Chapter Eleven
All afternoon Celeste did her best not to dwell on that stunning kiss.
Knowing she would see him again that evening didn’t help. The whole busy December day seemed filled with sparkly anticipation, even though she tried over and over again to tell herself she was being ridiculous.
It didn’t help matters that her sisters both attempted to back out of the sleigh ride and send her alone with the children. She couldn’t blame them, since it had been completely her idea, but she still wanted them there. Though she knew the children would provide enough of a buffer, she didn’t want to be alone with Flynn.
Finally she had threatened Hope that if she didn’t go on the sleigh ride with them, Hope would have to direct the show Tuesday night by herself.
As she expected, Rafe had obviously told Hope what he had almost walked in on earlier in the barn. Her sisters hadn’t come out and said anything specific about it, but after the third or fourth speculative look from Hope—and the same from Faith—she knew the word was out in the Nichols family.
If not for her beloved niece and nephews, she sincerely would have given some thought to wishing she had been an only child.
“You owe me this after dragging me into the whole Christmas show thing,” Celeste said fiercely to Hope at dinner, when her sister once more tried to wriggle out of the sleigh ride.
Hope didn’t necessarily look convinced, but she obviously could see that Celeste meant what she said. “Oh, all right,” she muttered. “If I’m going out in the cold that means you have to come, too, Fae.”
Faith groaned. “After an afternoon of tackling the stores on the busiest shopping day of the year, I just want to put my feet up and watch something brainless on TV.”
Barrett added his voice. “You have to come, Mom. It won’t be as fun without you. You’ve got the best caroling voice.”
“Yeah, and you’re the only one who knows all the words,” Louisa added.
Faith gave her children an exasperated look but finally capitulated. “Fine. I guess somebody has to help you all carry a tune.”
After dinner they all bundled up in their warmest clothing and traipsed down to the St. Nicholas Lodge. Even Rafe came along, which she supposed she was grateful for, though he kept shooting her curious little looks all evening.
They arrived at the lodge just as Flynn and Olivia walked in from the parking lot. Olivia wore her pink-and-purple coat with a white beanie and scarf. She looked adorable, especially when she lit up at the sight of them.
“Hi, everybody! Hi!” she said. “We’re here. Dad didn’t want to come, but I told him we promised, so here we are.”
Celeste had to laugh at that, especially when Flynn’s color rose. “It’s good to see you both,” she said.
It wasn’t a lie. The December night suddenly seemed magical and bright, filled with stars and snow and the wonder of the season.
Olivia skipped over to her, hardly even limping in her excitement for the evening. “Guess what, Celeste?”
“What, sweetheart?”
“Today when we were cleaning we found boxes and boxes and boxes of yarn and scrapbook paper and craft supplies. Would you like to have them for your story times at the library? Dad said he thought you might.”
“Seriously?” She stared, overwhelmed and touched that he would think of it.
“You don’t have to take them,” he said quickly. “I just didn’t want to send everything to Goodwill if you could find a use for it.”
“Are you kidding?” she exclaimed. “Absolutely! I can definitely use craft supplies. Thank you so much!”
“Good, because they’re all in the back of the SUV. I took a chance that you would want them and figured if you didn’t, I could drop them in the box at the thrift store in town after we were done here.”
“Smart.” She considered their options. “My car is still here in the parking lot from this morning. I can just pull next to you, and we can transfer them from your SUV to mine.”
“Do you want to do it now or after the sleigh ride?”
“Go ahead and do it now while you’re thinking about it,” Hope suggested. Celeste narrowed her gaze at her sister, wondering if this was some sneaky way to get the two of them alone together, but Hope merely gave her a bland look in response.
“Sure,” she said finally. “That way we won’t forget later.”
They walked out into the cold air, and she tried not to think about the last time they had been together—the strength of his muscles beneath her hands, the delicious taste of him, all those shivery feelings he evoked.
“I’m parked over there,” he said, pointing to his vehicle.
“I parked at the back of the lot this morning to leave room for paying guests. Just give me a minute to move my car next to yours.”
“I could just carry the boxes over to where you are.”
“It will only take me a minute to move.” She took off before he could argue further and hurried to her very cold vehicle, which had a thin layer of soft snow that needed to be brushed away before she could see out the windshield. Once that was done, she started it and drove the few rows to an open spot next to his vehicle, then popped open the hatch of her small SUV.
By the time she opened her door and walked around to the back, he was already transferring boxes and she could see at least half dozen more in the back of his vehicle.
