“I heard that you flew helicopters in Afghanistan, risking your life, saving people like your friend Boze. But rescuing Gloria Gibson scares you more? She needed this wedding to happen as much as Boze and Dolly. Gloria was so very happy, mon ami.” Shaking his head, Philippe left to collect his daughter.
Kincaid poured himself a cup of coffee, but his hand shook so badly he poured it all over the table. “Dammit.”
He looked around. He sat alone, like the last soldier standing. Who really won this battle? He looked at his wristwatch. He had plenty of time to make the evening party in Vegas with Honey-Honesty-Honda-what's-her-name.
The moonstone engagement ring glinted at him on the table. He picked it up. It was heavy, odd-looking when not on a finger. The diamonds glistened like Gloria's eyes did when she talked about things that mattered. The moonstone in the center of the ring looked like the snow they'd landed in yesterday, when they'd laughed. I made Gloria laugh. Now I made her cry.
This had to be his worst Christmas ever. He deserved to have his head licked by horses.
~—~—~—~ ~
[Back to Table of Contents]
* * *
Chapter 7
Kincaid found Gloria in the mansion's library, just off the foyer. She was thrusting cookie ornaments onto the branches of what had to be the last undecorated tree of the six in the house.
“I didn't mean for this to happen,” he said.
“What do you mean by anything you do or say?”
With the apron bow flopping all about on her sexy hips, she threaded ribbon through another cookie then plunked it haphazardly on a branch. He remembered her chiding him about how the lights had to be exactly four inches apart. He risked his life to step beside her now to straighten out the cookies.
“I guess I meant for them to split up.”
“Finally, the truth.”
“But I meant to split them up for all the right reasons.” He gave her a quick summary of what was going on, but couldn't bring himself to tell her that Boze might still pine over a woman and her boy left for dead in Afghanistan. He stuck to the here-and-now story, how a lot of people who lost money in Kane real estate developments were going to sue Brendan and Dolly to get their money back. “Don't you see, Gloria, that Boze could lose his ranch and even Dolly?”
Gloria whipped around. Her cheeks were wet. “What gives you the right to interfere with them? So what if they get married and they end up having to work together to get her out from under all the hocus-pocus her ex did? They'd do it together, as husband and wife, with love helping them stand tall together. And if you think John doesn't know about that real estate mess already, you're a fool. Dolly would've told John by now. That's what people do when they love each other. They don't lie. They work together. They honor each other by trusting each other. They share the bad times as well as the good.”
In that moment, something surreal happened to Kincaid. He was in awe of how wise this woman was. And what an asshole he was. She believed in true love. He'd managed to trample all over it as if it were mere dirt in a corral.
He put his Stetson back on. “I'd do anything for Boze, Gloria.”
“Then you have to stop being jealous of him.”
“Jealous? What the—”
“He lost a leg and got a purple heart and you didn't. He has the promise of a home back at his ranch with a fine woman, and you've got ... what?”
“I have a life.”
“You're not even dating.”
“I date all the time. I have a date waiting for me tonight.”
“What's her name?”
“Honesty, or Heather, Hannah maybe, or something like that.”
Gloria shook her head at him in a way that made him shrink inside his skin. “Maybe you should find out her name. Maybe you should realize that what your friend has is something special. He has a whole community of friends here for this wedding and you're trying to destroy that for him. Just look around Moonstone. The whole town was going to come out for this wedding.”
“It's just a wedding. Boze will find another woman.” Even Kincaid knew that was lame.
Gloria ripped a cookie off the tree then snapped it in two. “Did you even bother to find out what the gingerbread Moonstone village was all about beyond the magazine layout? I bet you thought it was all about ‘me’ wanting to become famous. Because fame is what you're after for yourself.”
He wanted to walk out, but he'd never seen Gloria destroy one of her own precious ornament cookies. “Hell, yeah, I want fame. Isn't that what you want? To end up decorating the White House for a State dinner?”
