“This living room looks like you bought out all the stores in the mall,” Shane said when they had brought in all Luna’s shopping bags from the truck and lined them up against the wall in his house. There was barely a trail from the Christmas tree to the sofa.
Luna plopped down on the sofa, removed her boots, and wiggled her toes. “Imagine seven times this many at the Paradise. After we get the presents all wrapped, we’ll be taking most of them down there tomorrow to go under Mama’s tree.”
“Most of them?” Shane sat down on the other end of the sofa and put her feet in his lap.
“We’ll leave the puppies’ presents and the ones we bought each other here under our tree,” she answered. “This is what Christmas looks like when you have a big family. You sure you’re up for this kind of thing?”
He picked up one of her feet and started massaging it. “Oh, yeah, I am. I can’t wait to be a husband and a father.”
“That goes beyond wonderful,” she groaned. “You’ve got until midnight to stop.”
“This massage parlor closes at nine,” he joked, “and then it turns into a gift-wrapping shop.”
“If you insist,” she said with a long sigh, “but the gift-wrapping could wait until morning.”
“I don’t think so,” Shane told her. “I promised Joe Clay and Mary Jane I would have you home in time to help with the Christmas Day baking tomorrow morning. A lemon chess pie was mentioned, so I plan on getting you home by midmorning.”
She closed her eyes and wondered when the right time would be to tell him that she was in love with him. He hadn’t actually said the words yet. He’d hinted at them after that big argument they had had. She tried to remember his exact words, but the general idea was that he didn’t want them to be over, and he wanted to be a part of her family someday.
How would he feel if she took the initiative and said it first? Should she wait until just the right moment, and if so, when would that be? Maybe Christmas morning? That way, it would always be a special memory.
“What are you thinking about so hard that it’s causing wrinkles on your forehead?” he asked.
“Whether to tell you that I’ve fallen in love with you right now or wait to make it a special thing,” she answered honestly.
He stopped rubbing her foot, stood up, and scooped her up into his arms. Then he sat back down with her still in his lap. “I’ve been waiting for you to say that for weeks. When and where doesn’t mean as much to me as just hearing you say the words. I think I’ve been in love with you from the first time I met you. You and Endora were moving into the house on the last day of May. There were dark clouds in the sky that day, and Joe Clay called me to come help move a bunch of furniture into the barn. He introduced me to you and Endora, and it was love at first sight.”
“Why me and not Endora? She and I are identical,” Luna asked.
“But you aren’t really identical,” Shane said. “Your eyes sparkle more than hers. And you have a tiny freckle between your right eye and your hairline.”
“I love you, Shane O’Toole,” she whispered.
“I love you, Luna Simmons.” He stopped massaging her foot, stretched out beside her on the sofa, and kissed her on the cheek.
“Do you think our kisses will always be hot even when we are eighty years old?” she asked.
“Even hotter,” Shane answered, “because I intend to tell you that I love you every single day until we’re as old as Bernie.”
“And after that?” she asked.
“Three times a day, so if I forget one, then you’ll still hear it,” he said with a grin.
“Are we planning to live until we are in our eighties, then?” she asked.
“Maybe even longer. I figure it will take me that long to prove to you just how much I love you,” Shane answered. “Any years after that will just be a bonus. Why did you decide to tell me tonight?”
She told him about the near wreck and the sudden stop on the way home when they found the kittens. “If there had been a vehicle coming from either direction when Rae braked to keep from hitting the deer, it could have been a far different story. If there had been a semi behind us when she stopped so suddenly to keep from running over that box with the kittens, the truck couldn’t have stopped, and it would have rear-ended us. For a few moments after we came to a stop, we all wondered if we had died. I didn’t see a bright light, but I did see your face and you looked so sad. Then today while we were in the mall, all I could think of was you and the fact that I hadn’t told you how I felt.”
Shane buried his face in her hair. “I’m glad I didn’t know about what happened, but I agree that we shouldn’t ever put off what we have to say to each other.” He stood up with her still in his arms and carried her down the hallway.
“We have presents to wrap,” she muttered.
“They can wait,” he whispered.
“And that’s the last one,” Luna said the next afternoon when she had wrapped pretty paper around the last matching Christmas aprons—one for each of her sisters, one for Bernie, and one for her mother. They were all printed with a Christmas tree that stretched from the bottom to the top of the bib. “At least it’s the last one that I’m wrapping here. Your presents are at home, and I’ll give them to you on Christmas Eve when we have our private celebration right here.”
Shane gathered up all the bits and pieces of scrap paper and put them into a trash bag. “I’ve decided what I want for Christmas, but I don’t think you can buy it at the mall.”
Luna’s heart fell. She had found a wooden sign to hang in their new store with O’TOOLE written on it in eight-by-ten pictures of different kinds of fishing equipment. The O was a bobber out in the water. The T was a fancy lure. Then there were two more bobbers, a red one and a green one, which seemed fitting for Christmas. The L was a hook, and the E was a lure standing vertically with three hooks on the side. In a jewelry store, she had bought him a necklace with Saint Andrew on it—the patron saint of fishermen. And then in another store, she’d found a key chain that looked like a fishing lure that was engraved with, “You are the greatest catch of my life.”
And now he was saying that he wanted something that couldn’t be bought at the mall. At this late date, she wasn’t sure she could find what he had in mind.
“I want you to move in with me,” he said. “You don’t have to make up your mind right now, and it can be anytime you feel like it, but before the store is finished, please. I want us to walk out to the store together the morning of our grand opening. From this house where we live—together.”
“I can do that,” she said without hesitation, “but I want to wait to make it an official moving in until after Christmas is over.”
“Before you go back to school?” he asked.
“The day after Christmas,” she answered.
“That’s the best present in the whole world.” He grabbed her hand, placed it on his shoulder, put an arm around her waist, and danced around the living room with her.
All the fancy places in the whole world couldn’t have been better than where they were right then. She had told him she loved him in their house. She would be moving in with him in less than a week—into their house. And someday soon, they would probably come to their house for a honeymoon. Why go anywhere else? They could make beautiful memories right there in Spanish Fort as well as they could make them in any honeymoon haven in the world.