Chapter Twelve
“Are you sure we’re not too early?” Flynn asked his daughter as they pulled up in front of the St. Nicholas Lodge on the night of the show. “It doesn’t start for quite a while.”
She huffed out her frustrated-at-Dad sigh. “I’m sure. She told me five thirty. This is when I’m supposed to be here, Celeste said, so they can help me get ready with my hair and makeup and stuff. I get to wear makeup onstage so my face isn’t blurry.”
Yeah, he was terrible with hair and didn’t have the first idea what to do about makeup. Here was a whole new stress about having a daughter. Soon enough she was going to want to know about that stuff. Good thing he had friends in LA with wives who could help a poor single dad out in that department.
She opened the passenger door the moment he pulled into a parking space. “Okay. Thanks, Dad. I’ll see you at the show.”
When he turned off the engine and opened his own door, she gave him a look of surprise. “You don’t have to come in yet.”
He shrugged. “I’m here. I might as well see if they need help with something—setting up chairs or whatever.”
“Okay,” she said, then raced for the door without waiting to see if he followed. Clearly, he was far more nervous about this whole performance thing than she was.
She had made amazing progress in a short time. In a matter of days she already seemed much more at ease with herself and the world around her than she had been when he brought her to Pine Gulch. She used her arm almost without thinking about it now, and she hardly limped anymore.
He wasn’t foolish to think all the pain and grief were behind them. She would be dealing with the trauma for a long time to come, but he was beginning to hope that they had turned a corner.
Children are resilient. She’s working her way over to the other side in her own time.
He gave no small amount of credit to the Nichols family, for their warmth and acceptance of her. She had made friends with the children and she also completely adored Celeste.
Would he be able to keep that forward momentum when they returned to California? He had no idea, but he would sure as hell try—even if that meant figuring out the whole hair-and-makeup thing on his own sometime down the line.
He pushed open the front doors after her and walked into the lodge, only to discover the place had been transformed into an upscale-looking dining room.
What had been an open space was now filled with round eight-top tables wearing silky red tablecloths and evergreen and candle centerpieces. The huge Christmas tree in the corner blazed with color and light, joined by merry fires flickering in the river-rock fireplaces at both ends of the vast room. Glittery white lights stretched across the room and gleamed a welcome.
The air smelled delicious—ham and yeasty rolls and, if he wasn’t mistaken, apple pie.
Like iron shavings to a magnet, his gaze instantly found Celeste. She was right in the middle of everything, directing a crew of caterers while they laid out table settings.
His stomach muscles tightened. She looked beautiful, with her hair up in a dark, elegant sweep and wearing a simple tailored white blouse and green skirt. Again, the alluring contradictions. She looked prim and sexy at the same time.
“Hi, Celeste,” Olivia chirped, heading straight to her for a hug, which was readily accepted and returned.
He didn’t understand the bond between the two of them, but he couldn’t deny the strength of it.
“Looks as if you’ve been busy,” he said, gesturing to the tables.
“Hope and Rafe did all this while I was working at the library today. It looks great, doesn’t it?”
“Wonderful,” he agreed. “I was going to see if there was anything I could do to help, but you seem to have everything under control.”
“I don’t know if I’d go that far,” she answered with a rather frazzled-sounding laugh. “I don’t know what I was thinking to agree to this. If Hope ever tries to rope me into one of her harebrained ideas again, please remind me of this moment and my solemn vow that I will never be so gullible again.”
He smiled even as he was aware of a sharp ache in his chest. He wouldn’t be around to remind her of anything. Some other guy would be the one to do that—a realization that he suddenly hated.
“Thanks for bringing Olivia early. She wanted her hair fixed the same as Louisa’s.”
“She said it was going to be a big bun on her head,” Olivia said. “That’s what I want.”
Celeste smiled at her. “Find your costume first, and then Louisa’s mom is on hair and makeup duty in the office, and she’ll help you out.”
“Okay,” she said eagerly, then trotted away.
Without the buffer of his daughter, he suddenly couldn’t escape the memory of that earthshaking kiss a few days earlier. When she smiled like that, her eyes huge behind her glasses, he wanted to reach out, tug her against him and taste her one more time.
“How are you?” she asked.
He didn’t know how to answer. That strange, irresistible tenderness seemed to twist and curl through him like an unruly vine. As he had no idea what to do with it, he said the first thing he could think of in a futile effort to put distance between them.
