When Rafe arrived to pick Kaitlyn up at the Bean at six p.m., he stopped dead in his tracks. She was waiting for him near the door, not her usual behind-the-bar position, where she was always finishing up a hundred things before she could get out. She’d even ditched her apron with the cartoon coffee bean. Instead she wore a black sweater dress with tights and big hoopy earrings, which she must’ve dug out of the suitcase full of clothes and cosmetics he’d thrown together for her earlier. Her hair was down and she had on red lipstick.
“Wow,” he said without thinking, then winced. Another foot-mouth moment. “I mean, wow, you look terrific,” he said carefully, “but you didn’t have to dress up.”
“This isn’t dressed up,” she said, grabbing her coat off a nearby chair. “I just wanted to look nice.”
She looked more than nice. She looked amazing. Sexy as hell. Gorgeous. He pried his eyes off her. “Oh, I almost forgot,” he said, handing her a bundle wrapped in green paper.
She ripped open the paper to find daisies and sent him a tentative glance. “Oh, Rafe. They’re beautiful.”
“Pretty,” he agreed. But it wasn’t the daisies that were beautiful to him. “Not very Christmasy, though.”
“No, but they’re my favorites.”
“I asked at the flower shop what daisies mean.”
She carried them behind the bar and reached below it for a tall stainless-steel carafe for cream. “What did you learn?”
“Childbirth, motherhood, new beginnings.” He wasn’t eloquent enough—or courageous enough at the moment—to tell her that the new beginnings was what had stuck with him. He wanted to spend time with her and get back to what they’d once had. But as far as taking an entirely different kind of step with her…could he do it?
She filled the carafe with water and set the daisies in it, and took a minute to fluff them out, or whatever a person did with flower arrangements. “Nice,” she said, admiring them on the counter as she walked around and let him help her with her coat. Her awful, worn coat.
“Where are we going?” she asked. “I’m a little bit starving.”
He raised a brow. “You’re starving, huh? That’s a nice change.”
She nodded and smiled. “Now that I can eat, everything tastes amazing and it seems I’m hungry all the time.”
“I thought we’d take a walk through town and decide where to grab dinner. Is that okay?”
“Sounds like a plan.” He held the door for her as he’d done a million times before, but this time it felt different. He felt excited and awkward at the same time, like he was back in high school taking a girl out for the first time.
They walked out of the Bean and onto the street, which was crowded with Christmas shoppers, even though it was a little after six on a weeknight. To navigate them around a group of shoppers in the middle of the sidewalk, he took her hand, but after they’d passed, he didn’t let go, even though he could have.
As they walked for a block or two, Rafe was vaguely aware of the lights, the decked-out windows, and all the shoppers laughing and talking, their arms laden with shopping bags. Kaitlyn occasionally exclaimed at something—the vintage train set chugging around the tracks in the hardware store windows, the animated snowman and the fake snow in the ice cream shop window, and the digital light displays in the computer repair shop. But most of his awareness was focused on the woman next to him. He loved seeing her excited, pointing out things that caught her eye, relaxed for the first time in a long while.
“We’ve walked this street a lot of times,” Rafe said.
She turned suddenly and gave him a strange look.
“Just never holding hands,” he said.
At that, she blushed and immediately tried to retract her hand, but he kept a good hold on it.
“I—like it,” he said, lifting a brow. “Do you?”
She looked down at their hands and then at him while he held his breath, thinking himself an idiot for asking. “I—um—yeah,” she said. “It’s nice.”
“Good,” he said, letting out the breath and adjusting his grip so their hands fit together more comfortably. “Me too.”
He tugged her toward a clothing shop. “Let’s go in here.”
She pulled him to a stop. “You want to go inside a women’s clothing shop?”
“Yeah. For Rachel.” Fortunately, she didn’t question that.
Rafe walked down aisles of expensive, dramatic clothes. He stopped to view a bright orange scarf wrapped around a mannequin. It was made of some kind of material with soft tentacle-like appendages that stuck out everywhere—like the shaggy chenille fibers on a shower mat. Plus they were sparkly. The mannequin wore a matching hat too.
