Czytaj książkę: «A Boy's Christmas Wish»

CHAPTER ONE

BETH THOMAS’S FATHER, Rick, didn’t seem terribly concerned that Granny was missing. He looked up from a basket of laundry he’d been halfheartedly folding and shrugged.

“She’s probably wandered off again,” he said. He was a short man with a full head of iron gray hair and bushy black eyebrows, and he was staring down at the laundry as if he’d rather murder it. He was recently divorced from Beth’s stepmom, Linda, and the housework seemed to irritate him more than the divorce settlement. He was a moderately successful literary novelist, and Beth was still waiting for him to inject all this unprocessed emotion into a new manuscript. So far—nada.

“Does she wander off often?” Beth asked.

“From time to time...yes.”

Beth rubbed a hand over her expanding belly, and the baby wriggled inside her. She was eight months pregnant with sore feet, and Granny had been the buffer zone between Beth and her father since she’d arrived home for the holidays.

“Where does Granny go?” Beth pressed.

“The store.”

For the Thomas family, “the store” never referred to the grocery store or the hardware store. Rick raised his eyes to meet her gaze, and she could see the pain there. Before Linda left, Rick had declared bankruptcy, and the corner store that had belonged to the family for three generations had been put up for sale by the bank. So much for second mortgages.

“I’ll go check there,” she said.

“I can do it—” Rick dropped a T-shirt back into the basket. “You should probably put your feet up or something, kiddo.”

Kiddo. She was thirty-two.

“No, I’m fine, Dad. I’m supposed to get exercise anyway. I’ll go see if I can find her.”

Beth wanted out of the house, away from her father’s irritable household chores and the stuffy smells of toast and pine-scented air freshener. She’d come home because she didn’t have much choice. Her city job as a caregiver for an elderly lady had come to an end when the woman moved to a long-term care facility, and Beth was due to give birth within four short weeks. The baby’s father was out of the picture, hence her return home. But her dad’s divorce and bankruptcy meant that her arrival wasn’t terribly convenient for him, and she could feel his frustration. He needed space, and so did she.

Beth headed down the stairs, stepping carefully. She couldn’t see past her belly, and her center of gravity was off now that she was all tummy, but she made it down, shoved her feet into her boots and grabbed her cream woolen coat. It didn’t close properly, but she did up the top few buttons and wrapped a scarf around her neck. It would have to do. The corner store wasn’t far from her dad’s house, and she angled her steps in that direction, keeping her eyes peeled for Granny.

North Fork, Alberta, was a small community on the Canadian prairies with a downtown that consisted of about four crisscrossing streets and a park next to a towering brick church. All winter long, that park had trees decorated for Christmas—an intricate design of twinkling lights that encircled a running track that was flooded to make a skating rink. She’d grown up in this town, learned to skate on that outdoor rink, and she’d even gotten engaged one Christmas in the glow of those Christmas lights to a rugged guy named Danny Brockwood, who’d come to town for a job as a millwright.

But that had been five years ago, and that engagement had ended in heartbreak when she discovered he’d been lying to her the entire time—he had a child that he’d never told her about. So she packed up and went to the city, where she’d hoped for a fresh start. A degree in medieval studies qualified her for absolutely nothing in particular, and she’d gotten a job with a private company caring for the elderly in their homes. Sometimes, when she got home from work and flung herself on her couch, she’d look at the blank TV and wonder how Danny was doing. It was her own bad luck to have fallen in love with the wrong guy.

Beth stopped at an intersection and looked both ways, scanning for the familiar form of a slender old lady in a bright red jacket and clomping winter boots. Alberta was cold and dry this time of year, the snow swirling into banks on the sides of the street—not even needing salt to melt it off the asphalt. The wind blew in powerful gusts, stopped only by the low houses. The prairies had no other wind blocks, just section upon section of frozen farmland, bared to elements. However, for all the arctic winds, the sun shone bright and cheery. Beth had often wondered how people used to endure this kind of cold before electricity and water heaters.

Granny might run off, but apparently, she was with it enough to put on a coat and boots before she did. Perhaps that was why her dad didn’t worry quite so much. Besides, in a town the size of North Fork, everyone knew everyone, and someone was bound to bring her home again. Granny was a fixture around here—the lady from the corner store. What kid didn’t know her? And what adult hadn’t bought tiny paper bags of bulk candy from her in their own childhoods?

The corner store was just ahead, and Beth plodded toward it. It was closed down now, the windows papered over and the neon signs that used to flicker in the windows gone. Her heart constricted at the sight of it. That store had been her home just as much as the house, or the town; it had been her respite from her by-the-book stepmother.

