by Cara Colter
At first, his lips remained closed against hers. And yet, he did not push her away. She sensed he wanted to, but could not. And so she deepened her kiss until she felt the tiniest give in him, the tiniest of surrenders.
And into that gap, she poured everything she was, and it was like sunlight pouring over snow, turning what was hard and cold into something silver and liquid.
He broke free of her lips, but he did not get up and leave. Or throw her out. Instead, he seemed to be eyeing the life rope she was throwing him.
“What if I hurt you?” Aidan whispered. “And in hurting you, hurt my daughter? She wants you as a mommy so desperately. I’m going to blow it.”
“Are you?” Even though he had said that, she could see him reaching out for that rope.
“Yes,” he said.
“Just trust it a little bit,” Noelle told him. “Just trust love a little tiny bit, and see what it can do. Let’s see what happens next.”
For a long time, he said nothing. But then he took the rope she offered, Noelle saw the answer in his eyes, she saw in them that little flicker of light that was at the heart of the human spirit, and that was at the core of all human strength.
The ability, in the face of overwhelming evidence that it might be heartbreaking to do so, to still say yes to hope.
“All right,” he said. “Let’s see what happens next.”
* * *
Over the next few months, Noelle discovered that Aidan was not a man who did anything by half measures, including seeing what happened next, including falling in love.
He courted her with an intensity, an attention to detail, a fierceness, a tenderness that made her feel as if she was the most loved woman in the world.
He wined her. He dined her. He showered her with gifts. They hiked the trails of Banff National Park and rode the gondola to the top of the world. They rode a different kind of gondola in Venice and snorkeled off the coast of Kona in Hawaii. They went to visit the wineries of the Sonoma Valley. They rode in a hot air balloon. They took a road trip and found each of the hidden hot springs of the Kootenays. They embraced adventures: rock climbing and kayaking and white water rafting. They took cooking classes and ballroom dancing classes.
They discovered what it meant for them to be a couple. Rufus and Nana, who had gotten married a scant two months after Christmas, happily took Tess when they went away.
And they discovered what it meant for them to be a family. They took Tess to Disney World in Florida, and the fabulous Atlantis resort in the Bahamas. They took in children’s theaters and themed playgroups.
And for all this, Noelle’s favorite moments with Aidan and Tess remained the simplest ones. Walking hand in hand along the Bow River as pussy willow buds burst in the trees. The three of them going together to story time at the library, or sprawled out on the floor of the children’s section of the bookstore. Sitting on a bench and eating hotdogs at the truck downtown at lunch hour. All of them crowded into Tess’s bed reading stories at night.
Best of all was when they went to the ranch together. Watching the quiet love grow between Nana and Rufus, and watching Tess learn to ride Gidget, playing board games at night and sitting in the hayloft together after everyone else had gone to bed.
The ranch was “their” place somehow, the place where, entirely free of distractions, something bolder and more beautiful than they had ever imagined for their lives had taken root.
They were at the ranch one summer evening when Aidan asked her to go for a walk with him.
They found themselves at the Honeymoon Cabin.
“I have a gift for you,” he said quietly.
Noelle laughed. She had tried so hard to dissuade him from gifts, but there was no point. She took the envelope he held out to her. “What is it?”
“Open it.”
Noelle opened it and found a sheaf of legal-looking papers.
“I don’t understand what this is.”
“Your grandfather took me aside a few weeks ago and gave me a talking-to.”
“Really? What did he say?”
“He said he understood I was trying to do the honorable thing. He said he understood that it was important for a man to make the woman he loved feel as if she was a princess. He said he understood the value of an old-fashioned courtship. But he said enough was enough. He told me to get on with it.”
Aidan was looking at her with a quiet intensity that made her heart stand still. That thing he did to her heart never seemed to change.
“He said time was shorter than a person could ever imagine. He said that’s why he and Nana did things so quickly. Because they have both experienced losses and they have the maturity to understand that time runs out.
“He told me to marry you and have some babies, already.”
“Aidan Phillips! Are you asking me to marry you?”
He was silent.
Even as her heart soared, Noelle could not resist teasing him. “Because my grandfather told you to?”
“Actually, he said all that after.”
“After?”
“After I asked his permission. Quit rushing me!”
“His permission?”
“To marry his granddaughter.”
Suddenly, Noelle didn’t feel like teasing him anymore. This was real. This was what it all had been building toward: the time together, the increasingly heated looks and kisses. She loved spending time with him. She would not give up a moment of their romance.
But she was with her grandfather on this one.
She needed Aidan at a different level now. She needed to touch him in places where no one else touched him, and she needed to let the heat of his kisses spread until they were both weak with it. She needed there to be no more reasons to say no.