“You need this,” Rafe said.
She laughed. “Actually, I think that’s more up Hazel’s alley. It’s very…creative.”
“And orange,” Rafe said. “Very orange.”
Rafe walked up to the owner, who stood behind the counter sorting sparkly jewelry. She had coal-black hair done up in a smooth bun and wore an elegant print dress with high-heeled boots.
“We’d like to see that,” Rafe said, pointing up at the mannequin wearing the ridiculously orange boa-scarf-whatever-it-was.
“No, Rafe,” Kaitlyn whispered. “We really don’t want to see that.”
“Yes, we do,” he insisted, then turned definitively to the shop employee. “The coat. Do you have her size?” He gave a nod in Kaitlyn’s direction.
The woman looked Kaitlyn up and down. “He’s kidding,” Kaitlyn said, waving her arm dismissively. “He’s a big joker.”
“I’m not kidding,” he said. “What’s your size?”
“Young man,” the woman said, walking down an aisle and producing the coat in Kaitlyn’s size. “This is a designer coat. If you’re not serious…”
“Oh, we’re serious,” Rafe persisted.
Kaitlyn tried again to protest. “Rafe, I really don’t want—”
He held it out for her to slip into. After a moment’s hesitation, she finally tried it on. It was camel-colored, which looked great with her hair, and double-breasted and long—below her knees. He didn’t know much about fashion but it looked elegant and classy and a million times better than that thinly lined thing she’d been wearing for the past five winters.
“It fits you quite well,” the saleswoman said.
“What’s it lined with?” she asked. “It feels like goddess material,” she said with a grin.
Rafe nudged her toward a full-length mirror. “Take a look.” She was a goddess, and he wanted her to have this coat.
As she examined herself in the mirror, he saw her brows hike up for just a second as a look of surprise crossed her face, but then she carefully schooled her features to neutral and shrugged the coat off. “It’s really pretty. Thank you for letting me try it,” she said, handing it back to the saleswoman before she turned to Rafe. “Come on, Rafe. Time to go.”
She practically dragged him out of the store and back onto the street.
“That coat looked terrific on you,” Rafe said.
“It was beautiful. But—”
He stopped her by putting a hand on her arm. “Are you always like this?”
“Like what?” Maybe her coat really was getting thin, because he swore he felt the heat of her right through it.
“You never let anyone do anything for you,” he said. “Or take care of you.”
“I’m not going to let you buy me a coat, if that’s what you mean.” Stubbornness and pride made her chin tilt up. “I can buy myself a coat. I just haven’t gotten around to it.”
“Yeah, yeah. You don’t need it. But what if someone just wants to do something nice for you?”
“There are a lot of nice things that don’t cost a month of rent.”
“It wasn’t that much.” He squeezed her arm a little, until she looked up at him. “It’s okay to let someone do something for you just because they want to.”
She shrugged and looked uncomfortable. “I—I guess I’m not used to that.”
He sighed. “Someone should make you feel special every single day.”
* * *
“Want my milkshake too?” Rafe asked a little later, holding out his chocolate shake as they sat in a booth at Lou’s, the local teenagers’ hangout.
“Ha ha,” Kaitlyn said, holding up a hand to refuse. She’d just eaten a double cheeseburger, fries, and an entire chocolate shake. “That was amazing,” she said, putting a hand on her stomach. “The most delicious burger I’ve ever eaten.”
Rafe pulled out his phone and took a picture of her empty plate.
“Are you posting that somewhere?” she asked, sort of horrified as he continued doing something on his phone.
“Not yet,” he said, glancing up. “But I think this is the first time you’ve ever eaten more than me, and I wanted to document it.”
“Not funny,” she said, fake frowning.
“It’s a little funny.” He paused and looked up, showing her his phone. “Or at least, fifty of my friends on Snapchat think it is.”
“Rafe…” she said, grabbing for his phone.
“Kidding, I’m only kidding,” he said.
