by Jamie Pope
“And I want back the last five years of my life, but that ain’t happening anytime soon.” Her mother had loved Brent. Hallie had been with him for so long he had become part of her family and she his. Her mother was probably feeling like she had lost a son. But things were really over. There was no going back for them.
“I don’t tell you this because I want you to speak to him. I’m just telling you this because it means he really does love you. He was talking out of his behind when he said those things to you. He probably just had cold feet.”
“It sounds like you want me to forget everything that happened and get back together with him.”
“I think he might have changed. He wants to settle down here and make a life with you. And I want you to come home and never leave me again.”
“Mom....”
“I only have you, Hallie. You’re my baby. The only piece of your father that I have left, and I would die if anything happened to you. Keel over and die. Drop dead on the spot with grief.”
“Mom, please stop being so morbidly dramatic.”
“I’m not. Hallie, I know you need to do this for yourself and I want desperately for you to be happy, but I just miss you. You’re not just my kid, you’re my best friend.”
Hallie felt her heart squeeze painfully then. “I love you, too, Mom. Can we talk about this more when I come home for Christmas?”
“Yes, of course. Are you sure you are feeling okay?”
“I slipped on ice on my way to work Monday and hit my head. I have a little bit of a concussion, but I’m feeling fine for the most part. A really beautiful paramedic came to my rescue. And my neighbor looks in on me. You don’t need to worry.”
“You do realize that it’s never going to stop, right?”
“I do. I’ll speak to you later, Mom.”
“Okay, baby. Goodbye.”
Hallie dropped her phone and inched closer to Asa, glad he was there to lean against. “My mother is the queen of guilt. If there were gold medals given out for the sport she would hands down win.”
“I heard.” He kissed her temple. “It’s good to have someone love you that much.”
“I’m going to have to give her grandchildren fairly soon.”
“Oh, about four or five to start.”
Hallie laughed, but she knew that she didn’t see herself spending the rest of her life here. She didn’t see herself raising her children far away from their grandmother, or the place where she felt most connected to the grandfather that they would never meet.
“Would you come with me today?” Asa asked. He sounded a little subdued. She felt there was a slight shift in his mood.
“Yes,” she answered without hesitation. “You’re not working today?”
“No. I have the next two days off. I’ve been working a lot of overtime. You didn’t ask me where I wanted you to go.”
“I trust you.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t. We won’t get back till late tonight and this trip might require you to bring extra clothes.”
“Are we going on some kind of heist?” She rubbed his arm. “I don’t think I’m limber enough to avoid those laser motion detectors.”
“No? I would like to see you wiggle around in a black cat suit, though.”
“What’s the matter, Asa?”
“You were mugged?”
“It wasn’t like I was held up at gunpoint. This skinny hipster guy came up to me and asked me if I had the newest iPhone. I told him I did and he took it out of my hand and ran off.”
“I fully endorse your mother giving you bear spray.”
“Of course you do.”
“You want to go out for breakfast first? I know a place near the lot where I keep my car.”
“We’re going someplace we need to drive?”
“Yes.” He kissed the side of her neck. “Unless you want to stay here. I’m comfortable where I am.”
It would be easy to stay in bed with him all day. In fact it was something she could see herself doing. She really liked Asa. She was more attracted to him than she had been to anyone else, but she was still hurting about Brent. Not because she missed him, not because there was still love there, but because she had planned so much of her life around him. And he’d hurt her, more than she thought it was possible. She could fall in love with Asa. It would be too easy to. But she couldn’t take another heartbreak.
If the breakup with Brent threw her for a loop when she knew it was ultimately for the best, she wouldn’t be able to survive another loss. But that didn’t mean she could pull herself away from Asa. It didn’t mean she wasn’t going to spend time with him every chance she got.
“We’re going out today. I could use some pancakes.” She rolled away from him. “Do you think they’ll make reindeer ones for me?”
* * *
“You ate so healthy at breakfast,” Hallie said to him as they walked to where he kept his car. “I’m a little disappointed. I thought you would eat some kind of lumberjack or hungry-man thing. But you had egg whites and spinach and turkey sausage.”
“I’m a rescue paramedic, which means I train with the fire department and perform high-stakes rescues. I have to stay in shape for it. And after yesterday, I needed something green to balance out all the cake and chocolate and beef I had.”
“You make me feel guilty for ordering extra bacon.”
He grabbed her hand and pulled her into a hug. “Eat bacon. Eat pancakes. Eat whatever you want as long as you feel this good against me. I find you incredibly sexy. Did you know that?”
She tilted her head and looked up at him like she wasn’t sure whether to believe him or not. “No one has ever called me sexy before.”
“The man who failed to tell you that you were sexy is a complete and total jackass.” That was the man who was still apparently in love with her, who was still moping around town like a lost dog.