Beth waited for a truck to pass, and she tugged her coat a little closer around her belly. The cold was seeping into her fingers and toes, and while pregnancy had left her generally overheated, a coat she couldn’t zip certainly took care of that. She crossed the road and stopped again, looking in all directions. No sign of Granny.

“Granny!” Shouting in the middle of the road didn’t seem to do much good, either, since the only response was the bark of a dog from a nearby yard.

Beth stopped in front of the store and looked up, her gaze focusing on the For Sale sign. Except it wasn’t for sale anymore...there was a big banner covering it stating Sold.

She sighed. It was to be expected, of course, but it still hurt. Someone had snapped it up, and soon enough that old store would be turned into something else. A Laundromat or a coffee shop. Whatever business ended up there, the Thomas family wouldn’t have the heart to frequent it.

The door was ajar, and Beth gave it a pull. It opened with that familiar jingle of the bell overhead, and she stepped inside. Nothing had changed. The old shelves were still in the same place, except most of the product was gone. There was one shelf that still held various odds and ends that looked fully stocked. She heaved a sigh.

“Hey.”

Beth startled as a man stood up from behind one of those shelves, his hands full of cardboard, and she caught her breath when she recognized him. He was tall and dark, as he always had been, but the last five years had solidified him. He stared at her in equal surprise, and he dropped the cardboard and brushed his hands off, then came around the shelf.

“Danny...” she breathed. “What are you doing here?”

She swallowed hard and tugged at her jacket again, as if by covering her belly she could protect herself from that barrage of emotion.

“What are you doing here?” he countered.

“I was looking for Granny. And I just wanted to stop in and see the old place before it—” She didn’t finish that thought. What was Danny Brockwood doing here? Did he know the new owner or something?

“I haven’t seen her,” he said. “You...um—” His gaze moved down to her belly, then up to her face again. “You look good.”

“Thanks.” She wouldn’t address it. Yes, she was pregnant, but Danny didn’t get explanations. He didn’t deserve them. He could just stand there and wonder.

“How are you doing?” he asked. “I thought you’d have come back to town before this.”

“I was busy.” That’s what people said, wasn’t it? At least people who wanted to save face. “How is your son?”

Danny pulled a hand through his hair, but something in his expression softened in a way she’d never seen before. “He’s eight now. Almost nine. He’s a good kid. Smart as a whip, too.”

Luke was the secret that Danny had kept from Beth until five days before their wedding. Then his ex-girlfriend dropped his toddler son on his doorstep and told him that it was his turn at parenting. That was a big secret to have kept from her. People didn’t have children and then just forget—it had been a willful omission, and if he could hide something that big, what else could he hide? Her faith in her swarthy fiancé’s love had shriveled. This wasn’t about romance anymore; it was about real-life challenges and her ability to take him at his word. But her fears went deeper than that. She’d seen the way he looked at that little boy, and she recognized that they shared a connection she never would. She’d had a stepmother of her own, and she wasn’t keen on taking on that role for herself.

“So, are you married?” Danny asked after a beat of silence.

“No.” She tugged at her coat again. “Single.” She wasn’t going to pretend that things were any different than they were. She was very much on her own in this.

“When are you due?” he asked.

He eyed her in that curious way he used to do when they were younger and dating, and she felt a small part of her resentful heart thaw.

“It’s rude to ask about a pregnancy that hasn’t been confirmed yet, you know,” she said wryly, and Danny cracked a grin.

“Hard to deny that one, Beth.”

“I’m due January fourth,” she said, smoothing a hand over her stomach. “And it’s a girl.”

Danny nodded slowly. “Congratulations. You really do look beautiful.”

Everyone had to say that to a pregnant woman—she knew that. She felt puffy now, and huge.

“So what are you doing here?” Beth asked, glancing around. “I noticed that the store is sold.”

“I bought it.” His gaze didn’t even flicker as he said it. “It was a price I couldn’t refuse.”

Her heart sank. This was adding insult to injury. She’d never fully recovered from calling off their wedding, and now when her family was going through their hardest times since, Danny was the one to swoop in and buy up their heritage?

“You?” She stared at him, aghast. “You bought our store?”

The bell above the door jingled behind her, and Beth turned to see Granny step inside. Her coat was open in the front, and the old lady smiled sweetly when she saw Beth and Danny.

“You two lovebirds,” Granny said with a low laugh. “Don’t block customers now.”

Granny wasn’t completely with them, it would seem. Her mind was firmly fixed in the past. She headed over to the shelf that still held some dusty bags of sunflower seeds and assorted items like windshield scrapers and expired lip balm.

“These prices,” she tutted. “Far too high. Nothing will sell at this price...”

