Rain dogged them the whole way south, flying in sheets under the old truck’s tires. Steam rose from cattle clustered in the muddy fields more akin to spring than December twenty-third. Temps hovered in the upper 40s, but the news folk warned a cold snap was like to swoop down from Canada any day now.
Though the truck heater kept the damp at bay, Nora snuggled alongside him on the bench seat anyhow. Inched outta her seat in the first hour and never gone back. Her head rested light on his shoulder. They sat denim to denim.
Rob dropped his hand off the wheel and squeezed her knee. Driving home for Christmas alone didn’t hold a quarter the joy of her at his side. Their five-and-a-half-hour drive crested seven with the bad weather, the holiday traffic, and the tractor-trailers throwing up road tsunamis. The hours slipped by to the tune of the radio’s Christmas music marathon under an unbroken dome of dull gray clouds.
He swung through his hometown to show her the main street all gussied up in holiday finery. The garlands and wreaths slung under the store awnings stayed safe and festive even if the bright red bows on the streetlights hung limp and waterlogged. A left at Carson’s Crafts and Collectibles—boasting eBay services in the front window now—would take them out past the high school. Near dark going on five o’clock, though. Mama would have supper waiting on them if he towed Nora all over the county and back of beyond just to show her his childhood haunts.
He’d have a next time, a whole stretch of years, to share his memories with her. The game when he’d hit the home run clear across the outfield and busted a bus window in the parking lot. The Nesleys’ sledding hill the year they’d gotten the whopper of a storm. Hell, he and Marcus hauled Daddy’s old smooth-bottomed toboggan again and again while Jilly and Sara clapped and cheered, ’til all their fingers froze in their mittens. They piled through the front door, stomping snow off their boots, and Mama appeared with mugs of hot cocoa and fresh-baked gingerbread men.
Pressing her legs together, Nora grew squirmy as an inchworm in the seat. “How much further?”
“Ain’t but ten minutes now.” He hung a right, the turnoff one he’d made a hundred times before, but never with his woman at his side. “You want me to stop in town, or you wanna hold it?”
“Huh?” She blinked twice, pure deer-in-headlights, and shook her head. “I don’t need a bathroom break.”
“You sure?” Hell if she didn’t. Her knee jounced as if the truck bumped along washboard ruts instead of smooth pavement.
“Mm-hmm. No pee-jitters. Just the ordinary kind.” She spread her fingers in front of the heat vent. Pale fingers, slim and bare, they offered no hint a wedding band had ever circled one. “What did your parents say when you told them you were bringing me to Christmas?”
“That they can’t wait to meet you.” A reassurance he’d repeated half a dozen times in the last two weeks. Not strong enough, seemed like. He eased onto the shoulder, threw the truck in park, and unsnapped her seatbelt.
“Rob, what—”
He hauled her into his lap and kissed her. Tight fit, his arm wedged between her back and the steering wheel, but Christ she belonged just so. “You planning to call my daddy a hayseed hack who can’t plow a straight line to save his life? Tell my mama she’s fat and ugly and her cooking tastes like the back end of a cow?”
“Good God, no, of course I’m not.” An adorable divot perched between her eyebrows.
He kissed her frown line for good measure. “Then here’s what’s gonna happen.”
A familiar red truck coming from the other direction slowed, the driver’s window dropping, and Rob punched the button to lower his own.
The vehicle rolled to a stop alongside his, a lane-width away. “You folks all right?” A man’s hand emerged from the window. The driver gripped the roofline in the growing dusk and peered out from under an old-school plaid hunter’s cap, earflaps and all. “Outta gas? Got a flat?”
“All good, Mr. Nesley.” He leaned into the drizzle and raised his voice. His folks’ oldest neighbor had to be nearing eighty these days. “It’s Rob, Rob Vanderhoff.”
“Oh, Rick’s younger boy, sure enough. You’ve grown some. Not so big as your brother, mind. The wife’s sending me to the store.” With arthritic fingers thick and curving, Mr. Nesley patted his chest. “Got my marching orders tucked away. You in town for the holidays, son?”
“Yessir. Taking my girl here”—he tipped her backward, and Nora obliged with a wave out the window—“home for Christmas, and she’s caught a touch of nerves.” Her light slap at his shoulder came expected and went undodged. “’Preciate you stopping, though.”
“Ah, yeah, that’ll do ya. First time my girl and my mother got in the same room, hoo boy, fireworks flew. Singed me something good. Sixty-one, no, sixty-two years now, and those burns still smart.” He smacked the roof twice. “Give ’em hell, girlie. Rob, you thank your mama for the cookies she sent over. All that bending and stooping at the oven’s gotten to be too much for my Louise. Merry Christmas!”
