“And just how would I go about getting this mythical husband?”

She slanted a look toward Shane. “Shall I advertise for one or should I just go straight to that online site and say something to the effect that I’d like one husband, please. No chores will be required, no expertise necessary. Must be able to stand and look manly when so-called ‘wife’ deals with fire-breathing former in-laws.”

She knew she sounded hysterical but she couldn’t stop—she was spiraling out of control.

“Sounds like a piece of cake to me. How about you? Sound like a piece of cake to you? Or do you know something I don’t about locating a husband who’d be a willing stand-in?”

“Not sure I understand what you mean by a stand-in,” Shane said, “but I’d be willing.”

“Willing?” she echoed, confused. “Willing to what?”

“I’d be willing to marry you so you could retain custody of Ricky.”

Five sets of eyes turned to stare at him at the same time.

Dear Reader,

Welcome back to Ladera by the Sea, a charming 120-year-old family-run bed-and-breakfast in San Diego with a breathtaking view of the Pacific Ocean. You might recall meeting the family—Richard Roman and his four daughters, Alexandra, Christina, Stephanie and Andrea, in the first book, Innkeeper’s Daughter. That book saw oldest daughter workaholic Alex come to grips with her true feelings for Wyatt Taylor, someone she had grown up knowing and verbally sparring with for years. You’ve returned just in time for their wedding. But, before that can take place, second daughter Cris, the Inn’s resident chef, has to learn how to finally move past the heartache of losing her first husband and recognize the love that’s been in her own backyard all along. Thrown into this is a pending custody battle with her well-to-do former in-laws who are suing for sole custody of her five-year-old son, Ricky. Curious? Good. Come, read and I promise that all secrets will be revealed.

As always, I thank you for taking the time to read my book and from the bottom of my heart, I wish you someone to love who loves you back.

All the best,

Marie Ferrarella

www.marieferrarella.com

A Wedding for Christmas

Marie Ferrarella

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MARIE FERRARELLA

is a USA TODAY bestselling and RITA® Award-winning author, and has written more than 240 books, some under the name Marie Nicole. As of January 2013, she has been published for 30 years. She earned a master’s degree in Shakespearean comedy and, perhaps as a result, her writing is distinguished by humor and natural dialogue. Her goal is to entertain and to make people laugh and feel good. Her romances are beloved by fans worldwide. Visit her website, www.marieferrarella.com.

To

Nancy Diamond

&

Wendy Brower

For telling me

About their grandmother’s

Azalea plant

Contents

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

EPILOGUE

PROLOGUE

SOMETIMES THE PATH from the family-owned bed-and-breakfast to the small, private cemetery that overlooked the sea seemed longer to reach than it actually was.

Other times, like today, he wasn’t even aware of how long it took to get there. One second, Richard Roman was deciding that he wanted to share a few moments with his wife and his best friend, the next he was already standing before their headstones, talking to the two people who had known him the best and, just possibly, the longest.

His Amy had been in this spot overlooking the sea a long while—sometimes it felt as if she had always been here, whereas Daniel had been here only a little while. Richard missed them both so very much.

But it helped to come here to talk to them both whenever he was troubled or happy.

Someday, he himself would be laid to rest here, Richard thought. Buried next to his Amy.

But not for many years to come.

His girls needed him.

The four of them, ranging in age from twenty-one to twenty-eight were well along on their journey into womanhood, but they still needed him, needed his guidance.

“Looks like Alex won’t be wearing your wedding dress after all, Amy, even though she had her heart set on it. She’s too tall and just a touch too curvy to get into it. I know that Wyatt has no complaints in that department, but Alex really did think she’d be walking down the aisle in your dress. She was very disappointed.”

He shook his head, recalling the stricken look on Alex’s face when she told him about the dress. “I know you’re thinking,” he continued, addressing Amy and Dan as though they were standing right in front of him, “that alternations can be made since the wedding isn’t until Christmas, but Alex feels that it’s disrespectful to alter the dress you wore when you married me. At times it’s hard to believe it’s Alex talking, but she’s got this whole sensitive side to her that she never let on about.” He chuckled. “Who knew, right, Dan?”

