Winter Wishes

by Fern Michaels

  Who could have imagined when I was alone in my apartment drinking Schweddy Balls and feeling sorry for myself that I would end up here, in County Kerry, Ireland? I look up at the seagull and feel a pang of empathy for the lonely creature. Before coming to Ireland, I felt like a seagull, circling around and around in the dark, hoping to find my way.

  Vivia once told me that she is her best self when she travels. I didn’t get it before, but I get it now. In Philadelphia, I was a shadow of my best self, stretched thin with work and worry over student loans, but here in Ireland I feel relaxed, confident, centered.

  “I have to work tomorrow, but I am free the day after,” he says, his voice as warm and comforting as a woolen blanket. “I would like to spend the day with ya, Grace. Would ya like to spend the day with me?”

  The day, week, month . . .

  “Sure,” I say, keeping my tone casual. “What did you have in mind?”

  “I want it to be a surprise. I’ll text ya tomorrow with the details.”

  He laces his fingers through mine and we walk across the beach, up the hill, down the path leading to the turnoff. He climbs onto the motorcycle and I climb on behind him, snuggling close for the short ride back to Ondine’s cottage. When he turns onto Oysterbed Road, I close my eyes and savor our last few seconds together, enjoying the warmth of his solid body, the scent of his spicy cologne, and the way my blood is racing through my veins, making me feel younger and alive.

  He pulls to a stop and kills the engine. I am about to unwrap my arms from his waist when he puts his hands on mine and holds them in place against his rock-hard abdomen. We sit like that for a few minutes, listening to the wind whispering through the trees, inhaling the scent of pine needles and coming snow, prolonging a moment that will soon be a memory. It’s simple and sweet and makes my heart ache for something I didn’t even know I wanted.

  I climb off, remove my helmet, hand it to Colin, and wait while he secures it to the back of the bike. He lifts his visor and grins at me.

  “I am awful glad ya saved my life, Grace Murphy.”

  He turns the key in the ignition and the engine growls to life. He winks, lowers his visor, and drives away, his taillight fading in the darkness.

  So am I, Colin Banks. So am I.

  Chapter Eight

  DAREDEVIL

  The next morning I notice I got a text from Vivia:

  Am I to take from your radio silence, Mata Hari, that you have finally managed to infiltrate the set and are using your feminine wiles to seduce Mister Colin Monaghan? Does the object of your obsession . . . er, affection . . . know that you traveled over 3,000 miles to be near him?

  “We are going to jump out of an airplane.”

  I am sitting in the front passenger seat of Colin’s sleek black SUV, dressed in black leggings, ripped boyfriend jeans, a UC Davis tee, and a flannel shirt. Colin texted late last night to say that he arranged a big surprise for our day together and that I should dress casually, in layers. I figured we were going on a hike.

  “Are you crazy?” I retort.

  “I’m Irish,” he says, winking. “We’re all as fecking mad as a box of frogs.”

  “Where?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Where is this insane event supposed to take place?”

  “We are making our jump over Bere Island.”

  “Bear Island? Excellent. So, after we plummet to our deaths, bears will feast on whatever flesh is left on our shattered bones.”

  He laughs.

  “No worries, a stór,” he says, patting my knee. “There aren’t bears on Bere Island. Our broken bodies will be undisturbed.”

  “Ha ha.”

  All joking aside, panic is rising inside me like a tide, ominous, unrelenting. I twist the corner of my flannel shirt around my finger, making a knot, and wonder what big, bad, brave Colin Banks would do if I clutched the sides of the door and refused to leave the SUV. I did that once. First day of third grade. New school. You move a lot when you’re poor—move to a cheaper place, move to avoid paying back rent, move to public housing. I don’t know why, but I became convinced my mom was going to leave me at the new school, that she would drop me off in the morning, drive away, and never come back. I clutched the door handle of her Ford hatchback and refused to get out. It took Mom and my new teacher to pull me out of the car and into the school. I blink away the memory, and the tears collecting in my eyes, and unknot my shirt.

  Colin flips his turn signal on and pulls off the side of the road.

