by Patricia Kay
Jack studied his sister’s wise eyes. Hope bloomed. “Do you really think there might be a chance for us?”
A slow smile spread across Jenny’s face. “I certainly think it’s worth a shot, don’t you?”
* * *
Christmas Eve had always been one of Nicole’s favorite days in the whole year. She liked it even better than Christmas Day. Her family had all kinds of traditions for Christmas Eve. Arlette always put a big ham in the oven and to go along with it she’d fix fresh green beans and jambalaya, and of course, a big pot of gumbo. The turkey and trimmings were saved for Christmas Day.
After dinner, the family always gathered around the tree, and the adults opened the gifts they’d given to one another. The children were allowed to open the gifts from their aunts and uncles. Then the entire family, including the children, went to Midnight Mass.
Christmas morning, each family spent at their own homes, where Santa had always visited. This year, Aimee was so excited about Santa coming, she could hardly sit still.
Nicole tried to be happy, tried to enter into the spirit of the holiday she’d always loved so much, but she was having a hard time. Her mother kept sending her anxious glances, and Nicole knew her misery showed.
Right now, she and her mother were working in the kitchen. Soon the rest of the family would be there.
“Be careful of your dress, chere, ” her mother said. “You better put an apron on.”
Nicole sighed. She reached for the apron, tied it over her red dress.
“Stir that gumbo, will you?” her mother said.
Nicole reached for the wooden spoon.
The doorbell rang.
Arlette said, “I wonder who that could be.”
Nicole shrugged. One of the neighbors, probably. It wasn’t the family. They’d just walk in.
From the living room she heard her father talking and Aimee’s excited squeal, then the sound of another male voice.
She stopped stirring. She forgot to breathe. The other voice sounded like... no. Impossible.
“Nicole, chere,” her father said as he entered the kitchen, a big smile splitting his face. “Someone is here to see you.”
And then Aimee, holding onto Jack’s hand, led him into the kitchen. Jack—dressed in a white turtleneck sweater, dark gray jacket and gray jeans. Jack—with an apprehensive expression on his face. Jack—who looked as if he wasn’t sure what kind of welcome he’d get.
The wooden spoon clattered to the floor. Nicole stared at him, completely incapable of speech or coherent thought. In her wildest dreams, she’d never imagined a more unlikely scenario.
Jack smiled tentatively. “Merry Christmas, Nicole.”
“Jack,” she whispered. What was he doing here?
“Réne,” Arlette said. “Why don’ you help me with the gumbo? You come and stir, and Nicole—she and Jack can go into the livin’ room.” She turned to Aimee. “And you, chere, you stay here with your grandmama and grandpapa.”
“But, Grandma!” Aimee protested.
“Listen to your grandmama,” Réne said firmly, his tone brooking no argument, and Aimee reluctantly let go of Jack’s hand.
Jack bent down and hugged her. “I’ll see you later, honey.”
“Promise?” Aimee said.
“I promise.”
Then Jack straightened and reached for Nicole’s hand. “Come on,” he said softly. Like someone walking in her sleep, Nicole let herself be led into the relative privacy of the living room, which was lit only by the twinkling colored lights of the big Christmas tree in front of the picture window.
Nicole trembled as he turned her to face him. But the next minute, she was in his arms, and he was holding her close. “Oh, God, Nicole, I’ve missed you so much,” he murmured against her hair.
Her heart was going like a demented thing. She lifted her face. His blue gaze fastened on hers. She was afraid to hope.
His hands cradled her face, and he dipped his head. When his cool lips met hers, something fell apart inside Nicole, and a sob erupted. She pushed at him. “No.” she said brokenly. “No. I can’t take this. Jack, why have you come? I don’t want you here unless...” She could feel the tears, and she didn’t want to cry. She didn’t want to make a fool of herself.
“I love you, Nicole. I love you. That’s why I’m here. These past two weeks without you have been the worst kind of hell. I found out I don’t want to live my life without you. And I came here to tell you so. To see if there’s still a chance for me. For us.”