“Merry Christmas, Mr. Nesley.” He tossed the words over the rising crank window. Same truck the Nesleys’d had since his boyhood, well cared-for and purring quiet and steady as a cat on the hearth. The red truck slipped away just as smoothly. “Now where was I?”
Nora nestled against his shoulder and wormed her arms around his back. “Calmly reassuring your anxious girlfriend her fears are a pyramid scheme cooked up by her overactive imagination.”
He sent his own window skyward, cutting the chill and the mist swirling in. “Right—so Daddy’ll yank you into a hug and tell you to keep me in line, and Mama’ll drag you straight to the kitchen and shove a stirring spoon in your hand and a cookie in your mouth. You watch.”
Lifting her chin, she sent a honey-brown wave of hair tumbling across his arm. “Is that where you get your habit of shoveling food in my mouth?”
He swiped his thumb across her lower lip, soft and full and a tad reddened from his kiss. “Best hope not. I don’t want my mama knowing the thoughts I think when you open your mouth for me.”
“I like your thoughts.” She captured his thumb and sucked hard, teasing with her tongue. “They all seem to end with me relaxed and sleepy.”
Merciful Christ. “Only when I’m getting ’em right, honey girl.”
He slipped her off his lap in an attempt to stop his cock from gaining more altitude against her warm, cozy backside. Too late to prevent takeoff. He buckled her in and rejoined the sparse traffic headed northwest.
Little subdivisions, clusters of five to ten houses, squatted across the road from family farms now, creeping deeper into the rolling hills and prairie grass. Thick as deer mice. His faming neighbors up in Iowa probably thought the same of him. Five years he’d had his modest acreage, and he’d yet to plant a thing. A big kitchen garden would start things off nicely come spring if he had a pair of feminine hands to play in the dirt with.
Once her ex had backed off his threats over the house, and her boss—good man—had refused to play ball with the asshole’s harassing complaints about her moral suitability for bank work, Nora’d talked some about selling her place. In the spring, when the market rebounded. When new growth started.
She spent half her nights in his bed already. But damn if he didn’t need her the other half, too. A good night text held little appeal compared to her cuddled up alongside him with her soft skin, her sweet scent, and her round curves. Space to be independent though. She needed some, and railroading her along wouldn’t gain him any ground. He’d had eighteen years of adult bachelorhood. She’d had a fair bit less, and her boldness grew with every discovery, every step toward being the woman her first marriage had stunted.
Coming up on six months, their relationship. They’d done Thanksgiving at his place with Brian and a handful of other buddies from work, a real casual friends affair. But Christmas, Christmas called for family, and not once had he considered Nora anything less. The proof lay snug in a tiny satin bag in his pocket. The slim circle of white gold alternated channel-set garnets and diamonds for their birth months.
Thirty-four days he’d carried the darn thing, since the week before Thanksgiving, and he hadn’t worked up the gumption to ask her. Not the nerves so much as the how. Every fool with a notion in his head and a ring in his pocket these days laid out some elaborate scheme and recorded the whole shebang, posted his bragging cleverness online for the world to praise. Not his style.
But Nora deserved praise. If a fancy proposal showed a woman her worth, a man ought to slap on his thinking cap and get the job done right.
“It’s so green here.” Nora leaned to and fro, spilling her hungry blue-gray gaze through the windows as evenly as the sky covered the fields. “I thought it’d be all broken gold.”
“Winter wheat. You’re used to corn stubble.” He pointed across his grip on the wheel. “Those up there are ours.” The south field ran thick with rows of short, splotchy green wheat spreading tendrils. The day’s soaking would do them good if the rain hadn’t come too fast and hard and driven off the nutrients in the soil. “Must be staying too warm to go dormant yet—ask my daddy about his wheat, and he’ll talk your ear off.”
Daddy would love her forever, because once Nora asked, she’d dig herself right into the conversation of percentages and yields and temperatures and rainfall. A hatful of numbers made for a common language even with this being her first visit to a working farm.
He took the turnoff for the house and headed up the slope into the last rays of sunlight. The rain registered little more than the odd sprinkle now, but he pulled up alongside the front porch anyhow. The tieback curtains framed the Christmas tree in the parlor window. Same curtains, fresh tree. Mama insisted on the real thing, and Daddy obliged her on all house matters.
A step or two’d have Nora under the roofline with no cause to worry about impersonating a bedraggled mouse fleeing an unexpected flood. He cut the engine, and the low pings of raindrops played a scattershot medley. Their seatbelts, unsnapping, added a deeper click-and-zip. “Ready?”
Turned toward the house and fumbling behind herself, Nora squeezed his thigh. “Nope. Not even close.” She scooted across the seat and out, leaving the door hanging wide. His bold girl took the porch stair in two quick hops.
