A Down-Home Savannah Christmas

by Nancy Robards Thompson

  “That’s a great idea,” she said. “Since I’m a teacher, you’d think I would’ve thought of that.”

  “You helped a lot today,” he said. “You really shouldn’t be too hard on yourself.”

  She wondered if this was his way of subtly changing the subject to the camp so that they didn’t have to talk about what happened at the wedding. She really shouldn’t have brought it up.

  She stood.

  He was standing so close to her now. A frisson of awareness zinged through her and nearly took her breath away. She stepped back and butted up against the couch. He reached out and steadied her.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  “Yes. I’m fine.”

  I’m fine. You’ll be fine. But why do I feel like you and I are anything but fine?

  “If you can’t find the friends’ numbers, maybe her teacher could put you in touch with them,” she said. “Even though the kids are on vacation, sometimes the teachers have workdays. Call tomorrow and check. Because you’re right—kids usually go to camp together, don’t they?”

  She was rattling on. She sounded like an idiot.

  “Let’s see,” he said. “The last time I sent my kids to camp—Oh, wait. I don’t have kids.”

  He laughed. She did, too, but it sounded more like a nervous hiccup.

  “Are you sure about that?” she asked.

  “Yeah. I’m sure.”

  “Good to know.”

  She bit her bottom lip to keep herself from saying anything else stupid.

  He reached out and lifted her chin so that she was looking him in the eyes.

  The feel of his touch, the unwavering directness off his gaze heated her body.

  “If you don’t want to talk about the wedding, we don’t have to,” he said, returning to the conversation they’d skirted with all the camp talk. “I won’t lie to you, Elle. It’s not pleasant. I mean, I wouldn’t have intentionally messed with Roger’s head if he’d been the fine, upstanding guy everyone thought he was. It didn’t matter what everyone thought. You were the only one who mattered and I knew he didn’t deserve you.”

  The way he was looking at her, with his eyes fiery and impassioned, in contrast with the gentle way he was touching her face—like he was holding something fragile—she thought he might lean in and kiss her. And the stupidest thing was that she would’ve let him.

  She wanted him to.

  But then he pulled away his hand and took a step back, putting some much needed space between them.

  “The only thing I need for you to know is that I would never hurt you, Elle. Not on purpose. Not then. Not now. Not ever.”

  She blinked. Her lips parted slightly.

  “Roger was cheating on me, wasn’t he?”

  Daniel didn’t answer right away. He didn’t have to. The look on his face said it all.

  Until the wedding day, Daniel had been Roger’s best friend. They’d kept in touch through Roger’s college years at the University of Georgia. Even though Daniel didn’t go to college, he’d spent more time in Athens, Georgia, than Elle had.

  She hadn’t been happy when Roger had asked Daniel to be his best man in their wedding. To her, Daniel had always been that friend, the one whose mission seemed intent on leading Roger astray. As if Roger, the man-child, was so naive and impressionable he could be led. For the first time it dawned on her that Roger was probably the one who had been doing the leading. He certainly had led her on a merry chase. For all these years it had been easier to blame Daniel than to accept the fact that Roger had been playing her for a fool long before the day he’d left her standing at the altar.

  “I owe you an apology, Daniel.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  “Yes, I do. You saved me from making the worst mistake of my life, but until now I blamed you for ruining everything. If it hadn’t ended there, it would’ve ended eventually. It would’ve been messy, and even though Roger running out on me was pretty damn humiliating, it would’ve been more humiliating to be the wife who was the last to know about her husband’s infidelities.”

  Pain knitted Daniel’s brows. “I’m sorry it had to happen that way.”

  “Be honest with me. What happened the night before the wedding that made you so adamant about stopping the wedding? Did Roger cheat on me that night?”

  “Elle.” His voice was a warning.

  “Daniel.” Her voice was insistent.

  “Did you not talk to Roger after he left?”