She stared at the unexpected bounty. “This is amazing! Are you sure Olivia wouldn’t like to keep some of this stuff?”
He shook his head. “She went through and picked out a few pairs of decorative scissors and some paper she really liked, but the rest of it was destined for either Goodwill or the landfill.”
“Thank you. It was really kind of you to think of the library.”
“Consider it a legacy from Charlotte to the library.”
“I’ll do that. Thank you.”
He carried the last of the boxes and shoved it into her cargo area, then closed the hatch.
“There you go.”
“Thanks again.”
She expected him to head directly back to the lodge. Instead, he leaned against her vehicle and gave her a solemn look. The parking lot was mostly empty except for a family a few rows away loading into a minivan, probably after seeing Santa Claus inside.
“Do I owe you an apology?” he asked.
She fidgeted, shoving her mittened hands into her pockets. “An apology for what?”
He sighed. “We both know I shouldn’t have kissed you, Celeste. It was a mistake. I didn’t want to leave you with the...wrong impression.”
Oh, this was humiliating. Was she so pathetic that he thought because she had told him she’d once had a crush on him, she now thought they were dating or something, because of one stupid kiss?
Okay, one amazing, heart-pounding, knee-tingling kiss. But that was beside the point.
“You don’t owe me anything,” she said.
He gazed up at the stars while the jingle of the sleigh returning to the lodge and the sound of shrieking children over on the sledding hill rang out in the distance.
“Here’s the thing. Right now, my whole attention has to be focused on helping my daughter. I’m not...looking for anything else. I can’t.”
She leaned against the cold vehicle next to him and tried to pretend she was sophisticated and experienced, that this sort of moment happened to her all the time—a casual conversation with a man who had kissed her deeply just a few hours ago and was now explaining why he couldn’t do it again.
“It was a kiss, Flynn. I get it. I’ve barely given it a thought since it happened.”
He wasn’t stupid. She didn’t doubt he could tell that was a blatant lie, but he said nothing. He simply gave her a careful look, which she returned with what she hoped was a bland one of her own.
“Good. That’s good,” he said. “I just wanted to clear the air between us. The last thing I want to do is hurt you or, I don’t know, give you the wrong idea. You’ve been nothing but kind to Olivia and to me.”
“Do you really think I’m so fragile that I could be hurt by a single kiss?”
* * *
The question seemed to hang between them, bald and unadorned, like a bare Christmas tree after the holidays.
He had a fierce wish that he’d never started this conversation, but the implications of that kiss had bothered him all afternoon as he’d carried box after box out of Charlotte’s house.
He meant what he said. She had been very sweet to him and Olivia. His daughter was finally beginning to heal from the trauma she had endured, and he knew a big part of the progress she’d made the past week was because of all the many kindnesses Celeste and her family had shown them.
It seemed a poor repayment for him to take advantage of that because he couldn’t control his base impulses around her.
He also couldn’t seem to shake the guilt that had dogged him since that conversation with Rafe. The other man hadn’t come out and blatantly told him to leave her alone, but Flynn hadn’t missed the subtle undercurrents.
“Your brother-in-law and I had quite a talk this afternoon while we were finishing the screens for you.”
“Is that right?”
Her cheeks looked pink in the moonlight, but he supposed that could have been from the cold night air.
“He’s very protective of you and wanted to be clear I knew you had people watching out for you.”
She made a low noise in the back of her throat. “My family sometimes drives me absolutely crazy.”
Despite the awkwardness of the conversation, he had to smile. “They’re wonderful, all of them. It’s obvious they love you very much.”
“A little too much, sometimes,” she muttered. “They apparently don’t think I can be trusted to take care of myself. Sometimes it really sucks to be the youngest sibling.”
He couldn’t imagine having any siblings. While he was lucky to have very tight friends, he knew it wasn’t the same.
“I think it’s nice,” he answered. “Having your sisters close must have been a great comfort after you lost your parents.”
Her lovely features softened in the moonlight. “It was,” she murmured. “They may drive me crazy, but I would be lost without them. Don’t tell them I said that, though.”
He smiled a little. “I wish I had that same kind of support network for Olivia, but I’m all she has right now. I can’t forget that.”
“I understand. You’re doing a great job with her. Don’t worry. Children are resilient. She’s working her way over to the other side in her own time.”
His sigh puffed out condensation between them. “Thanks.”
“And you can put your mind at ease,” she said briskly. “You’re not going to break my heart. Trust me, I don’t have some crazy idea that you’re going to propose to me simply because we shared one little kiss.”