The screen door whined open as if it’d been waiting all day on the chance.
“Come in, come in”—Mama shooed her in the house—“you must be Nora. Robin sends such nice photos in the email. Of course the printer won’t do them right, I—”
The screen door snapped shut, and him still warming the driver’s seat with his lazy ass. His mama, alone with Nora, already talking photos. The family albums sat in the dining room hutch on a direct line between the front door and the kitchen where it’d be only proper to offer a guest a drink.
Baby bathtimes. Childhood Halloween costumes. That school play—Christ.
He hustled around the truck and snatched the bags from under the slate gray tonneau cover on the bed. One for him, one for Nora, since his folks were like to bunk them in odd corners of the house unsuitable for sharing. His siblings and their spouses got the doubles. He beat feet through the front door.
“Robin, don’t you forget”—Mama hollered from the kitchen before the closing snap—“to leave your shoes on the rug.”
He rocked at the edge. A raindrop made the wise decision to slide off his boot and onto the braided oval instead of the hardwood.
“I’m finished cleaning the floors”—well of course, wasn’t nothing Mama couldn’t get done early and perfect the first time—“and you’ll have the mop handle in your grip quicker than a hawk scoops a mouse if you track mud all over. God bless this awful rain. Take your bags on upstairs, please.”
“Where to?” Stooping with the bags slung over his back, he wrestled his shoes clear of his feet and promptly stepped, sock-footed, in a wet spot. Yech. “You putting Nora in the front on the right?”
Too small to be a true bedroom, Mama’s sewing room got good eastern light and served fine as a guest room in a pinch. The cozy corner chair unfolded into a narrow twin.
“Don’t be silly, Robin. You’ll share your old room.”
His foot skidded off the first step. His shin banged the riser. Sonuva—
“Beef stew’s waiting on you. You haven’t fed this girl since Des Moines? I’m surprised her stomach isn’t rumbling a hole clear through on both sides.”
“She’s a survivor, Mama, strong and resilient. I’m lucky enough she’s”—not blind, nothing hidden from his honey girl except the ring in his pocket, and she’d have it soon as he settled on the best damn way to show her his love—“kind to my faults.”
He attacked the steps with more care, Nora’s easy laughter from the kitchen a welcome balm. If his shin bruised, she might offer a kiss or two to speed the healing along.
The first room on the left at the top of the stairs had changed. The bunk beds he and Marcus had shared for more than a decade, long after the novelty had worn off and the irritating lack of privacy for teen-hormone-fueled masturbation had begun to grate, no longer stood against the far wall. A double bed had taken up residence. Odd as hell pairing for the old dressers cluttered with athletic trophies whose owners had moved out. Though Marcus hadn’t gone far, just up the road a ways. Maybe his big brother dropped by nightly to kiss his old awards for luck.
He lowered the bags whisper-quiet beside the foot of the bed. The. One. A parent-provided bed blessing his relationship with Nora. And Mama hadn’t said a word, sly woman.
“Not how you left it?” Daddy leaned on the doorframe. “Wrestled that up here not two days after you asked your mama about bringing your young lady down for Christmas. ‘It’s time,’ says she.”
They exchanged a backslapping hug, the proud post-game clinch, and the heat of his folks’ approval chased away the last of the damp clinging to his thoughts. “Well and past time. I didn’t figure I’d ever get the bedroom back. Thought you’d put Nora in the sewing room and me in a sleeping bag guarding the tree from Santa-peepers.”
“Corralling the rugrats up here makes getting the presents under the tree easier, but we’ll manage with them camping down in the family room. Shut the parlor while they nod off.”
Eight little ones, from two years on up to twelve. Getting that bunch to sleep before midnight would take luck and skill both. A few years down the road, they’d have new cousins to keep the Santa magic alive for. Three or four babies he and Nora’d be making in beds like the solid double in front of him with its curving headboard and heap of pillows.
“You feeling all right, son?” Daddy elbowed his ribs with a solid poke. “Drive getting too long for your old bones?”
“Wasn’t expecting that”—he waved at the extra quilt folded across the foot, sure to be hiding sheets pulled neater and tighter than any barracks inspection ever turned up—“is all.”
Daddy grunted. “You’ve been dating this girl of yours for months. That picture you sent your mama of her in the batting helmet, all bright eyes and dusty face, has been staring at me from the fridge since August. Not once in the eighteen years since you moved outta this room have you ever suggested bringing a girl for Christmas. Your mama and I aren’t so old we imagine you’re sleeping apart.”
Nora’s picture on the fridge. Part of the family, her accomplishments and her beauty out for anyone to see, and for sure a topic of discussion when Mama’s friends came over for coffee. “Can’t get anything by you.”
