Christmas at Twilight Page 19

  The drapes covering the sliding glass door were open, letting in the mellow colors of encroaching morning and revealing silvery white snow. Silently, fresh flakes twirled in that sweet space between darkness and dawn. A white Christmas. Life didn’t get any better than this.

  If she died now, she would die happy.

  When he saw her, Hutch smiled at her in a different way. His smile was fuller somehow, richer, holding nothing back. She’d opened herself up to him, and by doing so he’d opened more fully to her.

  Her heart stumbled. He reached over and turned on the radio. “Jingle Bell Rock” bounced out. He held out a hand to her.

  Never mind that she was in pajamas and her hair was mussed and she had on no makeup. He looked at her as if she was the most gorgeous thing he’d ever seen.

  She took his hand and he spun her around the room.

  The kids jumped off their chairs and started dancing around beside them, kicking their legs and flailing their little arms. The room filled with so much Christmas cheer that tears misted her eyes.

  And damn if Hutch wasn’t tearing up too.

  He gave her a pointed look and she thought that meant he was going to dip her. She prepared to be spun away and pulled back again before the big dip, but instead, Hutch lowered his head and kissed her, right in front of the children.

  Deeply, passionately, sweetly, miraculously, putting every wonderful emotion in the world into that kiss. He didn’t need to say words because his glorious kiss said everything. No man would ever need a voice if he could kiss like this. Everything he wanted to say was in that kiss.

  I want you, I need you, I respect you. I desire you. I love you.

  Love.

  She wasn’t imagining it. She could taste love on his lips and it was the flavor of Christmas. Kismet cookies and peppermint candy canes. Gingerbread and butter cream. It was the flavor of wishes coming true, of hopes actualized, of dreams realized.

  In didn’t matter how long this moment would last. For right now, right this minute, Meredith had everything she had ever wanted. A home. Children. A beautiful Christmas tree surrounded by presents. Meaningful music as the song changed to John Lennon and Yoko Ono singing “War Is Over.”

  Another year was over and what had she done? She had found her True North. Her mother would be so proud.

  The children ate as quickly as they could, stuffing pancakes into the mouths so they could get breakfast over with and get to those presents. They delighted over the fact Santa had taken a bite out of the kismet cookies they’d left for him, and the reindeer food was gone, and there was a sooty boot print on the fireplace bricks. Clever Hutch.

  “Can we open our packages now, Mommy, can we, huh, can we?” Ben asked, pancake syrup stuck on the corner of his mouth.

  Kimmie was already out of her chair, spinning around the living room.

  Meredith met Hutch’s eye. He nodded. They abandoned their own half-eaten breakfast so the kids could get to their packages.

  Wrapping paper flew. A flurry of foil. Ripping. Tearing. Shouts of delight. Squeals of joy. Hutch manned a video camera. Meredith took still shots with her camera phone. When Ashley got home, they’d have every second of it recorded for her.

  Ashley.

  She was the missing piece, the one thing that made the holiday incomplete.

  If practicing yoga had taught Meredith anything, it was how to stop focusing on what was missing and appreciate what she had. Purposefully, she turned her mind from the distressing thought of Ashley’s absence and focused on what was right in front of her.

  “Thomas the Train!” Ben exclaimed. “Open the box, Unca Hutch. Open it now!”

  Chuckling, Hutch took a multitool from his pocket and went to work on the box.

  “Look, Mommy.” Kimmie had put on a tiara and plastic glass slippers. “I Cinderella.”

  Mommy. Kimmie kept calling her Mommy.

  “Yes, you are, sweetheart.” Meredith smiled at her. “Yes, you are.”

  Hutch freed Thomas the Train from the box and Ben flung himself across it. Joy radiated from every pore of his body. This was what Christmas morning was all about, children’s happy faces.

  Oh, Ashley, you are so missing out. Choosing to spend Christmas with a man you don’t even know over being here with your child.

  She felt a nudge against her knee, looked up into Hutch’s face, and realized she’d been woolgathering. He extended a small box wrapped in silver paper and topped with a bright red bow toward her.

