The Christmas Cookie Collection

by Lori Wilde

  “A damn old fairy princess,” Patsy chuckled.

  “You’ve waited a long time for your happy wedding.”

  “Forty-­three years. I can still hardly believe it.” Patsy clasped Christine’s hands in hers. “Don’t give up hope. Never, ever stop believing. Dreams really can come true.”

  Funny. It was the exact same thing Jenny had said to her on the same day she got that awful letter, ending all her hopes and dreams.

  Not all her hopes and dreams. She was the one who’d broken things off with Eli.

  But she’d done it for a reason. The well-­being of his children was more important than her desires. Those kids deserved to be happy, and if she couldn’t be the one to mother them, she didn’t want Eli holding on to her. He needed to rebuild his family. Too bad she couldn’t be the one to help him do it.

  Once the music started and ­couples edged out onto the dance floor, Christine decided to go home. She couldn’t dance, and everyone was paired off. She felt lonelier here than she would at home, alone with Butterscotch watching It’s a Wonderful Life.

  Telling her friends she was going to the bathroom, she instead headed for the exit. Just as she started down the church steps, Eli was coming up them.

  She stopped. Was he here to see her?

  “Chrissy,” he said. “Were you just leaving?”

  His brown-­eyed gaze ate her up, and she was having trouble breathing. “Yes,” she whispered.

  “Can we talk?”

  She shivered in the cold and glanced over her shoulder. “We could talk in the vestibule.”

  He reached out to take her hand, and she didn’t resist. That was the problem. She’d never been able to resist him. That’s how she’d gotten in this mess in the first place.

  Once they were secreted away from prying eyes, Eli took her other hand. He held them both. Squeezed tightly. “I need you, Christine,” Eli murmured. “I made a mistake when I let you walk away. I told myself it was best for Sierra. That I didn’t want to risk hurting her. But the truth was that I used her as an excuse to protect myself, because I was terrified of getting hurt. Losing Rachel was tough enough, but you made me feel things again. Things I’d never felt before. Strong, scary things. You resurrected my heart and hopes, and, along with it, my fears.”

  Christine stopped breathing. It startled her to hear him admit it. His dark brown eyes searched her face, beseeching her to give him another chance. She could not turn away.

  “I’ve loved you since I was seventeen,” he continued. “I didn’t have the courage to admit it then, but I’m admitting it now. I know it’s too soon. I don’t care. It’s the way that I feel, and I know that it’s right. We’ll work it out with Sierra. She’s just at a tough age. Eventually, she’ll come around.”

  “Eli.” She finally took a breath.

  “I know it’s asking a lot for you to love me back. We’re just barely getting reacquainted after sixteen years, but I feel something powerful, and I know you feel it too.”

  Joy washed over her, but it was so intense, she had to close her eyes to absorb the meaning. Her fingers curled around his hands, and she clung to him like a shipwreck survivor on a raft.

  “You don’t have to love me back.” His deep voice rumbled through her ears. “But I had to tell you how I felt. If you give me a chance, I’d like to spend the rest of my life making you happy.”

  Eyes still closed, she listened to what he was saying. Listened with all her might. Heard his words echo through her ears again and again. I love you. I want you.

  “I know I’ve got a lot of baggage. Four of them to be precise.”

  Christine’s eyes flew open. “Those kids are certainly not baggage. They are precious each and every one.”

  “Including Sierra?”

  “Especially Sierra. She needs me most.”

  He shook his head. “That’s one of the things I love most about you, Chrissy. You have such an understanding heart.” He tightened his arms around her. “And the way you love so easily and completely.”

  Emotions tangled up inside of her like unwound yarn. Concern, hope, trepidation, amusement, happiness, but the sweet, delicious warmth shimmering through her was much more than that. Her entire body vibrated with a hot strumming light burning bright as the star atop her Christmas tree.

  “I love you, too, Eli Borden,” she whispered. “I’ve loved you since I was fifteen years old. And there’s nothing more I’d want on the face of this earth than to be mother to your darling children.”

  “Are you asking me to marry you?” he chuckled.

  “Not at all,” she said. “We really do need to take things slow this time. I just want you to know I’m in for the long haul.”

  “So am I, Chrissy. So am I.”

  Then he took her in his arms and kissed her for a long, long time.

  EPILOGUE

  Christine spent Christmas Day with Eli and his children. As she watched them open their gifts, she couldn’t help wishing she could slow-­motion her life so she could extend this moment of utter joy. The twins were bouncing from Christine to Eli, showing them what Santa had brought. Deacon was chattering a mile a minute about all the cool video games he’d gotten.

  Even Sierra had apologized for her behavior and was actually sitting next to Christine on the couch. When she opened the running shoes Christine had gotten her on a late Christmas Eve dash to the stores, Sierra sent her a sideways glance. “I heard you used to be a sprinter. You almost went to the Olympics.”

  “I did,” Christine said.

  “Do you think you could help me with my cross-­country training?”

  “I’d be honored.” Christine smiled.

  They cooked Christmas dinner as a family. Everyone helping out. Abbey and Abel set the table. Deacon made the bread. Sierra tossed the salad. Eli fried and carved the turkey, and Christine made everything else.

