Strangely, Corrie felt exactly like a lost puppy. Only she felt that way when she thought of returning home, not here in the inn with Greer and Andy.
Andy went out and got the spare twinkle lights and began winding them through the branches.
Corrie showed Greer how to carefully poke a threaded sewing needle through the center of the popcorn and slide it along to the end. She left her with that and went to throw together some sugar cookie dough.
When she had popped the first batch into the oven she came back to find Andy with the lights tangled into a ball and Greer with only three pieces of popcorn strung, throwing fistfuls of the stuff at the branches and crying.
“I leave you two on your own for fifteen minutes and this is what happens?”
“Maybe we really do need you to stay,” Andy teased then gave a sad smile and added, “Which means if I were you, I’d run for the hills while you still can.”
Corrie gave him a shake of her head then went down on her knees by his sister. She scooped up the sock monkey left limp on the floor and offered it to Greer. “What’s the matter, sweetie?”
The child took Buddy Mon-Kay in both hands and curled him into a tight hug. “This isn’t working. The popcorn just breaks when I try to string it. I miss my mommy. If she was here, she’d know what to do to fix it.”
Corrie lifted her gaze to Andy.
He let the knotted-up lights fall away and came to their side. He put his hand on Greer’s back. “Hey, kiddo. You know Mom is off helping somebody else have a family of their own for Christmas. I got an email saying she’ll be back on Tuesday. That’s not too long for us to wait, knowing what good work Mom is doing, is it?”
The little girl looked up at him and sniffled. The tears in her dark eyes beaded on her black eyelashes, but once she swiped them away with the back of her hand, they stopped. “No. That’s not too long. Families are important. I just wish…”
Andy’s face went pale. His jaw tightened.
Clearly, even people who didn’t have bitter, overprotective mothers sometimes wished their moms made different choices. A wall of conflicting emotions rose up in Corrie. She missed her mom. She wanted to comfort Greer. She had empathy for Andy. She felt in that one moment abandoned and comforted.
She stood and cleared her throat. “You know, I have three big bags of miniature marshmallows in the trunk of my car. I bet those would string a lot easier and be just as pretty. Why don’t I go get those?”
Andy turned his head to follow her flight as she gathered her coat and headed for the door. “But they’re for the contest entry, right?”
“Yeah. It’s a quick way to make an easy fondant and I want to mix them with icing to make clumpy, shiny globs of snow. But they’re just marshmallows. I can buy more tomorrow.” With that she stepped outside and took a deep breath to collect herself.
What was happening to her? she wondered. Maybe Andy had a point about sticking to the plan. If she let herself get carried away too much, she’d never find her way. She took a deep breath, steadied her resolve and went to get the marshmallows from her car.
They did string up much more easily than the popcorn, especially after they decided to use dental floss instead of string. In almost no time they had wound the garland from the top branches to the lower ones. Andy plugged in the twinkle lights.
“Now we’re getting somewhere,” Corrie announced at the sight.
“Somewhere boring,” Greer grumbled. “There’s no colors on this tree. That doesn’t look very Christmassy to me.”
Corrie stared down at the very simply shaped, pale sugar cookies on the tray in her hands. “She has a point. If I had food coloring, I could have whipped up some icing for these. But I didn’t bring any because I wanted all white accents on my piece.”
“You know these cookies are kind of like your contest gingerbread.” Andy picked up one of the diamond shapes.
“How so?” Corrie cocked her head, trying to guess what he had in mind.
“They don’t have to taste good.” He looked over the cookie in his hand as if contemplating taking a bite. “In fact, they don’t even have to be edible.”
“I did make them extra thick and less sweet than my usual Christmas sugar cookies, to stand up to being hung on the tree. So, what are you thinking?”
He moved in close to whisper, “I have gallons of powder blue paint in the dining room. I don’t suppose the painters would miss enough to cover a few cookies.”
She pulled back just enough to meet his gaze. “Andy McFarland, I do believe you’re beginning to think like me.”
“I’d deny it but before I met you I can’t imagine a case where I’d ever have suggested using wall paint on cookies, then using those cookies as Christmas tree ornaments.” He shook his head and put the cookie back on the tray.
She laughed and went to the cans stacked along the side of the dining room. She picked one up and read the label. “You sure you ordered powder blue paint?”
“I don’t like the sound of that question. What’s wrong?” His boots scuffed over the concrete floor, pounding along until he was at her side. “What color is the paint?”
She plunked the can down with a deadened thud. “Gunpowder blue.”
His eyes went all squinty. “What exactly is gunpowder blue?
Corrie used the can opener key to pry the lid off and peered down inside, concluding, “Gray.”
“Gray?” He swept two fingers across the paint on the lid and smeared it on to the dining room wall.
Corrie looked closely at the color, which was darker and maybe a hint bluer than the concrete beneath their feet. “It’s gray all right.”
“No. This won’t do. I can’t…” His face went red.
Corrie suspected that if the painters had been here instead of her and Greer, he’d have lit into them and taken a bite out of their backsides. He had been trying so hard to get this all right and here it was, another goof up like the bed linens and lack of curtains and workers who refused to work in bad weather. She wanted to comfort him. She wanted to counsel him.
She wanted to take him in her arms and kiss him and make it all better, the way he had when she had bumped her head.
Instead she tried to smile about it and said, “At least you hadn’t already wasted a couple of days getting it on the walls before you found out.”
“Yeah, I guess there is that.” He took the lid from her and set it on top of the can. “Well, there’s no choice. I have tell the painters to hold off while I go to Daviston tomorrow to get all new paint.”
Greer cocked her head and looked at them. “Does that mean we’re done decorating?”
“We can find another way to get color on to the tree,” Corrie said. There was always another way, of course, and Andy needed to be reminded of that. “If you have any colored paper we could make a paper chain.”
Andy shook his head and nudged the paint can with the toe of his boot. “I don’t know where I’d find any—”
“I have some.” Greer ran off to the spot beside the front door where she had sloughed off her coat. Her small hand dove into the coat pocket and she wrestled free the piece of red paper she had brought home from Sunday school. “We can use this.”
“That’s a start. If you can round up some more, plus a pair of scissors and some glue or tape, we’ll be in business.” Corrie took the page.
“I have some tape in a box in my room and I have a magazine we could cut up, too. There’s scissors in the kitchen drawer because Andy won’t let me keep them upstairs.” Greer ran off to get the other supplies.
“You know which drawer she means?” Corrie started off toward the other room with the paper in her hand.
