by Liz Johnson
“You are capable of ruling Concordia, Jonah.”
He stared at Hamish. Wondered how the man had known exactly what to say. Wished he knew how to believe it.
“You have a patience and a foresight your brother lacks. And you are bolder than you realize. The very fact that you were willing to invoke the 18th Decree proves it.”
Jonah combed his fingers through his hair. “Unfortunately, public opinion may see it differently. They may see it as running away from my responsibilities. Being weak, apathetic.”
“Hang public opinion.” Hamish grinned before turning thoughtful. “One question: Who originally brought the 18th Decree to your attention?”
Why did that matter? “Justus McDougal.” The youngest member of the Advisory Council, one who rarely spoke up, and . . .
And though several years older, one of Geordie’s closest friends throughout their growing-up years.
Had Hamish’s thoughts just gone the same direction? Did that account for his pressed lips and the hard set of his jaw?
“Hamish, whatever you’re thinking—”
“I know. He’s your brother and a loyal countryman.”
So why didn’t Jonah’s own assurances do anything to settle his unease now? He grabbed the plate that had held his pastry earlier, swiped his empty coffee cup from a shelf. “Think I’ll take this to the kitchen.”
He couldn’t think about this anymore. He needed a distraction. He needed . . .
“Rowan, hi.” He found her standing in the middle of the small kitchen, staring out the window over the sink. “You ditched your meeting?”
She gave him a sheepish smile. “Once the rest of the committee members get gabbing, they don’t really need me anymore. Besides, my mom was here. She brought me a new oven. I don’t know how she managed to get it in here by herself. She’s pretty upset that I didn’t go to Thanksgiving and—” She lifted her palms to the back of her head and tipped her gaze to the ceiling. “I don’t know why I always ramble so much when I’m around you.”
“Well, if you haven’t noticed, it hasn’t exactly scared me away.” He set his plate on the counter. “Speaking of which, about tonight. We could take another walk.”
She rubbed her palm up and down her opposite arm the way he’d seen her do a dozen times in the past four days. “We could.”
“Or . . . we could do something else.”
“Like what?”
“Well, this is your town.” He spoke slowly, uncertainly, hopefully. “You probably know a little better than I do what kind of fun there is to be had on a Wednesday evening.”
She stopped her fidgeting and he watched, fully intrigued, as her expression shifted into anticipation. “Any chance you lugged some snowshoes across the Atlantic with you?”
Chapter 6
Jonah pulled his newly purchased snowshoes from the back seat of Rowan’s car. Twilight dusted the western sky in shades of lilac and orange, casting a glow of color over the snow-blanketed field stretching in front of them.
People gathered in clusters, decked out in coats, hats, some in snow pants. Others sat on bleachers that edged one side of the field.
Rowan closed her car door and rounded to Jonah’s side, holding her vintage snowshoes by the bindings over her shoulder. Her cheeks and nose were already rosy from the cold, and the evening brushed streaks of amber through her braided hair. “Come on, we don’t want to miss kickoff.”
The wind raked over his skin as his boots sunk into the snow. “We’re here to watch American football?”
“We just call it football.” Her blue eyes danced under the hazy light of dusk. “And we’re not here to watch, Your Majesty.”
The sound of those two teasing words—Your Majesty—coming from her lips was enough to chase away the last lingering thought of that newspaper article Hamish had shown him this morning. It’d stuck in the back of his mind all day, gnawing at him while he hooked up the new stove, fiddled with the library’s furnace, helped Rowan plaster the town in fliers for her event.
But now? Bundled in a heavy winter coat and a gaudy green and red striped scarf Rowan had pulled from the library’s lost and found box and insisted he wear, Concordia felt a million miles away. A whole different world. Another life altogether.
“I don’t understand. We’re not going to watch?”
She shook her head, strands of loose hair fluttering around her face as she led the way to the field. “We’re going to play. It’s Tinsel tradition. Every Wednesday in winter, as long as there’s snow, anyone who wants to play shows up.”
