It wasn’t yet five o’clock, but the sun was already setting. If he were the napping sort, it would be a good time for it—the evening loomed long before him. This isn’t how life’s supposed to be. I’ve spent thirty years trying to help people avoid loneliness of the soul and now I’m headed down that same road. He raised his eyes heavenward, trying to see Elnora’s features in his mind. I could use some help here.
Maggie barked sharply and trotted to the French doors. Eli followed her, glad to have his personal pity party interrupted. “Want to go out?”
She did, but not for the reason he’d assumed. Cass was on the graveled path, a bright picture in her green coat and peacock blue scarf. Yearning washed over him like an overcoat of late adolescence. Even in the cold outside air, he felt warm. Enlivened. “Walking?”
In the time it took him to put on his fleece jacket, he’d joined her, clipping Maggie’s leash to her collar.
They discussed their Thanksgiving celebrations, the progress of Chapter Six and his website even though it wasn’t a workday, and whether or not Eli would be a baby after his upcoming surgery.
“I’ll be a hero,” he insisted, waving his arm and hitting a tree limb that promptly dumped snow all over them. “This hand will look like Mighty Mouse’s on steroids. I’ve seen those bandages.”
She shook her head, her soft curls blowing against his cheek. “You’ll be a wimp.”
He lowered his arm, taking her hand in his. For warmth, he told himself. But she didn’t pull away. Oh, sweet Lord, she didn’t pull away. “Wimp? Did you just say wimp?” He almost added, “To your boss?” But he didn’t want her to remember right then that he was her employer. That at the end of the day, he signed her paycheck. Today he just wanted to be friends with her.
Or more.
“When do you put up your Christmas tree?” She smiled at him, her eyes showing green in the dusky light. “I ask because I’m pretty sure your Mighty Mouse bandage will relegate that job to your worthy assistant.”
“I don’t.”
She stopped walking. Maggie didn’t like that. And Cass’s hand pulled loose from his—he didn’t like that. Her eyes were wide, as though he’d said something at least shocking if not downright profane. “What?”
He shrugged. “I’ve lived alone for twenty years and I’ve never spent Christmas at home, so it seemed like a waste of time and work. I’ve always enjoyed other people’s trees. When do you put yours up?”
“Thanksgiving weekend. Well, the last two years, I didn’t.” Bleakness crossed her face so quickly he thought he’d imagined it, chased by a determined smile. “I will in the cottage, though.”
“A real one?”
She gasped in what he hoped was mock horror. “This is Christmas Town, remember? And this is Maine. Of course I put up a real one, and I decorate it with those gingerbread men you were coveting the other day.”
“I wanted to eat them, not hang them on a tree,” he protested.
Laughing together, they walked toward downtown, their hands together again. Sometimes, when they stopped, his arm went around her shoulders. The physical connection lent excitement to the day.
Although the Green wasn’t fully decorated yet, people had already been busy putting up lights and hanging holly on the picket fences as they would every morning until the Christmas pageant on Christmas Eve.
Most businesses were closed, a practice Eli was old-fashioned enough to applaud, though it looked as though Esther’s House was open. She’d probably had guests in the B & B over the long holiday weekend. Beginning tomorrow, Santa would come to town each afternoon at three o’clock, his sleigh pulled by two farm horses. Carolers, volunteers from every choir and chorus in Christmas County, would roam downtown in full voice every afternoon and evening until Christmas.
The ten-foot Christmas tree in front of the Pine Tree Inn was already lit. Across the street from it, a sign declared that Beth’s Trees was open, although not doing a booming business by the looks of things.
“Do you mind?” Cass didn’t wait for him to answer, just moved into the display of cut trees. Maggie strained at her leash to follow and Cass slowed, laughing. “Douglas firs?” she asked when the lot attendant approached.
The young woman hesitated. “Over there, I think.” She paused for a moment, as if measuring her words, then said, “They’re very nice. I’m sure you’ll find one you like.” She smiled down at Maggie, but her gray eyes had a wounded look that made Eli want to offer to help her.
