Coming Home for Christmas: Christmas Angel / Unexpected Gift / Navy Joy

“The last Christmas we had together? Seven years ago? When we were hanging them on the tree? Instead of hanging it up, I slipped it into my billfold.”

“But...why?” Anna stared down at the poor, tattered thing that had seen better days.

Shrugging, Kyle admitted, “I wanted to take a part of you with me, Anna. Maybe because it had your energy, your love in it... I don’t know. I always put it in a plastic Ziplock bag and tucked it into the pocket of my Kevlar vest when I went out on a patrol. I always believed you were my guardian angel and I wanted to take you with me into battle.”

“I—I didn’t know...” Her voice dropped to an aching whisper as she held it gently between her hands. Her lower lip trembled.

“One time? I forgot to put it into my vest. We went out on an op and I got shot in the right calf.”

“Oh, God, Kyle—”

He held up his hands. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have said anything. I’m fine now. A hundred percent, okay? Wipe the worry off your face?”

Sitting back, Anna cradled the angel in her hands.

“You are always with me, Anna.” Kyle felt emotions rising swiftly in him. He forced himself to smile, but it was a poor attempt. What he wanted to do was hold her. Kiss the hell out of her again. See her smile once more. Hear that husky laugh of hers, which always sent riffles across his flesh.

Nodding, she carefully handed it back to him, their fingers briefly touching. “I’m glad to know this. Did you ever marry, Kyle?”

“No.” He saw her perplexed look. “Look, I knew in our business getting married wasn’t an option. And you were smart enough at twenty-two not to say yes to me even though I wanted to marry you, Anna. I kept seeing SEAL marriages fall apart, one after another. They have a ninety percent divorce rate, so I steered clear. I never got serious with a woman after you. I didn’t want to lead her on.” He had plenty of one-night stands, but Kyle wasn’t going there with Anna. All it would do was hurt her, and he’d hurt her enough already.

“That was good of you to tell me that,” she admitted quietly, sipping her coffee. “I knew I couldn’t handle you being in danger all the time, Kyle. It would have killed me.”

“You’re a big worrywart,” he teased gently. “I understand now. Back then, at twenty-two, I didn’t.”

“I hurt you badly by turning you down,” she choked. “I always felt horrible about it.”

Kyle reached out and captured her fingers. “It was the smartest thing you could have done, Anna. And like you said, we had to grow up and mature a little in order to know you did the right thing for both of us. I was kind of blind, deaf and dumb at that time.” Blindly in love with her. But he always had been.

“I still feel that way at times.”

“What? When you married Tom?”

Anna gave him a painful shrug and couldn’t meet his eyes. Unconsciously, she rubbed her nose. “He walked into my life six months after you proposed to me. Looking back on it, Kyle, I should have realized I was on the rebound from you.” She moved her finger around on the wooden table, drawing circles. “I wanted to settle down, have a family. I so desperately wanted to have what my parents had with me coming into their lives. We had been so happy as a family....”

Kyle frowned. “Anna, I don’t want you getting another headache because we’re getting into some serious talks here.”

“My headache is gone.” She managed a faint smile. “I wasn’t very good at picking the right man, Kyle. I thought I loved Tom.” Her voice trailed off. “I wanted kids so desperately. I got pregnant right away and then miscarried the second month. Tom blamed me.”

“For what?” Kyle demanded, confused. “You can’t make your body miscarry.”

“That’s what I told him. I got pregnant nine months later, and by the third month I miscarried again. I was devastated. I thought there was something wrong with me.” She gently touched her belly.

“And where was Tom in all of this?”

“Angry. That’s when he accidentally found all those letters and emails you’d written to me when you first joined the Navy. He accused me of loving you, instead. That because I loved you, I miscarried his children.”

“That’s a crock of bull,” Kyle ground out, flexing his fingers into a fist and then forcing himself to relax.

“Things sort of fell apart between us after that. It wasn’t a marriage anymore. Just two people living together, but unhappy.”

“Why didn’t you email me, Anna?”

She gave him a sad look. “And what good would that have done? If Tom had found me emailing you, he’d have—well—he was violent and I didn’t want to stir up trouble.”

Giving her a sharpened look, he asked, “What do you mean he was violent, Anna?”

She felt the tension rise between them. Kyle’s face had gone stony and still, his gray eyes narrowing on her. Opening her hand, she said, “He had a terrible temper. I didn’t know it when I first married him. I only found out about it...later.”

With a hiss, Kyle gripped her hand firmly. “Look at me.”

Anna held his intense stare. She felt his hand warm and gentle around her coolish one. “What?”

“Your nose, Anna. How did it get broken?”

