Santa's on His Way

  “She told you she was staying?”

  He nodded, looking at his gloved hands. Staying. Such a strange word.

  “You know how she hightailed it out of here. Destined for bigger and better things than Gracely, Colorado.”

  And me.

  “So, she had to swallow her pride a bit to come home. To realize this was where she belonged and admit it to her whole family. Trust me, my children don’t swallow their pride easily.”

  “I know, but . . . I can’t . . . It’d always be hanging there. That she left. That she could again. I’ve had too much of it. I don’t know how to . . . I don’t know how to believe it changes.”

  Mrs. Tyler nodded, squinting off into the distance. “I understand that. It’s hard to believe in good things when bad things happen. But . . . Well, if there’s anything I’ve learned in this life it’s that belief is a choice. Belief in the good. Belief in the bad. The world around you has both, and you’ll never get to decide which one wins on any given day, but you do get to choose which one defines you. The world will turn on either way, regardless of what you choose to believe in. So, why not believe in the good?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t feel like I have that choice. Not with this.”

  “Your feelings are wrong, Cal.” She smiled kindly. “I know, I know, I’m supposed to say that all feelings are valid, blah, blah, blah.” She rolled her eyes. “My boys used to play that old ‘why are you hitting yourself?’ game. You know where they take your hand and make you slap your own face?”

  “Um, sure.”

  “Cal, sweetheart, stop hitting your damn self.”

  Much like the other day with Bill, he didn’t want to admit the words made sense, but of course they did. The kind of sense that rearranged your whole life, and he really didn’t want to.

  But he was starting to think he had to.

  “See what the rest of us see. Believe in the good, and my God, believe in yourself.” She reached out and cupped both his cheeks. “You’re a good man. But it doesn’t matter how good you are if you don’t believe it. It doesn’t matter how much you love if you don’t choose it.” She patted one cheek, not exactly lightly, then hopped to her feet. “That’s my drop of wisdom for the day. What you do with it is up to you.”

  Up to him. Well, shit.

  * * *

  The wedding was beautiful. Lindsay didn’t think there was a dry eye in the house when Cora and Shane exchanged vows, including her stoic oldest brother’s. Which only made her more teary. When the pastor announced them as, not just husband and wife, but a family as they engulfed Micah in a hug onstage, she downright sobbed.

  The small reception was a magical winter wonderland. There were industrial heaters and little pitted bonfires surrounding the small space, plus plenty of cozy places to sit and piles of heavy flannel blankets. Micah was pulling around Cora’s niece and nephew in a sled, and Christmas music crooned from the speakers on a beautifully decorated table.

  A beautiful Colorado night sky stretched out above, perfectly clear and glowing gloriously. And Lindsay was eating some of the best wedding cake she’d ever had.

  It was perfect and beautiful and Lindsay was so, so glad she’d decided to come home. To be a part of not just weddings, but the everyday. To exist in this wacky world of Tylers. Her blood, her roots, her hope.

  She finished off the cake and looked out at the small dance floor. Shane was dancing with Cora. Molly had clearly coerced Boone out there, since he was standing and scowling as Molly laughed and tried to get him to move. Gavin was sitting in between Em and Lou Fairchild, making them both laugh. Lindsay’s mom danced far too close with her new husband, Ben. A few more couples from Cora’s side danced to the happy tune of “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree.”

  She was about to get up and convince Gavin to dance with her, to give up the little sliver of lingering melancholy that everything hadn’t worked out exactly the way she wanted and focus solely on the joy of it all.

  Then Cal appeared. He stood next to the hay bale she’d been sitting on with a few heavy blankets over her lap and around her shoulders. He was mostly still shrouded in the dark, since she’d chosen the most faraway seat she could when she’d gotten her piece of cake.

  “Hi,” she offered, peering up at him.

  “Hey.”

  “Crashing the party?”

  “Something like that.”

  “You want to sit?”

