by Linda Turner
“I don’t have liver spots! Or gas!”
His lips twitching, it was all he could do to keep a straight face as he arched a brow at Janey. “You know that’s why they call us old farts, don’t you?”
“Dan!”
Chuckling, more than content with the reaction he’d gotten, he returned his attention to his popcorn stringing and said to himself, but loud enough for everyone else to hear, “Some people think we talk too much, too, though, I don’t see it myself. It’s a free country. Everyone has the right to express themselves.”
Barely resisting the urge to laugh, Sara wanted to kill him for nearly giving her away, but she needn’t have worried that Janey had caught on to the fact that she was throwing her and Reilly together. She was so happy that Reilly was staying that she didn’t know if she was up or down and wouldn’t have noticed if the Pope himself had walked into the room.
“I got the decorations out while you were gone, dear,” she told her, “so you and Reilly can get started whenever you like. While you’re doing that, I’ll make some snacks. You both must be hungry after lugging that tree around.”
Leaving the tree to them, she bustled into the kitchen, and within minutes, mouthwatering scents were filling the house. Cheese dip, chili, nachos, and Mexican hot chocolate with cinnamon. Helping Reilly separate the dozens of strings of twinkle lights it would take to light the huge tree, Janey grinned as Reilly sniffed the air in appreciation. “I told you Mom loves to cook while I put up the tree. If you don’t like Mexican food, don’t worry. Before the afternoon’s over with, she’ll make pizza and hot wings and God knows what else.”
“You might want to pace yourself,” Dan added with a knowing smile, “or you’re going to be absolutely miserable by the end of the day.”
They weren’t, Reilly soon discovered, kidding. Ten minutes later Sara hustled into the family room with a tray loaded with chips and dips and nachos spiced to set your hair on fire, and it was all delicious. Enjoying himself, he filled up. Thirty minutes later, just as Janey and Dan had warned him, Sara went back to the kitchen and returned with meatballs in a marinara sauce that was, hands down, the best he’d ever tasted.
“These are fantastic!” he told her, reaching for another in spite of the fact that he wasn’t the least bit hungry. “You couldn’t have just cooked these.”
“They were in the freezer,” she admitted with twinkling eyes. “I like to keep things cooked up. You never know when you’re going to need them.”
Just the thought of what else she might pull from her freezer had him groaning and throwing his hands up in defeat. “No more. Please. I’ll be so full I won’t be able to help Janey with the tree.”
In the process of stringing lights through the thick branches on the back side of the tree, Janey stuck her head around to tease, “It’s so nice of you to remember what the objective of this exercise is. I could use another pair of hands.”
Chuckling, he went to help.
Satisfied that she’d fed them all well, at least for the moment, Sara took the easy chair next to Dan by the fire and settled down to help him string popcorn and oversee the decorating. “You really did get a beautiful tree, dear,” she told Janey. “We haven’t had one that big in years.”
“Not since Joe dragged that Douglas fir home when he was in high school,” she said, grinning. “That was the ugliest tree I’ve ever seen in my life.”
“Just because it was a little dry—”
“Dry?” she scoffed. “C’mon, Mom, it was dead and you know it. The needles were turning brown.”
“Which was why she spray painted it green one night while everyone was asleep,” Sara confided to Reilly, chuckling. “She thought it was just awful.”
Enjoying the reminiscing, Reilly could just see Janey sneaking down the stairs in her nightgown in the middle of the night with a can of spray paint. “Why didn’t you just go get another tree if that one was so bad?” he asked Janey, grinning broadly. “You certainly had plenty to choose from.”
“It was Joe’s year to pick the tree,” she said simply. “You can bet when it was my year to pick, I didn’t get a dead one.”
“No,” her mother agreed, biting her lip to keep from laughing. “It just had a crooked trunk and kept falling over. Every time I turned around, I was buying lights for it, because the old ones kept breaking when it fell.”
Left with no choice, she had to agree that her tree hadn’t exactly been perfect, either. “Okay, so it had a little problem with balance,” she admitted. “But once we figured that out and put a rock under the tree stand on one side, it was fine.”
“As fine as Joe’s was once it was painted,” her mother agreed sagely.
Brown eyes met blue, and Janey and Sara both had to laugh.
“Sounds like a draw to me,” Dan decided. “How about you, Reilly? What do you think?”
Caught off guard, he blinked. “What? You want to drag me into this? Oh, no, you don’t! I’m no dummy. I know better than to get involved in a discussion between mother and daughter. I plead the Fifth.”
“A wise man,” Sara chuckled. “Now that we’ve got that settled, how about some brownies? I’m hungry.”
For an answer, everybody groaned.
They spent the rest of the afternoon laughing and eating and decorating the tree with ornaments that had been in the family as long as anyone could remember. After dozens of strings of lights were strung through the tree, setting it aglow, a long rope of brightly colored glass beads was draped from limb to limb like a necklace gracefully adorning a woman’s neck. Bulbs and old-fashioned ornaments were added, and with them, stories were told about the family and Christmases past and days that were long gone.