Oh, God. She was still afraid to hope. Still afraid he’d change his mind. “I... oh, Jack.”
He pulled her back into his arms, lifted her chin. With his thumb he wiped away her tears. “Oh, my love, please don’t cry. I’m sorry I hurt you. Can you forgive me?”
She nodded. The tears still flowed. She couldn’t seem to stop them.
“Nicole,” he murmured, “I have to know. Do you love me?”
“Yes. Yes, I love you. I’ve always loved you. Didn’t you know that?”
He kissed her then, a long, deep, drugging kiss that had her head reeling and her heart pounding. She wound her arms around his neck, clinging to him as if she’d never let him go. Finally, they drew apart. He smiled down at her. “You’re so beautiful, do you know that?”
She smiled, too, and the last of her fears and uncertainties vanished.
“Let’s go sit over there,” Jack said softly. He motioned to the sofa.
When they were sitting side by side, his arm around her, he leaned down and kissed her again. “I’ll never get enough of kissing you,” he whispered against her mouth. Then he drew back and his eyes were sober.
A tiny fear jabbed at Nicole, but his words dispelled it as quickly as it had come.
“Nicole, will you marry me? Will you marry me and travel with me? Could you be happy making our home wherever my work takes me, at least until Aimee’s a little older?”
A great joy filled her heart. She wanted to shout. She wanted to sing. She’d taken the greatest gamble of her life, and she’d won. Still, she couldn’t resist teasing him. After all, he had put her through the most miserable two weeks she’d ever known in her entire life. “Well, I don’t know,” she said with a soft chuckle. “It all depends on how many trips home to Patinville you’ll let me take in a year.”
He grinned. “As many as you want.”
“Three?”
“Of course.”
“Four?”
He gave a mock frown. “Now, don’t push your luck! I may be in love, but I’m not a complete pushover!”
She tried to keep her face serious. “How about kids? How many kids do you see us having?”
He laughed and captured her upturned mouth in another breath-stopping kiss. “How many kids do you want?” he muttered when he let her up for air.
“Oh, about six,” she said.
“God, you drive a hard bargain.” He gave her a hard kiss full of promise, then stood, pulling her with him. He reached into his jacket pocket. His eyes were shining as he handed her a small velvet jeweler’s box.
So happy she could hardly think, Nicole snapped open the lid. A beautiful diamond solitaire sparkled with all the lights of the tree. “Oh, Jack, it’s so lovely.”
Just then Aimee came racing into the room. “Grandpa said I could come in now!” she announced happily. Her brown eyes gleamed with excitement. “ What’s that?”
Jack grinned at her, then removed the ring from the box and slipped it on the ring finger of Nicole’s left hand.
“Oh, Mommy,” Aimee said, eyes wide. “A ring! It’s so pretty!”
“This ring means your Mommy and I are engaged.”
“’gaged?” Aimee said, frowning.
Jack laughed. “Yes, engaged. That means we’re going to get married.”
Aimee’s eyes got even wider. “Really?” she squealed. “Does that mean you’ll be my daddy?”
“Would you like that?”
“Uh-huh!” Aimee
beamed. “I love you, Jack Rabbit!”
Jack’s eyes gleamed suspiciously bright, Nicole thought, as he bent down and scooped Aimee up in his arms. He kissed her cheek, and as Nicole’s gaze met his over Aimee’s head, happiness clogged her throat.
“I’ve got something pretty for you, too, honey,” he said, setting Aimee down again. He reached into his other pocket, pulling out another jeweler’s box.
To Nicole’s great delight, there was a miniature version of her diamond engagement ring in this box, and when Jack took it out and put it on Aimee’s pudgy finger, Nicole thought her heart would burst.
Aimee dashed off into the kitchen. “Grandpa! Grandma! Guess what? Jack Rabbit’s gonna be my daddy! Look at the ring he gave me! We’re ’gaged!”
