The Bachelor’s Christmas Bride (17 page)

“You just bought my grandmother's house!”

“And I'll turn around and sell it. The point is, Shannon, what I realized tonight is that the only thing that matters to me—that truly matters—is that I want you. I want to be with you. I want to live whatever kind of life makes you happy, because the only thing that's going to make me honestly, genuinely happy, too, is you. Anywhere. Living with wild monkeys, if that's what you want. As long as I'm with you…”

The words were hanging in the air as Dag turned onto the road that led to Logan and Meg's place. But that was when both Dag and Shannon spotted a black limousine up ahead, already parked beside the big farmhouse. A black limousine that certainly didn't belong there. And abruptly put everything else on hold.

Dag hit the brakes purely out of reflex, knowing instantly that there was only one person who was likely to have come to Northbridge in a limousine on Christmas Eve.

“That can't be…” he muttered darkly to himself.

“Wes,” Shannon said, giving voice to Dag's worst thoughts.

Wes Rumson.

In what Dag had no doubt was a grand gesture.

And even if this one didn't come with a crowbar, Dag thought it couldn't have hit him any harder.

The other guy from Shannon's so-recent past.

The guy Shannon had said she was finished with.

And Dag couldn't help wondering if it was possible that he'd made the same mistake twice—that Shannon wasn't as finished with Rumson as she'd said. That a grand gesture from the rich politician might sway her still…

“Can I turn us around and go the other way?” Dag joked feebly.

“If it's Wes, I'll have to see him.”

“
If?
Who else is it gonna be?”

And what else is the politician going to do but pull out all the stops to get you to say you'll marry him…

Dag really was tempted to jam his truck into Reverse and back the hell out of that drive. Sweep Shannon away. Make
that
grand gesture.

But he resisted the urge, knowing if she was determined to hear out the other guy, there was no stopping it.

He took his foot off the brake and went the rest of the way up the drive, reaching the limo right about the time Wes Rumson got out the back of it—tall and straight, dressed in a suit and tie underneath a custom-tailored overcoat, looking as if he were ready to take the governor's chair right then.

Dag pulled to a second stop beside him and Shannon rolled down her window.

“What are you doing here, Wes?” she asked, not sounding thrilled to see him, but also not perturbed or angry—the way Dag would have preferred. And probably not knowing that that alone was like a sucker punch.

“I came to talk to you,” the politician said as if he'd just driven around the block rather than from his family's estate in Billings.

Shannon didn't jump at that and Dag took some comfort in what he interpreted as hesitancy. But then she said, “I'm staying in the apartment around back. You can follow us.”

“Right behind you,” Wes Rumson said as if it had been an engraved invitation he was expecting and en
titled to. Then he ducked into the limo's rear seat and Shannon rolled up the window again.

And Dag just sat there, fighting so many inclinations that he knew he couldn't act on.

But Shannon was looking at him again, her brow furrowed once more, and rather than reassuring him, she said a simple, “I'm sorry.”

That Rumson is here? That you're dropping me flat to talk to him? Or that you can't say yes to me, either…

Dag didn't know. And there was no time to ask. And even if there was, was this really the best moment to force her into a corner?

Dag knew it wasn't, so he merely raised his chin in answer to her apology—whatever it was for—and drove around to the garage, followed by that damn black limousine.

Without another word, Shannon got out of the truck at the foot of the apartment steps, and Dag watched her lead the politician up those same stairs he'd been climbing with her every other night. The politician—the man—who wanted her, too. Who could offer her more than he could. Who she must have had feelings for in one way or another. Who she might still have feelings enough for to take what he was offering after all…

And that was when Dag felt something that hit him harder than any beating he'd ever taken. On the ice or off.

 

Dazed and confused—that was how Shannon felt as she turned on the apartment's lights and took off her coat. First there had been all that Dag had stunned her by saying. Now Wes. She was having trouble gathering her wits.

But Wes was standing just inside the door, taking off
his own coat as if she'd asked him to, and she had to deal with him. So she pushed aside what Dag had said and turned to face her former non-fiancé.

“It's Christmas Eve and you drove all the way to Northbridge?” she said when Wes hadn't taken the lead.