“Good. It’s been a busy few days. We’ve made a lot of progress with Charlotte’s house. We’re now down to one room and a few cupboards here and there.”
She didn’t answer for about three beats, and he thought he saw her hand tighten. Would she miss them when they left? Olivia, no doubt. What about him?
“That’s a huge job,” she finally said. “I imagine you must be relieved to be nearing the finish line.”
Relieved? No. Not really. It had been a strange, disquieting experience sorting through the pieces of his grandparents’ lives, all the treasures and papers and worthless junk they had left behind. It made a man wonder what would remain of his own life once he was gone. Right now he didn’t feel as though he had all that much to show for his years on the planet.
“I thought it would take me until at least New Year’s, but we’re ahead of schedule.”
“That’s great,” she said. Was that cheerful note in her voice genuine or forced?
“At this point, I’m thinking we’ll probably take off the day after Christmas. Maybe we’ll drive to San Diego for a few days before we head back up the coast to LA.”
“Oh. So soon? I... That will be nice for you, to be back in the warmth and sunshine after all this snow we’ve had.”
Logically, he knew it should be what he wanted, to go home and begin cobbling together the rest of their lives, but he still couldn’t manage to drum up much enthusiasm for it.
“If I don’t get the chance to talk to you again, I wanted to be sure to give you my thanks for all you’ve done to help Olivia.”
Surprise flickered in those lovely eyes. “I didn’t do anything,” she protested.
“You know that’s not true,” he said. “You have been nothing but kind to her from the first moment we met you at the library that day. You gave her an unforgettable birthday celebration and have helped her feel the Christmas spirit when I would have thought that impossible this year. She’s beginning to return to her old self, and I give a great deal of the credit for that to you and your family.”
Her smile was soft and sweet and lit up her face like a thousand twinkly lights. He was struck again by how truly lovely she was, one of those rare women who became more beautiful the more times a man saw her.
“She’s a remarkable girl, Flynn. I feel honored to have had the chance to know her. I’ll miss her. I’ll miss both of you.”
Before he could come up with a reply to that—before he could do something stupid like tell her how very much he would miss her, too—one of the catering crew came up to her to ask a question about the dessert trays. After an awkward little pause, she excused herself to help solve the problem.
I’ll miss her. I’ll miss both of you.
The words seemed to echo through the vast lodge. While his daughter’s life had been changed for the better because of their stay here in Pine Gulch, he wasn’t sure he could say the same thing for his own.
He would miss Celeste, too. Rather desperately, he realized suddenly. As he stood in her family’s holiday lodge surrounded by the trappings of the season, he realized how very much she had impacted his world, too.
“Got a minute?”
He had been so lost in thought he hadn’t notice Rafe come in. Though there was still a certain wariness between the two of them, Rafe seemed to have become much more accepting of him after their time together working in the barn the other day.
He liked and respected the other man. In fact, Flynn suspected that if he and Olivia were to stick around Pine Gulch, he and Rafe would have become friends.
“I have more than a minute,” he answered. “I’m just the chauffeur right now, apparently, delivering Olivia to get her hair fixed.”
“Perfect. While you’ve got your chauffeur hat on, I’ve got about twenty older ladies in need of rides. None of them likes to drive after dark, apparently, and especially not when it’s snowing. Naturally, Hope promised them all she would find a way to get them here without thinking of the impossible logistics of the thing. Chase was supposed to help me shuttle them all, but he got tied up with something at his ranch and won’t be free until right before the show starts. Everybody else is busy right now with the kids, so I’m in a pinch.”
He was honored to be asked, even though he wasn’t part of the community. “Sure. I’m happy to help, but I don’t know where anybody lives. You’ll have to tell me where to go.”
“I’ve got a list right here with addresses and names. I figure if we split it up, we’ll have time to get everybody here before the show, but it’s going to be tight. You sure you don’t mind?”
He didn’t. It felt good to be part of something, to feel as though he was giving back a little for all that had been done for him and Olivia.
“Not at all. Let’s do it.”
* * *
“Where’s my dad?” Olivia asked. “I thought he was going to be here to watch.”
She looked absolutely beautiful in the little angel costume she wore for the show—and for the special part they had just practiced at the last minute.
