of the day?”

  “I just needed to stop by home and change clothes before heading to a business meeting in Denver. I thought I’d drop in and see how my favorite youngest daughter was doing.”

  They sat down in two of the chairs along the wall. “I’m doing great, Daddy.”

  “That Aaron sure seems like a nice boy.”

  “He really is,” Macie said, thinking back to the Christmas Kickoff party, their kiss in the kitchen, and the family breakfast the next morning before he headed back home.

  “You make sure he knows he’s welcome anytime, okay?”

  “I’m pretty sure he got that message by the sendoff you and Mom gave him yesterday morning.”

  He reached out and gave her hand a squeeze. “Alright, alright. I’ll stop trying to nudge the relationship and just let it play out on its own. Now tell me, how’s the decision on whether or not to buy this building coming along?”

  Macie took a big breath, and then let it out in a fast huff. “I don’t know, Dad. As I’ve been pushing to grow the business more, the numbers have actually been coming in where I was hoping they would. Not that one month’s worth of data is enough to base a decision off of. There are just so many variables.”

  “So the numbers are coming in good, but...” he prodded.

  “But getting sick really scared me. If Aaron hadn’t stopped in to help, I don’t know what I would’ve done. I was trying to convince myself that I could just push through it and everything would work out, but Dad, I was really sick. Too sick to have done what he did, no matter how hard I tried or wanted it.

  “I know I was only sick for a couple of days. But the truth is, if I’m ever out of commission, even for a little while, this business is, too. It relies too heavily on me being one hundred percent.” It was a fear that she hadn’t actually voiced before, and now that she said it, she felt it even more strongly.

  “Can you get another employee? Then you’d have enough overlap that if any one of you was sick or hurt or what have you, there would always be someone to cover for you.”

  Macie shook her head. “I can’t and still have the numbers be where they’d need to be to buy the building.”

  “Is there more growth potential? If so, maybe you could move forward knowing that things would work out.”

  “I don’t know. That’s impossible to tell without more market research and testing. And those things take time.”

  “Would you like me to take a look at your books with you, maybe see if there’s something you’re missing?”

  “That’s okay, Dad. You’ve got a meeting you need to get to. I’ll get this figured out.”

  “I know you will. You’re a bright, determined girl who knows how to use that business degree you’ve got. Just know that the offer stands anytime you want it.” He rubbed Lola’s head and ran his fingers back and forth behind Reese’s ears, just like they liked it, then pet the two dogs and one cat that had sidled up to him, then left.

  Macie headed back to her office to work her way through another scenario. The more she thought and planned and figured things out, the more things popped into her head that she would need to account for. And the more she got worried about committing to something so big.

  Eventually Emily came in to work, and things got much busier out front. Still she worked through plan after plan. But all the playing and laughing going on in the other room was distracting, and she found herself spending more and more time glancing over at the coat Aaron had left cradling her head when he’d lain her down on the makeshift bed he’d made for her on the floor last Thursday. She’d taken the coat home with her, and had meant to bring it to the Christmas party to return it to him, but she’d forgotten. She still wasn’t ready to analyze her forgetfulness to see if it had been strictly on accident, or if a part of her wanted to keep it a little while longer just to feel him near. Or to give her an excuse to go see him.

  Whatever the reason behind it was, she did have the coat, and she did need to return it to him. She glanced up at the clock. School was out, but he’d probably still be there. She put on her own coat, grabbed her purse, and slung his coat over her arm.

  The front office let her know that he had swim team practice today that was probably just about over, so she headed toward the end of the school with the gyms and the indoor pool. When she went through the doors, his entire team was out of the water, pressing their towels against their suits and hair as they listened to him give details about when their next practice and meet was. A chlorinated humidity hung in the air, so she immediately set his coat on a bench, removed hers, and laid it on top of his. Aaron dismissed them all to the locker rooms.

  Macie figured that he would probably turn around and walk her direction, but he didn’t. He pulled his shirt off, tossed it on the benches along the sides, and dove into the pool. She didn’t mean to just stand there, watching him when he didn’t even know she was there. But his strokes as he glided through the water were just so... beautiful.

  He swam freestyle, one arm at a time coming up out of the water, then sinking back in with such powerful force and perfect rhythm, his head turning to take a breath every fourth stroke. His legs kicked so strong and lean and every line and angle of every movement was breathtaking. Each turn at the ends of the pool was flawless, not a wasted motion, not a muscle out of line. Watching him was mesmerizing, and gave her the strangest sense of déjà vu. Then he switched to swimming the butterfly stroke, his arms coming out of the water at the same time, those powerful legs kicking together.

  The third time his arms came out of the water, she gasped.

  This wasn’t the first time she’d seen him swim. It had been a long time since she had, but she immediately knew it was true. The more she watched him swim, the more details came back to her. The pool. The crowds. The suit, the swim cap, the diving blocks, the judges, all on her family’s TV. She had been what? A senior in high school? No, not quite. It was the summer Olympics, right between her junior and senior years. And he had been the golden child of the USA Olympi
c Swim Team, swimming in several individual and team events.

  How had she not recognized the name? Probably because it was just normal enough to not stand out. There was something people used to chant. She racked her brain trying to remember.

  “Aaron Hall,” she whispered the chant. “Take gold in all.”

  Something happened, though. The details just hadn’t been in her head enough. Like she hadn’t seen it happen herself; she’d only heard about it, so it didn’t stick.

  He swam up to the end of the pool nearest Macie, touching the side of the pool with both hands at the same time. Then he stood and brushed the hair out of his face. The moment he noticed her standing there, his face broke into a smile. He must’ve been able to read the expression on her face, though, because the smile fell right along with his shoulders. She could tell that he suspected she knew.

  Yet still, he put on a smile and acted like nothing happened. “You’re a nice surprise. What brings you to the chlorine-scented, humidity-filled part of town?”

  “Aaron, you are an Olympian! A gold medal-winning Olympian!”

  He didn’t respond—he just glanced at the lane beside him, like he was wishing he’d kept on swimming.

  “Aaron, why would you not mention that? Why would you not tattoo it on your arm or print it on all your t-shirts?”

  He took a long breath, then put his hands on the side of the pool and pushed himself out. He walked toward her, the pool water running down his chest, arms, and legs, accentuating muscles that she had only felt a hint of when she’d put her hand on his chest. Then he turned, grabbed a towel from the rack, and pulled it down his face, then dried off his neck. “Because I don’t have the best of memories associated with the Olympics.”

  Macie’s brows crinkled and her head cocked to the side as she tried to remember what had happened. He blew out a breath. “Okay. I’ll tell you the story—I’d rather you didn’t find it out by Googling it. Give me ten minutes to shower and change.”