The Christmas Key

by Lori Wilde

  And no one else.

  Afterward, they lay in each other’s arms, breathless and perspiring. Filled with the joy of this special moment.

  “I love you,” Mark whispered, cupping her face with his palms and staring into her eyes. “I love you, Naomi Luther.”

  She gasped at his words, a slight sound, but distinct. She knew he loved her. Saw it in his eyes. Felt it in his touch. But his words surprised her. She didn’t expect him to say it so readily and with such heart.

  He kissed her again, full of enthusiasm.

  I love you, Naomi Luther.

  Music to her ears. Her head swam, dizzy and delighted. She had no idea how this had happened so fast. Three weeks ago, she hadn’t even known him. But she had dreamed of him a year ago, and now he’d turned her life upside down in the best possible way.

  They had so much to sort out. Details to discuss.

  It was thrilling and scary. This leap into the abyss of love.

  Naomi dragged her mouth from his. “Mark?”

  “Yes?”

  “I love you too.”

  The corners of his mouth lifted in a hallelujah smile. She reached up to trail her fingers along his hard jaw, marveling at his handsome face. Traced his cheekbones and then his lips.

  He kissed her fingertips.

  She shivered. With desire. With love. With hope. So much hope.

  Was she being a fool to think things would be this easy? The part of her that was afraid all this would disappear, as quickly as it came, chewed on that piece of fear.

  A rich sadness crept over her. Last night, as wonderful as it had been, was over. In the past.

  And the future? Well, that was pretty uncertain, wasn’t it? She had no idea what last night meant in terms of going forward. Things might not work out. This had happened so fast, and she came with a ready-made family. Was this what he really wanted? Or had he just gotten carried away?

  Doubts pressed into her brain, tightened her chest. Yes, she was terrified this wasn’t going to work out.

  But oh, how she loved him.

  A tear slid down her cheek, surprising her. Her body melancholy for something she was afraid to want so desperately.

  She wasn’t upset. There was a special kind of beauty in the uncertainty. Her heart was open. Ready for what lay ahead. It was okay. She was okay. No matter what happened between her and Mark, she would survive this. After losing Clayton and Samantha, she could survive anything.

  But she couldn’t help praying for their happily-ever-after.

  “Hey, hey.” He brushed her tears away with this thumb. “What’s wrong?”

  “I . . . you . . . us.” Her bottom lip trembled.

  He kissed the tip of her nose, peered into her eyes until they were both cross-eyed and giggling over it. “Us,” he said, and squeezed her tightly. “Can you imagine it? Us. We. You and me.”

  The melancholy feeling was back, settling into her bones in a new way. She wondered how growing up with the parents he grew up with had molded him. It couldn’t have been easy. She admired how he had come through that upbringing with such honor and integrity. He was a rare man.

  One in a million.

  “I want to marry you,” he said.

  Her heart skipped a beat. Two. She blinked at him, stunned and giddy and scared. So scared. “Wh-what?”

  “This isn’t an official proposal. When the time comes, I’ll do it up right. Bended knee. A ring. Ask your father for your hand in marriage. The whole shebang.”

  “Mark—”

  “I’m just putting it out there. I think we should get married.”

  “I—”

  “I know you’ve been proposed to before . . .”

  Just last week. By Robert. She was having a heck of a December. Two proposals in one month.

  “But I’ve never asked anyone to marry me before.”

  “I believe you.” She felt a little sad about that. He’d gotten all the way to thirty without loving someone enough to want to propose to her. “But this is marriage we’re talking about.”

  “You don’t want to marry me?” He sat up, with pillows supporting his back against the headboard.

  “I want to marry you very much, Mark Shepherd.” She peered deeply into his eyes, cradled his cheek in her palm. “But it’s not that simple.”

  “Why not?”

  She told him then about the Christmas key. How her father and Mark’s psychiatrist, Dr. Fox, had set up the whole thing. “It was all a ploy to get you to Twilight. They thought once you got here and met us that we could all start to heal.”

