Final chapters of free-read Christmas novella

It’s a wrap! Here are the final chapters of Stand Still & Chill. Thanks for reading and sharing and MERRY CHRISTMAS!!

Stand Still & Chill

Volume 2 of the Match Made in Almost Heaven duo

CHAPTERS 21-30 (the final chapters)

story by Nora Edinger

noraedinger.com

cover design by Phyllis Sigal

Copyright 2023

dedicated to Erica and Rachel

*****

Dear Reader,

I hope you enjoy reading this Christmas romance, done in the heart-lightening spirit of the season, as much as I enjoyed writing it. Set in my home state of choice, West Virginia, Stand Still & Chill is the second half of my Match Made in Almost Heaven duo. The first half, Suspended Aggravation, was released in 2020 as patron-sponsored art and remains available as a free read through Weelunk online magazine and at noraedinger.com.

Releasing Stand Still & Chill as a free read is a celebration of thanksgiving for more than 30 years in the writing business. While I retired from journalism in summer 2023 and am enjoying a second career that has nothing to do with sitting in front of a computer, I still hope to take on occasional projects that capture my interest. So, this might not be the last you hear from me…

Thank you for reading this novella in the meantime. Thank you for sharing this link hither and yon. And, may all the joys and wonders of the season be yours!

Blessings,

Nora

P.S. Earlier chapters can be accessed under the blog button at noraedinger.com. Sharable links to earlier chapters of Stand Still & Chill are available on my personal Facebook account.

Chapter 21

The second mistaken encounter with Rafe was no one’s fault. It happened the very next evening. Brianna chalked it up to sheer back luck. Extraordinarily bad luck.

It all started in the barn. Having already done everything the horses needed her to do — which was possibly too much, her back was already telling her — she was trying on a pair of cross-country skis in private.

She had sneaked them out of a stash Robert kept for guests who weren’t entirely prepared for their Canaan Valley experience. Or, at least she had tried to sneak them. Hauling two skis that were as long as she was tall out the kitchen door, across a parking lot and a field and into the barn wasn’t exactly a stealthy maneuver. Anyone could have seen her. Anyone could have heard her, for that matter, particularly when she managed to shut both skis in the kitchen’s storm door at one point. But, so far as she knew, no one had.

Now, in the minimalist barn lighting, she squinted down at the pictorial how-to directions she had printed out from a beginner’s website – Nordic Skiing For Dummkopfs. The site designer was either German or had a weird sense of humor. Maybe both. The instructions were terribly funny for, well, instructions. She wondered if he had received a threatening letter from the “Dummies” book people. Copyright is copyright. Who knows?

Whatever the origin of the site, the instructions were helpful enough. She put on the lightweight boots, laid the skis out on the barn floor and stepped carefully on top of them, right on the spots obviously meant for feet. She squinted again, then bent over to clip the elongated toe of her right boot into the clamp on the right ski. Repeating the process on the other side with equal success, she stood up straight and smiled. There. That was simple enough.

Brianna clomped around a bit in the straw, trying to get the feel for a skiing technique in which all the foot except for the toe is free to move and flex. It was really different than the rigid boots of snow skis. She clomped some more and Prince Charming whinnied loudly at her back. It might have been a give-me-a-snack whinny, but Brianna suspected it was more on the “seriously?” side of things. Who knew horses could be such smart alecks?

“Are you criticizing my technique, bub?” she turned to ask the wizened gelding, who stared back at her with brown eyes that Brianna was almost sure were sparkling with equine laughter. She couldn’t resist. “Oh, you — you’re such a sweetie pie.” She side stepped over – right ski, left ski, right ski, left ski – with the intention of giving him a scratch on the nose. And, she almost made it. There at the end, though, one ski tip got somehow caught in the stall fencing and she teetered alarmingly toward the unforgiving metal of Prince Charming’s stall door.

Brianna, too panicked to remember anything as important as how to release skis from their bindings, simply could not get her balance. Right ski, right ski, left ski, right ski, she clattered like a doomed cartoon character. Then, she fell like a rock, closing her eyes as she braced herself for the inevitable impact.

But, it didn’t happen. At least not exactly.

What she collided with was not solid steel. It was the firm chest and strong arms of Rafe Davis. Her eyes opened just in time to realize this, right before the impact took them both down to the floor in a tangled heap of legs and arms. And, most unfortunately, skis.

“Hold still,” Rafe demanded as Brianna struggled mightily to get out of his lap and grip. “One of us is going to break something if you don’t stop.”

Brianna stopped. She had no choice. Both of her skis were, quite remarkably, still attached to her feet. Her left leg was propped up in Rockette kick, the end of the ski on the floor and its tip alarmingly high in the air. The back half of her right ski was partially underneath Rafe, her knee bent so tightly that her heel was planted against her backside, which was itself wedged against Rafe’s leg. Otherwise, she was flat on her back across Rafe’s lap, his left hand the only thing keeping her head off the concrete floor. If they had been in a yoga class, people would have been duly impressed at their pose.

Without another word, Rafe stretched out his right arm to unsnap both of her skis and they were able to slowly and carefully disentangle. “Are you OK?” he asked after they had both made it back onto their feet and were brushing straw off various body parts. At least he was brushing off straw. Brianna started to do so, but stopped when a bolt of pain shot up her right arm. She peeped in surprise and he looked up, repeating the question. “Brianna, are you OK?” He seemed legitimately concerned.

Brianna’s entire lower arm was throbbing. But, she had no intention of telling him that. “I’m fine,” she brazenly lied. Her intended effect was entirely spoiled when fat, unbidden tears began rolling down her face.

“No, you’re not fine,” Rafe sighed, coming to her side at once. “Where are you hurting?” She lifted her wrist to show him and whimpered at the jolt of pain that even that small motion caused.

Rafe ran his fingers gently down her forearm, to check its bones’ alignment, Brianna supposed. That looked OK to her, although her wrist was already beginning to bruise and swell. “Don’t move it anymore,” Rafe said, turning to go to the barn’s massive first-aid kit. He came back to her with a sling that he helped her into with surprising speed and skill. Brianna wondered if people who work at ski lodges have seen so many injuries they are half the way to being a medical professional no matter what it is they are actually trained to do.

“You’re going to need to go in for an X-ray,” Dr. Rafe said determinedly. He sighed and rubbed his forehead with one hand. “Dad went to bed early. He said he felt like he was coming down with a cold. Do you want me to wake him up or do you want me to drive you there?”

“I’ll drive myself,” Brianna said primly.

“No, you will not,” Rafe said. “Not all the way to Elkins, in a sling. You’d never make the road curves with just one arm. You’d be a menace to other people as well as a danger to yourself.” He was right, of course. Even in daylight, such a drive would be ill-advised. Add in darkness and the possibility of wildlife in the headlights and such a drive would be pure idiocy.

“Well,” Brianna said. “OK.”

Rafe seemed to abandon the idea of getting his dad out of bed even though she had never answered his question. He fished into the pocket of his jacket and pulled out keys. “Let’s just go.”

They said nothing else as he gingerly helped her into his SUV and then reached across her to buckle her seat belt like he would for a child. Only when they were well down the road did he speak again. She could tell he was somewhat irritated. “What were you trying to do, anyway?”

“Learn how to ski,” she said quietly. She was feeling rather irritable herself at this point. And, it wasn’t entirely because of the pain. Why? Just why can I not keep away from this man?

“You wanted to learn how to ski in the barn?” Rafe snorted. “Corduroy has some 10 miles of groomed trails, three of them with night lighting. Why weren’t you out there on actual snow instead of on a concrete floor inside the barn?”

Brianna answered him with a shrug. “I only wanted to learn how to clip on the skis and move around a little bit tonight. I got some instructions online.”

Rafe looked at her incredulously. “Do you mean my dad hasn’t taken you skiing yet? That’s ridiculous. He skis practically every day when there’s snow.”

“Why should he have?” Brianna countered testily. “It’s not like I actually need to know how to ski to promote the business.”

Rafe seemed even more irritable now, if that was possible. “I guess you don’t. But, it would seem to make a whole lot of sense given that dad actually owns a ski lodge and the two of you …”

“Look out!” Brianna squealed, pointing to a doe that was crossing the road just 20 or 30 feet ahead of them. Rafe slowed dramatically, a good thing, as the kind of multi-pointed buck that hunters only dream about was following in hot pursuit. They stopped in the road and watched the merry chase disappear into the darkness. The deer didn’t even seem to notice them.

“I’m glad you’re driving,” Brianna said with a shiver, realizing how close they had come to an accident. “I would never have been able to. You were right. Thank you.”

Apparently mollified, Rafe harummphed in agreement again lapsed into silence. They didn’t speak again until she came out of the examining room with her arm in an impressive black brace and a hot pink sling that was better proportioned to her petite frame.

The doctor, a round and unusually jolly fellow, wagged his finger at Rafe and winked at them both. “It’s only a hairline fracture, but Mrs. needs to take it easy for a few days and keep her arm propped up whenever she can to cut down on swelling,” he said in a thick accent. India? The Middle East? Brianna wasn’t sure.

He pointed to Rafe and handed him a slip of paper. “She can take these or over-the-counter for the pain. No driving for Mrs. No dishes. No carrying groceries. You do that,” he finished with another wink directed at just Rafe. “Other things are still OK.”

Other things? Oh! Other. Things.

Brianna wanted to die. “He’s not … We’re not,” she stammered, both her cheeks flaming hot with humiliation. It was no use. The doctor had already turned on his heel and headed back through the translucent door that separated the waiting room from the examining rooms.

“It’s OK,” Rafe said grimly, holding the door to the parking lot wide open for her. “It was just a natural assumption. We’re here together, late on a Saturday night. What else is he …”

“Oh no,” Brianna wailed, her thoughts immediately taking another, less mortifying direction.

“Are you in pain?” Rafe asked in alarm.

“No. Not much. Not now that I have the brace,” Brianna tried to explain. “It’s just that it’s Saturday night. Tomorrow is Sunday and I’m not going to be able to play the piano for church. And, it’s only two weeks until Christmas. I don’t even know if I’m going to be able to play for Christmas Eve service. Pastor Dittmeyer is going to be so disappointed.”

“Are you even going to be here for that?” Rafe asked. “Aren’t you going home to be with your family like you did at Thanksgiving?”

“No,” Brianna said. She wasn’t going to say anything else, but Rafe stared at her in such an inquisitive way that she opted to explain. “My parents are going on a cruise that leaves a couple of days before Christmas and my brothers are going to be with their wives’ families. The Reeds got Thanksgiving this year. We alternate.”

“Are you going to stay here in Canaan then?”

“I don’t know,” Brianna admitted. “I know I’d be welcome at Allie’s and Gabe’s, but this is their first Christmas with the baby. I don’t want to interfere with that. Maybe I’ll go on a trip of my own.” Brianna looked down at her splint in the darkness. The doctor had said she’d be wearing it for at least four weeks. That would take her well into January. “Or maybe not.”

“Well, I’m sure dad would be glad to have you here,” Rafe said quietly. “Margaret will be with us at the lodge. Her son will be with his wife’s family, too. You must all be on the same schedule.” He sighed. “Dad decided to close the lodge on the 24^th and 25^th so no one will have to work and we can have the whole great room to ourselves. You might as well be there, too. I guess.”

“Thanks,” Brianna said in an equally quiet tone. “I might take you up on that.”

When pigs fly…

Chapter 22

Rafe set down the receiver of his office phone and reflected on a very odd thing to discover in adulthood. His father couldn’t date worth beans.

There really wasn’t any explanation for it. Robert had been a great husband – at least as far as Rafe could tell. Forty-three years together and Rafe didn’t remember any lasting friction between his parents. Robert had excelled at the big stuff. He worked. He kept the family clothed and fed and sheltered. He got everyone to church. He didn’t run around with women. He didn’t engage in any of the vices that derail so many marriages.

He was pretty good at the smaller stuff, too, Rafe reflected. His dad generally remembered things like birthdays and anniversaries – often with flowers for the latter — and he showed up when and where he was supposed to in spite of his busy career.

Even the sweet stuff seemed to be in order. Rafe could remember catching his parents in a cuddle or kiss countless times – a cringe-worthy moment when he was of a certain age. There were many, “I love you’s,” called out the door as one spouse was leaving and even more spoken into the phone during check ins that happened in the middle of the work day. Theirs was a loving and supportive marriage and Rafe had reaped many benefits from it.

So, why was his dad such an incredibly lousy boyfriend now?

It was unfathomable. The lack of skiing instruction by a lodge owner. The constant running off to Charleston, leaving Brianna alone so much of the time, yet not wanting to drive her to Wheeling when she wanted to see her friends’ new baby. The not knowing that Brianna was likely to be alone for Christmas.

As if all that wasn’t enough, when Rafe called him earlier in the afternoon to check on Brianna’s arm, his dad didn’t even know that Brianna was injured. It seemed Robert hadn’t gone to church because of his cold and – apparently – had not even bothered to contact his girlfriend to let her know he wasn’t coming to services.

“It’s not like she could do anything about it,” Robert had explained when Rafe questioned this lack of contact. “It’s just a cold, Rafe.”

If Rafe’s recent dating history hadn’t been such a train wreck in its own right, he would probably have delivered a lecture on how to woo a woman in the modern era then and there. As it was, he just did a lot of grimacing on his side of the phone call and finished up with one very pointed question: “How do you see things progressing with Brianna, dad?”

There had been a long pause. “Well, son,” his dad had said. “I’d like her to be a permanent part of our life and family. You’ve probably figured out by now that that’s why I asked her to come here. I didn’t want to say anything and make a big deal out of it. I was just hoping things would take care of themselves. I’m still praying that’s what will happen.”

A permanent part of the family.

“I see,” was all Rafe had been able to come up with in response to that zinger. Their conversation had ended nearly immediately after that.

Now, Rafe stared out his full-wall office window, out past a sea of skiers in Skittle-colored garb waiting for various lifts. His view was one of the best on the mountain, yet he wasn’t really seeing it. He was, instead, seeing images of Brianna. There was Brianna with her friends’ baby in her arms, looking like some kind of Old Master Madonna. There was Brianna at the piano that night at the lodge, tendrils of hair snaking out of her up-do to fall down her back as she played carol after carol. There was the look of surprise on her face when he had all but kissed her that night at the diner. Then, there was the image of her face crumpled in tears of pain last night and his instant fear that she was seriously injured in spite of the fact he had basically leaped between her and the stall to break her fall.