After Rafe paid the bill, they left the restaurant. Kaitlyn felt full and content. But not just from the food. Everything between them felt different. She wouldn’t even describe their friendship as back to the way it used to be—not that she believed it ever could be, after all that had happened. But Rafe was right—it was better, but in a way she couldn’t quite put her finger on. Everything between them felt charged with a different energy. With what she could only describe as a hopeful anticipation.
Maybe it was the fifties Christmas music they’d played from the old jukebox in Lou’s while they were eating—Elvis and “Jingle Bell Rock” and Alvin and the Chipmunks and “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree.” Or maybe it was that Rafe was back to holding her hand again and his smile was finally reaching his eyes. And when he looked at her, she saw something there that she thought she’d never see—things she didn’t even dare to vocalize.
On the way home, they passed a roped-off parking lot filled with fresh-cut trees, a sharp piney scent filling the air. “Let’s get a tree,” she said on impulse.
“Just like that?” He sounded surprised.
“It would make your house look a little Christmasy.” She put her thumb and index finger together and smiled. “A tiny bit of Christmas.”
His look softened. “Okay. But I don’t have any ornaments.”
“Maybe I can ask Rachel for that basket of ornaments you made as a little kid.”
Rafe laughed, good and loud, a deep sound that hit her low in her stomach. “Anything but that.”
She grinned because she knew he wouldn’t refuse her. But she also knew he was going to love it. She’d make sure of it.
They walked down an aisle surrounded by tagged trees on both sides. Rafe immediately pointed to a tall, narrow tree. “How about one like that?”
She wrinkled up her nose. “It’s so…skinny. That doesn’t feel like Christmas to me,” she said. “Maybe it’s because I’m pregnant, but I like the rounder ones.”
“You’re not going to want one as wide as Rachel’s, are you?” he asked cautiously. “Because that took an hour to set up.”
“No, not that big. Just not…lanky.” She pointed out a fuller tree. “That’s a nice one.”
“Yeah. Nice firewood,” he said under his breath.
“I can’t believe this,” she said, rolling her eyes. “You’re Mr. Fun. What have you got against live Christmas trees?”
“You have to haul it home,” Rafe said as they walked. “Then you have to saw the trunk to get it to fit into a stand. Plus the needles get everywhere.”
“Wow,” she said. “We aren’t tree-compatible. I had no idea.” She slowed her steps as they neared a group of wider, rounder, fuller trees. Now they were talking!
“The truth is,” Rafe said, examining the boughs, “I’m a firefighter. We know too much about the hazards of having live trees.”
“I’ll make sure to water it.”
“And keep candles away from it. And keep it three feet away from the fireplace. And toss it in a few weeks.”
“Yes, yes, and yes.” His grinchiness left her undeterred. “Now, which one should we get?” Suddenly she felt something cold on her neck. She looked up to find Rafe had shaken the snow off a pine bough onto her head and was laughing at her.
“Hey, why’d you do that?” she said, dusting off her hair and coat.
He looked down at her and smiled and set to work swiping the snow off her hair. Suddenly he froze, fingering a strand.
His lids lowered. She got tangled up in noticing his long lashes, unfair for a man, really, and the look in his eyes, which had turned dark and dangerous. Her legs suddenly felt like spaghetti, and she grabbed his forearms to steady herself. He homed in on her lips and lowered his head and oh my, right here in the middle of the tree lot, he was going to…
She felt Rafe grab her arms and jerk her to the side, out of the middle of the aisle, just as an enormous nine-foot tree—tall and plump—fell right at their feet with a giant whoosh, scattering snow from its boughs around their feet.
“Oh my gosh, that scared me,” she said, still clinging to him, her hands on his chest. She was wrapped up in him and enjoying it way more than she should. And she was a little startled, but definitely not frightened.
“I saw it falling,” Rafe said. “You okay?”
Okay? How could she be okay when her pulse was racing a mile a minute and adrenaline was pumping through her veins? Being close to Rafe had driven all other thoughts from her mind. She vaguely registered the pounding feet of Boy Scouts coming to the rescue. “I’m perfect,” she blurted. “I mean, it’s perfect. The tree, that is.”
He looked at her and then at the fallen tree, a puzzled expression on his face. “What do you mean?”