  Elle shook her head. “I saw him once after the wedding. He apologized and said he realized too late that he didn’t love me enough to spend the rest of his life with me.” She shrugged. “But now I’m wondering if something else happened.”

  “After all this time do the details really matter?” he asked.

  “Not the details. I need an answer to the burning question. For all these years, I wouldn’t let myself go there. I wouldn’t let myself see the truth, but now that I see it, I need to know for sure.”

  Daniel stood there looking at her with brown eyes that held so much emotion—not pity, but a kind of emotion that made her realize that he genuinely cared.

  “Look, if it will make you feel better,” she said, “telling me would justify what you did—nudging him at the altar. At least in my eyes—in my heart—it would justify it. Daniel, all these years you let people believe you were the bad guy. You’ve taken the fall for me getting left at the altar. I don’t need details. I need a simple yes or no. Did Roger cheat on me the night before our wedding?”

  Daniel took a deep breath and then nodded.

  “Thank you for saving me from making the biggest mistake of my life.” She felt herself moving toward him in slow motion, arms lifting, her hands touching his face, fingers threading through his curly brown hair. Her mouth covered his. He tasted achingly familiar and brand-new all at once. It was almost an out-of-body experience—as if she was watching the kiss unfold from above. When his arms closed around her and pulled her flush against his body, her world tipped on its axis and she fell tumbling into the promise conveyed in his kiss.

  Chapter Seven

  When Daniel awoke alone the next morning in a strange bed that wasn’t his own, it took a minute for him to remember where he was—the guest room of his brother’s house. The next thing he pondered was whether kissing Elle had been a dream. But he could still feel her mouth on his and still taste her on his lips. He knew without a doubt the kiss had happened. What he didn’t know was how Elle would feel about it in the light of day.

  She hadn’t lingered afterward, which was probably a good thing because he wanted to keep kissing her. Hell, he hadn’t wanted to stop there. But one kiss was not an all-access pass. Even if she’d wanted more, they both knew it shouldn’t happen with Chloe in the next room.

  It had been an awkward goodbye with them making small talk about him bringing Chloe with him to the Forsyth Galloway Inn so he could go to the hospital and she, Zelda and Wiladean could watch Chloe.

  But they hadn’t talked any more about the wedding or what transpired before it. Obviously, she didn’t want to hear the gory details of how Roger had awakened on his wedding day with a raging hangover and a stripper he’d met at the club where they’d celebrated his bachelor party.

  Daniel had tried to stop him. When Roger started slurring his words and getting a little too cozy with his favorite—a redhead who had invited him on stage to play the submissive in her tribute to Fifty Shades of Grey—Daniel had intervened and told the woman Roger was getting married. He’d gone as far as shepherding Roger to the car and driving home and dumping his drunk ass into his hotel bed. But obviously somewhere during the night, the pair had exchanged contact information. They’d ended up exchanging more than that. When Roger didn’t answer his phone the next morning, Daniel had gone to his hotel, prepared to pour a gallon of coffee down his
sorry throat and stuff him under a cold shower and into his wedding tux. That was when he’d found him passed out with the woman in his bed. He was supposed to be getting married in two hours.

  Daniel had tried to talk him out of going through with it. He’d tried to persuade him to call Elle and do the right thing by canceling or at least postponing until Roger could work through whatever it was that was compelling him to act this way. Daniel’s argument was that if he wasn’t ready to get married, he shouldn’t get married.

  No judgment. Just facts. If he still had a penchant for strippers—a penchant that went beyond casually watching them—then maybe he needed to rethink taking a vow where he’d pledge to forsake all others except for Elle until death did them part.

  After the redhead left and Roger showered, he’d dressed in his tux and had insisted on going through with the wedding. Until it came down to the moment when he had to look Elle in the eyes and take his vows.

  Thank God for that moment of clarity. Because until Roger bolted, Daniel had thought he was going to go through with it.

