The Gift-Wrapped Groom (17 page)

“And so he had difficulty settling on one thing,” Nicholas said.

“On anything, as it turned out. An observation I failed to make until it was too late.”

“Too late?”

“After more than five years of being engaged, I started to press Cade to set a definite date for our marriage. His excuse for not setting a date was that he was still trying to find himself. This group wanted him to come play with them. There was this interview with a company in Florida and another in New York. He said he had to keep his options open.”

Noel stopped, took a sip of her hot chocolate and another breath before she went on.

“So I waited. But none of the offers he received seemed good enough for him to accept. Like you said, he had difficulty settling on one thing. My grandfather tried to warn me that Cade was not the kind of man who would ever really settle on something, or someone. I...didn't listen.”

Noel stopped. Nicholas filled the silence with an observation. “A grazing animal with big eyes will constantly find his nuzzle caught in the fences surrounding his pasture, trying to search for the sweeter grass, ignoring the sweetest of all grass, that which he stands on.”

“Hmm. I did feel rather underfoot sometimes. Anyway, he finally stopped ignoring my ever-growing concern over our excessively long engagement. He agreed we would be married on December fifteenth, two years ago. I was so elated he'd finally set the date, I let him convince me that all my ideas of a big wedding with all our friends and family from Midwater would just be an expensive hassle. A more romantic approach, he said, was to meet before a justice of the peace in Missoula.”

“It was not romantic?”

“Not when the bridegroom doesn't show up.”

Noel thought she could say the words without her voice cracking, without feeling again the bite of abandonment. She had been wrong. Her voice did crack. The bite nipped hard. The tears gathered at the back of her throat. She thrust her chin upward to keep them from rising to her eyes.

Nicholas's hands closed over hers.

“Where is this Cade now?”

She took a deep breath, gathered those stupid tears in her throat into one painful lump and swallowed.

“I don't know. He never came back to Midwater. He had a note delivered to the justice of the peace in Missoula. It said he was sorry but he couldn't accept the responsibilities of being a husband. He had to...keep his options open.”

Nicholas's fingers stroked hers, softly, gently, for a moment before he spoke again.

“You said earlier that Berna Vane did this thing to him that she did to me tonight. What did Cade do?”

“Oh, he kissed her back. He laughed later, telling me I was too sensitive, that it was all just in fun. Probably keeping another one of his damn options open.”

Nicholas removed his hands from hers, sat back in his chair and muttered something in Russian that did not sound very nice, but which sent a nice little thrill up Noel's spine. Then he said in English, “He was not right for you.”

“Yes. I know that. It's just...”

“You still love this man?”

“No. But I did. I believed he loved me. I believed all his empty promises about our spending our lives together. When he did not show up to our wedding, I felt like such a fool, such a silly, stupid, gullible fool. I swore that I would never let myself love or trust a man that way again.”

“And you have not.”

“Nor will I. So, Nicholas, now you have your explanation for why I didn't marry.”

“But I still do not have the explanation for why you sent your grandfather out in search of a husband.”

“Sent my grandfather out... Wherever did you get the idea I sent my grandfather out looking for a husband?”

“If you did not, then why did he bring me here?”

“He brought you here because he thought—thinks, rather—that I need someone to love. Plus, he's got this thing about bouncing great-grandchildren on his knees.”

“But if you did not want a husband, why did you marry me?”

“I married you because if I didn't, he was going to take over my store and house, and I'd never know another moment of peace from his long, interfering nose.”

“How could he take over your home and store?”

“Because he was the one who loaned me the money to pay my mortgage last year when I lost that shipment of ornaments I told you about. Only, his price for lending that money was my accepting some mythical cross between Einstein and Hercules as a husband. Heaven knows I never would have agreed if I thought you actually existed.”

Noel watched as something like surprise entered those expressive black eyes. She wondered how she could have ever thought them cold or remote or passionless. They were warm and deep and—

The knock that sounded on the door was full of force and swept through the quiet kitchen like an exploding cannon. She started, then looked down at her watch. “It's after midnight. Who could it be?”

