A Town Called Christmas

Shannon spoke as if that was a good thing to share, but how would she know? Nicky had been her high-school sweetheart. She’d never suffered a broken heart.

Merry shrugged. “Rebounding balls bounce off each other,” she said thinly.

Her father’s voice rang out from the head of the table, stalling the dinner chatter. “Merry, Shannon. Are you girls whispering about my Christmas present again?”

Merry’s gaze snapped off Mike’s face. She hadn’t felt so awkward around her family since high school. No, even then she’d been relatively confident.

She had to go all the way back to junior high. Her first serious crush on a kid named Jason, who’d been a head shorter than her. Nicky had teased her without mercy. The family’s enthusiasm had mortified her when Jason had arrived with his dad to escort her to an eighth-grade dance, with her mom snapping photos, her dad joking about first kisses and Nicky and Noelle making smooching noises behind Merry’s back.

She smiled to herself. She hadn’t thought of those days in years. The move back home had brought up a lot of old memories.

Shannon answered Charlie’s question. “We’re talking about sports.”

“Sports?” Grace echoed with a genteel but dubious air.

Shannon smiled blamelessly. “Basketball.”

“Our Merry was the MVP of her high-school class,” Charlie said to Mike. “Basketball, volleyball and track. Her teams went to the regionals.”

“Oh, Dad. That was ages ago. No one but you remembers.”

Mike eyed Merry approvingly. “Do you still play?”

“I run, some. I golf during the summer.”

“You look athletic.”

Was he kidding? Everyone had stopped eating. She couldn’t tell if there was an actual hush in the room, or if it was only her own ears that weren’t functioning. Her voice did sound far away when she answered. “Not so much, lately.”

Mike nodded as if he’d noticed nothing out of the ordinary. “There’s really a lot of snow here. Do any of you ski?” Either he was oblivious, or extremely polite.

Merry let the conversation slide by. Her mother’s face was pink. Shannon gave Merry a sympathetic squeeze before turning the other way to link hands with Nicky under the table. The men talked about the weight room they used aboard their aircraft carrier, while Charlie reminisced about learning Ping-Pong in ’Nam during his own tour of duty. Then he started in on his ski-jumping stories, which could end the dinner conversation if no one interrupted.

Merry told herself to relax.

“We built our own ski jump on Sawhorse Hill, a rickety contraption made of old barn boards and cedar poles. It leaned to the left. Climbing the ladder to the top was taking your life in your hands.” Charlie eyed the last piece of beef on his plate, then reached for the gravy boat. “I volunteered to make the first jump.”

“More guts than brains,” Grace said fondly, as she always did at this point in the story.

“A trait of the York males,” Shannon added, making Nicky give a raspy chuckle.

Perhaps a trait of the females also. Merry frequently felt as if she was teetering on the brink of a scary adventure, with no one to catch her when she fell.

She looked at Mike. He was watching her father, nodding along with the story. Skip and Georgie sat on either side of him, lured there by Mike’s intervention when the boys had started fighting over who got to sit next to their dad. He’d called them his dinner service copilots.

Diplomatic, decent, dependable. Not to mention dishy. Merry felt slightly feverish whenever she thought about catching Mike shirtless, and since she thought of that every five minutes, well, no wonder she’d grown so warm.

She tugged at her collar while her gaze rose inexorably from the surface of the table. Yes, he was still there. Captain America, a practically perfect man. Her unexpected gift for the holidays.

Who’d arrived in her life at the worst possible time.

“So there I was at the top of the makeshift ski jump, on a couple of badly warped skis,” Charlie continued. “The ramp was as bumpy as a backwoods road beneath the snow we’d packed onto it. Someone gave a push to get me started.”

Charlie surveyed the table, in his element. The only thing he liked more than telling family stories to a new audience was gravy. His gaze fastened on Mike. “Do you know ski jumping?”

“Sure. Like the Olympics?”

“Well.” Charlie chuckled. “We young pups thought so at the time. After dinner, Grammadear will take out the photo albums. There are a few shots of me in the glory days.”

Shannon nudged Merry. She mouthed “Help.” Dragging out the albums and the same old stories would lead to an entire evening of family time.

Merry nodded. She remembered well. Some fathers kept their daughters’ boyfriends in line with threats. Her dad did it with endless storytelling until the boyfriend du jour went away out of sheer boredom.

“What happened then, Grandpa?” Skip made a swooping gesture. “Did you fly through the air with the greatest of ease?”

Charlie put his fists beneath his chin. His shoulders hunched. Georgie and Skip hunched with him. “I started down the hill. Picking up speed. The spectators were shouting. ‘Jump, Charlie, jump!’”

Merry looked tenderly at Georgie, who was entranced, his eyes like glass marbles. Mike was doing the same. Their gazes intersected. They exchanged smiles and the heat flushed through her again, only this time she wasn’t thinking about Mike’s physique, but what a natural inclination to fatherhood he seemed to have. He was the type of man—strong, quietly confident, even heroic—that any woman would like to have as the father of her children.

Hormones. Merry clutched the napkin in her lap. Even considering that Christmas was the season for miracles, she was getting carried away.

“Snow was flying,” Charlie continued. “The boards rattled beneath my skis. One of them popped up beneath me as I hit the end of the ramp.”

Georgie gasped.

“I shoved off with all of my might, snapped my arms out and cranked the skis up to my chin as I leaned into the jump.” Charlie extended his arms and did an airplane maneuver over the crowded table. “I must have flown for a mile.” He winked at the grown-ups. “The spectators cheered. And then—” he focused on the boys “—I dropped out of the sky.”

“Bam,” said Skip, slapping a fist into his palm.

“I hit hard, you betcha. Nearly bit my tongue in half. One of my skis snapped like a twig and I went head over heels.” He drew circles through the air. “Cartwheels, I did. All the way across the landing zone.”

“Were you hurt, Grandpa?”

“Nope. A snowdrift saved me when I landed in it headfirst.” Charlie’s chest expanded. “I set the hill record on that very first jump and nobody ever did beat it.”

Skip’s eyes narrowed with skepticism. “How far did you fly?”

“Eh. The exact number’s in dispute because we didn’t have a tape measure. About…” Charlie inched his hands apart like a fisherman with a tall tale. “Forty feet. Give or take.”

“Wow,” Georgie breathed.

“More giving than taking, is what I’ve been told, my dear.” Grace rose. “Are we having second helpings? Thirds? No? Then, who wants to help me clear?”

Both Mike and Merry started to get up, but Shannon shot to her feet, dragging Nicky with her. “We’ll do it. You sit down, Grammadear.” She handed her husband the meat platter and potato bowl and swept up several dinner plates, escaping through the swinging door between the dining room and kitchen.

A short silence settled among those left at the table.

Skip’s expression was solemn. “Mom and Dad want to kiss in the kitchen.”