Cass soon found a fat three-footer that would fit on the library table in front of the cottage’s front window. After paying for it, she kept looking. “Here, Eli,” she said finally, backing out of a stack of trees. “It’s perfect. It might as well have your house’s name on it.”
“That’s one of my favorites.” The young woman, who’d told them her name was Cara, hurried to help Cass hold it up straight. “Do you have a nice big area for it?”
He did, but that didn’t mean he wanted it. Trees were messy. They lost needles. This one was so big it would undoubtedly cost as much as his last royalties check. But it would take a stronger man than he was to look away from the two pairs of eyes—three counting Maggie’s—that told him he needed a tree this year.
“Okay.” His sigh came from so deep the exhalation should have frozen into a snowball. “Just remember what my worthy assistant promised.”
Cass exchanged a conspiratorial look with Cara and shook her head. “He’s imagining things.”
They paid for their trees, arranging to pick them up the next day, and crossed Main Street to head toward home. Eli paused in front of Esther’s House. “Do you want a cup of hot chocolate?”
She nodded. “Sounds good, but what about Maggie?”
“She’ll hide under the table and Esther will pretend not to notice.”
That was exactly how it went, too, even though Cass snorted laughter when Esther “accidentally” dropped a doggy treat on the floor when she delivered their mugs of chocolate and a plate of Christmas cookies.
“It’s been a different kind of day.” Cass rested her chin in her palm. “I thought it would be so lonely after the girls left and it wasn’t. Thank you for sharing your afternoon with me.”
“The gratitude should be mine. I didn’t expect to be lonesome and was. You saved me from that.” Eli sipped from his cup and smiled over at her, thinking he wouldn’t mind sitting here with her until Esther threw them out. “Just as you saved my website and Chapter Five. I’m glad I happened onto you that day in Reindeer Meadow, Cass Logan.”
She smiled back, her eyes glinting green in the flickering light of the candle on their table. “I’m glad you did, too.”
He and Maggie walked her all the way back to the cottage. The dog sat quietly on the doormat while Eli took Cass into his arms and kissed her.
“It’s been a long time.” She sounded breathless, which was exactly how he felt. “Could we try that again?”
Certainly they could.
Chapter 6
Eli slept away Monday afternoon after his morning surgery. His bandaged hand rested in his lap. Maggie gave him concerned looks occasionally, but let him sleep. She went to Cass’s office chair whenever she needed to go out or just wanted company.
At five o’clock, Cass shut down the computer and thought about leaving. Eli had said she should, that he’d be all right alone if she wouldn’t mind keeping Maggie for the night. She’d made soup and coffee and put them in thermoses to keep them hot. She’d even set out a teapot and a couple of bags of Earl Grey. Not that he usually drank tea, but she thought he might want some when he woke. She’d set the TV remote control, his cellphone, his medication, and a bottle of water within easy reach of the recliner where he slept. He would be fine.
Of course he would.
But still she hesitated. This had been her life for several years, looking after people who didn’t feel well and couldn’t take care of themselves. There’d been no choice, of course—she’d loved
Paul and her mother. But every day had started with the knowledge that, barring miracles, neither of them would ever get better.
She didn’t love Eli Welcome, but she liked him. And more. In the time she’d known him, when they had spent great parts of every day together, she’d also come to respect him and enjoy his company. Sometimes, when he smiled at her or held her gaze with eyes the same color as the faded jeans he wore most of the time, she felt the kind of yearning that was physical but...oh, a lot more than physical, too. The kind she’d thought had died with Paul.
But it hadn’t. Eli had proven that to her on her porch Thursday night. When she thought about the shared kisses—which she had done almost nonstop since then—that longing became a part of her. Warm and electric in her veins. In her heart.
