Her shoulders drooped. “It’s a long story, and I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”
Cole set down his mug, then hers, and drew her into his arms, the glamorous woman and the wounded child locked inside her. He loved them both. “Not tonight you won’t.”
Sloan crumbled, sobbed into his chest. He held her until the crying lagged. Then he lifted her chin. She turned away, grabbed a tea towel he always kept hanging on a hook near the stove, buried her face, and in a muffled voice moaned, “Why do I always end up crying when I’m with you?”
He rested his chin atop her head, swayed gently. “Why do I always want to hold you if you’re an arm’s length away?”
His comeback brought a slight smile, and she pulled away to see his face. “Always?”
“Every. Time.” She snuggled into his embrace, and he realized she was exhausted, wiped out. “There’re clean linens on my bed. Get some sleep. I’ll take the couch.”
“I shouldn’t—”
He interrupted. “Toby will be up with the chickens, and I’ll fix him breakfast. You get some rest. Like the song says, ‘the sun will come out tomorrow.’ ”
She was too tired to argue, so she leaned forward, kissed him ever so lightly, turned, and started to his bedroom. She had taken only a few steps when Cole asked, “If Gabe was your loss, what is Toby to you?”
She was quiet for a very long minute, searching for a way to tell him what was in her head and heart. She and Gloria were collateral damage from other people’s mistakes, yet here they were together at an intersection of time when they could make a difference in another child’s life. “I came to love Gabe too late, but with Toby, it’s different. He deserves the best Gloria and I can give him. Toby’s my redemption. He’s not a substitute for Gabe, if that’s what you’re wondering. I’m not his mother, and I don’t want to be. Plus, Lindsey wanted Gloria to raise him in her house.”
Sloan turned to face Cole, this man she’d come to know and care for so very much. “You know, people say, ‘Never give up! You can have it all!’ And when I won the contest, when they announced my name and all that confetti fell on me, I believed I’d gotten it all. But then Lindsey came along, and I realized that ‘having it all’ is fluid…flexible. Because somewhere along the way, my ‘all’ got bigger.”
She spoke in fits and starts, but Cole listened to every word, offering no interruptions, no platitudes. Visible tears swam in her eyes. “Lindsey’s gone…that’s my loss. But she left me something I didn’t think I’d ever have. She left me a family. Toby…Gloria too. Just the three of us, Cole. DNA doesn’t make up every family, you know. We’re a crazy little clan for sure, but we belong to each other.” She wanted to add And my sister made it possible for me to know you too but didn’t have the courage.
Cole was shaken as her words imbedded in his heart. He’d never loved her more, never wanted her more than in this moment. Instead he watched her disappear into his bedroom and shut the door. He longed to follow, to hold her and love her for the rest of their lives. He grasped the edge of the granite countertop, hung tightly to the cold hard stone, taking deep breaths to slow the rising tide of desire to go to her. He was smart enough to understand that sometimes the only way to hold on was by letting go.
Sloan arrived two days before Christmas, encumbered with extra suitcases filled with gifts. She’d shopped in LA, had bought everything she’d felt like buying for Toby and Gloria and Cole, and had dragged it all to Windemere, where she shut herself in a room and personally wrapped and tagged every present. She knew she had overdone the buying spree, but didn’t care. This year was for all the Christmases of growing up when she’d had so little. For her this Christmas was about giving.
The house had smelled of Christmas cookies and pumpkin pies when she’d first walked in the door. The tree was dressed with twinkle lights, paper chains, gingham bows, pinecones, and candy canes—a homespun replica of a Country Living magazine cover. And when the sun set, battery-operated candlesticks glowed from every window, as if lighting the way for Santa up the long driveway. Toby moved at warp speed, excited by every box under the tree tagged with his name, while he gushed nonstop about his and Sloan’s upcoming trip on the day after Christmas.
“I can’t calm him down,” Gloria said, throwing up her hands. She told Sloan that when Toby returned to school after the first of the year, she would be working the seven-to-three shift at the nursing home so that she could be home to meet Toby’s school bus. “Just like his mama used to. I surely miss her.”
