Rafe couldn’t help feeling like it was already Christmas, even though it was just another ordinary day. He found himself humming holiday tunes and attacking his chore list with gusto. By noon, he’d done two loads of laundry and gone to the hardware store to look at paint chips. He’d exhausted the puppy playing ball and also tug-of-war on two separate occasions with his favorite socks, which he’d accidentally left in the laundry room. Turns out stealing socks and running away with them was the puppy’s new favorite game. As Rafe tossed the wet, chewed-up socks, he couldn’t help chuckling.
Kaitlyn, the puppy, the baby…he was building a new life. A life that still seemed too good to be true.
Because of Kaitlyn, he was taking a chance again. He was living again.
And he pretty much decided he didn’t ever want to see his house without Kaitlyn in it.
That afternoon, Rafe walked into the Bean with a bunch of paint strips laid out in the shape of a fan. “Hey, beautiful,” he said, as Kaitlyn was wiping down tables. “Got a second?”
“Hey, handsome,” she shot right back. “What’s up?”
“Can you give these a look?” He sat down at a table and she leaned over him to see. He liked the sensation of her hand resting on his shoulder. If she wasn’t at work, he would’ve pulled her right into his lap and kissed her silly. It was hard, controlling himself until later when they could be alone.
“Paint samples?” she asked. “What needs painting?”
He nodded, taking in her familiar vanilla and cinnamon and coffee scent. “The spare room. I thought we could turn it into the baby’s room.”
“Wait a minute,” Kaitlyn said, looking a bit puzzled. “I thought we were turning my bedroom into the baby’s room. Remember the track lighting, the asbestos crisis?”
He reached up, grabbed her hand, and kissed it. “Maybe that was all a ploy to get you to stay with me.” She frowned, so he said, “You know I’m kidding, right?”
“Yes, but I’ve only been at your place for two days. Plus we’ve got a new puppy.” She smiled at that and spread her arms wide. “Give it a few days—you might be taking back your offer real soon.”
“You don’t understand,” he said.
“Yes, I do.” She lowered her voice. “We only made love one night. Everything’s new and fresh and wonderful. We don’t need to make any sudden—”
He covered her hand with his, which made her stop talking and look at him. He couldn’t seem to stop smiling.
“What?” she asked, smiling too.
He dropped his voice. “I like how you said that. Make love.” He squeezed her hand and noticed the adorable way she blushed. “Look, I—I pretty much know that I never want you to leave my bed—or my house—ever again.”
As soon as that was out of his mouth, he realized what he’d said. It had slipped out, for better or for worse. She met his words with a skeptical look, which disarmed him. And made him want to prove to her—by his actions, not just talk—that he’d meant it. “Speaking of which, when are you done here?”
“Not anytime soon. There are only a few days left to get my recipe into the cookie contest. I need to think about my final strategy.”
“You’ve been on your feet all day. Maybe you should take a break.”
Hazel and Logan came out from the back. “Hey, Rafe,” Hazel said with a little wave before addressing Kaitlyn. “We were wondering if we could bake for you tonight. We’re done with homework and we know how pressed you are for time. We want to help.”
Kaitlyn looked surprised and pleased. “Actually, I’d love some help.” She pulled a couple of pieces of paper out of her apron pocket. “I’ve got two more variations to try. If you can mix up these batches, maybe I can scour that box of recipes one more time.”
Hazel took the papers and said, “Great. We’ll get started.” As the two teenagers walked back to the kitchen, Rafe could hear the sounds of laughter and pans being taken down and Christmas tunes being cranked up.
Rafe raised an eyebrow. “Are you sure you want two teenagers in your kitchen?”
“She wants to help,” she said, a touch of pride filling her voice. “Maybe this contest won’t be a total loss after all.”
The clanging of pots and pans and more giggling ensued.
“If that version of Hazel is the only thing I get out of this contest,” Kaitlyn said, her voice full of feeling, “it will be worth it.”
“So you’re okay with not winning?” He was pretty much sure that wasn’t the case.
“I’m not giving up,” she said. “Just appreciating that some things are more valuable than winning.” She grinned broadly. “But winning would be nice too.”
Rafe laughed. “There’s the woman I know.”
“I’m going to get back to work. Can I get you anything?”
“I want to help too.” He didn’t like her standing all day, and he knew she’d never quit until she got this recipe right. “I’ve got to stop in at Nonna’s, and then I’ve got to go let out our little friend. And then I’m great to help mix a batch of dough or do more dishes, whatever you need.” He stood and got ready to go.