  “Grace,” he says, turning to face me. “Look at me, please.”

  I look at him and feel ridiculous, stupid even, for acting like a weak, weepy baby. The man jumps out of helicopters and drives off bridges for a living; I don’t want him to think I am a big fat coward.

  “I would never make ya do something ya didn’t want to do, a stór.” His low, husky voice rumbles in his chest. He reaches out and puts his hand on my cheek, stroking the tender skin just behind my ear with his thumb. “If ya don’t want to skydive, just tell me. If ya decide ya do want to jump, ya need to know that we will be tethered together. I won’t let anything bad happen to ya . . . ever.”

  I look into his brown eyes and the panic recedes. I don’t know what it is about Colin Banks, but he makes me feel safe—my heart, my body, my thoughts—even as he is making me feel terrified and thrilled.

  “Do ya trust me, Grace Murphy?”

  “Ah, sure,” I say, smiling. “I trust you.”

  Thirty minutes later we pull into a parking lot beside a narrow strip of a runway and a Quonset hut with chipping yellow paint.

  We hop out of the SUV and walk across the gravel lot into the Quonset hut. Over the next three hours, Colin briefs me on how to sit securely in the airplane during takeoff and ascent, how to safely exit the aircraft together, the proper body position during free fall, and how we will perform our landing.

  We gear up and go out to the plane. Before I have time to reconsider the lunacy of this date—or sign on to the Geico app to see if my life insurance policy covers death by skydiving—the plane is in the air and climbing to fourteen thousand feet.

  We’ve only been cruising a little while when Colin stands and makes a fist, his thumb and pinky raised. It’s the skydiver’s hand signal for relax. It looks like the shaka sign the surfers used to make on Huntington Beach, and I am waiting for him to say, “Hang loose, duuude.”

  Instead, we hook up, shuffle over to the door, and wait for the red light to flash green. I close my eyes, take a deep breath, and then we are falling, falling, falling through clear blue sky. During my briefing, Colin told me the free-fall part only lasts about sixty-five seconds. It feels like six seconds. We are weightless, floating, flying together, our arms outstretched, legs bent and touching. It’s exhilarating and sexy.

  The view is breathtaking . . . literally. The ocean stretches endlessly, a rolling blanket of deep blue.

  Colin pulls a cord, the chute deploys, and we are jerked up through wispy clouds. Then, we are spiraling, spiraling, spiraling toward the sea. Colin maneuvers us toward an island covered in a patchwork quilt of green. The island gets closer and closer. I pull my knees as Colin instructed and keep them up until he lands feet first on spongy ground.

  He has barely untethered us when I turn around and jump on him, wrapping my wobbly legs around his waist and my arms around his neck.

  “That was amazing!”

  He laughs.

  “Ya liked it then?”

  “Are you kidding? I fecking loved it!”

  My wind-chapped cheeks flush with heat as I suddenly realize that Colin is supporting me by cupping my bottom in his hands. I unwrap my legs and drop onto my feet.

  He crosses his arms over his chest and grins. “Are ya impressed?”

  “Crazy impressed.” I look into his twinkling eyes and it feels as if my heart has decided to skydive, free-falling inside my chest. “This is the best date ever.”

  “It’s not over yet,”
he says, winking.

  By the time we finish gathering the parachute, a mud-splattered Jeep with the “Aerodrome Ireland” logo emblazoned on its hood is bouncing over the ground toward us. We hop inside and drive over dirt roads to the small town of Rerrin, where we catch a ferry back to the mainland.

  It isn’t long before we are back in Colin’s SUV, racing along the circular road that is the Ring of Beara. Colin pulls off the paved road and follows a rutted dirt track until it ends. He hops out, gets something from the trunk, and comes around to open my door.

  “I thought we could have a picnic lunch.”

  He is carrying a big black backpack, the kind soldiers wear when they are on special ops missions. Colin leads the way over mushy, marshy ground, up a slight rocky incline, until we come to what looks like the ruined tower of a castle perched on the edge of a cliff.