  He gave a little nod, then took a seat next to her. She offered up a bit of blanket and he nodded again, so she moved it over his lap. They sat there like that for a few moments, watching the wedding reception in front of them.

  “I talked to your mom today,” he finally said.

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah. Is she always right?”

  “No. But she’s right an annoying lot of the time.”

  His mouth quirked at that, even as he watched the goings-on in front of them. But she watched him. The soft cast to his mouth, that hint of something hopeful in his blue eyes.

  “You know, she didn’t want me to leave back then. She thought I’d regret it, and she was wrong.” He stiffened, but she plowed forward, because hope and truth was the only way. “I can’t regret leaving. I really needed that. It gave me a confidence being the Tyler baby was never going to allow me, but I regret the way I did things. I wasn’t thinking about you. I was eighteen and self-involved and all that mattered to me was escaping and making my mark and I didn’t think about how you might see that. There were so many things we could have tried, or done differently, but I was too selfish to see them.”

  “Me too.”

  She whipped her head up. He’d never . . . never once taken even a shred of responsibility for anything that had happened when they’d ended things. “What did my mother say to you?”

  He chuckled at that, and it wasn’t even a bitter sound. It was a bit more like the Cal she remembered.

  “Actually that realization didn’t come from anything she said. She just . . . was there and I had to realize . . .” He blew out a breath. “You might have left, my parents might have left, but there were plenty of people who stayed, even if I was an ass to them for it. I should have focused on what I had, instead of what I didn’t, but I was young and . . . what was your word? Self-involved. I was very, very self-involved.”

  Lindsay didn’t know what to say to that. Even less so when he finally turned his head to meet her gaze.

  “But I loved you. I still love you. And I’d like to think I’m not quite as self-involved as I used to be. Or at least, I’m taking the steps not to be.”

  “I love you, too.” She tried to breathe normally. Was afraid to make sudden movements or more begging proclamations for fear he’d evaporate in front of her very eyes. “I’m waiting for your but.”

  “I don’t have one.” He hesitated for a second. Then his hand reached under the blanket and grasped hers. “I’m scared. It’s hard to weather, being left behind. It’s hard to get over that fear. I’m not even sure I can. But . . . I have a choice to believe, and to build a foundation, and to build it with you.”

  She couldn’t say anything. She wasn’t even sure she was breathing. She thought she’d need to put in so much more work, so much more proving, and she would. She still would, but . . .

  “Well, are you going to say anything?”

  “Cal.” Cal. Her Cal. Her future. Tears spilled over onto her cheeks and she didn’t have any words. Not any. So she just launched herself at him, knocking them both to the snowy ground. But he laughed and the blanket was still tangled around them and today really was perfect.

  Which finally gave her the words she needed to say. “I love you, Cal, and I’m not ever giving up on us again. I’ll prove it to you. Over and over again. I’ll never walk away like I did. Not ever. I will fight and I will stay and I will give us everything I am.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. And you are going to do the damn same, do you hear me?”


  “Yes, ma’am.”

  And on the frigid ground in the midst of her brother’s wedding, she kissed the man she’d loved and lost, and now got to love again. Forever.

  EPILOGUE

  One Year Later

  Lindsay loved teaching. Even with a headache brewing and her favorite top stained with paint from one child’s enthusiastic thrusting of his overly painted paper at her, she was pretty damn happy.

  It was hard. Some days she wanted to scream—whether at the kids or the administrators—but some days she felt so damn fulfilled she could barely catch her breath. The learning to deal with both was making her a better person, step-by-step. The handful of handmade presents she had in her bag was a bit of the icing on the cake.

  But the best part of all of it was that she got to come home, to the Barton ranch. There’d been an attempt to just date at first, but it had been silly when you knew you wanted to be with the other person every night forever. So, Cal had started remodeling the old barn to be their new home. Sarah and Bill would live in the big house and handle Christmas trees and weddings, and she and Cal would live in the barn. He would ranch, she would teach, and life felt...