“Rafe,” she said, giving him a solemn look.
“What is it?” he asked.
“It means a lot, just your being here.”
He didn’t say it, but it meant a lot to him too.
* * *
When Rafe returned an hour later with the puppy in tow, he was hit with the heady scent of baking cookies. All the overhead fluorescent lights were on in the kitchen and Springsteen’s “Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town” was blasting. As he took a peek into the kitchen, he saw Hazel with a big streak of flour across her cheek laughing and flicking flour at Logan. They might’ve been actually filling a couple of cookie sheets with cookies too, but there was such a mess everywhere, he wasn’t sure.
Kaitlyn was sitting at an old wooden table backed up against the far wall of the kitchen—she often used it as her desk—riffling through the big box of recipes. Four stacks of paper clippings sat in front of the box.
Hazel came up to the counter just as Rafe was taking a seat. “Hi, Rafe. Aunt Kate’s been like that for the past hour. We’ve been making all kinds of racket and she hasn’t even looked up. Want me to get her for you?”
“Let her be for now.” One glance at the hurricane in the kitchen made him think he’d have no difficulty occupying his time while he was waiting for her to finish up.
“How about some coffee—and taste test our cookies?” Hazel asked. “We made three batches. Except we might have forgotten the baking powder on the second batch. Or baking soda, I forget which. But the third one might be normal. You can be the first to try it.”
“Gee…thanks,” he said, flashing her a smile, even if he was a little nervous about being the guinea pig for scary taste testing. “It’s nice of you to help your aunt,” he said. Because…it was. And he wanted Hazel to know that.
Hazel shrugged. “She deserves to win.” While she turned and poured Rafe a coffee, Logan walked up to the counter with a plate full of cookies.
The thought of tasting yet another chocolate cookie…honestly, it was losing its appeal, even if no ingredients were forgotten. But if Kaitlyn wasn’t giving up, he wasn’t going to either. He gestured with his hand. “Pass them over.”
The two teenagers and Rafe all took bites.
Hazel’s eyes teared up a little.
“What’s the matter, Hazel?” Logan asked.
“Taste it and you’ll know,” she said in a whisper.
Rafe bit into it and yes—he got it. It was…meh.
He could tell by the expression on Logan’s face that he felt the same way.
Hazel put down the cookie and crossed her arms. “It’s no use.” She flicked her gaze to Kaitlyn. “I don’t know how she does it—being so cheerful day after day. Working like this.”
Logan wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “We can’t give up.”
Rafe force-swallowed the cookie. “Logan is right. We can’t show her that we think this might be impossible. We’ve got to support her. That’s…that’s being a family.”
Suddenly a scream emanated from the back.
The puppy startled awake under the table and began barking.
Rafe’s heart lurched in his chest. His usual adrenaline response to a crisis, normally so automatic and so controlled, made him trip over his own feet and then on the puppy’s leash as he scraped back his chair and ran around the counter to the back room.
Kaitlyn was standing in the middle of the stainless-steel kitchen. Her bright yellow top was the only flash of color in the otherwise neutral space. She was jumping up and down waving a paper clipping. As soon as she saw him, she catapulted herself into his arms.
A million things went through his mind, mostly the primary causes of pregnancy emergencies. “Look, Rafe,” Kaitlyn said. “Look at this!” She waved a yellowed piece of lined paper in front of his face. “Are you okay?”
He felt like he’d just had a heart attack, but other than that, he still had a pulse. “Yeah, sure. Are you?”
She squeezed him tightly. “I’m amazing. Take a look!”
Amazing? He started breathing again, tried to get his heart to stop pounding in his ears and blocking out his ability to think.
She was fine. The baby was fine.
Everything was okay.
Somehow, he managed to grasp the piece of paper and focus on it. “‘Grandma’s orange cream cheese Jell-O in a horseshoe mold,’” he read. That title didn’t even have the word chocolate in it. He looked at her, puzzled.
“Turn it sideways,” she said, clapping her hands. “Sideways. Just like you said.” She jumped up and down while he rotated the clipping ninety degrees. There, in the margins, were some pencil scrawlings. Faint and very easy to miss.
“I didn’t see it the first three times I went through the box. But then I examined the fronts and backs of every single piece of paper. It took me hours. But I did it! I found it!” She was smiling from ear to ear, her eyes lit up with happiness.
He squinted at the faded writing. Chocolate, flour, cocoa powder, butter…He glanced from the paper to her glowing face, knowing exactly what he was looking at.