Andy raised each can of paint in turn, checking the labels and shaking his head as he said, “Considering I was hiding them from her and she knows where they are, my guess is she moved them, so…”
“I’ll figure it out as I—” Just then she flipped over the page Greer had gotten in Sunday School, wanting to look at it before she cut it up. With every sentence she read there, her stomach tightened. “Andy? Did you know that the kids have to come up with their own costumes for the Christmas pageant?”
“Huh?” He looked up from the paint cans at last and blinked as if he’d just woken up from a light nap. “What? Costumes? When?”
Corrie closed the distance between them, her boots scuffing lightly over the hard surface of the floor with each hurried step. She extended the paper to him. “They have to bring their own costumes to the dress rehearsal Tuesday evening.”
“No. Not possible.” He took the paper away from her, read it over. “A costume? With a halo and wings? Forty-eight hours from now when I have to go out of town tomorrow? It’s not doable. No. There are some things I just can’t…” He crumpled the paper into a ball in one hand. “I can’t do it all.”
“Hey! We need that for the paper chain,” Greer snapped.
“I don’t have time to fool around with paper chains or painted cookies or decorating Christmas trees.” Andy tossed the balled-up paper lightly to his sister then paced to the base of the stairway, looked back at the unfinished room and shut his eyes. “I started out this day just a couple days behind on the inn. I’ve lost at least one more day because of the paint. Now I find out I’m also behind schedule getting you a costume for the Christmas play. I don’t think I can do all this alone.”
“You’re not alone,” Greer and Corrie spoke at once.
He put his fist on the banister and looked toward the door. “Look, it’s not that I don’t appreciate you two but neither one of you is a professional painter, neither one of you can make a child’s costume out of, well, I don’t even know what we’d make it out of but I do know we don’t have a sewing machine to do it and if we did, either of you a seamstress?”
“I may not be any of those things but I’m a really good prayer.” Greer took Corrie by the hand, dragged her a few steps then reached out to her brother. “You told me that we’re never alone. God is always with us. That’s what Christmas is all about, God loves us and doesn’t want us to be alone, so He sent us Jesus. So when we think it’s too much for us to take care of ourselves, we can turn to him.”
Corrie and Andy looked at each other. Another defining moment, this time not just for Andy, but for all of them. What he did now would help to shore up the foundation of his sister’s faith. And it would create a new level of closeness between Andy and Corrie. They would no longer just be two people whose paths crossed one lonely Christmas season. They would share a bond of faith.
“And one of the ways we help each other is to pray for each other,” Greer went on. “If we do that then we know we aren’t alone. We know Mom isn’t alone when she’s traveling and Andy’s not alone when he’s trying to get all his work done. And Corrie.”
“What about me?” she asked softly.
“Even if you don’t find your daddy, you’re not alone. You have God. You have us.”
Tears washed over Corrie’s line of vision. She struggled to swallow. Hardly an hour ago she had felt like a lost puppy and had dug deep within her memory to hold fast to her mother’s warning that she could only count on herself. Now this innocent child had taken her hand and acted in God’s stead to say that she was never alone because she was loved. Corrie looked at Andy.
“I have to tell you, if Greer wasn’t here, I probably wouldn’t have even thought about turning to prayer until I was absolutely overwhelmed.”
She nodded.
“But…what do you say?” He held his hand out toward her.
Her hand trembled as she lifted it then stretched her arm out and slid her chilled fingers into the warmth of his palm.
There in the twinkling light of the Christmas tree she bowed her head and the three of them shared a brief prayer that everything would work out.
That night as she drove home, Corrie began to formulate her own idea of just how that would happen.
Chapter Twelve
Monday morning the alarm clock woke Andy. He went about his workday routine as always. Showering, dressing, then heading into Greer’s room to get her up and started getting ready for school. Only this morning, Greer’s bed was empty.
A week ago that would have either irritated or worried him, or both. Today, he headed downstairs fairly certain of where he would find his sister and who he would find her with.
“Good morning, Greer! Good morning, Corrie!” He strolled through the swinging kitchen door only to find the room dark and cold.
Confused, he headed to the dining room. Empty. His pulse picked up to match his footsteps pounding against the unforgiving concrete. He had his hand on the banister and was just about to go bounding upstairs to look for his sister when the sound of giggling made him pull up short. “What on earth are you two doing?”
“’Bout time you got up, sleeping beauty.” Corrie called from where she sat, cross-legged on the floor shredding something silvery into strips that she then handed to Greer who reached up on tiptoe to place them on the tree. “We’ve already eaten breakfast out of a pouch and recycled the packaging into tinsel.”
“Nothing you just said registered in my thick head.” He rubbed his hand through his hair and squinted at the pair of them.
Greer laughed and handed him a silver packet containing a toaster pastry. “We ate them cold because I told Corrie that’s how I like them and she said she’d rather eat the cardboard hot or cold and I said that if we have to take the marshmallows off the tree then we should at least make icicles out of—”
“Again. Head.” He pointed to his skull. “Thick. Not getting any of this.”
Corrie laughed and stood. “I went to the grocery store in Hadleyville last night after I left here and found out there wasn’t a marshmallow to be found in all of town.”
He blinked at her and decided that even if she insisted on not making any sense, that didn’t mean he couldn’t carry on like a civil, normal human being. “Good morning to you.”
Corrie blushed.
He’d never met a woman so sheltered and yet so outgoing who blushed as easily as Corrie did. Well, he’d never met a woman as anything as Corrie. Still, he liked it when she blushed.
So he kept his gaze trained on her, folded his arms and lowered his chin. Using his best cool intensified look he asked, “I suppose you came to my home this early to get a start on your project?”
Her blush deepened. “Actually, no.”
Greer began fiddling with marshmallow strings and moving around the tree. “She came to get a ride to Daviston with you.”
Cool intensified became lukewarm unnerved. “What?”
“You said you were going over first thing to pick out some new paint?” Corrie made a nonspecific gesture toward the dining room and the pyramid of cans of gunpowder blue paint. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to come with and see if I can’t find some marshmallows.”
“If she can’t she may have to take the ones off the tree, only we’ve all had out dirty paws all over them.” Greer held her hands up and flashed her fingers up and down. “So these marshmallows might not look very white and snowy. So she’d rather go with you. So…say you’ll take her, Andy.”
“I need to… I can’t just…”
“And get some ornaments for the tree. Not a lot, but some pretty ones. Shiny. And lots of colors.” Again, Greer waved her hands all around as she spoke.