That’s what he had done. He’d leaped like an NFL player, no thought for his own well-being, only for hers.

He closed his eyes, ineffectively trying to stop the internal slide show, and finally admitted the truth to himself. I’m in love with Brianna. I am in love with my dad’s girlfriend. Rafe sighed until there was no air left in his lungs. This was bad. This was really, really bad. There was only one honorable thing to do. Leave.

Rafe thought about this. He didn’t particularly want to leave his job at Snowshoe, at least not yet. And, his dad wouldn’t like it. Of that, Rafe was sure. When the whole family had moved from Colorado to West Virginia, his parents no doubt envisioned a quiet retirement in which Rafe and any future family he might have would be close at hand, grandchildren swarming noisily through the lodge. Robert probably continued in that hope, even though Rafe’s mom would never see such a thing.

He frowned. Two hopeful parents or just one, a marriage and children clearly weren’t going to happen anytime soon. And, Rafe had no intention of sticking around waiting for them, all the while pining for the one woman he couldn’t have and judging his father’s courtship missteps with a hyper-critical eye. No way. That kind of life would be far worse than leaving his job and what little family he had left to be alone somewhere else. Anywhere else.

Rafe pulled an old-school clipboard out of his desk and began making a list of his best contacts back in Colorado. Snowshoe had been great. He would forever be thankful he had been at hand when all the trouble with his mother was unfolding. But, that was then. Right now, being on the other side of the country was absolutely the better option. He would start making the calls tomorrow. The sooner he got out of West Virginia, the better.

*****

Happily, it took only a few days to get a nibble. There was absolutely nothing in Colorado, oddly enough. People there were holding onto their jobs like a squirrel with an acorn. But, a friend of a friend knew of a general manager position that was soon to be posted at a reputable lodge in Lake Tahoe. Lake Tahoe as in California. Even farther away from West Virginia than Colorado was. Even better.

By the end of the week, Rafe had made a few phone calls and many e-mails, fired off a resume and references and said countless prayers. By early the next week, he had an interview arranged and plane tickets booked for a quick trip that would have him there and back to Snowshoe just before Christmas.

He’d only be gone for three days, in fact. If he played it right, no one but a handful of his closest employees would even know that he was gone. Rafe figured Veronique would guess what he was up to. He had always been a fast tracker. She knew that, as she was cut from the same cloth. Two years at a small resort was technically enough GM experience to move onward and upward. And, if this Lake Tahoe job wasn’t the one, there would surely be something else. He’d go to Europe if he had to. He’d go to Japan if he had to. He just needed to go. Now.

Rafe logged off his e-mail account and smiled for the first time in several days. There was hope. Thank God.

*****

Her first Christmas entirely alone breathing down her neck, Brianna was on the internet like white on rice. She pondered cruises. She tried to imagine herself playing shuffleboard, dipping fruit in a chocolate fountain, taking a tai chi class on the lido deck or wearing a hat made out of straw. Nope. Too old lady, she decided.

She considered France. The Seine. Paris. The food. The pastry. The chocolate. The men. The price. Nope. Too expensive, she determined with regret. She might be unemployed any day now.

She checked out a slew of potential volunteer “vacations.” There was trailblazing in the Rockies. There was farm work at a deep-South exhibition site for an agency that gave out animals like goats and chickens to help families in developing nations work themselves out of poverty. It was a group that her brother John absolutely loved. Some of his solar cookers were part of the program, in fact. Worthy? Absolutely. But, nope. Too strenuous, she reluctantly admitted. Her arm still hurt if she overdid it.

She closed her eyes and tried to picture what her innermost heart wanted to do – something young and hip, something not terribly expensive and something that didn’t require shoveling. A couple minutes of that kind of thinking was all it took. It was December and her body was in the mountains. The rest of her, as it turned out, was in her car, in the sun, the wind blowing through her hair.

Oh.

Yeah.

Brianna went to map website and checked out the travel time between Cranberry and St. Augustine, Fla. 813 miles. 13 hours. It was a long haul to be sure. She didn’t care. She was 28 years old. She had a red car with a convertible top, cruise control and an excellent sound system. It was high time she took a real road trip instead of flying everywhere.

She only wished she had decided to do such a thing while Allie was still single and able to join her. But, even solo, Brianna figured it could be the trip of a lifetime.

The smile was unstoppable. There wasn’t even a need to feel guilty. Her family would be out of town and Robert didn’t really need her at Corduroy at this point. PR stuff aside, he had already hired a local teenaged boy to take over with the horses since she couldn’t do barn chores with her injury. Brianna could and would take a full two weeks off, cruising down the Atlantic coast in her little Cooper until she hit the beach of her choice.

Not one to leave anything to chance – particularly given the holiday crush — she immediately began making hotel reservations starting for the night of Dec. 23. She took out an old-school clip board and fired up the map website again.

Virginia Beach should be plenty far enough for the first night, she decided, especially since she wanted swing up to Wheeling to dig out some lighter weight clothes. It was out of the way, but she might be able to get in a super-quick visit with Allie if she left on the 22^nd instead.

Christmas Eve and Christmas Day could be spent in Charleston, S.C. There would surely be something to do and somewhere to eat in that large of a city. Then, on to Savannah for a last stop over. Perfect. She’d be out of Cranberry before Christmas, an excellent way to avoid the threat of having to spend any significant time with Rafe.

Brianna logged off her computer, capped her pen and smiled like the Cheshire cat. There was hope. Thank God.

Chapter 23

The remaining days until Christmas passed like a blur. Guests checked in and out of Corduroy in solid, boisterous numbers — ready to ski and ready to seriously celebrate the holiday. Cranberry bread was eaten. Christmas movies were watched. Snow was tracked onto every flooring surface of the lodge, much to Sunny the retriever’s annoyance as it was increasingly difficult to find sleeping spots that were both warm and dry.

Check.

The presents Brianna had ordered on-line began arriving both at her apartment and at the homes of friends and family. Her phone pinged constantly with various tracking reports. She was North Pole worthy.

Check.

Her injury recovered enough that she was able to ditch the hot pink sling and drive, more or less safely, with her bad arm in just a brace. She could also hold herself firmly against the upper portion of Corduroy’s cross-country ski machine to do just the leg part of the exercise. Robert was horrified at her accident. He insisted that she at least learn that much of the Nordic-ski technique, which involved an odd pushing off from the toe to launch each gliding step, on the exerciser.

“I want your next adventure on skis to be a happier one,” he said. Brianna could heartily agree with that.

Check.

She was also able to play carols at every church service except for that first one after the injury. Well, also except for Christmas Eve, which was still two days away. She felt a little guilty about missing the main event — Pastor Dittmeyer’s puppy eyes almost made her consider leaving on her road trip a day or two later. But, a woman’s got to do what a woman’s got to do. Which, in this case, was to flee.

So, check that, too.

Ironically, avoiding Rafe had not been particularly difficult in recent days. Since the night of her fall and his chivalrous medi-vac efforts, he was nowhere to be seen. Brianna was at the lodge every day, working on something Corduroy related or visiting the horses. But, no Rafe. Maybe he was swamped in holiday bookings. Maybe Robert was visiting his son on the mountain instead of Rafe coming to Corduroy. Maybe Rafe was simply visiting during the hours she was not there.

Whatever. She decided to chalk his absence up to the mercy of God.

Tonight, her last night in Cranberry for at least two weeks, was looking even better. Brianna’s bags were packed and Margaret had invited her downstairs for an evening of Jeopardy and cookie baking.

Can life really get much better than Jeopardy, cookie baking and a road trip to Florida?

Granted, some of the cookies were destined for Christmas festivities with Rafe and Robert, as Margaret had already warned her. The others were fair game, however. Brianna planned to eat until she was as stuffed as a deer in one of those clubs for old guys. She figured they would be the only home-baked goodies she’d have the entire holiday season. So, tonight was a free pass, diet wise.

Boom, boom came Margaret’s get-down-here tap on the radiator pipes. Brianna picked up her present for her neighbor and three more small packages for Margaret to give to Robert and Rafe on Christmas Day and Bertie, the lodge manager, whenever she could. She headed for her friend’s apartment, offering a small sigh as she galloped down the stairs. This unexpected camaraderie with Margaret was one thing she’d definitely miss when she left Cranberry for good.

The scent wafting from Margaret’s open door drove such sad thoughts straight out of her head, however. “Mmmmmmm,” Brianna said as soon as she walked straight in. The woman hadn’t even started making anything and it somehow already smelled like a bakery.

“It’s not food. I managed to spill a whole bottle of vanilla on my apron,” Margaret admitted sheepishly.

“Well, it’s a good scent on you,” Brianna laughed.

“Isn’t that what that study found a few years ago?” Margaret asked, a mischievous gleam in her eye. “The only fragrances men actually had a measurable response to were vanilla, pumpkin pie and strawberries, as I recall. All food. It figures.”

Brianna laughed. “And, here I am wearing my Southern belle floral. No wonder I’m still single.”

Margaret looked at her pointedly. “Baby, the only reason you’re single is you don’t want to be married yet. If you did, you would be.”

The older woman’s words sounded like such a statement of fact, Brianna didn’t bother to argue. She supposed they might be true, although she hadn’t really thought about it in that way before. She and Mark Morelli had definitely been headed in the direction of matrimony. And, it would have been a pretty good match. Brianna had been the one to put on the brakes. And, if she’d been willing to settle for a merely OK match, there would have been a handful of former suitors who could have fulfilled that role.

Brianna didn’t have any more time to ponder whether or not Margaret was correct, although she did give a passing thought as to why Margaret had never remarried after being widowed at such a young age. Odd, that. The two women poured themselves into cookie baking, Jeopardy completely forgotten. Margaret showed Brianna how to use a tiny wooden pestle to shape even tinier tart shells and then stuff them with a finely minced version of pecan-pie filling. Those were the “lassies.”

They shaped firm, toffee-colored dough that smelled wonderfully of molasses into balls, rolled the balls through chunky bits of sugar and then flattened them with the bottom of a drinking glass. Those turned into ginger snaps hard enough to encourage dunking. Dunking was always a good thing in Brianna’s opinion.

Margaret did some of the trickier bits herself, particularly on a “rushki” cookie that had a dough she said couldn’t take much handling without getting tough. Margaret did all the mixing and rolling and cutting. Brianna just watched. But, Margaret insisted she play a part by arranging the squares onto baking trays, putting a dollop of fruit or nut mixture onto each one, folding over two of each square’s corners and pressing down slightly in the middle so they would stay together. Whew.  

Eventually, dozens of cookies were cooling on sheets of waxed paper all over the apartment. They sat down, drank coffee and ate. Margaret seemed to also be giving herself permission to indulge. How could she not, Brianna decided. The cookies were so good. Good like absolutely nothing had tasted since her Grandma Janie had died while Brianna was in college. That grandma, the same one who had the horses, had baked like a pro. The pies. The bread. The cobblers. The smells in that farm kitchen had been pure magic.

They sampled so much, in fact, that if it hadn’t have been for the excellent coffee Margaret kept pouring, Brianna might have been ill. As it was, they still ate way too much, stayed up way too late and had an absolutely wonderful time.

“Wow,” Brianna finally said, unable to eat even one more coffee-soaked ginger snap. “It’s after midnight. I’d better get some sleep. I decided to leave at 8 a.m. and do a whole day in Wheeling.”

“Wait, I have a little something for you,” Margaret said. She pulled a small stack of books, none of them wrapped, from a cupboard. “These are some of my favorites. I’ve left lots of notes in them that might be of some help some day.”

Each of the trio was a cookbook it turned out. A vegetarian cookbook. “Thanks,” Brianna said, hoping her voice sounded warm enough. The thought, she truly appreciated. Margaret wasn’t a fancy package, poofy-bow type of present giver. These books were from the heart and Brianna absolutely loved that. The vegetarian theme, not so much.

Are these crazy romantics never going to give up?

“I have something for you, too,” Brianna said instead of dwelling on that negative thought. She handed Margaret a single volume that was simply wrapped. Roomie minds apparently think alike. Margaret seemed quite pleased when she pulled out a vintage, beautifully illustrated copy of The Little Prince, written in its original French, of course.

“Le Petite Prince,” Margaret cooed, obviously both surprised and pleased. “Merci, mon ami.”

“De rien,” Brianna replied in lieu of “you’re welcome,” nearly exhausting what little she could remember of her college French. She remembered another everyday phrase as she headed out the door. “Bon nuit.”

“Bon voyage,” Margaret countered, thankfully switching back to English at that point. “I hope your trip is sunny and warm.”

“Me, too,” Brianna said with another Cheshire cat smile. Florida in January. Florida. In. January. FLORIDA IN JANUARY. “Me, too.”

*****

It was cold and miserable.

Brianna got up at 7 a.m., ready to counter last night’s cookie bacchanal with some thoroughly righteous oatmeal and yogurt before driving off into the bleak, mid-winter sunrise. Instead, she was greeted by a weather report detailing the freak snowstorm that was socking in the valley. She peeked out the bank of windows at the front of the building into the darkness. Snow was falling in a thick sheet. At least that’s what it was doing within the diffuse, yellow orb that surrounded one of Cranberry’s four downtown streetlights. That was all Brianna could actually see.

She’d clearly be staying put for a while.

She ate her righteous breakfast. Check. She did some light cleaning that really didn’t need to be done. Check. She rummaged through her suitcases. Yep. Still plenty of empty space in there for the summer clothes that were waiting for her back at her carriage house in Wheeling. Check. Every possible to-do now exhausted, Brianna paced her small living room, too frustrated to sit down. I need to get out of here. I need to get out of here.

Then, a special ring tone designated for Allie chimed.

“Hey, what’s up?” Brianna asked joyfully. A phone call from her best friend — what could be better on a snowbound day?

“I’m up. For too many hours,” Allie said with a soft yawn. “Ava woke me, most recently that is, at 4 a.m. I’ve just been waiting until I thought was safe to call you. I need to hear another adult voice or I’m going to go crackers.”

Brianna laughed. “Is Gabe already gone for work?”