She shrugged and met his gaze. “That’s our tree. It’s fate. It fell right at our feet.”
He peered down at her from his tall height. “That sounds like something Nonna would say. And it nearly fell on us, by the way. I’m not sure I’d interpret that as a friendly sign.”
He kept his big arms around her when the Boy Scout leader began apologizing profusely and offered them a deep discount. She snaked her own arm around Rafe’s lean waist—just for balance, of course.
“We’ll take it,” Kaitlyn said, looking up at Rafe. “If it’s okay with you?”
He half rolled his eyes and half smiled. “What the lady wants,” he told the Scout leader. “Wrap it up, guys.”
They ended up buying a few boxes of ornaments and strings of lights that the Scouts were also selling. Rafe insisted on paying for everything and didn’t even accept the Scout leader’s promise to give them a deal for their trouble. Distracted by deciding which colored balls they should buy, she suddenly saw Rafe discreetly hand the leader something when he thought she wasn’t looking. A small box?
“What was that?” she asked.
“Nothing,” he said, a little too dismissively. “We need a tree topper,” he said, picking up two boxes. “Star or angel?”
She shrugged and pointed to the angel, which was shiny silver and smiling. She liked the idea of an angel smiling down on them. “Well, this is Angel Falls. And your name is Raphael. So—obvious choice.”
“Yeah. I think—let’s get the angel,” he said. As he turned back toward the cashier, he continued in a voice almost too low to hear. “To watch over the baby.”
His words made her freeze. Did she hear that right? A glance over at Rafe showed he was already paying for the ornaments, tipping the Boy Scout, telling him that he was an Eagle Scout and that the library garden was his Eagle Scout project.
But wait—did he just pick the angel to watch over their baby? She turned away and pressed on her chest, which suddenly seemed tender. And blinked her eyes, which were getting watery. All sorts of melty, gushy feelings were threatening to spill over from her heart, and somehow she had to keep them contained.
It was an impossible task. She realized that she was tired of containing them. What if she allowed them to spill over everywhere into the entire rest of her life? What if she stopped denying her feelings and admitted the truth—that she wanted him?
No, no, no. What was she thinking? This was all a dream. A fantasy. It couldn’t be real. Happiness wasn’t something she was used to or even expected. But this…this was dangerous. These feelings left her heart completely unprotected. Exposed.
The trouble was, she couldn’t seem to stop them.
Kaitlyn quickly swiped at her eyes and got it together before joining Rafe at the register, where he was watching the Scouts carry the tree off to the bundler machine. Then she and Rafe began the walk back to Rafe’s house to get his truck. She was really hoping the walk would clear her head.
As they crossed the bridge that ran over the falls that gave their town its name, they noticed couples were getting their photos taken in front of the angel statue by Mary Mulligan. A children’s choir was standing off to the side singing carols, and people were gathered around listening. The sweet voices of the kids and the backdrop of the light garlands strung across the bridge made everything look magical. Part of her wanted to linger and listen and enjoy the holiday spirit.
But the other part saw that Mary was headed straight for them. “We’ve got to walk faster,” she said to Rafe.
“What for?” Rafe asked, slowing down instead. “Do you have to get back? Are you cold?” He started to unzip his jacket. “Want my coat too?”
“It’s not that. It’s—”
Just then Mary grabbed Rafe’s arm.
Too late.
“Congratulations, you two, on the big news. When’s the date?” Mary winked at Kaitlyn. Oh dear. Mary knew. That meant the whole town probably did too.
“Well, actually—” Kaitlyn began, but Mary interrupted.
“I visited your nonna in the hospital and she told me all about the engagement and the baby. I’ve never seen her so happy.” She chuckled as she fiddled with her camera. “Don’t know what you two are waiting for with a bun in the oven, but that’s young people nowadays. Anyway, all proceeds from photos this month go to the shelter party for Christmas presents for the kids. So how about puckering up for charity?”
“For charity,” Rafe said. “Of course.”
“Of course,” Kaitlyn said, as Rafe slid his arm around her back. And oh, she felt his warmth, right through her coat. The dangerous warmth that she was afraid to feel.