Corrie stood perfectly still, her hands clasped in front of her looking like a hapless waif in search of marshmallows.
He shifted his gaze from Greer to Corrie then to the tree. “I’ll be ready to leave as soon as Greer gets on the bus for school.”
Greer cheered and leapt in the air.
That was way more enthusiasm than the situation merited. Corrie laughed at the kid’s antics. But then she could. Corrie wouldn’t have to deal with the aftermath when she left and Greer realized that neither her prayer nor her blatant matchmaking attempts would make Corrie his girlfriend.
He rubbed his hand over his forehead but that didn’t ease the twinge of pain building there. He went to collect his sister to take her to the bus stop and though he didn’t want to do it, he had to make it perfectly clear to the kid. “I’ll take Corrie to Daviston because I’m going anyway, and it’s a good thing to do what you can for others, that’s all. Nothing more. Got that?”
“I got it,” Greer had said as she skipped off. “But I’m still praying that Corrie is your girlfriend. Don’t forget the ornaments.”
This was not how he had expected the morning to go. Greer on the bus. Corrie in the seat next to him. The Snowy Eaves Inn in the rearview mirror. Still, it didn’t seem to be costing him any time or effort and he didn’t exactly mind the company.
“When we get to Daviston, we’ll hit the home improvement store first to return the wrong color paint.” He glanced back to the truck bed to indicate the cans that had been stacked in the doorway to the dining room since last night. And were still stacked in the doorway to the dining room at this very minute. He fixed his eyes on the road as they passed a sign saying they were only a few miles away from Daviston and he groaned. “No. I can’t believe this.”
Corrie didn’t seem to have any trouble believing, or pointing out his mistake, though she did have the good grace to look sympathetic as she said, “You forgot the paint, didn’t you?”
“I meant to put the paint in the truck but I got distracted.” He gripped the steering wheel. “If we go back and get it now it will add at least an hour to this trip. And cost at least an hour of work today for me and…oh, man.”
“You know, I took a lot of pictures of the inn and Christmas tree last night.” She pulled her purse into her lap and began rummaging around in it. “I might have gotten the paint smudge you made on the wall if you want to show them how wrong it is. Worth a shot, right?”
She brought out her phone and began scrolling back through the photos.
Andy kept his eyes on the road. This was not like him. He didn’t just up and leave to run an errand without making sure he had everything he needed. “Don’t worry about it, Corrie. It’s not just about the color. We left in such a rush I left the phone number of the painter’s crew chief.”
She set the phone in her lap, cocked her head and pushed up her glasses. “Okay. No problem. We’ll just look him up on the web.”
“Or, when we get to town we’ll look him up in the phone book.”
“The phone book?” She laughed like he’d suggested they do something as archaic as hopping in his jalopy and heading down to the burger joint to split a malted. “I’ve used a phone book maybe three times in my whole life. Why don’t we just look him up online?”
He nodded toward the phone in her lap. “Can you connect to the web on that thing from here?”
She jabbed a couple of buttons. “Um…no. Sorry.”
“Then when we get to town we’ll try it the old-fashioned way. C’mon, you’re the one big on being flexible when things don’t go the way you want. Might do you good to learn a new skill,” he teased. “It’s not hard. The guy’s name is Ben Haines. You go to the H’s, find Haines then look down the list to Ben. Ben Haines… Haines, Ben.”
“Haines, Ben. Haines… Ben.” She said it normally, then quietly then she just mouthed the name with no sound at all. Then her lips moved without clearly forming any name or recognizable word. Finally, she turned to him. “What if…Andy…oh my goodness! It can’t be that easy, can it?”
“Trust me, it is.”
“No. You don’t understand.” She flipped back through the collection of photos she’d taken in the inn and stopped at one taken in the attic. She turned the screen toward him and thrust it in his direction. “BJ loves BB.”
“I can’t look at that. I’m driving. And if I weren’t driving and could look at it, I would still have to tell you that I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“My mom never talked about my dad to me. My grandmother insisted that Mom not even put his name on my birth certificate. I guess my mother went along with that because she was so hurt when he didn’t come for her and she was alone and desperate and needed my grandmother’s love and approval.”
“I see.” He made a sharp turn and the truck went bumping off the highway on to the side road that would take them to the store where they could use the phone book and get new paint.
Corrie seemed oblivious to the scenery as it changed from rural roadway to the landscape of a midsized town. She just stared at her cell phone and said, “Ten years ago when I begged my mom to find my dad, she got on the phone immediately. I sat on the floor in the other room, listening as she asked again and again for James Wallace. James Wallace. I said the name over and over and wrote it down in my diary like that. But…”
“Your mom wasn’t calling people and asking about your father, she was calling directory assistance, asking for a listing. Last name first.”
“I know it sounds so obvious now, but I was a kid. I didn’t know about that, I just heard her asking over and over for James Wallace but his name was really—”
“Wallace James.”
“Wallace James,” she echoed, softly. She touched the picture on the small screen. “Okay, that doesn’t make the initials BJ. But in the same year my mom worked at the inn, someone with her initials loved someone with the last initial J. Andy, I think I just figured out my father’s real name.”
“I guess it would be a bad time to bring up that if you had approached this more carefully instead of making it up as you went along, you’d have had that information before you made a thousand-mile drive.”
“I just…” Her lower lip quivered. “I feel so foolish. All that time, wasted. When if I had only…”
“I didn’t say that to make you feel bad, Corrie. I was just trying to lighten the moment.” And done a lousy job of it, judging from the stricken look on her sweet face. Fortunately, he had what he believed would be the perfect remedy for that. “I suspect you’ll forgive me for that clumsy attempt at a joke when I tell you this. You know our mayor, Ellie Walker? The one with the nephew in Virginia named Wallace? Her maiden name was James.”
“You mean I’ve been spending time all week looking for my dad right under the nose of my own…” She scrunched her face up like she was doing a tricky math problem in her head.
“Great aunt,” he filled in for her as he pulled the truck into the parking lot and eased it into the closest available space. He shut the engine off and turned sideways in the cab to face her. “Ellie James Walker is your great aunt.”
“Ellie James Walker is my great aunt.” She bowed her head then sniffled.
He thought he should say something but had no idea what. He swallowed and felt like he had a baseball lodged in his chest. Ever since his dad died he had made it his goal to protect his family from every inevitability he could plan against. And to fix any damage left by whatever he couldn’t plan around, whatever caught them off guard.