“Oh, yes,” Allie said. “He slept right through all the baby’s fussing this morning. She wanted to nurse every hour on the hour! I think she’s growing.”

“Is she sleeping now?”

“Yes, thank God,” Allie said before stopping to chew on something crunchy.

“Are you having breakfast just now?” Brianna asked in amusement. It was 9 a.m. Allie was usually an early bird.

“This is the first chance I’ve had,” Allie admitted. “I keep a pitcher of water by our bed so I don’t dehydrate. That’s all I’ve had until now.”

The friends chatted on, in between Allie’s bites of food. Her friend was excited about Brianna’s road trip, although she reassured her that the very idea made her feel more exhausted than envious at the moment. Allie commiserated about the frustration of a delayed start, wondered if Brianna liked the biography of eccentric photographer “Snowflake” Bentley she had sent (Brianna did, of course), and thanked Brianna thoroughly for the set of folk song CDs she had sent to her own tiny family.

“Well, I know how much Gabe loves to sing,” Brianna laughed. Gabe’s off-key efforts were notorious, although Ava always smiled with delight at her daddy’s singing, according to Allie.

As they continued talking, it became clear Brianna wasn’t going to include Wheeling in her travels. She was so delayed she would have to immediately head south and just buy some appropriate clothes on the road.  

They finished the call with merry Christmas wishes and Brianna’s admonition to her friend to get some sleep while she could. And, that was all there was to it. No big news from either side. No drama. It was just the kind of call that maintains the bonds of friendship.

No sooner had she signed off from her call with Allie, however, than her phone chimed with an incoming text message. Brianna looked at her screen. It was from Maggie Alton, the Chicago-area artist that had stayed at Corduroy earlier in the month. I have deer heads in orange, red and forest green corduroy, the text read. Which is your favorite? I can ship right after Christmas.

Brianna pursed her lips, trying to visualize Corduroy’s great room. Right now, in the full flush of Christmas, red or green seemed like a logical choice. When the holiday decorations came down, though, the dominant color theme would mostly be wood, wood and more wood. That went with anything. But, in the spring, she knew the blankets and pillows strewn around the room would switch from wintry reds to buttercup yellows and oranges. Bertie had shown her the closet full of linens that Robert’s late wife had stockpiled shortly before the car accident.

That decided it. Only one option would go with everything. Green! Brianna texted back. Hope all is well in IN.

A couple of minutes went by. Brianna stared absentmindedly out the window. It didn’t seem like it could be possible, but it was snowing harder. So hard, it was still impossible to see the hardware store just across the street even though it was mid-day. She sighed, then startled when her phone chimed a text arrival once more.

It was Maggie again. Brianna opened the message, expecting to read something about where to send a bill. That wasn’t it at all. I don’t want to talk about details right now, but can you really pray for Michael and me, the text read. The pregnancy has suddenly become high risk. Michael could lose us all.

That was it. Brianna stared at her phone. “Michael could lose us all.” Such a simple sentence, but Brianna could feel the pain and fear behind every word. Her eyes filled with tears as she remembered the delighted look on Maggie’s face when she had announced the news that she was carrying twins to Michael’s family. Even though Brianna didn’t know Maggie and Michael very well, she already felt a sisterly bond with them. Christianity at its best can be like that.

Brianna sank back onto the couch and considered the situation. Wow. What a huge loss if the absolute worst came true. It would be the second such loss for Michael, who had already experienced the death of a spouse. And, right at Christmas. Life comes at you fast — even when you’re in wedded bliss. Her own troubles – wasted interest in a man who barely seemed to notice she was alive on one hand and a delayed beach trip on the other – seemed extremely small in comparison. Even Allie’s new-mom exhaustion seemed of little consequence.

Of course, I’ll pray. I love you, my sister in the Lord, Brianna texted back, meaning every word. And, then she did what she said she would do. No standing required, she simply sat still this time. And, she prayed and prayed some more, both for a miracle and for the unexplainable peace of God to fill a certain beach house on the windy shores of Lake Michigan, a certain sleepy cottage in Wheeling and a certain over-the-shop apartment in snow-swept Canaan Valley.

How wonderful to know that there was enough of God to go all around.

Chapter 24

It was 3 p.m. – the next day, the day she was supposed to be on the road to Florida. Brianna remained cooped up in her apartment, watching The Weather Channel in morbid fascination. At least Margaret was now there to keep her company – and make a delicious lunch of butternut squash soup and homemade crackers. Brianna hadn’t even known crackers were a home-kitchen possibility until Margaret was rolling out dough and pricking it all over with a fork.

Delicious, but not so tasty as to take her mind off the weather, which was awful in an epic kind of way.

It seemed a nor’easter had taken a sudden and surprising turn and, instead of heading out to sea as had been expected, had moved deep inland. Where, unfortunately for Brianna, it was staying put over the Appalachian Mountains like some sort of snow machine gone rogue. According to an overly excited studio announcer, there was already more than two feet of fresh powder on the ground at “Snowshoe, a popular ski resort in the region,” and there was “no end in sight.”

The storm had shifted direction too quickly for the channel to have a man on the ground yet to do things like plunge a yard stick into a drift or throw snow in the air for the delight of viewers at home, but the studio guy was still hyping it as, “the biggest snow event in the mid-Atlantic for at least the last decade.” At one point, Rafe’s voice was piped in over archival film footage from Snowshoe’s slopes. He sounded as pepped up as the announcer, saying holiday skiers were simply waiting for visibility, “stoked in anticipation of the excellent skiing to come.”

Stoked? Seriously, dude?

The coverage droned on, but Brianna’s attention was arrested by the unexpected sound of Rafe’s voice and her own heart-lurching response. She smiled ruefully at the ridiculousness of her situation. For whatever stupid, stupid reason, she had it bad for this guy. Really bad. Oh, the irony. She was finally smitten and the guy in question absolutely was not. Maybe that’s all it was, she pondered. Was Rafe’s unavailability the real attraction? If it was, that was somehow even sadder than genuine, unrequited love. That would mean she was just creating her own romantic drama.

Brianna’s phone rang yet again, interrupting such depressing reflections.

“Hey there, Sparky,” Robert said warmly. “Did you hear my son on TV?”

“We certainly did,” Brianna replied with a real grin. She couldn’t help but love her employer as much as she loved, or maybe loved, his son. It was more than the guileless smile and ruddy cheeks on the employer side of things. Robert really was the Quaker Oats guy.

“We?” Robert asked hopefully. “Is Margaret there with you? I called her apartment, but there wasn’t any answer.”

“Yes, she’s here. Do you want to talk to her?”

“Yes, but that’s OK,” Robert said. “I’ll call her later. It’s you I need to talk to right now.”

He seemed to take a deep breath then went on in a rush. “Brianna, I know you’re a grown-up woman, but I’m going to play dad here for a moment. I really don’t like the idea of you being out on the roads in your little car until all of this is over. I want you to stay put in the valley until after Christmas Day. Do it for me, if you won’t change your plans for yourself. Rafe might not make it down the mountain anyway. It’ll just be me and Margaret here at Corduroy if you don’t stay.”

Once again, Brianna was touched by Robert’s concern for her safety. Her own parents had texted her holiday greetings from a port of call somewhere in the Caribbean an hour or so ago. They hadn’t even asked about the storm, although it was possible they were unaware of the weather in West Virginia given the fact they were cruising. She decided to give them the benefit of a doubt.

“I already changed my reservations,” Brianna admitted with another grin. “But, I’m going to try to leave tomorrow morning instead of today.”

“It might still be snowing then. And, that’s Christmas Eve day,” Robert argued. “That’s a lousy time to start a trip. A lot of places are going to be closed – even church is cancelled for tomorrow night.

“Just stay, Sparky,” he sighed. “I can come and get the two of you in the truck if the roads are still bad tomorrow afternoon. You can have dinner here. You and Margaret can even spend the night at the lodge if you like since we’re shut down to guests. We can all sleep in Christmas morning and I’ll make my famous waffles for breakfast. It’ll be just like…”

Robert trailed off, but Brianna knew what he was thinking. It would be just like the old times he had shared with his wife and his son. How odd, how very odd that each of them was without that critical holiday ingredient of family this year. Robert’s wife, Rafe’s mother was gone. Brianna’s and Margaret’s relatives were elsewhere. They were four lonely, lonely peas. Now, she was the one to sigh, in concession. They might as well be peas in a pod, she instantly decided.

“That sounds good,” she said, almost meaning it. She would just deal with it. A holiday with Rafe Davis might not be ideal, but it was certainly not going to kill her. She was not a 16-year-old girl crushing on the football captain. Plus, she could drown any sorrows their unwanted fraternization might cause with freshly squeezed citrus juice and sunshine as soon as she got to Florida.

“Well, all right,” Robert responded. Brianna was instantly reminded of Rafe saying those exact words in the exact same tone when he watched her ski down a slope at Snowshoe for the first time. It was a nice memory. But, she didn’t want a nice memory that included Rafe.

She puffed out a breath of pure frustration. Robert was clearly elated by her change in plans. Brianna could only hope she hadn’t made a decision that she would truly regret.

*****

What an incredibly lousy decision! A real stinker!

Brianna was on kitchen detail. That’s not what she was peeved about. Margaret and Robert had managed to combine their considerable cooking skills to make a fantastic Christmas Eve dinner. They’d picked Italian in spite of the fact no one in the assembled group was even remotely of Mediterranean ancestry. Who cared? It was wonderful.

There was wedding soup with the tiniest “meatballs” Brianna had ever seen. She didn’t bother to ask of what they were actually made. She didn’t particularly want to know. There might be cashews involved. There was an ooey-gooey lasagna — vegetarian but not vegan, so the cheese was deliciously real. There was also an amazing, delightfully garlicky salad, tiramisu and plenty of Pacific Blue espresso to top off the meal. The pair so outdid themselves, it only made sense that someone else do the cleanup. She’d readily volunteered.

It was Rafe that was the problem. Even though the snow had stopped by mid-day Christmas Eve, the guy had been a no show until the last possible minute. They’d held dinner and held dinner, Margaret fussing more and more with each cell phone update on what the road conditions were and speculation as to if or when he might arrive.

Alone now in the quiet of the kitchen, Brianna replayed the earlier parts of the day in her mind.

Trying to stave off hunger and avoid any need to personally take a phone call from Rafe, she had tried to keep herself busy with the horses. But, even in a barn, there’s only so much a girl can do. She finally gave Snow White and Prince Charming the peppermints and apples she had sneaked out of the kitchen and called it a day.

Robert was waiting just outside the barn doors. “Hey, Sparky,” he said. “Can you help set up these luminaries? Margaret doesn’t want to leave the kitchen, but Rafe’s on his way. I want to have them burning when he gets here.”

So, Brianna dutifully helped to fill white paper bag after white paper bag with sand from a bucket Robert had hauled out onto the lodge’s porch. Votive candles and a long, fireplace lighter finished the job. The two of them stood on the porch in the twilight, just enjoying the soft, glow that stretched down both sides of the long, flagstone path between the porch steps and the parking area.

“It’s so beautiful, Robert,” Brianna said, freshly amazed that such a simple combination could create such an impressive display. “It really feels like Christmas.”

“It does,” Robert answered proudly. “Marilyn was a Western girl. She did luminaries every Christmas, no matter where we were living or traveling. One year, she packed candles and paper bags and matches and took them on the plane. The TSA would probably think that was the makings of a bomb now! We didn’t have a driveway that year, just a terrace on a condo in the Bahamas. She carried the sand up from the beach in an ice bucket and did a border on the terrace. Rafe loved it.”

“It sounds like she was a really special woman.”

“She was,” Robert said. Then — after a brief, misty eyed pause — he floored Brianna. “You know, Sparky, I wanted to ask you a personal question if you don’t mind.”

“What’s that?” Brianna asked warily. In her experience, when someone asks ahead of time if they can ask something else, it generally doesn’t precede anything good. She hoped he wasn’t going to bring up the whole Rafe fiasco again. It was time to give that a rest.

But, that wasn’t it at all.

“Do you think it’s too early for me to start dating?” he asked shyly.

It had been easy to pick up on Robert’s embarrassment even before he finished the sentence. “It’s been almost a year since the accident,” he continued. “I don’t want to upset Rafe, but I really feel like it’s time to move on. I can’t keep running back and forth to Charleston all the time just to stay busy. I want a real life of my own, here, at my home. That’s why I started Corduroy in the first place.”

Brianna looked up at her sweet-faced employer and made a split-second decision. “You were married for 40 years, right?”

“Forty-three,” Robert corrected.

“Forty-three then. I think you more than kept all the promises you made to Marilyn and to God,” Brianna said firmly. “Yes, I think it’s OK for you to move on. If Rafe loves you – and it’s clear that he does – he will get used to it, at least eventually.”

Robert smiled and put his arm around Brianna’s shoulders. “Thanks, Sparky,” he said, giving her a sideways hug. “I really needed to hear that.” Then, Robert floored her again. “Now, I just have to see if Margaret feels the same way I do.”

Margaret!

Brianna could hardly contain the joyous laugh that instantly bubbled up inside her. But, somehow, she did. She simply grinned like an absolute idiot and laid her head against Robert’s shoulder. He squeezed her shoulder in response. Wow. It wasn’t just Margaret. She was going to really miss this guy, too.

Those melancholy thoughts disappeared in a blinding flash of SUV headlights, though. Rafe had arrived. Robert moved away from Brianna to meet him in the middle of the lighted path. “Merry Christmas, son!” he practically shouted. “You made it!” The two briefly embraced and then began to discuss road conditions, which were apparently still lousy at best.

“I hope they’re at least a little better than they were when I picked up Margaret and Sparky this afternoon,” Robert said. Rafe didn’t respond to that. He simply nodded to Brianna with an almost pained expression on his face as he passed by her to go into the lodge.

Would he rather be back at Snowshoe? Are the luminaries making him miss his mom? Does he just not want a stranger here at a family holiday? Brianna had no idea what he was thinking, but it clearly wasn’t anything happy.

Nothing improved over dinner. The four of them ate. The food was still excellent, despite Margaret’s fears. But, the conversation felt like leftovers from several days ago – cold, lacking in flavor and a bit on the dodgy side.

“I bet Snowshoe is really hopping now that the snow has stopped,” Brianna suggested at one particularly dull point. She gave Rafe her best fake smile.