And then he smiled. The afternoon sun played along the planes of his face. “I guess your boy does bring out the best in Alex. None of us saw that coming,” he confessed, then rethought his words. “Well, except for you, of course, Dan,” he admitted. “You knew all along they were right for each other, didn’t you? Otherwise, you wouldn’t have insisted that Wyatt finish that book about the inn you started working on just before you died. If it hadn’t been for that deathbed promise you extracted from Wyatt, Alex wouldn’t be on the hunt for a wedding dress and my third offspring wouldn’t be running around like a chicken without her head because Alex put her in charge of planning the reception. Cris, naturally, will be doing the cooking. Or rather, have the meal all ready for the reception right after the ceremony. If I know her, she’ll be up all night the night before, getting everything prepared and just so. She is a perfectionist, our Cris. She takes after her mom,” he added. “It’s really a shame that her husband died so young. Michael was a great guy.

“Speaking of which,” Richard said, interrupting himself, “one of Cris’s old acquaintances, Shane McCallister is doing some renovation work on the inn for me. I’ve seen the way he eyes Cris when he thinks no one is watching. That young man is really taken with her. Who knows? There might just be a second wedding soon. I certainly hope so. Cris deserves to be happy, like Alex.”

A wistful smile played on Richard’s lips, and tears glimmered in his eyes as he looked from one headstone to the other. “I wish you both could be present for Alex and Dan’s wedding. Yes, I know, you’ll be here in spirit and that’s an enormous comfort to your girls, but sometimes—” Richard dropped his voice to a whisper “—it would be nice to actually see you, touch you....”

He sighed as he glanced toward the rear of the inn. “I guess I’d better be getting back. I’ll keep you posted on the search for Alex’s wedding dress and on how everyone else is doing. I miss you both more than words can ever say.”

He turned and made his way back to the inn. Unlike the journey to the cemetery, the journey back always felt infinity longer, because he made it knowing he was all alone.

CHAPTER ONE

SHE SAW HER through the window.

Curious, Christina Roman MacDonald made her way to the garden. Her older sister, Alexandra, was just standing there, staring off into the horizon from the looks of it.

For most of her twenty-eight years, Alex had been the very definition of a workaholic, a veritable tribute to perpetual motion. Seeing her so still wasn’t normal.

But then, this wasn’t exactly a period of business as usual for her sister. Not with the all-important step she would be taking in just six short weeks.

“Having second thoughts?” Cris asked, coming up behind Alex.

The gardener, Silvio Juarez, had just finished mowing the lawn and the air was heavy with the scent of freshly cut grass.

Caught off guard, Alex whirled to find her sister standing behind her. “About?”

“Running for prom queen of Munchkin High,” Cris said impatiently. Most brides-to-be lived and breathed wedding details this close to the event. Alex, apparently, was different. “About getting married, of course.”

Alex merely shook her head. “All my doubts had come before Wyatt’s proposal and I’ve long since worked them out of my system.” Clearly, she was looking forward to being his wife.

“No, no second thoughts,” she replied with a small, peaceful smile.

“Regrets, then?” Cris guessed, watching the set of Alex’s shoulders. The two girls were closer than most. She could draw clues from Alex’s body language. “Prewedding jitters?”

“No,” Alex answered and then pointed out, “and it’s too soon for prewedding jitters.”

Cris laughed shortly. “Tell that to Stevi,” she said. Of their younger sisters, Stephanie, two years Cris’s junior, was the temperamental artistic one. “By the time your wedding day arrives, she’ll have gone through three meltdowns. I’ve never seen her quite like this. At the very least, you’d think she was the one getting married, not you.”

Alex gave a half shrug. Stevi tended to get caught up in whatever she was doing. The moment she’d heard that Alex was marrying Wyatt, she’d volunteered to handle all the details. Alex had been glad to have one less situation to deal with.

“Maybe she thinks that if it’s not perfect, I’ll hold it against her,” Alex speculated. “She should know better.”

“She should,” Cris agreed, coming to stand beside Alex in the garden, “but you know Stevi. She’s a bit of a drama queen when her nerves get strung out. Maybe you shouldn’t have put her in charge of your wedding.”

“As if I’d had a choice,” Alex said with a smile. Stevi had commandeered the position. “Too late now. Besides, she was following me around on her knees until I finally gave in.” She eyed Cris. “What would you have done?”

That was an easy one, Cris decided with a grin. “Eloped.”

It was Alex’s turn to laugh. “Right. Sorry, I forgot who I was talking to. The daughter who eloped and almost broke her father’s heart.”