  He didn’t seem upset by her revelation. She was more irritated by the manipulation than he was. His smile turned wistful. “I’m so very glad they did. If they hadn’t, I would never have met you.”

  “It wasn’t honest.”

  “But it did the trick.”

  “You should be mad. I’m mad for you.”

  “How can I be mad about anything that led me to you?” He drew her into his arms and she rested her head on his chest. Listened to the strong beat of his steady heart.

  “Your feelings about Dr. Fox and my dad sending you on a wild-goose chase with a fake Christmas key aren’t the issue.”

  He lowered his eyes and his voice, caressed the top of her ear with his thumb. “You’re calling yourself a goose.”

  “Stop trying to make fun, I’m being serious here.” She swirled her fingers through the small patch of dark hair between his nipples.

  “Okay,” he said, stroking her hair. “What is the issue?”

  “You didn’t have time to transition from the military to civilian life. You went from being discharged to showing up on our doorstep. You haven’t had time to figure out what you really want.”

  “I want you,” he said, his voice turning mulish.

  “Is it because you believe in following the rules? You made love to the preacher’s daughter so now you have to ask her to marry you. Is that it?”

  “No! Not at all,” he growled.

  “Are you sure?”

  “I love you, Naomi. That’s why I asked you to marry me.”

  She thrilled to his words, but they needed to be absolutely sure this was what they both wanted. “You need time away from me. Clear your head. Get some perspective. Go back to see your psychiatrist. Find out why he thought it was necessary to play mind games with you.”

  He tightened his arms around her. “I don’t want to go.”

  “Which is precisely why you should. If you marry me, you’ll be an automatic daddy.”

  “I know that. Hunter calls me Daddy already. I love the little guy as much as I love you.”

  “That might be true,” she said. “But you didn’t have good parental role models. And you don’t know how difficult raising a child is. You need to think about this before jumping in with both feet.”

  “I want to marry you. I want to be Hunter’s father.”

  “This is complex stuff here, Shepherd,” she said, calling him by his last name so he would know how serious she was. “Heavy-duty psychological stuff. You’ve fallen in love with the sister of the man whose death you feel responsible for. I want you to find out if it’s truly love you’re feeling for me and Hunter, versus a need to make amends.”

  His breathing deepened, lengthened. “That’s what you want?”

  She lifted her head from his chest, moved around on the bed so they were face-to-face and she could look him squarely in the eyes. “No, that’s what you need. Time and space.”

  “How much time and space?”

  “Let’s say Christmas. You come back by Christmas, then we’ll talk about getting married. If you don’t come back . . .” She lifted a shoulder, steeled her jaw. “I’ll understand.”

  “That’s a week away.”

  “Do you need more time? We could make it New Year’s Eve.”

  “No, no,” he said. “I’m having a hard enough time imagining what I’m going to do without you for a week.”

  “You
’ll be fine.”

  “I won’t.”

  “You will.”

  “You’re worrying for nothing,” he said.

  “Then it shouldn’t be a problem.” She got out of bed and started putting on her clothes. “I need to get back home before the family gets up.”

  He grabbed her by the wrist and hauled her back into the bed for a long, hot farewell kiss.

  “Go,” she panted, pulling away. “If I see you on Christmas, then I’ll know this was truly meant to be.”

  “And if you don’t?” he said, looking worried for the first time since she insisted he leave.

  A jolt of worry shook her too, but she schooled her face not to show it.

  “Then know this, Mark Shepherd, wherever you go in this world, whatever you do, right here”—she drew a heart shape over her heart—“you will always be well and truly loved.”

  “How are you feeling?” Dr. Fox asked.

  It had been two days since Naomi sent Shepherd away. He’d driven his Jeep to DFW Airport and caught a flight to Maryland, rented a car there so he wouldn’t have to do all that driving. He’d been replaying the last few weeks in his head. Remembering everything about Naomi. The sound of her kind voice, the scent of her natural fragrance, the way she moved, that cheerful smile. How quickly he’d fallen in love. Was she right? Were his feelings for her somehow muddled with guilt and a sense of responsibility toward her and Hunter?

