by Cait London
Sheltering Harmony from the wind, Jonah carried her back to the house while she continued to clutch and hug him, and mentally fuss over what areas of his anatomy were frostbitten. Jonah found himself smiling. He liked her fussing over him, scolding and threatening him with dire consequences if he—
If you ever pull a trick like that again, I won’t be held responsible. Even though your abilities are developing, I’m still stronger in the imaging department. You won’t get out of this with that falling-rose-petals trick this time. If you ever leave me without warning to travel into a blizzard again, I swear I will personally place a cupid on every Fargo fence post. I’ll enter you in love-god contests from here to every psychic possible.
“You’ll catch cold, rosebud,” he said aloud when Harmony paused.
Harmony gathered him to her and held him tightly. “Then I’ll drink rosehip tea and snuggle close to you. You are a sweet, dear man, Jonah Fargo,” she whispered fiercely. Tears trailed down her cheeks as she kissed him. You are free, aren’t you, dear one?
“It was time, rosebud. It was time,” Jonah repeated, needing to say the words aloud. His heart eased, a sadness flowing through him and away into the bitter, cutting wind. Harmony understood how he had ached, giving up that last precious tie to his daughter, though she would remain with him forever.
“I do love you,” Harmony murmured against his cheek, shivering and burrowing closer to him.
“My heart, my life,” Jonah whispered. He held her close after he’d shut the door with his boot.
“Likewise,” she whispered against his lips. Then she splashed him with cupids and images of reindeer horns with jingle bells on his head.
Jonah began to laugh and fell with her onto the couch. He shook his head, jingling the bells on the image of his reindeer horns.
She looked up at him, love shining in her expression as she said, “Welcome home, cowboy.”
~**~
Epilogue
Harmony shivered, blinked and smoothed her hair with shaking hands. As she continued carrying Jonah’s Santa Claus suit to him, she adjusted her clothing.
“That was not funny,” she muttered aloud, gripping their bedroom dresser with a supporting hand. “It does not matter if we are newlyweds. Your behavior is—”
She blew a tendril from her flushed face and frowned at him. “We are not amused. Making love to me while I’m acting as a hostess isn’t fair play, buckaroo. You know Pax’s entire family is waiting in the living room for Santa Claus. Now was no time to ambush me.”
Jonah drew her into his arms and knew that she’d come for him in the night when the house was quiet, when she could revel in her powers as a loving wife and tiger woman.
Harmony pushed him back onto the old bed and pinned him beneath her. She was crushing Santa’s pillow stomach and grinning at him over it. Jonah smoothed his way through her hostess lace and cranberry velvet dress to caress her thigh. She quivered at his touch, her amber eyes dark with sated passion and a touch of revenge.
“I couldn’t wait,” he admitted ruefully as he smiled, still woozy and happy from their lovemaking. “You look so caressable. My loving feelers went wild. They stampeded toward you in this Christmas getup. I can’t be held responsible, especially when you pet that new monster’s horn.”
“When I hold Therapy’s horn, I’m working on my new designs or some deep, vast problem, like your nonscheduled behavior, and you know it. Just you wait. When I catch you under the mistletoe ball, you’re going to melt, Mr. Fargo,” she threatened with a wicked grin.
“Mmm. Promises, promises.” Then he sighed happily and stretched beneath her.
Harmony kissed him leisurely, trimming off the passion still humming through them. “If we didn’t have a house filled with guests and children waiting for Mr. Ho Ho, I’d pay you back for your little ambush.”
“Little?” He wrapped her hair around his fingers, studying the textures and scent of his wife, his love. He imaged Harmony later, after Pax’s family had gone. His wife looked adorable in just the Santa Claus hat and her black nightie.
“I refuse to patronize you. Lately you are far too confident.” Her fingers smoothed the cupid pendant beneath his sweater and love filled her amber eyes. “I do love you, buckaroo.”
Minutes later, Harmony sat on Jonah-Santa’s lap and cuddled close to his pillow-stomach. She smiled at Pax, Janice and the children who had gathered around Santa Claus.