“Don’t exaggerate,” Cris chided. “Dad knew the reason.” And so did Alex. She’d met her late husband’s parents at Mike’s funeral, and although polite, they were so formal Alex had told Cris she was completely uncomfortable in their presence, something that rarely happened to her. “We did it so Mike wouldn’t have to invite his parents to the ceremony and be forced to put up with them trying to talk him out of making ‘a foolish mistake he’d regret for the rest of his life,’ as they said.”

“They were—and are—snobs and I’ll always hold it against them that we didn’t get to see you as a blushing bride,” Alex said, immediately defensive on her sister’s behalf. “Speaking of which...”

“Yes?” Here it is, Cris thought, the reason Alex was standing pensively out here rather than working at the front desk.

“I’m as calm about the wedding as a human being can be,” she told Cris. “I feel like I’m finally getting it right.” She pointed to the azalea bush that someone had given their father at their mother’s funeral. A healthy plant, it seemed to bloom at odd times, generally when something momentous was occurring in their lives.

This time, though, Cris took the words to mean that Alex felt she had been a screwup until a couple of months ago, whereas nothing could have been further from the truth.

“Don’t run yourself down,” Cris insisted. “You’ve been Dad’s right hand—sometimes his left one, as well—for years now, running the inn when he was sick, being here day in, day out, no matter what else was going on. It even took you longer to graduate from University of San Diego because you were here all the time, performing feats of magic—”

Alex waved off her sister’s accolades. “Not quite. And I wasn’t talking about my work anyway. I meant the direction of my life.”

She glanced around the garden and it seemed to her that despite the fact they were in San Diego, it was November, yet the garden was in full bloom. The sight filled her with joy.

“I always figured that running the inn would be it for me. You know, like being here would be the sole purpose of my life. Making sure things ran smoothly while I watched you and Stevi and Andy get married, have kids. Grow,” she added wistfully.

“Grow what? Fat?” Cris asked with a laugh.

Alex shook her head. “No, just grow. As women, as people,” she elaborated, then added for good measure, “become multidimensional.”

This definitely did not sound like the Alex Cris had grown up with. She scrutinized her sister.

“Are you feeling all righ? You’re getting me a little uneasy. You’re beginning to sound like some college professor OD’ing on Adlerian self-actualization. Besides,” she added with a touch of asperity, “I didn’t exactly ‘grow’ as a wife.”

“That’s because you weren’t allowed to be one for very long,” Alex reminded her. Cris and Mike were barely married before he was shipped out to Iraq, where his young life was cut short by a roadside sniper. The letter from Cris telling him she was pregnant was found in his breast pocket. “Next time will be better.”

“Not going to be a next time,” Cris informed her with quiet conviction.

Alex’s mouth curved in a smile. “I think Shane’s got other ideas on that subject,” she said. They’d hired the general contractor for the latest renovations to the 120-year-old inn. Aside from excellent references, Shane McCallister was also the older brother of one of Cris’s high school girlfriends.

Alex’s pending nuptials had her evaluating everything around her with fresh eyes, and the way Shane was looking at Cris spoke volumes.

“Now you’re babbling,” Cris said dismissively, then eyed Alex. “This is your clever way of deflecting questions, isn’t it?” she said, shaking her head. “I’m not prying, Alex, I was just being concerned about you.”

“I’m fine,” Alex replied with finality, calling an end to what she deemed an unnecessary discussion.

“Then what are you doing out here, communing with the azalea bush in the middle of the morning?” Cris didn’t add that the behavior just wasn’t like Alex, but her tone implied it.

Impatience creased Alex’s brow. “It’s called taking a break, Cris.”

That was fine, except for one thing. “You don’t take breaks.”

“I didn’t used to take breaks,” Alex corrected. “This is the new, improved me.” Alex smiled. “‘The times, they are a-changin’,’ little sister,” she added glibly. And then she glanced at her watch. Alex-in-Charge was back. “Shouldn’t you be in the kitchen, working on lunch, using whatever time you have left before your three-foot assistant gets sprung from kindergarten? According to my calculations, Stevi should be picking Ricky up soon and bringing him home. Don’t forget, Wyatt’s back in L.A. for a week, so he’s not here to play with your energized off-spring and be his sidekick.”