She took off her jacket, hanging it back in the closet near the front door. She would go home later, after he’d woken up and she was sure he would be all right for the night. Until then, she’d go into his wonderful kitchen and bake. She’d promised him gingerbread men to go on the tree that stood still undecorated in the living room corner furthest from the fireplace.
“Cass?” His voice stopped her before she’d gotten out of the room, and she turned back, going over to the recliner.
“What can I get for you?” How many times had she said that? And how many times had she heard the same reply?
“Nothing.”
His eyes were clear and his color good. She thought a little resentfully that she’d never looked that healthy after any kind of medical procedure, much less an invasive one.
Still holding her gaze, he continued, “But you need to know I’m all right. You don’t have to take care of me.”
She swallowed hard. “It’s not your hand that’s the problem. You’ll have your bandage off in not time. It’s that you have a bad heart.” She caught herself, but not in time. She’d already said more than she should have. “I’m sorry. It’s not my business. I saw the pacemaker the other day.”
He shrugged, shaking his head against the back of the chair. “It’s not a secret. I have a very good heart, but my electrical system’s screwed up. It doesn’t mean I’m going to die, or that you’re going to be trapped at my bedside typing my memoirs.”
She tried to laugh, though it was a breathy failure. She couldn’t bear to think of him dying. “Your memoirs? Really?”
“Yeah. It would only take a couple of days. I’m a pretty boring guy.”
He was anything but boring. He was intelligent and funny and compassionate. She liked everything about being his assistant, but she didn’t want to be his caregiver, the one doctors left instructions with and pharmacists called on the phone. The one left to grieve alone when her world did a drunken spin on its axis once again.
She gave herself a moment to get her voice back to normal. “Do you play chess?”
“Yes.”
“Will you teach me?”
“Of course. Do you play euchre?”
“Yes. I grew up in Indiana—we all play euchre.”
“Will you teach me and whatever other two people we can talk into it?” He gestured with a hand that looked for all the world as if he was wearing a white oven mitt. “Of course, I can’t learn until I get these bandages off, which means we both have to stick around. Okay?”
She thought for a moment of the day she’d returned to Maine, when it had struck her that there was nothing left for her, not in Indiana or Christmas Town or anywhere else. That wasn’t true anymore. Because even though she might never mean anything more to Eli Welcome than an able employee, he was much more than that to her.
She wasn’t ready to examine too closely just how much more, so she settled for what was offered. “Where’s your chess game? I’ll set up a table in here.”
~*~
He smelled gingerbread. Maybe he had died, regardless of what he’d semi-promised his assistant, because surely to his Lord this was what heaven was like. It smelled like Cass’s cottage had before Thanksgiving, but he was in his own bed and it was full daylight. He never slept past dawn, even in midsummer when it seemed as though the sun came up before he was fully asleep. Maggie was nowhere to be seen. Eli imagined she’d already followed the scent of gingerbread.
Ten minutes later, having mastered getting the sleeves of a shirt over his bandaged hand and putting on socks one-handed—who’d have thought that would be so hard?—he followed his nose to the kitchen.
“Tell me those are gingerbread pancakes you’re making. I’m really hungry.”
Standing at the sink, Cass jumped. Maggie, at her feet, turned and barked accusingly at him. “Sit down. I’ll bring your coffee.” The skin under Cass’s eyes was dark with what looked suspiciously like fatigue.
“Did you go home?” He sat obediently—his hand throbbed more than he cared to admit, especially to his assistant who looked suspiciously like she hadn’t slept.
“For a while.” She brought coffee for them both and took the seat that had become her accustomed one. Her ever-present notebook was at her place. She didn’t meet his eyes. “Did you sleep well?”
“I did, which you know very well because you checked on me every hour on the hour, right?”
“Not that often.” But her cheeks bloomed bright pink. “Let me get you some toast to have with your medication.” She was up and away from the table before he could stop her.