  As they sat at the table, holding hands and giving thanks for their meal, it occurred to Christine that she had indeed gotten everything she ever wanted. A job that not only enriched her but helped her spread joy to others, children to love, and the man of her dreams.

  She smiled, thanked God, and was darn glad that once upon a time, she’d had the foresight to fling a penny into Sweetheart Fountain and make a heartfelt wish for true and lasting happiness.

  Grace

  CHAPTER ONE

  The perfect Christmas starts with the perfect tree . . .

  Flynn MacGregor Calloway put a palm to her aching back, wrapped her other arm around her pregnant belly, canted her head, and studied the spindly-­branched, lopsided Scotch pine. After much wrestling and a few choice words, she’d managed to get it set up in a corner of the living room in the cottage she shared with her husband, Jesse.

  She’d wanted to surprise him, so she’d waited until after the morning wedding of Jesse’s father, Sheriff Hondo Crouch, and his bride, Patsy Cross, before she’d slipped down to the Christmas tree lot and using Jesse’s pickup truck drove the tree home. Jesse had volunteered to drive the newlyweds to DFW airport to catch a plane bound for a Hawaii honeymoon and had taken their sedan because four ­people and luggage fit in it better. That gave Flynn plenty of time to get the job done.

  The glow from the icicle lights dangling on the eaves outside slanted through the window and shone through some of the more meager limbs.

  Okay, so it wasn’t quite a Charlie Brown tree, but it was close and clearly not what Maven Styles, the author of How to Host the Perfect Christmas, had in mind when she declared that an impeccable holiday began with the perfect tree.

  Then again, Maven Styles probably wasn’t on a newlywed student’s tight budget that required her to wait for Christmas Eve when they marked down the trees. Flynn had picked this one up for five dollars and she was proud of her bargain. Maybe not proud, but it was a real tree, not artificial, and seven
feet tall. She should get points for that, right? All it needed was a few decorations to spiff it up.

  She couldn’t regret cutting corners. The baby had been a surprise, a very welcome surprise to be sure, but their finances had taken an added hit because of it. Between scraping together money for her college tuition, the cost of rebuilding Jesse’s motorcycle shop after the fire, exorbitant health insurance for the self-­employed, and getting ready for the baby’s arrival, they hadn’t much money left to spend on holiday celebrations. Their situation was a temporary setback, she knew that, but part of her couldn’t help feeling wistful that their last Christmas with just the two of them was going to be as sparse as that scraggly Scotch pine.

  Stop feeling sorry for yourself, she scolded. Plenty of ­people have it much worse.

  By tightly pinching pennies all year and keeping an eagle eye out for sales, she’d managed to save just enough to buy Jesse a new leather jacket to replace the one he’d worn since high school. She couldn’t wait to give it to him on Christmas morning. For now, it was wrapped and stowed in the trunk of their car. He’d had so little growing up that she ached to give him everything his heart desired. Which was why she’d checked How to Host the Perfect Christmas out of the library, hoping she could pick up a few pointers.

  A cardboard box filled with decorations from her childhood sat on the floor. Flynn peeled back the tape and opened the flaps. Her mother had had the habit of either buying or making one special ornament to commemorate each Christmas.

  As she removed them from the box, each decoration stirred a memory—­the candy canes made out of bread dough and shellacked (crumbling a bit now with age) that she and her younger sister, Carrie, had helped their mother bake in 1992. The twin wooden toy soldiers her mother’s best friend, Marva Bullock, had given her after the twins, Noah and Joel, were born; and the last ornament her mother had ever purchased, a delicate red glass ball inset with a tiny nativity scene.

  Air stilled in her lungs. Although her family hadn’t known it at the time, the red glass ball represented the last perfect Christmas before her mother had been diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.

  Tears misted her eyes. Oh, Mama. You’ll never know your grandchildren. With a knuckle, she wiped away the tears. Should she put the ornament on the tree? It would stir painful memories every time she looked at it. And yet the ornament was a shining reminder of that one perfect Christmas when her family was last together and whole.

  Flynn nibbled her bottom lip. What would Maven Styles recommend? Hmm.

  The light caught the red glass, glittered prettily, highlighting the sweet scene of Mary gazing upon the baby Jesus with rapt eyes. Beautiful. It was so beautiful and, honestly, too precious to risk. Gently, she nestled the ornament back in its packaging.

  For the next half hour, she strung lights, hung ornaments, and draped garlands, filling in the branches, transforming the tree from leftover to magnificent. Jesse was going to be so surprised.

  After she finished, she stepped back to look over her handiwork. Ah, much better. Except for a glaring bare spot near the top of the tree. One more ornament should take care of that. She peered into the box.

  Only the red glass ball remained.

  She pursed her lips, glanced from the box to the empty branch and back again. The bare spot bothered her sense of symmetry and, honestly, since she was trying to make her own perfect Christmas, shouldn’t her mother’s last ornament have a place on her tree? Life was bittersweet, after all. The good and the bad mixed in a complicated mosaic of joy and pain.

  Carefully, she climbed up onto the stepladder and stretched long in order to reach the unadorned limb.