“What a silly mistake to make. Just blindly charging around with the wrong name when I should have… I could have…” A small sob cut her off. Her shoulders lifted and fell, then she covered her mouth with her hand and tried to collect herself.
Corrie was not his family, but when he brought her into his home and promised to set things right after Greer broke her treasured snow globe, he had extended that same dedication to her. And he had failed her. “Like you said, you got the wrong idea as a kid. You didn’t know any better.”
“What about my father? Did he not know any better? If it could be that simple for me to find him, wouldn’t it have been just as easy for him to find me? He knew my mom’s real name and where she lived. She’s owned a bakery in that town with her name on it for almost twenty years now.” She shook her head slowly. “He could have found me, if he wanted me. My mom was right. We can only depend on ourselves.”
Corrie Bennington sat in his truck crying over all the time lost, all the opportunities she might have taken that would have led her to her father so much sooner and the harsh reality that that father had never tried to make contact. Andy didn’t know how to fix that.
She slipped her glasses off and tried to clean them with a corner of her green-and-white scarf. The spots from her tears and the fuzzy fabric created a cloudy blur that painted the entire lens.
Andy couldn’t give her back the time lost or the sense of joy she had so clearly gotten from going about life in her haphazard, things-will-work-out-if-you-are-open-to-change way. But he could do this. He reached out and took her glasses, tugged free the hem of his fresh, clean shirt and carefully cleaned them. Then he reached out, tipped her chin up with one finger and slid the glasses in place.
He brushed his thumb over her cheek to wipe away a runaway tear and said, quietly, “When you know better, you do better. You have a name now. You have a connection. Corrie, you have what you came for. You went about it in a weird way, but you’ve reached your goal.”
“Have I?” She looked up at him, attempted a weak smile then sighed. “Funny, from my point of view, it feels like I’ve lost sight of it completely.”
Chapter Thirteen
Andy spent the next two hours tracking down the painters, dealing with their mistake, arguing with them when they said they couldn’t come out to start his job until tomorrow and then looking at countless paint samples in almost imperceptibly differing shades of blue. Corrie sat on a stool in the paint store and stared at her phone. It was not her most productive morning.
Andy hated seeing her like this, this woman he’d seen chase after whatever she wanted—from a popover to a whole new life perspective—with joy and determination. He wished he understood her sudden bout of wishy-washiness. She had her goal within reach at last. She just needed to call her mother and confirm that she had the right name, just so she didn’t bother some poor local family with her claim, then contact the mayor to find out how to reach her father. She just needed to get up her courage and follow through. Simple as that.
Simple as picking out a color for an inn you’d devoted every waking hour of the last year to completing. He winced, then glanced over at her and lifted up the two paint samples in his hands. “Blue or bluer?”
“The bluest.” She slumped against the counter, her chin in her hand.
“The color for the dining room.” He walked over to her and showed her the samples again, hoping to stir her out of her funk by giving her a chance to do what she seemed to love most—meddle in his business.
Her face did brighten up a bit. “You’re going to let me choose the color for the dining room at the Snowy Eaves Inn?”
“Whoa. I didn’t say I’d let you choose. It’s still my baby, you know, but I would like your input.” He meant that. She had good taste and a vested interest in the old inn.
“Can’t let anyone else do a job that you had on your ‘to-do’ list, right?” She sort of smiled as she said it, but didn’t give off the feeling she actually found any humor in her observation.
“Blue or bluer?” he asked again.
“My mom said I wasn’t going to find what I was looking for in a museum or a photograph. I realize now, it’s not even in a name.” She rubbed the pad of her thumb lightly along the edge of her cell phone, frowned and looked off into space. “Maybe the truth is that I don’t even know what I’m looking for, and until I do, I’m never going to find my way.”
He’d only made the offer as a subtle way of helping her. But what had ever been subtle about Corrie Bennington? He tossed the paint samples down on to the counter, anchored himself directly in front of her and folded his arms. “Look, you want my opinion?”
She barely looked up from the phone. “I thought you wanted mine.”
He took the phone from her and held it up like a lawyer offering a vital piece of evidence. “About that call you can’t seem to make.”
“Yeah, sure. Why not?” She snatched the phone away from him and sighed. “But I think I already know what you’re going to say.”
“Oh, you do, do you?”
“Same advice you’ve been giving me since I got here. Make a plan. Get things in their proper order, maybe even write up some notes for the conversation. Then just stay on track, don’t let anything or anyone throw me off course.”
“Actually, I—”
“And you know, you’re right.”
“I am?”
“Yes. You’re right and I… I’m all wrong.” She shook her head and met his gaze at last. “I’ve been going at this from all directions. Thinking every new avenue, every new person I met might just have something important to add. Hoping that if I kept my eyes, my ears, my heart, my options open I’d stumble on my answers eventually.”
“That doesn’t sound ‘all wrong’ to me, Corrie.” In fact, the things she was beating herself up over were some of the very things he found most endearing in her.
“You’re sweet to say it, but really, I can see now I’ve just been spinning my wheels. If I had listened to my mother to begin with, I’d have accepted that I have only myself to rely on. I’d have demanded she give me all the information I needed and probably found the man without all this gingerbread inn, wasting your time, decorating bandstands and cutting down Christmas trees nonsense.”
“I never said you wasted my time.” He wanted that made very clear.
“Well, then, let’s not waste any more of it. Pick a color.” She tapped the counter, missing the two samples Andy had selected and landing on a pamphlet of heritage colors with a blue wall on the cover. “We have ornaments, marshmallows and Christmas-pageant-costume supplies to get. That’s what we came here for, that’s the plan. Let’s stick to it.”
She marched off toward the door, leaving Andy to pick up the decorating pamphlet, peer closely at it then hand it to the man waiting to fill his paint-mixing order. “Four gallons of whatever color this is.”
“It’s all a matter of sorting things out and getting them done now. Shopping? Tick.” She made a check mark in the air as she strode out the door. “Gingerbread contest entry? Tick. Phone calls to Mom, Ellie Walker, my father? Tick, tick, tick. No wild goose chases that lead nowhere. No more living in a fog like a kid who thinks that there’s some wonderful place where she could go and find her answers. I had my answers, Andy. My mom and you were right all along.”
The minute they got back into his truck, Corrie began to lay out a strategy. They’d go to a big discount store where they could get everything they needed in one place, return to pick up the cans of newly mixed paint and get back in Hadleyville in time for Andy to pick Greer up from school.
