Love Reimagined

by Delancey Stewart

  The Palmers were at my house for dinner the night the snow began falling around the village, and after we’d all stood out and marveled at the beauty of it, we’d gone back in to work on the puzzle we’d just started in the middle of our dining table.

  “Think Mr. Allen’s house can still be done in time for Christmas?” I asked Sam and Chance.

  Chance whistled long and low. “You told me it had to be done.”

  Sam smiled at me. I’d become the conversational conduit between him and his brother, and in some ways I’d begun to run the office. Chance didn’t make promises to clients without checking the schedule with me first, and Sam was much calmer now that Chance wasn’t overpromising.

  “I’d really like us to be able to keep the promise you made him,” I said.

  “Miranda,” Chance began. “Construction is not about promises. It’s about schedules, and those are often impacted by—”

  “So we’ll have it done?” I interrupted.

  “If the snow’s not too heavy, we’ll get it done,” he said, shaking his head at me.

  My mother wore an almost-constant smile these days, and she looked up at me to smile now, something different lighting her eyes that made me a little bit nervous. Dad had been quiet all night, and Sam had been a little jumpy, standing up often and shaking out his newspaper while he looked around the room, as if expecting something to happen.

  As I put in a piece of the puzzle, I felt Sam’s gaze lingering on me and I looked up. He was staring at me, a warm look on his face and a tiny smile on his full lips that made my insides flip. I wanted to kiss that smile and watch it grow. I suddenly wished Sam and I could have a little time alone.

  “Miranda,” he said, reading my mind. “Take a walk with me?”

  My mother let out a strange little yelp, and I looked at her questioningly.

  “Excuse me,” she chirped, covering her mouth with her hand as if she’d burped.

  “Sure,” I said, standing up. “Let me grab my coat.”

  We went out onto the porch, my parents and Chance watching us with more interest than normal, and I had a sneaking suspicion that something was afoot. The light from the house cast a warm glow around the structure, and it made the thin layer of snow that had fallen turn a soft yellow. The woodsmoke in the air was a comfort—fireplace fires smelled completely different from forest fires—and my heart swelled in my chest as Sam took my hand. My life had turned around so significantly in a short amount of time, I didn’t know how much more happiness I could handle.

  I let Sam lead me out into the darkness of the road, and we ambled slowly along, breathing the cold air. Sam put our clasped hands into the pocket of his warm coat and stopped walking, turning so we were facing one another.

  “Remember when I went to a meeting at lunch today?” he asked without preamble.

  “Yes,” I said, wondering where he was going with this.

  “Do you know who I met with?”

  “The schedule said, ‘important meeting,’ and since you wouldn’t let me come, I have no clue.” There was a slight pout in my voice. I’d been a much bigger part of the business since becoming partner, and I didn’t like being left out.

  He chuckled, and the sound stirred the desire I’d felt inside. I rose up on my toes to kiss him. A little groan escaped his lips when I did, and he pulled me close and kissed me back. After a minute, he pulled away, his eyes on the cabin at the end of the road—Mrs. Teague’s place. “You know what?” he said. “Would you mind taking a super quick detour?”

  I held his hand and let him guide me as we walked to the widow’s front door and knocked. I spoke to Mrs. Teague now and then, but I’d never dropped by unexpected. I grinned up at Sam. “What are we doing?”

  “Just checking in,” he said.

  The old woman opened the door, looking small and a little bit frightened, but her face cleared when she saw Sam standing in the circle of light on her front doorstep. As soon as she recognized him, her hand went to her hair. “Oh hello, Sam,” she said, and I would’ve sworn she blushed. “What are you doing here so late at night? Hello Miranda.” Her eyes darted toward me, but then went right back to Sam, full of admiration.

  “I just wanted to check in and say hello,” he said. “I told you the other day I’d stop by again soon.”

  She smiled and then looked over at me, almost sheepishly. “Sam’s been keeping me company lately, playing backgammon.”

  I smiled up at him. I knew we’d agreed to refinish her second floor, but I’d had no idea Sam and Mrs. Teague were friends.

