A Hickory Ridge Christmas (10 page)

It was good to see her stark expression soften even though her eyes still looked damp.

“My decisions weren't exactly stellar, either.”

Todd smiled, his memory of that teenage girl and the woman she had become melding. Her sweetness and vulnerability—things he'd loved about her but believed she'd lost—were still there, just buried beneath layers of self-protective armor.

“Whatever mistakes you made, you've done an amazing job with Rebecca. She's an incredible kid.”

“She is pretty great, isn't she?” Hannah settled back into the sofa again, some of her tension from moments before seeming to ebb.

Todd found himself relaxing, too. “She's happy and kind and well-adjusted. You see, God always had a plan for her—for all of us.”

Tilting her head, Hannah studied him, drawing her eyebrows together. “There it is again. You lived next to me for two years. You went to church every Sunday with your parents and even with me a few times. In all that time, I don't remember you talking about your faith.”

“I didn't have much faith to speak of at the time,” he said with a chuckle. “Oh, I believed in God and all. I'd heard the message from the cradle. It all seemed reasonable enough. I just didn't see any reason to take it as personally as you did.”

Hannah suddenly straightened and lowered her feet to the floor. “Personally? If I'd been focused on my personal relationship with God, then— Oh, I don't know. But we weren't talking about me, were we? This was about you.”

Todd shrugged. “The story of my faith journey is pretty pedestrian. Unoriginal. I had to hit rock bottom before I looked up.”

Her front teeth pressed into her bottom lip, and for several seconds Hannah said nothing. But, in a whispered voice, as if she didn't want the answer but had to know, she finally asked, “When was that?”

“When I was ten thousand miles from here, on one of the most beautiful tropical islands in the world and so lonely that I thought I might die. It did no good to call. My letters just came back unopened. It felt as if someone had carved my heart out and left it beating outside my body.”

Hannah squeezed her eyes shut and covered them with her hands. “Now that was graphic.” When she
lowered her hands, she crossed her arms over her chest in a nervous self-hug.

“Okay, it came from a teenager's point of view. One who'd been playing too many video games. But those were stark days. I'd been so stupid that I ended up losing everything that mattered. That's when I hit rock bottom.”

“Then what happened?”

“I turned to God, and He came alive for me.” Todd held his hands wide to show how obvious that answer was. “He was there, showing me that I wasn't alone. I didn't realize until later that He'd been there all along.”

“I'm glad.”

Todd drew his eyebrows together. “That I found faith?”

“That, too, but more than that.” She paused to study her hands and push back the cuticles on two of her nails. But finally she looked back at him. “I'm glad you weren't alone. I know what's that's like. To feel alone.”

“Is that how you felt?”

She didn't answer right away, but her eyes looked shiny in the firelight and then a single tear traced down her cheek. “More than just alone, I felt abandoned. Even before I took the pregnancy test.”

You abandoned me.
She hadn't phrased it that way, but he felt the condemnation of it anyway. Closing his eyes, he could picture Hannah as she must have been then, sitting by herself in her room, keeping a terrifying secret locked up inside.

Of course, she felt abandoned, whether he'd intended it or not and despite that he'd had the argument of a lifetime with his father for taking the foreign assignment. He couldn't change the fact that she'd been alone, perhaps even more alone than he'd felt without her.

“I'm so sorry I wasn't here.”

“Yeah, me, too.” She gazed into the fire for several seconds. “I'm sorry about a lot of things.”

“Then we have something in common. I've been trying to apologize to you ever since I came back to town. Since before I even knew about Rebecca.”

“There's no need for you to apologize.”

“But could you do me a favor and let me anyway?”

At first she shrugged, but she finally nodded.

“I'm sorry about pressuring you into— Well, you know. A sexual relationship. You were only looking for comfort, just someone to talk to in those months after your mom died, and I read something more into it. I wasn't thinking about you, or consequences or sin. I thought only of myself.”

Todd had always wondered how Hannah would react when he finally apologized, but her nervous laughter he definitely didn't expect.

“Pressure?” Hannah said when she finally stopped chuckling. “It wasn't like that, and you know it. You can try to take all the blame. For a long time, I would have been more than happy to let you.

“But it wasn't all your fault. I was there, too. We just became too close and got carried away.”

“Thanks for saying that.” Todd blew out a tired
sigh. “We've caused each other so much pain. Do you think we can ever get past it?”