Andy couldn’t have laid it all out better himself. That should have pleased him but seeing her like this, so focused on the goal and keeping one foot in front of the other to get to that goal kind of made him want to fog up her glasses and see if she wouldn’t rather go try to find a civic club luncheon to crash.
“We can get this done faster if I gather the grocery items, you pick out the Christmas ornaments then we meet in the craft department to get what we need for Greer’s costume.” She breezed in and grabbed a shopping cart.
Andy had to hustle to catch up with her. “What? You’re in too big a hurry to stop and make that poor elderly greeter your new bff? Or at least ask him if there’s a lady’s sewing circle meeting today that you can crash for the homemade pie?”
She gave him a sidelong look. “I don’t have time for that now, Andy.”
“Don’t have time for pie or…jokes?” he asked quietly as she pushed purposefully on past him. She didn’t answer.
His cell phone rang and she called out behind her without breaking stride, “Meet me in the craft section in ten minutes.”
He watched her walk away and somehow even the way she carried off that pink coat and those chunky boots had changed. It was an act. He realized that. But still, an act born of pain and embarrassment. She could have found her father anytime, if she had been willing to accept her mother’s bitter life view. Instead, she followed her own heart and where had it gotten her?
Here. It had gotten her here. It had gotten her to the Snowy Eaves Inn. It had gotten her to him. How could Andy not be a bit sad to see her deny the part of her that did all that?
He cleared his throat and answered the phone as she disappeared from sight behind an oversized candy-cane-framed sign promising “Christmas savings on the things you need now.”
Ten minutes later he strained to read the overhead signs searching for the craft section in the huge, brightly lit store. When he couldn’t readily find it, he just began looking aisle by aisle through the bundled up shoppers for that familiar coat and boots.
“Nope. No. Uh-uh. Not…” He pulled up short, turned and went back two steps. Hands on hips he shook his head at what he saw. “Okay, I understand taking off your coat and tossing it in the cart, but where are your boots, young lady?”
“You like?” She stepped out into the aisle, placed one toe out and rolled her ankle.
Andy couldn’t admire the bright white athletic shoe on her foot without taking in the view of Corrie head to toe. He’d grown too used to seeing her in her padded coat, shapeless boots, winter scarf, even that wraparound bib apron that practically enveloped her when she worked in his kitchen. He hadn’t realized how tiny she was, almost fragile, it seemed.
He’d never thought of her that way but looking at her with her boots and her coat in a cart looking like every other woman in the store…
“Why?” he asked.
She shrugged one shoulder to downplay it all and looked at the floor. “It’s not going to snow while I’m here. It’s time I accepted that. These shoes are practical. Don’t you like them?”
He had liked her unfounded optimism. He had liked her being ready for her dreams to come true. The idea that she was now ready to kick all that to the curb, and wearing sensible shoes while she did it? He didn’t like that one bit. He came to her and said softly, “I liked your boots.”
She smiled up at him. “But these are for ‘what is,’ not for ‘what if.’”
“But, Corrie…”
“You didn’t get any ornaments?” She adjusted her glasses, giving him a stern look.
“I, uh, no…the call took longer than… It was the dispatcher at the company where we bought the reclaimed wood flooring.”
“Problem?” She moved back behind the shopping cart and rolled it along, scrutinizing the shelves piled with glue and felt and beads and more.
“No. Actually, they plan to load our order up tomorrow and send it out Wednesday. We should have it by the weekend. We may have to point every fan in Hadleyville on to them to get the varnish to dry in time, but the floors should be installed and ready for guests by the open house on Christmas Eve.”
“Great!” She paused to pick up two large jars of glitter. “Score another point for taking things on yourself and sticking with the program until you get results. Which do you think? Silver or diamond dust?”
“Honestly, Corrie, I think—”
“You’re right. I said I’d do Greer’s costume myself, that makes it my choice. I’ll take them both.” She clunked them into the basket. “So, I’ve got the new shoes, the replacement marshmallows and some candy canes and cinnamon sticks to put on the tree. Now all I need is some poster board and we can be on our way. What about you?”
He needed a great deal more than anything he could find in a superstore, he thought. In that instant, he recalled the prayer he had uttered the night Corrie showed up on his doorstep. He had asked the Lord for help.
Just a few days later, the final details for the inn had begun to fall into place. It actually looked like he might make the Christmas Eve deadline for the open house. On top of that, he’d shown Corrie how to fix her entry in the gingerbread house contest. And as of today, she not only knew her father’s name, but had a lead on one of his—of her—relatives who could bring them together. Taking all that into account, it seemed like Andy had everything he needed and more.
He looked into the basket and then at Corrie. “Maybe we should get a few ornaments, just in case Mom doesn’t get home tomorrow, for Greer.”
“Okay, then.” She gave a quick nod and wheeled the cart right by him. “We’ll do that but you two are on your own to hang them up. I want to go back to my hotel room and do some research online with the new name I have for my dad. I don’t expect anything new to turn up, but I should cover all the bases. If he really is the mayor’s nephew, he doesn’t even live in Vermont anymore, so I can backburner that until I’ve done what I came here to do, represent my mom’s bakery in the gingerbread house contest.”
“And see snow,” he called out after her.
“I can’t see it snowing, Andy. I just have to accept the way things are and keep my eyes on the prize.”
“I thought the things you can’t see with your eyes were the prize,” he murmured as she walked away.
Chapter Fourteen
“Where’s the sparkle? You promised sparkle.” Greer’s black dress shoes scuffed over the lobby’s concrete floor as she twisted around to try to look at her cardboard-cutout wings.
“First things first, sweetie. I have to get them on and make sure they’ll stay put and not droop.” Corrie chewed on her lower lip.
Yesterday she might well have covered the wings in glitter as soon as she was happy with their shape and size and then worried about whether they worked for the costume. It would have been messier that way, and more fun. And it would have made Greer’s eyes light up when she tried on the simple but adorable costume that Corrie had managed to whip up with another spare white sheet, some golden tinsel garland and poster board. But this way was better, she told herself. “Once we get the kinks worked out we can—”
Greer did another spin.
“Honey, you have to stand still.”
“But I feel prettier when I twirl. Don’t you think twirling is the best, Corrie?”
“We don’t have time for twirling right now, no matter how pretty it makes you feel or what I think of it.”
For the record, Corrie did think twirling was the best but clearly the things she thought were best didn’t get her anywhere. Greer was right that all the sparkle had gone out of this whole costume bit, and Corrie didn’t mean the glitter. She hung her head and sighed.