Aidan got down on one knee before her. She resisted the impulse to touch his hair.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a velvet box. He snapped open the lid. The band within, studded with perfect diamonds, winked with astonishing blue lights. He cleared his throat.
“Noelle McGregor, I am so in love with you I can barely think for it. I am so in love with you I can barely breathe for it. You have taken a landscape that was bleak and dark and brought it to color and life. You have shown me the meaning of my life. You have become the role model for my daughter.
“I cannot imagine my life without you. I want to spend the rest of my days with you. I want to have children. I want to love you until you are breathless with my love.
“Will you marry me?”
Noelle was crying shamelessly. She dropped the papers he had given her and they scattered in the wind. She let her hands roam in his hair, relishing it, delighting in it. This incredible man was asking her to join lives with his. For the rest of their lives. Forever.
“Yes,” she whispered. “Yes.”
He rose to his feet and gathered her in his arms, and then shouted so loud the mountains sent an echo back to them.
“Thank you,” he whispered. “Thank you for giving me something to hope for.”
It was a long time before they came up for air.
“I guess we should find all those papers,” he said reluctantly.
“What are they?”
“The deed for all this land. We’re going to build our house here one day. And raise our children here.”
“You bought back the McGregor land?”
“Every inch of it.”
“But you’re not a rancher!”
“I can learn. Plus, I figured you probably won’t be able to keep your hands off me if I’m wearing a cowboy hat and riding a horse.”
“I can barely keep my hands off you now,” she said wryly.
“Oh, in that case, maybe I’ll just lease the grazing rights.”
It was her turn. “Thank you.”
Not jus
t for the land. In fact that seemed like the least of it. For all of it. For teaching her what love was. For giving her back her sense of family. For renewing her trust in life. For giving her a sense of herself, for allowing her to evolve into a woman worthy of love.
Worthy of him.
They turned, and hand in hand, they chased down all those papers that were scattering in the wind. It seemed those papers were playing with them, leading them on a path that pointed straight to the future.
EPILOGUE
“I THINK WE should paint a hippopotamus on the wall,” Tess said, her voice full of authority. At seven, she knew everything, including, apparently, what a new baby brother would require in his nursery.
“A hippopotamus?” Aidan repeated, trying to buy time. He wasn’t quite sure that would fit with the nursery theme that he and Noelle had decided on—blue, jauntily nautical—to welcome their first child together, a boy, to the world. He didn’t have a whole bunch of time for this, and a hippopotamus seemed like a rather large design change.
He gulped, trying not to think about the lack of time. In less than a week their baby was due.
“Maybe you should ask Mama,” he suggested.
Tess had started calling Noelle Mama within a week of the wedding. Neither Noelle nor Aidan had suggested it; she had apparently come up with it on her own. Not Mommy, not a replacement for her mother who had died, but a new name.
“Ask me what?”
Aidan turned, paintbrush in hand, and looked at his wife.
She was exactly what he had recognized, what his heart had recognized—from the first moment she had thrown a snowball at him.
The most beautiful woman in the world. The woman who could change everything. The woman who was brave enough to come and rescue him from his lonely world.
“Can we have a hippopotamus in here?” Tess asked.
Noelle pretended to consider it. “Aren’t they awfully big?” she asked, seriously. “Do you know what they eat?”
Tess’s laughter, so frequent, so joyous, peeled through the room. “Painted on the wall, Mama. Not a real one.”
Noelle contemplated the blank, pale blue wall. “I think that would be perfect,” she said.
Aidan suppressed his groan.
Tess sighed with contentment, and went and cupped her hands on Noelle’s tummy. “Hello, in there,” she called loudly, “Hello, Ben.”
And then she put her ear to Noelle’s stomach. “I hear him,” she decided. “Oh! He kicked me. Daddy! Come feel him.”
And so he went and laid his hand over the tautness of Noelle’s belly. Their eyes met as the baby seemed to do a somersault inside of her.
“Is it time?” he asked, stunned by the violent activity. “I’ll get the car. I’ll call Nana. I’ll—”
Noelle was smiling at him, indulgently. She, and she alone, was entrusted with this truth. If he ran his billion-dollar company the way he awaited the birth of their baby—nervous, impulsive, jumping at every shadow—Wrangler would be broke.
Noelle, on the other hand, didn’t seem the least bit worried about whether or not it was time. He had suggested they move back to his condo in the city until the baby arrived. When Noelle said no, he woke in the night, scanning the sky for storms. Even though it was fall—no chance of being snowed in, at all—he contemplated possible disasters. Trees falling. Water rising. Vehicles not starting.
Noelle had gotten up one night to find him coming in from outside.
“It’s the middle of the night,” she told him.
“I was just checking.”
“Checking what?”
“It’s windy.”
She had cocked her head at him.
“A tree could come down over the driveway!”
“You could bring the helicopter out here,” she said. “A straight run to the hospital. Most of them even have landing pads right on the property.”