  “I just like to make sure you’re happy and healthy,” he said, his smile wide and warm. “And I wanted to see if we were still on for a walk tomorrow afternoon. Do you have snow boots?”

  She gazed past us, maybe noticing the snow for the first time. “Oh my,” she said. “I think I do have. I guess I’d better find them.”

  “Good,” Sam said. “I’ll be here at ten, and we can double check your heaters and make sure you’ve got plenty of firewood stacked where you can get to it easily, okay?”

  My heart warmed as the woman’s face glowed, and I couldn’t help but feel proud of the man standing next to me, proud to be holding his hand. He was thoughtful and kind, warm and strong. And the way his eyes crinkled at the corners as he grinned at the old woman with genuine warmth lit another little flame inside me. Sam was a good man. In every way.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow Sam,” Mrs. Teague said, her smile relaxed and happy.

  “Good night,” Sam and I both said, and we walked away after Mrs. Teague had closed her door.

  I pressed myself against Sam’s warm side, unable to stop myself from smiling. “You’re a good man, Sam.”

  “Because I worry about an old lady on her own?”

  “Yeah. That and about a million other things.”

  Sam stopped us then and took my other hand so I was facing him, the moon casting long blue shadows on the snow beginning to gather at our feet. “Do you know who I met with today?”

  This again? “No,” I said. “Are you going to tell me?”

  “I met with your parents,” he said.

  What? Confusion swirled within my mind. “Are they building something?” It was odd they wouldn’t mention it to me first.

  “No, but maybe we are,” he said.

  Riddles were not my strong suit. “What are you talking about?”

  Sam took both my hands in his and kissed each of my palms before wrapping my hands in the warmth of his bigger ones. Then he dropped to his knee in the gathering snow.

  “Sam!” I laughed, half of me realizing what might be happening, and the other part still disbelieving and thinking only about how his knees were getting wet.

  “Miranda,” he said, his voice low and reverent. “I’ve loved you as long as I can remember. And I know we haven’t been together a long time—as a couple I mean. But I know you like I know my own soul, and you know me better than anyone else. And you love me anyway.”

  “I do,” I said, feeling the irony of the words as tears sprang to my eyes. “Even though you always smell like licorice.”

  “Shut up, you love it.”

  “I don’t think you’re supposed to tell me to shut up while you’re proposing.”

  Sam grinned at me. “How do you know I’m proposing?”

  Oh crap. I pulled my hands back, feeling silly. “You’re not? I mean…you had a meeting with my parents! What was—” My voice was rising quickly.

  Sam took my hands back in his own. “Calm down,” he said. “Let me finish.”

  I took a deep breath but couldn’t help myself. “But are you proposing or not?”

  “Miranda,” Sam’s voice held a little note of warning.

  I shifted my weight impatiently. “Okay, okay. Sorry.”

  “Your parents gave me permission to speak to you tonight, to ask you a question.”

  “Yes.” Excitement flooded my chest. He was proposing!

  “I wondered if you�
��d do me the great honor—” his voice faltered slightly.

  “Yes!” I was trying to make this easier for him.

  “Of finishing this walk with me.” He stood up.

  “Wait, what?” My heart fell. “Walk? I don’t…” What the hell? Had I been completely wrong about what was happening here?

  Sam didn’t say a word, but he didn’t move either. “Dammit, Miranda,” he finally said, turning to me. “I’m supposed to get to talk, and then once I’ve asked the question, you answer. That’s how it’s gone in my head every time.”

  The snow was falling thick around us now, and the confusion cleared. He was trying to propose. But I kept screwing it up. I nodded eagerly. “I’ll be quiet.”

