looked up and everything in her body seemed to drop to her feet, then rebound to fill her whole body with joy.
He came.
Blake Nelson was here in Beckett’s Run, dressed in boots and jeans and a soft sheepskin jacket and his hat. The brown cowboy hat made him seem impossibly tall and, yes, even a touch exotic, and she swallowed, thinking he looked absolutely gorgeous.
Anything she’d thought of saying to him deserted her. All her apologies were jumbled in her head. All her proclamations seemed small and paltry next to the reality that he’d flown all the way to New England on Christmas Eve and shown up on her doorstep.
He took a step through the snow, and another, and when he was close enough for her to hear him clearly he stopped.
“I don’t want to fix you,” he said.
The air stilled between them, carrying only the faint sound of music coming from downtown and the soft plop of clumps of snow dropping off cedar branches.
“I don’t want to fix you, Hope. I love you just the way you are.”
It was like she could suddenly hear the “Hallelujah Chorus” in her head. She slowly dropped her camera bag and went down one step, then another. He took one step forward, then a second. A smile blossomed on her face and she was rewarded when he smiled back, slightly sideways as his scar pulled at his lip. It didn’t matter. She adored the roguish tilt to it.
When she reached him she stopped and tilted her face up to his. “You came.”
“I had to. I shouldn’t have let you go in the first place. It was all wrong from the moment you left. I knew I’d made a terrible mistake.”
“So you came after me?”
He put his gloved hand on her collar, squeezing the inside of her shoulder. “It was high time someone did.”
Oh, he did get it! She threw her arms around his neck and pulled him close. It had been so long since she’d felt she was first in someone’s life.
“It wasn’t trying to be perfect that made me put up walls,” she whispered, holding him tight. “It was wanting to feel like I mattered. No matter what I did I never felt like anyone thought I was important enough to waste time on. Never thought anyone would ever think enough of me to stay, you know? Gram was the only anchor I had.”
“Now you have me,” Blake said softly, wrapping his arms around her. “No matter what happens between us, Hope, you’ll have me. Because I know you matter. You matter to me. More than you can imagine.” He gazed into her eyes, his wide and earnest. “I didn’t say it right that night on the sleigh. I’m not sure I’ll say it right now. I know you’re scared. I know this is crazy. But I didn’t expect to feel this way. You were right. I don’t even think I knew I was doing it. I was afraid. I am afraid. Of loving someone so much and losing them.”
“So what changed?”
“You drove away and I’d lost you anyway. Lost you and missed out on all the wonderful things we might have had. I couldn’t let you go—not when I’d found what I’d been looking for all along.” His throat bobbed as he swallowed. “I realized that you need to hang on to wonderful things in life with both hands when you have the chance. So they don’t get away.”
He gripped the sleeves of her coat in his fingers and gazed deeply into her eyes.
“With both hands.”
“Oh, Blake.”
He wasn’t sure of her. She got that now. And why should he be? She hadn’t been sure herself until this morning—until she’d been without him and seen the reminder of all she’d left behind. She stood on tiptoe, feeling utterly feminine for once, and not like the awkward beanpole who’d been too shy to take the initiative. She tilted her head and kissed him. Really kissed him—without hesitation, without reserve. He angled his head and her hand bumped his hat, knocking it to the ground, but they didn’t stop. Not until the kiss had settled from a question into a certainty. He could be in no doubt of her feelings now.
“We can make it work,” he said, holding her close. “I know we can somehow...”
“I was going to change my ticket this afternoon anyway,” Hope said, grinning. “I was going to come back after Christmas. I wasn’t sure what would come after that, but I knew that yesterday couldn’t really be goodbye.”
“You were?”
She nodded. “I had a rather interesting conversation with my sister this morning. She told me I was using my job as an excuse to avoid intimacy. She’s right. My feelings for you scare me. But I don’t like who I’ve become, Blake. You did fix me—or at least you started to while I was with you. You reminded me of things I once wanted but had given up on. Family. Closeness. A house full of children. And presents and get-togethers.”
“You want those things?” He leaned back and looked into her face. “But you always hung back.”
“It seemed easier not to hope at all rather than continually be disappointed,” she replied. “But I was just pretending to be something I wasn’t.”
“When you were standing in the kitchen in that apron with flour on your nose I knew,” he said. “You belonged there. I didn’t know how to make you see it. But you looked happy. It seemed right.”
“It was right. You gave me the greatest thing of all, Blake. Acceptance. You accept people. Yes, you try to fix them—not to make them someone different from who they are, but to show that they are already valuable and worth your time. I love you, Blake. I didn’t expect to, and I certainly didn’t want to, and I wasn’t even sure I could. But I do—so much. You’re my Christmas miracle and I wasn’t even looking for one.”
His eyes sparkled at her. “Hope? I want to kiss you again, but we’re still in the middle of your grandmother’s yard. And if this town is like most small towns then nothing is private. Do you suppose we could go inside, where it’s warmer and more...um...?”
She took him by the hand and led him up the porch, over the squeaky board, and inside. He immediately swung her about until she was in his arms and he was kissing her—without the caution of that first time by the tree, and not in the lazy way they’d kissed in the snow, or even the desperate, unsure way they’d kissed only minutes ago in the yard. This one was deliberate, confident. Like coming home and Christmas morning and all the good, fine things she could imagine rolled into one.
When it broke off they were both smiling, and the weight that had been on her shoulders—the one he’d seen right from the beginning—suddenly rolled away. She laughed as she realized she had one final present to give him.
“I finally did it, Blake. I took the perfect picture.”
“You did?”
She nodded. “Stay here. I’ll show you.”
She raced upstairs, boots and all—she’d clean up later—and grabbed her laptop. “I haven’t had a chance to print it yet, but look.” She brought up the picture and held it out. “It’s you and Cate in front of the tree.”
“And this is the perfect shot?”
She