“Knock it off, kid. You’re like a puppy chasing its tail.” Andy came from the dining room into the lobby wiping paint off his hands with a rag. “Let Corrie do her job.”
Corrie sat back on her heels. “That’s as good as it’s going to get for now. Go upstairs and take this off, sweetie, you can put it back on when we get to the church for the rehearsal.”
“Oh, man, the rehearsal!” Andy scrunched his eyes shut tight and smacked his forehead with one open hand. “I forgot all about that. When do we need to leave?”
Greer and Corrie shared a look then both broke out giggling. Corrie pushed up from the floor, went to him and took the rag from his grasp. “We need to leave as soon as we get you cleaned up.”
Greer scampered on upstairs.
“Aww, no.” Andy raised his hand to the exact same spot where he’d left a streak of pale blue paint. “I didn’t…”
“You did.” She had to go up on tiptoe to reach his forehead, especially without the added oomph of her thick-soled boots. But if she rested one hand on his shoulder and stretched… “There. All better.”
“I’ve said it before, Corrie, you do make everything around here better,” he said quietly as he took the rag from her hand.
She lowered her feet to the floor. Another time, another circumstance, if she had stood this close to Andy and he had said that, Corrie doubted if her feet would touch the ground for days afterward. “Thanks.”
“I only wish it were that easy to make it all better.” He shut his eyes and his head shook slightly.
She studied his face for a moment. He had dark circles under his eyes and a grim set to his lips that he hadn’t had when they had gone out to cut down the tree. “Problems?”
He leaned forward to put his mouth near her ear and whisper, “Got a text from Mom. Flights delayed. No details. Greer is going to be so disappointed.”
“Oh, no.” Corrie angled her shoulders back so she could meet his gaze. “What can I do to help?”
“You’re doing it. Keeping Greer busy, making the costume. I can’t tell you how much it means to me.” He looked into her eyes.
Corrie pressed her lips together. Her head felt light and that lightness radiated through her arms and legs right down into her fingertips and toes. One more word from Andy…the right words…if he’d only ask her to stay. It wasn’t part of the plan, of course. But if he would show the slightest inclination to change his plans…
“It means a lot to us,” he corrected. “We’ll never forget your kindness this week.”
“Yeah.” Corrie inched backward, her hand slipping from Andy’s shoulder. Before her decision yesterday to not follow every whim, she might have pressed him for more. Might have even told him outright that she was open to helping out beyond this one week.
She took a deep breath as the conflict between the things she had decided to be true and the things she had always believed clashed within her. You are on your own. You can always find a friend to help you along the way. Order brings results. You have to be flexible. She would never see Andy McFarland again after this weekend. She would see Andy everyday for the rest of her life in her dreams of what might have been.
“Ready to get going?” Greer bounded down the stairs with her costume under her arm.
“Yes, it is time we moved on,” Corrie said.
“I’ll get my coat and my keys.”
The rehearsal went smoothly. Well, as smoothly as any rehearsal involving a dozen kids in costume on the eve of a big chance to show off just one week before Christmas could go.
Corrie had stayed to watch over Greer. She wanted to see how the costume held up and get pointers on possible additions or adaptations from seeing the rest of the getups. And she did all that. She also avoided going grocery shopping with Andy.
Grocery shopping seemed like such a mundane thing, but walking through the store at his side, in the town where he grew up, where her father had grown up? It hinted at a sense of normalcy and belonging that weren’t Corrie’s to claim. She didn’t belong anywhere. She never had.
That’s what had brought her to the Snowy Eaves Inn. That’s what she had been looking for all along. That’s why she had chosen to spend time with the wonderful people in Hadleyville rather than press them for info on her father. It was why she had stayed open to every possibility rather than lay out a set course and strive toward a practical goal. She had been hoping for something too wonderful.
She had been searching, not for a father or the right way to fit into her mom’s work or even a snowfall to make her happy…she had been looking for a home.
It wasn’t going to be Hadleyville, Vermont. Her father didn’t live here. Her mother didn’t live here. Andy wasn’t going to ask her to stay here.
When the rehearsal ended and the children poured out of the church on to stone steps, Corrie tramped out in her plain no-name athletic shoes and splashed down in a big puddle of icy, mucky water. She grimaced and looked upward. “Rain?”
Greer squealed, pulled her coat up over her head and ran toward the street where Andy’s truck sat. He flung open the passenger-side door for them.
Corrie sighed and started down the steps, muttering, “I thought for sure it would have snowed by now.”
“Don’t worry. Weatherman promises we’ll be knee deep in the white stuff by Christmas,” a woman said as she propelled her two children toward the curb.
“I’ll be long gone by Christmas,” she answered even though the family had already whisked past her.
She slouched in the seat next to Greer.
“Rehearsal that bad?” Andy asked, guiding the truck into the road.
She managed a laugh. “I’m a baker not a seamstress. The costume took longer than I expected and I still have to glitter the wings.”
“And she’s going to use lots of glitter,” Greer insisted.
Corrie tried to calculate how long that would take, then leaned the side of her head against the cold glass of the window. “I just thought I’d have more done by this time today, what with doing things your way now.”
“Yeah. Maybe I didn’t mention that my way doesn’t always mean a fast track.” He chuckled and pointed the truck toward Mt. Piney. “But it’s rocking and rolling now so how about you work on your contest entry while I make us all dinner?”
Forty-five minutes later Corrie had put the costume away, assured Greer that she’d decorate the wings before she left tonight then settled into the kitchen at long last. She had begun the process of making fondant when Greer came bounding in with her sock monkey wrapped in a bit of scrap sheet and a pair of cardboard wings taped to its back.
She set the toy aside and climbed on a stool next to Corrie. “What’s that for?”
Corrie worked over the soft, pliant fondant and explained what she intended to do with it and that they’d have to let it rest before shaping it into snowdrifts and so on. “The real thing that has me worried is that before I can do anything else, I have to cover the entire roof with these little chocolate wafer candies. I brought as many as I could from home hoping I’d find some more here, but since I didn’t, I can’t afford to make even one itty-bitty mistake.”
That from the queen of mistakes of all sizes. Her penchant for flying by the seat of her pants had come around to bite her yet again. She took out her frustration kneading the fondant. She was in such a rotten mood today. Maybe she should just chuck it all for tonight, go back to her hotel and work extra hard tomorrow.
“Painters finished the primer coat. Once they’ve gotten all the work around the trim, they’re going to call it a day.” Andy came in and went straight to the sink to wash his hands. “So that leaves me free to get dinner on the table.”