“Just so.” His father wagged a stern finger under his nose. “You using protection?”
“I’m thirty-six, Daddy. I think I got it handled.” Or Nora did, more like. Her handling kept him ready at a moment’s notice.
“You gonna—”
A creak and hustle sounded from the hall, and his dad fell silent. The rich brown of Nora’s hair rose like a fawn from the tall grass as she climbed the stairs light and quick.
“—hide up here with me?” Daddy carried on as if he hadn’t paused or redirected his attention. “The kitchen’s been covered in cookie sheets for days, and I’ve had my knuckles rapped enough times, thank you. I ask you, can a man ignore the rich, spicy call of fresh-baked cookies when the aroma crawls right up his nose? No, he cannot.”
Nora peeked around the doorframe. “Rob? Your mom told me to tell you to wash up, because supper’s on in three minutes.”
Grinning, Daddy rattled him by the shoulder. “She say he’d be sitting on the stool in the corner watching the rest of us eat until he showed the proper respect and clean hands her table deserved?”
Nora’s answering smile set his father to nodding. “You, too, Mr. Vanderhoff. Connie says she’s going to charge you with theft if she sees a speck of ginger on your hands.”
“Uh-huh. Rob best watch himself if you’re learning his mama’s tricks already.” His daddy beckoned her into the bedroom. “C’mon now, don’t be shy, this room’s yours for the week, so you show it who’s boss.”
Daddy operated in two modes—the quiet, solemn listener and the gregarious showman. Not hard to guess which he figured would put Nora at ease fastest. Seemed effective. She’d been nervous as hell a few minutes ago, but she strode forward without a shake.
“I’ll do my best, sir.” She scanned the room as if she meant to build a mathematical model, the bed of less interest to her than the doodads tucked around. Be a hoot to quiz her on which she thought his and which his brother’s.
“Diederik Vanderhoff, Lil’ Miss Nora, though most call me Rick. It’s nice to see the boy hasn’t been funning us with all his talk of the young lady in his life. Lord knows what he can do with a computer.” Daddy spread his arms wide. “How’s about a hug, make sure you’re real?”
Nora wrapped her arms around his barrel chest. Daddy patted her back with the gentle fondness he showed any creature in his care. His level stare over the top of her head, though, and the short nod, those were for Rob. You take care of this one, boy.
He heard the message sure as if Daddy had spoken the words. In truth, he spouted off a pseudo-grumble about manicures and excused himself to wash up.
“So this is your room, huh?” Nora ran her finger across his name on an old MVP trophy from his baseball days. No dust, not in Mama’s house. “And you were so worried about us having to sleep apart the whole week.”
“Usually my nephews’d be stacked five deep in here.” His worry had been more for Nora’s emotional balance—dealing with a huge pack of new faces, over the whipsaw joys and sorrows of holidays, and him not there to cradle and reassure at the end of each day. Texting between floors would’ve denied them both the comfort of closeness. He bumped her hip. “We’re in uncharted territory.”
“You sure?” She pressed her face to his shoulder and breathed deep. “I think you’ve charted the territory pretty well. Climbed the peaks, explored the valleys.”
He nipped her ear and found his reward in her gasp. “If I had, I’d definitely have to wash up for supper, and not just my hands.”
“Fifty-nine seconds, Robin,” Mama shouted up the stairs.
Nora giggled and pulled away. “I better not make you late, or you’ll have to sit in the corner.”
“You, too, honey girl.” He reached after her but only managed to swipe a few floaty hairs and air.
“Oh no, not me.” She twisted and darted backward through the door. “Your mom likes me.”
He chased her down the stairs and washed up at the kitchen sink, play fighting over having to share the space with her and a sack of potatoes waiting to get cut up for tomorrow’s potato salad.
Mama pitched a drying towel on his head. “You can scrub, peel, and cube those for me after dinner, Robin, while I catch up with Nora.”
* * * *
Seven hours of driving, a full supper, and a few rounds of rummy while Mama peppered them with every question on God’s green earth ought to have left him drowsy as hell. But by the time he and Nora took their turns in the bathroom and she pulled her PJs from her bag, a newfound friskiness started his cock wagging. Down to his undershorts, he made an obvious statement of interest. Or would, soon as she turned around and caught him.
She wriggled clear of her sweater. Static lifted her hair. Unzipped, her jeans hung off her hips. Three slim, sexy lines divided her back. Her pale blue bra didn’t come near to matching the depths of her blue eyes.
He snugged his cock against her ass and hugged her close. “You need those pajamas just yet?”
“This is your parents’ house.” Whisper aside, she rolled her hips in welcome. The honeyed scent of midsummer rose from her skin. “They’re right down the hall.”