  Sam took his knees again. “Miranda, you already make me happier every day than I knew I could ever be. Would you consider making me the happiest man in the world and become my wife?” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a little box, flipping open the lid. In the relative darkness, I couldn’t see the color of the box, and I couldn’t really see the ring, but the lights from my distant house reflected in Sam’s eyes and glinted off the surface of the stone on the ring. I didn’t care if it was tiny, I didn’t care if it was a rock he’d picked up on the side of the road. What the ring looked like didn’t matter at all to me. What mattered was the man before me, kneeling in the snow and asking if I’d spend my life with him. Tears rolled fat and happy down my cheeks and my chest squeezed with emotion.

  “Yes,” I said softly, dropping to my knees to face him. “Yes, I want to marry you,” I said, and Sam threw his arms around me, pulling me close and pressing his lips to mine. He kissed me deeply and passionately, and I wasn’t sure if hours went by or merely minutes, as heavy flakes of snow drifted down around us and Sam held me in his arms beneath the shadows of the trees that had witnessed every important moment in my life. Here was one more event for the Giant Sequoias to chronicle—the night I agreed to become Mrs. Sam Palmer as snow fell all around us in Kings Grove. The night my heart became fuller than I’d ever known it could be, and everything that had ever seemed wrong suddenly felt completely right. “I love you, Sam.”

  “Miranda,” he said, slipping the ring onto my finger, “I love you more than you will ever know.”

  And in the presence of those big trees, atop a blanket of freshly fallen snow, my life began again.

  THE END

  Sneak Peek

  Love Redefined - Chance Palmer’s Story

  Love Redefined Chapter 1

  Chance

  Wakey wakey!” I called, pushing through the back door into Sam’s house.

  No answer came from the bedroom down the hall, but that wasn’t unusual. Sam had developed an affinity for sleeping in, now that he and Miranda spent most nights together.

  I bustled around in the kitchen, making coffee and stirring up batter for pancakes, and I’d be lying if I said I was trying to be quiet.

  And I’m not a liar.

  I generally spent my mornings at Sam’s house, even though my own house was about three hundred yards away and I had a modern and functional kitchen I liked very much. In fact, when Sam and I had rebuilt our houses after the fire had taken our family’s old home, we’d spared no expense, and my kitchen here was nicer than most homes in the valley. It was nicer than Sam’s because my tastes were just higher end.

  But his whole house felt more comfortable in some way I couldn’t put my finger on, and I preferred his place to the cold austere elegance of my own house.

  When the coffee pot was full and the sausages were sizzling, I heard movement down the hall and poked my head around the corner to see Miranda shuffling out of the bedroom, her hair sticking up in all directions and her glasses slightly askew. She wore loose pajama pants and a long-sleeved T-shirt, but the thing you noticed first about Miranda was her smile.

  “Morning, Chance,” she said, her voice thick with sleep as she grinned at me and got herself a cup of coffee. She settled into a chair at the end of the table as I finished up, and a few minutes later Sam appeared, looking far less adorable than his wife-to-be.

  “Dude,” he said, his grumpy demeanor settled firmly in place. “You have your own house. Why do you barge in here every weekend and make a bunch of noise at five o’clock in the morning?”

  “It’s after eight,” I informed him.

  “It’s not your house,” he said, picking up a sausage and sticking it in his mouth.

  “Who would cook for you guys if I didn’t come up?”

  “I have an idea,” Sam said, and I prepared myself for a sarcastic assault. “Why don’t you cook breakfast at your own house on that Viking stove you insisted you had to have, and then you can use your phone to invite us to come down there?”

  I raised a shoulder and shot him a grin.

  “It’s fine, Sam,” Miranda said. “It’s nice having breakfast made for us. Chance is like our own personal chef.”

  “No, he’s like my own personal brother I can’t get rid of.”

  Sam might have had a point, actually. The thing was, I’d never planned to stay in Kings Grove, never wanted to. When I’d gone to college, I’d wiped my hands of this place and never planned to come back, except maybe for the occasional holiday. And when I met Rebecca at grad school and she accepted my proposal, well, that sealed it.

  But if my life so far had taught me anything, it was that there was no value in making plans for yourself. The universe had some kind of twisted, screwed-up plan for each of us, and trying to point yourself in a different direction ended only in heartache. And I’d had enough of that. If the universe wanted me here in Kings Grove, living my life three hundred yards from my baby brother, then that’s what I was going to do.