“Yes,” Rafe replied, not looking her in the eyes, thereby entirely missing her feeble effort. “Yes, it is.”

And, that had probably been the high point of the dinnertime conversation. Looking back at the meal, she was doubly glad to be alone and in the kitchen.

Well, not quite alone. Tito Puente was one man who would always be there when a girl needed him, she realized with a real smile. She stopped midway through loading the top drawer of the dishwasher and crossed the room to where her purse hung on a hook in the pantry.

As she fished her phone out of her bag, she couldn’t help but notice an extravagantly ruffled, marigold-yellow apron with an all-over pattern of citrus slices that was also hanging there. It practically called her name. It practically screamed toopics. She slipped the apron on over her head, tied a poofy bow behind her waist, popped in her ear buds and drifted into an equatorial zone, anticipating Florida so very fervently she could practically taste the salt air and feel the ocean breeze on her skin.

Brianna salsa danced her way through the rest of the dishwasher loading, putting each fork into its cup with an extra flourish. She samba danced her way through a clearing off of the counters and the broad wooden table that stood in the middle of the lodge’s kitchen. She gave her dish cloth a feisty twirl at one point. She mamboed through the scrubbing of several pots and pans – pleased by the fact she’d found plastic gloves generous enough to fit over her brace.

She swayed her hips in time to the beat of bongos as she worked. “Manana, cuando yo te vea,” a silken-voiced man sang. Freed from the sink, Brianna swayed a little more. Hey, it was just her and some mammoth piles of clean dishes. Forget mild mambo. It was time for some wild, forget-your-troubles mambo, Brianna decided. She whipped off her gloves, flipped them over a pan and got her arms into it, brace and all. And, then, her feet joined in, moving into a quick-paced box step that swayed her to the sink, toward the stove, toward the refrigerator and, then,

back,

back,

back.

Back into something that shouldn’t have been there. Or, someone, more precisely. A someone whose arms wrapped instantly around her to keep her from falling.

Brianna twisted on her heel, embarrassed to be caught dancing in the kitchen but even more embarrassed because she knew the size and firmness of the body she had backed into could only belong to one person. Rafe. Turning toward him was an even bigger mistake, she realized as soon as she did it. Her face grazed Rafe’s neck as she spun. He made a sound deep in his throat that vibrated against her lips. It almost sounded as if was injured. Yet, he said nothing. He, instead, practically jumped away from her, holding her by only the shoulders until she was steady on her feet, then letting her go.

“I’m sorry,” she murmured, unable to look at him. “Are you OK?”

“I’m OK,” he said in a tight voice. “I should have realized you didn’t know I was there. I could see the cords.” He pointed at the earbuds now resting against her collarbones.

There was a moment of silence.

“Tito Puente?” he asked out of nowhere, still looking at the earbuds.

Brianna smiled at his correct identification. She looked at his chin and nodded. “The King of Mambo.”

Rafe smiled slightly himself, and Brianna breathed deeply — in relief or sadness or something. Then, Rafe did something very odd. His eyes opened wider and he looped one finger under the neck strap of her apron, also right at her collar bone. “Did my dad give this to you?” he asked, his voice and face suddenly and inexplicably both shocked and angry.

Before Brianna could answer, Rafe stormed back into the great room, leaving her standing alone, once more, in the kitchen. Her ear buds still blaring mambo, she caught only part of the argument that was suddenly going on beyond the swinging doors that divided the two rooms.

“Why is she wearing mom’s old apron?” Rafe was saying. Actually, it was yelling – rather polite yelling, but still yelling. “She deserves a whole lot better than that from you.” That much she heard.

“What are you talking about?” Robert yelled back, with equal politeness.

But, any attempt at civility had gone downhill from there. Rafe was somehow tremendously offended that she – Brianna Reed, whom he obviously hated – was wearing his sainted mother’s apron.

Brianna didn’t stop to think or even listen to the rest of the argument. I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to be here.

She pulled off the apron, folded it carefully and placed it and a hastily scribbled note down on the wooden table. Then, she stuffed a few items from her purse into the pockets of her ski jacket and headed out of the kitchen and into the large supply closet. How fortunate that Robert and Margaret had insisted on casual dress. She had on jeans and a sweater – so, a couple minutes of gearing up was all it took. Brianna was ready to roll, or at least to ski.

She slipped out the back door and into the black night without a sound.

Chapter 25

“Gone to bliss!” Rafe shouted as he read Brianna’s note. He was now more unnerved at her sudden disappearance than he was angry with his dad’s courtship techniques, which seemed to be growing lousier by the minute. “What is that supposed to mean?”

Robert didn’t seem to know, either.

Margaret glared at them both. “It means the cabin, you two … you two bozos,” she said quietly but pointedly. It was the first time she had spoken since the argument began. Rafe and Robert both whipped around to face their friend, as surprised at the uncharacteristic steeliness in her voice as they were at the name calling.

“Don’t you two know anything about Brianna?” she demanded, clearly on a roll. “She goes there all the time, whenever it’s empty in fact. She likes to sit and read in the little living room. Bertie even gave her a key of her own a couple of weeks ago. How could you both care so much about the woman and not even know something that basic about her?”

Rafe looked at his father nervously and then back to Margaret. Don’t say anything, he pleaded with his eyes, realizing she, for one, had figured out the depth of his feelings for Brianna. I don’t need this. Dad doesn’t need this. Rafe kicked his toe against a chair leg in frustration. It scooted loudly but only a few inches. It was a heavy chair. He considered kicking it again, but didn’t. A broken toe was the last thing he needed. He just stood there and wished he had just stayed at Snowshoe, like any sensible person would have done in such weather.

“Someone’s going to have to go after her,” Robert said, clearly as upset as Rafe was. “She can’t ski worth anything with that arm brace. And, the trails aren’t even groomed with all the new snow. She’s probably in a ditch somewhere already.”

“Do you want me to go with you?” Rafe offered guiltily, even though he had no desire whatsoever to be a part of this little adventure.

“No,” Robert fired back. “I want you to go, period. You made this mess. You can clean it up.”

Rafe frowned, stunned that any man, particularly his Dudley-Do-Right father, would be unwilling to go out in search of his own girlfriend. In spite of their age difference, Robert still skied as well as Rafe when it came to Nordic style. Sixty-eight or not, there was no reason he shouldn’t be the one, or at least one of the ones, to go.

“She’s your …” Rafe retorted.

“No,” Robert silenced him. “She’s yours. And, you need to get over whatever snit it is that you’re in and get on with it.”

Robert headed back into the great room and, in a very uncharacteristic behavior, let the swinging doors slam shut with a sharp snap. Rafe looked after him in amazement. Sunny the retriever, who had been cowering throughout the exchange, flapped her ears in displeasure at the tension in the room.

“Can you believe that?” Rafe demanded of Margaret, pointing at the door through which his father had disappeared. “I thought he loved her.”

“He does love her, baby,” Margaret said, already throwing small packets of food into a backpack she pulled out of the pantry. “Just not the way you think. You and Brianna can work through all of this nonsense tonight.”

Margaret looked up from her packing. “If she’s closer to the cabin when you find her, just go there and stay. She must have her key if that’s where she said she was going. Plus, it’s snowing again. She’s not going to be able to handle coming all the way back to the lodge in these conditions. Go,” she finished, pointing at the back door. “And, hurry.”

Rafe looked out the kitchen window. The snow was light but steady. He threw his phone and a small first-aid kit from the supply closet into the bag Margaret had packed, then suited up. The thought of Brianna lying somewhere out there in the cold nearly made him ill. He, too, went out the back door, snapped on his skis and practically leapt into the night.

*****

It took every ounce of Christianity that Rafe had not to cut loose with a stream of red-hot words. He’d been looking for Brianna for a half hour. The visibility was so low and the snow was so deep and soft, it was an incredibly slow and hard slog for even a skier as experienced as he was. There were times he would not have even been sure he was on the trail to the cabin were it not for the dark shapes of trees to each side of the path. This was not one of the lighted trails at Corduroy, not that that would have made much of a difference given the continuing snow fall. He couldn’t imagine such an inexperienced skier as Brianna could have made it so far, but the tell-tale tracks of her skis showed she had and was still ahead of him.

“Brianna!” he called, as he had about every minute or two since he left the lodge. He stopped to listen, expecting to hear nothing, as he had every other time. This time, however, there was a soft cry of response. He kicked into high gear, sprinting through the drifts, and found her, half sprawled, half standing on the side of the trail just 20 or so feet ahead. She didn’t move or even turn to look at him when he skied to her side, however.

“Are you OK?” he asked, feeling rather stupid even as he asked it. No one who was OK would be in such an odd position.

“It’s my hair,” Brianna said testily, her face pointing to the ground. “I slipped off the trail and I got caught in some thorns.”

He dropped his ski poles and reached out to pull her onto her feet.

“Don’t touch me,” she snapped. “I can do it myself.”

Rafe stood there a moment, uncertain as to what to do, while Brianna struggled in vain to get free. “Just stand still,” he said when she finally stopped fighting. “I’m going to cut off the whole branch. We can get the rest of it untangled later if you don’t mind skiing with part of a tree hanging down your back.”

“Well, I guess I don’t have much of a choice, do I?” Brianna made a disgruntled snort not unlike a horse, or a small and very angry girl. She seemed to consider her plight entirely his fault. It probably was, he decided. But, angry as she was, she at least stood still this time. Rafe fished a multi-purpose tool out of his backpack and exposed a tiny saw blade. It took only a few seconds to cut through the small branch.

She was free – and she immediately took off, heading for the cabin with Olympic-worthy speed. Rafe fished around in the snow to retrieve his poles and followed her.

“Leave me alone. Go home!” she yelled over her shoulder.

“This is home!” he yelled back.

They reached the cabin in less than five minutes. In spite of her efforts to actually shove him away, Rafe used the metal tip of his ski pole to unsnap both of their skis and then prop them against the outside wall while Brianna fumbled through her pockets, obviously in search of the key. He had a flash of panic. What if she had somehow lost the key when she stumbled? There was no way both of them were going to make it back to the lodge. It was snowing even harder and the wind seemed to somehow be blowing from every direction, swirling away what little visibility there was in a cloud of powder. He contemplated breaking a cabin window.

He didn’t need to, it turned out. She finally found the key, but couldn’t get it into the lock. Her fingers were apparently so stiff with cold he instantly wondered just how long she’d been stuck in the brush. Rather than ask, Rafe simply took the key from her and unlocked the door himself. The wind practically shoved them inside the cabin, slamming the door soundly behind them.

Neither of them spoke for what seemed like forever. They just stood there, in the dark. “You shouldn’t have followed me,” she finally said. “I was fine.”

Rafe rolled his eyes even though her back was to him. Fine. Right. On the way to freezing to death is more like it.

Now, his eyes narrowed. He’d had about all he could take for one evening.

“Look, Brianna, I don’t particularly want to be here, either,” he snapped. “I only followed you because we were worried about you taking off like that and we obviously had good reason to be.” Brianna snorted and crossed her arms. She also shivered, which made Rafe walk over and adjust the thermostat before saying anything else. He flipped on several lights, as well. It was an angry flipping.

“Well, you can leave now,” Brianna said.

This time, Rafe snorted. “No, I cannot leave,” he snapped again. “You saw what it was like out there. We’re both going to have to stay here tonight whether you like it or not. No one can ski safely in weather like this.”

 He pulled his phone out of his pocket. Astoundingly, there was a signal. He called his dad, staring out at the snow swirling in the glow of the porch light while he waited for him to pick up. “She’s fine,” he said as soon as Robert answered. “We made it to the cabin, but we’re going to have to stay overnight. It’s almost impossible to see with the wind and the snow.”

His dad apologized, although his wording was so vague it suggested he wasn’t quite sure what he was apologizing for. Rafe apologized, as well. He was quite certain as to why he needed to do so. It was quite a list of reasons, in fact. But, he didn’t plan on detailing them in front of Brianna, so he simply said “good night,” adding a rather lame, “Merry Christmas,” as an afterthought.

Rafe decided then and there to have to have an honest talk with his dad before he left the valley, and leave he was going to do. Come Feb. 20, in fact. The interview at Lake Tahoe had made sure of that. It had gone amazingly well, he reflected while moving toward the living room area and turning away from Brianna’s efforts at freeing her hair from the branch.

He arranged logs and kindling in the fireplace instead of looking at her, all the while thinking back on the several rounds of interviews he had endured with various VIPs from the Los Angeles-based corporation that owned the Lake Tahoe lodge. When they were done, Rafe was unexpectedly sent to the lodge restaurant for coffee – alone. He remembered sitting there, looking out the wall-sized windows onto the slopes below and hoping the interview had gone as well as he felt like it had.

It must have. About a half hour later, two of the men who had interviewed him joined him for yet more coffee and an on-the-spot offer. If he could be on site by March 1, the job was his and for more pay than they had originally offered. Rafe said he could. Hands shook. Contracts were signed. And, that was that. He’d flown home, given notice at Snowshoe the next morning and had already found a nice, fully furnished apartment to rent at Tahoe. He planned to leave Canaan Valley Feb. 20 and enjoy a leisurely drive across America. What better way to shake off the dust of the Brianna disaster?

Rafe smiled at this future certainty as he pulled a long match out of the brass canister he remembered his mother setting on this very hearth. He set the kindling ablaze with a technique worthy of the Eagle Scout status he had painstakingly earned in his youth.

That done, he looked around the room, thinking not of Brianna – who was making absolutely no progress with the branch, he couldn’t help but notice – but of his mother. Bliss, Corduroy’s honeymoon cabin, had been her final decorating effort. He remembered her smiling across the lodge’s kitchen table at him and his dad one weekend afternoon when Rafe had stopped by for lunch. It was the last time he had seen her truly alive.

“I want to get it just right, Robert,” she had said of the décor she was nearly done installing. “Bliss is a place for marriages to begin. I want it to be romantic and perfect. Who knows?” she had added mischievously. “Rafe and his bride might even stay there sometime. That’s how I designed it, with them in mind.”

Rafe had rolled his eyes at his mom. She’d been trying to marry him off since the day he’d turned 30. “Your dad was a married man at just 25, Rafe,” she had gone on to say, almost pleadingly this time. “And, we had you just a few years later.”