“I don’t even know the rules to Ameri—football.”
She laughed. “Oh, don’t worry, we don’t really play by the rules anyway. There’s only one hard and fast requirement: snowshoes. Just to make it interesting.” She laced her free hand through the crook in his elbow and tugged him along.
“Lucky for us we dumped Hamish back at the hotel. He would not approve of this.” It’d been all Jonah could do to convince the man to take the night off from playing bodyguard. Or chaperone. Or whatever it was he’d been doing ever since he’d followed Jonah across the ocean.
Rowan stopped at a bench and sat, dropping her snowshoes onto the white ground in front of her. “Why wouldn’t he approve?”
Jonah lowered beside Rowan. “Because there’s tackling in this sport. Heaven forbid I get a bruise or two.” He lined up his right boot over one snowshoe and began fastening the bindings. “Once, Adelaide and I took a fencing class—she said it seemed like a royal sort of sport. I got a nick—one silly little nick on my cheek. But the way Hamish reacted, you would’ve thought someone had just taken a knife to my throat.” He chuckled at the memory.
“Adelaide was . . . your wife?”
His laughter faded. “Uh, yes.”
“That’s a beautiful name.”
And she’d been a beautiful woman, inside and out. Jonah pulled at his shoe’s bindings until he felt the tightness through his boot.
“Do you mind if I ask when . . . ?”
She didn’t have to finish the question. “Thirteen months ago. Almost fourteen.” He paused. “We’d been married less than a year.”
Rowan was quiet. But when he lifted his gaze to her, in her eyes he read the words she didn’t say. Words of comfort and support and . . . friendship. The kind that didn’t come along often, not for men like him whose elevated position often led to isolation. Oh, he had his books, of course, and once upon a time, he’d had Mum and Adelaide. At times, Geordie.
But in recent years he’d grown resignedly accustomed to a sort of dogged loneliness in life.
Until Rowan Bell had come along and reminded him how good it felt simply to take a walk with someone near his own age. Someone who didn’t demand his opinion or request a decision. And as amused as he was every time she lapsed into rambling, it was her ability to listen and, even more, her comfort with silence, her patience, that made him crave her presence. That drew him to the library—more than any book—day after day.
And in this moment, he found it unfathomable that he’d only known Rowan since last Friday.
Or that he could speak of his wife in one breath and in the next . . .
He shook his head, looked away from Rowan, and jammed his left boot into his snowshoe. “Tell me about your committee meeting,” he said abruptly. “Tell me about this event you’re planning.” Or about anything, really. Anything to keep his heart from outpacing his common sense or, worse, his brain from needlessly reminding him all over again that Adelaide had deserved so much more than him.
If Rowan was ruffled by his sudden change of topic, she didn’t show it. “The committee’s on board. A Charles Dickens Christmas at the Library is a go. I think it’ll be grand. And festive. Maybe even a little romantic, what with all the lights and music. We’re going to do a dance and everything.” She finished fastening her right shoe and stood.
Which is when she must’ve noticed his wry expression. “What?” Her mittened hands found her
waist.
“Well . . . how many Dickens novels have you read?”
“Why does that matter?”
He rose, testing out his shoes. “Because Dickens’ works are mostly rather bleak and harsh. There’s very little romance or happiness to be found. Your event sounds wonderful. I’m just questioning your choice of inspiration.”
Her hands dropped to her sides. “Now you tell me. Why in the world didn’t you say something earlier this morning when I first told you all about the idea?”
“Because you were so happy about it.” He tried to take a step in the snowshoes. Blast, he was supposed to run in these things? Felt like he was sinking into sand.
“More likely because you were enjoying one of those bakery pastries and your mouth was full and it just would’ve been too much bother to tell me I’d based the entirety of the library’s future on the assumption that Dickens books have happy endings.”
“They do generally have happy endings, you just have to slog through a dashed lot of muck to get there.”