The costume set off her delicate features and lovely blond hair to perfection.
Celeste’s gaze drifted from her to the other children in their costumes. They all looked completely adorable. Somehow, by a Christmas miracle, they were really going to pull this off.
“Do you see my dad?” Olivia asked.
She frowned and looked around the beautiful screens Rafe and Flynn had built to serve as the wings to their small stage. She saw many familiar, beloved neighbors and friends, but no sign of a certain gorgeous man.
“I can’t see him, but I’m sure he’ll be here.”
“Who are you looking for?” Hope asked, looking up from adjusting Joey’s crooked crown.
“Flynn.”
“I don’t think he’s back yet from picking up the last group of ladies.”
Celeste stared at her sister. “What ladies?”
“Oh, didn’t you know? Rafe asked him to help shuttle some of the ladies who wanted to come to the dinner and show, but didn’t want to be stuck driving after dark.”
She gaped at her sister. “Seriously? Flynn?”
“Yeah. He’s already dropped off one carload earlier, and then I think Rafe sent him out again.”
She pictured him driving through the snow to pick up a bunch of older ladies he didn’t even know, and her throat seemed suddenly tight and achy. What a darling he was, to step up where he was needed.
How was she supposed to be able to resist a man like that?
She was in love with him.
She drew in a shaky breath as the reality of it crashed over her as if the entire plywood set had just tumbled onto her head. It was quite possible that she had been in love with him since that summer afternoon so many years ago when he had picked her up from her bike, dried her tears and cleaned up her scratches and scrapes.
Was that the reason she had never really become serious about any of the other men she dated in college? She’d always told herself she wasn’t ready, that she didn’t feel comfortable with any of them, that she was too socially awkward. That all might have been true, but perhaps the underlying reason was because she had already given her heart to the larger-than-life boy he had been.
In the past few weeks she truly had come to know him as more than just a kind teenager, her secret fantasy of what a hero should be. She had come to admire so many other things about him. His strength, his goodness, the love he poured out to his daughter.
How could she not love such a wonderful man? She loved him and she loved Olivia, too. Her heart was going to shatter into a million tiny pieces when they left.
“What if he doesn’t make it back?” Olivia fretted now. “He’ll miss my big surprise.”
Celeste drew in a breath and forced herself to focus on the show. There would be time for heartbreak later.
“He’ll make it back. Don’t worry. He wouldn’t miss seeing you.”
Actually, Flynn missing Olivia’s big surprise might not be such a bad thing. She wasn’t quite sure he would like it, but it was too late for regrets now.
Olivia still seemed edgy as the music started. Her uneven gait was more pronounced than usual as she followed the other children onstage for their opening number.
Just as the last child filed on, she saw him leading three older women: Agnes Sheffield, her sister and their friend Dolores Martinez.
She watched around the wings as he took their coats, then helped them find empty seats. Agnes touched his arm in a rather coquettish way. As he gave the octogenarian an amused smile, Celeste fell a little in love with him all over again.
Darn man. Why did he have to be so wonderful?
At last, when everyone was settled and the children were standing on the risers, Destry Bowman, one of the older girls, took the microphone.
“We welcome you all to the first ever holiday extravaganza at The Christmas Ranch. Consider this our Christmas gift to each of you.”
The children immediately launched into the show, which was mostly a collection of familiar songs with a few vignette skits performed by the older children. After only a few moments, she could tell it was going to be considered an unqualified success.
She saw people laughing in all the right parts, catching their breath in expectation, even growing teary eyed at times, just as she’d predicted to the children. Most of all, she hoped they had a little taste of the joy and magic of the season, which seemed so much more real when experienced through the eyes of a child.
This was different from writing a book. Here she could see the immediate impact of what she had created and helped produce.
Seeing that reaction in real time made her rethink her objections to the upcoming Sparkle movie. Maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad thing. The story was about finding the joy and wonder of Christmas through helping others, as Uncle Claude and Aunt Mary had taught them. If Sparkle could help spread that message, she didn’t see how she could stand in the way.
Finally, it was time for the last number, which they had changed slightly at the last minute.
“Are you ready, sweetheart?” she whispered to Olivia.
The girl nodded, the tinsel halo of her angel costume waving eagerly.