  Just then, the front door swung open and Jesse walked in.

  One look at her handsome husband and Flynn’s heart reeled. Whenever they’d been separated, even for a few hours, it was like this. He took her breath away, time and again.

  How she loved this man!

  He’d lost a few pounds over the last few months, working two jobs to make ends meet, and his hair was a bit too long since, to save money, he’d gone from getting it cut every six weeks to every two months. The cold and wind had reddened his cheeks and the tops of his ears. For the life of her, she couldn’t coax him into wearing a ski hat or gloves, but he had the collar of his old leather jacket pulled up tight against his neck.

  Jesse halted in his tracks, his festive smile dying on his lips and two furrows digging between his eyebrows. “What are you doing?”

  “Surprise!” She gestured from the stepladder like Vanna White revealing letters on The Wheel of Fortune. “The tree only cost five dollars and—­”

  His frown deepened. “You’re nine months pregnant putting up a tree and climbing up on a stepladder while you’re here all alone. What on earth were you thinking?”

  Her smile bobbled and her stomach sank. “That I’d surprise you.”

  “I don’t need these kind of surprises.”

  “I’m fine,” she whispered. “It’s fine.”

  “You could have fallen.” He stalked across the room toward her.

  Her pulse revved. “But I didn’t.”

  “What if you had? What if something had happened to the baby?”

  “You’re overreacting.”

  “No I am not,” he said gruffly and put his hand to her lower back, while he held out his other arm to her.

  She placed her palm in his and he helped her down. His touch was tender, but his eyes were troubled.

  “Imagine if I came home to find you on the floor. I—­” He broke off, shook his head.

  Heat pushed up her face. Her stomach vaulted into her throat. He’d never scolded her like this before and it hurt her feelings, but he was right, one hundred percent. She’d been so excited about setting up and decorating the tree that she hadn’t even considered it might be unsafe. “Jesse . . . I . . . I’m so sorry. I didn’t think.”

  “We’re going to be parents soon. We can’t be selfish. The baby must always come first.”

  Stricken, she mumbled, “Of course. I know that.”

  His distant gaze fixed on the Christmas tree, but he was looking past it, through it. He’d been raised in a string of foster homes, hadn’t known who his real father was until he was an adult. Was he thinking about the care that no one had taken over him?

  Flynn cupped his cheek with her palm. “Jesse?”

  He shifted his attention back to her. “We both have a lot of adjusting to do.”

  “We can handle it,” she said. “Together, we can do anything.”

  He rubbed his hand against her upper back in a circular motion, gave her a soft smile, and drew her into his arms. She rested her head against his chest as best she could with the bump of their baby between them, and breathed in his scent mingling with the smell of Scotch pine.

  After a moment, he pulled back, slid his arm around her shoulder, and eyed the tree. “It is pretty,” he said, “and a good bargain. I’m sorry I bit your head off, it’s just that there’s so many things that can go wrong.”

  “Shh, it’s okay. I understand.”

  He kissed her forehead. “We need to get a move on delivering those Angel Tree gifts. The Weather Channel is predicting the ice storm might hit sooner than they first thought. Tonight instead of tomorrow morning.”

  “On the plus side, we’ll have a white Christmas. I mean how many times do we get a white Christmas in North Central Texas?” she asked. “It’s going to be perfect.”

  “Not if we get caught out in it. I already stopped by the community center and the Angel Tree volunteers loaded up our car with food and gifts. Where’s your coat? I’ll get it for you.”

  “Front closet.”

  As he moved down the hall, her gaze flicked back to the Scotch pine. The red glass ball had slipped down the branch and it hung there, fragile and tremulous. In the face of Jesse
’s displeasure with her she’d neglected to securely anchor the ornament to the branch.

  It was about to fall.

  Gasping, she waddled as fast as she could toward the tree.

  But she was too late.

  The treasured glass fell from the branch, smacked against the hardwood floor, and shattered into a million tiny slivers.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The perfect Christmas and

  a charitable heart go hand in hand . . .

  The car smelled of turkey dinner with all the trimmings that they were delivering to a needy family. Jesse reached across the seat for Flynn’s hand, and squeezed it tightly.

  She gave him a forgiving smile and squeezed back.

  He was still shook up over finding her up on that stepladder. He knew she was just trying to give him a festive Christmas, like the kind he’d never had growing up, but if anything had happened to her, he would never have forgiven himself. Why hadn’t he already bought a tree and put it up so she wouldn’t have felt obligated to do so? He’d screwed up. Let her down.

  “I’m sorry about your mother’s ornament.”

  She blinked, forced a smile. “Thanks.”

  “You still miss her a lot.”

  Flynn nodded. “Don’t you miss your mother?”

  “I barely remember her.”

  “Still, you must feel something. Especially at the holidays.”

  He shrugged. What was it with women that they always wanted to talk about feelings? “Do I wish she hadn’t died? Hell, yeah. But it happened and I can’t change that, so no point digging up the past.”

  “Sometimes, I worry that something might happen to me and our little one will have to grow up without a mother.”

  “I won’t let anything happen to you,” Jesse said fiercely. “Not as long as I have an ounce of air left in my body.”