“I wanted to see you. To talk to you.”

“And you had Herbert drive you? Didn't he want to be with his family—his
kids
—tonight?”

“I'm paying him well. If I'd driven myself I would have wasted the time. Instead I was able to work on my next speech while he drove—that is his job.”

Shannon was thinking about the three kids the driver had shown her pictures of and of them not having their father with them tonight of all nights because Wes's work came first. For Wes at least.

Not to mention that even as he'd been coming to see her, she hadn't been what he was actually focusing on.

“I'm still not sure why you're here, Wes,” Shannon said.

The tall, impressive politician stepped nearer and took a velvet ring box from his pocket. “I thought maybe a private Christmas Eve proposal might be welcomed with a little more favor,” he said, opening the box to reveal the biggest diamond Shannon had ever seen.

But even dazzled by the diamond, Shannon thought that this was nothing but another tack he was taking. A retry that had the earmarks of a new strategy he and his cousin had devised.

Or maybe coming after what Dag had just said to her—full of so much emotion, so much passion—this just sounded rehearsed and superficial. Either way, it wouldn't have swayed her even before all that Dag had said on the drive home.

She shook her head, wondering how many times she was going to have to turn this man down to get him to accept that she wouldn't marry him. “The
way
you propose, the timing, whether it's public or private—those aren't the reasons I won't marry you, Wes. I told you—”

“Yes, you did tell me. But I think you're mistaken, Shannon. We may not have the mirror image of what your parents had, but we're not so bad together. I know people who have much less to build on than we do and they make perfectly successful pairings. We get along, we can always find something to talk about, we have things in common, we both want to make our mark—”

“You want to make your mark. I just want—”

“I know what you want. But how much bigger can your life be than as the wife of the governor? As maybe the wife of a president some day? And you can make your mark, too. You can push education—
I'll
push education, it's a popular topic and with you being a teacher, you can do great things for the state, for the country. We make a good team.”

“And you love me so much you can't live without me,” she said facetiously, as if she were feeding him the line he should have used.

“I do love you, Shannon,” he contended. “You know that. Maybe not the way you think your father loved your mother—”

“It isn't something
I think,
it's something I know.”

“Still, I care for you. The same way any normal husband cares for his wife. We could have a lifelong, fruitful marriage. Kids. And you'd never again have to spend a Christmas Eve, a Christmas, alone like this, without family.”

“That's why you're really here now, isn't it?” Shannon
said as it dawned on her. “You came because you thought I'd be at a particularly low point tonight, tomorrow. That I'd be vulnerable…” Not because he wanted to make this first holiday after the loss of her family easier for her, not because he wanted to make sure she was all right. But to use what he'd hoped might be a weak moment to his own advantage.

She considered telling him just how not-alone she'd been since arriving in Northbridge, or tonight, how not-alone she would be tomorrow with Chase and Hadley and Cody and Meg and Logan and Tia. And Dag… But it didn't seem worth it, so she merely repeated, “No, Wes, I won't marry you.”

“I just don't understand you, Shannon,” he said curtly, sounding frustrated and aggravated that this play still hadn't accomplished his goal. “We've been involved for a long time. We've talked about marriage. Your parents are gone so there's not that holding you back. You've said you want more out of life and I'm here offering that. Get your head out of the clouds and let's be realistic—you idealized your parents' relationship. You made it some sort of storybook love that nothing can live up to—”

“In all the time we've known each other, Wes, you only met my parents twice. You don't know what kind of relationship they had.”

And Shannon knew that he was right when he'd said he didn't understand her because he genuinely didn't. He didn't understand why there was absolutely no temptation, no appeal in this passionless
Bigger Life
that he was offering.

But she wasn't even slightly tempted by it. Despite the fact that he was Wes Rumson, that he was impeccably dressed, handsome, cultured, intelligent, wealthy, well respected. Despite the fact that they
had
had a pleasant-
enough, enjoyable-enough relationship that had met some of her needs.

It just didn't matter to her because she hadn't had even the tiniest thrill when she'd first seen his limousine, the tiniest thrill at thinking that he'd come all the way from Billings on Christmas Eve just for her. She certainly didn't want to run into his arms. She wasn't aching to have him touch her, kiss her—everything that came instantly with every thought, every glimpse of Dag.

