by Naima Simone
Didn’t stop him from wanting to protect them from whatever ghosts had pursued them all the way from Boston.
Didn’t stop him from just...wanting.
Jesus. If he could shove his size-fourteen shoe up his own ass, he would. He’d deserve it for staring down one of his biggest mistakes last night and still standing here in the bright light of day and considering a repeat.
Olivia had been his first love. And though she’d claimed to return that love, she’d left Rose Bend—left him—because small-town life had been suffocating for her. He hadn’t been enough to compete with the sophisticated lure of the big city.
Watching her drive away had done more than break him. It’d shattered him in a way that only returning stateside from Iraq without his best friend Raylon Brandt had done. He’d failed someone he’d loved, again.
He’d failed to protect Raylon in that small village in the desert.
And he’d failed to be enough for the woman he loved.
On the steps of his cottage, watching her car fade into the distance, he’d vowed never again to be a failure. To never disappoint another person...disappoint himself.
Nessa Hunt had his failure scrawled in permanent marker all over her.
Nothing good could come from getting involved with her. Not for either of them.
Yet, as he peered down at Ivy’s defiant scowl—the angry glare that couldn’t conceal the flickers of insecurity, of pain—he called himself about fifty-six different kinds of fool.
Shit.
And he was stepping right in it.
“Listen, Mozart, I don’t know what that means,” he said, cocking his head and crossing his arms over his chest. “But I do know that if Sonny or Cher up and disappeared on me, I would be losing my shit.”
“Language,” she grumbled.
“Right. Sorry.” He paused, struggling to hold back his smile, seeing how this was definitely not a smile situation. But damn, she was making it difficult. “Anyway, I won’t get into you and your sister’s business, but even if you two aren’t ‘in each other’s back pockets,’ she still deserves to know when you’ve gone MIA so she doesn’t worry.”
“She’s not worried. Relieved, maybe. Not worried,” Ivy insisted, stubbornly, her mouth twisting down at the corners. When Wolf just stared at her, not budging, she rolled her eyes and pulled her phone out of her coat pocket. “How about a deal? If I call Nessa and let her know where I’m at, you let me stay here and help you.”
Surprise whistled through him, and he arched his eyebrows. “You interested in carpentry?”
She shrugged a shoulder, what he was becoming to recognize as her tell—the I-care-but-damn-if-I-let-you-know tell. “My dad used to do work on home projects like bookshelves and tables for our neighbors. He’d let me help.”
Used to.
Oh, sweetheart, I’m so sorry. Wolf’s arms physically twinged with the need to pull this prickly girl into a hug and hold her just as he would one of the twins.
When Moe had mentioned Ivy’s parents in the kitchen yesterday, he’d sensed something—a tense undercurrent between Nessa and Ivy about their father. But Wolf hadn’t guessed their father was gone. He slowly lowered his arms, involuntarily taking a step toward Ivy. What about her mother? Was she dead, too? As soon as the question ghosted through his mind, the answer struck him with certainty.
Oh Jesus, this little girl.
She was going to break his heart.
Swallowing hard, he used the excuse of turning to his toolbox, opening the lid and removing an extra pair of gloves to get a grip on the emotion that shoved its way into his chest and throat. His family had known death. Flo and the twins had all been touched by it. He’d been scarred by it. Still bore the wounds...
And then more recently, Cole had lost his wife and baby during childbirth. Losing someone you loved... It irrevocably changed you, and sometimes not for the better. So, yeah, he got how death could alter a person.
He just... He just hated that Ivy knew it, too.
And as pointless as it was, he longed to protect her from the knowledge. But he couldn’t.
He could give her just a little of the memories with her father, though.
“Call your sister. No negotiating on that,” he said, injecting the same steel in his voice that he used when reminding the twins of the chores-first, video-games-YouTube-videos-second rule.
Dismay flashed over her face before she schooled it into a carefully constructed mask of You suck anyway. “So, you’re saying I can’t stay and help?”