It wasn't a question she expected an answer to. She got up, went to the door, Mistletoe following her, barking excitedly. The second the door was opened, her grandfather came scurrying in at his typically fast clip, with Jean in his wake.

Noel smiled at Jean, who shook her head when Noel tried to take her jacket. “We won't be staying long.”

Noel turned to her grandfather, suspicion curling through her words. “It's a bit late to be calling, isn't it?”

He kissed her on the forehead. “We wouldn't have stopped if I hadn't seen the light and known you and Nicholas were still up. We missed you through most of the meeting, Nicholas. I hope neither of you is going to let Berna...upset you.”

Noel watched in some surprise as Nicholas reached down, picked up her dog, raised Mistletoe over her head and planted a small, firm kiss on her lips. He then gently put Mistletoe down, wrapped an arm around Noel and turned to face her grandfather.

“I have wondered about the purpose of Noel's dog. Now I know he is to smooch under.”

Noel broke out in surprised laughter as her grandfather clapped Nicholas on the shoulder, a relieved twinkle in his eye.

Jean rested a sedate hand on Noel's arm. “For a change, your grandfather didn't come by just to pry into your private life, Noel. Something happened after you left tonight that we thought you should know.”

Noel's lingering merriment over her husband's surprising and unusual sense of humor fled at the sobering tone of Jean's voice. “Something happened? What?”

Now even the smile disappeared from Winsome's face. And then Noel saw what she had missed earlier. The lines of worry around his mouth. “Grandfather?”

“Doc Mallory came by just after you drove off.”

“And?”

“It's Fay and Don Duncan,” Jean said. “The reason they didn't make it to the meeting. Several of their cows have dropped their calves prematurely. Stillborns. Doc thinks it might be brucellosis. He's taken blood samples and sent them off to the state lab.”

“Brucellosis? No. But that would mean—”

“The entire herd could be infected,” her grandfather said. “Yes, Noel, I know. And their range quarantined. And if so, well, it'll prove the last straw for Fay and Don. They'll be forced to sell out to CMC.”

Noel let out a long, heavy sigh, finding not even Nicholas's warm arm around her able to keep away a sudden chill.

* * *

“W
E MIGHT
as well as forget the festival for this year, Noel,” Babs Renner said. “Three more of the Duncans' cows lost their calves today. None of us has got the energy nor the heart for celebrating no more.”

Noel got up and faced her neighbors in the community center, where they had gathered to once again review the plans for the festival, but had only succeeded in dwelling on the disastrous news that had spread so quickly through the valley since the previous evening.

“Listen, everyone. Doc Mallory hasn't gotten the results back yet from Missoula. We don't know for certain if it is brucellosis. It could be something else, something that's not even contagious.”

Kurt Haag snorted as he spread his considerable bulk across two chairs. “You're a dreamer, Noel. I saw them cows myself while I was helping Seth deliver some more winter feed. Probably be losing the whole herd soon. You just got your head up in them there clouds while the rest of us folks are trying to make ends meet down here on this old valley floor.”

“Don't you mean on this old barroom floor, Haag?” Lucy quipped. “Only ranching you ever did was helping to deliver feed. You've never roped anything thicker than a bottle of that watered-down swill you call whiskey. Noel is right. It's stupid for us to go breaking our stride at the first sign of some faint critter tracks. I say we wait until we're lookin' at whatever we've got facing us square in the eyes.”

“But if it turns out to be brucellosis, Lucy?” Tucker interjected. “Your folks' spread is just on the other side of the Duncans'. You could be next.”

“Well, now, thank you, Deputy Sheriff Archibald Tucker, for putting me in mind of that news,” Lucy said sarcastically as she twisted toward him. “Like I couldn't have figured that one out for myself.”

Tucker twirled his toothpick uneasily in his thick mustache and did a lot of uncomfortable grunting as he resettled himself in his chair.