  The box was the size of a jeweler’s box, and for one awful second, she thought, It’s an engagement ring. Immediately, images of Sloane proposing to her only three weeks after they’d met sprang into her mind. The way she’d stupidly fallen for his slick charm, thrown herself into his arms, and exclaimed, “Yes, yes, I’ll marry you.”

  Meredith turned to stone, stared at the pretty box sitting in Hutch’s palm. “You shouldn’t have gotten me anything. Christmas is for children.”

  What was she going to do if it was a piece of jewelry or worst of all, a ring? Surely he wouldn’t do that to her, would he? Not after everything she’d told him.

  Her stomach pitched. She liked him so very much, was even on the verge of falling in love with him, but Sloane had been a cruel teacher and she was an apt pupil. She no longer trusted herself when it came to matters of the heart.

  Hutch crouched in front of her, watching her face expectantly. Was he about to go down on one knee?

  No, no, no.

  He put a hand on her knee, stared into her eyes, and sent the mental message, What’s wrong?

  She pasted a half smile on her face, pretended as if nothing was wrong. No point leapfrogging off onto a lily pad that wasn’t there. She tugged on the ends of the bow and it gave easily, unfurling into one long ribbon that fell from her lap and dropped to the floor.

  Her fingers felt stiff against the crisp foil. She tugged off the Scotch tape holding each end of the wrapping paper closed. It sprang open revealing a black box embossed in silver letters with the name of the company.

  True North.

  For one shocked second her heart literally stopped. She inhaled a sharp gasp and her heart started again, chugging like an overworked steam engine.

  His hand tightened on her knee and he reached out two fingers to tip up her chin, urging her to meet his gaze. Concern filled his dark eyes. What’s wrong?

  “Nothing,” she said, tracing the embossed letters with her fingers. True North. “Absolutely nothing.”

  Her mother had been a kooky free spirit who believed in the universe giving signs on which path to follow, and if you paid attention to the signs, they’d guide you to your destiny. Mom considered getting caught in the Albuquerque box with Meredith’s dad as a sign they were meant to be. He was her True North.

  Meredith had never been a believer in that sort of thing. It defied logic, science, and the laws of nature. But here she was with a man she was swiftly growing to love, holding a box branded with the very words her mother used to describe her philosophy about life. When you find the right mate, he will be your True North.

  If this wasn’t a sign, then nothing was.

  She’d never heard of a True North jewelry store. Nevertheless, she held her breath as she lifted the lid on the box.

  There, nestled inside a Styrofoam base, was a key-chain-sized pink canister of pepper spray. There was a card underneath the canister that read: To my Meredith. For when I’m not around to keep you safe.

  My Meredith.

  She raised her head.

  He knelt before her, shoulders back, chest forward, jaw relaxed in a beguiling posture that said, I’m solid, have faith in me.

  She laughed, palmed the pepper spray. “Wicked sense of humor, Brian.”

  The left side of his mouth quirked up and he dropped a sly, you-ain’t-seen-nothing-yet wink.

  “Mommy,” Ben said, picking at his seat to remove a pajama wedgie. “There’s one package left with no name. Is it mine?”

/>   “No, that package belongs to Hutch.”

  “Aww, man. I thought it was mine.”

  “Told ya it wasn’t,” Kimmie said.

  “It’s not yours neither.”

  Those two acted more and more like real brother and sister with every passing day. Their endearing squabbling brought a smile to her face. “Ben, why don’t you hand Hutch his present?”

  Hutch’s grin hung crooked like a door half off its hinge. Genuine. Beguiling. Irresistible. She liked that smile. She hitched up to it. Smiled back.

  They sat watching each other for a long moment, grinning.

  The radio played Pachelbel’s Canon in D for Christmas. It was her favorite piece of classical music. Surely, in heaven they played Pachelbel. The beautiful sound stirred all of Meredith’s long-buried hopes, and a tear rolled from her eye and slid down her cheek.