“She’s watching from heaven,” Toby said with a child’s confidence.
For Sloan the only bump about Christmas was that Cole was nowhere around. She remembered he had family in Indiana and asked Gloria, “Did he go home for the holidays?”
“Goodness, no. He’s working the Christmas shift so the fellas who have families don’t have to.” She shook her head. “I declare, that man’s done nothin’ but work since you left two weeks ago. Taken extra shifts and given some of the men extra time off. Nice of Cole, but I sure don’t want him to keel over.”
After Toby and Gloria had gone to bed Christmas night, Sloan sat listening to soft Christmas music and staring at the tree—the gifts unwrapped and put away, the ham dinner eaten and stored for another meal—and thought about Cole Langston. For months he’d been in her thoughts…no matter where she was or what she was doing. The night she’d spent at his house after finding Toby, and baring her soul to him, had been a turning point.
She’d awakened the next morning to the aromas of bacon, maple syrup, and fresh coffee, had pulled herself together, and left his bedroom to see Cole flipping pancakes and Toby scarfing them down.
“Hey, Sloan! You sure sleep late.” Toby had had the exuberance of a puppy, as if the turmoil of the day before had never happened.
“How about you, Sloan?” Cole had asked. “Ready for a stack?” His voice had been casual, his look compassionate. He had not forgotten the day before. Or the night.
She had felt suddenly shy, as if they’d lain together and made love all night. As if he already knew every inch of her mind and body. Of course they had not been intimate, but the feeling had persisted. She had walked to the table, ruffled Toby’s hair, and sat. “Bring it on, Chef. I’m starving.”
Now, this Christmas night, as she gazed at the twinkling tree, she asked, “Could what I’m feeling be love, Cole Langston?” Her answer came in a nanosecond. She smiled, satisfied that the bursting joyous passionate feeling inside her heart at last had a name.
Cole tried to ignore the insistent ringing of his doorbell, finally gave up, threw on a pair of pants, and padded to the front door. He threw it open, growling, “What!” On his doorstep in blinding sunlight and a blast of cold winter air stood Sloan.
She checked him head to toe, hair disheveled, eyes bleary with interrupted sleep, face dark with stubble, his chest bare, gray sweatpants hanging low on his hips, brushing the tops of bare feet. She flashed him a sunny smile. “And good morning to you too, Mr. Langston. Don’t want you to catch a cold.” She gave him a gentle push back into the foyer and closed the door behind her. “Can’t stay but a minute. Toby’s in the car, and we’re heading to the airport.”
Her smile coupled with the scent of her perfume hammered him, and all his senses went on high alert. “What time is it?”
“Way too early, but he’s been up and packed since five a.m., and Gloria’s trying to get ready for work. I thought we might as well go to Nashville and let him run around the airport and maybe wear himself out before our flight. We change planes in Dallas, so—” She stopped talking because the bemused smile on Cole’s face and his sexy blue eyes stole her concentration.
“So you stopped over to say goodbye?” Again.
She cleared her throat, hoping to calm nerve endings that were snapping like downed electrical wires. “Yes, but also to ask you a quick question.”
“I’m listening.”
She ran the tip of her finger
down his chest, from the hollow of his throat to his belly button. Goose bumps burst on his exposed skin, making him shiver. “You know Toby and I will be back in six days. And I’m wondering, do you have any plans for New Year’s Eve?”
His dimple sneaked out with a sultry smile. He would wait a lifetime for her, so six days were nothing. “I serve at my lady’s pleasure.” He fisted his right hand above his heart and gave a slight bow of his head.
Her knight-errant. “The lady wishes to spend the evening with you.”
“Does my lady wish anything special for the evening? Food? Champagne?”
“Whatever the chef chooses will be”—she paused—“delicious, the lady believes.” She curtsied.
He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed the smooth pale skin. “As you wish, my lady.”
Her heart crashed against her rib cage and she could barely breathe. “Until then, stay away from dragons.” Sloan spun and rushed out the door.