“Serves me right for thinking repeated viewings of the Mickey Mouse version of A Christmas Carol made me an expert.” Rowan sighed, then pulled on his arm. “Come on, Your Majesty. Mayor Hayden’s about to blow his whistle and we don’t even have a team yet.”
Snow crunched underfoot as he followed her toward the mass of people gathered near the center of the field, his gait awkward as he tried to adjust to the snowshoes. With each step, he had to widen and lengthen his stride to keep his shoes from hitting each other.
Moments later, Mayor Hayden pointed him toward one team and directed Rowan to the other. Rowan shrugged, tossed Jonah another grin, and lined up with her team.
“I’ll try not to tackle you too hard, Your Majesty,” she called across the distance as he found his place with his team. “Wouldn’t want to get on Hamish’s bad side.”
“You’re already on his bad side, Miss Bell. Or are you forgetting the incident with the encyclopedia?”
The mayor held up his hand, both teams bent low. His whistle screeched just as the stadium lights blinked on.
And chaos erupted.
Jonah scrambled in the snow, the unwieldy shoes making it impossible to move with any grace whatsoever. But then, this wasn’t about grace. It was about . . . freedom. Yes, the freedom to just be. To run around in the snow and laugh with abandon and attempt to play a game he barely understood. It was about—
A form whizzed past him. Rowan?
And great heavens, she had the ball in her hands, her laughter trailing behind her. Well, then.
He dashed after her, his own laughter rising from his panting lungs, snow splaying about him. Rowan expertly weaved in and around other players, but though she might be more agile in her snowshoes than he, his was the longer stride. He caught up to her in seconds, his arms reaching toward her even as he wondered how one was supposed to tackle a woman and—
With a squeal, she attempted to leap out of his reach, but she came down at an angle on one shoe. She crashed into the snow, landing on her back and dissolving into a fit of giggles as the ball flew from her hands.
He stumbled to his knees beside her, breathing hard, ignoring the pandemonium all around as he scooted closer to her. “You funny girl. I had no idea you were so athletic.”
“I’m not. But clearly neither are you or you’d be in that pile of people all diving for the ball I just fumbled instead of leaning over me.” The stadium lights reflected like little dancing orbs in her eyes and snowflakes clung to her hair.
And he couldn’t look away from her smiling lips. “Yes, but the view is decidedly better here.”
“Jonah?”
There was a breathy quality to her voice. One that made his already galloping pulse break into a full sprint. “Yeah?”
“I haven’t read a single Dickens novel. I’m not much of a reader at all anymore.” She struggled to sit up. “If that means you must sever any and all connection to me from here on out—”
He interrupted her with a hearty laugh, pulling her to her feet. “No chance of that,” he said, leaning close. Close enough that flyaway strands of her hair tickled his cheek. “However, next time the football lands in your hands, I won’t hesitate to take you down.”
She screeched and raced away, calling over her shoulder, “I’d like to see you try.”
“Hamish is going to kill me.” The light of a streetlamp slanted into Rowan’s car, highlighting Jonah’s profile in the driver’s seat. And the band-aid over his right eyebrow.
“It’s just a scratch, Rowan.”
“There was blood.”
“Barely.”
“He’s going to kill me.”
“He’s not. He might give you one of those dark, withering stares of his, but I’ve survived a vast number of Hamish’s glares and lived to tell of it.”
The quiet hum of the heater lulled Rowan, even as her limbs ached from the evening’s activity and her snow-dampened jeans clung to her legs. She’d stuffed her messy hair into a burgundy knit beret as they’d left the football field and though it slid down her head now, she was too relaxed to bother straightening it.
After the game, she’d suggested they pick up some hot chocolate then take a little drive through town to see all the Christmas lights. Jonah had asked to drive and though she didn’t know what the rules were on licensed Concordians driving in the U.S., she couldn’t have possibly turned down his request, not with that hopeful smile he’d flashed.