  But how could a deep, abiding sense of love and rightness be wrong?

  He’d gotten a motel room near Walter Reed and had managed to talk Dr. Fox’s receptionist into squeezing him in for an appointment.

  Shepherd glanced to the windowsill. The dying plants he’d watered when he was last in this office almost a month ago were thriving. Their leaves were shiny and green, reaching for the light. It didn’t take long to turn things around. All they’d needed was attention.

  “The plants look good. You started taking care of them?”

  “Bought a little plant food,” Dr. Fox said. “How do you feel?”

  “About you faking me out with the Christmas key?” Shepherd raised an eyebrow.

  “If that’s bothering you.”

  “Why did you do it?” Shepherd asked, leaning against the sofa and draping his left arm over the back. “I’m sure you had a point.”

  “You needed a mission.”

  “Why the subterfuge with Pastor Luther? Why pretend Clayton left me the Christmas key?”

  Dr. Fox shifted, setting his chair casters to squeaking. “You’d stopped making progress. I needed to do something to snap you out of your mistaken beliefs.”

  “And what beliefs are those?”

  “That the world is a dangerous place, and for the most part people can’t be trusted. That if you just follow the rules, you’ll stay safe.” Dr. Fox leaned forward, rested his palms on his thighs. He peered at Shepherd over the rim of the reading glasses perched on the end of his nose.

  The man had hit the nail on the head.

  Shepherd’s lifelong doubts and fears distilled into a quick summary. Albeit reductive and a bit dismissive of his suffering, but Dr. Fox was right. Shepherd’s childhood had been dominated by dangerous situations and parents he could not trust. The military—his salvation, with its rules, rank, and regimens—had formed the last triangle of his belief system. The Marines gave him structure. Structure gave him stability. Stability gave him peace.

  Until last Christmas in Kandahar when everything he’d come to trust and depend on imploded.

  “This particular set of beliefs is not uncommon in PTSS sufferers,” Dr. Fox went on. “It can lead to feelings of alienation. These beliefs can arise from not having enough emotional support. It’s been theorized that strongly held negative beliefs predict soldiers’ vulnerability to developing post-traumatic stress symptoms following a traumatic event. It also explains why two people can go through the exact same experience, and one will develop PTSS and the other will not.”

  Shepherd sat there, absorbing this.

  “Whereas,” Dr. Fox went on, looking like a professor delivering a lecture from a podium, “an optimistic belief system can actually be a buffer against the effects of trauma.”

  That made a lot of sense.

  “Bottom line? Pastor Tom and I felt the deception was worth the risk to get you to examine your belief system.” A grin crept over Dr. Fox’s face. “Then when the opportunity came up for Tom to pretend to mistake you for the handyman, he just went with it.”

  Shepherd curled his hands into fists. “Lying to the Luthers caused me a lot of emotional conflict. What if that had made my condition worse?”

  “Tom was in contact with me. I guided him.”

  “Lucky coincidence,” Shepherd muttered. “What if I hadn’t gone along with Tom’s mistaken identity ploy?”

  “Sometimes it does really feel as if Jung was onto something about synchronicity.”

  There was more synchronicity than Dr. Fox knew—kismet cookies and Christmas Eve dreams. He wasn’t going to tell the psychiatrist about that. It was too special to share.

  Plus, he didn’t want the man dismantling his feelings with logic. His love for Naomi was real, no matter the whimsical story behind it.

  “Do you think it was bad that I didn’t insist on telling Tom who I was?”

  “Actually”—Dr. Fox’s eyes brightened behind his glasses—“I was proud of you.”

  Shepherd cocked his head, confused. “For lying?”

  “No.” The psychiatrist sent up a self-satisfied grin. “For not following the rules. You listened to your gut instinct and rolled with the situation instead of staying stuck in the ‘rule’ of honesty is the best policy. I was excited for your progress.”