“We have to…for Rebecca's sake.”

“What about for
our
sake, Hannah? Yours and mine?”

At first Hannah appeared confused. They hadn't spoken about anyone's needs but their daughter's since Todd had returned to town. It was probably a mistake to do it now, but Todd couldn't help himself.

“A long time ago you and I were friends. Good friends. We were good together.”

Hannah started shaking her head. “It was a long time ago. Maybe we really can't go back.”

“Can't? Why not?” Then he stopped himself. He couldn't push, or he might frighten her away. “We don't have to go back. But I would like to go forward. This is my what if. I think we owe it to ourselves to explore it.”

“What are you saying?”

“I'm saying that I would be honored if you would consider going out to dinner with me one night this week.”

“A date?”

The word seemed to clog her throat. Todd's throat tightened, as well. Had he asked too much too soon? Had he become too anxious to reach his ultimate destination and messed up the journey?

He would have backtracked again, perhaps even assured her that their date would only be as friends, if he hadn't heard the squeak of the front door from the other room.

“Hannah, Todd, we're back,” Reverend Bob called out, as if he thought it necessary to announce himself.

Though they were adults and simply sitting on opposite ends of the couch, they both straightened and planted their feet on the floor. Sounds of the rustling of outerwear and then approaching footsteps followed.

Their moment, their sweet cocoon of time alone together, was ending, and Todd worried that his chance with Hannah was coming to a close along with it.

“Yes, a date. Well, what do you say?”

The wait for her answer seemed to take hours instead of seconds. She glanced at the doorway through which her father and Olivia would come in only seconds. Was she gauging the amount of time she had to put him off completely?

But then she turned back to him, her lips curving into the most beautiful smile in the world. “Yes, Todd, I'd love to have dinner with you.”

“A
re you sure this place isn't too expensive?” Hannah glanced around nervously, first at the crisp, white tablecloths and crystal stemware and then at the candles that cast the whole restaurant in a golden glow. At least he'd warned her the place would be dressy, or she might have worn jeans instead of the long, black-velvet skirt, cream sweater and the dress boots she'd chosen.

This place—maybe her accepting Todd's invitation altogether—might have been a mistake. He'd made reservations less than twenty-four hours after she'd agreed to have dinner with him, not even giving her time to change her mind.

“Well, I might be a little short. Do you think you can pick up the difference?”

Todd gave that mischievous half smile that had always made her feel light-headed and made her
stomach tickle. “I can afford it. Maybe not every week, but I can afford it. I have a job now, remember?”

“But Five Lakes Grill? It's so extravagant.” She glanced out the restaurant's front window that faced Main Street. Garlands still wrapped the streetlamps and holiday lights still glimmered in the store across the street, but she could see a few signs in the windows that read After-Christmas Sale.

“You finally agreed to go out with me. I wanted to impress you. Did it work?”

Hannah glanced around the room again and then back at Todd. He'd impressed her, all right. Dressed all in black, from his wool sport coat to his turtleneck and trousers, he'd never looked more handsome. Even the candlelight seemed to give him special attention, dancing over the blond highlights that remained in his hair.

She cleared her throat. “You didn't have to impress me.”

“But I did, didn't I?”

She nodded, pressing her hand over the flutter in her stomach. Though she glanced away from his intense gaze, she could still feel him watching her. Why was she so nervous, anyway? During the short span of their friendship, she'd gotten to know this man better than most people ever knew each other. They'd shared their deepest thoughts, their failures and their fears.

Todd had borne the pain of her mother's death as if the loss had been from his own heart. How could she have forgotten all those stolen hours of intimacy
that had nothing to do with the physical and everything to do with why she'd fallen in love with him?

Then the idea struck her that although they'd shared food and conversation together so many times, they'd never gone on a real date before. Dating had seemed extraneous to the relationship they'd already built together.

“Can you believe this is our first date?”

Hannah stiffened at his words, and her cheeks warmed. She shouldn't have been surprised that his thoughts had traveled the same path as her own, but she was.

Either the candlelight hid her discomfort or he pretended not to notice, but he continued as if she'd already answered him.

“I don't know about you, but I'm really nervous.”

An ironic chuckle bubbled inside her throat. “It doesn't seem right, does it?”

He shook his head. “We know each other too well for us to be nervous.” His eyes took on a faraway look as he lifted a hard roll from the bread basket and buttered it. “Or at least we used to.”