Cris knew she could count on her father to spend a little one-on-one time with his only grandchild. That was the good part about living at the inn with the rest of her family. Someone was always around to help out with Ricky when she was busy cooking.

“I did forget,” Cris confessed. “But have you worked out the logistics yet?”

“What logistics?”

“Where you and Wyatt will live after the ceremony?”

“Here,” Alex said with finality. “Where else would we live?”

Granted Wyatt had grown up spending summers at the inn with his father, but a lot of men would have wanted to begin their marriage in a place of their own. “Well, Wyatt does have that house in Brentwood.”

To Cris, Alex had always had an answer for everything. Now was no different. “Where he’ll stay when he can’t avoid being in L.A. Otherwise, we’ve got dibs on the new section being added to the inn. Whenever your guy gets around to finishing it, that is.”

“He’s not my guy,” Cris protested, even as a bit of color climbed her cheeks, highlighting her embarrassment. “You hired him.”

“You knew him,” Alex countered.

“That has nothing to do with anything,” Cris declared. At the time, they’d needed a general contractor and giving her old friend’s brother a job seemed the right thing to do. Her father and Alex made those kinds of decisions, so her input wouldn’t have carried much weight, Cris told herself.

But Alex had a different take on the situation. “Your knowing Shane helped seal the deal,” she told Cris.

Cris couldn’t help wondering if there was a reason Alex was laying this at her doorstep. If so, her sister was overlooking one obvious fact.

“Ha. He could have been Santa Claus, and if you hadn’t liked his references and his plans for the extension, you wouldn’t have hired him and you know it.”

“Let’s just say you have a point. Meanwhile, break—not that it actually turned out to be that—is over, and I’ve got to be getting back to the front desk. I left Dorothy in charge and you know how much she dislikes being in a position of authority.”

Cris smiled sympathetically. She herself didn’t exactly care for manning the front desk, although she was getting better at it.

As for Dorothy, she was one of her father’s lost souls, people who occasionally turned up at the inn. Their father would extend a helping hand until that person could stand on his or her own two feet.

Dorothy, her life in shambles, had come to them years back. She’d booked a room for one night so that she’d spend her last night on earth in a place with clean sheets and the smell of the sea through the opened window. Sensing her hopelessness and desperation, Richard Roman had stayed up all night with her, talking about everything and anything. When dawn finally arrived, the world somehow didn’t seem quite so bleak for the woman.

Because she confessed that she couldn’t pay for the room and she wouldn’t take charity, Richard gave her a job. That allowed Dorothy to keep her dignity. The job turned into a vocation and she worked her way up. She became head housekeeper—and was fiercely devoted and loyal to Richard and his four daughters.

As they walked into the front room, Dorothy immediately released a sigh of relief. She moved away from the desk as if the floor had suddenly caught on fire and she was barefoot.

“You act as though you didn’t expect me to come back,” Alex remarked, amused.

Now that Alex had returned, Dorothy could be a little magnanimous. “Of course I did. It’s just that those were the longest twenty minutes I’ve ever spent.”

“Don’t understand how,” Alex commented, “seeing as I was only gone for fifteen. And I would have been back sooner, but Cris just kept talking and talking.” She slanted a sideways glance at her sister, then added with a completely straight face, “Didn’t seem right, cutting her off and walking away just like that.”

“No, of course not,” Dorothy agreed solemnly. “I wouldn’t have expected you to.”

“She’s pulling your leg, Dorothy,” Cris said. There was never any winning with Alex. “You are impossible. I should start composing my letter of condolence to Wyatt now. Better yet, I should tell him to run for the hills while he still can.”

“Don’t you dare,” Stevi warned, entering with Cris’s five-year-old son in tow. “You do anything to mess up this wedding I’ve been working so hard on and I swear, it’ll be the last thing you ever do.” Stevi’s eyes narrowed as her threat became more menacing. “Alex and Wyatt are getting married Christmas Day if I have to hog-tie both of them and pull them up to the altar in a horse-drawn cart.”

“Nothing weird about that statement.” Alex laughed, shaking her head. “Maybe I should elope.”

“You do and I’ll hunt you both down and make you pay dearly for my pain and suffering,” Stevi warned.

Threatening vibes were all but wafting from Stevi’s five-six form. “You do realize,” Alex said, “that you’re just organizing a small wedding reception and not staging the second invasion of Normandy or a military coup in a third-world country, right?”

