He wiggled in her embrace, but she couldn’t seem to get her arms to cooperate and let him go.
“Give the kid some air, Tess. You don’t want to smother him to death.”
Right.
She didn’t.
She didn’t want to release him, either.
Finally, Alex had had enough. He pushed at her arms, scuffing his feet on the wood floor.
“Are you okay?” She crouched in front of him, touching his cheek. It was warm. He was warm. He’d been there for a while, his hair sticking up but dry, his coat hanging open. His feet were bare, his toes pink. “Where are your shoes?”
“There.” He pointed to the vestibule, and she saw his snow boots sitting in a puddle.
Hers were dripping all over the wood.
Smart kid, but he’d nearly gotten himself killed. All for the sake of a porcelain angel.
“You said you were never going to do this again, Alex. You promised, remember?” The words were louder than she’d intended, nearly drowning out Cade’s soft murmur. He was on his cell phone, reporting that Alex had been found, and she was glad that he was distracted, because she was crying again, tears just sliding down her cheeks completely unchecked.
She sniffed them back, and Alex looked up, frowning at her through Emily’s eyes and his own oddly adult face.
“It’s okay,” he said, brushing his hands down her cheeks, the gesture awkward and sweet.
“It wouldn’t have been if you got hurt, or worse.”
“I needed my angel.”
“We don’t know where it is.” She sighed, exasperated and upset, because until the angel was back, she knew Alex would keep wandering.
“I know,” he responded.
“Oh, Alex.” She didn’t even know how to respond to that. When he got an idea in his head, it just seemed to never leave. “Get your boots on. Let’s go home.”
“Max is coming to pick us up. He’ll be here in about ten minutes,” Cade said. He put his hand on Alex’s shoulder, bending down so they would have been eye to eye if Alex hadn’t been staring at the floor. “You can’t do this again, Alex. You could be hurt. So could any of the people who have to go looking for you when you run off. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” Alex mumbled.
“Good, because if this happens again . . .” Cade’s voice trailed off. Obviously he was at a loss, too. What kind of threat would be effective for Alex? Was it even fair to make one?
“Go put your boots on, Alex,” Tess repeated wearily, dropping into a pew and rubbing the bridge of her nose. This had gone too far. They were going to have to get some professional help. A psychologist or something. Someone who knew a lot more than Tess did about parenting atypical kids. Because obviously she had no frigging clue what she was doing.
He walked away. Not toward the vestibule and his boots. Toward the piano.
“Alex—”
“He’s already here. What can it hurt to let him play until Max shows up?” Cade sat beside her, as weary, it seemed, as she was.
“He needs to be punished. Or . . . something,” she said lamely, and he grinned, his hair wet from snow, his cheeks ruddy. So handsome, so wonderfully familiar, so Cade that it nearly hurt to look at him.
“It’s good that you’re clear on your plan,” he commented as Alex began to play.
“It’s not funny, Cade.” To her horror, her voice broke and tears started rolling again, all hot and sticky on top of her already hot and sticky cheeks. Damn! Years of never crying, and now she couldn’t seem to do anything but cry.
“It’s not the end of the world, either,” he said gently, pulling her into his arms and pressing her head to his chest.
“But I don’t even know what to do with him!” she wailed.
“Sure you do. You love him. Anything else . . . we can figure out together.”
Together . . . ?
Oh, man, she liked the sound of that.
Hearing it made the tears fall harder, because she’d returned to Apple Valley looking for nothing, wanting nothing. She’d found home. In the house her sister had left her, the town she’d thought she despised.
In Cade’s arms.
“Don’t cry, Tess,” he murmured. “It breaks my heart when you do.”
Not just words, she thought. Truth, and they touched that place in her heart that she tried so hard to hold back from everyone. Filled that spot that had been empty for so long, she’d thought it could never be filled.
“I’ve always loved you, Cade Cunningham,” she whispered, something about the peaceful church and the dim lights and the soft music making the revelation seem just right.
He stilled, and she thought maybe she’d been wrong to say the words, to put it out there between them. She wouldn’t take them back, though. Not even if she could.
He tilted her chin, looked into her eyes, studying her face as if all the secrets of the universe were in it. “Have you?”
“Yes.” She swallowed down words and explanations and the need to tell him that he didn’t have to return the feeling. Yes was enough, because it was the simple truth. And right then, in that place, with Alex’s gentle song playing, that was plenty.
“Even when I beat you at street hockey?”
“You never beat me!” she protested, and he chuckled, pulling her back into his arms so that she could feel the rumble of his laughter deep in her soul.
“We’ll have to have a rematch to decide who’s telling the truth,” he finally said.
“Will we?”
“Of course. I can’t have the woman I love hanging her supposed victories over my head for the rest of my life.”
“Cade, you don’t—” Have to say you love me because I said I love you, she wanted to say, but he cut her off.
“There’s love and there’s love, Tess. You know that?” He cupped her face, the warmth of his palms searing through her. “The kind that is meant for a season and the kind that is meant for forever. Everyone has a chance at the first, but not everyone gets a chance at the second. I’ve had two chances. Once when we were kids, and I was too stupid to see what was right in front of my face. I’m not stupid anymore, and I’m not going to pass my chance up this time. You mean too much to me.”