“They had four of us kids.” Her bra came loose with ease, and he spanned her back, smoothing the dangling straps toward her arms. “I’m inclined to think they know what goes on in a bed and don’t oppose it.”
“Under their roof, though?” Her shimmy lowered her jeans and raised his cock.
He dipped his fingers into her panties. A little drift, a little tease. “The truck’s outside, and the bench seat’s ample.” Her wider stance invited investigation. He slid south and cupped her. Perfect fit for his palm, her lips soft and spreading. “How cold you figure it is outside just now? We can fog the windows if you like.”
She turned in his arms, presenting him with a handful of squeezable ass. He sneaked his other hand into her panties to fix the imbalance. Couldn’t leave her half unsqueezed.
His bold-eyed woman invaded his shorts and gripped his cock. “Too cold to keep this up.”
He hissed through his teeth. “You know someplace warmer?”
Sweet agony, her touch. For all the slow seduction of their teasing games, though, she’d never leave him hanging. Her appetite had grown with her confidence. Christ, they’d had fun building her up. Her promise to initiate, his rock-solid promise not to turn her down once. Whatever she asked for, whenever she asked, had gotten his enthusiastic yes for three straight weeks in September.
She captured his mouth in a deep kiss. “Condom?”
“My bag.” He stripped his shorts as she shed hers. “Side pocket.”
They’d talked some about Nora going on the pill, but he’d let the issue lie soon as she’d walked a halting path through explaining.
A time or two of forgetting to take hers, and she’d received a barrage of lectures on responsibility—with the end result being her husband had dispensed her birth control pill and supervised her while she swallowed one every damn morning for six years. She’d offered to get a new prescription and start them up again.
“I got a better idea.” He’d piled a stack of cock coats in her palms. “We’ll stick to these. You put them on me anytime you like, and I won’t have a thing to complain about.”
Fingers curled tight, she’d clutched the square packets. “You’re sure? I don’t want—” She’d pinched her lips, and a flicker-twitch had darted across her face. “I don’t want to be demanding. Controlling, as if I’m the only one whose feelings matter. I want us to make the important decisions together.”
“Whole world of difference, honey girl,” he’d told her. “You putting your hands on me is encouraging. And you in control’s sexy as hell.”
Still true. He lay back on the bed, and her intense focus as she worked the thin shield down his shaft riled up all the little swimmers in his balls. Her squeeze and tug, Christ. Fingers tonight, but she’d used her mouth a time or two, and he’d almost gone off early when she unrolled the latex with her lips and tongue.
Work done, she straddled him. Hell yes. He’d settle back and let her ride, his cock disappearing inside her, her breasts swaying to her rhythm—except she twisted instead of lifting up and taking him in. She gripped his thighs tight between her bent legs, though, and her anchoring her balance on him got him hot more often than not. Possession and trust. She didn’t hesitate to lean on him now.
Her twists and turns rubbed her belly against his cock. Her lips slid, slick and inviting, across his balls. She meant to tease him to death without even trying.
“Got it.” Her whisper swept over him in the same second she did, the quilts gathered in her fingers and over her shoulders like a cape. She flung the covers high, past their heads, and hot breaths and rustling limbs filled the darkness underneath. “Okay. Now you can love me, Rob.”
“Isn’t a minute goes by that I don’t.” He pitched his voice low and set his hands to roaming.
Thank God, the rest of his family lived closer and wouldn’t be showing up until morning. Bedcovers wouldn’t be enough to help Nora shut out the idea of folk hearing her tomorrow night when feet tromped on the stairs and the bathroom beside their room became grand central.
He loved her tender, their hips dancing to a song of hushed whispers and giggles and sighs. At her peak, she poured out a moan muffled against his throat. The new bed held up well under their finishing thrusts, with nary a squeak or a creak to betray what five’d give you twenty his parents already assumed they were doing in here.
She nudged the blankets down to their shoulders. The air thinned her rich honey musk. Hot enough under the covers they’d both gained a sweaty coating despite the slow pace.
He rid himself of the condom and sucked salt off her neck.
“Don’t you mark me with a hickey, Robin Vanderhoff.” Snuggling in closer, she resettled breast and hip and thigh in a glorious ripple all down his side. “I didn’t pack a turtleneck.”
“Gotta mark you somehow.” Like with the ring tucked safe in the jeans draped over his duffel. The urge pulled hardest in these moments, when she lay flushed and happy and his, her joy a treasure for his eyes and ears and fingers and nose and tongue. Every sense attuned to Nora please-God-someday-Vanderhoff Howard. “Wouldn’t want anyone stealing you away.”
“Somehow,” she murmured. “You’ll think of something.” In fumble-fingered bliss, she patted his chest. “My shirtless gentleman never fails.”