“What I realize,” Stevi responded, “is that you have no concept of what’s involved in carrying off a successful reception.”

Alex extended a sympathetic smile and an offer she knew would be refused. “If it’s too much for you, Stevi, I’ll gladly relieve you of the responsibility.”

Stevi’s blue eyes widened with complete surprise. “You wouldn’t dare,” she breathed.

Alex chuckled as she shook her head. “I can’t decide if you just uttered a frantic plea or tossed out a challenge without remembering to throw down the symbolic glove.”

Stevi blew out a breath, doing her best to rein herself in. “Okay, maybe I am being a little intense,” she allowed.

Alex’s eyes met Stevi’s, pinning her where she stood. “Maybe?”

Stevi relented. “Okay, I am being a little intense—”

“Only in the sense that World War II was a ‘little’ conflict. Stevi, I love you, but get a grip. This is just supposed to be a small gathering.”

“There’s nothing small about three hundred people in my book.”

“What three hundred people?” Alex inquired incredulously. Her list had under a hundred people on it. Well under a hundred. “Are you throwing the doors open to the general population?”

“No,” Stevi insisted. “I’m just counting Wyatt’s list.”

“Wyatt’s got over two hundred people coming?” she asked.

“That’s how many names are on his final list.” Stevi nodded. “Wyatt pared it down from five hundred,” she added. “He didn’t want you to be overwhelmed.”

“Too late,” Alex retorted.

“How could you and Wyatt not have discussed the invite list?” Cris asked her in disbelief.

“Well, I...just assumed he was...leaving this to me...” Alex trailed off. “His work has kept him away from the inn a lot. Say, Stevi, when did he have time to—”

“Now, Miss Alex,” Dorothy interrupted loyally. “You only get married for the first time once.”

“Wyatt knows I don’t want the wedding to get out of hand or come off like a three-ring circus. It’s supposed to be more or less an intimate gathering. Why is he inviting the immediate world? I want to see the list, Stevi.”

“I don’t have it with me,” her sister protested. “I went to pick up Ricky, remember?”

“I can wait,” Alex said matter-of-factly, indicating that she expected her to retrieve the list—now.

Stevi lifted her chin. “You don’t believe me? Or is it Wyatt you’re asking me to check up on?”

“Yes” was Alex’s answer. “Now go get the list.”

CHAPTER TWO

“MAMA.”

Cris looked down at her son. Throughout the discussion about the guest list, Ricky had been trying to get her attention by pulling on the apron that had become practically a part of every outfit she put on.

As resident chef, she spent most of her time preparing her kitchen, preparing her menu or preparing the meals themselves for the ever-changing array of guests, who came as much for the meals as they did for the inn’s charm, service and beautiful view.

Impatience vibrated in her five-year-old’s plaintive cry.

“What is it, little man?” Cris asked, placing her hands on his slight shoulders.

“I want to show you something,” Ricky told her with enthusiasm on the brink of exploding.

Though he was clearly bursting to share whatever it was, Cris knew that her son liked being coaxed. So she played along and asked, “What is it, Ricky?”

“I drewed you a picture,” he said proudly as he began digging into his bright blue-and-white backpack with its cheerful cartoon character logo—a gift from Dorothy on his first day of school.

“Drew,” Cris automatically corrected. “You drew a picture.”

Ricky spared her a glance as if he didn’t see what the problem was. “That’s what I said,” he insisted. “I drewed you a picture. Teacher told us to make one of our family.”

Cris opened her mouth to try to make the five-year-old understand the difference between the word he used and the word he was supposed to use, but decided to temporarily suspend the grammar lesson when she saw the picture he’d “drewed.”

At times, she still couldn’t help marveling that she was his mother. She certainly felt less than qualified for the position. Her own image of a mother—based on what she remembered of her mother—was that of unshakable wisdom mixed with love and understanding. While she had more than endless amounts of love to shower on the boy and she thought of herself as an understanding person, she felt sorely lacking in the unshakable wisdom department.

Every day seemed a challenge and there were days when she felt she’d made wrong choices. Very simply, there were more than a few days when she felt she didn’t know what she was doing.

Though there was nothing she wanted more than to be Ricky’s mother, she couldn’t shake the feeling that every step she took in this unfamiliar land called motherhood was like walking in a field riddled with pools of quicksand. Any second now, she expected to take the wrong step and be sucked under.