They’d just taken in Candy Cane Lane, the most lit-up street in town, every house a spectacle of twinkles and decorations. Now they drove without aim, Jonah seemingly as content as she was simply to enjoy the cozy warmth of the car.
Oh, this is what she’d needed tonight. Something to take her mind off that uncomfortable conversation with Mom this morning, the library, the city council. She wished she could find a way to catch and hold on to this carefree feeling, like a lightening bug cupped in her hands. Trap it in a jar. Keep it in front of her.
Something to gaze at the next time the library’s plumbing went cuckoo or melancholy thoughts of Dad and Grandma barged in.
Something to cherish when Jonah left in a few weeks.
“You’re suddenly quiet,” Jonah said after a sip of his drink. “If you’re still worrying about Hamish—”
“I’m not.” She leaned her head against the headrest.
“Good, because it’s not your fault that chap from the post office tackled me.”
“Peter the Postman. Who’s sixty-five if he’s a day.”
“I suppose I should feel rather mortified about that—a man in my prime being taken down by a senior citizen. But that silly scarf you made me wear got loose and flapped in front of my eyes and I didn’t see him coming.” He grinned over at her. “Or maybe I’m not really a man in my prime at all.”
She could listen to his accent on a constant loop. And as for being a man in his prime . . . “Jonah, I’ve never met someone who looks as natural sprawled out on a couch with a book in his hands as he does with his sleeves rolled up while he hooks up an oven or climbs a ladder to clean the cobwebs from a ceiling corner. You even had the hang of running in snowshoes by the end of the game. You run an entire country, not to mention . . . ”
Not to mention when he smiled she finally understood why all those rows and rows of romance novels in the library always resorted to the same old clichés of hearts skipping beats and stomachs filling with butterflies. Not that she’d read that many of them. Not lately.
And she’d better not start. She was having enough trouble reining in her runaway feelings as it was.
You are a silly goose, Rowan Bell. He’s a king. And he’s leaving after Christmas.
Besides, now she knew about Adelaide. Who’d only died a little over a year ago. For all she knew, he might still be in love with her.
Rowan’s beret slipped further down her forehead, so she yanked it off and tried to pat down her hair. But static from her mittens lifted st
rands every which way and one bobby pin after another dropped into her lap. She let out a frustrated huff and reached for her hot chocolate.
Jonah grinned, opened his mouth, but closed it before any words escaped.
“What were you about to say?”
He shook his head. “Nothing.”
“You’re trying not to laugh at my current frizz-head state, aren’t you?”
“Not at all. I’ve always thought your hair was rather fetching.”
“Fetching?”
“Do you prefer beautiful?” He tipped his gaze her way.
“I wasn’t fishing for a compliment, Jonah.”
Eyes back to the road. “Well, you got one anyway.”
“Well, thank you.” She plunked her Styrofoam cup back in the cupholder.
“Well, you’re welcome.”
Suddenly too warm, she plucked her mittens from her hands. Waited a beat. “But . . . why are you still smiling?”
Jonah tapped his fingers on the wheel. “Maybe I’m just happy. Maybe I’m enjoying my hot chocolate and all the Christmas lights and my not-at-all argumentative company.” He leaned her direction, his seatbelt stretching. “Maybe I’m realizing how much fun it is to drive a car for the first time in fifteen years.”
A gasp skidded from her lips. “What? Fifteen years?”
Jonah shrugged. “I’m a king, Rowan. A prince before that. I’ve been relegated to the back seat for my entire life.” He waved one hand. “Chauffeurs and all that.”
“Do you have a license? Do you even know how to drive?”
“I’m doing quite well, am I not? Hamish let me practice a few times in his Audi when I was a teenager.”
“A few times? These aren’t even good driving conditions—the snow, the ice.”
As if on cue, the car lurched over a patch of ice. Jonah’s fingers tightened over the wheel as the vehicle slid. He course-corrected with ease and tossed her a look with only the slightest hint of chagrin. “See, everything’s just fine.”
“Pull over, Your Majesty.”