He was actually thinking how brilliant she was, until he caught on that she was teasing him.
“A baby is nothing new here,” she told him gently, when she saw the worry furrow his brow. You’d almost think she was planning on having it at home.
Home.
They had built the house last year, in a clearing not too far from the Honeymoon Cabin. He could actually see the old cabin from their master bedroom window upstairs.
They had, of course, had their honeymoon there. They’d married at the ranch just a few days before Christmas, a year to the day since they met.
Noelle could have had the wedding anywhere. She could have had a ball that would have matched the Christmas Enchantment Ball. She could have chosen a beach somewhere. She could have had a live band and dancing deep into the night.
Instead, they had exchanged their vows on the porch of the old ranch house. Tess had scattered snowflakes made out of paper instead of flower petals.
Noelle had said no to a white dress. She didn’t think it was the color of celebration. She thought it would just blend with all that snow.
Instead, she had looked gorgeous in a red gown, sure of herself, a woman confident enough to fly joyously in the face of tradition.
They could have had a feast catered by the best chef in Calgary. But Noelle had laughed that off. Instead, they had cleared the barn and plank tables had been set up that groaned under the weight of all the neighborhood women bringing their favorite dishes. After supper the tables had been cleared away, and the fiddles had come out. They had danced until dawn.
They could have had a honeymoon anywhere in the world. They could have left the ranch behind and flown to Tuscany, or to a private island a friend of his owned.
No. Instead, when the party was over, Rufus had hitched up the sleigh and delivered them to the Honeymoon Cabin.
They had spent five glorious days of exquisite time in that snowbound little cabin, with nothing but each other.
By then they had traveled much of the world together, witnessed marvels and discovered treasures beyond imagining.
And yet, in that cabin, there had been a sense of having everything they would ever need.
Each other.
He could not think of that time without his mouth going dry with wanting her. He could feel that desire build within him.
Not just to touch her, not just for the incredible intensity of them together, physically, but for the intimacy of that time in the cabin.
Aidan realized he was a man who had been given a gift worth cherishing. He had a sense of knowing where home was.
Not really in a cabin, or on a ranch. Not really in this brand-new home that they had designed and built together.
As beautiful as it was, this building was just a house. Home was where she was, where Noelle was. It was that place of safety where they laughed and cried and celebrated and felt sorrow together.
His home, forever, was nestled in the heart of the woman he loved.
“A purple one?” Tess asked.
“A purple what?”
He got the look.
“A purple hippopotamus, of course,” Tess said.
“Yes, I think a purple hippopotamus would be perfect,” Noelle agreed. He frowned at the wall. There were all kinds of logistics to consider. What size should it be? And who had the skill to paint a hippopotamus? It could just end up looking like a giant purple blob on the wall. Even if it turned out okay, did a hippopotamus of any color go with the carefully chosen nautical theme of the baby room at all?
But looking at his wife and his daughter, he knew none of that mattered. They weren’t, either of them, about things looking perfect.
His daughter had tried so desperately to tell him that, when he had been busy giving her Christmases that looked so right, and felt so wrong.
Tess and Noelle were all about how things felt. Even if that was messy and chaotic and threw the best-laid plans to th
e wind.
He sighed, and decided not to weigh in on the hippopotamus. It was an argument he was bound to lose.
At that moment, the puppy, who was not allowed in here, pushed through the door. He was a black Lab, and he looked a lot like his namesake, Smiley, had.
Aidan had thought a puppy right now was the worst possible idea. But when Noelle and Tess were onside for something, they were a formidable pair.
The puppy, Smiley, too, thumped his tail, pleading to join them. Then in the excitement of having broken into the forbidden sanctum, Smiley gave them an apologetic look and piddled on the floor.
And their laughter rang out and filled the room, and danced out the open windows and sparkled in the surrounding forest, like fairy dust.
Aidan, that most pragmatic of men, could picture that laughter taking on a life of its own, and going out and out and out from them. He could picture it threading its way around a Christmas wreath where he had seen the word HOPE and then soaring on, past the forest, over the glades, and beyond what he could see, and even beyond what he could imagine.
He could picture that laughter joining the rushing rivers and the shooting stars, joining the great mystery that had given birth to it in the first place.
Aidan, that most pragmatic of men, could picture the laughter holding a force within it as brilliant as sunlight, a force that radiated outward, the only force that had ever really changed the world.
Love.
Their laughter held the magnificent healing power of love.
* * *
If you enjoyed this story, check out these other great reads from Cara Colter
Swept into the Tycoon’s World
The Wedding Planner’s Big Day
Housekeeper Under the Mistletoe
Soldier, Hero...Husband?
All available now!
Keep reading for an excerpt from Best Man for the Wedding Planner by Donna Alward.
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