Jack and Nicole both laughed, and then he pulled her into a fierce embrace. Just before his lips met hers, he said, “Six kids, eh? Don’t you think we’d better get started?
THE END
If you enjoyed Nicole’s and Jack’s story, you won’t want to miss the next book in the Cantrelle Family Trilogy, EMBRACING ELISE.
Here’s an excerpt:
Prologue
Lafayette, Louisiana --- early July, 2000
He liked everything about her.
Her hair. The way the dark, glossy curls bounced when she walked.
Her head and the way she held it. Chin up, so that his view of her profile and her sleek neck was unobstructed.
Her graceful movements. The flash of her long, tanned legs as she strode past him.
The length of her skirts. Not too short. Not too long. Just brushing the tops of her knees so that she looked ladylike and innocently sexy all at the same time.
The colors she wore. Cool colors. Soft colors. Feminine colors.
This was the third time he’d seen her. Every afternoon he sat on a bench at Cypress Lake and ate the lunch Daisy had packed for him that morning. And all three times, about ten minutes after he’d arrived, the woman entered the pathway that circled the lake, walked past him as he sat on his bench munching his sandwich, and proceeded a few yards down to a bench that sat directly under one of the cypress trees. Once there, she’d sit and open her big book bag, remove a sketch pad and quietly draw for about forty minutes. Then she’d put her sketch pad away and walk quickly back to the main campus.
Dev knew she was a University of Southwestern Louisiana student, although she looked as if she were in her late twenties or early thirties—much older than usual for a college coed.
She never looked at him. Or at any of the other males who eyed her as she walked along the path. Dev liked that about her. He liked that very much. It reinforced his idea that she was someone special, a woman without vanity or wiles. An honest woman.
Of course, he wasn’t the romantic type, but this woman brought out something in him . . . .
He even gave her a name.
Ann. In his imaginings, he’d called her Ann. He’d always liked the sound of the name Ann. It was clean. Pure. Simple. And old-fashioned. No parents named their daughters Ann anymore. Like Mary, Ann was a forgotten name, belonging to a bygone era when women were happy and eager to make a home for their families. When they thought it was the most important work a woman could do to keep house and cook meals and care for children and wait for their men to come home from the wars.
She had an aura of innocence about her...a sweet, straightforward integrity that drew him... that caused him to think about her at odd moments throughout his day.
He wondered what would happen if one of these days when she approached his bench, he spoke to her. Just said “Hello” or “Isn’t it a beautiful day?”
He imagined her voice: soft, low, cultured. Never strident. Never shouting jingo. Never argumentative.
He imagined her smile. Gentle. Sweet. A little wary. Because she wasn’t the kind of woman who would feel comfortable talking to a strange man—even on a college campus—but she also wasn’t the kind of woman who could be deliberately rude or cruel. Dev wasn’t sure how he knew that about her, but he did.
Yet something held him back from speaking to her. He told himself that he didn’t want to do anything to make her feel uncomfortable or cause her to stop coming to the lake. He also told himself it wasn’t a good idea for a teacher to make an overture to a student—even an older student.
But he knew these were all excuses. Because in his innermost thoughts, deep where his darkest secrets lay, Dev admitted that to speak to her, to force her to respond to him, might destroy all his illusions about her.
Chapter One
“Thank you, Ms. Cantrelle. I hope your stepmama, she likes the scarf.”
Elise smiled at the motherly Cajun salesclerk.
Ms. Cantrelle. She savored the sound of the name. Cantrelle. Her father’s name.
And now it was hers.
Elise accepted her charge card from the clerk at Abdalla’s, her favorite place to shop in Lafayette. She signed the charge slip and took her package, which contained the silk scarf—a gift for her stepmother, Lisette—whose birthday was on Sunday.
The smile remained on Elise’s lips as she exited the store and headed for the parking lot and her Toyota. The July sky was clear and bright, and even though it was only a little after nine-thirty in the morning, the air held the promise of another hot Louisiana day.