  Tenderly, Hutch leaned forward, cupped her chin in his palm, and gently wiped the tear away with his big calloused thumb. Her bottom lip trembled. He knew just as much as she did how precious and fleeting this moment was. They breathed in a shared breath, held it, and then released it in tandem.

  Kimmie waggled her tiara in time to the musical beat and clomped across the hardwood floor. Ben nudged Hutch in the ribs with his knee. “Aren’tcha gonna open it?”

  Hutch removed the bow and stuck it on top of Ben’s head.

  “Hey!” Ben laughed and slapped both hands on the bow.

  Kimmie giggled. “You look bootiful.”

  Hutch removed the wrapping paper.

  “It’s not much,” Meredith apologized.

  He tilted his head back and lasered her a look that let her know he didn’t care what was in the box. The fact that she’d given it to him was enough.

  “We made you fudge,” Kimmie said in the overly loud whisper of a four-year-old.

  Hutch opened the box, took out the fudge she and the children had made for him, and offered everyone a piece.

  “There’s something else in there too,” Meredith said.

  He examined the box, pulled out the folded piece of paper she’d stuck underneath the fudge, a gift certificate for a free massage.

  The glint in his eyes silvered. He refolded the certificate, slid it into the front pocket of his shirt, and patted it solidly over his heart as if it was the most priceless gift he’d ever received.

  CHAPTER 14

  Hutch cleaned up the wrapping paper mess in the living room while Meredith put a roast in the oven for Christmas dinner and they did the dishes together. The children begged to go outside and play in the snow, so all four of them bundled up.

  They showed the children how to fall backward in the snow and make snow angels, and then they had a snowball fight. It was Meredith and the children against him. They shrieked and laughed as Hutch pretended to be the Abominable Snowman, and tossed the children into the snowbanks, only to have them come right back at him.

  Wood smoke curled from chimneys. The smell of turkey floated in the air. Other families had been outside, and lawns were dotted with snowmen. To be different, they decided to build a snow fort rather than a snowman. When they were finished, the kids crawled inside the snow fort to play.

  “I have to go check on the roast,” Meredith told him. “Don’t let them stay out too much longer. Not too long ago they both had a fever.”

  Hutch nodded and he watched her go, unable to tear his gaze from her magnificent butt. He touched his left front pocket, the gift card for a massage. By giving him that gift card, did the woman get that she was tossing gasoline on an open flame?

  Meredith stopped when she reached the porch and turned back to catch him staring at her. A happy smile stretched across her face, aimed right at him.

  Hutch’s heart warmed in the dead center of his chest. If he could spend the rest of his life putting that smile on her face, he would consider it a life well spent. The warmth spread out, slipping into his bloodstream, circulating throughout his system until his entire body tingled.

  He wanted her. Yearning swelled. Hope crested.

  Ever cell in his body hummed her name—Meredith, Meredith, Meredith.

  But he had nothing to offer her. He had some money put away and he’d get his government pension, but he had no job and he couldn’t even speak. It killed him that he couldn’t tell her with his own voice how much she meant to him.

  He curled his gloved hands into fists.

  She waved.

  He waved back, feeling stripped naked and hung out to dry by his feelings. Too much. He wanted her too much. It wasn’t healthy, this need.

  She shivered, wrapped her arms around herself, nodded toward the house, and gifted him with one last wide Christmas smile before she went inside.

  God, he was a lucky bastard, even if it was only for this brief span of time. To have a woman like her smiling at him like that. As if he was something truly special. Some people went an entire lifetime without ever brushing up against something so divine.

  The kids giggled at him from the snow fort. Two little faces with red noses and cheeks beaming up at him. He wanted to tell them they looked like Rudolph, but he could not say the words. Instead, he motioned as if he was drinking a cup of hot chocolate and rubbed his hands together, pantomiming warming himself in front of a roaring fire.

  “No way, Jose,” Ben shouted.

  Both kids shook their heads and backed into the snow fort so deeply that he could no longer see them.

  Hutch got down on his knees in the snow, dug them from the fort, and carried them inside, a laughing child hanging from each arm.