He had listened to every word of the conversation she’d had with her mother and he hated it. He hated that someone had broken her heart so badly that she had to move hundreds of miles away from her family. He hated that she felt unlovable.
She reached up to kiss him, surprising him when she looped her arms around his neck and rubbed her chest against his. She was lucky that they were in a garage and far away from a bed because he was finding it harder and harder to resist her. “Asa, stop kissing me!”
“I didn’t—”
She pressed her lips to his again. “Let me pretend and blame you for this,” she spoke without removing her mouth from his. “I can tell myself later that you kept kissing me and I couldn’t help but kiss you back.”
“Why do you have to tell yourself that?” he asked as she continued to kiss him. Small full-lipped pecks that made it hard for him to concentrate. “You should kiss me if you want to kiss me.”
“I could fall in love with you and I don’t want to.”
They both froze and he pulled away from her slightly to look her in the eye. He was surprised to hear those words. Maybe a little jolted by them, because he could see himself falling in love with her, too.
He had experienced a lot in his life but he had never been in love before.
“I shouldn’t have told you that, but I did and it’s the truth.”
It was too soon, but he was glad that she had told him. There was no pretense, no games with them, and as much as he wanted to give in to whatever this was he knew that half of her heart was still in her hometown. She wanted to go back. There was no use falling for a woman who wasn’t going to stay.
* * *
“Did I freak you out by saying that?”
“No.” He shook his head and then stepped forward, took hold of her face and kissed her deeply. She moaned.
She broke the kiss and rested her head on his shoulder.
“Asa, maybe it’s not a good thing for us to spend the day together.”
“Get in the car.” He wasn’t going to make things easier for her. It might be too much for them. It might be crazy, but it was worth it to try. He would never forgive himself if he didn’t see where this went.
He slipped the key fob out of his pocket and hit the unlock button. His headlights flashed and Hallie stepped away from him. “This is your car?”
“Yes.”
“This is a BMW SUV.”
“Yes.”
“Are you embezzling from the city? Are you taking kickbacks? Or maybe you’re some kind of drug lord...”
“Because paramedics don’t make enough money to buy BMWs?”
“Yes.”
“Would you believe me if I told you my father got me a deal on this car?”
“Yes, but I think there is more to the story.”
“When I was in medical school I lived with a biomedical engineer who was going for his master’s, and for his final school project we collaborated on a functional knee brace that a lot of athletes use. We sold the design and I get royalties from it.”
She stepped forward and set a light kiss on his lips. “Goody Two-shoes.” She sighed. “Let’s get this day over with.”
“You sound like this is going to be a chore.”
“No.” She said as she opened the door. “I know it’s going to be the opposite of that.”
* * *
Asa had taken her out of the city, which surprised her. She wasn’t sure where they were going and she still hadn’t asked, but she was enjoying the ride. Just like she was going to enjoy her time with Asa. They hadn’t talked for a while, Hallie content to listen to the Christmas songs on the radio as she watched the scenery change. There were no mountains in Florida, just flat land, and there certainly wasn’t snow. Hallie had thought Hideaway Island was the most beautiful place in the world and in a way, it was, but her eyes nearly hurt now from all the beauty around her. Huge mountains with snowy peaks and hundreds and hundreds of evergreen trees. There was so much space all around them and it seemed to go on and on like this part of the world was never-ending. As Asa turned off the highway and through the town to get to their destination, Hallie saw large rustic-looking homes that were all decorated for the season. Red bows and Santa Clauses. Fully attired snowmen in the yard. It wasn’t dark yet so she couldn’t see the lights but she could just imagine how these houses looked when illuminated.
If this wasn’t enough to put one in the Christmas spirit nothing could.
Asa pulled to a stop in the parking lot of a train station. “I’m pretty sure we could have caught a train out of Grand Central.”
“Not this one.” He smiled.
Before them was an old-fashioned diesel locomotive with wreaths hanging in the windows.
“I’ve never been on a train before.” She shook her head, feeling a little choked. “I’ve been on the subway before, but then I spend most of the time trying to make sure no one is groping me. This is a real train, though.” She looked back to him. “This is beautiful.”
“I only take the prettiest women with concussions on train rides.”
She smiled at him. “And to think if I had worn the right footwear, we wouldn’t be here now.”
They got out of the car and walked up to the train where a conductor in an old-fashioned uniform greeted them with a warm smile. “Welcome aboard the Christmas Express! Can I see your tickets?” Asa slipped a piece of paper out of his pocket and handed it to him. “Oh, Diamond Class.” The conductor looked at Hallie and gave her a playful wink. “Your gentleman must be very fond of you.”
Hallie glanced back at Asa who was looking at her as if he was trying to gauge her reaction to all of this. She couldn’t help but smile again. She had been doing that a lot lately. She had told him earlier that she didn’t want to fall in love with him. It was going to be damn hard not to. She was already as fond of him as one person could get.