“We still do,” she assured him, not because she didn't share his uncertainty but because she wanted so badly to erase that sadness from his eyes. She set a slice of nut bread on her bread plate but didn't take a bite.

“It's okay if we don't know every little thing about each other today,” he said.

“What do you mean?” Unable to meet his gaze,
Hannah looked down and traced spinning circles on the tablecloth with her fingernail.

“At one time, we knew each other better than anyone. We finished each other's sentences. Before I sneezed, you'd pass a tissue into my hand.”

Her fingers calmed against the cloth as she allowed the memories to blossom inside her thoughts where she'd once held them in perpetual winter. “It
was
like that with us, wasn't it?”

“I want it to be different this time.”

As Hannah looked up from the table, Todd reached across it and covered her left hand with his right. How opposite their hands looked—hers finely boned and pale from the long Michigan fall and his hand, broad and strong, still clinging to its island tan. His skin felt so warm, his touch as sure as the man he'd grown to be.

It would be best for her to pull away discreetly—she knew that. Then both of them could pretend nothing had happened. But how could she pull away when the connection felt so right?

They stayed like that for a few minutes, just touching. Todd probably expected her to move her hand, but when she didn't, he finally spoke again.

“This is our first date. We've had many experiences together, but this is new. I want it all to be new like this.”

Hannah gently removed her hand from his this time, and he lifted his fingers to let her go. Immediately, her skin felt cold.

“As nice as all this sounds, Todd, we can't rewrite history.”

He nodded as if to concede that point. “But we can add new pages to our history. I know it—
we
—can be different together this time.”

“Can there be a chance for us after all that's happened?” Even as she said it, she felt a wave of loss thinking that the past might need to remain the past and the future only an unattainable dream.

“Maybe this is a mistake. Maybe I shouldn't have agreed to come. If you want, we could leave instead of ordering. We're only ripping open old wounds and taking the chance that we'll create even deeper ones. Wounds that won't heal.”

“We're doing all of that?” Todd held his finger to his lips as if in deep concentration. “I thought we were just having dinner.”

Despite herself, Hannah laughed. Seconds before she'd been contemplating pain and loss, and now he had her laughing again.

Todd laughed with her, his deep baritone turning the heads of a few other restaurant patrons before he lowered his voice. “Now are you sure you're just a photo-taking accountant? I see a future for you on the stage. You have a flair for the dramatic.”

“I like to keep my professional options open.”

He smiled at first, but then his expression turned serious. “I know a lot has happened between us, but can't we think of tonight as just dinner? We can pretend we're just two single adults getting to know each other better. We'll keep all our baggage carefully hidden the same way everybody else does on first dates.”

When Hannah paused for a moment to digest
Todd's suggestion, the waiter must have seen the break in conversation as his chance because he approached the table to take their order. The parchment-style menu still rested on the table where she'd laid it earlier. She'd been too busy talking to even decide what she wanted to order.

She met Todd's gaze across the table. If she ordered, it would be admitting that she'd decided to stay after all. After a quick look at the menu selections, she turned back to the waiter and ordered a puree of butternut squash soup and roast duck in a bread pudding.

After Todd gave his order of potato-crusted Lake Superior whitefish and the waiter left the table, he turned back to Hannah, who was watching him.

“You sound as if you have a lot of experience in the first-date department.” She shouldn't have brought it up again, but she couldn't help being curious.

Todd raised an eyebrow, “If a lot means the three times in the last five years that my mother insisted I attend this or that function with the daughter of some executive in dad's company, then I'm a first-date expert.”

“You are an expert compared to me,” she said with a grin. “This is my
first
first date. I haven't had much interest in socializing with members of the opposite sex in the last few years.”

“But you had a lot of offers, didn't you?” he said, though her comment appeared to surprise him.

Again, her cheeks felt warm, but she told him the truth, anway. “Yes, I've had some offers.”

“Especially from that one guy at your house. That Grant or somebody.”

The way he avoided her gaze suggested that his memory of Grant Sumner wasn't as foggy as he would like her to believe. He wasn't immune to a little latent jealousy on the matter, either.

“Yes, Grant was one of them.”

“What's the story with that guy, anyway?” he asked too casually.

“Grant's a great guy, a good friend, but he wasn't the right person for me.” Hannah braced herself for Todd's knowing glance that would suggest he knew just who that right person was, but he only nodded. “I tried not to encourage him, but I guess he thought someday…”

Hannah took a deep breath, still wishing she'd handled the situation better. “Well, anyway, I wish he would come back to church. I've missed him lately.”

