The Christmas Wedding Quilt: Let It SnowYou Better Watch OutNine Ladies Dancing

by Emilie Richards

  Only by stepping away from the window did she manage to get a grip on herself before he reached her porch. Focus, she told herself fiercely. Remember what’s important.

  He looked even better close up, his hair disheveled, his athletic shoes battered, his smile friendly and—heaven help her—sexy.

  “You ready to go?”

  “Yes, but...I did rent a car.” She nodded toward the shiny white Nissan Versa that sat in her driveway. “I really could go out on my own. I promise not to try to confront the guy if I find him...”

  He just looked at her. “No way you’re leaving me out.”

  She hesitated, refusing to admit even to herself that she was relieved, then nodded. “Thank you.”

  Once they were on their way, she asked how it had gone at the law firm that morning.

  He shook his head. “I decided the hell with it. I took a few days off.”

  She couldn’t help gaping. “A few days?”

  He flashed a grin at her. “However long it takes.”

  Rattled, Ella had no idea what to say. However long it takes? She’d been on her own so long, she wasn’t sure how to react. Was he in this for the novelty, or the excitement, or was he genuinely committed because...? That’s where she stumbled. Why would he be willing to give her so much of his time when he hardly knew her?

  Selfishly, she couldn’t help being glad his determination wasn’t wavering. Unselfishly—she understood that by helping her he had to be damaging his standing at work.

  “Um...thank you?”

  A crease in his cheek deepened and he patted her thigh. She laughed and settled back to enjoy the ride, even though she was still confused and—yes—a little troubled by why he was so determined to help her.

  When they reached Magnolia, she became tense and focused again, moving her head constantly to check both sides of the street and look down alleys.

  They skipped the parts of the neighborhood that had a view of downtown Seattle or Puget Sound. Those houses were among the most expensive in the city. It didn’t make sense that a car thief would live in a $2 million brick home with perfectly clipped hedges and a spectacular view. Gleaming Mercedes and BMWs and Land Rovers sat in those driveways, not twenty-year-old dented station wagons.

  But the side of the hill that faced the industrial flats was lined with modest houses, duplexes and apartment complexes. Brett prowled every street, and then did it again.

  At first they were both quiet. Then, to keep herself from going crazy, she asked what had gone wrong in the trial he’d lost.

  “It’s not the first one I’ve blown lately.” He moved his shoulders as if suddenly aware of taut muscles. “Damn. I thought I had it locked down, even though...” He let out a sigh. “This guy is a real piece of work, but his daddy is big in the software world and is loaded. See, at the firm that makes him an important client. But the smug ass grated on me. I can’t tell you how tempted I was to move down to the prosecutor’s table.”

  “You never considered being a prosecutor?”

  “Maybe in an early burst of idealism. I always wanted to walk in my father’s footsteps, though, so...” The lines in his face had deepened, aging him. It was a couple of minutes before he grimaced and seemed to shake off the brood.

  “I might just be having a bad streak. It happens. You get a judge with a prejudice, or miss a bad apple during jury selection. Now, there’s an art.”

  His stories of the process were entertaining and illuminating. Ella had been summoned to jury duty only once, which involved phoning in every morning, only to be told she wasn’t needed.

  “I was kind of sorry,” she admitted. “I thought it would be interesting.”

  “Yeah, it is. Or can be.” He gave her another one of those crooked grins. “Most people are grouchy and don’t want to do it, though. They’re afraid of getting stuck on a long trial. That can be a big hit financially. This one went on for three weeks.”

  At his return to the trial he’d just lost, she probed a little and he admitted a few mistakes he thought he’d made. He went quiet for a while after that, and when they started talking again he wanted to know about her. She suspected he’d revealed more than he wanted to. Maybe in response to his own openness, Ella ended up telling him things she didn’t usually reveal to people, talking about her parents and especially her current, very distant relationship with her dad, who was a Boeing executive.

  “He remarried,” she said, “but he didn’t have more kids. I see him and Carol once in a great while. None of us are very motivated to get together.” She hesitated. “When Jo emailed me about the quilt, I asked Dad’s permission to go through Mom’s stuff, in hopes that there’d be something that would hold memories for Olivia. And I got lucky when I went through the boxes—my grandmother had used the same fabrics to make Christmas tree skirts for all her kids. Ours ended up with a stain—I’m not sure why we kept it. But there was plenty of good fabric I could use.” She knew she was babbling to avoid finishing the story, then she realized she wanted to tell him. “I hadn’t seen Dad in months. I’d said what day I was coming, but...he wasn’t there. I guess he couldn’t be bothered. He never even mentioned it later.”

  “That stinks,” Brett said, his voice rough.

  “I’m better off than a lot of people. I had my mother, and the rest of my family until we moved.”

  “When you were eleven.” Brett shook his head.

  They continued to search, but they both got quieter as discouragement set in. Finally, she heard his stomach growl and, startled, she realized it was almost six o’clock.

  “Buy you dinner?” she offered.

  “Sure. You know what I’d like?”