  Elle didn’t need to know that. He would’ve spared her the hurt even if she’d insisted on hearing the details. And she could be pretty damn persuasive. But she seemed satisfied with the abridged version of the story. Maybe it was wishful thinking because Daniel had been in love with her since the first moment he’d seen her at Savannah Country Day, but it finally felt like the path to each other—that had always been blocked—was finally clear.

  He wasn’t going to kid himself. With all that was happening with Aidan, if this was going to work out, it might take a while longer. But he’d waited this long. He was willing for them to take their time so they could finally get it right. And they still had hurdles to clear.

  He hoped Elle wasn’t having regrets about the revelation and the kiss.

  The kiss had come on the tail of such an emotional revelation that he needed to not get carried away or read anything more into it. It might have been nothing more than her way of coming to terms with the confirmation that her ex-fiancé had cheated the night before their wedding. It might even have been a reflexive payback. Which could’ve been a thank-you to him or a private So there, I’ll kiss your best friend directed at Roger, who would never know it happened. Daniel had spoken to Roger exactly once after he’d left Elle standing at the altar and Daniel holding the scapegoat bag. Then the weasel had disappeared into his new life.

  Right now, Daniel needed to focus on the day ahead. He needed to go by the hospital to check on Aidan. An uneasy feeling nagged in his gut. No one had called, but rather than assume no news was good news—or at least it wasn’t bad news—he called the hospital.

  Aidan was stable. That was great news.

  For a moment, he considered not going to the hospital. He loved his brother but holding vigil at his bedside wouldn’t do anyone any good. But he knew he should go. That was what good people did. They went to the hospital. But it was so damn hard.

  Chloe was still sleeping when he got up. He quickly showered and surveyed the food situation in his brother’s kitchen to see what kind of breakfast he could scrounge up.

  As he started to open the refrigerator, a piece of paper tacked to the door with a couple of kids’ alphabet magnets caught his eye.

  Daniel took the paper off the refrigerator and studied it. It was a flyer for a weeklong holiday camp at Savannah Country Day. Well, hell. It had been right there all the time. He hadn’t noticed it because they had ordered in pizza and he hadn’t paid attention to the collage of papers on his brother’s fridge last night when he’d gotten Chloe some juice to have with dinner.

  It was for one week, but it didn’t start until the week before Christmas. If he could rely on Elle until camp started, it would buy him some time until Chloe started back at school after the new year. Maybe by that time, Aidan would be out of the hospital.

  Within the hour, he had loaded Chloe into his truck, buckled her into the booster seat that Elle had taken out of her car and headed to the Forsyth Galloway Inn.

  * * *

  “Look what I found,” Daniel said as he walked into the Forsyth’s kitchen, clutching Chloe’s hand and holding up a piece of paper with his free hand.

  He looked so darned hot, Elle thought. What was it about a big strong man holding a child’s hand that made her insides turn to mush? She’d seen plenty of fathers holding their children’s hands and none had awakened her lady parts like this.

  It was Daniel. That kiss last night after the confession that she’d pried out of him had set her free.

  And she’d been nervous about how he would act this morning. She worried that when she was admitting to herself that yes, she had a thing for her former nemesis, Daniel Quindlin, who hadn’t ruined her life but in his own stoic way had saved her from making the worst mistake, maybe he wouldn’t see her in quite the same way that she saw him.

  Yet, here he was, smiling and thrusting a piece of paper at her, acting as if he couldn’t be happier to see her.

  “What is that?” she asked.

  “Chloe’s camp.”

  “Seriously? You found it?”

  He nodded. “It was hanging right there on the refrigerator in plain sight. It was sort of collaged in among the other stuff Aidan had up there, but it jumped out at me this morning.”

  She took the paper from him and read it. “Oh, it’s an art camp. Chloe, do you like art?”

  The little girl nodded. “Princess Sweetie Pie and I like to draw and paint.”