“It wasn’t a little kiss. That’s the problem,” he muttered.
As soon as he said the words, he knew he shouldn’t have, but it was the truth. That kiss had been earthshaking. Cataclysmic. He would venture to call it epic, which was the entire problem here. He knew he wouldn’t forget those moments for a long, long time.
He wasn’t sure how he expected her to respond but, as usual, she managed to surprise him. She flashed him a sideways look.
“What can I say? I’m a good kisser.”
The unexpectedness of her response surprised a laugh out of him that echoed through the night. She seemed like such a sweet, quiet woman, but then she had these moments of sly humor that he couldn’t seem to get enough of.
It made him wonder if she had this whole secret internal side of herself—contained and bundled away for protection—that she rarely showed the rest of the world.
She intrigued him on so many levels, probably because she was a study in contradictions. She could be tart and sweet at the same time, firm yet gentle, deeply vulnerable yet tough as nails.
Most of all, she seemed real. For a guy who had grown up surrounded by the artificial illusion of Hollywood, that was intensely appealing.
“It looks as if the other sleigh ride is done,” she finally said. “The kids are probably anxious to get going.”
“Right. Guess I’d better get my carol on.”
She laughed, as he had hoped. At least the tension between them since the afternoon had been somewhat diffused.
As they walked, he was aware of a jumble of feelings in his chest. Regret, longing and a strange, aching tenderness.
For just a moment, he had a crazy wish that things could be different, that he had the right to wrap his hand around hers and walk up to the sleigh ride with her, then sit beneath a blanket cuddled up with her while they rode in a horse-drawn sleigh and enjoyed the moonlit wonder of the night together.
He could handle the regret and the longing. He was a big boy and had known plenty of disappointments in his life.
But he didn’t have any idea what to do with the tenderness.
* * *
Celeste decided a sleigh ride through the mountains on a December evening was a good metaphor for being in love.
She was bumped and jostled, her face cold but the rest of her warm from the blankets. It was exhilarating and exhausting, noisy and fun and a little bit terrifying when they went along a narrow pass above the ranch that was only two feet wider on each side than the sleigh.
She’d been on the sleigh ride dozens of times before. This was the first time she’d taken one while also being in love, with these tangled, chaotic feelings growing inside her.
She was quickly reaching the point where she couldn’t deny that she was falling hard for Flynn. What else could explain this jumbled, chaotic mess of emotions inside her?
“Oh. Look at all those stars,” a voice breathed beside her, and she looked down to where Olivia had her face lifted to the sky.
She wasn’t only falling for Flynn. This courageous, wounded girl had sneaked her way into Celeste’s heart.
She would be devastated when they left.
When they’d climbed into the sleigh, Olivia had asked if she could sit beside Celeste. The two of them were sharing a warm blanket. Every once in a while the girl rested her cheek against her shoulder, and Celeste felt as if her heart would burst with tenderness.
“I never knew there were so many stars,” Olivia said, her voice awestruck.
“It’s magical, isn’t it?” she answered. “Do you know what I find amazing? That all those stars are there every single night, wherever you are in the world. They’re just hidden by all the other lights around that distract us away from them.”
The whole evening truly was magical—the whispering jingle of the bells on the draft horses’ harnesses, the creak of the old sleigh, the sweet scent of the snow-covered pines they rode through.
Except for Mary—who had stayed behind in the warm house—Celeste was surrounded by everyone she loved.
“I wish we could just go and go and never stop,” Olivia said.
Unfortunately, the magic of sleigh rides never lasted forever. She had a feeling that, at least in her case, the magic of being in love wouldn’t last, either. The in love part would, but eventually the heartache would steal away any joy.
“We’ll have to stop at some point,” the ever-practical Faith said. “The horses are tired. They’ve been working all night and are probably ready to have a rest.”
“Besides that,” Joey added, “what would we eat if we were stuck on a sleigh our whole lives?”
“Good point, kid,” Rafe said. “We can’t live on hot chocolate forever.”
Olivia giggled at them and seemed to concede their point.
“I thought we were supposed to be caroling. We haven’t sung anything,” Louisa complained.
“You start us off,” her mother suggested.
Celeste was aware that while both her sisters seemed to be dividing careful looks between her and Flynn, they did it at subtle moments. If she were very lucky, he wouldn’t notice.
Louisa started, predictably enough, with “Jingle Bells.” The children joined in with enthusiasm and soon even the adults joined them. Flynn, on the other side of Olivia, had a strong baritone. Under other circumstances, she might have been entranced by it, but Celeste’s attention was fixed on his daughter as she sang.
