Santa's on His Way

  But something about driving under the arch of the Tyler Ranch had her sobbing all over again.

  I still love you. I will always love you.

  It should have been romantic. It should have led to her rushing into his arms and saying she felt exactly the same way.

  Because she did. She’d tried to find someone else. Had convinced herself eventually the right guy would come along to turn Cal into a pleasant memory, not this yardstick she held every other guy up to.

  But the truth was Cal was the man she’d always loved and it hadn’t gone away with time. His saying the same to her only made her more sure. Maybe she wasn’t exactly the same as she’d been at eighteen, but the heart of her was. She was older, wiser, and stronger, but she was still herself.

  He was harder, meaner with age and tragedy, but the heart of him was still the same. He protected what was his. He loved so fiercely it didn’t die out.

  She parked in front of the house and she knew she had to get a hold of herself before she went inside. In a house of ten people, someone was bound to find her with blotchy cheeks and a stuffed-up nose and demand to know what the problem was.

  She pulled some tissues out of her purse and tried to mop up her face up and then wondered why. What did it matter if someone asked her what the problem was? What did it hurt if she told them?

  Wasn’t that half the reason she was home? To have people who loved her and cared about her and supported her around? She missed having her sister to talk to and she’d missed having her mother’s gentle love. They might treat her like the brainless baby sometimes, but they had always, always loved her and been there for her.

  She trudged inside, and as if Mom had some sort of your child is distressed alarm in her head she appeared in the hallway almost immediately.

  “What’s wrong? What is it?”

  “I talked to Cal. ‘Fought’ would probably be a better word.”

  Mom’s expression was grave, but she held out her arms and pulled Lindsay into a fierce hug.

  “Mom. He said he still loved me,” she whispered into her mother’s shoulder.

  Mom was quiet for a few moments, but she didn’t let go. “How do you feel about that?”

  “I might have been happy about it, if he thought it was a good thing.” She blew out a shaky breath and wrapped her arms around her mother. Her mother who wouldn’t ever have willingly left them. Not in a million years, for a million opportunities. Deb Tyler was dedicated to her children, no question.

  Poor Cal. Who was dedicated to him, no question? Sarah, at most. And she might be nineteen now, but for a lot of years she’d been a kid dependent on him.

  “He said he loved you, but thinks it’s a bad thing?” Mom asked, guiding her toward the formal sitting room.

  “He wants nothing to do with me. And I mean nothing.”

  Mom deposited her on the couch, and as if she’d sent out some familial homing pigeon Grandma and Molly appeared at the door. Grandma had a plate of cookies in her hands.

  A hiccuped sob escaped Lindsay’s mouth and she knew that there would be no perfect moment beyond this one to tell them.

  “I’m home. For good.”

  Grandma, Molly, and Mom made identical expressions of surprise without saying a word. Lindsay laughed through her tears.

  “I haven’t just been working at an art gallery for the past two years. I’ve been getting my education degree. I decided I wanted to be an art teacher, and then I decided I wanted to come home. So, I’m student teaching at Gracely Elementary next semester, and the teacher is retiring at the end of the year, so as long as things go smoothly I should be a shoo-in for the job.”

  Still the women in her family just stood there with matching expressions of shock.

  “I’m sorry I kept it from you, but I didn’t want to hear ‘I told you so.’ I didn’t want crap for wanting to come home. I just wanted to do it. But you were all right. Leaving was stupid, and I should have just stayed, because being here is all I want.”

  Molly took a seat next to her and pulled her into a hug.

  “Speaking as someone who left home for all the wrong reasons, and came back for all the right ones, I don’t think you made a mistake, Linds. You grew up. You figured out you wanted something different than you originally thought and you went after it. That’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

  “So you wouldn’t have said ‘I told you so,’ you would have just supported me, if I’d told you two years ago?” She looked up at her mother.