There was something about her words that day that truly touched him. “OK,” Rafe said with a smile and a promise that had somehow appeared from thin air. “I’ll bring her here. I promise.”

Marilyn had clearly been startled, but seemed ever so pleased. “Thank you, Rafe,” she had said. “I know you will.”

Tears stung at Rafe’s eyes now, not unlike they had pooled in his mother’s that day. Here he was, as promised. At Bliss. But, not with a wife. Oh, no. That would be too good, too simple. He was with his dad’s girlfriend, with whom he also was in love. Aaaargh! He was instantly glad his mother couldn’t possibly know what a mess their family had become since her death. Forget Bliss. They should rename the cabin something more appropriate, like “Torment.”

“I think I need some help,” Brianna said softly, interrupting such unpleasant thoughts.

“You’re not the only one,” Rafe muttered even more softly. Then, he turned away from the fire to look at her and sighed. If anything, Brianna’s hair was even more tangled than it had been. Whole sections had fallen down from where they had been pinned on top of her head and were now coiled around the main branch, its spiny thorns sticking out here and there from the matted hair like Christmas tree lights.

“Come sit on the couch and I’ll see what I can do,” Rafe said resignedly. He pulled out the same multi-purposed tool he had used to saw off the branch, this time popping out a small pair of scissors.

“You can’t cut it,” Brianna gasped, sitting down with her back to him, but staring warily at him over her shoulder. “I’ve never cut it.”

“What? You’ve never cut your hair?” Rafe asked incredulously. “How long is it?”

“It goes past my waist when, well, there isn’t a branch in it,” she said shyly. “I used to cut it, sometimes short, just not since my Grandma Janie died. It’s kind of, well, my way of honoring her.”

“Did she have long hair?” Rafe asked, still surprised that a woman who obviously cared a great deal about her appearance would choose to have free-range hair – even as a tribute to even a beloved relative.

“She was old-school Appalacia,” Brianna explained, a wistful tone to her voice. “She believed a woman’s hair was her glory. And, hers really was. It was beautiful.”

“OK. We’ll … we’ll just make it work.” Rafe gently pushed the branch and tangled mass of hair to the front of Brianna’s shoulder, out of his way, and began pulling out the multitude of tiny, metal pins that had once held everything in place. That done, he used the tip of the scissors to cut away the thick elastic that held what was left of Brianna’s up-do together, explaining exactly what he was doing as he was doing it so she wouldn’t be alarmed at the snipping noise.

Whoa! She wasn’t kidding. Once loosened, her hair fell in a thick, luxurious sheet, gathering in a puddle on the top of his knee. He lifted one wavy curl and examined the golden highlights the sun had left on the tips of the rich chestnut. OK. He took a deep breath. Even tangled around a branch, he couldn’t imagine anything more glorious. He snapped his scissors shut, put them back in his pocket and set to work with a small comb he retrieved from the same location, removing the branch, thorn by painstaking thorn.

It was going to be a long night.

*****

Brianna stealthily checked her watch for probably the forty-fifth time as Rafe worked on her hair. 9:12 p.m. OK. It had already been a long night. There was only so much of Rafe playing around in her hair that she could take. Even with the occasional sharp tug his task required, it was a little too, well, way too good for comfort. She gritted her teeth and valiantly continued to resist the desire to lean back into his arms, concentrating instead on the white lights twinkling on a slim-but-real evergreen in front of the cabin’s main window. She leaned back just a bit. So comfortable. So beautiful. So blissful…

“Done!” Rafe finally exclaimed, breaking the near trance-like state all the tugging and combing had lulled her into.

She sat up straight, then twisted slowly to look at the wicked black cherry branch that had caused all the trouble. Thorns aside, it didn’t look that big now that it was out of her hair. Rafe threw the offending stick into the fire with a smile of triumph and Brianna smiled back as it began to crackle and burn. She wouldn’t have thought he would be one to make such a poetic gesture.

“Thank you,” she said quietly, pulling a hair tie out of her jeans pocket and ponytailing the still somewhat tangled mass as well as she could. Rafe merely harrumphed. Then the two of them stared at each other, as awkward as two 12 year olds at a middle school dance.

“We have food,” Rafe said suddenly, practically jumping off the settee and crossing the room to get the backpack he’d stashed by the front door. “Margaret packed something. I’m not sure what.”

He pulled a kitchen chair over to sit across from her rather than returning to the settee, unpacking the contents of the backpack onto the coffee table that was now between them. There were two smoked gouda-and-rye sandwiches that were cut into quarters and held together with a sauce that might have been a mix of Dijon mustard and mayonnaise. There were also two apples, carrots sticks and hummus, an abundance of cookies, two yogurts, a bag of granola, two bottles of water (one fizzy, one regular) and two bottles of orange juice. As if the numeric theme wasn’t obvious enough, Margaret had also included two carefully wrapped champagne flutes, two cloth napkins, two sets of silver cutlery and two china plates.

“Well,” Rafe laughed softly as he looked at the spread. “That would explain why the backpack was so heavy.”

“You’ve gotta love Margaret,” Brianna said shakily.

Then, they fell on the food as if they hadn’t eaten in days.

Brianna sneaked another peek at her watch when they were done. 9:42 p.m. Good grief. What were they going to do? Trapped in a honeymoon cabin in a snowstorm. It was the stuff of romance novels. But, it wasn’t romantic in reality. At all. It was just really, really awkward.

She got up and began to clear away the leftover food, stashing the breakfast stuff in the mini refrigerator. Rafe helped, even doing what few dishes they had in a tiny sink in the kitchen nook. 9:56 p.m. Brianna sighed, looked around the room and had a sudden idea.

“Do you play Scrabble?” she asked, pulling an old-school game board out of the small book case at one end of the living room nook.

“Not since I was a kid,” Rafe replied. He looked at his phone, checking the time she suspected. “But, why not? It’s still pretty early.”

Brianna set up the board, even shaking up the bag of letters for “fairness” before they drew their initial seven tiles. And, with that, the battle was on. For someone who supposedly hadn’t played in years, Rafe was awfully good at the game. This surprised Brianna, who had actually won a dorm tournament in college, beating wordsmith Allie of all people for the top prize. It was a gift certificate for an absolutely outrageous ice cream sundae. She and Allie had shared the spoils and both felt quick sick afterward. It was too much, even for two.

 Tonight was not unlike that game so long ago. Brianna and Rafe were neck and neck and nearly out of tiles when Rafe pulled off a zinger Brianna wouldn’t have thought possible if she hadn’t seen it for herself. “ ‘Quixote?’ ” she exclaimed when he laid down his final tiles – all seven of his final tiles. “Is that even a real word other than the proper noun? You can’t use proper nouns.”

Rafe smiled and flipped to the middle of an ancient dictionary with which the cabin had mysteriously come equipped. “Look, Q-U-I-X-O-T-E. Pronounced ‘kwik-set.’ Definition: ‘a quixotic person.’ ”

“Good grief,” Brianna sighed. “How many points do you get for that?”

He smiled. “Well, that’s 10 for the Q, eight for the X and five for the other letters. Twenty-three. Triple word score. Sixty-nine. Then the E made your ‘past’ into ‘paste.’ That’s another seven. Seventy-six. Triple letter on the T. Another two. Seventy-eight. Plus another 50 for using all my letters in one play. One hundred twenty-eight points.”

Brianna laughed. “OK, Scrabblemeister,” she said, instantly thinking of the sundae she and Allie had enjoyed. “What do you want as your prize?” She blushed as soon as she said the words, hoping he wouldn’t interpret them as anything suggestive.

Evidently, he did not. Rafe looked at her in all seriousness. “It would be nice if you would forgive me for acting like an idiot, once again, tonight. The whole apron thing — it was stupid and I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to be,” Brianna said. “It was your mom’s. I didn’t even think about that when I put it on. I know it’s been rough year for you guys. I just didn’t expect to get in the middle of it between you and your dad.”

“Yeah …” was all Rafe said in reply. He looked away.

Brianna looked again at her watch, wondering briefly why she even still wore one. Normally, she checked time on her phone, which she hadn’t thought to bring for some bizarre reason. 11:32 p.m. It was getting pretty late to keep putting off the inevitable. They were going to have to sleep eventually.

Rafe turned back to her just as she covered a yawn with her fingers. “You can take the bed. I’m sleeping on the couch,” he said firmly.

She looked at the bed, so fluffy and comfortable looking, especially with a red woolen throw draped cheerily across its foot. And, so very close to the settee where Rafe would be sleeping. There was absolutely no way she would be able to stretch out on the bed and sleep just a few feet away from a man to whom she was still incredibly attracted.

“I think I’d rather just sleep sitting up, like I’m on a long flight,” she said. “The bed’s all yours.”

Rafe looked at her like he might be ready to argue. But, he didn’t. “I don’t want the bed, either. Do you mind sharing the couch? It’s big enough for both of us if we’re sitting airline style.”

Do I mind sharing the couch? Where should I start?

That’s what Brianna thought. The idea was ridiculous. Folly. Nonsense. But, what she said was, “Sure.”

So, after several awkward minutes involving dual visits to the cabin’s tiny bathroom, she found herself curled up in a ball at one end of the plush settee, her back decidedly toward Rafe. Somehow, she was not surprised when, just a few minutes later, she heard a soft snore coming from his end of the furniture. She turned her head to look. Rafe was sprawled out on his back, his long legs stretched out where the coffee table had been and his head tilted straight back.

He looked uncomfortable and Brianna had a moment of guilt that she hadn’t given him the entire settee, as he had wanted. Her guilt waned as the minutes, then the hours ticked by. Rafe was getting a decent night’s sleep if his steady snore was any indication. All Brianna could do was keep herself crammed as tightly into her corner as she could and wonder just what was wrong with her.

Rafe was a Christian. He was a gentleman. She got that and appreciated it. But, couldn’t the guy have the decency to be at least a little bit tempted by spending the night alone with a female whom some men considered to be at least mildly attractive? Here they were, snowed in at a dreamy honeymoon cabin on Christmas Eve of all nights, and he hadn’t paid her any more attention than he would Sunny the retriever. Actually, he would have paid more attention to Sunny, Brianna decided. She’d seen the dog sleeping with her head in Rafe’s lap more than once.

Second banana to even a dog. It was going to be a long and lonely night. A more sullen thought occurred to Brianna. Perhaps it was going to be a long and lonely life, as well.

Chapter 26

Brianna woke to the fleeting rays of dawn and the sound of birds. And, bizarrely, to the comforting warmth of Rafe Davis’s arms. The last thing she remembered, she was primly curled at one end of the settee and Rafe was sprawled, in no way primly, at the other end. They had obviously met in the middle.

Now, Brianna’s face was snuggled warmly into the curve of Rafe’s neck and shoulder, his arm was around her shoulders and her one hand was resting rather familiarly on his chest. She didn’t move, more out of stunned surprise at the situation in which she found herself than a desire to stay in it.

It was so quiet in the cabin, she could hear not only Rafe’s gentle snore, but his heartbeat. It was true. Her face was pressed so closely against him, she could both hear the steady thum, thum, thum and feel his pulse against her cheek. She could also smell him, a spicy scent that somehow made her want to burrow even closer in spite of what her mind was screaming. Which was more along the lines of: Aaaaahhhhh!

Brianna frantically plotted as to how she could wiggle away to a more respectable distance without waking him. Given the way he felt about her, or didn’t feel about her as the case may be, there was no way on earth she wanted him to know about this. A girl has her pride.

First, she slowly pulled her face away from his neck. Rafe stirred a bit and Brianna’s eyes went wide with alarm, but he didn’t wake. Good. She took a deep and silent breath and straightened her spine, peeling her upper body away from his, millimeter by millimeter. When her ponytail, trapped beneath his arm, pulled taut, he snorted and pulled her more firmly against his side. Brianna stilled, her own heart now beating so loudly she wondered if people in neighboring zip codes could hear it.

She watched him carefully.He, at least, didn’t seem to hear anything. He slept on. She waited until her heartbeat finally slowed and tried again. And, failed again. At least that is what she thought in the fleeting moment between his startle response and him turning his face toward hers. Any further opportunity to consider the situation was extinguished by a soft “mmmm” and a kiss. A kiss that somehow managed to start at 60 mph and accelerate from there.

Brianna gasped when they came up for air. She wondered if she had morning breath. She wondered why now, after all these weeks. But, she stopped wondering just as quickly. She stopped everything but just being, in fact. Rafe kissed her again and only one shadowy thought rose to the surface. He was even better at this than he was at Scrabble. And, that was saying something considering the whole “quixote” thing.

Their kisses went on and on, so exquisite that Brianna didn’t make herself pull away from him, as was her long-time practice, until he twisted his body and lay back on the settee, carrying her with him.

“Rafe?” she whispered against his mouth, instantly back in the world of thinking and caring. Particularly about the wisdom of both what they were doing and where they were doing it.

He must have agreed. He went stock still beneath her and, after a very long moment, opened his eyes. To look at her in absolute horror. Rafe rolled out from under her so quickly, Brianna’s face smacked painfully on the cushioned arm of the settee as her body closed the gap he had left behind. She, in turn, shot up into a sitting position and looked at him in amazement.

“Oh, God,” Rafe said softly. It sounded more like a prayer than an interjection to Brianna. Then, he began a rambling discourse that included such key phrases as: “I’m sorry,” “I’m really sorry,” “I’ve always been an unusually sound sleeper,” and, “You have no idea how completely and utterly sorry I am.”

He’s apparently sorry. How good to know.

“I see,” Brianna said stiffly. She was now sitting with her lips clamped tightly together and her hands crossed on her lap like a British school girl. He was sorry, was he? Well. She was now steaming mad. “Let’s just forget about it, OK?”

But, Rafe couldn’t seem to let it go. He just kept apologizing. And, saying other stuff she didn’t even understand. There was something about, “I’m leaving soon, so you don’t have to worry,” and “There’s no reason for this to mess things up for you, too.”

What is that supposed to mean? Where is he going and what could possibly be messed up for him?

“Rafe,” Brianna snapped, standing up and putting out one open hand as if to deflect the pain his “sorry” refrain was inflicting. “I get it. You’re really, really sorry. Just shut up already, OK?”