And ironically, Granny might be right. None of that product had ever sold.

* * *

DAN COULDN’T HELP but steal another glance at Beth. She had always been gorgeous, but pregnancy had brought out a glow in her that he’d never seen before. Her golden hair tumbled around her shoulders in glossy curls, and her lips were fuller with the extra weight she carried. Her belly was like a perfect dome out in front of her. She seemed softer, somehow, and more vulnerable. And if the twenty-seven-year-old, trim-waisted Beth had been enough to fire his blood back then, this more mature version of the same woman, rounder and fuller, just about stopped his heart.

Except he knew better than to entertain those thoughts. Beth had dumped him because she couldn’t handle being a stepmother. Obviously, he should have told her about his son sooner, but until Lana had shown up on his doorstep, he hadn’t known that he would ever be allowed into his son’s life. Regardless, Beth had walked out because she didn’t want to be stepmom to his child, which he’d understood back then. He’d lied to her, and if there was one thing Beth could not abide, it was an untruth, and knowing that should have been enough to make him come clean. Except that was a part of his life he hadn’t been proud of—being the deadbeat dad of a kid he’d never met. It wasn’t that he’d been trying to hide anything from her—Lana had made it clear that she wanted nothing to do with him when they broke up before he moved to North Fork. He’d tried to contact Lana a few times afterward, and he’d gotten nothing but silence.

“Someone had to buy the place,” Dan said, and Beth’s attention whipped away from her grandmother and back to him. Her eyes glittered.

“You never liked my dad.” He could hear the accusation in her tone. What did she think, that he’d done this as some sort of revenge plot because Rick Thomas hadn’t thought he was good enough for Beth?

“Your dad never liked me,” he retorted. “And this has nothing to do with old tensions. I think we’re pretty much past all that, don’t you?”

Her dad had been right. Dan hadn’t been good enough for Beth. He’d come to North Fork for work—the oil fields about three hours north providing a lot of employment opportunities for large-equipment mechanics. When he’d seen Beth around town, he’d been drawn in by her effortless charm. She came from a respected family—her father being the Rick Thomas of literary fame—and she’d gone to University of Alberta for a degree, something that felt wildly out of reach for a guy like him. He’d never been terribly scholarly. He was a skilled worker and he loved his trade, but she had a way of talking that exposed a world he knew little about—a world with books and theories, history and primary sources. Her dad had written weighty masterpieces that were studied in Canadian literature classes the country over. There were three of them, and a fourth that he’d been working on for the last decade.

Beth sighed. “So what are you going to do with this place?”

“I’m going to open a tool shop,” Dan said. “A lot of guys in the trades have to drive into the city to get their tools, and it’s a waste of fuel and annoying to boot. I want to open a tool shop that carries most of the basics. I’ll order in the specialty tools on demand—”

Beth was staring at him, tears misting her eyes. Shoot. Okay, maybe she hadn’t wanted to hear his business plan, but what did she expect him to do with the place?

“I can’t keep it a corner store,” Dan qualified.

“I know.” She sucked in a breath.

“And the price was shockingly low—”

Beth shot him another pained glance, and he kicked himself. He wasn’t trying to hurt her here, but when the store had come up for sale at that price, the timing had been perfect. He’d been selling tools out of his garage for months, and he was making a pretty good profit. There was a demand for tools in this town, and this could be his first retail space. Lucky for him the bank agreed.

“I’m sorry about your dad,” Dan said, softening his tone. “I know he worked hard to build the business, and losing it all like that is horrible. I feel for him.”

She didn’t answer at first, and then she rubbed a hand over her stomach. “Well, he’s had more than one big shock in the last few months.”

“Linda leaving,” Dan clarified. That divorce had taken North Fork by surprise.

“Oh, no. They planned it out so they could separate ‘amicably.’” She did finger quotes around the last word. “Dad says it was coming for a while. Linda’s nothing if not detail oriented. I was referring to me.”

“The baby,” he confirmed.

“He worries a lot,” she said. “And he’s got a lot going on right now, so the timing could have been better.”

“So how’s your brother?” Dan asked.

“Perfectly successful in Illinois, thanks,” she replied with a wry smile.

Her older brother was a professor at a state college—the bar had been set quite high for the Thomas family. He could sympathize with Beth’s position right now. She’d deserved better than being left on her own for the biggest challenge of her life.

“Don’t know if this is rude to ask, but who’s the dad?”

“None of your business,” she retorted with a cool smile, and Dan laughed.

“You haven’t changed a bit,” he said.

She smiled and rolled her eyes. “You’d be surprised, Danny.”

Danny... He hadn’t been called that in a long time.