Dag, whom she'd had to leave hanging…

“Go home, Wes,” she advised then. “Go back to Billings to be with your own family, let Herbert get to his. This—you and I—just wasn't meant to be. I might vote for you, but I won't marry you.”

Wes snapped closed the ring box like the jaws of an alligator and put it back in his jacket pocket. “I don't think you know what you want.”

He was right about that, too, because it wasn't as if she was ready to rush to Dag and accept all he'd laid out for her either…

“But I know what I
don't
want,” she said quietly.

Wes remained with his pale brown eyes boring into her from beneath a fierce frown, shaking his head. Then he put his coat back on, all the while watching her as if he thought she'd gone out of her mind.

“Once I announce this publicly we're through—you know that?” he warned. “The polls may like you now, but yo-yoing would cost me votes.”

And she wasn't worth the loss to him.

“I know, Wes. Just make the announcement and get it over with.”

“We could have had a good thing, Shannon. I hope you don't regret this.”

“I'm sorry, Wes,” was her only response, the second apology she'd made in the last half hour.

And it brought back to mind the first one she'd made as Wes cast her a final glare and walked out of the apartment—it brought Dag back to mind.

And all he'd said.

And all she really needed to think about.

A
lmost the moment that Wes Rumson was out of sight, he was out of Shannon's mind, replaced with thoughts of Dag. And the things Dag had been in the process of saying to her on the way home from the church.

Because those things had been monumental.

Dag was willing to give up everything for her….

She hadn't fully grasped it at the time but as she rehashed it all in her head, she began to realize that that really was what he'd been saying. Offering.

He was willing to live any life she wanted to live. Anywhere. He was even willing to sell the house he'd just bought from her, to follow her to Beverly Hills, if she decided that was what she wanted.

Her grandmother had left her own life behind to help Shannon care for her parents. But other than that, no one else—certainly no man—had ever been willing to do anything that big for her. All three of the other men
who had proposed to her had wanted her on their terms and their terms alone.

Because Dag had been so convincing, because his words had been so heartfelt, she didn't doubt that he'd meant what he'd said, that he
would
give up his house, Northbridge, his plans for his future, for her.

The way she knew her dad would have given up anything and everything for her mom…

And after Wes had stood there only moments before, basically telling her that she was a dreamer to think she could ever find something like that, that she should just settle and accept what Wes believed most people had, Dag's sacrifice stood out as even greater.

But he hadn't said it was any sacrifice at all. Dag had said only that he was willing to do whatever it took to be with her because she was what he wanted. Which
was
the way her parents had felt.

And maybe it was time to stop ignoring her own feelings, she told herself. To stop locking them up and keeping them at bay, stop telling herself that everything that was going on with Dag was a lark, and take a look at what she actually did feel for him.

Realizing she was still standing in the middle of the living room, Shannon went to sit down. She looked at the sofa, at the floor between the sofa and the fireplace. At the hearth. At the spots where she and Dag had ended up so many evenings since they'd met. Talking. Joking. Laughing. Kissing. Making love…

Seeing it all in her mind somehow helped to set free her feelings for him. To experience them with a clear head rather than in the uncontrollable bursts that had come in the heat of the moment. Uncontrollable bursts that she'd followed by hiding those feelings from her
self again as soon as she could get them back under control.

And the power of those feelings was a little startling when they washed over her unrestricted, and undistracted.

Yes, she'd been aware of the fact that every minute she hadn't been with him she'd been thinking about him, watching the clock, counting the hours that would have to pass before she could see him again and wishing the time would go faster.

Yes, she'd been aware of a sense of contentment, of completion, of safety and security whenever she'd been with him.

Yes, she'd been aware that everything she'd done, everything she'd experienced, every food she'd eaten, every Christmas song she'd heard when she was with him had seemed to have a special, improved quality to it.

Yes, she'd been aware that she'd just felt happier whenever she was with him. Happier than she ever remembered feeling before. That she'd even been able to deal better with the moments when grief had paid her a return visit, she'd been able to talk about her parents and her grandmother with Dag without feeling as devastated by the loss. She'd been able to visit her grandmother's house and remember mainly good things.