The rasp in his voice was deadly and sent a shiver down through her. Unable to look away, she said, “Tom hit me one night.” She pulled her hand free of his, tucking it protectively in her lap. “I went to the police that night after it happened, Kyle. I pressed assault charges against him and they threw him in jail.” She touched her nose. “I was scared, but my parents and your parents backed me up. They surrounded me, protected me and helped me through that period of my life. My father fired Tom. He was sent to prison for a year. When he got out, he left for Texas. He signed the divorce papers and I was free.” She gave him an uneasy look. “It’s not something I’m proud of. I made so many mistakes.”

Kyle sat there wrestling with his rage over what had been done to Anna. “I wish... I wish you’d told me,” he managed tightly.

“And what could you have done, Kyle?” She searched his angry eyes, saw the fury in the line of his thinned mouth. “You were somewhere. God only knows where. We weren’t married. There was no legal tie between us, except that you’re my emergency contact. The SEALs wouldn’t have let you come home.” Her voice grew thin with weariness. “I managed to get through it. I had asked your parents to not email you anything about it because I knew it would upset you. And I didn’t want you distracted and maybe get you killed. That’s why I never said anything to you about it.”

Kyle looked away, his gut churning. His mother had emailed him about her divorce, but he didn’t want to bring it up right now. “God, Anna. I wish... I wish I’d been there.” And he didn’t finish the rest of the sentence that if he’d married her at twenty-two, this would never have happened. Because he loved her and would never hurt Anna. He’d never lift a hand to harm her. Ever.

* * *

“YOU START CUTTING up the construction paper for the paper chains,” Anna told Kyle the next evening. Today the sun had shown up after the blizzard, and Kyle had been out working all day until dusk with the wranglers, getting hay to the five thousand Herefords on the ranch. He’d come in just before dinner, taken a shower and changed clothes, and Anna made spaghetti and meatballs for dinner.

He sat down, picking up the scissors after rolling up the cuffs on his red flannel shirt to his elbows. “And you’re going to string the popcorn, I hope?” He held up his hand, showing how large it was compared with hers.

Kyle had seen a marked change in Anna this morning at breakfast. It was as if getting to talk out her toxic marriage had somehow helped her. Tonight, her ginger hair was tied in a loose knot at the back of her head and she’d put some plastic mistletoe in it to look festive. He liked the gold velour sweater she wore with her jeans and bright red fluffy slippers with Frosty the Snowman on her feet. In the past, Kyle remembered Anna always dressed up for Christmas decoration night.

She wore pink lipstick and her cheeks were tinged nearly the same color. Even her eyes sparkled, although Kyle missed the gold flecks he used to see in their depths. Still, Anna was happier than he’d seen her since coming home. He knew how much Christmas meant to her. It meant the same to him.

“Yes, I’ll save you from a fate worse than death,” she said with a laugh. “I’ll string the popcorn. You just cut, glue and make the paper chains.”

He liked sitting across from Anna. She was quick and efficient with thread, needle and popcorn. Soon, she had ten-foot-long chains lying out in neat order across the length of the table. Kyle was clumsy in comparison, but he knew how to cut the colorful paper into half-inch strips and then use the glue gun to create the chains. Within an hour they had enough to encircle the tree.

There was Christmas music playing in the background and Kyle, because he was tall, got the job of stringing the lights from the top down on the Scotch pine. As soon as he had the tree swathed in lights, he helped Anna place the paper chains and then the popcorn strands around the tree.

Standing back, he smiled at her. “Looks pretty decent, doesn’t it?”

She grinned. “It looks beautiful. Come on, you can help bring out the decorations.” She caught his hand, gave it a quick squeeze and pulled him over to the coffee table. There was one large cardboard box sitting on it. Each year’s decorations were carefully placed on sturdy, thin plastic shelves to keep them in order by the year that they’d been created.

Sitting down, he worked with her to bring out the oldest ones first, which were going around the top of the tree. The paper decorations brought back a lot of warm memories, and as they moved from their six-year-old decorations through age ten, Kyle’s heart squeezed with a fierce love for Anna. Every year, there were memories, some good, some bad. They were all immortalized by two young children with color crayons, construction paper, glitter and a gold thread for hanging each of them on the tree.

Anna had carefully and painstakingly preserved each year’s worth of events with both their families. Kyle remembered all of them sitting at the oak table, each of them cutting and drawing one main event that had taken place in their life that year. When the family was finished, there was a paper story of meaningful events that had occurred that particular year before Christmas. Anna had put photos with them, as well. For Kyle, it was an unexpected treasure trove, and it once more served to tell him just how important, how central, Anna had always been in his life.

For the next three hours, they talked, reminisced and then hung the oldest decorations around the top of the tree first. Some were of people, a photo with a name, who had passed on. Kyle remembered getting a black pony named Bart at age seven, and he’d drawn and colored it and then hung it proudly on the tree. As they reached the bottom of the tree, Anna handed him new construction paper, glitter, scissors and an ink pen.