There were other times, though, when gazing down into the happy little face that seemed the perfect combination of Mike’s features and her own, that she felt she had to be doing something right because just look at how Ricky was turning out. He was wonderfully well adjusted.

Of course, Cris was the first one to point out that she wasn’t doing it alone. She had a fabulous support system that consisted of her father and her sisters, even Wyatt and his late father, Dan, whom they had all referred to as “Uncle Dan” even though he really wasn’t related to them. They all doted on Ricky, filling his world with love and watching over him to make sure that no harm ever came to him.

Every night, without fail, Cris thanked God for her family and for bringing Ricky into her life. Without the boy, she didn’t know how she would have survived the sudden, heart-destroying loss of her husband.

“Hey, you didn’t tell me you had a picture,” Stevi cried, pretending her feelings were hurt as she walked into the kitchen.

Of the four sisters, only Stevi had artistic abilities—not to mention occasionally the artistic temperament that went with them. She was creating recognizable drawings by the time she was four and was still inclined to find an artistic outlet for her talent rather than joining Alex and Cris in making Ladera-by-the-Sea her life’s work.

“That’s ’cause I wanted to show Mama first,” Ricky informed his aunt with all the confidence of a child who believed himself to be the well deserving center of his family’s universe. To everyone’s credit—including his own—he was neither spoiled nor truly self-centered. Kindness came naturally to him, tempering most things that he said. “But it’s okay for you to look now, ’cause I showed it to her.”

He unfolded the drawing and held it up for his mother to see. Stevi and Alex shifted over toward Cris to view it, as well.

“Do you like it?” Ricky asked, his blue eyes eager and shining as he looked at his mother. “It’s us,” he added, just in case she’d missed what he said about it being a drawing of his family.

How silly, Cris chided herself, to get choked up over a crayon drawing, even a good crayon drawing, depicting a little boy holding what she could only assume was his mother’s hand. The two figures were surrounded by three female figures and a tall, thin man, who, because Ricky had used a gray crayon for the hair, had to be his grandfather. This was their family, Cris thought, the way her son saw all of them.

Close.

Hovering over this gathering was what appeared to be a large, unusual-looking bird. Cris glanced at her son. Approval and maternal pride shone in her eyes.

“It’s beautiful, honey.”

Ricky nodded, as if he had expected that response. Proudly, he acted like a tour guide for the drawing. “That’s you, Mama, and me. You’re holding my hand—”

“I can see that,” Cris said, relieved that she had correctly assumed as much and sounded believable when she commented on it.

“—’cause I’m letting you,” Ricky added by way of a narrative. “But I am a big boy.”

Cris knew that was her son’s way of making sure she understood he considered himself independent. “Yes, you are,” she agreed.

“And that’s Aunt Alex, and Aunt Stevi and Aunt Andy,” he continued, pointing his finger at each figure. All three had blond hair, just as he and his mother did, but he had dressed them in different colors and had managed to capture the height difference. “And that’s Grandpa,” he explained, jabbing a small finger at the other male on the page. “And that’s Daddy,” Ricky concluded, pointing to the winged creation just above his self-portrait.

“You drew your daddy as a bird?” Alex asked, trying to follow her nephew’s reasoning.

“Not a bird,” Ricky said indignantly. “He’s an angel.”

“Of course he is. Can’t you see that?” Stevi deliberately took her nephew’s side, pretending that Alex had to be blind not to see the figure for who it was.

Cris laughed as she bent over to hug her son, delighted that he thought his father was watching over him, the way she’d explained when Ricky had asked her to tell him about his father.

“Yes, he is, Ricky. Don’t mind your aunt Alex, she’s not good at seeing what’s right in front of her unless someone points it out.”

Alex knew Cris was referring to the antagonistic relationship Alex and Wyatt had had on the surface for years before Alex had realized how deep the feelings ran. Because Ricky was present, she decided not to comment on Cris’s barely veiled allusion.

“You gonna put that on the ’frigerator?” Ricky asked, eagerly shifting from foot to foot as he watched his mother’s face.

“Yes, I am.” She held out the drawing, taking note of its size. It was bigger than most of the drawings he brought home. “But you realize that means I have to take down another one of your drawings,” she reminded Ricky. “We’ve only go so much room on the refrigerator—even if it is industrial-sized,” she added, winking at him affectionately.