“No.” He extended the pair of gloves to her. “I’m saying that’s not a deal I’m willing to make. We don’t have to bargain in order for you to hang out and give me an extra pair of hands. If you want to stay, then I want you to. That’s it. No strings.” He sent a pointed look toward her cell phone. “Now call your sister.”
Shock widened her eyes and parted her lips, erasing all evidence of preteen sneering. “Really?” she breathed. “I can stay?”
“Really,” he said, softly. “Make the call and let me show you where I need you.”
At the words “I need you,” her face lit up like that damn Christmas tree in The Glen, and Wolf had to turn away again and quickly heft up one of the posts he’d prepared for cutting. Either that or snatch that girl up in a hug she might not appreciate.
The Hunts.
His next failure. Permanent marker.
Damn.
Six
ONE OF EVELYN REED’S favorite books had been Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and she’d often read it to Nessa at bedtime. Back then, Nessa hadn’t wanted to hurt her mother’s feelings, but she’d hated the book. Her feelings hadn’t changed over the years. Seriously, who followed a strange rabbit anywhere? Ever heard of stranger danger? Stay home where it’s safe and people don’t threaten to chop off any body parts, chick!
But now, as Nessa strolled down Main Street’s sidewalks crowded with morning shoppers and tourists, she silently apologized to Alice. She got it. While a letter in a will had sent her down the rabbit hole that was Rose Bend, MA, she now understood Wonderland’s appeal to Alice. No, this pretty, quaint town didn’t have talking, tea-drinking animals or homicidal playing cards. But it did have an old-fashioned pharmacy with a sign for an honest-to-God soda fountain inside. And a brick-and-mortar bookstore with a Christmas tree made of books in the display window, as well as an adorable ice cream shop called Six Ways to Sundae.
Not a fantasyland, but a foreign wonderland just the same.
My bad, Alice.
Nessa paused in front of a coffee shop with Mimi’s Café scrawled in elegant script across its black-and-gold awning. Though the door was closed, she still caught a whiff of freshly brewed coffee, and her taste buds kicked up a massive protest, crying out for a daily dose of caffeine. Her morning routine of sitting and savoring her first cup of coffee had been replaced by a heaping serving of panic due to Ivy’s disappearing act. Her belly rolled, clenching tight in phantom pangs.
She’d been so scared when she hadn’t been able to find Ivy.
And as she’d started her second search around the outbuilding behind the inn, all she’d been able to think was that she’d lost someone else. This was what happened when she let people in her life. They left. They never stayed. They di—
Then her phone had rung.
It’d been Ivy, telling her she’d caught a ride downtown and was hanging out with Wolf at the square.
Nessa’s knees had buckled. And she’d been grateful no one had been around to witness them hitting the cold, hard ground. But then, like a swollen flash flood, the anger had rushed in, streaming through her, and she embraced it. Let it power her to her feet and back to the inn. Pissed off was preferable to being weak.
Preferable to letting someone else become so important, so vital, that just the thought of their disappear
ance nearly wrecked her.
Needless to say, coffee hadn’t been a priority that morning.
But it was now.
Grasping the handle, she pulled the entrance door and entered. Freshly ground coffee beans, fried dough, sugar and the Jackson 5’s “Give Love on Christmas Day” welcomed her. Yearning, hot and strong like the coffee she’d longed for so badly, spread through her chest, swirling before surging for her throat. It clogged there, a thick ball of grief, wistfulness and threads of faded joy.
Only minutes ago, she’d thought of her mother’s favorite book. And now, hearing this song bombarded her with memories of Evelyn playing the Jackson 5 Christmas CD over and over every holiday season. Without fail.
Nessa blinked against the sting of sudden tears. God, this needed to stop. She wasn’t this person. This sentimental, weepy, touchy-feely person. And she damn sure wasn’t going to get back into the ER if she was the emotional equivalent of a tangled string of Christmas lights.
Pragmatic. Rational. Cool.
Nurse Freeze, dammit.
See? This was why she didn’t do Christmas.
“Hey, Nessa!”
Nessa jumped on the distraction of that bright greeting. Almost desperately, she wheeled around and met Sydney Dennison’s warm smile.