As all the children were onstage, she stepped out to the audience so she could watch. From this vantage point, she had a clear view of Flynn. His brow furrowed in confusion at first to see Olivia at the microphone, then when the piano player gave her a note for pitch and she started singing the first verse to “Silent Night” by herself a cappella, his features went tight and cold.
Her voice was pure and beautiful, as it had been the other night while they were caroling, and she sang the familiar song with clarity and sweetness. She saw a few people whispering and pointing and thought she saw Agnes Sheffield mouth the words Elise Chandler to Dolores.
When Olivia finished, the piano started and all the children sang the second verse with her, then Destry Bowman signaled the audience to join in on the third.
What they might have lacked in musical training or even natural ability, the children made up for in enthusiasm and bright smiles.
Beside her, Hope sniffled. “They’re wonderful, CeCe. The whole show is so good.”
She smiled, even though emotions clogged her own throat.
They finished to thunderous applause, which thrilled the children. She saw delight on each face, especially the proud parents.
A moment later, Hope took the stage to wrap up things. “Let’s give these amazing kids another round of applause,” she said.
The audience readily complied, which made the children beam even more. The show had been a smashing success—which probably meant Hope would want to make it a tradition.
“I have to give props to one more person,” she went on. To Celeste’s shock, Hope looked straight at her. “My amazing sister, Celeste. Once again, she has taken one of my harebrained ideas and turned it into a beautiful reality. Celeste.”
Her sister held out her hand for her to come onstage. She had never wanted to do some serious hair pulling more than she did at right that moment.
She thought about being obstinate and remaining right where she was, but that would only be even more awkward. With no choice in the matter, she walked onstage to combined applause from the performers and the audience.
Face blazing, she hurried back down the stairs and off stage as quickly as possible, in time to hear Hope’s last words to the audience.
“Now, Jenna McRaven and her crew have come up with an amazing meal for you all, so sit back and enjoy. Parents, your kids are going to change out of their costumes and they’ll be right out to join you for dinner. As a special treat for you, the wonderful Natalie Dalton and Lucy Boyer are going to entertain you during dinner with a duet for piano and violin.”
The two cousins by marriage came out and started the low-key dinner music Hope had arranged while the caterers began serving the meal.
“You all did wonderfully,” Celeste told the cast when they gathered offstage. “Thank you so much for your hard work. I’m so proud of you! Now hurry and change then come out and find your family so you can enjoy all this yummy food.”
With much laughing and talking, the children rushed to the two dressing rooms they had set aside. She was picking up someone’s discarded shepherd’s crook when her sister Faith came around the screen.
“Great work, CeCe. It was truly wonderful.” She gave one of her rare smiles, and in that moment, all the frenetic work seemed worth it.
“I’m glad it’s over. Next year it’s your turn.”
“Great idea.” Hope joined them and turned a speculative look in Faith’s direction.
“Ha. That will be the day,” Faith said. “Unlike Celeste, I know how to say no to you. I’ve been doing it longer.”
Celeste laughed and hugged her sisters, loving them both dearly, then she hurried back into the hallway to help return costumes to hangers and hurry the children along.
Just before she reached the dressing room, Flynn caught up with her, his face tight with an emotion she couldn’t quite identify.
Still caught up in the exhilaration of a job well done, she impulsively hugged him. “Oh, Flynn. Wasn’t Olivia wonderful? She didn’t have an ounce of stage fright. She’s amazing.”
He didn’t hug her back and it took a moment for her to realize that emotion on his face wasn’t enthusiasm. He was furious.
“Why didn’t you tell me she was going to sing a solo?”
She didn’t know how to answer. The truth was, she had worried about his reaction but had ignored the little niggling unease. For his own reasons, Flynn objected to his daughter performing at all, let alone by herself. But the girl’s voice was so lovely, Celeste had wanted her to share it.
Her heart sank, and she realized she had no good defense. “I should have told you,” she admitted. “It was a last-minute thing. After we went caroling and I heard what a lovely voice she had, I decided to change the program slightly. I didn’t have a lot of time to fill you in on the details since we decided to make the change just tonight, but I should have tried harder.”
“You couldn’t leave well enough alone. I told you I didn’t want her doing the show in the first place, but my feelings didn’t seem to matter. You pushed and pushed until I agreed, and then you threw her onto center stage, even though I made my feelings on it clear.”