He carefully set down the paper and rested his hands on her shoulders. “You did it, Katie,” he whispered, his voice all choked up. He grabbed her and lifted her up and twirled her around the kitchen until she grabbed onto his back for dear life, laughing and pounding on his back. “Congratulations,” he said. “Now you’re on your way.”
“Whether I win with this or not, I found it, Rafe! A piece of my grandpa, of my childhood. I’m really excited about that. And I can’t wait to try this recipe!”
He was thrilled for her. Even more than that, he was relieved everything was okay. Because the first thing he’d thought was…No, he didn’t even want to think where his mind had gone.
“I knew this recipe was too important for my grandfather not to leave a record of it somewhere.” She looked up at him with determination in her eyes. “I can win this, Rafe. I know I can!”
He planted a kiss on her neck. “I know you can too. But then, I always knew you could.”
Dimly, he became aware that the two teenagers were watching them. Logan had his arm around Hazel, and Hazel had tears in her eyes.
Kaitlyn walked over and placed a hand on each of their arms. “I want to thank both of you for all your help. This was a team effort. You two freed me up so I could look through that box one last time.” She hugged Hazel tight and whispered, “Thank you.” Then she insisted they go home because it was getting late on a school night.
When they left, Kaitlyn looked around at the disastrous-looking kitchen.
Rafe rolled up his sleeves. “Let’s get this job done.”
Kaitlyn held him back. “No, I don’t think so,” she said, a faint smile on her lips.
“I’m not saving this mess for you to clean up in the morning. Those kids may have helped, but I think they used every single dish and pot and pan that you own.”
“Rafe, I love that you want to help me, but…not tonight. I feel like doing something else now.”
He lifted a brow. The something else that came immediately to his mind sounded awesome, but he didn’t want to make assumptions. “Something else?”
“Yeah. Something with you. Something we can do together.”
The puppy batted its paws against her calves. Kaitlyn reached down and picked it up.
“Come here, sweet boy,” Kaitlyn said. “Let’s go home.”
Rafe put his arm around her and grinned, scratching the puppy behind the ears. “Let’s go home.”
* * *
The ride to the house seemed to take hours. But once they arrived, Rafe probably broke some kind of speed record tucking the dog into his crate. He met Kaitlyn as she was plugging in the tree and dimming all the lights.
“What do you want to do now?” he asked, leaning on the back of the couch and levelling his gaze at her.
He knew exactly what he wanted to do.
And so, apparently, did she, because a second later she was in his arms, wrapping herself around him and dropping enthusiastic kisses on his mouth and face and neck.
They fell onto the couch tangled up and laughing, but soon the kisses took over. Rafe paused long enough to gather her face in his hands and plant a quick kiss on her nose. “I’m so glad you found the recipe,” he whispered.
Her hands slid gently up his arms, a move that sent an unexpected shiver through him. “I thought it was lost forever,” she said, her eyes wide and blue and melting something deep inside of him.
I thought you were lost forever, he thought but didn’t dare say out loud. Instead, he kissed her again.
She surely must have felt his passion, his excitement at being with her, his happiness for her. As she unbuttoned his shirt and ran her hands over his chest and tugged on his jeans, her motions turned frantic.
“Hey,” he whispered, trying to pull back a little. “Keep that up and this is going to be over really fast.”
She kissed him again, and breathlessly, she said, “I don’t care. I want you so badly.”
“I want you too, Katie.” Somehow, his voice cracked. He’d never meant anything as much. “More than I’ve ever wanted anyone.”
The feel of her skin against his was so overpowering he had to catch his breath. He saw something flicker in her eyes, and he knew she understood that had taken him a lot to say. He felt their connection, the honesty borne from years of friendship, her generous and giving spirit accepting him, loving him whether or not he deserved to be loved.
He knew her so well, yet she was driving him wild, stripping him of all his defenses, and he could no longer hide the feelings that were overtaking him. Maybe she sensed how emotional he was, because she silenced him with a kiss, and wrapped her arms around his neck.
With one quick move, he rolled them over so that she was beneath him and helped her strip away her clothes.
He licked at her nipple, laved it with his tongue until she arched beneath his touch and little moans and sighs escaped her throat. When her breathing quickened and her hands clasped and unclasped on his back, he touched her intimately, stroking her and playing with her wet, swollen flesh. “Katie, you’re so beautiful,” he whispered. What had he done to deserve this, to deserve her? Nothing. Not a thing. That thought humbled him and made him want to do everything in his power to please her, to show her what she meant to him.
“Rafe,” she said, fighting through waves of pleasure to speak, but he would not stop. “Rafe, I— Oh, what are you doing to me?”