“Yes. But what you didn't know was that the gingerbread buildings were going to be auctioned off at the wedding reception as a fundraiser to build a library for Moonstone. Or did you know that and you decided it wasn't important?”
The lashings were starting to sting. “I'll give the town all the money it needs for a library.”
She tossed the broken cookie at his booted feet. “This isn't about money. It's about community. Bake sales, card tournaments, all those fundraising things people do in little towns like this are about feeling part of a family that works together and triumphs together. Everybody contributes, and everybody gains by it. Every child that helped put frosting on my buildings will take pride in the fact that they helped put the windows and walls into their new town library. But you've ruined their Christmas. Your fame and fortune can't buy them a magical Christmas.”
Gloria picked up a box of ornaments. She shoved them into his gut. “Here. You love doing things on your own. You decorate the trees and celebrate Christmas by yourself.”
The scent of cinnamon and gingerbread lingered in her wake after she dashed from the room.
I ruined Christmas?
He looked down at the ornaments, then at the hapless pine tree. Now what?
* * * *
The first thing he did later that Sunday morning was the honorable, humble thing. He apologized to Dolly. She was packing, but he persisted.
“Boze needs you and Finn. He needs all of us, Dolly. We're—” Crap, Gloria was right. “We're friends, a community. We're in this together.”
“John doesn't need my troubles with my ex. He's a good man.”
Kincaid took a deep breath. “Look, there's one thing a bull rider learns and that's that he wins the most points by riding the fiercest bulls. This stuff your ex brought on you is like that. I was thinking you should avoid it, but how about we fight it? All of us together?”
She snapped the suitcase shut, then started packing another. “I should trust you? I should drag Finn through all this togetherness?” Her packing continued.
Her rebuff was expected, but her mention of Finn gave him a clue to the mystery of the missing gingerbread houses. He loped downstairs to the kitchen of The Jingle Bell Inn to get Philippe's address from the chef, Kirsten.
He went twenty over the speed limit all the way to the City of Superior only to discover that Philippe's address was for a homeless shelter. Kincaid sat in his car, staring at a building that looked like a retrofitted grade school. Would his presence embarrass Philippe or Shandra Leigh? Did Philippe want people to know? But Kincaid was on a mission to save Christmas.
Inside the building, just off the entryway landing, he peeked around the corner of a noisy room. Maybe thirty kids bounced about working on games and art projects. Thirty kids with no real home. And no real tree. A table-top Christmas tree sat on a cheap, plastic table in one corner, in sorry need of Gloria's touch.
Kincaid finally laid eyes on Shandra. She was setting up a gingerbread house—one with cookie walls that looked to be the North Pole mansion, the post office, and school that had disappeared from Gloria's display. Kincaid's hunch had been correct. That was why her backpack had been so full and the reason she'd panicked when it fell down the stairs.
A lady volunteer headed his way. “Can I help you?”
“Yes and no. I know Shandra Leigh Montreaux and her father. Is
he here?”
She shook her head. “He had to make another quick delivery. The holidays are hard on the likes of him.”
“Shandra's building quite the gingerbread house.”
The volunteer took him further down the hall, whispering, “She pulled that out of her backpack today. I don't know where she got it. She does this a lot, stealing baked goods.”
“Why?”
“She's not as good at art or music as the other kids. That bugs her. So she's been telling kids she knows how to bake. In the last few days she's brought in an assortment of cookie ornaments, and now gingerbread. I'm going to have to say something to her father.”
“Don't. Let's not ... interfere.” He heard Gloria's voice in his head. “That's between her and her father. If she wants to come clean, that's up to her. Okay?”
The volunteer shrugged. “I can't let her keep stealing, though.”
“I've got an idea that might help Shandra. But I need your help. I'd like to sponsor a field trip.”
When he left the shelter, snow was falling. He paused to look back at the school. Somehow the volunteer had agreed to his outrageous idea. Next, he hoped to catch up with Philippe at lunch time back at The Jingle Bell Inn. He desperately needed Philippe's help, too.