“She loved it!” she protested. “She wasn’t nervous at all. A week ago, she was freaking out in a restaurant over a bin of dropped dishes, and today she was standing in front of a hundred people singing her heart out without flinching. I think that’s amazing progress!”
“Her progress or lack of progress is none of your business. You understand? She’s my daughter. I get to make those choices for her, not some small-town librarian who barely knows either of us.”
She inhaled sharply as his words sliced and gouged at her like carving knives.
Her face suddenly felt numb, as frozen as her brain. That was all she was to him. A small-town librarian who didn’t even know him or his daughter. It was as if all the closeness they had shared these past few days, the tender moments, didn’t matter.
As if her love didn’t matter.
She drew in another breath. She would get through this. She had endured much worse in her life than a little heartbreak.
Okay, right now it didn’t exactly seem little. Still, she would survive.
“Of course,” she said stiffly. “I’m sorry. I should have talked to you first. Believe it or not, I had her best interests at heart. Not only do I think she has an amazing voice, but I wanted her to know that even though something terrible has happened to her, her life doesn’t have to stop. She doesn’t have to cower in a room somewhere, afraid to live, to take any chances. I wanted to show her that she can still use her gift to bring light and music to the world. To bring joy to other people.”
The moment she said the words, realization pounded over her like an avalanche rushing down the mountain.
This was what the Sparkle books did for people. It was what she did for people. All this time she had felt so uncomfortable with her unexpected success, afraid to relish it, unable to shake the feeling that she didn’t deserve it.
She had a gift for storytelling. Her mother and father had nurtured that gift her entire life, but especially when their family had been held captive in Colombia.
Tell us a story, CeCe, her father would say in that endlessly calm voice that seemed to hold back all the chaos. He would start her off and the two of them would spin a new tale of triumph and hope to distract the others from their hunger and fear. She told stories about dragons, about a brave little mouse, about a girl and a boy on an adventure in the mountains.
Tears welled up as she remembered how proud and delighted her parents had been with each story. Maybe that was another reason she’d struggled to accept her Sparkle success, because they weren’t here to relish it with her.
Yes, it would have been wonderful. She would have loved to see in the pride in their eyes, but in the end, it didn’t matter. Not really. Her sisters were here. They were infinitely thrilled for her, and that was enough.
More important, she was here. She had a gift and it was long past time she embraced it instead of feeling embarrassed and unworthy anytime someone stopped her to tell her how much her words meant to them.
“Excuse me,” she mumbled to him, needing to get away. Just as she turned to escape, her niece, Louisa, came out of the dressing room holding a book.
“Aunt CeCe, do you know where Olivia went? We were talking about The Best Christmas Pageant Ever. She’d never read it, and I told her I got an extra copy at school and she could have it. I want to make sure I don’t forget to give it to her.”
She turned away from Flynn, hoping none of the glittery tears she could feel threatening showed in her eyes.
“She’s probably in the dressing room.”
“I don’t think so. I just came from there and I didn’t see her.”
“Are you looking for Olivia?” Barrett asked, joining them from the boy’s dressing room. “She left.”
She frowned at her nephew even as she felt Flynn tense beside her. “Left? What do you mean, she left?”
He shrugged. “She said she wanted to go see something. I saw her go out the back door. I thought it was kind of weird because she didn’t even have a coat on, just her angel costume.”
Celeste stared down at the boy, her heart suddenly racing with alarm. The angel costume was thin and not at all suitable for the wintry conditions in the Idaho mountains. Even a few minutes of weather exposure could be dangerous.
“How long ago was this?” Flynn demanded.
“I don’t know. Right after we were done singing. Maybe ten minutes.”
“She can’t have gone far,” Celeste said.
“You don’t know that,” Flynn bit out.
He was right. Even in ten minutes, the girl might have wandered into the forest of pine and fir around the ranch and become lost, or she could have fallen in the creek or wandered into the road. In that white costume, she would blend with the snow, and vehicles likely wouldn’t be able to see her until it was too late.
Her leg still wasn’t completely stable. She could have slipped somewhere and be lying in the snow, cold and hurt and scared...
Icy fingers of fear clutched at her, wrapping around her heart, her lungs, her brain.
“We can’t panic,” she said, more to herself than to him. “I’ll look through the lodge to find her first, and then I’ll get Rafe and everyone out there searching the entire ranch. We’ll find her, Flynn. I promise.”