  Well, a bit like a Christmas miracle.

  They’d spent the past year building. It had included ups and downs, fights and makeups, and a million other things Lindsay had finally come to realize were simply life. Regardless of dreams or the whole big world out there, the bulk of her life would always be this: Cal and her, happy or fighting, struggling or marveling at their success. It was all her life, and nothing better awaited her.

  It was a far more beautiful life than her wildest imagination had been able to dream up as a teenager.

  She parked outside the barn. They had a working bathroom and working heat at this point. The kitchen was still in progress, so they ate a lot of meals up at the main house, but most nights they then cozied together here and it felt like home.

  Humming “Jingle Bells,” Lindsay let herself in through the front door. Sometimes Cal was here when she got home, but sometimes he was still out with the cows. This afternoon, though, he was home, and he even looked like he’d showered and put on his nice clothes.

  “Are we going somewhere?”

  He uncurled from the couch, and since she was feeling the Christmas spirit, she allowed herself a dreamy sigh, because she was a very lucky woman indeed to be so desperately in love with a man that handsome.

  “I thought since you’re off work for the next two weeks we could drive into Benson and have a nice dinner.”

  “Steak?”

  “Most definitely. I may even splurge on wine.”

  “I think you’re trying to get lucky tonight, Cal Barton.”

  He grinned. “Indeed I am.”

  “Just let me change. I got paint attacked by Jaxon the Enthused.”

  “Again?”

  She sighed heavily. “Again.” But as she made a move for their bedroom, Cal took her by the arm and gently pulled her toward the tree. “Before you do that, why don’t you have a look. I added a new ornament.”

  “You, Cal Barton, hater of Christmas and begrudger of this very tree—”

  “I did not begrudge you this tree. I begrudged you the amount of junk you put on this tree.”

  “Humph.”

  “Look at the tree, Linds.”

  She peered at the well-lit branches, trying to sort through the parade of sparkling ornaments she’d perhaps oversplurged on. “I don’t see anything—”

  But then she did, and her bag fell to the floor with a thump and she sort of thought she might fall because she couldn’t feel her legs. She couldn’t breathe.

  * * *

  Cal watched Lindsay stare at the very modest ring that hung from a red ribbon on a branch at eye level. And she just stared, openmouthed, maybe shiny eyed, but there was no immediate answer.

  But then he supposed he hadn’t asked the question.

  It was a lesson he was learning, bit by painful bit, that people could not read his mind. That they’d never automatically give him what he wanted if he didn’t ask.

  All those years ago when Lindsay had broken up with him, he’d never asked her for different. Not to stay, not to compromise. He’d simply been furious and determined she’d done everything he’d ever feared.

  Those fears didn’t disappear, but he’d found in asking he often got the answer he wanted, and it always, always alleviated the fear.

  So, instead of waiting any longer, Cal did what he should have done in the first place. He got down on one knee. “Lindsay, I love you. We’ve started building this life together, and I want to keep building it. Will you marry me?”

  Finally she breathed, moved, escaped that frozen shock. Much like she had that night a year ago, because he had definitely picked this day for a reason, she launched herself at him and knocked them to the ground in the process.

  “You delight in causing me bodily injury, so that better be a yes.”

  “It’s a . . . It’s a . . . Whatever’s bigger and better and more beautiful than a yes.”

  “There is nothing bigger or better or more beautiful than you saying yes to this particular question.”

  She nuzzled into his neck and he figured she was probably crying. So, he let them lie there on the hard ground for a few uncomfortable seconds before he nudged her off him and helped her up. “Come on. You have to put it on.”

  She laughed through the tears, and when he tugged the ring off the tree his hands were shaking too hard to untie the ring from the ribbon.

  “Let me try,” Lindsay said, but her hands were shaking, too, and in the end she just shoved the ring, ribbon and all, onto her finger. “There,” she said, holding it up so he could see, tears streaming down her cheeks.