“Morning, Syd—Oh wow, a baby,” Nessa said, noticing the tiny infant bundled against the other woman’s chest in a carrier. A white blanket with pink flowers folded back at the corner revealed the sweet face of a sleeping baby with the plumpest cheeks, longest lashes and thickest head of dark curls. “She’s beautiful,” she whispered, mindful not to wake her even though they were in a crowded café.
“Oh don’t bother whispering.” Sydney chuckled. “It amazes me how once she’s asleep, it would take a bomb to wake her up. It’s just the getting her to sleep that’s the act of God,” she drawled. “And thank you. I think she’s absolutely gorgeous, but I figure I might be a tad biased. So, it’s nice to receive objective confirmation from others.” A smile infused with so much love it seemed to light up her face with an internal glow softly curved her mouth. “You’re downtown pretty early this morning. Doing some shopping?”
“No.” Nessa moved toward the line that led to the counter and Sydney joined her, though she held a to-go cup of coffee and a small white paper bag in her hand. “Ivy’s over at the square with Wolf, so I decided to stop in for coffee before heading over there.”
“Gotcha. You’ve picked the best place. There are several cafés in town, and they’re all great, but Mimi’s is the best. And the doughnuts here.” She rolled her eyes and let out a groan. “The glazed ones are the best, and I admit—I have an addiction. It started when I moved back to town this summer, and it’s only worsened since then.” Sydney leaned forward, her voice lowering to a pseudowhisper. “One time, I asked Autumn Bryant, the owner, if she laced the glaze with crack. She denied it, but seriously, would she admit it? I think not.”
Nessa snickered. “Okay, you’ve convinced me to try the doughnuts.” Then, because she couldn’t resist and curiosity niggled at her, she asked, “You said you moved back to Rose Bend. I thought you were from here.”
“Born and raised,” Sydney said, shifting forward in the line. “But I left after I graduated high school and returned home after almost ten years in June, freshly divorced and pregnant with this one.” She gently smoothed a hand over her infant’s head.
Uh, okay. That sounded like a story.
Sydney glanced up and laughed. “TMI? Well, this is a small town, and there’s no such thing. I give it by the end of today before you’ve heard about it anyway. Funny.” She laughed again, and it carried a rueful but fond note. “That everybody-in-everybody-else’s-business thing used to drive me nuts about this place. Now, it’s still annoying, but kind of...comforting. Maybe because I’m a mother.” She shrugged. “But yep, I returned home, the black sheep, snagged the mayor, married him and we became a ready-made family. And it was the best decision I ever made.”
From the love that brightened her brown eyes, Nessa believed she believed that. But what did Nessa know about happily-ever-afters?
“So, Cole...”
“No, Cole isn’t Patience’s biological father, but he is her father in every other way that counts. This little girl’s lucky enough to have two men who love and claim her,” Sydney said. “My ex-husband and his wife recently moved from North Carolina to Boston to be closer for visitations.” She huffed out a breath, her lips twisting into a wry smile. “Now, to understand how that’s a minor miracle, you’d need to know our whole story. And we’re going to need something a little stronger than coffee for that,” she teased as they approached the counter. Turning to the woman standing behind the register, Sydney grinned. “Bet you didn’t expect to see me again so soon. Autumn, I’d like to introduce you to one of our newest visitors, Nessa Hunt. Nessa, this is Autumn Bryant, owner of this amazing café and home of the doughnuts that may or may not be the subject of a possible DEA investigation.”
The pretty young woman, with her petite frame, wealth of shoulder-length brown curls and sprinkle of chocolate freckles on her cinnamon skin, didn’t appear old enough to own and run a successful business. She narrowed her hazel eyes on Sydney, but they gleamed with humor. “That is a rumor. A rumor I won’t confirm or deny. Nice to meet you, Nessa, and welcome to Rose Bend. What can I get you?”
Minutes later, Nessa exited the café with Sydney beside her, a coffee and hot chocolate in her hands, and a doughnut already in her stomach. Sydney hadn’t been wrong. If loving a baked good was wrong, she didn’t want to be right.
“We’re kind of in the same boat,” Sydney said as they made their way down the sidewalk toward the square.