But for some reason she hadn't associated any of that with having
feelings
for Dag.

And now she knew that—of course—that was where it had all come from.

Knowing that now, when she thought again about what he'd said on the way home, she suddenly couldn't deny that she felt all the same things he'd said he felt. That nothing seemed more important than being with
him. That anything and everything seemed more manageable if she had him by her side. That there wasn't a single thing she could think of that she didn't want to share with him.

The way her parents had felt about each other…

Her jaw actually dropped a little when that struck her.

Was it possible that she actually
had
found with Dag what her parents had had?

Maybe a small part of her had worried that what Wes had said tonight might be true—that she was searching for, holding out for, something unrealistic or idealized. Or at least, unattainable. But suddenly she knew that wasn't true. Because what she felt for Dag was exactly what she'd seen in her parents' feelings for each other. It
did
exist. And she was in the throes of it.

She was in the throes of it so firmly, so deeply, so intensely that she understood Dag's willingness to give up Northbridge, his house, his plans, to be with her.

The problem was, she was too firmly, too deeply, too intensely in the throes of it to feel as if she could let him do that…

But if she didn't?

If she said yes to Dag but didn't let him give up everything for her, then she was saying yes to Northbridge, too. To living in her grandmother's house. To a life that might have more open air than an apartment over a shoe repair shop, but that would be lived in a place that wasn't even as big as Billings.

She'd be saying yes to a life that was, in some ways, even smaller than the life she'd known before.

And then what?

Would she end up feeling the way Dag's mother had? Isolated and unfulfilled and as if she was missing out?

That gave her some pause.

But then she began to think about Northbridge and what she'd discovered here. What she could have here over and above Dag.

She'd come to the small town feeling sad and alone, feeling disconnected. But all of that had gone away, because while Northbridge might not be large, it still had so much to offer. Such warm and caring and kind and fun-loving people who had embraced her, who had made her feel a part of things as well as a stronger connection with her grandmother's memory.

And in Northbridge she had a brother, a sister-in-law, a nephew. She had the beginnings of a tenuous relationship with her other two brothers. The thought of staying to cultivate all of that actually felt better to her than any of the thoughts she'd had about Beverly Hills, about risking her friendship with Dani by becoming business partners.

The plain truth, she finally realized, was exactly what Dag had said he felt about her. The most important thing to her was him. Being with him. But being with him in Northbridge had an appeal all its own and she knew deep down that she could be okay with that. With a lifetime of living here. If she always had Dag…

Which was what she suddenly knew without a doubt that she wanted. What she had to have. Right now!

But it hadn't been early when she and Dag had left the church. Topping that off with Wes's visit and then with all the thinking she'd just done since, and the evening was gone—it was very late and she knew that Dag couldn't be alone anymore, that Logan, Meg and Tia had to have come home a while ago.

She went to the window that looked onto the back of the main house. The room Dag was staying in faced
the front, so she had no way of knowing if he was still awake or not, but in the rear of the house the only light on was in Meg and Logan's bedroom upstairs. And that went out a few seconds later, warning her that it was likely that by now everyone was in bed.

She hated that she'd left Dag the way she had, after the things he'd said to her, without anything but an apology for Wes's unwelcome appearance. And she couldn't imagine that Dag was thinking anything good or he would have been watching for Wes to leave and would have come to the apartment.

She could try his cell phone but she didn't want to do that. She wanted to see him. To see his face when she told him what she had to tell him. To have him wrap his arms around her and let her know he forgave her for running out on the most important thing he might ever have to say to her.

The doors to Logan and Meg's house all had keyless locks and she had the combination to the one on the back door—Meg had given it to her just in case she'd needed to get in at some point when they were gone. And even though Meg and Logan weren't gone, Shannon decided that she definitely needed to get in.

So without bothering with her coat, Shannon went out the apartment door, into the gently falling snow and across the yard.

The combination to the lock was easy and she punched it in quickly, instantly gaining access to the dark, silent house and feeling like a cat burglar as she went through the kitchen to the staircase that took her up to the bedrooms.

