in that.”
“Don’t worry your pretty head about me, Noelle.”
Noelle. The way his baritone warmed like wild honey around her name made her absolutely certain. “Thad?”
But there was no answer, just the moan of the wind and the hammering of snow falling with a vengeance. It pounded everywhere, on the top of her hood, on the front of her cloak, on the steps at her feet, and the sound deceived her.
Had he already disappeared into the storm? She couldn’t tell. She stood alone, battered by howling wind and needle-sharp snow, feeling seventeen again. Those feelings of love and heartbreak and regret were a lifetime ago. She’d had enough of all three these past years to last her a lifetime. She knew it was foolish of her to wonder about Thad McKaslin now. He had rejected her, too.
She turned on her heels and waded through the snow to the covered porch steps. They were icy, so she took them with care. It was best to keep her mind focused firmly on the blessings in her life. On what was good about this moment and this day. No good came from dwelling on what was past and forever lost.
“Young man, where do you think you are going?” Henrietta demanded from, what sounded, near the bottom of the porch steps. “You’ll come back here and warm up with a cup of tea in front of a hot fire.”
“I’ve got stock to see to before the storm gets much worse. Good day, ma’am.” Thad’s voice came muted by distance and the thick veil of snow.
“Mark my words, you’ll freeze to death before you make it to the end of the driveway!” Henrietta humphed when no answer came. “What a disagreeable man. He may have saved us, but God help him. We’ll likely as not find him frozen solid on the path to town come morning. Terrible thing,” she said, leading the way into the house.
Apparentlys back to her usual self. Noelle gave thanks for that.
After following her aunt into the warmth of the house, she found herself wondering about Thad. He’d disappeared back into the blizzard, just as he’d come to them.
A narrow escape.
He wasn’t bitter, Thad told himself as he nosed Sunny north. No, he was as cold to the past as the wind. But he was unprepared. Unprepared to have seen her. Unprepared to accept the fact that she’d said the words that kept playing over and over in his mind. I’ve never married.
Wasn’t that why he’d left Angel Falls? To do as her father wanted and get out of her life? So she could marry the right kind of man? Because there was no way an immigrant’s son like him could give Noelle the comfort she was used to. There had been many times over the last lonely years that he’d seen the older man’s point.
The love he thought they had was a fool’s paradise. A dream that had nothing to do with the hard reality of life.
They’d been two kids living on first love and dreams, but the real world ran on hard work and wages. He’d driven cattle from all over the West to the stockyards, from California to Chicago. He’d eaten dust and branded calves and tucked away every spare dollar he could and, except for a few months every winter, he’d lived out of his saddlebags. He’d learned what life was about.
The icy wind gusted hard, pulling him out of his thoughts. He’d gone a fair ways down the driveway. There was nothing around him but the lashing wind and the pummel of the iced snow, which had fallen around him like a veil. He gave thanks for it because he couldn’t see anything—especially the house he’d left. Noelle’s house. The twilight-dark storm made it easier to forget he’d seen her. To forget everything. Especially those early years away from her and how his heart had bled in misery until one day there’d been no blood left. Until he’d felt drained of substance but finally purged of the dream of her and what could have been.
Sure, there had been times—moments—since then when he’d thought of her. When he saw a woman’s chestnut hair twisted up in that braided fancy knot Noelle liked to wear. Or when he saw an intricate lace curtain hanging in a window, he would recall how she’d liked to sit quietly in the shade on the porch and crochet lace by the hour. Any time he heard a piece of that fancy piano music she liked to play with the complicated chords and the long-winded compositions, he would remember.
It was the memories that could do him in, that were burrowing like a tick into his chest. He tried to freeze his heart like the winter’s frost reaching deep into the ground. Usually that was the best way to handle those haunting thoughts of her and of the past.
He would never have come back to Angel Falls except for his kid brother. The boy didn’t know what kind of a sacrifice Thad was making in coming back here and in his decisions to stick around, help the family and start to put down roots for a change.
Roots. He’d been avoiding doing that all this time, aside from the money it took to buy the kind of land he wanted—because settling down would only remind him he wasn’t building a life and dreams with her.
Don’t think about Noelle. He willed the words deep into his heart. Now, if only he were strong enough to stick by them. Whether she was married or not, their past was dead and gone. He was no longer that foolish boy thinking love was what mattered. He was a man strong enough to resist making a mistake like that—like her—again.
The white-out strength winds blasted harder; Sunny shied and veered off the faint path of the road. Not a great sign. Thad pulled his mustang up, so he wouldn’t lose his sense of direction. It wouldn’t take much for a man to get himself lost in a blizzard like this. He shaded his eyes from the wind-driven downfall to try to get a good look, but he couldn’t see a thing. Still, he dismounted, to make sure. Something could be in the road—like another rider driven off track by the storm in need of help.
The curtain of snow shifted on a stronger gust of wind, and something red flashed at the roadside only to disappear again. Keeping hold of Sunny’s reins and his sense of direction, Thad knelt to find a lady’s hatbox tied up with a fancy red ribbon and, next to it, a small flat ice-covered package.
Must be Noelle’s things, he figured, scanning what little he could see for landmarks. This sloping slant of ground was probably at the junction of the main road. The sleigh had made a sharp turn onto the driveway here. Combined with the wind, the goods had probably slid right over the edge of the sleigh.
It looked as though he wasn’t completely done with Noelle yet. The small package fit into his saddlebag, but not the bulky hatbox. That he had to hang over his saddle horn by the ribbon.
Just his luck. Now, as he nosed Sunny north into the storm and toward home, there was a reminder of Noelle he could not ignore. The blizzard grew with a ruthless howl, baring its icy teeth. He was cut off from the world. He could see only gray wind, white snow, brutal cold and the cheerful slash of a Christmas-red bow, making it impossible not to think about her. To wonder, but never to wish.
No, not ever again.
Shivering between the cold sheets, Noelle burrowed more deeply into the covers. Her toes found the metal bed warmer heating the foot of her bed. Ah, warmth. Above the background drone of the blizzard, she heard the hiss of the lamp’s flame as it wavered, pausing to draw more kerosene up its wick.
On the other side of the bedside table, her cousin’s mattress ropes groaned slightly as she shifted, probably to keep the lamplight on her Bible page. “‘The Lord does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.’”
There