Elise was filled with a deep contentment. Her life was so different than it had been only a few years ago. During the past three years she’d made so many positive changes: she’d left an abusive husband and gotten a divorce, she’d been reunited with the father she’d never known and been made his legal heir, and she’d enrolled at the University of Southwestern Louisiana.
She smiled as she unlocked her car and tossed her package in the back seat. Next January, after the fall semester, she would have her degree in psychology. Then, if all went as she hoped, she would join the full-time staff at the women’s shelter.
Elise sighed with satisfaction. Soon she would even be financially independent—a goal she used to wonder if she’d ever reach. At thirty-one, her future seemed bright—the possibilities that lay ahead of her limitless. It was hard to believe that so few years back she had felt almost completely alone and without hope. Now she had not only found her father, but she had friends, she had goals, she felt useful and in control of her destiny, and she had been welcomed into her father’s large and wonderful family without reservation.
As she started her car, she glanced at her watch. Nine-forty. She had plenty of time. She wasn’t due at the St. Jacques Women’s Shelter until ten. For the past year and a half she’d worked three days a week—Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays—at the shelter, doing whatever needed doing. She’d worked behind the reception desk, helped sort and catalog donations in the Thrift Shop, assisted in food preparation in the kitchen, organized field trips, tutored children and taught their mothers simple skills, gone through the training necessary to man the hotline, and now she led group therapy sessions as well.
The work was by turns enormously satisfying or deeply frustrating. Sometimes it was even frightening. The workers at the shelter fought a constant battle to stay as objective as possible. Meg Bodine, St. Jacques’s director, had warned Elise of the danger of becoming too personally involved with any of the women and children. “They’ll break your heart, sweet pea, if you let them,” she was fond of saying. “Teach them, help them, listen to them—but don’t take their troubles home with you. Not if you want to survive.”
Elise smiled as she thought of Meg, who, in addition to being a woman Elise admired and respected and hoped to be like someday, had also become a friend. She wondered if Meg was back from the symposium she’d attended in Boston. She’d been gone a week, and the shelter just hadn’t seemed the same without her brand of breezy goodwill and down-home common sense.
A few minutes later Elise’s question was answered when she pulled into the shelter’s parking lot and saw Meg’s sporty red Volkswagen Bug in its covered parking slot—the
only perk Meg guarded like the crown jewels. Elise chuckled every time she saw the spiffy little car, which reminded her of an Easter egg. It was such an incongruous form of transportation for Meg, who was tall and big-boned, cared nothing about clothes or how she looked and routinely donated large chunks of her salary to the shelter’s coffers.
“Hi, Elise,” said the young woman sitting behind the reception desk as Elise entered the two-story building.
“Hi, Kim.”
“Meg wants to see you.”
“Oh, okay.” Elise headed straight for Meg’s office, poked her head around the open doorway and peered inside. Meg was shuffling through some papers on her desk. “Welcome back, fearless leader. How was Bean Town?”
Meg looked up and grinned. “Bean Town was great. I wowed ’em at the symposium, of course.”
Elise returned her grin. “Well, of course. I expected no less.”
“I also ate too much, as usual.” The grin faded, and Meg’s bright blue eyes filled with some nameless emotion. “Come on in. I want to talk to you for a minute.”
A tentacle of fear crept along Elise’s spine. “What’s wrong?” She walked into the small office and perched on the edge of the black leather chair centered in front of Meg’s desk.
“It’s Penny,” Meg said.
Now the fear turned to alarm. Elise swallowed against the sudden dryness in her throat. “Wh-what happened?”
“Last night her husband went on another drunken rampage. He hurt her bad.”
Elise fought to keep her voice steady. “How bad?”
Meg shook her head. “They don’t know if she’s gonna make it.”
“Where is she?”
“St. Elizabeth’s Hospital.”
“What about the children?”
“They’re okay, thank God.”
“Where are they?”
“Here, temporarily.”
“Temporarily?”
Meg nodded. “Penny’s sister, you know...the one who lives in West Virginia... she finally said she’d come and get them. She’ll be here on Saturday.”