The bedrooms formed a semicircle around a large landing at the top of the stairs and Shannon forgot that there was a table just to the left of the steps. So when
she turned in that direction she hit it, shoving it with a bang against the wooden railing.

She caught hold of it in a hurry to keep it from toppling over or making any more noise but apparently that had been noise enough, because just then from Tia's room came the three-year-old's voice.

“Santa?” she exclaimed.

In a panic, Shannon was about to dash back down the stairs to get out of sight when the door to the guest room opened. A surprised Dag registered that she was there, grabbed her wrist to pull her into his room, and—in his deep Santa voice—said, “Ho, ho, ho, little girls have to be asleep to get presents…”

Then he softly closed the door again.

He'd spun Shannon into the center of the bedroom and she watched him listen with his ear to the door for a moment to make sure his niece didn't take it any further. She couldn't help smiling at his quick thinking and impromptu acting. And at the sight of him shirtless, in a pair of sweatpants that dipped below his navel and made her shiver just a little with how sexy he looked.

But she wasn't sure if any of that was appropriate under the circumstances, so she forced a sober expression onto her face as Dag turned to her.

And the questioning challenge in his raised eyebrows let her know there were, indeed, more solemn things to deal with.

“I wondered if you were still here,” he said.

“Where else would I be?”

“On your way to Christmas with the Rumsons?”

Shannon shook her head. “There was never a chance of that,” she assured.

“There was if the guy had convinced you to marry him after all.”

“There was never a chance of that, either. But at least I think Wes has accepted it now and he'll finally make the announcement that we aren't engaged.” She paused a moment and then said, “Are you and I?”

That made Dag laugh involuntarily. And slightly forlornly. “Engaged? I don't know. I did a lot of talking. All I got from you was an
I'm sorry
before you hopped out of my truck to run off with that other guy.”

“I don't remember any hopping or running,” she pointed out.

“It must have just seemed like it to me.”

“And you weren't even watching to see if I went off with him?”

“Couldn't. I knew I wouldn't be able to stand it if I had to see that.”

“So you were just up here, going to bed?”

“I was just up here pacing and wondering and worrying and hating the hell out of the fact that there
was
another guy….”

“Maybe this time you should be glad there was,” she told him then. “I've been comparing the two of you since we met. Not on purpose, it just seemed to keep happening. And Wes Rumson came up short every single time.”

“Even with all the money and power and a
much
bigger life to offer you?”

“None of that matters. And neither do a lot of other things—like Beverly Hills…”

She watched his expression turn curious. And maybe cautiously optimistic. But before he could say anything she told him what she'd been thinking about since Wes had left tonight, the realizations she'd had, the decisions and conclusions she'd come to.

When she'd said her piece, she added, “So I don't know if what you were saying on the way home tonight was a proposal—”

“That's where it was headed. Number four for you.”

“Well, I think this is the one I can say yes to….”

He frowned.

Shannon hadn't expected that and felt some uncertainty herself suddenly.

Then Dag said, “I just want to be clear—you're saying yes to me, but no to Beverly Hills with or without me?”

“I told you when we talked about it that I had my doubts. I've told Dani that. I still had doubts about it, even thinking that you would come with me, that I wouldn't be doing it alone. But Northbridge? It's sort of grown on me, and I don't have any doubts about living here, maybe teaching kindergarten here if I can….”

“And you're okay living in your grandmother's house?”

“We can make it our house, can't we?”

He finally smiled. “Yellow paint it is—warm and homey and sunny,” he said, repeating her words from when she'd visited the house and they'd talked about whether he should paint the outside of the place white or return it to its original yellow.

And as if that settled everything, he pulled her into his arms then, kissing her the way she'd been craving to have him kiss her all day, all evening, certainly since finding him shirtless.

But the kiss didn't last long before he let go of her, yanked on a pullover hooded sweatshirt and then took her hand.

“Let's go where we don't have to worry about waking anybody,” he suggested as he led her out of the guest room.

They moved quietly through the dark house—with Dag making one quick stop to snatch a present from
under the tree—before they retraced Shannon's path to put them back at the apartment. There, Dag crossed his arms over his middle and instantly peeled off the sweatshirt.