He kissed her then, gently, softly. Like the song drifting through the chapel, like the snow falling from the deep gray sky. Like sunrise and sunset. A slow revelation, a sweet unveiling.
And, God, she wanted more. She wanted forever.
The chapel doors flew open and cold air swept in.
Cade eased back, his eyes blazing, his hands gentle as he pulled her to her feet.
Max hurried toward them. He wasn’t alone. Dozens of people spilled into the church behind him. Ida. The Murphys. Charlotte. Jethro and Natalie. People from the party, dressed in Victorian garb, bundled up against the cold, their eyes wide with excitement and relief. Blue-haired ladies and old high school friends, and Alex’s music still drifting in the air.
“I tried to tell everyone to go home,” Max growled, glancing over his shoulder and scowling. “They wouldn’t listen.”
“Why should we have?” Ida asked. “The boy has been found, and we’ve all been out looking. It’s good to see that he’s fine.” She settled into a pew, tucking her big skirts around her legs. Everyone else took her cue, filling the pews, pressing in close to one another.
Alex’s music soared, the sweet song he’d been playing changing into a medley of Christmas carols.
“The kid can play,” Max conceded. “I’ll give him that.”
“Shhhhh!” Ida demanded, grabbing his hand and yanking him into the pew beside her, the murmur of the crowd slowly fading.
The chapel door flew open again, and Gertrude hobbled in.
“Alex,” she cried, and it was the sound of every parent who’d ever lost a child and found him again. Tess stood, her heart filling for this woman who’d tried her best.
Alex stopped playing, his hands slack on the keys for several seconds as Gertrud
e made her way down the aisle, Zim close on her heels.
She dropped her crutches beside the piano, falling to her knees and dragging Alex into her arms.
“What were you thinking, boy? What in God’s name were you thinking?” She sobbed, crying like Tess had never seen her cry before. She reached blindly, grabbing Tessa’s hand and pulling her into the embrace. Their little family reunited.
Alex wiggled away from Gertrude, patting her old lined face.
“Look,” he said and pulled the piano bench away from the piano, dropping to his hands and knees near the foot pedals. He touched one of the swirling vines that wrapped its way up the piano, his fingers sliding into the center of one of the flowers. A crack appeared. Tess could hear people standing and moving closer, but she didn’t look away as Alex slid his fingers into the crevice and pulled off a panel of wood. A foot square, it had been carefully crafted out of thick wood. Alex reached into the hole it revealed and pulled out a box messily wrapped in silvery paper.
He handed it to Gertrude.
Someone gasped, and old Zim sputtered, moving closer, his face ruddy with excitement. “It’s the angel.”
“How can it be, you old fool?” Gertrude snapped, but her hands were trembling as she folded back the paper.
A shoe box was inside, and she raised the lid, her face paling as she looked.
“It is,” she whispered, carefully lifting the angel. The box dropped to the floor, something fluttering out as it landed.
A feather. Snow white and beautiful.
Tess picked it up, held it as the crowd murmured and old Zim sputtered, and Gertrude asked Alex how the angel had come to be in the piano.
“I found her under the tree. I put her there,” he said simply. “To keep her safe. She’s safe now.” He put the panel back on the piano, pulled the bench back over and sat. Oblivious to the crowd, to the excitement he’d stirred up. Oblivious to everything but the music that must always be playing in his head and that he poured out onto the keys. The gentle song he’d played before, sweet and beautiful.
People drifted back to the pews.
But Tessa stood rooted in place, listening to Alex’s song, the feather silky in her hand.
Cade’s arm wrapped around her waist, his fingers splayed across her ribs. He leaned close, his breath warm on her cheek. “We should sit down.”
She nodded, letting him lead her to the pew where Gertrude sat, one hand clutching the angel, the other tucked in the crook of Zim’s elbow.
She looked dazed but content.
She smiled at Tess, her face caving into dozens of wrinkles. “No more curse,” she whispered.
Tess didn’t say there had never been one. The song was too beautiful, the night too special to ruin it by arguing. She patted Gertrude’s knee and was surprised when Gertrude clung to her hand for a moment, looked straight into her eyes.
“You were always my favorite, Tess. Didn’t seem like it, because I had to be hard on you to make sure you didn’t turn out like that no-good sister of mine.” She swallowed and looked away. “I always felt kind of bad about loving you so much. A mother . . . she shouldn’t have favorites, right?”
True? Not?
It didn’t matter anymore.
Emily was gone, and Tess was where she’d always belonged.
“It’s okay,” she said, the feather light and strangely warm in her hand.
“Where’d that come from?” Cade asked, touching its edges, his finger sliding along her palm and then up her wrist. There was a promise in that touch, and she shivered.
“It fell out of the box when Gertrude dropped it. Zim must have put it in there.”
“No.” Zim shook his head. “The only thing I put in that box was the angel.”
“Then Alex must have,” she said.
“Where would he get a feather?” Gertrude asked, taking it from Tessa’s hand and studying it. “Not any kind of feather I’ve ever seen. Bet Miriam put it there.”