  Their faces could have passed for tomatoes, their eyes sparkling as they chattered about the snow. Less than a week ago, they’d both been sick with a fever, now it was as if they’d never been sick at all. Kids were miraculous. They healed so quickly.

  Ben and Kimmie skipped toward Meredith, chanting in unison, “Hot chocolate, hot chocolate, we want hot chocolate.”

  “Where’s your ski cap?” Meredith asked Ben.

  Ben shrugged repeatedly and shuffled his feet all loose-limbed and jerky, making it look as if he was afflicted with Saint Vitus’ dance.

  “You’re always losing your winter clothes. I’m not made of money, son,” she chided gently. “Go back and look for it.”

  “Okay-dokey.” Ben darted for the back door.

  Meredith turned to Hutch. “Could you go with him? Sorry to be so skittish but ever since I thought I saw Sloane on the town square—”

  Hutch understood. She hated letting the boy out of her sight, but she also recognized that he was growing up, she could not keep him tied to her apron strings. At this age, Hutch made a better guard dog for the boy. Plus he was better equipped to deal with Sloane if he did appear. Meredith seemed to have the idea the bastard she’d married was as untouchable as Lex Luthor.

  He went out the back door, stepped off the deck, and rounded the side of the house into the front yard.

  Ben was nowhere in sight.

  Okay, kid, where are you? A fissure of panic wormed into his gut. Igloo cool. Nothing to freak out about. The boy had most likely gone across the street to visit the Calloways.

  Behind Hutch lay the swollen Brazos River. The kid could have taken a header right off the deck and gone into the water. In his mind’s eye he saw the boy’s body swirling in the cold, murky waters. His palms slicked with sick heat. He staggered to the edge of the deck, his boots kicking up snow, and peered over the rail.

  Nothing but rocks and trees and swift-moving water. Nah. The boy had not gone down there. He would not believe that. Easy, easy. Don’t get freaky-deaky.

  Dammit. He wished he could yell. Call Ben home. He returned to the front yard and scanned the street with warrior precision, taking note of everything, on the lookout for enemies.

  From the north a white sedan toiled slowly up the street.

  He felt a hole open up in his stomach, an eddy of tornadic whirls spinning there and sucking up all his insides. Who goes there? Friend or
foe?

  Where was the boy? Not in the sedan. If someone in the white sedan had kidnapped Ben, the vehicle would be moving away from the house, not toward it.

  The white sedan edged closer. Hutch honed in on the only thing moving in the lonely, snow-strewn landscape and recognized Dotty Mae Densmore behind the wheel. What was the little old lady doing out in this weather? If he weren’t focused on finding Ben, he would offer to drive the sedan home for her.

  How could the child have vanished so quickly? He hadn’t been a minute after him.

  Hooyah. Snap to. Footprints. Look for footprints.

  Footprints. Easy tracking.

  In the aftermath of their snowball fight a flurry of footsteps furrowed the middle of the yard. A slurred mix of his big boot prints, Meredith’s petite foot, and twin pairs of identically sized tiny impressions marked the path from the middle of the yard, to the snow fort and back to the house. But there were no other prints anywhere else in the yard. None going into the road, or to the neighbor’s house on the left or to the ranch land yawning right beyond the white split-rail fence.

  Unless something or someone had snatched him up from thin air, the child had to be in the snow fort.

  Relief pushed his belly out, expelling pent-up air from his lungs. Hutch trod toward the snow fort. No rush now. He knew where the boy was.

  The acrid taste disappeared from his mouth and the release of tension left his muscles shaky. He’d never panicked in the heat of battle. That’s why they’d called Igloo. Calm. Cool. Collected. Level-headed and easygoing.

  With his own life, he was fearless, but when it came to children . . . his children—because while Kimmie and Ben might not be his children biologically, he felt as responsible for them as if they were his own—it was a different story.

  Hutch was not a poetic guy. He was not given to deep thought. But in that moment, in the snow, he had an epiphany. He loved those two kids.

  Ben poked his face out of the snow fort, grinned impishly.