With that, Brianna went into the bathroom. She didn’t slam the door, even though she wanted to. Brianna Reed stayed in control. She didn’t slam doors. She didn’t cry, either. Brianna Reed never cried, certainly not over a guy. But, she stayed in there until the tell-tale sounds of a snow plow could be heard on the road outside.

Chapter 27

In a performance worthy of an Academy Award, Brianna finally left the bathroom and managed to be standing at the door with a fake smile on her face when Robert came whistling up the walkway to the cabin. She did all this without acknowledging Rafe’s presence.

“Merry Christmas, Sparky!” Robert said with a grin. “Hey, son. I figured you two might prefer a ride home instead of having to ski back to the lodge.”

“My hero, to the rescue!” Brianna replied with a broader, even faker smile, shocked that she had completely forgotten it was a major holiday. She couldn’t quite bring herself to wish anyone greetings. “I’ll get my jacket,” she said instead.

Rafe seemed to take his cue from her. He greeted his dad and busied himself, hauling his backpack and both sets of skis and poles out to the truck bed. Brianna shoehorned herself into the tiny back seat before he was done, leaving the passenger seat to Rafe given the difference in their heights. She most certainly wasn’t squeezing in next to him.

Thankfully, Robert took care of the conversation on the short trip back to the lodge.

“The snow stopped around 2 a.m. I don’t know if the road crews were worried about holiday travelers or just full of the Christmas spirit, but they’ve been plowing like mad ever since,” Robert said. “They made it out to Corduroy’s driveway by 8 a.m. I decided to do the parking lot and the rest of the road out to the cabin myself. I figured you guys would be getting stir crazy, or at least hungry at this point.

Stir crazy is one way to describe it, Brianna fumed.

Then, they were there, back at the lodge, where all the trouble had started. She looked at her watch. 9:13 a.m. She supposed Margaret was inside, preparing an amazing holiday breakfast or brunch. Brianna was in no mood for such a thing.

“You know, Robert,” she said. “I know it’s Christmas Day, but I feel like I really need to go home and get some rest.”

“Off course, Sparky,” Robert said, touching her arm brace lightly. “Is your arm OK after all that skiing?”

“Yes,” Brianna reassured him. “I’m just tired.”

“Rafe could drive …” Robert began.

“No!” Brianna cut him off. “I’ll drive myself.”

And, she did. She said some thank you’s and a goodbye to Robert; conveyed Christmas greetings to Margaret, who was still inside the lodge and didn’t know Brianna had returned and was already leaving; and decidedly ignored Rafe.

She did yell “Merry Christmas,” from her car window as she drove away from the lodge. She supposed Rafe could take that as including him. It didn’t. But, she peeked back at him in her rearview mirror to see if he thought it did. Nope. He had already gone into the lodge, in fact. Only Robert stood outside, waving like a mom sending her kindergartener off on the bus for the first time. Brianna gave a final honk of her horn when she made the turn toward Cranberry and drove home.

The roads weren’t bad, but they weren’t great either. It took nearly half an hour to make what was normally a 10 minute drive. By the time she arrived back at her apartment, she really was tired. Instead of making final packing flourishes and heading out of town like a blue streak, which is what she intended to do, she fell into bed and slept for maybe a half hour.

Then she awoke, hungry and more irritable than ever. Too frazzled to cook, she reached into her freezer for one of the emergency frozen meals she kept there. Five minutes later, she was eating portabella risotto and baby carrots while standing at the kitchen counter.

What is wrong with me? Why did I ever let him kiss me like that? I never let anyone kiss me like that. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

Brianna, who had weathered myriad break-ups with barely a hair out of place, was completely undone. Well, not completely. At least she wasn’t crying. She consoled herself with that fact. Brianna had little respect for women who cried over men and she had no intention of becoming one. Even if there was a lump at the center of her chest that felt suspiciously like a sob.

No. She would certainly not cry. She would go to Wheeling, get her clothes and then head to Florida, as she had planned. And, she was leaving right now. She got up from the table, took care of the few dishes that she had used and moved to the bedroom, where she bathed, dressed and finished her packing as if the building was on fire.

*****

She was in Wheeling in time for dinner, which was a good thing as she was again starving. She stopped at a fast food restaurant close to her home, ordering at the drive-thru and eating the largest hamburger on the menu – take that, Mr. Vegetarian — sea-salt fries and a strawberry milkshake in the parking lot. It was unpleasantly cold in the car and it sure wasn’t much of a Christmas dinner, but it was all she had. Her parents were on their cruise. There would be no sustenance at the family home. And, her own kitchen at the carriage house was long since emptied of anything worth eating given her absence.

Wadded up wrappers were thrown into a handy receptacle and she headed home. As alone as ever. The darkness of her carriage house windows mocked her. She sat in her car in her own driveway and decided she couldn’t face going inside. She contemplated heading for Florida right then, buying whatever she needed on the way. But, that didn’t feel right given the lateness of the hour. Instead, she restarted the motor and drove to the one place where things always seemed to be just right. If she had ever needed a Goldilocks moment, it was now.

But, when she got to Allie’s and Gabe, she was almost afraid to go to the door even though they were clearly home. No guests seemed to be on site, but lights were on all over the house. From the curb, Brianna strained her ears. Was that the baby crying? No. Such a sound surely couldn’t travel through house walls, over the dormant grass and into her shuttered car. Could it?

Brianna looked at the bay window that stretched across the living room. There, the top of Allie’s was just visible over the café curtains. She was pacing wildly and Brianna listened again. It really was Ava Marie crying. Wow. The kid had lungs.

She waited. She fretted. Gabe and Allie had a very full life. They didn’t need her drama. She’d just drive back to her carriage house, sleep as well as she could and leave for Florida in the morning. She started the car, but she had lingered too long. The porch light turned on. Gabe crunched across the snow-dusted lawn in untied sneakers and knocked at her car window with a smile. She lowered the glass and tried to smile back.

“Hey,” he said. “It is you. Allie thought it was. What are you sitting out here for? Come on in.”

So, Brianna did.

Gabe was saying something about, “We thought you were already in Florida,” but Brianna wasn’t really hearing it. She was too busy coming completely unhinged.

No sooner had Gabe shut the door behind them and Allie had appeared in the entryway with tiny Ava than had Brianna pretty much collapsed into the tears she so despised. They weren’t even lady-like tears, she realized as Gabe led her to the living room and urged her to sit down on the couch. They were gasping, unseemly sobs. They were accompanied by occasional wails. Her nose was even running.

Allie handed the baby, who was now quiet and watching the proceedings with interest, to Gabe. She left and came back with a large box of tissues.

“Whatever happened, Brianna?” Allie asked in what sounded like deep concern as she sat down next to her on the couch. For some odd reason, Allie lightly touched the collar of Brianna’s sweater. Then, she pushed a tendril of hair away from Brianna’s face, flinched and turned to look worriedly at her husband.

Brianna wanted to stop. She wanted to tell them that she was OK. But, she simply couldn’t. She couldn’t do anything but sob and gasp and pull tissue after tissue out of the box that now sat in her lap.

Oddly, she also watched them rather than hide her face in her hands, as someone more accustomed to crying might have done. Brianna watched Gabe disappear up the stairs with the baby, who was now cooing happily, and come back alone. She watched Allie move to her side and sighed in relief as her friend’s arm embraced her shoulders. She watched Gabe pace the living room, almost angrily Brianna thought. At one point, he looked at Brianna, balled one hand into a fist and smacked it against the palm of his other hand. Yes, he was angry. Brianna couldn’t imagine why.

Eventually, there were no more tissues. Brianna looked down at the empty cardboard box and, then, at the pile of damp, white clumps at her side. The tears disappeared as abruptly as they came. She took several deep, shuddering breaths and was still.

Gabe pounced.

“Was this Rafe Davis?” he demanded. “Is he the one who did this?”

Brianna, deeply shamed to have been caught sobbing over a man, nodded but continued to look down at her lap. The opening of the tissue box wasn’t quite even, she noticed. There was a jagged piece of the little cardboard cover still in place. Brianna picked at the fragment with her fingernails until it pulled away. There, order was restored.

Except it wasn’t. Gabe was suddenly down on one knee in front of her, lifting her chin so he could see her face. “Brianna,” he said softly. “We need to call the police. Or, we could take you to the emergency room if you’d rather do that.”

“It’s going to be OK,” Allie said, clearly holding back a sob of her own. “I’ll stay with you the whole time no matter what they say. I promise.”

Brianna looked at her friends uncomprehendingly. “What are you talking about?” she finally asked. “I don’t need to go to the emergency room. My arm’s much better than it was.”

Allie and Gabe looked at each other again. “Do something,” Allie mouthed, her eyebrows bunched together in a frown. Brianna frowned in response. Did they think she was incompetent? Did they think she was blind?

Gabe, still down on the floor, took Brianna’s hand in his own and spoke softly. “This wasn’t bad dating behavior, Brianna. This is a crime and the police need to know. You don’t have to be ashamed of anything. Rafe is the one who should be ashamed. There’s no excuse for this.”

“No. No!” Brianna exclaimed, suddenly realizing her friends had somehow formed the impression that Rafe had assaulted her. “What you’re thinking – that didn’t happen. Nothing like that happened.”

“Then,” Gabe responded cautiously, his eyes narrowed. “Why are your clothes on inside out and why do you have a black eye? And, why are you, well, hysterical?”

“I have a black eye?!” Brianna shrieked in horror.

“Yes!” Gabe and Allie yelled in unison.

Brianna sprang off the couch and all three of them practically sprinted to the tiny half bath that lay just outside the living room. Brianna stared into the mirror and lifted her fingers to the right side of her face, which was every color from blue to purple to a deep gray. Add that to the streaks of mascara running down her cheeks and an overall redness and puffiness and it was no wonder her friends had assumed the worst.

“I have a black eye,” Brianna whimpered. And, she started to cry again.

They moved back to the living room, Allie having produced another box of tissues from thin air.

“Brianna!” Gabe said, exasperation clearly taking over at this point. “If you don’t tell us what happened, I’m going to go get Mark and the two of us will pay a little visit to Mr. Rafe Davis. We’ll get the information that way. I’m not sure I believe you that nothing happened.”

The idea of her best friend’s husband and her own ex-boyfriend shaking down Rafe for his side of the story had a certain, undeniable appeal, but Brianna couldn’t let this go on any longer.

“He just kissed me,” she sighed, sniffling back the last of her tears.

“You didn’t get that black eye from a kiss!” Gabe retorted.

“No, that wasn’t from the kiss. I think that happened when I fell on the couch,” Brianna said, touching her fingers to her face one more and wincing at the pain that slight contact caused. “I’m not sure.”

“How did you fall on a couch?” Gabe demanded.

“Rafe moved suddenly,” Brianna admitted, more humiliated to be telling this particular story than she was by the crying business.

“You were kissing on a couch and he moved and you fell?” Gabe said, sounding like a lawyer cross examining a witness. The scenario sounded absolutely idiotic spoken aloud like that.

“Yes,” Brianna whispered.

“And, is the, well, kissing why you’re wearing his sandals and your clothes are on inside out?”

Brianna blushed crimson and looked down at her cashmere cardigan, which was indeed inside out. The chocolate-colored ribbon that backed the shell buttons ran in a stripe down the middle of her chest. She couldn’t imagine how she had even gotten a cardigan on that way. Had she buttoned it and then pulled it on over her head? The socks and sandals were less of a mystery. She wiggled her toes. Oh my, but they were comfortable, even now.

“Brianna, answer me,” Gabe insisted.

“No! My clothes have nothing to do with Rafe. My shoes, either. And, they’re my sandals, not his. I went home and took a nap and decided to do my Florida trip afterall. I guess I just got dressed too quickly and I must not have ever looked in the mirror. That’s all it is. I promise. Rafe didn’t hurt me. Well, he did. But, not like that.”

“You always look in the mirror!” said Allie. “What happened, Brianna?”

Brianna’s lip began to tremble. She looked away. “He … he said he was utterly and completely sorry.”

Allie looked at her for a long moment and then gasped. “After he kissed you! The blighter!”

Gabe had been pacing again. Now he stopped and looked at Allie, then Brianna. He was obviously confused. Allie waved him off. “Go to bed, darling. This is a girl thing. Don’t wait up.”

He turned to go, still looking puzzled but also relieved. Before his foot hit the bottom step, however, Allie called him back. “Wait a second, Gabe.” She turned back to Brianna to look at her quizzically. “You don’t know why he apologized, do you?”

Brianna shook her head and felt fresh tears roll down her cheeks. She grabbed another tissue.

“Gabe, maybe you can help us figure this out. You know a lot about men and the kind of things they say to women,” Allie said to her husband, who now looked decidedly uncomfortable.

Between tidbits of information both Allie and Mark Morelli had dropped, Brianna knew Gabe’s romantic history prior to his recently found faith and marriage was “extensive.” The look on his face suggested it was also a closed book. He was the one shaking his head now. Oh, yeah, Brianna thought. He wanted that book closed, locked and the key thrown away, in fact.

“That’s OK,” Brianna rushed in, feeling a surge of empathy for Gabe. She had no intention of sharing the rest of her little story, either. Many, many things in life were better left unsaid and un-posted for that matter. She stood up. “Look, I’ll just go home and let you guys get some sleep. This is ridiculous. I’m sorry I caused such a fuss.”

“Sit,” ordered Gabe, pointing at the sofa. “If you don’t care,” he said to Allie, “I don’t … well, I do care, but I can do this if it’s what you want.”

“It’s what I want.” Allie smiled mischievously at her husband, then turned to Brianna. “Spill it, sister.”

“No, thank you,” Brianna said, her normal cool, calm and collected firmly back in place.

“I can still go get Mark if you like and we can make a midnight run on Snowshoe,” Gabe suggested with a grin. Brianna knew he was kidding. She hoped he was kidding. “Your choice.”

OK. Brianna rolled her eyes, but decided to cooperate. They were her friends. She would tell them part of the story. “Well, it all started when we got snowed in at the honeymoon cabin …”

“Wait a minute,” Gabe interrupted. “Is this like running out of gas on a country road?”

Allie looked at her husband in shock. “Please tell me you never did that.”

He ignored her. Brianna came to his rescue again. There were snowstorm squalls less innocent than Allie. This probably wasn’t going to go well.