“This has gotten out of hand,” she whispered in Rafe’s ear. “We really should say something.”
“Yeah,” he said, staring at her lips and sounding very unconcerned. “We’ll clear everything up…later.”
She didn’t protest. She was too busy staring right back at his nice full lips too. Wait. What was she doing? What were they doing, buying trees and ornaments, walking around holding hands, and now this? And was it wrong to want to keep that magic going just a little while longer?
Mary positioned them so that the statue was directly behind them. Rafe still had his arm around Kaitlyn. If only she could have a little breathing room so she could think, because everything was so muddled in her head.
Suddenly there was the sound of money hitting the ground, pinging and scattering at their feet. A quarter hit one of the iron posts on the bridge and ricocheted into the water.
“Oh-oh,” Kaitlyn said. They all knew the legend: drop in some money, kiss your honey, true love forever, yada yada.
Rafe looked down, searching for the source of the change.
Kaitlyn blushed. “Some change just fell out of my coat pocket,” she said. She didn’t say both pockets had holes, because he’d have a field day with that.
“You don’t have to kiss me,” she rushed on to say. “After all, that quarter plunged right into the falls, just to let you know.” She pretended to laugh, but for some reason she wasn’t finding anything funny.
“I don’t care about the folklore,” Rafe said. “But I do care about kissing you.” He tugged her closer and, smiling, he looked around, scanning something behind her head.
“What are you looking at?” she asked.
“Just making sure no other Christmas trees are about to fall on us.”
She couldn’t help laughing. Rafe was so…ridiculous. Funny. Unexpected. Wonderful. Yes, sometimes he was just wonderful.
“Did you say a quarter fell in?” Mary asked. “They say you need two for the legend to count.”
Kaitlyn could feel her face turning red from embarrassment, but Rafe just chuckled. Probably because Mary always did her best to increase donations for the city treasury.
At Kaitlyn’s feet, perched precariously on the edge, another quarter suddenly winked up at her, the water under the bridge rushing and gurgling as it ran over the falls. Impulsively, she scooted her boot closer to the cement edge of the bridge and let the other quarter tip in. It was a crazy thing to do, she knew. And she must be out of her mind for doing it. She blamed her crazy behavior on all the confusion she was feeling.
“Smile now, kids!” Mary said, holding up her camera. “Say ‘onesie!’”
* * *
Then suddenly Rafe was leaning in, Kaitlyn’s heart skittering as it always did at his nearness. She let her gaze drift upward, thinking how tall and handsome he was, and how somehow the story he’d told about his past had changed everything between them. And despite the fact that she was pretty freaked out about it, she felt something else she hadn’t felt in a long time…a sense of wonder. Of awe. Of…happiness.
Was that what she was so afraid of?
Rafe smiled a devilish smile, curled a hand around the back of her neck, and pulled her in. His hands were cold but his lips were warm and soft, and his kiss was slow and lingering without getting indecent in front of Mary. Kaitlyn couldn’t help but close her eyes and lean in to him, his hard muscle, his strength, his warmth. Her head spun, her breath becoming ragged as the kiss took away her breath and her sense.
Then Mary’s flash went off and Kaitlyn remembered she was standing on a bridge with icy mist from the falls hitting her in the face. The white twinkly lights strung through the trees surrounding the bridge blurred with the stars, and she saw her whole world spin. When Rafe pulled back, his eyes were shining with mischief, but also something else. A tenderness she only recently learned to see. A crack in the walls that surrounded his heart.
She was suddenly filled with the need to tear down those walls whichever way she could to find the man who’d been in there all along.
“Oh my goodness!” Mary exclaimed. “No wonder you two are…um, expecting. That is some positively ferocious chemistry! Lordie, pass me a fan!”
The photo was cute and, sure enough, Kaitlyn’s foot was twisted just a little from nudging that final coin into the falls. But she would be the only person to ever notice such a thing.
For the first time in their relationship, she wasn’t squashing all her feelings down somewhere where she refused to feel them. She was daring to let them out. And it felt more than a little like they just might be two people falling in love.