Why hadn’t she noticed during their rehearsals and the songs they had prepared that Olivia had such a stunning voice, pure and clear, like a mountain stream? It was perfectly on pitch, too, astonishing in a child.
She wasn’t the only one who noticed it, she saw. Hope and Faith both seemed startled and even Rafe gave her a second look.
Flynn didn’t seem to notice anything, and she thought of those stars again, vivid and bright but obscured by everything else in the way.
“What next?” Joey asked. “Can we sing the one about Jolly Old St. Nick?”
“Sure,” Faith said. Of the three sisters, she had the most musical ability, so she led the children as the sleigh bells jingled through the night. With each song, Olivia’s natural musical talent became increasingly apparent to everyone on the sleigh, but both she and Flynn seemed oblivious.
“What’s that place with all the lights?” Olivia asked after they finished “Silent Night.”
“That’s the Christmas village,” Barrett answered her. “It’s awesome. Can we stop and walk through it?”
“You’ve seen it, like, a million times,” his sister chided.
“Yeah, but Olivia hasn’t. It’s way more fun to see it with somebody else who has never been there. It’s like seeing it for the first time all over again.”
“You are so right, kiddo,” Hope said, beaming at the boy. “Bob, do you mind dropping us off here so we can take a little detour through the village?”
“Not at all. Not at all.”
The driver pulled the team to a stop, and everybody clambered out of the sleigh and headed toward the collection of eight small structures a short distance from the main lodge.
This was one of her favorite parts of the entire Christmas Ranch. With the lights strung overhead, it really did feel magical.
Each structure contained a Christmas scene peopled with animatronic figures—elves hammering toys, Mrs. Claus baking cookies, children decorating a Christmas tree, a family opening presents.
“This is quite a place,” Flynn murmured beside her.
“The Christmas village is really what started the whole Christmas Ranch. You probably don’t know this, but my family’s name of origin was Nicholas. As in St. Nicholas.”
“The big man himself.”
“Right. Because of that, my aunt and uncle have always been a little crazy about Christmas. Before we came to live with them, my uncle Claude built the little chapel Nativity over there with the cow who nods his head at the baby Jesus and the two little church mice running back and forth. It became a hobby with him, and after that he came up with a new one every year.”
With a pang, she dearly missed her uncle, a big, gruff man of such kindness and love. He had taught her and her sisters that the best way to heal a broken heart was to forget your troubles and go to work helping other people.
“He decided he wanted to share the village with the whole community, so he opened the ranch up for people to come and visit. The reindeer herd came after, and then he built the whole St. Nicholas Lodge for Santa Claus, and the gift shop and everything.”
“This is really great. I have no idea how he did it. It’s a fascinating exercise in engineering and physics.”
She frowned up at the star above the chapel, just a dark outline against the mountains. “Usually the star up there lights up. I’m not sure what’s wrong with it. I’ll have to mention it to Rafe. He has learned the ins and outs of all the structures in the village. I don’t know how everything works. I just love the magic of it.”
Olivia appeared to agree. The girl seemed enthralled with the entire village, particularly the little white chapel with its Nativity scene—the calm Madonna cradling her infant son, and Joseph watching over them both with such care while a beautiful angel with sparkly white wings watched overhead.
“You guys are welcome to hang out, but we’re going to head back to the house,” Faith said after about fifteen minutes. “It’s cold and I know my two are about ready for bed.”
“We need to go, too,” Hope said, pointing to a sleepy-looking Joey.
“Thank you all for taking us on one more ride,” Flynn said. “I appreciate it very much. Olivia loved it.”
“You’re very welcome,” Hope said. “It was our pleasure.”
The rest of her family headed back up to the ranch house while Celeste and Flynn walked with Olivia to the lodge’s parking lot.
“I’m glad you both came,” Celeste said when they reached their vehicles.
“This is definitely a memory we’ll have forever, isn’t it, Liv?” Flynn said as he opened the backseat door for his daughter. “When we’re back in California enjoying Christmas by the ocean, we’ll always remember the year we went caroling through the mountains on a two-horse open sleigh.”
She had to smile, even though his words seemed to cut through her like an icy wind whipping down the mountain.
“We’ll see you Tuesday for the performance.”
He nodded, though he didn’t look thrilled.
“We’ll be there. Thanks again.”
She nodded and climbed into her own vehicle, trying not to notice how empty and cold it felt after the magic of being with them on the sleigh ride.