  “I think it was more the crying than the timing that kept me from saying I told you so. Except Molly’s right. Much as it pains me to admit, you were right to leave. You needed to get away from us for a few years and find yourself. We sheltered you and you knew you had to get away from that and find something else. I’m glad it ended up being coming home, but I’m also glad you left and found what you needed to find.”

  “Everyone has to learn their lessons in their own way, in their own time.” Grandma thrust a cookie at her. “Now have some sugar.”

  Lindsay managed a watery smile and took the cookie, but it only reminded her of the Bartons.

  “Cal told her he still loves her,” Mom announced.

  Molly screeched so loud Lindsay thought she felt her eardrum vibrate.

  “It wasn’t a good thing, though,” she assured her sister. “He’ll never trust me again. He said too many people hurt him and he doesn’t want to love me.”

  “That’s a hard thing to overcome,” Mom said, as if it was hard and not impossible.

  “I can’t overcome it. You should’ve seen the way he looked at me. Like I was the source of all of his problems or his worst nightmare or I don’t know. He hates me. He said he didn’t hate me, but he does.”

  “I suppose he might feel as though he hates you because he can’t stop loving you, but I don’t think he can hate and love you.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s all moot,” Molly said, frowning. “It’s been six years. He might think he loves you, but what he really loves is who you used to be. He loves the image of you he has in his head. Six years changes a woman. It changes a man. I know that sometimes you can convince yourself you love anything if you try hard enough, but you’ve been apart too long for it to still be love.”

  “I know it’s a little different,” Mom offered gently. “But no matter that I’ve married Ben, I still love your father. I suppose if he’d lived I might have fallen out of love with him, but I can’t imagine it. He was a good man and that center of goodness never changed, even as we grew up and had kids and worked hard at this ranch. Sometimes you change at the core of who you are, but baby girl, I know you both. The core of you hasn’t changed. The core of Cal hasn’t changed. That doesn’t mean you should plan to get married and have kids this very second, but it means that you both still feel some love for each other—”

  “It doesn’t matter. He wants nothing to do with me. He said my existence hurt him.” The way he’d looked at her like she was physically driving a stake into his heart. It would haunt her.

  “Maybe your existence does hurt him, and maybe you can change that,” Mom said, as if it were simple. Possible.

  “I can’t. He said there was nothing I could do to change what he felt.”

  “Baloney,” Grandma said. “If he loves you, truly and not just the idea of you, then there are a million things you can do to patch up what went wrong. That’s what love is. The patching up.”

  “You know what that boy has never had? Someone willing to fight for him,” Mom said firmly. “No, it won’t be an easy fight because he has been taught over and over again no one will. But if you love him, if you want a chance to build something as adult Lindsay and adult Cal, you have to be willing to put up that fight.”

  “Even if he doesn’t want me to?” Lindsay asked. She didn’t want to hurt him. She wanted to give him whatever he wanted. He deserved some peace, some goodness. If she pushed this, oh, she wasn’t sure she could watch that naked
pain on his face again.

  “Did you want to leave us years ago or did you feel like you had to? Did you come home to face the inevitable ‘we told you sos’ because you wanted to or because it was the best thing for you? The things we want are not always the things that’ll make us happy.”

  “Oh, crap, Mom’s dropping wisdom. We’re all going to be crying at the end of this,” Molly muttered.

  Mom gave her a sharp look but then continued talking. “I’m not saying you can force that boy’s hand to give you what you want or even what you need. You can’t. He has to make the choice to trust, and he might not. So what you do is decide what you want, and what you’re willing to fight for. Maybe it’s him. Maybe it’s not. But you have a choice.”

  Choice. The thing she’d been talking to Boone about this morning. She had the choice, and Cal had his own, but she didn’t have to let his change hers.

  “You know, I talked to Boone this morning. He said he was home because he didn’t have a choice, and I told him we always have a choice and he needed to make his.”

  Mom sniffed, and then Molly was dabbing at her eyes, and Grandma had suspiciously turned away.

  “You have become a very wise woman, darling daughter,” Mom said with a scratchy voice.