  He leads me into the tower, pulls a blanket out of his backpack, spreads it on the ground, and invites me to sit. Then he busies himself gathering rocks and using them to form a circle in the center of the tower. He pulls a camping log and a small bundle of twigs out of his backpack and positions them in the circle, removes a lighter from his pocket, and soon we have a cozy campfire.

  He joins me on the blanket and we eat roasted chicken sandwiches, sliced apples, and drink bottles of apple cider while staring out the gaping hole in the tower’s wall at the ocean beyond.

  “To all our days here and after,” he says, holding his cider bottle in the air. “May they be filled with fond memories, happiness, and laughter.”

  “Sláinte,” I say, clinking my bottle against his.

  “Sláinte!”

  Colin waits until I have taken a sip of cider before grabbing the bottle from my hand and setting it aside. He pulls me into his arms and we fall back on the blanket, lips on lips, legs tangled together. We explore each other’s bodies with our hands and mouths until we are fevered and gasping for breath. I know I should pump the brakes on this holiday romance, but a dangerous little voice in my head is telling me to grip it and hit it. I slide my hand down his chest, tugging on his jeans button.

  He groans against my lips and shoves his hands under my tee, cupping my breasts.

  I feel as if I am free-falling through a night-blackened sky, tumbling blindly toward danger, powerless to stop what is happening. Words spin around and around in my brain. Lunatic. Break the pattern. Holiday romance. Broken heart. Colin. Colin.

  “Colin,” I moan. “I want . . .”

  “What, a stór? What do ya want?”

  I want you to stop before we have sex and I fall hopelessly, helplessly in love with you and ruin this amazing, special thing we have . . . like I have ruined every other relationship I have ever had. I want you to stop so I can tell you the truth—that I came to find one Colin and fell in love with another.

  “I want . . .” My skin flushes with my arousal. “I want . . . I want you.”

  Colin growls low in his throat.

  We lay together under another blanket he pulled out of his miraculous, Mary Poppins, never-ending backpack, and stare out the window as snowflakes tumble out of the sky, making the same spiraling descent we made a few hours before.

  It’s one of those perfect moments, like when you plug the Christmas tree lights in for the first time and they all light up, or like when you stand on the beach and a wave curls onto shore and washes over your bare feet. The Vienna Boys Choir came to Philadelphia two years ago and I scored a free ticket. I sat in the pew, listening to those angelic voices, and my heart felt whole and content.

  That’s how I feel right now, lying beside Colin. Whole and content.

  I am sitting in his SUV, holding my hands in front of the heater vents, when I remember Kale and his “10 Things” list on my Facebook wall.

  “Colin?”

  The snow is pouring out of the sky and he is concentrating on the road.

  “Yes, a stór?”

  “Do you think my hair smells like chlorine?”

  “No.”

  “If I told you I liked to wear flannel pajamas with frog princes on them, what would you say?”

  “Are they easy to remove?”

  “Be serious.”

  “I am serious,” he says, laughing. “I don’t care what ya wear to bed as long as it’s easy to take off.”

  “Okay,” I say, tucking my hands under my armpits. “Let’s say it was a Friday night and you wanted to go out, but I wanted to stay home and watch 10 Things I Hate about You.”

  “With Heath Ledger?”

  “Yes.”

  “I fecking love that movie.”

  A warning bell goes off in my head. Something is wrong here. Colin is too perfect. He likes the way my hair smells, doesn’t care if I wear flannel pajamas, and plans rom-com-worthy dates.

  “What if I told you I have quirky friends, write fan fiction, and—”

  He glances over at me, frowning.

  “What is this about, Grace?”

  I take a deep breath and then I tell him about getting suspended from work (omitting the Colin Monaghan bit) and how Kale dumped me on Facebook.

  “Your ex-boyfriend is a fecking rawny Muppet.”

  “A what?”

  “A spineless fool.”

  “What would you have done?”

  “I would have taken the piss out of ya.”

  “Eww.”

  “It means I would have teased ya. I would have given ya a hard time, Grace.”