“He's probably having a tough time letting you go. I know from experience how difficult that is.”

She blinked. A jealous comment she would have expected, but Todd's compassion surprised her. Many things about this adult Todd surprised and pleased her. Still, the conversation had become too serious, so she decided to lighten the mood by adding, “A few others asked me out, too.”

“You sure know how to kill a guy.”

Hannah chewed her lip, trying not to smile. “The infant safety seat in the back of my car probably discouraged a few of them, but I still had some calls.”

“I'm sure you did. Who could blame them?”

Soon they were both grinning, the discomfort that had been between them evaporating as their natural
banter reemerged. They discovered that they did know each other, and what they didn't know about their current lives they began to learn.

They traded samples from their dinners as they joked about old times and shared stories from the more recent past. Often, the conversation would sneak back to their daughter's antics, and they laughed about those, as well.

Hannah felt more at peace than she'd been in a long time. She might have attributed it to the restaurant's ambience—the candlelight, the murmur of quiet voices, the sense of romance blossoming at nearby tables—but she decided not to lie to herself this time. Her feelings had nothing to do with the atmosphere and everything to do with the company.

She'd caught Todd watching her a few times when he'd thought she wouldn't notice. How could she not? The yearning in his gaze was strong enough to have awakened her from a sound sleep. Did Todd see a similar expression when she looked back at him?

No, she couldn't have thoughts like that—thoughts of any future beyond tonight. Not yet. Maybe not ever. The risk was too great. The prospect of another loss too terrifying. Would she ever be able to recover if she lost him again?

“What time did you tell Mary Nelson you would pick up Rebecca?” Todd asked, drawing her from the abyss of her dark thoughts. “I was surprised you took Rebecca there instead of having Mrs. Nelson come to your apartment.”

Hannah set her fork aside and wiped her mouth
with a napkin. “Oh, didn't I tell you? Rebecca gets to spend the night at Mrs. Nelson's. Mary insisted, and Rebecca was thrilled about sleeping in Mary's big guest bed.”

“She'll really sleep there?”

“No, she'll be crawling into Mary's bed before the night is out. Mary doesn't mind.”

“That's good news.”

Hannah tilted her head to the side and gave him a quizzical look. “That Rebecca will be sneaking out of her bed in the middle of the night?”

Todd choked on the drink of water he'd just taken and coughed into his napkin before he could answer. “No. The good news is that you don't have to rush right home. We can have dessert and coffee.”

“I don't know…” Hannah said, a smile pulling at her lips. Strange, as confused as she was about the two of them and what the future might hold, the one thing she did know for certain was that she wanted to stay right where she was. With him.

“Come on…tiramisu, chocolate mousse, sorbet…”

“Well, when you put it like that…”

Todd wiped his forehead with his napkin as if he'd just survived an ordeal. “Whew, you're a tough negotiator. I didn't think I'd make it through that one.”

“I went easy on you that time.”

“I appreciate that.”

Hannah was rolling the last bite of the creamiest lemon tart she'd ever tasted around on her tongue when she caught Todd staring at her again. Her face felt warm under his regard, but she had to attribute at least
part of the heat to the frothy cappuccino she'd been sipping.

Around them, the waitstaff had already begun clearing the tables and setting up for the next evening. Only one other couple remained at the corner table, probably newlyweds from the private glances they were exchanging.

“We should be getting home,” Hannah told him.

“Why? Do you have a curfew? You said Rebecca was settled for the night.”

Hannah wiped her mouth and set her napkin aside. “I have to work in the morning. Some of us don't have the week between Christmas and New Year's off each year. Some of us are just entering tax season where we'll barely be coming up for air until after April 15, and that's if we don't file a bunch of extensions.”

“Oh, sorry. I forgot that you had to work.” He studied his dessert plate for several seconds before his head popped up again. “But you could take just a few minutes longer…so I could walk you home, right?”

“Walk me home? Won't your car start?”

“It had better. It's only a month old. I just thought that it looks like the perfect night for a walk. It will be good for us, especially after that dinner.”

Outside the restaurant's front window, dozens of snowflakes were skittering toward the ground, but trees planted in the Main Street sidewalk weren't swaying, so the wind from earlier in the day must have died down. She looked back at him.