“Corrie is going to use chocolate candy for the roof of her inn, Andy,” Greer reported.
“Hey, that’s a cool idea. If we ever get a leak in our roof, I’ll remember that.” He dried his hands on a kitchen towel then motioned for his sister. “Why don’t you come over here, Greer, where you can hand me the ingredients for the casserole.”
“Where I can’t reach the gingerbread house and mess it up is more like it,” Greer grumbled, wriggling down off the stool and going to Andy’s side. “Man, you drop one snow globe and nobody trusts you, never again.”
“We trust you, short stuff, just not with things that can’t be easily fixed that have to be done by a certain time.” Andy handed the girl two cans of condensed soup and pointed her toward the can opener. “I trust you with our dinner, if that’s any consolation.”
She rolled her eyes and promptly dropped a can of soup on his foot.
He let out a yelp and hopped around for a second before he gave Corrie a grin and a wink much to Greer’s delight.
“Construction boots. Steel toes.” He bent down and handed the dented can to Greer. “Now you see why you’re on casserole duty and not going near that gingerbread house.”
Corrie started to tell him that she didn’t mind if Greer worked on the piece. Before she could, the whirr of the can opener cut her off.
Andy put one hand on the counter to create an intimate zone between them, lowered his head and said, “I want you to know I haven’t forgotten about your snow globe. I said I’d figure out a way to make it right and I will.”
The things Corrie wanted set right, Andy couldn’t fix. He couldn’t make up for all the conflicts stirring around in her about her father. He couldn’t, and wouldn’t, even if he could, tell her that her mother was wrong and Corrie should rely on faith and hope and friendship along with her own wits to get by. But when she looked up at his kind, handsome face?
She wanted to believe him. She wanted to allow herself to rely on him, to trust without cynicism. She mustered a fragile smile and met his gaze, so close that she could see the reddish tint to the tips of his eyelashes. “You don’t have to worry about it, really.”
The can opener went silent.
“I’m not worried.” He stood up straight and folded his arms. “I’ll get it done.”
Corrie pressed her lips together and nodded. If she had tried to speak she’d have lost her voice and probably found herself blinking away the tears. She wanted her world to be the way it was the day she first arrived here. She wanted…
“Soup’s ready,” Greer called out over the bang and clatter of cabinet doors opening and shutting. “What can I open next? Sardines? Coffee? Baked beans?”
“Better take care of this.” He gave her a nod then turned to deal with Greer.
Corrie hunkered down over her project and began carefully laying out the chocolate wafers so as not to waste a one.
When Andy and Greer finished assembling the casserole, he went to the school backpack in the corner of the kitchen and handed it to her, knowing she had a reading assignment that she could just finish before dinner was ready. As the child got down to that he came over to inspect Corrie’s progress.
“Nice work.” He moved close in behind her then around to the side. “You see any room for real-world application with this method?”
“Is that renovation contractor speak for ‘can you do some work around this place’?” She dipped her finger in a glass of lukewarm water and smoothed down a bead of icing before delicately pressing another wafer in place.
“No.” He dipped his own finger into the icing bowl and then took a taste. “That is guy-standing-around-with-nothing-to-do speak for ‘maybe this would go faster if you had a guy who has actually been on the roof of the Snowy Eaves Inn sticking those wafer things on on the other side’.”
She looked up at him and smiled. “Very precise work to get the layers just like this. Think you can handle it?”
He adjusted his sleeves, which were already pushed up from cooking, then waggled his fingers like a street performer preparing to carry out an intricate sleight of hand. “Watch and learn.”
Andy worked steadily away on one side of the roof while Corrie worked on the other. They didn’t speak much. She could have chalked that up to concentration or even the weariness of the day or her anxious mood. But in truth, every time she raised her head to share a thought or witty remark or launch into a story about baking or Greer or what she hoped to do about the whole father-finding situation, she’d look at him working away and end up sighing. Just sighing.
What a nice guy. Strong guy. Take-charge guy. Why did he have to live a thousand miles away? It didn’t seem fair. She wondered if those very thoughts had gone through her mother’s mind all those years ago when she met Wallace James.
Now that she had a real name and a new perspective on what it meant to search for someone, how little effort it would have taken on his part to find them, Corrie saw her mother in a new light. How hopeful she must have been. And in love. So in love she had convinced herself that the two of them could overcome all the odds stacked against them. So that, when it all fell apart, it wasn’t just her heart that was broken, it was her trust in the way she believed her life would play out.
Corrie had had a little taste of that today. Despite her mother’s fear of being hurt, and her determination to teach Corrie to protect herself, Corrie had always taken chances. She’d always trusted God, the basic goodness of most people and her own common sense. Was that so wrong?
She looked up from her work to find Andy staring at her. She smiled, just a little.
He grinned at her. “Hungry?”
She hesitated. Not because she wasn’t sure if she was hungry but because once again she didn’t know if she could put herself in a situation with Andy and his sister that would only remind her later how very much alone she really was. The Corrie who had first shown up here days ago wouldn’t have even considered that. She’d have done what felt right, expected the best outcome and if she ended up lonely and missing the good times, she’d have consoled herself that at least she had had those good times and celebrated that. She raised her head and looking at the man, thinking of his promise to make things right and the effort he had made already, a sliver of the old feelings peeked through.
Corrie smiled back. “I am hungry. Thank you for sharing your dinner with me.”
A few minutes later they had heaping plates in the cozy kitchen. To keep Greer away from the paint fumes, Andy had vetoed eating in the dining room. Greer pointed out that it also kept her away from the big sawhorse tables weighed down with the opened paint cans with the lids tapped back into place. And the trim work balanced across the backs of tarp-draped chairs to make them easier to paint. Not to mention the wrong color paint stacked like cans in a carnival ready to be knocked over.
Andy held up his hand to stop her from adding to the list and laughed at being caught once again manipulating his kid sister’s environment to make things easier on himself. The guy had a sense of humor about himself.
And he could cook, too.
Corrie filled up on the delicious casserole. The three of them laughed and talked about the pageant practice. Greer went into elaborate detail about how she wanted her wings glittered and never once mentioned her mother’s delay. Andy listened intently and decided that he could wait until they were done to check on the job the painters had done.
When the McFarlands gathered the plates to rinse and put in the dishwasher, Corrie returned to work. More relaxed than she had been earlier, it only took a few minutes before she had tweaked the last few wafers into place on her side of the roof.