  Turned out, that was a burger and a shake. They went to Seattle’s famous Dick’s Drive-In. Ella was impressed that Brett was willing to allow food and drinks in the Corvette. After he’d let her off at home, she pictured him stopping somewhere on the way home to vacuum. She almost smiled. Surely no crumb was allowed to mar the impeccable interior of his precious car.

  The slight lift in her mood lasted until she checked her email.

  From: JoM@fleetmail.com

  Being back at Kanowa Lake has made me remember so much I hadn’t thought of in years. We had good times, didn’t we? For some reason the other day I thought about Olivia’s HUGE crush on Johnny Randall. It was that last summer, wasn’t it? He was helping his dad cut deadfall and split firewood for Grammy Mags. Shirtless on hot days, no less! We had endless excuses to be lurking in his vicinity, all for Olivia. Hmm. Too bad we don’t have a piece of Johnny’s shirt to add to the quilt. BTW, Brody says Johnny is a dentist, of all things. Probably doesn’t take his shirt off on the job anymore.

  Ella reread the email, her mood fluctuating between amusement and irrational depression.

  She knew it wouldn’t have occurred to either Jo or Rachel that so many of their memories of that last summer at Hollymeade didn’t include her, except as the little kid they kindly let trail behind. This story was a perfect example. Rachel and Jo had been just old enough to understand Olivia’s passion for skinny sixteen-year-old Johnny Randall. Her eleven-year-old self had only been confused.

  Soon she was going to have to let Jo and Rachel know the quilt was gone. She probably should have done it right away, but...she kept hoping. Maybe she and Brett would find her car. Maybe the cops would. Maybe, miracle of miracles, the quilt would still be in it. He might tear the package open, but the average car thief would surely sneer when he saw the contents and toss the whole thing in the back where it would lie forgotten. Right?

  Just...please don’t let him throw it in the nearest Dumpster.

  * * *

  “WHAT?” ELLA EXCLAIMED, swiveling in her seat to stare at him. “You went out again last night?”

  They were now into day three of their search. Brett sh
rugged, concentrating on the always-heavy downtown Seattle traffic. “It was still light. I figured, I don’t know, he might decide it was safe to come out in the evening.”

  He hadn’t exactly thought it through. He’d been restless, that’s all, and not ready to give up the search.

  Or maybe it was more than that. He still hardly knew what a quilt “top” was, but he did understand that the object itself was only symbolic.

  His mouth twitched at the idea. “Are you laughing?” Ella sounded indignant.

  “Ah...I took a few literature classes in college. I was set on law, so I was majoring in politics, but I figured a thorough grounding in literature would boost my ability to be eloquent.”

  “Yeah, so?”

  “So I discovered I am totally literal. I got a C in my first class, Eighteenth-Century English Literature.” Outrage still rose in him at the memory. He’d worked his butt off for that class. “I’m still not convinced all those old guys were really using symbolism.”

  A giggle escaped her. He flicked a glance her way. Her eyes were wide with astonishment at her own reaction.

  “Now you’re laughing at me.” He leaned heavy on the disgruntlement.

  “Maybe.” This was the least shadowed smile he’d seen yet on her face. “It’s just that I’m still mystified. Is there a point to your reminiscences?”

  “Symbols,” he explained, then explained his train of thought.

  “Oh.”

  While he was making a left on Garfield and crossing the industrial flats to Magnolia atop its knoll, Ella was silent.

  “I guess it is,” she said finally. “Symbolic on a lot of levels. Or maybe I mean to a lot of people.”

  “To your aunt.”

  “Yes. The quilt was—”

  “Is,” he corrected, not letting her finish.

  She glanced at him. “Okay, is. The quilt is the best way we have of making sure she’s present for Olivia at her wedding. She started it with love for her daughter, and we wanted to finish it the same way.” Her words became choked toward the end.

  He took her hand. He’d discovered how much he liked holding Ella’s hand.

  “To me, the quilt means I’ve contributed something worthwhile to my family. It makes me feel as if I matter to them.”

  He had to clear his throat before he could speak. “Yeah. I know.”

  “And I’m guessing for all of us cousins there’s this connection to my grandmother, too, who taught us how to quilt. She might be gone, and Olivia’s mom is gone, too, but it’s only because of them that the quilt can happen. You see?”

  “I do.” He saw that her mother was in the mix, too. A link had been broken for Ella, and somehow this quilt could mend it.

  “So you’re right. If the quilt had meaning only to me, it wouldn’t matter so much.”

  As far as he was concerned it would. He didn’t know the woman who’d started the quilt for a daughter he also didn’t know. He knew Ella. And he really hated it when Ella used words like worthwhile as if she wasn’t. To him, that’s what it all came down to. If she could safely send this quilt—no, excuse me, quilt top—on its way, some of her wounds might heal.

  And that was why he wasn’t going to give up until all hope was lost.

  “All right,” he said. “Let’s start where we lost him on Tuesday. We’ll work outward in circles.”

  “Makes sense,” she agreed, and leaned forward like a setter catching a scent.

  * * *

  ELLA GRABBED HIS WRIST. “You can’t go into that parking garage. What if you get trapped in there?”

  He was more worried about somebody seeing him sneak in, but he wasn’t about to say that. He only shook her off. “If there’s no other exit, I just have to wait until somebody else opens the gate. You sit tight.”