Noel put her hands up for attention and let her eyes sweep over those gathered before her. “Look, everyone. If it isn't brucellosis, then we're wasting our time worrying over nothing. And if it is, well, worrying isn't going to help. What do you say we put aside our worrying and direct our energy to working harder to make this Christmas festival the best yet. We owe it to those folks who count on us to show them all the joy and jubilation of Midwater's sensational homespun holiday.”

“I'm riding with you, Noel,” Lucy said.

“You've got my vote,” Jean chorused.

Kurt Haag snorted. “Yeah, right. Listen to the little lady. Throw away all your time and hard-earned money. Just like you did with her dad on all his harebrained schemes. Remember that year of the drought when he said the village's well wasn't deep enough? Or wide enough? That all we had to do was dig through several more feet of rock and down a couple of hundred feet more? Yeah. And I think you all know just how right that turned out.”

Nicholas could feel the uneasy shuffling among those present. They wanted to be positive, follow Noel and believe everything was going to be all right. But Haag's negative reminders of past failures had successfully sat them on the edge of that big steam-hole mistake in the middle of their village. And they were afraid.

It was into this uneasy quiet that William Winsome got up and circled behind the podium. He rapped on its surface lightly with the end of his pen, then looked out over those assembled, waiting until exactly the right moment of quiet attention had been achieved.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” his confident tone boomed, “as Noel says, we have everything to gain by proceeding with the plans for our Christmas festival and nothing to lose.”

“Maybe you don't got nothing to lose, Winsome. But we ain't got a horse spread up in the hills and bank accounts in Switzerland.”

Nicholas recognized that quarrelsome, raspy voice as coming from the big saloon owner. But Winsome did not respond to its taunt. He smiled almost benevolently at his critic, like a tiger might at an annoying but very small flea. Then, suddenly, his voice began to rise like the roar of a wave, sweeping through the room, gathering momentum.

“We like to think we put on our Christmas festival for the tourists who flock in to see our lights and decorations, hear our carolers, sip our homemade cider, taste our puddings and pies and cranberry cakes, ride in our horse-drawn sleighs, watch our enactment of a play that has touched the hearts of so many generations. But, we do not put our festival on for these poor city folk who so crave what our small village can afford them in the way of homespun holiday entertainment. No, my neighbors and friends, we do not put this festival on for
them.
”

The room had hushed. Its occupants sat forward in their chairs now, quiet, expectant, waiting to hear this man with the voice that rose and fell with such power and majesty tell them why they did what they did—already knowing, yet eager to hear, eager to be told. By him.

Winsome did not disappoint them.

“We put this festival on for us.
We
need the beautiful lights and decorations of Christmas.
We
need its joyful carols breaking forth from our lips and our hearts.
We
need the warmth of its cider and succulent delights that so tantalize our taste buds.
We
need to be whisked away in a romantic horse-drawn sleigh.
We
need the message of
A Christmas Carol
to once more touch our souls. We. You. Me.”

There was a moment of stunning silence before his final whisper-soft words sprayed over them like a salty benediction.

“Because, my friends, our Christmas festival reminds us that this extraordinary adventure we all call life is an adventure lived best when it is lived with joy.”

The last syllable sank, only to be followed by rising applause. Nicholas could hear Noel's clapping above it all. He could see the proud glow in her eyes as she stood along with the others in the room, giving a standing ovation to the magnetic man at the podium who had so eloquently refueled their waning fervor.

Nicholas stood with them, clapped with them. Not nearly as unaffected as he thought he would be by William Winsome's words of why this village needed its Christmas festival. Maybe it was because Winsome accepted the applause not as a seasoned actor and politician, but with the honest grace of a man who had spoken his heart.

Winsome sent a smiling wink in the direction of his granddaughter. She returned an approving wink to him. A curious relationship these two had, Nicholas thought. On the surface it seemed almost antagonistic at times; but underneath, well, underneath Nicholas was beginning to see that in its own way Noel and Winsome's relationship might be just as deep and loving as what he had shared with his grandfather.