“I’ve got everything I want, Santa,” she said, meaning it.
Harmony settled drowsily against him, laying her head on his Santa-clad shoulder. “Everything,” she repeated, filled with happiness as she looked at each loving face.
She surveyed the home that she and Jonah had begun to redo, the huge Christmas tree twinkling in the corner, the scents and delights of Christmas shared with her loved ones.
The months since Jonah’s claiming had been thrilling as she adjusted to her fast, unpredictable, but always desirous, sweet and old-fashioned, cowboy-husband.
Jonah had insisted on a proper church wedding with all the frills. He had insisted on a white dress and grimly refused to participate in any image-loving in the week before their mid-September wedding. As a pre-groom, he had meticulously outlined potential crop failures, his morning moods and how he was very happy without children in their lives. Jonah noted that Pax’s brood was too much anyway.
Harmony sensed a bit of untruth in that statement, but their love grew every day. Now she found Jonah looking at her, because he seemed to like that activity. The moment she locked onto his fast-moving thoughts, she caught images of herself wearing only a Santa Claus cap and a black negligee.
Jonah was determined to understand himself and to make their marriage work. He did not promise to understand her, just to love her with every bit of his heart. He said that she was too emotional, too susceptible to womanly irrationalities, but despite all that, he flat-out loved her because “all of her rosebud components went together just fine.”
He studiously said “I love you” every morning and every night and meant it. After their marriage, he mused frequently— and Harmony had wondered, too— if they could damage body parts by constant lovemaking, psychic or real. They shared the quiet times, the gentle silent understanding times, and she listened with Jonah to the sweeping sigh of the wind.
Since he’d given away the doll, Jonah’s pain had eased. He missed his daughter, but his heart had gentled, filled with Harmony’s love and their future.
Jonah was considerate, teasing, boyish and all-western male. When faced with choices such as linoleum colors or curtains, he reverted to spouting safe, ancient cowboy wisdom.
Harmony had learned how to ride horses, how to sing to distraught cows during thunderstorms and how to tell when the diggings were good for dinosaur bones. She learned how to whistle, without using her fingers, to call a horse. Jonah was very proud of her farm-machinery welding skills and her cautious ability to ease troubled friends.
He’d forgiven her when she was really angry and dressed him in a suit of bells. Harmony yawned and cuddled closer to Jonah-Santa as she remembered his jingling bell-suit. Jonah had stood, grinning and challenging her, and she’d thrown the bells at him.
Now, on their first Christmas Eve as Mr. and Mrs. Fargo, Harmony nestled in Jonah-Santa’s strong arms and sighed sleepily... She’d been moving very fast, her life in constant tilt since their marriage. There was the open house and Jonah acting proudly as she showed off her new shop, a modernized block building. Neighbors came frequently and she and Jonah had quite the social life, in and out of town socials.
Lucky brought June to Thanksgiving dinner. A proud cowboy, Lucky treated the blushing and sometimes-flustered June like a princess. Harmony had noted that June’s breasts were no longer pointed.
The new Fargo marriage ran at a good, swift, loving tilt, but lately Harmony had been feeling tired.
“I’ve got everything I ever wanted,” she murmured, smiling sleepily at her family a
nd her husband.
Shrimp-Elizabeth’s thoughts were happy: Me, too. Thank you, Santa Claus. I won’t be stuck in a motel room with Jonah this year. No rock and roll for me, thank goodness. Just my new sweetheart— Roderegas’s relative— and pure country-western.
Jonah noted the contours of Harmony’s face, her angular jaw blending into her soft mouth. She inhaled and yawned and her new lush curves lifted and shimmered over her cranberry velvet bodice.
Since the first day of October, Harmony’s shifting emotions had fascinated Jonah. She had explained tightly in her best methodically controlled way that she was allowing herself post bridal nerves. “Wifing” was a serious business— or at least, it should be. Then she threatened him with “dire consequences” if he didn’t stop grinning at her.