  He felt a little choked up himself. “Feels kind of silly to be this worked up,” he managed to say.

  She pressed her palm to his cheek, her eyes still bright with tears, but her hands weren’t shaking anymore. “We worked hard for this. And we have a lot of hard work ahead of us. I’m going to be worked up about every good thing, because it feels damn good to work hard and get what you want.”

  He pulled her into a hug and just held her there for a moment, because it reminded him of what Mrs. Tyler had told him that day a year ago. That good and bad happened, but you got to choose what you believed in. There would be hard times and hard work ahead, and he would always, always choose to believe in the woman in his arms.

  So, he swept her up and against him and started carrying her toward the bedroom.

  “I thought you were going to take me to Benson,” she murmured, planting a kiss on his neck, then his jaw.

  “There’s still time.”

  She laughed at that and sank into a kiss that nearly had him running into the wall. Instead, they made it to the bed and celebrated the best way Cal knew how to celebrate. Together and naked.

  Later that night, instead of heading to Benson for a nice celebratory meal, Lindsay insisted they go to the Tyler Ranch and tell her family. There were cheers and hugs and toasts and eager wedding plans already being made. Thankfully Shane, Gavin, and Boone helped him escape and they went out to the barn and taught Shane’s stepson how to throw darts.

  Then they headed back to Barton house. “We should stop by and tell them, too,” he said, turning onto the drive that would lead them there.

  Lindsay leaned her head against his shoulder as he drove. “Of course we should.”

  Bill and Sarah had gotten married at the tree farm in the summer at a very small ceremony. This winter they’d made the Christmas tree farm an even bigger success than it had ever been, adding sleigh rides and Santa visits and hot chocolate stands.

  Cal had even admitted to Bill that seeing him take such good care of his sister made him up his own game. He’d been a little drunk at the wedding when he’d confessed it to his new brother-in-law, but he felt rather proud of himself for saying it all the same.

  It was still weird to knock on his ow
n front door, but there’d been an unfortunate not-knocking incident a while ago that had made them all agree knocking was the best policy if anyone wanted to keep their eyeballs.

  So, he knocked, and Lindsay slid her arm around his waist and it didn’t matter that some parts felt weird, because most parts felt beyond right.

  Sarah opened the door, a bright smile on her face. “There you are! I’ve been looking for you!”

  “You have?”

  “We have some news we wanted to share,” Sarah said, moving out of the way so they could step inside. She looked downright giddy, which Cal found very suspicious.

  Lindsay shrugged out of her coat, looking just as giddy, though that only made him happy, not suspicious. “We have news, too,” she said grabbing Sarah’s hands.

  The women held on to each other as they progressed into the living room, where Bill was. He had two bottles and four champagne flutes on the table.

  “There you are!” he greeted exactly as Sarah had.

  “Here we are. So, whose news are we going to—”

  “You have a ring!” Sarah screeched, dropping Lindsay’s right hand and using both hands to grasp Lindsay’s left. “Oh my God! Oh my God!”

  “Please don’t cry,” Cal murmured. He could take Lindsay’s happy tears, but both of them at the same time was too much.

  “It’s just . . .” Sarah sniffled and took a hitching breath. “I’m . . . I . . .”

  Bill slid his arms around Sarah’s shuddering shoulders.

  “We’re having a baby,” Bill said, big chested and proud.

  Lindsay’s shriek nearly deafened Cal and he could only stare at his baby sister having a baby. An actual baby.

  Sarah looked up at him, tears streaming down her face, and he didn’t have words, so he just pulled her into a hug.

  She hugged him back.

  “I guess tonight is quite the celebratory night,” Bill offered. He handed Lindsay a glass of champagne, and then Cal understood the two bottles because the glass he handed Sarah was clearly sparkling cider. He offered Cal a glass, then took one for himself.