He called the airport on his cell phone to check on flight times. Flights connecting to Minneapolis and then to Montana and Chicago left at six and throughout the evening. He knew Gloria, Boze, Dolly, and Finn would be on those planes if he didn't stop them. He had maybe three hours to work some kind of magic. But he wasn't a party planner. Gloria was.
She'd ripped him good earlier, so he was sweating down his back when he called her next. “Glo, I need your help. I have this plan—”
“Why should I help you?”
“Because you have a cute butt.”
She hung up on him. Sure, he'd used that line on other women, but with Gloria it was true. Didn't she know that? What was he doing wrong now?
Exasperated, he almost stayed in Superior to get on a plane himself. But as he stood in the snow looking at the old school building, he also realized the last two days had been the richest of his life. Because of Gloria. Before he left Moonstone, he wanted Gloria to know he cared about her dreams and the kids’ Christmas wishes. He wasn't sure he could change from being his selfish, jealous, asshole self overnight, but maybe a few more bull rides would shake all that out of him. He needed time. For now, he wanted to lasso some Christmas spirit and bring it back to Moonstone and Gloria.
* * * *
When he drove into Moonstone, Kincaid saw Philippe's diesel rig at the gas station. Inside the shop, the coffee smelled strong and black and tasted bitterly good. Kincaid said, “This'll put hair on your chest.”
Philippe eyed him with suspicion over a steaming Styrofoam cup.
Kincaid sat down with a cup of brew. “Shandra Leigh wants a magical Christmas, right?”
“Like you'd know about that.”
“I have something special in mind for her and the other kids. I'd like your help.” On Phillipe's shrug, Kincaid added, “You get around, know the countryside and people. I need a cow, some geese, and a good jeweler. And a few other things.”
Philippe smiled with sudden recognition. “You're not meaning to—? That's something only Vegas would do.” He began laughing. “Does Gloria know about this plan of yours?”
“I'm still working on her. I need to sweet talk her. But whenever I try to say important stuff to her it's as if I've suddenly stuffed my shaving brush with lather in my mouth.” Kincaid wasn't sure it was good or bad that Philippe was chuckling so hard tears squeezed out the corners of his eyes. “Can you tell me a really good line or two that works on women? Makes them feel extra special? In Vegas, I pretty much just say to the gals, ‘Let me buy that for you,’ and that takes care of things.”
Philippe leaned forward in his chair. “Actually, I have a few lines that worked on my wife when I wanted to buy the camper from hell, the boat that leaked, and what I called the antique tractor.” He took out a delivery order pad, ripped off a page, then handed Kincaid a pen. “Write these down. Guaranteed to make the good times roll.”
Kincaid did as he was told.
~—~—~—~ ~
[Back to Table of Contents]
* * *
Chapter 8
At three-thirty that Sunday afternoon Kincaid found Gloria in the North Pole foyer along with her suitcases. He stood in the open doorway, realizing that watching her walk out of his life would be like watching the sun slip a final time behind the mountains back home.
He swept off his Stetson. “Bonjour, cheri.” Philippe insisted French worked. “S'il vous plait, your apron.”
With a cross-eyed look at him, Gloria asked, “You want my apron? What for?”
“No. You have to put on the apron and your Rudolph pin. Hurry.” Gloria wore a blue, cable-knit sweater over blue jeans. She looked strange without her apron.
She said, “I've decided to go to Florida early.”
“You can't, Mademoiselle.”
“Why not?”
Nervous about the time, he looked back outside and up the street, then came back. “I need you here and dressed in red, with the white apron and wearing your blinking Rudolph barrettes and pins. You have more of those, don't you? We'll need bunches of them to hand out.”
“To hand out for what? To whom?”
“For the big Christmas show you're putting on here in the mansion. Right now.” He enjoyed the way she paled a little in the face. “Yes, Gloria, you're putting on a huge show for the town, the kids, for Dolly and Boze and Finn, and for the photographers.”