The boy nodded solemnly. “I know, Mama. I’m not a dummy-head.”

“Ah, a new term from the playground I see,” Cris noted with a good-natured sigh. He seemed to have a new addition to his vocabulary at least once a week. Usually not of the best variety. “No, sweetheart, you’re not a ‘dummy-head’ and I hope you don’t call anyone else that,” she added, eyeing the boy.

Silky straight blond hair swung as Ricky shook his head in firm denial. “No, ’cause you said not to call people names even if they call me those names. Right?” he asked.

“Right. Because that makes you the bigger man,” Cris concluded firmly.

An unexpected little frown formed on Ricky’s forehead as he said, “Teacher says I’m not a man.”

Alex ruffled her nephew’s hair and laughed affectionately. “Your teacher doesn’t know you the way we do,” she assured the boy. “You’re more of a man than some guys three times your age.”

From the look on Ricky’s face, her nephew clearly saw no reason to contest that. He beamed at her as though she had just lifted a bad spell he’d been forced to endure for the sake of peace and quiet.

“You hungry, big guy?” Cris asked.

“Uh-huh,” he answered, once again bobbing his head.

“Okay, let’s see what we can find for you to eat,” Cris suggested.

As she slipped her arm around his shoulders, ready to usher him to the inn’s kitchen, Shane McCallister emerged from the section of the inn temporarily curtained off with sheets of plastic. They hung from the ceiling and went all the way to the floor to keep dust spreading to the rest of the inn at a minimum.

Behind the plastic sheets, the latest addition, as well as renovations to a previously constructed section, was taking place. Dust from his recent foray into carpentry had turned sections of Shane’s dark blond hair to a shade of off-white.

Ricky had taken to Shane astoundingly fast. Excited to see him now, the boy broke away from his mother and ran over to the contractor.

“Look at what I drewed, Shane!” he declared proudly, holding up the drawing.

Shane got down on one knee, the hammer that was hanging from his tool belt hitting the tiled floor with a thud. He gave the boy his complete attention.

One arm around the boy’s waist, Shane pulled Ricky to him as he held one edge of the drawing with the other. “You drew this?” he asked with the appropriate amount of wonder in his voice.

Pleased at the reaction he was receiving, Ricky grinned. “Yes, I did.”

“Cool. That’s a really fine family portrait,” Shane said. Releasing Ricky but still holding the drawing with one hand, he pointed with the other hand to what had previously been identified as a bird. “That angel your dad?”

Cris exchanged looks with Stevi, who watched from a distance. The latter shrugged in confusion, as clueless as Cris about how Shane could identify what still appeared to be an oversize bird. Cris couldn’t help wondering if perhaps Shane had somehow overheard the end of the conversation about the drawing. Shane’s startling interpretative ability seemed too much of a coincidence otherwise.

“Yes!” Ricky cried out, glancing over his shoulder at his mother. The glance all but shouted, See?

“You can tell it’s an angel?” Cris asked, gazing at the general contractor pointedly to see if he was pulling her leg.

“Sure,” Shane replied, the complete picture of innocence.

“Why didn’t you think it was a bird?” she asked suspiciously.

He regarded her as if the answer was obvious. “Because it’s a family portrait and Ricky doesn’t have a pet bird.”

Cris laughed as she shook her head. “You’re good,” she told him, impressed. “You make it sound so simple.”

The smile on his handsome, tanned face was utterly and frustratingly enigmatic. “Some things just are. Right, Rick?”

In response to hearing the adult version of his name, Ricky puffed up his small chest and beamed at this newest man in his life.

“Right,” he echoed with confidence. “Mama’s gonna make me lunch. You wanna have some, too?” Ricky asked, slipping his hand into Shane’s as if the man’s affirmative answer was already a foregone conclusion.

“Okay,” Shane readily agreed. He jerked a thumb toward where he’d parked his vehicle. “I was just going to take break and get my lunch out of the truck. Give me a few minutes and I’ll join you, Rick,” he said, pulling his hand out of the boy’s grip.

Cris stared at him. “You’re brown-bagging it?” she asked, incredulously.

Granted the addition and the renovations had been going on for more than a week now, but to be honest, she hadn’t been all that aware where Shane and the men he sometimes had working for him took their meals. She’d assumed he was out in the dining area.