“Look.” He cleared his throat. “If you see anything that you want in here...I bought the whole place, contents included. But I don’t need any of it—” He was doing it again, minimizing a lifetime of Thomas family memories in this old place, which wasn’t his intent. “What I mean to say is, if there is anything that you want from the store, it’s yours. I only got the keys today, so I’m looking at everything for the first time, too.”

“Thank you.” She nodded. “There will be things. Like the bell over the door.”

“Yeah, yeah.” He nodded. “Take it.” He glanced up and realized it was high over her head, and in her current state a stepladder would be a bad idea. “Or I can get it down for you.”

He caught her eye, and he felt a swell of sympathy. Things had been hard for the Thomas family lately, and he was just an added insult.

Beth was beautiful and smart, with a sharp sense of humor. He’d always imagined that she’d gone to Edmonton and met some bookish type who would be impressed by her father’s name. Then she’d get married and drive a quality SUV, have some beautiful babies... She was making good on that last one, and for that he was grudgingly glad.

Parenthood had a way of improving a person. It carved them out and deepened them. It took a heart and stretched it farther than a person thought possible. It changed weekend plans from drinks or watching the game into cartoon movies and playing in the snow. Luke’s arrival had been a shock, but he’d changed Dan’s life for the better in every way possible. Dan had always hoped that he’d be a successful business owner here in town, and that when people saw him coming they’d call him “Mr. Brockwood.” Turned out that his deepest satisfaction came from being called “Dad.”

He glanced at his watch. Luke would be out of school soon.

“So how is your grandmother doing?” he asked.

They both instinctively looked over to where Granny was arranging the shelf, wiping dust off the packages with her palm.

“Not so good,” Beth said softly. “She keeps slipping into the past. And apparently, she’s been wandering off a lot.”

“I noticed that,” he agreed. He’d driven her home a couple of times when he’d found her on the street looking confused.

“And she keeps asking about Grandpa.” Beth’s eyes glittered with emotion.

“What do you do?” he asked.

“We tell her that he’s gone out for milk,” Beth said with a shrug. “It sure beats breaking her heart fourteen times a day telling her that he died. So if she ever asks—”

“Yeah, right. Milk...” He nodded.

Everyone loved Beth’s grandmother, whom most people called Granny. She was that sort of lady. And when Beth had agreed to marry him, when a furious Rick had kept encouraging his daughter to think this through a little more, Granny had been happy for them. Dan would never forget that. She’d taken his hand in hers and smiled up into his eyes and said, “Marriage is a blessing, Danny. May you two be brilliantly happy.” For a guy who’d grown up with minimal encouragement, her words had meant the world.

“Granny, we should go,” Beth called. “We need to get back.”

“No, I’d better mind the store,” Granny said with a decisive shake of her head. “It’s too early to close.”

Beth and Dan exchanged a glance.

“Danny will mind the shop, Granny,” Beth said. “Right, Danny?”

“Yeah, of course,” Dan said. “Don’t worry, Granny, I’ll take care of everything.”

Granny brushed her hands off and came back toward them. “Are you sure, Danny?”

“I’m sure,” he said earnestly.

“Do you know how to use the cash register?” she pressed.

“Yes, ma’am. Beth showed me.”

Granny didn’t look convinced, but eventually she smiled. “Well, you are going to be part of the family very soon, aren’t you? I think it’s only right that we trust you with a few responsibilities.”

In Granny’s mind, Dan and Beth were still engaged, he realized, and his throat suddenly felt tight. Of all the days to go back to, those were happy ones. Too happy to last, but happy.

Granny smoothed her hands over her jacket.

“Can I help you zip up?” Beth asked.

“Oh, my...” Granny’s eyes grew large as she focused on Beth’s round belly. “Look at you!”

Granny glanced back at Danny with a look of shock, and he was forced to hide a smile. Yeah, there’d been a time when he’d have loved to take the credit for Beth’s glowing pregnancy, but not now.

“Okay, let’s just go,” Beth said hurriedly.

“The sooner the better on that wedding, my dear,” Granny said pointedly, and Beth shot Danny a look of exasperation.

“Beth, I’m cleaning this place out over the next couple of weeks. Come by and take anything you want,” Dan said.

“Thank you,” Beth said. “I’ll come by tomorrow, if that’s okay.”

“Not a problem. I’ll be here.”

Beth pushed the door open, and she and her grandmother left the store, the soft ding of the bell echoing in the stillness as the door swung shut again.

Beth Thomas was back, and Dan wasn’t sure how he felt about that. All those old memories—all those old feelings—came in a flood. But fatherhood had changed everything for Dan, and there was no going back.