“No, Rafe couldn’t possibly have planned it,” she plowed on in a rush. “There was a Christmas dinner at Corduroy and there was an argument between Rafe and his dad that I didn’t understand even though it was about me. And, then, I got upset and I left on skis for the cabin by myself and Rafe followed me.

“And, that was a good thing because I got my hair stuck in a tree and it was really snowy and we couldn’t see well enough the ski back to the lodge. So, we stayed at the cabin and slept sitting up on the settee – not the bed. But, when I woke up we were together and I tried to get away, but he might have been awake or he might have been asleep and he kissed me.

“Then, he was definitely awake and he … well, he got off the couch really quickly and I fell and he apologized over and over and said all sorts of other weird stuff.”

“What kind of weird stuff?” Allie asked, clearly having understood everything Brianna said. Gabe looked more confused than ever.

“Are you sure he didn’t plan this?” he asked.

“Of course not, Gabe. Weren’t you listening?” Allie said, shhing him. “What did Rafe say that was weird?”

Brianna thought about it. “Stuff like, ‘This doesn’t have to mess things up for you, too,’ like something had been messed up for him already. You know, it’s always been like that with us, now that I think about it. It’s like we’re in the same play, but we have different scripts.”

They were all silent for a moment after that. Brianna was reflecting on some of the stranger things Rafe had said in the last couple of months. His fury over the apron. His disgust that Robert hadn’t taught her how to ski the night she had fallen in the barn. It just didn’t make sense. She looked at her friends. Gabe and Allie both seemed to be thinking just as deeply.

“Is it possible that Rafe thinks you are dating someone else?” Gabe asked suddenly, looking at Allie instead of Brianna. He smiled at his wife. “Did you notice that you two, too?”

“I did,” Allie smiled back. “ ‘T-W-O’ does sound like ‘T-O-O,’ doesn’t it?”

“What are you two talking about?” Brianna asked in exasperation. Then, suddenly, she got it, too. “Oh! Ooooh! Do you think he really said, ‘This doesn’t have to mess things up for you two,’ like two as in a couple?”

Allie and Gabe both nodded. “That would make more sense,” Gabe said. “But, who could he think you’re dating? There can’t be that many men in Cranberry. Did you meet someone at Snowshoe?”

Brianna had to think about that one. Gabe was right. There weren’t that many men in Cranberry, particularly available ones. And, she hadn’t met anyone but Rafe at Snowshoe. The only single man she knew, in fact, was Robert.

Robert.

Robert, as in Rafe’s father.

“Oh,” she whispered, her hand covering her mouth, which had dropped open in shock. “Oh, noooooooo!”

Gabe just laughed, seeming to have reached the same conclusion at the same time. “Oh, man. The poor guy’s fallen in love with you, but thinks you’re dating his dad! No wonder he apologized! Waking up kissing someone else’s girlfriend is bad enough. Adding the dad factor would freak out almost anyone.” He glanced warily at Allie, “Not that I’m speaking from personal experience, of course.”

Allie looked at her husband with narrowed eyes and Brianna rushed in again. “Do you think it could really be that simple?”

But, she already knew the answer. It was. She thought back over the last few weeks. Rafe flipping on all the lights to get a good look at her the day they met in the diner. Rafe practically interrogating her over dinner that night at his lodge. Rafe flirting then backing away, flirting then dating a flurry of other women. The look on Rafe’s face the day he came out the barn with peppermints for the horses and, again, when he pulled up to the lodge just last night. Both times, Brianna had been in a friendly embrace with Robert. Both times, Rafe had seemed to almost be in pain.

Then, there was Rafe last night. He was obviously concerned enough to come after her, kind enough to spend more than an hour untangling her hair. His apparent lack of attention to their proximity was just that, an apparition. His sleep-shrouded kiss was the reality.

“We did have different scripts,” Brianna said in wonder, every odd comment suddenly making complete sense. “We had different scripts the whole time.”

Chapter 28

Rafe’s day unfolded rather differently than Brianna’s, but it was in no way easier. While Brianna climbed into her car and drove away from Corduroy and away from him, he wandered into the lodge, arriving in the kitchen without quite knowing how he’d gotten there. Margaret was there already, stirring something in a pot that was bubbling away on the stove.

“Well?” she said cheerfully, looking up at him with a smile. “How did it go? Is everything all straightened out now?”

He glanced at the swinging door behind him. It was firmly shut. His dad must still be outside with Brianna. “It was a train wreck,” Rafe admitted freely. The experience had clearly knocked his natural discretion right out of him.

Margaret turned the flame under the pot down to its lowest setting, put the spoon on a rest and motioned him over to a chair at the kitchen table. He sat. She stood for a moment, smoothing down his hair with one hand, like his mother used to do when he was a little boy. Then, she sat down, as well. Sunny, the retriever, sauntered over and laid her head on top of his foot with a soft whimper. It was female sympathy all around.

It was all Rafe could do to not cry. That, in and of itself, was extraordinary. He hadn’t cried since the day of the car accident. And, that had been the first time in, well, he couldn’t even remember how long it had been before that. Maybe when he’d torn a tendon playing soccer in his junior year of college. He’d cried that night, lying splayed out on the field like a squashed bug. Klieg lights and all, he hadn’t cared one bit who saw him, so great was the pain.

“What happened, baby?” Margaret asked gently, bringing him back to the present. The equally painful present.

“I kissed her,” Rafe sighed, rubbing his forehead with his fingers as if that would make the sudden headache that had come upon him go away.

 “You kissed Brianna?!”

Rafe froze.

Great.

Just great.

It wasn’t Margaret’s voice. It was his dad’s. His dad, who was suddenly standing right next to him. The experience at the cabin had apparently knocked out more than his discretion. It must have nixed Rafe’s ability to hear things like opening doors, as well. He closed his eyes for a moment, then stood and faced his father.

“I did,” Rafe said unflinchingly. “And, I’m sorry. I know it shouldn’t have happened, but it did and I’m sorry.”

Rafe wasn’t sure how he expected his dad to react to such news, but grinning wouldn’t have even made his list of possibilities. Confused, Rafe looked at Margaret, as well. She was grinning, too. Then, even more oddly, Margaret came over to his father and Robert looped one arm around her waist and pulled her to himself in a quick sideways hug. As if that wasn’t enough, Margaret giggled and kissed his father on the cheek. Rafe stared at the both of them, wondering if he was delirious.

“Am I missing something here?” he finally asked.

“You have no idea, baby,” Margaret hooted, pointing him back to the chair. “You might need to sit down for this one.” Rafe did sit down. He was simply too weary and confused to resist. He looked at his dad, wondering what he could possibly be thinking.

Robert leaned toward Rafe, putting both hands on the table in between them, his fingers spread out on the light wood. “Son, I am not dating Brianna,” his father said, looking straight into his face.

“You don’t have to break up with her over this!” Rafe exclaimed. “It was just a kiss. Well, a few kisses. I wasn’t even awake, at least I wasn’t awake when it started, but I’m sure I’m the one who started it. She would never have done such a thing. It won’t happen again. It can’t. I’m leaving in a couple of months.”

“Well, I certainly hope it will happen again,” Robert continued cheerfully. “Wait! What do you mean you’re leaving?”

Rafe looked at his father incredulously. Maybe Robert was the one who was delirious.

“I’m moving to Lake Tahoe come Feb. 20?” Rafe said. He was going for a simple statement of fact, but it somehow came out as a question.

“Lake Tahoe?!” Robert exclaimed. “Why are you going to Lake Tahoe?”

“For a new job,” Rafe said carefully, trying to figure out why his father was so alarmed. Rafe had always fast tracked jobs. Two or three years here. Two or three years there. Robert might not be happy he was leaving West Virginia, but he shouldn’t be so shocked.

“What about Brianna?” Robert demanded.

“What about Brianna?” Rafe demanded back.

“You can’t leave now,” Robert said. “Not just when you’re getting together!”

“We’re not getting together!” Rafe said, instantly flooded with shame. “I would never do that to you. Or to her.”

“Rafe, for the last time,” Robert said with a frown, “I. Am. Not. Dating. Brianna. Reed.”

“Wait a second,” Rafe said, a light starting to dawn. “Does that mean you were never dating Brianna?”

“Never!” Robert laughed. “I don’t know whether to laugh or be offended that you ever thought I was,” he said. “I couldn’t believe it last night when Margaret told me what you two had cooked up in your imaginations. I don’t know where you got such an idea. The girl’s 28 years old! I could be her grandfather.”

“But, what was with the ‘Sparky’ and the mamboing and the horses and the hugs if you weren’t dating?” Rafe asked, still not quite believing what his father was saying. “And, you told me you hoped she would be part of the family. What was that about if you’re not dating her?”

“I want her in the family as my daughter in law, Rafe, not as my wife.” Robert sighed. “That’s why I asked her to come here in the first place. As soon as I saw her, I knew she’d be right for you. Brianna was the perfect way for me to keep my promise to your mom.”

“And, what promise was that?” Rafe asked warily.

Now Robert looked uncomfortable. “Rafe, your mom and I always wanted to have other children, before you and after you. We just couldn’t. And, your mom was always worried about you being alone when we’re both gone. She wanted you married and having a family of your own more than almost anything. So, when she was … hurt, I promised her I would find a wife for you, just like Abraham did for Isaac after Sarah died. You know, the Old Testament story. I don’t know if she could understand me, but I promised her that anyway. It’s what I knew she would want.”

Rafe raised his eyebrows at this, but said nothing.

“When I saw Brianna at the Capitol, I don’t know how I knew it, but I just knew that she was the one,” his father continued. “I did some checking around and found out who she was and what she did. Everyone down there absolutely loves her, by the way. So, I tracked her down, told her that I needed a PR person and that my son needed a wife. I even showed her your picture. And, for reasons I will probably never understand, she came home with me.”

“Are you telling me that Brianna Reed knew from the get go that you wanted her here because you wanted her to marry me?” Rafe asked, as stunned that Brianna had agreed to such as stunt as he was by his father practically ordering a bride for him by mail.

“Yes!” Robert said, obviously pleased that Rafe was finally getting with the program.

“But, that’s crazy!” Rafe exclaimed. “What kind of woman would do such a thing?”

Margaret re-joined the conversation at this point. “The kind of woman who’s gutsy enough to take a risk, that’s who,” she said with conviction. “Brianna is not crazy. She’s high spirited. She needed a break from her life in Charleston and she wanted to be loved, too. An unusual opportunity came along and she obviously decided to go for it. That’s adventure, baby, not something she should have to be ashamed of.”

Rafe sat at the table staring off into space for a long moment. He replayed some of the moments he and Brianna had shared over the last few weeks in his mind. Her warm greeting the day they had met. How much fun it was to be with her the day she’d spent with him at Snowshoe. How naturally they’d fallen into the behavior of a couple that night at the lodge during charades. How they’d reached for each other in the depths of sleep. How she’d responded to his kisses. He’d remember that forever. Even though, until this moment, he’d been trying desperately to not even think of such a thing.

“Oh, no,” he said suddenly, realizing what she must have thought about his reaction to their kisses. “Oh, noooooo.”

“What is it, baby?” Margaret asked in concern, patting his hand with her own.

Even in his distress, Rafe noticed a new ring was on her finger. He frowned, once again in puzzlement. It looked oddly similar to his grandmother’s favorite ring, an antique turquoise and silver number that was reportedly late 1800s Navajo. It had been stored under a tiny display glass since her death, too small for his mother’s own hand and too historically valuable to be resized. He shook his head, dismissing such thoughts. Of course it wasn’t Granny Davis’s ring. That would be impossible.

He re-gathered his thoughts to the dire state of things with Brianna. “I apologized,” Rafe said, looking straight into Margaret’s eyes.

“I already told you, Rafe,” his dad interrupted in exasperation, “there is absolutely no reason to apologize to me.”

“Not to you,” Rafe said, still looking at Margaret. “I apologized to her. Many, many times.”

Margaret’s eyes went wide. “That’s not good, baby.”

“Tell me about it,” Rafe sighed.

Robert still looked a little confused. Margaret clearly was not. “You need to go to her and get all of this straightened out right now,” she said, “before it’s too late.”

“I know,” Rafe said, wondering just how to explain what an idiot he had been. If Brianna Reed had ever truly wanted him — and he had some serious doubts about that, no matter what his overly enthusiastic father claimed — she probably wouldn’t any longer after she’d heard the whole story.

“Um, baby, you need to go to her as soon as you can, but you might want to take a shower first,” Margaret said from out of nowhere, her nose wrinkling. “And, change.”

Rafe laughed. “Point taken.”

Then, for some reason, he looked again at Margaret’s new ring. It was on her left hand. He did a quick count. Fourth finger. And, it was his grandmother’s ring. He was sure of it now. He looked at his dad and pointed at Margaret’s hand. “Am I missing something else, too?”

Now, Robert laughed. “We’ll talk about that later. That, and the whole Lake Tahoe thing.” He pointed to the lodge stairs. “Go on, get going. Take a shower and go get the woman already.”

Chapter 29

It took Rafe a mere 15 minutes to shower and put on jeans, a turtleneck and the red cashmere crewneck he wore only at Christmas. He was a fleece quarter-zip kind of guy, but Brianna deserved better than fleece, to be sure. She deserved better than the sweater, for that matter, but it was the best he could do on such short notice. It took another 15 minutes to brush his teeth, shave and clean his nails with a folded magazine subscription card he pulled out the reading basket. As an afterthought, he ran his hands through his hair, trying to make it behave. It refused, curling around his collar the same way it always did.

Whatever. He bolted down the stairs and hopped into his SUV, his dad and Margaret practically cheering him on, and headed straight for Brianna’s apartment. Margaret had given him the key to the building’s exterior door so that he could go right up.

“She might not let you into the hallway if she’s still mad,” Margaret had said. Rafe suspected Margaret was right. He happily took the key, unlocked the street-side door and bounded up to the third floor two steps at a time.

“Brianna,” he called loudly as he knocked. “It’s Rafe. We really need to talk.”

Nothing.

“I’m really sorry …” Rafe said through the door. He winced at his own words. Wrong words. Wrong words. “No, I’m not sorry. Well, I’m not sorry about kissing you at least. That was amazing. I am sorry about being such an idiot.”

Still nothing.