Her steady breathing and the warm weight of her draped half atop him as she slept inspired a dozen further attempts at composition. Each silent recitation ended with the same question—Will you marry me?—but none approached the grand, memorable event she deserved.
The clock on the nightstand ticked over. Thirty-five days, now. The asking weighed more than the ring.
* * * *
Christmas Eve dawned bright and cold, and the hours slipped by fast as a whirlwind. Marcus showed up with his brood in time to polish off the last of Mama’s fancy oven French toast.
Big brother blitzed through the kitchen crowd like the defensive lineman he’d been in school and punched his shoulder in greeting. He would’ve returned the favor, but Mama handed him fresh plates for the kids.
“Marcus Vanderhoff.” He leaned beside Nora at the sink. “The good-looking brother.” He waggled his left hand, flashing the titanium wedding band he’d worn for a dozen years. “Sadly, I’m already taken, but Robbiekins might make a passable husband someday.”
Nora flicked soapy water from her hands. “I dunno about that.”
The floor teetered underfoot, and not from the slam-welcome his four-year-old nephew’d delivered to his knees. The noise level dropped.
“Oh.” Marcus shifted his weight and shot him a grimace. “Sorry, I assumed.”
Glancing over her shoulder, Nora blushed red enough to pull Santa’s sleigh. “No, I was joking, I mean—” She shook her head. “I mean I couldn’t pass him up.”
The family roared, the littlest laughing with no idea why.
Sara’s crew hit mid-morning, and the pack of kids grew to six. Jilly arrived late as always. Soon as she and hers walked through the door, the whole family descended on the kitchen for lunch, scarfing everything in sight. Supper wouldn’t come until after the evening service, Marcus’s three being in the children’s pageant.
Not one moment belonged to him and Nora alone. Mama carted her off to the kitchen, the sewing room, the dining room with its photo albums. His sisters cornered her in the family room, overseeing the chaos eight youngsters caused, and the laughter coming from their nook had to be the scariest sound in the house. By two o’clock, the men had been dumped unceremoniously outside with the rowdiest of the bunch and ordered to spend at least two hours tiring them out.
Christmas finery went on afterward, and they trooped out and loaded up the vehicles to get good seats in the pews for the stunning transformation from nephews and niece to shepherd and sheep. Closest he came to alone time was sitting beside Nora in church. Hardly counted. He couldn’t very well interrupt the pastor’s sermon to ask how his girlfriend was holding up in the face of an extra sixteen Vanderhoffs in her daily routine.
He clasped her hand between his with the excuse of warming her chilled skin. Her ring would sit just there, add a new texture to memorize when he touched her. He had to abandon his hold all too soon in favor of his two-year-old niece begging “up” with her chubby hands waving. Not for his lap—for Nora’s. She snuggled the toddler close and played quiet games of naming and pointing and making faces. Tiny white shoes with gold buckles smacked his leg with every bouncy kick. Down the pew, Jilly whipped her phone out, snapping pictures and flashing him a thumbs-up.
Mama set out the fancy china for formal Christmas dinner in the dining room, the dishes ones she and Daddy’d gotten for their wedding forty-odd years back, after he’d come home from the service. Two tours in Vietnam, Army, maintenance corps, and on his first day back in Kansas he’d walked right into the grocers where Mama worked as a checkout girl and proposed. Down on one knee in front of God and everybody. Columnist even wrote it up for the local paper. For some anti-hippie screed about the importance of old-fashioned family values, sure, but every household in the county knew about Daddy’s dedication and the torch he’d carried day in and day out the three years he’d been gone.
Well past nine before they got the dining room squared away, the church clothes traded for comfortable lounging gear, and the younger generation bedded down with a movie marathon in the family room. Closing the panel doors cut off their view of the parlor and the fireplace. The sooty bootprints from the hearth to the tree would be one of the last tasks of the night. Mama hauled out the stocking stuffer box, and Nora helped her load up the socks. More than fit across the mantel. A quilt stand got pressed into service for the runoff.
He planted himself in a seat and followed the proceedings from outside the flow. The mound of presents under the tree grew while the beer dwindled and the wine bottles emptied. Last-minute wrapping jobs went to Mama, and pristine presents came off the assembly line. Red-cheeked and laughing, his Nora, welcomed into the fold like a native. If he’d worked out the damn proposal plans faster, he could’ve been introducing her tonight at church as his wife-to-be. But every idea crowding his head came with a nagging suspicion attached. Not good enough. Not perfect. Not Nora.
She cocked her head toward him, and her wide smile dimmed beneath drawn brows. “What’s wrong?” she mouthed.
Shit, now he’d gone and worried her.