When she was seated again and they were both sharing their toast with Maggie, he said, “This isn’t part of the job description. I’m fine on my own.” She had her curly hair in a messy bun sitting a little crookedly on the back of her head. He couldn’t stop looking at it.
He couldn’t stop looking at her.
“I had to be here. Maggie wants to go down to the green this morning and see how the decorating is coming along and you know she’ll jerk your arm right off if you don’t move quickly enough.”
He sipped from his cup and thought he might have to marry her just so he could drink her coffee every day for the rest of his life.
Where had that thought come from?
Wherever it had come from, he hurried past it. “I have two arms, you know. I probably wouldn’t hold the leash in the bandaged hand. Did she tell you she wanted to go to the green?”
“She didn’t have to.” Cass looked smug. “She and I understand each other.”
“May I go to the green with you and Maggie, or does she want to keep you to herself?”
“Well, I don’t know.” She slipped out of her chair and into a crouch, lifting the little dog to her knees. “What do you think, girl? Shall we let him come along?” She waited while the dog nuzzled her ear, then said with a deep, phony sigh, “She says all right, this time, but you have to behave and if anyone offers her a treat you’re not to say no.”
“I think you’re both a little on the far side of normal.” But he was laughing. He seemed to laugh a lot when she was around. He’d planned to work today, but that could wait. For a few hours, anyway. “Can you leave your baking?”
“I’m between batches,” she assured him.
He put on his jacket and one glove while she got ready to go, walking around the dining room table and looking at the gingerbread ornaments. He found a star with a broken point and ate it, chewing thoughtfully. There were gingerbread boys, girls, reindeer, stars, bells, and other shapes. Some of them looked like the letter X, but were bumpy and asymmetrical. “What’s this?” He held one up when she came into the room. “Should I eat them so no one sees how crooked they are? I wouldn’t want you to be embarrassed.”
Her laughter made music in his soul, and he closed his eyes against the emotion that washed up both unexpectedly and powerfully.
“It’s two sticks crossed, for Two Sticks Farm. I made them for the girls’ trees. And a few for mine, too. There were a lot of happy years on that farm.” She sounded wistful.
“Why did you leave it?”
“It was the way we set it up when Paul first got sick. We both knew I wouldn’t want to be
there if he wasn’t. We still owned the property in Indiana, so I kept that one and Two Sticks went to Amy and Lia. But then my mother died and there was nothing to keep me in Indiana, either, so I sold that farm and came back to where the girls are.”
They stepped outside. Eli lifted his face to draw in the cold, clear air, then smiled because she did the very same thing at the very same time. “Do you want to move back to Two Sticks?” His bandaged hand felt chilly, and he slipped it into his pocket.
“No. I was panicky when I came back here, because I felt so lost,” she admitted. “I guess I thought my life was over because I was truly alone for the first time ever, but it wasn’t. It’s just different now—kind of anticipatory, for want of a better word.” Her glance at him was shy, but verging on flirtatious. “I have you to thank for that.”
“Me?” He didn’t intend to take her hand, but somehow her gloved fingers were laced with his.
“Because of you I have a job and a place to live and a friend.” She chuckled when Maggie lunged toward a scampering squirrel. “Okay, two friends.”
They walked all over town, waving at and stopping to talk to the people working on the green. Eli came to a full stop in front of St. Matthew’s.
Cass tilted her head back to look up at the steeple—it was the tallest one in town. “I’ve always thought this was such a pretty church. Do you miss it a lot?”
“I still go to services here.”
“That’s not what I mean,” she said, her voice gentle. “I remember asking you the day I came about the job if stopping being a pastor was like stopping being a mother. It is, isn’t it?”
“Some of it is.” He shrugged, trying to stave off the sadness that threatened. “I guess that’s the part I miss. Marrying people, being a sounding board when they’ve decided life just sucks, helping to solve problems. Just being a hand-holder.”
She smiled at him. “You want to do what I never want to do again, don’t you? You want to be—at least spiritually—a caregiver.”
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