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s it.” He squeezes my knee. “I am confident enough in my masculinity not to be threatened because ya write a bit of romantic fiction. It’s a wee man who feels he can’t compete with a fantasy.” He takes his hand off my knee and puts it back on the steering wheel. “Any other questions?”

  “No. Yes.” I turn to look at him. “Why do you keep calling me ‘a stór’? What does it mean?”

  He turns off the road and follows a driveway up a hill, parking in front of a thatch-roofed cottage with windows glowing golden in the darkness.

  “It’s an Irish term of endearment.”

  I smile a big, beaming, toothy smile like the kid from A Christmas Story when he finally got his Red Ryder BB gun.

  “What’s it mean?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  I poke him in the sides, tickling him.

  “Tell me.”

  “No.”

  “I’ll keep tickling you.”

  He squirms to get away, laughing.

  “Fine,” he says. “I have broken six bones, suffered hypothermia, a stab wound, and second-degree burns, but I can’t stand to be tickled.”

  I stop tickling him.

  “It means ‘my treasure.’”

  And just like that, my battered and abandoned heart grows three sizes. It’s amazing how a little love and tenderness can heal a person.

  “Thank you,” I whisper. “That’s a lovely thing to say.”

  Then, I lean over and kiss his cheek. He turns his head and kisses me on the lips.

  “I hope ya don’t mind, but I promised my gran I would drop by and introduce ya to her.”

  I look out the window at the whitewashed cottage and the new-fallen snowflakes sparkling like glitter on the thatched roof and my eyes fill with tears, my throat constricts.

  “You brought me to meet your grandmother?”

  “Sure. Why not?”

  He jumps out of the car and comes around, opening my door and holding his hand out to help me down. I have never had a date introduce me to his family—not after two dates, not after twenty-two dates.

  * * *

  If Santa had asked me to make a list (and check it twice) of the traits found in an ideal grandmother, I would probably just write: see Catriona Banks. Colin’s gran is as short as an elf, with twinkling green eyes, silver hair, and a kind smile. She speaks with a thick Irish accent and her words rise and fall in a most charming, lyrical way.

  Although Colin tells her we can only sta
y for a few minutes, she waves him away with a “go on, will ya,” links her arm through mine, and leads me to a set of overstuffed chairs facing the fireplace.

  She is a brilliant conversationalist, as skilled at asking questions as she is at listening. She cuts through all of the gristle and gets right down to the bones of my life. I don’t know why, but I tell her things I’ve only told my closest friends. When a timer in the kitchen begins ringing, she apologizes and hurries to turn it off.

  Colin walks over and whispers in my ear, “She likes ya, which means she is going to insist ya stay for dinner.”

  We have shepherd’s pie, mushy peas, and buttery rolls. After we have cleared the table and helped wash the dishes, she prepares a tray with homemade cinnamon oatmeal cookies and a pot of tea, and we settle beside the fire. She tells me funny stories about Colin when he was a boy, and by the time we are pulling our coats back on and saying our good-byes, I am hopelessly, helplessly in love with Catriona Banks.

  “’Tanks a million,” she says, giving me a hug. “It was grand to meet ya. Just grand.”

  “Would you adopt me?”

  She pats my cheek.

  We are almost to the SUV when she calls to Colin. He helps me inside, tells me he will be right back, and shuts the door.

  I watch as he lowers his head so his grandma doesn’t have to raise her voice, and a lump forms in my throat. Colin is one of the good ones, a decent guy who treats me with respect and loves his grandmother. I look up at the wintry sky, find the brightest twinkling star, and make a wish.

  “I don’t know if this thing I have going with Colin is more than a Christmas holiday romance, but whatever happens, please let me get a good one. Let me get a good one with a gran who smells like lavender and bakes oatmeal cookies.”

  Colin runs back to the SUV and climbs inside.

  “Gran would like ya to join us for Christmas Eve dinner,” he says, turning the key in the ignition and backing down the driveway. “That is, if there isn’t somewhere else ya would rather be.”

  My heart feels like a big, shiny Mylar balloon pumped full of helium. It’s the same feeling I used to get in elementary school gym class when I would be chosen first for a kickball team . . . only better. Much, much better.