Once they were on the train they were shown to their seats in the front. Hallie thought there might be a lot of children on a train ride like this, but as they headed to their seats, she saw that there were families with bouncing children and squirmy toddlers, groups of teenagers, and young couples as well as elderly ones on dates. They all seemed to be buzzing with electricity.
It must have been the ambience. The train’s walls were covered in rich wood with brass trim detailing. There were huge picture windows and plush-looking red leather seats that looked comfortable enough to curl up and fall asleep in. It was almost as if they’d been transported back in time. They stopped at the very front of the train where they were seated across from each other at a small table covered by a red-and-green-checked tablecloth. There was a little partition behind her, closing them off from the people behind them. It was intimate and semi-private. The train hadn’t even taken off yet and she knew she was going to enjoy this trip very much.
“When did you do this all, Asa? This couldn’t have been a spur-of-the-moment thing.”
“Last night after you left. I had been hearing about this for a while from a bunch of people. Even my brother-in-law mentioned taking my sister here. I looked it up and saw that there were tickets left and here we are.”
“You asked me this morning. What if I had said no, or told you I was busy?”
“Then I would have found some other woman on the street to take. Or better yet, Ms. Peabody in 4C. She’s been giving me the eye lately.”
“She’s eighty-two!”
“She gets around,” he countered and she laughed.
The train started to pull off and they traveled farther into the mountains.
“See how great New York is?” he said to her as they looked out the window. “You get everything in one state. The excitement of the city. The beauty of the mountains. In the summertime I can take you to the beach.”
She almost started to say she didn’t know if she was going to be here in the summer. She knew once she went home for Christmas it would be much harder to come back here and be virtually alone when her family was all there on Hideaway Island. But she stopped herself, because she couldn’t say for sure what she was going to do. “You sound like you work for the tourism board.”
“I get twenty percent for every out-of-towner I get to move here.” He flashed her a grin before he sobered. “I know how hard it must be for you to be away from your family now. I just want to take your mind off things.”
“Thank you. I moved here to take my mind off my past and to reevaluate my future. I don’t think I succeeded in doing any of those things.”
“You’re still in love with your ex?”
Her breath caught when he asked her that. She didn’t expect the question to come from him and she was even more surprised with the answer that came out of her. “No.” She shook her head. “I’m not in love with him anymore. But sometimes I think I still love him. Or what we used to be.”
Hallie thought for a moment that maybe she shouldn’t be talking about this with Asa, but he reached across the table and grabbed her hand. “You were together a long time.”
“It was good for the first few years. It really was. That’s how I convinced myself that I wasn’t a complete idiot for devoting so much of my life to him. He was sweet and kind and he really did love me. But his career became so important. Too important. He was closing twenty-million-dollar deals. He would go through dark moods if a buyer backed out, but I dealt with it. I tried to help him in any way that I could but it was never good enough.”
“He could have changed.”
“Maybe.” She shrugged. “But I did, too. I made a promise to myself that I wouldn’t go backward. I won’t. I put him first for years. It’s time to put me first.”
“I love it when a woman wants to come first,” Asa said with a small grin.<
br />
His little dirty joke made her really laugh. She couldn’t remember the last time she had done so. Not since she had been in New York. Not in the months before it. She had just been existing, but these past few days she had felt like she was living, experiencing things she had never thought she would.
“You make me happy, Asa.” She froze after she said it. She was always saying things to him that she didn’t mean to say, but everything she said to him was the truth. She had never been so honest with a man in her life.
And if she were honest with herself, she knew that she wouldn’t be able to resist him much longer. She was going to have to make love to him. The potential damage to her heart be damned.
Chapter 7
It was snowing when they got off the train, which looked beautiful when they were enclosed in the warmth of the train and had mugs of gourmet hot chocolate in their hands. But when Asa saw his car covered in about five inches of snow, he wasn’t so thrilled. Although Hallie seemed to be fine with it. That surprised him. She had been so anti snow and winter, but now she was walking toward the car with her head thrown back to catch the snowflakes hitting her face.
“I feel like I’m in a snow globe,” she said, laughing.
This was no gently falling snow like they had experienced the day in the park. It was small, quickly accumulating flakes that reminded him of other storms he had experienced growing up in New Jersey.
“I checked the forecast this morning,” he said more to himself than her. “It wasn’t supposed to snow.”
“You live in the city, don’t you?” A man with his family in tow asked.
“How did you know?”
The man grinned. “We get all the snow up here. It’s not supposed to get better until later tonight. There’s a little resort about two miles up the road with a nice restaurant. Take your wife there. If you pay for the day pass they’ll let you hang out and enjoy the amenities all day.”
“Thanks for the suggestion. I think I’ll do that.” He looked over at Hallie again. The man had mistaken her for his wife. It wasn’t the first time that had happened today. He wondered if she’d noticed and if she had, did it bother her?