Daddy wedged a hand under his arm and heaved him to his feet. “C’mon. Outside. Getting so’s a man can’t breathe in here without knocking somewhat over.”
The cold air blasted his lungs. He stepped up to the porch rail. Stars winked through fuzzy halos of thin clouds.
Daddy smacked his hands down on the wood beside him and leaned out. “You gonna marry this girl, Robin?”
He slipped his hand in his pocket and brought out the ring pinched between his index and middle. “I aim to.”
Daddy’s low whistle cut a crisp note in the stillness. “Got that handled, too. Good man.”
“Not that good.” He folded his fingers tight, cupped the ring safe in his palm, and bounced his fist on the porch post. “I wanna ask her right. Unfurl a banner off the side of the barn. Fill the lobby at her work with balloons.” The first idea nixed—his luck, one of her coworkers would hit the panic button and he’d end up proposing from a jail cell while he explained about not being a bank robber. “Rent out the whole bowling alley for a fake company party and program the scoreboards to flash the question and nothing else.”
Daddy snorted. “Twenty years since the last time I gave you the talk on this porch. You swung outta that truck all scowls and grousing, and my heart thundered loud as the furnace kicking on. One chance, I told myself, to get the message through a mess of hormones and foolheadedness. Your mama wanted gentlemen for sons, and I wasn’t about to have any less in my house. S’pose you might’ve forgotten the finer points.”
“What?” The talk stuck in his head with the permanence of acid-etched metal. “I remember—her conversation, her laugh, her scent. Nora’s the one. I just need to get my head wrapped around this proposal, give her the proper scale. Something grand she’ll remember, so she’ll never wonder how much I love her.”
“Robin. Ain’t one big thing does that, son.” His voice gruff, hoarse from the cold, maybe, Daddy rubbed his wedding band. “It’s a lifetime of little ones. You show her every day, and she won’t forget. Take it from a man married forty-one years.”
The towering non-right-ness toppled. His nagging suspicions hadn’t let him settle on any one scheme because none would do. Elaborate plans wouldn’t make Nora any more or less his wife. She’d hate the secrecy. Other folks knowing before her, and he’d have to keep details from her. Go behind her back.
No.
Not even for a good cause. Sneaky behavior would put her on edge for no reason, and they’d worked hard together to create the security she needed. Trust and honesty trumped impressing her with flash and polish. Trust and honesty, every day of their lives.
“Thanks, Daddy.”
“Mm-hmm.” A hard squeeze and two pats graced his shoulders. “Time to get some sleep. Kids’ll be up early clamoring to unwrap all those boxes.”
Santa’s cookies and milk had been half-consumed and the soot trail laid. The presents engulfed the base of the tree. His siblings and their spouses ambled up the stairs with Mama shooing them along.
Nora raised her cocoa mug and quirked a smile at him. “I should rinse this out. I’ll just be a minute.”
“I’ll do it.” He cupped his hands around hers and kissed her cheek. “Wait for me?”
“As long as you need me to,” she whispered. “Same promise you made to me.”
Christ. This woman. He took her mug and tiptoed into the kitchen. Chocolate residue rinsed clear, the mug claimed a spot on the drain board with the rest. Silence settled over the house, not even a rustle from the pile of sleeping children on the floor in the family room.
He threaded his way back through the dining room, circling the broad table with its extra leaves for fitting the whole family around. The arch framed Nora in the parlor between the brick fireplace and the red-and-gold bows and baubles on the tree. Back turned, she traced the letters on the newest stocking hanging from the mantel. The quilted green and white base matched his own, hanging alongside, but the bright red embroidery spelled out Nora in Mama’s neat stitching.
Not a moment to themselves all day, not since the gentle alarm-clock kiss he’d given her eighteen hours gone. He dug in his pocket. The right moment, precious and perfect, and theirs alone. A lifetime of small gestures. Ring clutched in a thumb-and-forefinger grip, he stepped through the arch.
She smiled as she turned. “Did you get lost—” Her gaze dropped, and her voice trembled. “Rob.”
“Nora.” His lungs flat-out refused to suck in enough air. “Nora.”
Words failed. All the pretty speeches blanked. He’d never choked so hard in a crisis, as time slowed and stopped and the whole world filled up with her. Honey brown hair fell in waves around her face. Head tilted, lips parting, eyes gleaming, she stood surrounded by the soft glow of white lights on the Christmas tree.
“Marry me.” He raised the ring in offering, his arm operating on brilliant instinct instead of waiting for his head to catch up. His heart and soul would have to do. “I want to wake up beside you every morning and thank God for trusting me with such an amazing woman. I want to be a worthy partner to you. I want to be a man you can rely on, a man whose love you can believe in. Marry me, Nora Howard, and I promise you I will be faithful, and true, and yours, every day of my life.”