  Lindsay smiled up at her mother, and squeezed her sister’s hand, and made sure her voice was strong enough to reach Grandma’s retreating form. “I learned from the wisest.”

  CHAPTER 5

  Running away was not an option. Cal had lived by that simple, steadfast rule since the second time his mother disappeared.

  This morning he’d run away from Lindsay, and it had eaten at him all day. Real men didn’t run away from their problems. They faced them. If the other party ran away, well, you dealt, but you never turned tail and ran.

  Ever.

  The problem was, it wasn’t a mistake he could apologize for. The person he’d hurt hadn’t been Lindsay. It had been himself. He’d broken his own code, and how was he supposed to fix that?

  He didn’t want Lindsay anywhere near him. It ate him alive. What had she been doing for the past six years? Who had she touched? Did her skin and lips and body feel the same as they had? Did she still laugh at puns, and eat far too much sugar, and want to change the world with her art? And if she didn’t . . . he wanted to know every last inch of what was new.

  Staying. In Gracely. In his orbit. Forever circling around a single source of pain.

  “It won’t be forever,” he reassured himself. If her leaving hadn’t lasted forever, why would he expect her staying to? Why would he expect anything from her except all the things he’d always known?

  He blew out a breath as he pulled the stable doors closed. Across the yard the house was lit up like a damn carnival. Dad had always gotten into the whole thing, believing Christmas was magic and pulling in Gracely-ites and tourists alike to cut down trees or drink warm cider or do whatever other shit depending on the year.

  Business! he’d proclaim cheerfully. Then when Mom or whoever didn’t show up on Christmas Eve he’d get so piss-poor drunk Cal would have to search the whole house for things he could wrap so Sarah would still believe in Santa.

  Belief. He knew what belief got a person.

  He stomped toward the house, his mood somehow fouler than it had been after running away from Lindsay like a coward.

  There was a car he didn’t recognize parked near the house. Probably someone to do with the wedding, since the rehearsal was tomorrow. He couldn’t wait for it to be over. Of course, then he had to face Christmas.

  But in one week, one hellish week, things would go back to normal. Another Christmas behind him, and not another wedding to worry about for the foreseeable future. He could certainly survive one week.

  Even if it’s full of Lindsay?

  He grimaced as he shoved the front door open, and then he stared in openmouthed shock as he watched his baby sister jump out of the arms of some man.

  A man. Not a boy. A man.

  “What the hell is this?” he demanded.

  “Cal. You’re . . . you’re back early.”

  “Am I?” He glared at his sister, temper boiling. Maybe he was spoiling for a fight, and God had presented him with this gift. Some man touching his baby sister.

  “Th-this is—”

  The man stepped toward him, hand outstretched, polite smile on his face. “It’s good to meet you, sir. My name’s Bill Gower.”

  He looked down at Bill’s outstretched hand, then at his sister, most assuredly not shaking this man’s hand. Sir. This man who’d been molesting his sister’s face had called him sir.

  “And who the hell is Bill Gower, Sarah?”

  “He runs a company that rents out chairs and heaters and other outdoor wedding necessities.” She swallowed, forcing a bright smile at Bill, then at Cal. “We’ve been working together for the past few months. Obviously, wedding venues need chairs, but I didn’t want to store the chairs, so we’ve come to an agreement on . . . chairs.”

  “Are there chairs stored down your throat?”

  Sarah’s cheeks turned bright red and Bill made some move to speak, and Cal was determined right then and there if Bill spoke one word he would punch him straight in the nose.

  But Sarah held up her hand, and Bill nodded, some unspoken conversation going on between them. The kind of unspoken conversation you had with someone you’d been intimate with.

  Oh, Bill Gower was going to meet his maker.

  “Kitchen,” Sarah stated through gritted teeth.

  “You will not order me around, Sarah Barton.”

  “Kitchen,” she repeated, and he knew if he didn’t acquiesce he’d be eating a microwave meal for Christmas. With no cookies. Sarah really did make the best cookies.