  Shepherd cocked his head, studied the doctor with a flinty gaze. “Your methods are unorthodox.”

  “I tailor the method to the patient. I wouldn’t have used this approach with anyone else. But you needed to learn to trust yourself above any rule.” Dr. Fox set his notebook down on the desk, ran two fingers over his upper lip. “Besides, it worked, didn’t it?”

  “I’m back for a reason.”

  “And why is that?”

  Shepherd told him then about the situation between him and Naomi, about how they’d fallen in love in such a short time. “She thinks my feelings for her can’t be real because it happened so fast.”

  Dr. Fox tapped his chin with his index finger. Said nothing.

  “She thinks by asking her to marry me I’m just following the rules. In other words, I made love to her, now I have to marry her.”

  “Are you?”

  “No.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Shepherd scowled. “Absolutely.”

  “How can you be sure?” Dr. Fox’s gaze turned cagey.

  “How can anyone be sure of anything?” Shepherd hardened his chin.

  Dr. Fox lifted his shoulders and his hands in a no-one-can-know gesture. Well, that was unhelpful.

  “So I’m supposed to spend the rest of my life measuring my decisions on whether I’m following the rules or not?”

  “No,” Dr. Fox said. “You’re supposed to learn how to trust your gut so implicitly that acting on it becomes second nature.”

  “Is that what you do?”

  The psychiatrist grinned. “How do you think you ended up with a Christmas key in your pocket?”

  Irritation burned his nape. “How do I get to the place where I instinctively know when I should break the rules and when I should adhere to them?”

  Dr. Fox spread his fingers wide, pressed the fingertips of his hands together. Rested his index fingers against his lips. “When you finally drill down to the source of your beliefs and start unraveling them.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Confront your mother.”

  Shepherd’s blood ran cold. He hadn’t seen his mother since she received a twenty-five-year sentence for armed robbery when he was twelve. “Is that really what it takes?”


  “How much resistance are you feeling to the idea?”

  “One hundred percent.”

  Dr. Fox leveled him a hard stare. “What we resist persists.”

  “More Jung?”

  “What can I say?” Dr. Fox cracked open a smile. “I’m a fan.”

  The idea of facing his mother soured his stomach, but in his heart Shepherd knew the psychiatrist was right. He’d closed the door on that part of his life, but his relationship with his mother remained unresolved.

  Maybe visiting her in prison was exactly what he needed to really put the past to rest so he could move on into a whole new life with Naomi.

  “I’ve given it some thought,” he told Dr. Fox.

  The psychiatrist nodded and they talked for a little while longer before ending the session. “You’ve made amazing progress in less than a month,” Dr. Fox said. “I’m impressed.”

  It was all because of Naomi, and Dr. Fox and Pastor Tom’s little manipulative ploy that got him to her. He held no grudges. He could feel the effects of post-traumatic stress slipping away. Dr. Fox was right. He had one last thing to do before he could let go of his past completely.

  Confront his mother.

  He left the psychiatrist’s office feeling both elevated and anxious. Limped out into the lobby. Saw a familiar face waiting in reception.

  It was the red-haired private. Dressed in blue jeans, a bright green shirt, and a brown bomber jacket. Calmly whittling. And smiling.

  An inexplicable sense of joy seized Shepherd. Expanded his heart.

  The kid looked transformed. His eyes were bright. His skin was clear. He radiated self-confidence.

  What a change.

  “Gunny!” The kid leaped to his feet, embraced Shepherd in a bear hug.

  “Hey.”

  The kid stepped back, eyed Shepherd up and down. “You’re looking good.”

  “I could say the same about you.”

  “No cane?”

  “I need it less and less.”

  “That’s awesome.”

  “You look happy,” Shepherd said. “What happened?”

  The kid met his eyes. “You.”

  “Me?”

  “That day we met and you gave me the knife and the wood.” The kid shook his head. “Who knew whittling was exactly what I needed?”