She pressed her fingers to her mouth, her hands shaking, and tears streamed down her cheeks. But she bobbed her head in an unbroken cascade of nods, and his heartbeat started up again.
“Yes.” Voice thick and sniffly, she reached out for him. “Yes, yes, you could ask me a thousand times, Robin Vanderhoff, and the answer for you will always be yes.”
He swept her up toward the ceiling with a shout, swung her down, and kissed her. She tasted of peppermint and chocolate from the candy cane swizzle stick in her cocoa. The ring slipped onto her finger with a gentle nudge.
A thundering herd of little stocking feet thudded and slid through the house. “It’s Santa! Santa’s here!”
“That’s not Santa.” Hair sticking up every which way, Sara’s nine-year-old made a gagging face, complete with sound effects. “That’s just Uncle Rob kissing Aunt Nora.”
“But he was here—look, presents! And the stockings are full, and the cookies are gone.”
“Why’s Aunt Nora crying? Didn’t Santa bring her anything?”
“Footprints! Uncle Rob, did you see Santa come down the chimney? Did he say what he brought? Did you tell him I was an extra good boy this year?”
The children swarmed around them to reach the tree. He set Nora back on her feet with care and pressed their foreheads together. “Sorry, honey girl. I wanted to make this memorable.”
“It is.” She kissed his cheek. “You did.” She smoothed the button flap at the top of his Henley. “How could I forget the night you kept your shirt on?”
Their laughter melted together beneath the din of excitable kids.
The hall lights snapped on above the stairs. “What in the devil is all the ruckus?” Daddy descended in a blue pajama set and slippers. “It’s not even two in the morning. You kids get on back to bed.”
Rob buried his face in her shoulder. “Lord, my siblings’ll love this. How long you think I’ll be making apologies?”
“We’ll be making, you mean,” she whispered. “Probably only the next sixty years.”
Hell, he could live with that.
The rest of the family crowded downstairs in their Christmas pajamas. Big yawns and owlish glances made the top fashion statements.
“Sorry, everyone, it’s my fault.” Nora beat him to the apology by half a second. “I didn’t know my way around the house, and I bumped into Santa by accident. He said he’d let me off with a warning, since I wasn’t snooping and I’d been a good girl otherwise, and he gave me this ring.” She held out her hand, red and white shimmering in the slender circle that called her his.
The congratulations came in a flurry of hugs and the occasional evil eye from sleep-deprived parents.
“I’ll put the coffee on.” Mama bundled her robe tighter and stepped around a wandering child. “We’ll all have a nice nap after breakfast.”
Someone tugged on his left hand, dragging him backward with determined, if minuscule, force. He squatted to niece-level.
“How come Santa didn’t bring a ring for you, Uncle Rob?”
“He brought me your Aunt Nora.” The sweet woman who fretted about making a good impression on his family. The sexy temptress who told him what she wanted and took her pleasure from him. The beautiful angel who shed tears as she promised to love him forever. “He just delivered her early, is all, ’cause I’ve been waiting a long time for her.”
Jilly’s oldest clamped her lips together and wriggled around, staring at the Christmas tree. “I waited a long time, too.”
He gave her a gentle push toward the tree. If Jilly didn’t want hers opening gifts yet, she could steer the munchkins away. He had Uncle Rob duties to uphold. “Santa told me your presents have polar bears on the tags. How ’bout you go find a good one?”
She scampered off, her beaming smile bearing a gap at the bottom where she’d lost her first tooth.
He unkinked his legs and leaned on Nora. Those naps couldn’t come soon enough. “You sure you want to enlist in this motley outfit?”
She laid her hand on his shoulder. The light caught the ring’s jeweled depths. “Santa brought one gift for the both of us this year. Do you think it’s too greedy to ask for next year’s?”
“Anything you want.” Hell, she’d said yes. She could have a decade’s worth of gifts if she liked.
“I want a shared gift next year, too.” She cupped his jaw and turned him toward the tree, her ring smooth and cool on his skin. “Give me one of those, Rob.”
Clustered in a loose half-circle, his nieces and nephews passed presents. Boxes rattled and shook as the chorus of pleas grew louder. His siblings pulled up chairs and slumped in them with half-lidded eyes.
Nora linked her hand in his and slipped them between their bodies. Her flat stomach rested under his palm. “Give me one of ours.”
His Christmas wish granted, his Nora and the promise of a family of their own. The proposal couldn’t have gone better. The chaos of Christmas morning surrounded them. Christ, he couldn’t wait to see what the next year held.
“Whatever the lady wants.” He hugged her close. “My calendar’s full up with Nora Howard Vanderhoff.”