  She stalked toward the back and Cal stared at Bill. The man didn’t say anything, but he held Cal’s murderous gaze.

  “I could kill you with one hand.”

  “I hope you won’t,” he replied gently.

  Gently. As if Cal was completely off his rocker. As if Cal was acting like some petulant child.

  He stalked after Sarah and into the kitchen. “I don’t know what the hell—”

  “Stop. Stop.” Sarah wrapped her arms around herself looking wounded somehow, though he didn’t know what she had to be wounded about.

  “That wasn’t a business meeting in there.”

  “No, it wasn’t. Bill and I have been dating, and I invited him for dinner so I could introduce you two. I’ve been trying to tell you for days, but . . . Well, Lindsay has made you rather grumpy.”

  “My moods have nothing to do with Lindsay.”

  She snorted. “Sure, and I have chairs stored down my throat. Cal, listen to me. I like him. I . . . I think I love him.”

  “No.”

  “You don’t get to decide that.”

  “Haven’t you learned a damn thing?” he demanded, panic at the fact she’d even utter that horrendous word beating through him. “Love is poison, and it will only leave you hurt and alone.”

  She let out a breath, almost like she’d had it punched out of her. “You don’t really think that, do you?” She looked so pained, as though she felt sorry for him. “Cal . . .”

  “What could possibly give you the impression you can trust him? You can love him? You’re nineteen and—”

  “And you’ve been in love with Lindsay since, when? Eighth grade? It isn’t about how old I am, or how old he is—”

  “Just how old is—”

  “Cal, I love him. Nothing you can say is going to change that. We’re dating. Maybe . . . It’s possible at some point we’ll be more than dating. I don’t need your permission, but I’d like your support.”

  “You will end up hurt. You will end up like the rest of us. You can’t trust this. You can’t want this.” He had to convince her of that. For her own good. He couldn’t stand it if she was hurt. It would kill him.

  She crossed the room and put her hands on his shoulders. “Oh,
Cal. You make me so sad sometimes.” Then she wrapped him in a hug as if . . . None of this made any sense.

  “Maybe your cynicism is warranted,” she said, giving him one last squeeze before releasing him. When she looked up at him, there were tears in her eyes, but she was smiling. “But I don’t want to be cynical. I want to be in love.”

  He was pretty sure she could have stabbed him and that statement would have hurt less. She was going to get clobbered. By love. Just like Dad. Just like him. And he didn’t know how to save her from it.

  “Please have a civil dinner with us. Because if you can’t, you need to go back to your stables. I’ll leave you leftovers, but I’m not eating dinner with . . .” Her eyebrows drew together. “I know you want to protect me, and I know you’d never leave me, Cal. You would and have sacrificed yourself for me. Maybe that’s why it isn’t so hard to want to be in love. I’ve always had yours.”

  Now she was twisting the knife. He nearly doubled over from the pain of it.

  “Of course you’ve always had mine. So, maybe you should try a little faith. You might be happier for it.” She smiled thinly. “I’ll leave you alone for a few minutes to decide.” But she didn’t just leave. She rose to her tiptoes and brushed a kiss across his cheek. “I love you, Cal. And I always will.”

  Then she left him alone in the kitchen with that impossible, impossible task.

  * * *

  Lindsay stared at the lit-up Barton house and tried to ignore the nerves fluttering in her stomach. She could have called Sarah and asked if it was a good time. She could have made an appointment to meet Sarah in Gracely.

  But she wasn’t really here for that. She had her laptop with her designs for some marketing material for Sarah, but she was absolutely, truly here to see Cal.

  Still, she did have things to show Sarah, so that’s what she’d do first. She pushed out of the car, allowing herself to enjoy the pretty starlit night, the snow under her feet, and the magic of Christmas all around her.

  “Give me some of that magic,” she whispered into the evening before cresting the stairs of the porch. She knocked on the door and waited for someone to answer.