Rafe glanced around the stairwell, instantly glad Brianna had no curious neighbors. He knocked again, more faintly this time. “Come on, Brianna. Open the door.”

Still nothing.

Rafe moved a half step to the tiny stairway window and peered down into the alley behind the diner. Brianna’s car was nowhere to be seen. It hadn’t been parked at the front of the building either. She was gone and Rafe felt rather ill.

Too late. Too late. Too late.

Margaret had suggested such a thing might be possible back at the lodge. Her warning echoing in his head, he went down to his SUV and called her, hoping she would have an idea of what to do next. “She’s gone, Margaret,” he said flatly when she answered.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes,” Rafe said. “There’s no answer at her door. Her car isn’t here. I’m looking up at her apartment windows now and they’re all dark. She’s gone.”

There was a pause. “Well, her parents are on a cruise,” Margaret finally said. “So, I don’t think she would go home. You know, she might just have left on her trip to Florida in spite of everything. She told me yesterday morning that she was still going. She still had hotel reservations. But, she also said she wanted to stop by Wheeling to pick up some lighter clothes first. That’s could be where she’ll stay tonight, at her home there. Do you know where she lives?”

Rafe hung up the phone without responding and started the engine. He knew exactly where that sweet little carriage house of a home was and he was going to get there in a hurry.

*****

Getting there was one thing. Getting inside the home was quite another. Rafe drummed his fingers on the steering wheel of his SUV in sheer frustration. The windows of Brianna’s carriage house were every bit as dark as those of her apartment. It was late. She might be sleeping inside, but, again, there was no sassy little car in sight. Unless she had parked in her parent’s garage instead of the tiny driveway outside the carriage house, she wasn’t here, either.

He pulled out his phone. He could call her. He had her number. But, calling just didn’t feel right. If she was here, he’d wake her up. If she wasn’t here, that was even worse. Whatever was going to happen between the two of them really needed to happen face to face.

Laying his head back against the seat rest, he tried to think. Where had she said she was headed? She had given him a sketchy itinerary last night while they were playing Scrabble. He remembered something about Savannah. And, was it St. Augustine or even Key West? It was someplace historic. He remembered that even though he’d been too distracted by her hair, her glorious hair, at the time to pay complete attention. He was paying attention now, though. He looked back at the carriage house. There was snow on the sidewalk, but no footprints.

No footprints!

That meant Brianna had never been here. He smacked his steering wheel this time. If she’d left for Florida already, he’d have no choice but to call her. If he didn’t, he might not be able to track her down until she came back to Cranberry. If she came back to Cranberry.

Just then, however, he remembered Allie, Brianna’s friend. If anyone knew where Brianna was, it would be her. He put the SUV into reverse and headed back across the Kanawha River to the nearby historic district where Brianna’s had pointed out her friends’ home to him when he had dropped her off at the hospital to see the baby.

Bingo.

And, it was even better than he’d hoped. There, in front of the Morelli’s bungalow, sat Brianna’s little Cooper. He parked his SUV right behind it and leapt out. He glanced at his phone as he reached the door and hesitated. 11:34 p.m. That was late to be visiting. But, the downstairs lights all seemed to be on. Whatever, he decided once more. He knocked vigorously, having absolutely no idea what he was going to say when someone opened the door.

*****

The trio inside the bungalow was startled by loud knocking. It sounded like someone was ready to pound down the door. Gabe smiled broadly as he got up to answer it. “I have a feeling someone else finally figured something out,” he laughed.

Brianna looked at Allie in a panic. The three of them had been drinking hot chocolate and rehashing the whole Rafe mess, trying to figure out how things had gone so awry. She was so worn out by the events of the last 48 hours she hadn’t even taken the time to right her sweater or wash her face. All the smeary make up and bruising and inside-out clothes were still on full display. If it really was Rafe at the door, he was certainly going to get an eyeful of her at something way less than her best.

It was Rafe.

She heard him at the door and tried to straighten her hair as best she could. Allie winked.

“Is Brianna here?” Rafe demanded.

Then, Brianna saw Gabe step back into the living room, motion toward her with one hand and, somehow, Rafe was there. Just there. He might have moved toward her. She might have moved toward him. But, somehow, they were now standing in the middle of the room. Together. Rafe’s arms were wrapped tightly around her and she was breathing contentedly against the softness of his sweater, inhaling his spicy scent and knowing with a certainty that everything was right in the world.

Merry Christmas, indeed.

Chapter 30

Brianna awoke to the cawing of a crow and blue skies, nothing but blue skies. For a moment, she had no idea where she was. A baby was making happy noises nearby. That was her first clue. It still took a full minute for it to register that she was lying in a twin bed in Ava Marie’s bedroom, where she had slept – she checked her watch to make sure – for just short of four hours.

She smiled and stretched like a lazy, contented cat, pleased in the knowledge that Rafe was asleep on the couch just downstairs. The couch where they had spent the waning hours of Christmas night simply talking. Well, there had been some gazing into each other’s eyes and some delightful, snuggly kissing, too, but the talking had been what had truly been important.

“I love you,” Rafe had told her before he said anything else. And, Brianna, knowing what he said to be true, freely admitted she loved him just as much. Beyond that, the conversational details as to why he had been so confused about her relationship with his father, why she had come to Canaan Valley and how very sorry they both were for the pain they had caused the other simply fell into place.

That pain, that trouble was over now.

There were new challenges to face. The Florida trip. That one was easy. She had already used her phone to cancel all her reservations. Roadtripping was something that would just have to wait given that Rafe was moving away. Contracts had been signed. Resignations had been given. They could not be wiped away with a swipe of the finger on a smart phone screen. And, he was moving soon. To the other side of the country. Neither of them knew quite what to do about that.

“And, I think my dad might have asked Margaret to marry him,” Rafe said as he tried to explain what had gone on at the lodge after she had left. Brianna had squealed with delight at that good news.

“I knew it!” she said. And, Rafe said he was somehow not surprised that she had known such a possibility had existed even though he obviously had not.

“We need to sleep,” he announced at some point in the wee hours of the morning. “Gabe said something about a bed for you upstairs and the couch for me.” He grinned and traced the circle of her face with his finger. “You look so sleepy, I’d like to carry you there, but I probably shouldn’t.”

He definitely shouldn’t they decided after a last goodnight kiss at the base of the stairs that was incredibly difficult to end. Brianna went up the steps to Ava Marie’s room backwards, waving a last, sweet goodnight to Rafe before the landing turn took him out of her view. She stood alone at the top of the steps for a moment, her thankfulness that her friends were nearby eventually outweighing the temptation to run back down to him.

A slight knock on the bedroom door in the here and now reminded her just how nearby they still were. “Come in,” Brianna called softly, unwilling to disturb the quiet of the morning with anything louder.

It was Allie, her hair damp from the shower but still dressed in a bathrobe. “I’m sorry to wake you,” she said, smiling in a way that suggested she was not sorry at all. “It was either me or a very angry Ava Marie. It’s time for her breakfast and she doesn’t like to be kept waiting.”

Brianna watched lazily as her friend leaned over the side of the crib, freshened her daughter’s diaper, then took her into her arms and carried her to the softly padded rocking chair that sat next to the bed. Allie’s shyness over nursing was apparently over. This time, her friend simply moved the lapels of her fuzzy pink robe this way and that way and fed her child without further ado.

“You’re really a mom,” Brianna said, watching in fresh wonder, her head now propped up on her elbow. She wanted this for herself. She wanted a fuzzy pink robe and a rocking chair and a little cottage. Maybe a little cottage at Lake Tahoe. Her own little patch of bliss could be wherever it would be, as long as the little baby in question was Rafe’s.

“That’s right,” Allie laughed. “And, I have the stretch marks to prove it.”

“Really?” Brianna winced at that thought.

“Really,” Allie confirmed with a solemn nod. “Having babies is not just cute little onesies and stuffed bunnies, you know.”

Brianna took a deep breath and decided she even wanted the stretch marks. “I’m getting married,” she said softly. “At least I think I am. He hasn’t asked me yet.”

Allie smiled. “He will. I could see that on his face last night. The man loves you.”

“He does, doesn’t he?” Brianna smiled, even as Allie abruptly moved Ava to her other breast. It was odd, seeing her friend exposed in this way. But, Brianna realized that she was just as exposed emotionally. Her soul was on open display. And, it was OK. Life wasn’t supposed to be about tight schedules and fast tracking through educations and jobs and putting up an impressive Instagram veneer to keep everybody else out. It was about moments like this, being real and open and standing still long enough to share and love and hope. It was about taking the time to wonder just what it is that God might have in store.

She threw open her soul a little wider. “I think Rafe and I are going to have babies. Lots of babies,” Brianna said with a grin.

“Really?” Allie said, mocking her friend with a grin of her own. “I just hope not anytime too soon. It was awfully late when I heard you creeping up the stairs last night.”

“Hey, I came up those stairs alone and ended up here in my little single bed,” Brianna laughed. “Right were I should be – at least for now.”

“Actually, you should probably be in the shower,” Allie replied, looking at her watch. “Rafe said something over coffee this morning about going back to Snowshoe this morning and – let’s see, how did he put it? It was something about taking you home with him even if he has to carry you all the way there.”

“He would probably do it,” Brianna sighed happily.

“He would definitely do it,” Allie laughed. “So, you better get moving, my very-much-in-love friend.”

Epilogue

“We’re going to Canaan Valley!” Brianna squealed as soon as Rafe made a definitive turn off the interstate. They were not headed to Florida, which is what she had guessed was to be their surprise honeymoon location. She never had made that road trip. Their time together before he left for Lake Tahoe had been too precious and the time since then had mostly been spent visiting each other or planning their wedding.

“I can’t believe I didn’t guess, or that Allie didn’t let the cat out of the bag when she was packing for me,” she giggled. It had been odd to let Allie loose in her closets at the carriage house, even though that’s what Rafe had requested. Brianna — who packed her more unmentionable items herself, thank you very much — hoped her friend had at least thrown one sweater into the mix. It was October, after all.

“I hope you’re not disappointed,” he said with a grin. “We can road trip down the mountain for a long weekend at the beach when we get back to Lake Tahoe, if you need some sand and surf.”

“I just need you,” Brianna said silkily, thoroughly delighted they weren’t going to be facing snail-paced airport lines or even hours on the road before nightfall. “I don’t care where we spend the next week as long as you’re there.”

Rafe looked at her a little longer than he really should have given that he was driving on mountain roads and sighed a contented sigh. Then, he told her about the promise he’d made to his mother just before the accident, the promise that he’d bring his bride to stay at Bliss someday. Brianna nearly cried when she heard the story.

“Oh, Rafe, that’s so beautiful,” she sighed back. “I love Bliss and I love Canaan Valley in the fall! It’s so woodsy and rivery and perfect.”

“Rivery? I don’t think that would qualify as a word in Scrabble. But, I guess it is that,” Rafe laughed, thrilled to finally have his wife to himself. How could one courtship have lasted so long? How could one wedding ceremony and a reception dinner have lasted so long? “And, I know you’ve always liked Bliss. Actually, I really hope you love it. I’m hoping that we’ll own it someday soon.”

“What do you mean, own it?”

He laughed again and reached over to squeeze her hand. “If we want it, dad and Margaret want to sell Corduroy to us at a very reasonable price. My contract at Lake Tahoe is up in a little more than a year. When it’s done, we can stay in California, go to another lodge somewhere else or come back to West Virginia and run Corduroy. Whatever we want, Brianna. If we want to come back, we’ll have plenty of time to build a house here in the valley while we’re wrapping things up in California. What do you think?”

Owning Corduroy. Her mind instantly flew through some fun marketing and decorating possibilities. She wondered if her Indiana friend Maggie Alton — who had survived her perilous pregnancy although the twins would be the last children she would ever have — still made faux deer heads from vintage blankets. The great room could use at least one or two more.

Her leg began to bounce with excitement and Brianna took a deep, calming breath. She was on her honeymoon. If there was ever a time to be mindful, to be in the moment, this was it.

“I think I love you,” she said simply. And, she did. Brianna looked at her husband’s handsome profile and traced her finger along his jaw and down the column of his neck. “You don’t have to sell me on the idea of Corduroy, Rafe. Our families are here. Our friends are here. It’s perfect.”

“It’s sure better than the cross-country commuting we’ve been doing for the last couple of years,” Rafe sighed. This time, it was not a contented sigh. It was a weary one.

Traveling back and forth from Lake Tahoe to Charleston for the last 20 months, 1 week and four days had taken its toll on both of them even though he’d done the lion’s share of the visiting. Taking the time to fully recover from the shock and grief of losing his mom had been invaluable, though, as had slowing their romance down enough to truly get to know each other.

Much of the latter had happened online, which was probably just as well. If Brianna hadn’t wanted such a large and slow-to-plan wedding, he would have hauled her across the Nevada state line on one of her brief visits to Tahoe for a quick wedding long, long ago.

“You’re pretty much ready to resign from the lodge at Lake Tahoe, aren’t you?” she asked, interrupting such reflections.

“Yep,” Rafe admitted. “It’s a great job and I love being back in the West, but I’d rather start our family here if you don’t mind the sudden change. Dad and Margaret didn’t decide they were ready to retire until just a few days ago.”

“Rafe, I promise, this sounds wonderful to me,” Brianna assured him with a smile. “But, what about Robert and Margaret?” She leaned as far over as her seat belt would allow and managed to trail tiny, nibbling kisses along the same path her finger had just taken. “Where are they going to live?”

Rafe closed his eyes as long as he safely could while actually driving. Come on, Brianna.

“Dad said they’re going to convert the two floors over the diner into one large apartment. Margaret wants a spiral staircase like they have in Paris.” he said a little shakily. “They’re actually picking up a vintage one there and hauling it back if you can believe it. They went straight to the airport from the reception in fact. Second honeymoon, dad said. I think they really just wanted us to have Corduroy to ourselves. There aren’t any guests. It will be just us and Sunny, of course. Honeymooning.”

“Honeymooning at Bliss,” Brianna sighed. “That sounds right in every way.”

It did, indeed. He drove a little faster.

###

Acknowledgements: It takes a ski village to write any book. A big thanks to Paul Exley, owner of Alpine Skis & Boards of Wheeling, WV. All authenticity in things ski related is thanks to him.