Listening to the history of the McBrides, Reilly couldn’t help but be entranced. In many ways Janey’s family was much like his. She was close to him in age, and her childhood, with all its hopes and dreams, hadn’t been all that different from his despite the fact that she’d grown up on a ranch and he’d been very much a California kid of the sixties.
The resemblance ended there, however.
He was first-generation Californian—his parents had been born and raised in Illinois, and their parents before them in states even farther east. So he didn’t have the kind of family traditions that came from living and dying and working the same piece of ground year in and year out, generation after generation. And he envied Janey that. Her family history was all around her, her ancestors as familiar to her as if she’d actually grown up with them. She not only knew where she and generations before her had been born, she only had to walk through the small cemetery east of the homestead to know where she and the rest of her family would one day be buried.
In today’s world, where no one seemed to put down roots anymore because they were too busy moving around the country in search of the almighty dollar, he found that—and Janey—incredibly fascinating.
Watch it, the voice of reason cautioned in his head. Don’t get too taken with the lady. You’re only her first boyfriend. Remember? You’re just helping her get her feet wet so she won’t be afraid of the water, then you’re history. If you allow yourself to forget that, you’re the one who’s going to be in over your head. Then who’s going to get hurt?
A smart man might have listened to that and taken it under advisement, but he wasn’t worried. He still loved Victoria. How could he get hurt?
So when they finished the tree just as dinnertime rolled around and Janey invited him to stay to eat one more meal, it seemed a shame to end the evening. He stayed and thoroughly enjoyed himself. Then somehow, before he knew it, it was going on ten o’clock at night, Janey was walking him to his car, and he didn’t know where the day had gone.
“You don’t have to walk me out,” he said when she slipped on a jacket and stepped outside with him. “It’s too cold.”
“I don’t mind,” she said huskily, huddling in her wool jacket as they reached his car. “And I wanted to thank you for all your help today.
I had a wonderful time.”
Her eyes shining in the muted glow from the porch light, she looked up at him with the sweetest smile on her face and had no idea what kind of alarm bells she set off inside him. He should have heeded the warning, but he couldn’t hear anything but the rush of his blood in his veins. With a will of their own, his eyes dropped to the innocently provocative curve of her mouth, and need kicked him hard in the gut. Swallowing a groan, he just barely resisted the need to haul her into his arms.
Right then and there he should have thanked her for the day, gotten in his car and driven away. But before he could stop himself, he murmured, “So did I.” It seemed the most natural thing in the world to lean down and once again kiss her on the cheek. “Three.” It was only then, when he felt the softness of her cheek under his lips and saw the happiness shining in her eyes, that he realized he’d been waiting hours for just that moment.
Janey had, too, and she hadn’t had a clue. Feeling slightly dizzy with anticipation, an ache she couldn’t understand squeezing her heart, she looked up into the dark depths of his midnight-blue eyes and wanted so much more than a kiss on the cheek from him. How, she wondered, had he done this to her so easily, when she didn’t even know what to expect next? And when were they finally going to reach ten?
There was a lot to be said for putting a sparkle in a woman’s eye, Dan decided as, in spite of her objections that he needed to rest, he moved to help Sara collect the dirty glasses and dessert plates from the coffee table. He’d watched Reilly flirt and tease with Janey all day, and he didn’t doubt that right that very moment he was kissing her good-night. And Dan envied him that. It had been too long since he’d kissed a woman he loved good-night. And that was years ago, when he still had Peggy. He’d never kissed Sara, though he’d wanted to for years. Maybe it was time he did something about that. Making a snap decision, he stepped in front of Sara and took the tray of dirty dishes from her.
Focusing on what she was doing, she automatically reached for the tray again. “You shouldn’t be carrying that. Reilly said you’re supposed to rest at least another week before you even think about doing anything physical—”
That was as far as she got. A split second later he reached for her and had the satisfaction of watching her blue eyes widen in surprise. Before she could do anything but gasp, he kissed her full on the mouth.
Shocked, Sara felt the ground tilt beneath her feet and instinctively clung to him, her thoughts in a whirl. He’d lost his mind, she thought as her senses began to blur. Being out of bed for the first full day, helping string the popcorn and visiting with Reilly, it all must have been harder on him than she’d anticipated. He was exhausted and didn’t know what he was doing. That was, she decided, the only reasonable explanation. After all, they were just friends.
But when he finally let her up for air, the emotions rushing through Sara had nothing to do with friendship. Her heart was pounding, her knees were weak, and she couldn’t seem to think clearly. Still caught close in his arms, she looked up at him in confusion. “What are you doing?”
“Reilly isn’t the only one taken with a McBride woman,” he growled. “Why are you so surprised? I told you that years ago.”
It was true—he had asked her out several years after Peggy had died, but Sara hadn’t really taken him seriously. How could she? He was one of her best friends, for heaven’s sake!
“I thought you were just going through a lonely spell. You only asked that once, so I assumed you just did it on a whim and lost interest when you came to your senses.”
“That won’t happen until the day they put me in the ground,” he assured her gruffly, and kissed her again.
Her head spinning, she should have stopped him. This was all happening too fast. She had to have some time to herself to think, which she couldn’t seem to do when he was kissing her. Then she heard Janey at the front door.