Sloan meandered down the back road, taking her time, reminiscing over the moments in Cole’s foyer that had ignited hunger and anticipation for their upcoming New Year’s Eve together. Sunlight streamed through the windshield, so warm that she had turned off the car’s heater. She glanced in her rearview mirror and saw Toby in the backseat staring out the window. She was mulling over the days ahead with him in California, when a shape flashed past her peripheral vision. She applied the brakes, looked in the side mirror, and saw a large brick entranceway opening onto a widened side road. What in the world?
“Are we there already?” Toby asked.
“No, but I see something I’d like to look at. Won’t take but a minute.” She put the car in reverse, backed up, and stopped in front of two curved low walls of neatly mortared red brick with an entrance road between them. A sign read WINDEMERE ACRES. The road, as wide as any boulevard in Los Angeles, invited people into what was clearly going to be a new subdivision. She turned in, shut off the engine. “Let’s explore.”
Happy to be out of the car, Toby hopped and jumped on one foot, then raced down the new asphalt road until it abruptly ended in gravel and red dirt. Sloan followed. Small stakes in the ground flagged with strips of red cloth marked off plots of land. To her right was a brightly painted board showing large wedges of lots, some marked SOLD. The sign read: FUTURE PRESTIGE HOME SITES FOR SALE—1- AND 5-ACRE LOTS, and had phone numbers to call for inquiries.
She turned again to stare in wonder, a cold breeze blowing her hair. Toby ran up. “What is this place?”
“It’s where I used to live.” He looked around, confused. “It was a trailer park when I lived here.”
Clearly uninterested, he held up a foam coffee cup thrown away by some construction worker. “Look what I found. You know what this is?” Inside the stained cup lay a dead butterfly with orange-and-black markings on its wings. Before she could say a word, he announced, “It’s a monarch,” and seemed proud to know it.
“Interesting” was all she could say, still stunned by the view of home sites where she’d spent so many unhappy years.
“Didya know that every spring monarchs fly all the way from Mexico to Canada? And then in the fall they fly all the way back to Mexico and hang in trees—lots and lots of trees. And they make more butterflies and sleep all winter. We studied it in school.”
She glanced down at his smiling upturned face. “Long trip.”
“I know! Crazy. They just know where to go every time, even though no one tells them. They’re programmed that way. My teacher says it’s like survival of the fittest.”
Nature’s programming. Instinct. Sloan turned to study the board, saw that several primo five-acre lots backing onto a faraway tree line were still for sale. And in that moment she knew she would never buy or build in Los Angeles. She would build here, a gorgeous house with verandas and columns and rolling green lawns. Whenever she came off the road from weeks or months of touring, whenever she needed to rest and renew her body and mind, this is where she’d come. Gloria would raise Toby in his mother’s house, Gloria’s house now. They loved and needed each other. Cole was nearby too. Sloan would make sure Gloria and Toby would want for nothing. Tears filmed Sloan’s eyes as she remembered that Gabriel was also here, forever.
“You crying?” Toby asked, his forehead puckered.
“Happy tears.” She held out her hand. “Come on, Tobias Ridley. Race you to the car.” She let him run slightly ahead of her to the vehicle.
“I win!” Toby shouted when he tagged the car.
Me too, she thought. Like the monarch butterfly, sometimes a person had to travel thousands of miles to find the way back home.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My thanks to Marie Farley and her daughter Jessica Farley. Their input concerning child advocacy laws was invaluable.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
LURLENE MCDANIEL began writing inspirational novels about teenagers facing life-altering situations when her son was diagnosed with juvenile diabetes. “I want kids to know that while people don’t get to choose what life gives to them, they do get to choose how they respond,” she has said.
Lurlene McDaniel’s novels are hard-hitting and realistic, but also leave readers with inspiration and hope. Her bestselling books have received acclaim from readers, teachers, parents, and reviewers.
Lurlene McDaniel lives in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Visit her online at LurleneMcDaniel.com and on Facebook, and follow @Lurlene_McD on Twitter.
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