“Oh, come on,” Tess said, sighing.
“Sure as I’m sitting right here, that’s where it must have come from. This is no ordinary feather. It’s from an angel’s wing.”
If they hadn’t been sitting in church, Tess would have laughed out loud. Instead, she snatched the feather back. “Don’t start, Gertrude.”
“Don’t start what? I’m telling you there are things in this world we don’t understand. Things a mind too filled up with facts to be reasonable just doesn’t comprehend.”
“Are you saying—”
“Be quiet. We’re in church,” Zim growled. “That’s no place for arguing. Besides, I want to hear the boy play.”
Gertrude scowled but subsided.
“Looks like things are back to normal with old Gertrude,” Cade whispered in Tessa’s ear, and she could hear the laughter in his voice.
She smiled into his eyes, felt her heart responding to the warmth she found there.
God, she loved him!
Alex’s song slowed, each note sweet and lovely. Feathers on a summer breeze.
Tess frowned, fingering the feather.
From an angel’s wing?
Ha!
But she had to admit, it was the prettiest feather she’d ever seen. She tucked it deep into her coat pocket.
Finally, the notes faded into silence. No one moved. No one spoke. Alex stood, shuffling to Tess and Gertrude, his head down, his hair falling over his eyes.
“It’s time to go home,” he said.
“You’re right,” Tess responded, taking his hand and holding Cade’s and walking down the aisle with both of them. Gertrude and Zim followed.
People sniffed and sobbed, and Tess was pretty sure someone snapped a photo. No doubt they’d be on the front page of the morning newspaper, but she didn’t mind. In Apple Valley people cared about the little things, the quiet things, the things that were easy to miss if one didn’t look carefully enough.
And, she decided, that’s exactly the kind of place she wanted to be.
“You’re smiling,” Cade said as they stepped outside.
“Because I finally know what it means to be home,” she responded simply.
“Took you long enough to figure it out.” He smiled, kissing her forehead, her lips. “What do you say we put Alex in the car with Zim and Gertrude and walk to my place?”
“It’s freezing!” she said, but she could see hundreds of Christmas lights sparkling in the park, and the snow was beautiful against the sky, and she thought that maybe a walk wouldn’t be so bad. Not if the person she was walking with was Cade.
“True,” he whispered against her ear. “But I can think of plenty of ways we can warm each other up once we get there.”
“I like the way you think.” She laughed, then helped Alex into Zim’s car, buckling his seat belt, saying good night to Gertrude.
Then she took Cade’s hand and they walked toward town, fat snowflakes drifting like angel feathers on the cold night air.
Please turn the page
for an exciting sneak peek of
Shirlee McCoy’s next Apple Valley romance,
THE COTTAGE ON THE CORNER,
coming soon from Kensington Publishing!
November 27th.
The worst day of the year.
The worst day of her year, anyway.
Usually Charlotte Garrison spent it with a box of tissue and a bagful of mini Reese’s. If she were feeling particularly sappy, she’d rent a romantic movie and watch it on her two-decade-old TV.
No need for that today.
She had a real live romance to watch.
Cade Cunningham and Tessa McKenzie’s wedding was the most talked about event in Apple Valley, Washington, since Miriam and Daniel Riley had married over a hundred years before. The happy couple had asked Charlotte to make the wedding cake. If she hadn’t loved them both so much, she’d have said no. But, she did.
That was Charlotte’s problem. One of her many problems. She loved the people in her life, and she’d d
o anything for them. As long as it wasn’t illegal or immoral. Which . . . when it had come to her husband . . . had proven to be a problem.
“Do not even go there,” she murmured.
The nineteen-year-old kid working salad prep at the counter a few feet away smiled quizzically.
“What?” he asked.
“Nothing.” She placed the last sugar flower on the five-tier cake. White on white to go along with the Victorian Christmas theme that Tessa had chosen for the wedding. The cake was beautiful, every flower sparkling with shimmery powder. Anemone for unfading love. Bluebells for constancy. Lavender for devotion. Violet for faithfulness.
Such fanciful Victorian ideas.
She’d have snorted, but town hall’s oversized kitchen was nearly bursting at the seams with people preparing Tess and Cade’s catered buffet. The last thing she wanted to do was give any of them reason to talk about her.
Not that people weren’t already talking.
Charlotte and Cade had dated a few weeks after she’d moved to Apple Valley. It had been a moment of weakness on her part. She’d been new to the area and wavering in her conviction that being single was the best thing a woman could ever do for herself. Cade had asked her to dinner. She’d said yes.
Two very nice dates later, they’d decided that they’d be better suited as friends than lovers. That had worked out well, considering that Tessa had returned to Apple Valley to care for her nephew Alex. There’d been no doubt the two were meant to be together. Charlotte had been thrilled when Cade had asked her opinion on the engagement ring he’d bought for Tessa. She’d been overjoyed to hear that that Tessa had said “yes.”
That’s not what the blue-haired ladies at the diner were saying, though.
According to them, Charlotte was pining with love for the town’s handsome sheriff. Half of them probably expected that she’d poisoned the cake. It would be interesting to see how many actually ate a piece of the confection.
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