  And I couldn’t help it if my house felt a little bit lonely compared to the warmth Sam got to enjoy with Miranda here.

  I was staying close. The universe intended it this way.

  “You’ll be happy to know I have a meeting today, and if all goes well, I’ll probably have to go down to Sac for a couple days this week or next,” I told Sam, making a plate of pancakes and sausage for myself and settling into my spot at the long table. “Developer is looking at bringing a high-end resort up here and I’m going to go charm his pants off.”

  “Why do you want his pants off?” Sam asked.

  I threw a pancake at him. “You know what I mean.”

  “Do we need a high-end resort up here?” Miranda asked, smoothing her hair back into a ponytail. “What about the Inn?”

  “Not sure yet,” I said. “Maybe we expand the Inn, maybe we replace it. Maybe both properties can serve slightly different audiences. I’m not sure if Annette and Joe want to keep that thing going anyway.” Annette and Joe Piper had been running the Kings Grove Inn for decades, and both were in their seventies now. I had a strong feeling they might be looking for an exit strategy anyway.

  “Anyway, thanks for breakfast,” I said, taking my plate to the sink. “I’ll see you guys later on. Stay out of trouble.” I kissed Miranda on the cheek, stuck a hand into Sam’s hair and rubbed it around, and was out the door before he could shout at me.

  I walked back to my own house, the clean clear air filling my lungs as the endless blue sky of the Sierra Nevadas stretched cloudless over my head. This summer was proving to be mild and beautiful, and anyone would look around themselves here and feel lucky to be alive, lucky to be in a place as magical as this.

  Anyone but me. I opened the door to my darkened house and felt my energy sink. Back at home. Back in my quiet, perfect, empty home.

  An hour later, I was parking the truck in front of the Palmer Construction office. I glanced over at the main parking lot, surrounded by the central buildings of the village’s downtown, such as it was. There were plenty of cars parked around, which meant good news for the local businesses that depended on tourist traffic in the summer months to keep themselves going the rest of the year.

  There were little groups of hikers clustered on the si
dewalks in front of the ranger’s station and the diner, and the lot in front of the Inn was packed. Kings Grove was pumping. It was perfect, considering I was trying to sell this developer on the place being busy enough to support a high-end property.

  I got out of the truck and looked around the for guy I was supposed to be meeting. He didn’t seem to have made it up the hill yet, so I unlocked the office and pushed open the door to wait inside.

  My office usually needed some tidying up, so I forced myself to get to work doing that until the guy showed up. The bell over the door rang after a few minutes and I stepped into my doorway, confused to find a tall woman with dark wavy hair stepping into the lobby.

  “Hello?” She called in a voice low and resonant with just a touch of sandpaper in it. “Hey, are you Chance?”

  I stepped fully into the lobby feeling a little bit off balance. I’d been expecting a man, a guy named Mike Kennedy. This woman was clearly lost, but as she stood there with dark eyes holding my gaze and a little flush on her cheeks, I found myself wanting to keep her here for a minute.

  “Guilty,” I said, smiling wide. “Can I help you with something?”

  The woman gave me an evaluative look and shifted her weight. She wore dark jeans and boots with a low heel, and a wrap tank that was professional, but also revealed a figure that was both fit and curvy. Her arms were toned and defined, and for a second I thought I might like to ask her about her workout regime.

  “We had a meeting this morning?” She sounded the tiniest bit annoyed.

  Confusion made my smile slip a touch. “I did have a meeting this morning,” I agreed. “With a guy named Mike.”

  “With a girl named Mike, actually.” She sighed and reached out to shake my hand, and I got the sense she’d had this conversation many times. “Michaela Kennedy,” she said.

  I took her hand, impressed by her firm grip and soft skin. Her eyes never left mine, and something in my chest warmed uncomfortably. “Okay, well.” I was strangely off guard, and stepped back for a minute to compose myself. “Sorry, I just…”