His Holiday Heart

“So you’re Lucy.” Gran’s voice rose above the others. “What a pleasure to meet you. Danielle gave me one of your books just last week. I started it yesterday, and I can’t remember the last time I read something that made me laugh so hard.”

Here it came, the long stream of self-importance he knew had to be there. He turned on his heel, forced his feet to start working again and stalked from the room. He could hear his mother’s voice from long ago, still crystal clear after all these years. If it wasn’t for you, I would be a star right now. I have the face for it, everyone used to say so. Then I would be somebody. Someone important.

He was halfway to the kitchen, but was he safe? No, because Lucy’s voice was following him like a cloud of doom.

“That’s so nice of you to say. A lot of people tell me my books are funny, but they aren’t supposed to be.”

A wave of laughter followed him as he stormed into the back half of the house. Dorrie and Lauren looked up from their work at the counter.

“Hi, Spence.” Lauren repositioned her knife and kept chopping. “Happy Thanksgiving.”

“Happy Thanksgiving to you, dear.” Dorrie’s eyes were twinkling, always a bad sign. She was in such a happy mood.

He didn’t approve of happy moods. The sound of Lucy’s voice seemed to gravitate to his ears like space dirt to the atmosphere, and while he couldn’t make out the words, he heard kindness and caring in her tone. Gran was answering her. They were hitting it off. Great. That meant everyone in the family was now in love with Lucy.

“You look in a particularly good mood this morning.” Dorrie waltzed toward him, stopping to lay a reassuring hand on Lauren’s shoulder before she circled around the counter. “And wearing the sweater I gave you for your birthday. It looks handsome on you, just like I thought.”

“It’s black. It seemed appropriate for today.”

Dorrie laughed; she always understood him even when no one did. It had always been that way, even when he’d been a hurting teenager and he’d done his best to push her away. She hadn’t been fooled then, and she wasn’t now. “It may be an occasion of mourning for you, Spence, but we like having Lucy here. You ought to try smiling a little. Show off your dimples.”

“I don’t have dimples.” It was best to deny it.

“Put your best foot forward. The girls told me everything.”

“Of course they did.” He recognized the look. Dorrie was ready to give him a hug, and physical closeness made him nervous. He stepped back. “I don’t want to put my best foot forward, sorry.”

Dorrie rolled her eyes, still not fooled. “If it makes any difference, I don’t think it matters. God makes our plans, Spence, we don’t. Don’t you forget that.”

It was his turn to roll his eyes. “God’s plan for me right now involves making sure no one falls on the sidewalk out front. I’m going to put more deicer out there before Danielle, Jonas and the kids get here. Jonas might have trouble with his cane.”

“All right.” Dorrie went back to the stove where pots were boiling, and delicious scents were rising up with the steam. “You go work on the sidewalk if that’s what you need to do, but you’re still going to have to come back into this house sometime. You can’t avoid her forever.”

His hand was on the doorknob to the garage before he realized two things. Dorrie and Lauren were exchanging looks that made him fear the worst: They were going to make sure it was impossible for him to avoid Lucy Chapin. And, worst of all, he had left his coat in the other room. He would have to walk past Lucy to get to it.

Maybe Jack had an extra coat in the garage, he thought, and yanked open the door. “Dorrie, don’t you sit me next to Lucy at the table. You hear?”

“Sure, I hear you.” Dorrie sounded as if she were enjoying this way too much. “But I am your mother, young man, and you will sit where I tell you to, and you will mind the manners I raised you with.”

He had a few things to say to that, but the truth was anything he might say would hurt Dorrie’s feelings, and he wouldn’t do that on his life. So he left her to her victory and her hopes and stalked out into the frigid garage. He was out of luck. There was no coat or anything he could use anywhere in the neatly organized shelving. Dorrie was right. He couldn’t stay outside forever. He hit the garage opener, and who was standing there holding his coat?

Lucy. He gritted his teeth and prepared for his system to go haywire. His palms went damp. His face felt hot. He suddenly seemed far too tall and big and awkward.

Dainty, petite Lucy was sweet and unruffled. She obviously wasn’t having a problem functioning. No, she looked calm and at ease, without so much as a nervous flicker. She was wrapped up warmly in her parka and fuzzy hat, scarf and mittens—in neon blue.

“Your sisters thought you might need this.” She held out his warm coat like a peace offering.

He did not want a peace offering. He wanted his system to return to normal. He wanted the static to clear from his brain and the panic to leave his bloodstream. He forced his feet toward her and plucked the coat out of her grip. “They forced you to bring this out?”