  He already had his door open. He’d watched a car come down the quiet street and slow. Now the ponderous iron gate was creaking to the side, allowing access to the parking garage beneath a good-sized apartment complex. There were a lot of these in the area, but this was his first attempt to search one.

  Ella was still protesting when he sprinted across the street, watched the Ford Focus turn in and move out of sight before he slipped in through the gap just before the gate closed.

  There were two floors to this garage. Cars, he discovered, were double-parked, which meant roommates must have to juggle who had to leave first in the morning.

  He tried to make his stride purposeful, in case anyone noticed him, his careful scan unobtrusive. A ramp carried him up to the second floor. He nodded pleasantly at two women who emerged from an elevator and headed straight for their car. It was a keyed elevator. He pretended to be searching his pockets for his keys until he heard the squeal of brakes as they descended the ramp.

  A couple of times he got his hopes up when a red fender caught his eye, but none belonged to a Subaru. Finally he descended the ramp and crouched behind an SUV until he heard the gate rising. Last minute, he slipped out and returned to his car across the street.

  “Oh, my God!” Ella sounded as if she was hyperventilating. “I was sure you’d been caught.”

  “Not a chance.” He was pleased at his nonchalance, although he’d concluded that B&E was not going to be a new career path for him. Unless he got caught, of course, and, with a felony conviction, lost the right to practice law.

  “It wasn’t there?”

  “Nope.”

  She insisted on taking her turn at the next big garage, which didn’t sit well with Brett. But how could he argue?

  “My car, my risk” were her exact words.

  She emerged breathless, but also laughing. “Well,” she said when she registered his disbelief, “I’ve never done anything like that.” She sounded defensive. “It was a little exhilarating. Don’t you agree?”

  He groaned. “I’ve created a monster.”

  “What? I’m supposed to be girlie and pretend I was totally terrified?”

  “Just don’t get any ideas,” he growled.

  “Like stealing a CD out of an unlocked car?” She batted her eyes at him. “You know, this total idiot left the brand-new Snow Patrol CD lying right on the seat of an unlocked car. Can you believe it? I was thinking of buying that one.”

  Brett shook his head.

  “Of course,” she said after a minute, her voice small and chastened, “I guess I’m not really in a position to criticize anyone else, am I? When I left my windows cracked.”

  “Not the same thing,” he said immediately. “Somebody had to work at stealing your car.”

  “If only there’d been a parking spot open in front of the gallery.” She sounded mournful. “Then none of this would have happened.”

  Her words gave him a jolt that felt something like anger, and something like...Brett wasn’t sure what.

  “If your car hadn’t been stolen, we probably never would have met,” he said, an edge there he couldn’t disguise.

  Her gaze turned skittish, and he tightened his jaw against the temptation to say anything else that might panic her. He felt near enough to panic himself.

  Brett made the mental effort to rewind. His mood had been seriously bad when he walked out of that restaurant. What if a frantic blonde hadn’t catapulted into him? What would he have done, thought, felt over the next three days without her? The three days that had, instead, been devoted to his quest and to getting to know Ella Torrence in a way he wasn’t sure he’d ever known any of his girlfriends?

  He drew a gigantic blank. He didn’t even want to imagine not meeting Ella.

  And he hadn’t even kissed her.

  “Hey!” She leaned forward in a way that was familiar from their first day. “Is there any chance...?”

  Half a dozen blocks down a hill, making a turn... red, and it defini
tely had a square back. He shifted gears, and sent the Corvette in pursuit.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  THEY CHASED a red Subaru station wagon for a good fifteen minutes before getting close enough to realize it was way newer than hers. The wasted pursuit set the tone for the rest of the day, spent in fruitless search.

  Ella cooked for Brett that evening. Black bean quesadillas—not fancy, but she hadn’t exactly had the chance to go grocery shopping. Then he wanted to see her studio, so she led him to the rear of her house, where walls had been knocked down to join what had been a third bedroom with a glassed-in porch. The space, now stretching all the way across the width of the house, was flooded with light. And it was roomy enough to accommodate two kilns, her potter’s wheel, shelves to hold clays and glazing supplies as well as work in various stages of completion and, finally, a huge table where she kneaded and sculpted clay. Brett surprised her with his interest, although she didn’t know why. She should already have figured out by now that he was a smart man who was way more complex than the cocky first impression he had given her.

  As he studied her finished work, he kept sneaking glances at her. He was probably thinking, Huh. She made this. Only...did his huh mean he was impressed, or just the opposite?

  She crossed her arms tightly and watched him.

  He raised his eyebrows and said, “What?”

  “You’re asking me what? You’re the one giving me the funny looks.”

  “It’s just...” He slid his finger along the spiny back of a sculpture she’d created probably three years ago. She’d never quite decided if she liked it or not. “Some of these are contradictory.”

  “Aren’t we all?”

  He took her question seriously. They had a spirited debate about consistency of character that she enjoyed. She explained then how her artistic style continued to evolve, and admitted that sometimes she didn’t understand what she was trying to do until she’d actually accomplished it. And not always even then.