Jonah usually felt like one big grin and refused to hide his happiness. The bells jingled as he scooped her up in his arms; to his delight, Harmony was shocked. That event had taken him all day to distract her with loving, an enjoyable task. He loved seeing her flustered, warm and snugly, or her amber eyes flashing angrily at him. He just loved her.
His fingers caressed her still-flat stomach, and the tiny Fargo son nestling inside. Jonah wanted to announce to the world that Harmony carried his child, and each time he pressed his head to her womb, the baby recognized his father’s voice. Keeping his thoughts off the baby was difficult, but he wanted Harmony to discover and to want his child.
Sometimes women preferred marriages without children. That thought had slipped past his control.
Harmony stared at him. Jonah Fargo. Listen, buckaroo, if I ever got pregnant with your baby, I’d fly over the moon.
Mmm. I think we’ve been there a few times already.
Don’t start. I’m just resting a bit, and then the mistletoe ball awaits you, Mr. Ho Ho.
“I think that I’m going to sleep all of January,” Harmony said after another yawn. Pax handed her a cup of warm cider and she frowned slightly at the three cloves in the bottom of her cup. Over her head, Pax winked at Jonah.
Jonah shifted her closer, and nuzzled her unruly, beautiful hair. “Ah… Harmony, could there be other reasons that you’re tired?”
She leveled a look at him. Last night, the day before that, and the months before that? Now, would bonding and mating, real or unreal, with heavy frequency, be a reason? To say nothing of how busy we’ve been and my Christmas orders, she stated with mild irritation.
Harmony looked sharply at Pax, who had just issued a mental snicker. She looked at Jonah, her amber eyes widening. Her hand pressed his closer to her womb. No. I would know. Women know these things right away... Don’t they?
Don’t tell me your emotions will roller coaster for the next five and a half months, Jonah drawled mentally, awed by the delight filling his wife’s expression.
When? she asked silently.
Our wedding night. He just poured right out of me, like the love I feel for you. You were too busy at the moment, gathering him tight inside you and keeping him warm. You remember when you said that I acted dazed? When you worried about me catching cold? And kept pouring that awful rosehip tea down me?
No. It isn’t possible. I would have known. Mothers always sense the baby first...
Not you. You’ve been busy being emotional and making love and tossing Christmas cheer everywhere. The way you wrap gifts— biting your tongue and that festival of ribbons and paper is an emotional experience in itself... Do you want him? he asked, fearing for one heartbeat that she didn’t.
You know I do. Stop preening, Jonah. Or glowing. I can see your grin under that beard.
Then Jonah nuzzled her soft cheek with his bearded one and they shared the image of a son. “Merry Christmas, rosebud,” he whispered.
“Merry Christmas to you… Daddy,” she whispered back, loving Jonah, the completion of her heart, her soul.
“Ah... Santa… I think we’d better go,” Janice murmured quietly and looked sharply at Pax, who was chuckling. She began bundling up the children against the winter weather and insisted, “Don’t we?”
“We’re having a baby, aren’t we, Aunt Harmony?” Jimmy asked suddenly, startling his mother.
Have to watch the little powers, Pax advised softly. They have big antennae.
Santa had to fly, delivering other presents, but Jonah cuddled Harmony close against him as they watched Pax’s family depart.
Snuggling back against his arms and closely gathering the shawl he had placed around her, Harmony let her hair ripple freely to the wind.
“Merry Christmas, my heart,” she said, her love for Jonah keeping him warm.
They listened to the wind sighing across the plains, sweeping the past away and bringing in the New Year. The time had come for peace and the future and yet, treasuring the past and dear ones.
“Merry Christmas. Come inside, rosebud. I’ll keep you warm and tell you how much I love you.”
“It’s that Santa Claus cap caper with the black nightie, isn’t it? Now I know why you started thinking about that on our wedding night. Just after you seemed so stunned. You were shielding your images from me, weren’t you?”
Jonah grinned boyishly. I have been very, very good.
The End
~**~
From Cait London:
I hope you enjoyed Miracles and Mistletoe and will review it. Look for more of my stories and books, available everywhere. Cait London books offered by my publishers and myself are easily available in either paper or e-publishing.
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~**~