Since they’d left the coffee shop, several people had stopped and called out greetings to her and introduced themselves to Nessa. Sydney took it all in stride, but for Nessa, she again commiserated with Alice. In Boston, people weren’t mean, but usually the most a stranger received was a nod and maybe a brief, polite smile. Maybe. Definitely not this friendliness that had the city-born, suspicious part of her doling out side-eye.
“In what way?”
“I’ve been gone so long, this will almost be like my first Christmas in Rose Bend. But I remember them. And, Nessa, my friend, you are in for a treat. Or shell shock.” She snorted. “If you haven’t guessed yet, they go all out here. The Christmas tree lighting is just the start of it. There’s a pageant, caroling, a movie night, parade, tree decorating contests... It’s a crazy, magnificent time.”
“Sounds like you missed it,” Nessa murmured.
Sydney nodded, and she lifted her hands, cradling her baby through the carrier. The gesture struck Nessa as instinctive, as if the other woman weren’t aware she’d done it. “I did. If you’d asked me all the years I was in North Carolina whether I did, I probably would’ve denied it. But I did. I’m looking forward to the insanity. To introducing Patience to it.”
Nessa didn’t reply as they crossed the street and neared the walk that bordered the town square. It fit the name: short, neatly trimmed hedges decorated with bright red poinsettias, pine cones and greenery bordered a wide space set in the heart of town. Benches, little patches of winter grass and big stone pots that would probably boast beautiful, vibrant flowers in the spring and summer dotted the paved area. And right in the middle, bent over a couple of long lengths of wood laid across two triangular platforms, worked Wolf and Ivy. The loud buzzing sound of a saw whirred in the air, and Wolf stood behind Ivy, his arms bracketing her as he carefully guided her in cutting the wood. Absently, Nessa also noted a boy off to the side, digging into the ground with a long tool, but almost immediately, the man and the little girl recaptured her attention.
Even with goggles covering nearly half her face, Nessa spied the concentration creasing Ivy’s expression, but it’s what she didn’t glimpse that caused her to stutter to a
halt.
Anger. Resentment. Even sorrow. The emotions she was so used to seeing on Ivy’s face were missing. For a moment, the vise that had seemed to become a permanent fixture around her chest since she received the call about Isaac loosened just a fraction.
Because for just a moment, she caught sight of the girl who’d once been a regular moody but happy preteen. A preteen with an attentive, protective father.
But as quick as that band relaxed, it tightened again. Constricting and leaving that desperate, hollow ache because that carefree girl was forever gone. Ivy no longer had an adoring father.
She only had Nessa.
The shittiest substitute ever.
“Your sister seems to be getting along well with Wolf,” Sydney said, sipping from her own cup of coffee. “I’m not surprised, though. He has a way with kids. There’s this core of...I don’t know...no-bullshitness and strength in him that gives them a sense of stability. Of safety. See Trevor over there?” She dipped her head in the direction of the tall boy Nessa had briefly noted. “He’s one of Cole’s clients. On his way down a rough road with a bad crowd. But working with Wolf has helped keep him straight. Trevor respects him when he doesn’t respect many people.”
Nessa remained quiet, but she could see that. From the instant they’d met, Wolf had managed to sneak past those heavy walls Ivy had erected around herself. Ivy had taken to Wolf. Hell, so had Nessa.
“Nessa, please feel free to tell me to mind my own business,” Sydney murmured.
Well, she definitely had her attention with that opening. Nessa glanced at Sydney, who stared at her, brown gaze steady but with an understanding that both warmed Nessa and set her on edge. Nothing good ever came from a conversation that started like that.
“Last night, when I was leaving the lighting, I noticed you and your sister ahead of me. You two didn’t seem...close. And let me apologize now for eavesdropping, but I overheard a little of your conversation, and your sister...” Sydney glanced at Ivy and Wolf again, and silence echoed between them for a moment. “Your sister reminds me of myself at her age. Angry. Hurt. A little lost. Not to give you my life story, but my sister died when I was younger, and for the longest time it created this wedge between me and my parents. Hell, between me and almost everyone.”