“I canceled my photographer. The magazine layout is kaput.”
Vehicles rumbling made them both huddle at the open door. A stretch limousine hummed into view.
Gloria asked, “What the heck are you up to?”
“Those are the last limos found in both Superior and Duluth.” Out of each limo alighted several people in costumes.
Gloria's delicate eyebrows pinched together. “Are you holding a clogging party?”
“Those are area farm women as the ‘Eight Maids a-Milking.’ Your chef had the extra aprons. I had the limos pick them up.”
“Our chef Kirsten's in on this party of yours?”
“Oh, yes. And the high school football team in that third limo pulling up are now ‘Ten Lords A-Leaping'. The next one with eleven kids in band uniforms piling out are—”
“Don't tell me. ‘Eleven Pipers Piping.'”
“Those are kazoos, but we can pretend they're pipes.”
“What's going on?”
“I'm making amends, Gloria. Now hurry, get yourself out of that dull outfit and help me.”
“Excuse me?”
Oops, that was my old self talking. “Let me try this line on you, okay?” He filched in his back pocket for the paper with Philippe's suggested lines. “'Your cheeks are as rosy as the first shrimp catch'.”
“My cheeks? You're talking about my butt again?”
“Not those cheeks. Your real cheeks. I'm paying you a compliment. You're as beautiful as the first shrimp catch of the season. Never mind. You're really leaving now? After all the work you put in? After we fixed up the sleigh for the big surprise? You'd really want to miss the look on everybody's face when Rudolph appears?”
She peered again at the limos and costumed people. “You did all this?”
“Not by myself. I took your advice. Just about everybody in town knows me. I've been knocking on doors. Please be Mrs. Claus. Any minute now the mansion is going to be inundated with the rest of the ‘Twelve Days of Christmas’ and with several kids and family members from a homeless shelter in Superior.”
“Why?”
Kincaid's heart was pounding so hard he could barely hear himself speak. “Because, Gloria, it's Christmas-time.” Because ... He looked down at the piece of paper and read the second saying. “'Your eyes are as soft as molasses poured on a buckwheat pa
ncake'.”
“What is that?” She indicated the paper shaking in his trembling hand.
“My homework on how to charm you. Here's another one. ‘You're as pretty as a new pickup truck'.”
Giving him a sideways glance, she said, “What color of pickup truck?”
This was working! But what was her favorite color? “Shiny red. Red as an apple.”
A bus grinding into the parking lot interrupted them. Kincaid said, “Those are the kids with Philippe. I'll show them what to do with their gingerbread and decorations while you change.”
“Gingerbread? What decorations?”
“I knocked on doors all over Moonstone and asked a few favors because of something you said. The gingerbread town belongs to the community. The kids here need a library. Everybody I asked was willing to make homemade gingerbread cookie walls and they're coming over now to finish constructing the village. They also donated cookies and popcorn balls and homemade stockings to decorate the mansion. Now, will you help me? Get dressed?”
A smile climbed onto her face. “How can I not help you when you try this hard?”
She rushed off and came back in her red sweater and white pinafore apron. Together, Kincaid and Gloria welcomed half of Moonstone's population, along with the children and several parents from the Superior homeless shelter.
A silver-haired, bull-dog of a lady burst into the foyer with a covered cage. “I'm Tootsie Winters. You the guy ordered partridges or doves? I raise silkie chickens. They'll have to do.”
Kincaid said, “That's supposed to be one partridge in a pear tree, Tootsie, and two turtle doves, not twelve.”
“I heard there'll be a news crew here. I want to advertise my flock. We can make big bucks with all this, you know.” She hurried inside.
Gloria said, “What news crew?”
“I told you I wasn't good at this. I have all of them coming out from Superior and Duluth. Evidently they were intrigued by a champion bull rider putting on a party in tiny Moonstone.” He swallowed. “I used my fame. Hope you don't mind.”
“This place is a mess.” She whirled about in panic.
Men Of Moonstone Series Page 11