  Elle returned the paper to Daniel. “I do, too. I have a feeling that you and I are going to have a lot of fun while your uncle Daniel works around here today.”

  “Uncle Daniel, are you staying here all day?” Chloe asked.

  “I sure am. I will be right here if you need me.”

  Chloe frowned and hugged her white cat.

  “I thought you were going to visit my daddy and ask the doctor when I can go see him.”

  Daniel’s gaze snared Elle’s for a moment and she gave a quick nod, trying to telegraph that it was fine for him to go and check on his brother and that she was happy to look after Chloe.

  “It’s probably a good idea for you to go touch base with the doctor and get an update on Aidan.”

  “I called this morning. They said he’d stabilized.”

  She sensed a shift in his mood, a hesitancy. She couldn’t quite put her finger on what was wrong, but something was.

  “Chloe and I have a lot planned,” she said to lighten the mood. “So, go ahead. We probably won’t even miss you.”

  Again, Daniel snared Elle’s gaze. “I hope you’ll miss me.”

  And bam, there it was again, that feeling that had her heart twisting and her lady parts singing. She needed to be careful because she wasn’t sure what those rogue feelings were about and she would wager that he wasn’t completely clear, either.

  “I will miss you, Uncle Daniel. You will come back as soon as you see Daddy, right?”

  There was something uneasy in his smile. In fact, it seemed as if he was only making the effort to smile for Chloe’s sake. If not for his upbeat entrance this morning and the bit about hoping she would miss him, Elle might have worried that his mood was personal. But here she was overthinking it again.

  “Actually, I’m not sure if I’ll get to go today,” he said. “But I’ll ask the doctor when I talk to him.”

  “You’re not going to the hospital?” Elle asked.

  “We’ll see. When I spoke to the nurse, she said they’ll call me if there’s a change—”

  “Good morning,” Gigi called as she pushed through the kitchen doors.

  “Good morning.” Elle looked at her watch, glad for the diversion. “You’re up early this morning. It’s only 7:30.”

  “I have a very good reason to be up all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.” She looked at Chloe an
d the little girl broke into a fit of giggles.

  “Princess Sweetie Pie has bright eyes and a bushy tail, Gigi. See?”

  She held up the cat for Gigi to inspect. “My goodness, look at that. She sure does.”

  Gigi bent down so that her ear was at the level of the cat’s mouth. “What’s that, Princess Sweetie Pie? You want to play the My Little Pony game?” Chloe’s eyes got big and she moved the cat so its head bobbed up and down.

  “Of course, I’d love to play, Princess Sweetie Pie,” Gigi said. “I’ll see if Chloe wants to play, too.”

  The child bounced up and down with excitement. “Yes! Yes! I want to play.”

  Gigi took the little girl’s hand and shot a knowing smile first to Elle and then to Daniel and back to Elle.

  Could she be more obvious?

  “Sorry to leave you two alone, but Chloe, Princess Sweetie Pie and I have big plans. You two entertain each other.”

  She winked and then followed Chloe, who was already halfway out the kitchen door.

  Elle heard Gigi greet some guests who were staying at the inn, but she couldn’t hear the conversation through the swinging door. For a moment, she considered going out to see if she could help. But it was her mother’s day to set out breakfast and tend to the guests. She knew the real reason she was tempted to go out there was that she was standing here with Daniel, with the feel of last night’s kiss still fresh on her lips, and she had that same uneasy feeling in her stomach she’d had yesterday, when Gigi had skipped out on their lunch plans and left her alone with Daniel. Once again, it was obvious that her grandmother was doing her best to push them together. Not to mention, all of Daniel’s walls seemed to go up whenever they talked about him going to the hospital. She had no idea what that was about. All she knew was things felt a little awkward.

  “What time is the crew arriving?” she asked.

  Daniel glanced at the clock on his phone. “In about an hour and a half. I told them to get here around nine o’clock. Why?”

  “Are you going to the hospital before they arrive?”