“There. Perfect.” She stepped back and held her hands up. “Exactly the way I envisioned it. How’s your side coming along?”
Andy and Greer both turned at the same time. Andy opened his mouth but Greer got her opinion out first. “Lousy.”
“Hey!” Andy scowled at his little sister. “Why don’t you go get those wings so we can finish up with those?”
“Very funny, you two.” Corrie came around the island where they had been working fully expecting to find the roof as a mirror image or better of hers. She rounded the structure, and turned her head from the faces of her friends to the neat rows of chocolate wafers.
Only neat was not the right word for what she saw.
“Oh. Um, that’s kind of…” She spread her fingers and jabbed them together so that they didn’t quite fit. “Just in that one place, though. The rest of it is good. I mean…if you don’t look too close at—”
“He busted every wafer on that whole section by the pointy part,” Greer volunteered, tipping up her chin and tossing her black hair in a smug sort of flip before heading out the swinging door. “And he wanted to keep me away from it.”
“Sorry.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Blame my big, clumsy, calloused hands.”
“I don’t think they’re clumsy.” Corrie liked his hands. They were rugged enough for his line of work and gentle enough to braid Greer’s hair. How could you not like hands like those? “This just isn’t your forte.”
“I was thinking I’d chip off the broken ones and the ones that slid a little then replace them with—”
“I don’t have enough wafers to do that.” She brushed her fingertips over the imperfections in Andy’s handiwork. The broken bits and wobbly row made her smile. A real smile. A smile that came from the depths of her being. Life wasn’t perfect, no matter how hard you tried, no matter how much you planned or followed the rules or stayed on schedule. That wasn’t the end of the world.
“Oh, Corrie, I’m sorry, I—”
“It’s no big deal.” She looked up at him. All day she had tried her best to be a stick-to-the-schedule, stay-on-track kind of person. Now, Andy’s little mess up gave her a reason to chuck all that and go back to improvising and making do with what God gave you. “I’m going to use a gloppy white frosting-type stuff to represent snow. I’ll just make sure to glop a little extra over your bloopers.”
“Corrie Bennington, you are the first woman I have ever met who offered to glop over my bloopers.”
Okay, she blushed. Again. And laughed. She had blushed and laughed more in the last few days than she had this whole past year, she believed. She liked it. She lowered her face, then looked up at the man responsible. “You know what I mean. I just cover up the irregularities with a little snow.”
“Snow!” Greer came bursting through the swinging door but instead of coming all the way in she stood there, holding it open.
“Not real snow,” Corrie told the child. “Frosting made to look like snow. We can use it to hide your brother’s roof goofs. Couldn’t exactly use real snow for that, huh?”
“Well, if you wanted to, all you’d have to do is go outside and scoop some up!”
“What?” Corrie looked at Greer, then Andy. “Really? A real snow?”
“Big, fat, fluffy flakes.” Greer swooped her hands down gracefully to demonstrate how they were falling. “It must have started a while ago because it’s sticking already.”
Corrie could hardly catch her breath. She stared at the gingerbread inn, the copy of the snow globe that she had so often dreamed of seeing blanketed in a real, honest-to-goodness snowfall. What had started as a real stinker of a day had totally turned around. Not by Andy’s plans or Corrie’s determination, but by a wonderful surprise.
“C’mon.” Corrie looked up to see Andy holding her coat out to her. “You may get to use those boots after all.”
Corrie didn’t care about coats or boots or scarves or anything. She dashed past the man without stopping.
He snagged her arm and began tucking her into her coat.
“Hurry up. I want to see the snow,” she protested.
“You’re like a kid,” he told her as he had to bend at the knees to see to get the coat fastened up right.
Greer clapped her hands. “Can I put on my coat and go out, too, Andy?”
“Sure. Wear a hat and gloves,” he reminded her as he popped the collar of Corrie’s coat up around her ears and brushed the hair back from the temples of her glasses. “I don’t suppose you have a hat and gloves?”
“I’ll be fine.” She had already begun to jostle up and down trying to get him to turn loose of her so she could get going.
“I’ll get you a pair of mine.” He looped her polka-dot muffler around her neck, pulled it up like a hood on to her head then wound it around. “You can wrap up in this scarf to keep your head and face warm. Just as long as you don’t stay out too—”
“Stay out? I can’t even get out.” She gave him a playful push then used the moment to spin around and make her getaway.
Andy was right behind her.
Corrie had actually seen snow falling a time or two in her life. Once, they’d even had a dusting of the white stuff on the lawn. It had practically shut down the entire town for a day. The grocery stores were depleted of bread and milk. Her mom did a record business in hot chocolate and cookies.
But nothing about those experiences had readied her for what she saw when she went skating out the door of the Snowy Eaves Inn.
“It’s like a Christmas scene from a wonderful old movie,” she said to Andy as he rushed out after her, wearing one pair of gloves and holding another set in one hand.
“Here, put these on.”
“Oh, stop it.” She pushed his hands away. “I don’t want to put those on. I want to feel this. I want to feel the snow on my face and touch it with my bare fingers.”
She moved out from under the shelter of the entryway and raised her face skyward. Bits of crystallized cold dropped on to her cheeks and instantly began to melt. The wind stirred and the flakes plastered themselves on her glasses and clung to her lashes.
“You’re going to freeze,” Andy warned her.
“I don’t care if I do,” she said and did a slow spin, arms wide and eyes shut. “Tell Greer she’s wrong. Twirling is not the best. Twirling in snow is the best.”
“All right, enough.” He caught her by the hand and let her finish her whirl right into his arms. “Let’s get these gloves on you and then—”
“We can make a snowman?”
“Not nearly enough snow yet. Besides, with all that rain we had this afternoon, there’ll be a layer of ice out there. You need to be extra careful moving around, especially without your boots.”
“Oh, you, with your boots and gloves and hats.” She rested her hands on his thick coat and tipped her head back to look at his face. “What are you worried about?”
“You,” he said softly.
“You don’t have to worry about me,” she murmured in return. She meant that.
“I don’t? Why not? Because you’re going to look after yourself?”
“Maybe. Or maybe because I’m going to look out for you.” She hadn’t planned it. Of course not. She didn’t plan much of anything in her life. She couldn’t be like Andy. Or like her mother. She followed her heart and believed in the best.
That’s exactly what she did when she threw her arms around Andy McFarland’s neck and standing in her very first, honest-to-goodness snowfall kissed him like she had never kissed anyone in her entire lifetime.
And like so often was the case when she didn’t think things through, she regretted it almost instantly.
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