“You know they did. They all used the pregnancy excuse, and your grandmother simply shouldn’t be out in the ice.”

“It is getting colder out.” It was the closest thing he could say to thank you. He was grateful for her concern about his grandmother, but that was as far as he was willing to go. It was best to keep the status quo of him disliking her and her avoiding him. He punched his arms into the sleeves of his coat. “You can go now.”

She squinted her pretty eyes at him and folded her arms over her chest. The contemplative look on her lovely face made his stomach drop.

Uh-oh. He was going to get some comment on that. As he spotted the bag of deicer and strode toward it—alarmingly close to her—he could hear her mind working. The best defense was a good offense, so he started talking before she could start in. “Go. Just because I helped you last night doesn’t mean I want you hanging around today.”

“Sure, I see that.” She winced, and there was a shadow of hurt in her soft green eyes.

It stung his conscience, but he had to set boundaries. He had to drive her away and keep her there because of the strange weakening in the vicinity of his heart. Every instinct he had began to shout danger! Longing eased to life in his soul—a deep, quiet wish that he could not allow.

“I think I have your number, Spence McKaslin.”

“I doubt it.” He grabbed the scoop inside the deicer bag and filled it. There was no way she could know his secret. No possible way. He straightened, doing his level best to keep his focus on the concrete in front of his boots. With great effort, he was able to walk right on past her like a normal, not interested, unaffected man.

He was careful to keep his back to her, though, as he scattered the pellets across the driveway. Her boots pattered on the concrete behind him. He could feel her intake of breath. She was preparing to say whatever she had been thinking so hard about, and he wasn’t going to stand for it. He had defenses to fortify and shields to keep in place.

“Go in, Lucy. Go away.” Those words didn’t come out nearly as harsh as he wanted, and he winced. How was he going to drive her away if he didn’t sound mean and unfriendly? Where had his commanding voice gone? Where was his embittered grimace? He tried to summon them up, but they were as frozen as the wintry world around him.

“You can growl and bark all you want. I’m not going anywhere.” Lucy padded on by him in her expensive designer boots. She was holding a smaller scoop, and she had the audacity to sprinkle pellets, too. “You can’t scare me anymore.”

“Why not?” He deepened his voice and scowled extra hard.

“Because I have figured you out, Spence McKaslin.”

“Unlikely.”

“Likely,” she corrected with the sweetest grin. She faced him with her chin set and her pretty eyes laughing at him. “You always used to make my knees tremble, and I did all I could to avoid you, but no more. Growl all you want. I’m not afraid.”

His jaw dropped. He knew he was staring at her like an idiot, and if any of his family happened to be looking out of the front window at this exact moment, they would draw a much different conclusion. He probably looked like a lovelorn fool gaping at Lucy as if she were the loveliest woman on earth.

She did happen to be the loveliest woman on earth, but he didn’t want to be caught staring at her.

She sashayed on by, heading straight to the bag of deicer. “You don’t have to look so shocked. I’m glad I can now step foot inside the bookstore and the church without having to plan how to avoid you first.”

“Maybe I want you to avoid me.” His mouth felt strange in the corners, almost as if he were trying to grin. Impossible. He forced the corners of his mouth down into a severe frown and cast the last of the pellets along the corner of the driveway.

“It was nice of you to help me out yesterday.” She stopped at his side.

Way too close. His throat seized up. His lungs forgot how to work. His feet iced to the concrete. “N-no problem. I would do the same for anyone lacking good sense.”

“I know.” She didn’t seem particularly bothered by his insult, as if she knew he didn’t mean it. “I understand completely. It was nothing personal.”

“Good.” Whew. He stormed past her and commanded his eyes not to stray in her direction. He’d had enough of this malfunctioning eyeball problem. It took all of his effort to focus on the ground in front of him, and yet his vision strayed to her. He couldn’t help noticing the way she stood like sweetness itself, framed with the background of pristine snow and beheld by the white mantle of snow clouds that were gathering. Dressed in her bright blue coat, she was like a dream, too good to be real and impossible to believe in.

You don’t believe in dreams, he reminded himself as he snatched Jack’s snowblower from its place against the wall. He’d lived his life this way, from the moment Linda—his biological mother—took off. He learned how foolish dreams were. He learned how fickle love was. A smart man didn’t let his heart go warm and soft over a woman. He gave the snowblower a shove and burst back out into the driveway.

Lucy was watching him with a puzzled look. “The driveway is clear of snow. Even that little skiff of ice is gone, now that the deicer is working.”