Later, she never remembered moving, but between one heartbeat and the next, she pulled free of Dan’s arms and put half the distance of the room between them. By the time Janey stepped into the family room, she’d turned to quickly start picking up dirty glasses again.
“Oh, there you are, dear,” she said, flustered, and didn’t notice Janey’s cheeks were as pink as hers. “I was just telling Dan that it’s been a long day, and he shouldn’t overdo it.”
“She’s right, Dan,” Janey told him when he moved to pick up the tray of dirty dishes on the coffee table. “I’ll help Mom with that. Why don’t you go to bed? You do look a little flushed.”
Swallowing a silent groan, Sara didn’t dare look at Dan when he hesitated. If he said anything…
“Maybe you’re right,” he finally told Janey gruffly. “I guess I tried to do too much too soon. I never did know how to take things slow. I’ll try not to make that mistake again.”
Not misunderstanding his veiled message, Sara released a long, soundless breath she hadn’t even realized she was holding. It was going to be all right. Janey didn’t seem to have a clue what he was talking about, and he was all but openly assuring her that she didn’t have to worry about him kissing her again. She should have been pleased. They could go back to being just friends and forget that any of this had ever happened.
But even as she assured herself that was what she wanted, she couldn’t help but remember how long it had been since she’d been in the arms of a man she cared about. She’d forgotten how wonderful it could be.
Chapter 10
The minister had a packed house and was in his element. Outside, it was cold and wet and miserable, but the spirit of Christmas filled the church, and when the congregation raised its voice in song, it sounded like the angels themselves had descended from Heaven to praise the Lord.
Seated next to her mother on one side and Zeke, Lizzie, and Cassie on the other, Janey couldn’t stop smiling. She told herself it was because it was Christmas and this year, as always, she had a lot to be thankful for. Everyone was well and happy, and when Merry had her baby sometime within the next few weeks, there would be another baby in the family to love. Work was going well, and she was feeling good about herself. Those things alone were enough to make anyone happy.
But even as she closed her eyes to thank God for her blessings, she couldn’t stop herself from peeking across the aisle to where Reilly sat directly across from her. She hadn’t expected to see him at all today, but there he was, his dark-blond head bowed in prayer, looking wonderful in a navy suit that did wonderful things for his eyes. He appeared to be listening attentively to the minister’s every word, but Janey knew he was as aware of her as she was of him. From the moment he’d slipped into the pew and realized she was seated across from him, he’d been sneaking as many peeks at her as she had at him. And every time their eyes met, they both smiled.
This time was no different. As soon as the prayer was over, Reilly lifted his head and glanced over at her, and just that easily, they were both grinning at each other like a couple of toddlers playing peekaboo.
After that, the rest of the service passed in something of a haze. Janey stood when she was supposed to and sang the hymns that were as familiar to her as the sound of her mother’s voice, and every time the minister said, “Let us pray,” she closed her eyes obediently. But if anyone had asked her what the sermon was about, she couldn’t for the life of her have said.
After the service Janey wasn’t surprised when Reilly stepped across the aisle. “Hello,” he said huskily. “It’s a beautiful morning, isn’t it?”
He spoke to everyone, but it was Janey his eyes lingered on. Her heart thumping pleasantly, she said with a smile, “Actually, it’s sleeting outside.”
“Then I guess we should all get going before the roads get nastier,” he said. “Be careful on the way home.”
And before she could guess his intentions, he leaned over and kissed her gently on the cheek, right there before God and her family and half the congregation of the Liberty Hill Methodist Church.
Her heart t
urning over in her breast, Janey heard him softly whisper, “Four,” and almost moaned at the feel of his warm, moist breath in her ear. Surprised by the kiss, her brothers glanced back and forth between the two of them with a frown, but she never noticed anyone but Reilly. He was right, she thought, feeling like she was walking on air as she and the rest of her family followed him outside into the cold, icy drizzle. It was a beautiful day.
“Did you hear about the kiss? Everybody’s talking about it.”
“She’s walked around with a smile on her face all day. Isn’t it wonderful to be in love?”
Sighing dreamily, Margaret Lester said, “I remember when Otto courted me. I couldn’t stop smiling, either. That was the best summer of my life.”
“I have to admit, I had my doubts at first,” Abby Hart confided as the Busybodies and Lester sisters gathered in the solarium Monday afternoon to discuss the latest course of events concerning Janey’s romance. “Dr. Jones seemed so unhappy. I thought he was still in love with his dead wife.”
Caroline Saunders nodded her white head. “So did I. But he certainly seems happier now. I saw him in the hall a few minutes ago, and he was actually whistling!”
“That’s because he’s expecting to see Janey—”
Striding into the solarium for her afternoon break just in time to catch her name on the lips of the octogenarians gathered around the table in the far corner, she arched a teasing brow at them when they jumped guiltily. “All right, what’s going on? I heard you guys talking about me. What’d I do?”
“Nothing!”
“We were just talking about…about…”
“About the jitterbug and how it’s making a comeback,” Rebecca Flowers said hurriedly when Margaret drew a blank. “And we were wondering if you knew how to dance.”