He could have said the same. He kissed away the soft little sounds she made, watched as she fell apart in his arms. Then he entered her, and being inside her, her body wrapped tightly around his, her arms stroking softly up and down his back, her saying his name on a shuddering whisper, filled him with a joy so powerful he could not contain it.
She grabbed his butt and tugged him even closer. “I want all of you, Rafe. Everything.” She wrapped herself around him, both of them clinging to each other with a need he’d never experienced before.
He started to shudder, a fine trembling he could not control. He could not stop himself, could not stop the rhythm or the pleasure as it hit him in relentless waves.
“Rafe, I-I’m coming again,” she whispered.
He felt her muscles contract around him, and that was all he needed to finally let go. A long, guttural moan escaped him as he shuddered one final time.
They came together, him calling out her name on a guttural sigh.
As the world slowly came back into Rafe’s consciousness, what he noticed was the quiet—in the room, and the peacefulness within him of holding Katie in his arms. For a long time afterward, they lay there together, wrapped up in each other, enjoying being together in the glow of the Christmas lights.
* * *
They might have been just a little noisy, because a little while later, Kaitlyn sat in the laundry room in her flannel pj’s with Santa heads on them and the reindeer robe her mom bought her and her reindeer slippers, which a very wide-awake puppy was chewing on. She pulled the puppy away from the stuffed antlers and lowered him into her lap, where he put his head down and snuggled into the folds of her robe.
They sat there like that, her leaning against the dryer, drinking a glass of milk and aimlessly rubbing the puppy’s head as he began to doze. In her other hand, she held the recipe.
As she hung out with the puppy, she took ten photos of the recipe just in case, including one with Rafe’s phone, and memorized it too. She wasn’t taking any chances of losing it now.
“So that’s what Grandpa did,” she told the puppy, whose eyelids lifted sleepily at the sound of her voice. “And you’ll never guess what the secret ingredient is—coffee! That makes complete sense!”
The giant lick Kaitlyn got on her fingers told her he probably didn’t care.
In a few minutes, Rafe walked in, wearing scrub bottoms, his feet and chest bare, little droplets of water from the shower still on his shoulders and smelling like her bodywash that she left in his bathroom.
She couldn’t help smiling a little. Mostly because she was ecstatic—about finding the recipe, of course, but also because she couldn’t believe what was happening between them. She couldn’t believe things had gone back to—no, had surpassed—the easy friendship they’d had before, and what had developed in its place was something she couldn’t even put into words.
As Rafe set down the dog’s water bowl, she reached into the dryer and handed him a clean towel to line the bottom of the crate. He smoothed out the towel and shut the door and sat down next to her, stretching out his long legs beside her. She leaned into his strong body. He took a swig of her milk and wrapped his arm around her. They sat like that, watching the puppy’s deep, even breathing, the picture of peace and calm.
“What is it about sleeping babies?” Kaitlyn said. “So stinking cute.”
“You know what Nonna says,” Rafe said. “‘If babies didn’t tug at our heartstrings when they were asleep, no one would want to take care of them.’”
“Well, good thing you were cute then, because Nonna told me you were a handful.”
Rafe chuckled. “I was a cute baby. Far cuter than my sisters.” He examined the now-sleeping puppy. “Now that the recipe’s found, we have other important things to do.”
“Like what?”
“Give this little guy a name.”
“I’ve been thinking about that,” she said. “Some dogs look like their name, like Snowball or Spot or Fluffy.”
“He doesn’t look like any of those,” he said with a grin. “He might look like Trouble.”
“That’s like a self-fulfilling prophecy. Better to go with Happy or Angel if you’re going to take that route.” She thought for a minute. “We could do a theme. Like, you Langdon kids are all named after angels.”
“Themes are hard. How about keeping it simple?” Rafe said. “Maybe something masculine, like Bear or Gunner? Moe, Harley, Duke?”
Kaitlyn turned and pretended to look all over his chest and even peered around his back. Which was quite a treat, actually. All those lean, defined hills of muscle.
“What are you doing?”
“Looking for your Hells Angels tattoo.”
“Ha ha,” Rafe said. “I suppose you have a better idea?”
“Sure. Sunny, Sparkle, Rainbow. Unicorn. Those were Julia’s suggestions.”
“I don’t think I could live it down if I showed up at the station with a dog named Sparkle.”
“How about Christmas Miracle?” Kaitlyn said. “It was sort of a miracle, how you found him. And no one knows a thing about where he came from.”
“You’re a Christmas miracle,” he blurted.