“Yeah,” he answered. “It saves time if I don’t have to drive over to one of those fast-food places. This way, I get done faster and I can spend the rest of the time working on the addition.”

A lot had been going on at the inn of late, what with Alex and Wyatt’s wedding swiftly approaching and Ricky beginning kindergarten, not to mention a mini-convention of historical writers coming to the inn to hold this year’s annual meeting. Consequently, Cris had been exceedingly busy, aware only that Shane had been in and out of the inn several times to take measurements and render estimates after being apprised of what their father and Alex wanted done.

She realized now that he’d only really been on the job a few days.

She had to focus, Cris upbraided herself. Otherwise, she wouldn’t be able to get done all the things done she needed to.

No time like the present, she decided.

“Saves more time if you just tell me what you’d like to eat and I make it for you,” she said with an easy smile.

A smile he found more than captivating.

He always had.

Even so, or perhaps because it was so, he shook his head, brushing off her generous suggestion. “No, that’s okay. You’re busy.”

She raised a perfectly arched eyebrow. “And you’re not?”

He wasn’t clear on what one thing had to do with the other. After all, this wasn’t a competition where the loser would wait on the winner. “Well, yeah, I am, but—”

“No buts,” she informed him. “You’re coming with us to the kitchen.”

“Yeah!” Ricky added his minuscule weight to the argument.

Then, to ensure that Shane would indeed comply with his and his mother’s wishes, Ricky once again slipped his small hand into the contractor’s callused one. Holding on with all his might, Ricky gave Shane’s hand as hard a tug as he could manage.

“Wow.” Shane lunged just enough to make it seem he’d been thrown off balance by the boy. “You sure are strong.” He pretended to eye the boy suspiciously. “You work out?”

Ricky giggled and shook his head, obviously pleased with the evaluation. “No. I’m strong ’cause Mama feeds me good.”

“I bet she does,” Shane agreed, glancing in Cris’s direction, a trace of his admiration showing through. “But just so you get it right the next time, what you should say is Mama feeds me well,” Shane explained, gently correcting the little boy’s grammar.

Her momentary connection with Shane’s intense dark blue eyes instantly quickened Cris’s pulse at the same time that his thoughtful method of correcting her son’s grammar gladdened her heart. She was always partial to people who were nice to Ricky.

“She feeds you good, too?” Ricky asked, surprised.

Cris did her best to stifle the laugh that rose to her lips, but Shane, she noticed, didn’t attempt to hide his reaction.

Instead, he laughed. “You’re going to be a challenge, I can see. Tell you what, maybe after I knock off for the day, you and I can find some time for a little grammar lesson.”

Excitement all but radiating from him, Ricky asked as he continued to tug the man to the kitchen, “Who are you gonna knock off?”

“No, not who,” Shane corrected. “What.”

That threw Ricky back into confusion. “You’re gonna knock off a what?” he asked, his thin, wheat-colored eyebrows knotting; he was clearly perplexed.

Shane laughed, charmed and delighted. “You are definitely going to be a challenge,” he told the boy as they crossed the kitchen threshold. “But it’ll give me a chance to practice my skills.”

“Practice what skills?” Cris inquired as she crossed to the refrigerator with the picture Ricky had drawn.

“Teaching skills,” Shane replied. When she looked at him quizzically, he explained, “I’ve got a teaching degree, and I majored in English.”

“I didn’t know that.” Something didn’t make sense. “So why aren’t you teaching?”

That was easy enough to explain. “Jobs aren’t exactly plentiful these days, even for teachers. And there’s no reason for you to know that I got a degree in teaching. You and I kind of lost touch after high school,” he reminded her.

They had at that. By then, she’d been going with Mike, and Shane had just been the older brother of one of her girlfriends, a guy she’d dated a couple of times before Mike had come into her life and swept her off her feet.

Seeing Shane again after all this time, she fleetingly wondered how things would have turned out if he had swept her off her feet instead. Burying the question that could never really be answered, Cris forced a smile to her lips as she opened the refrigerator and cheerfully asked, “Okay, men, what’ll it be?”

CHAPTER THREE

RICKY SCRAMBLED UP onto one of the stools that stood against the long stainless-steel service table where Cris did most of her food preparations. Rather than sit, he knelt on the stool so that he appeared bigger to his new friend, who took the stool next to his.

“You know what I like, Mama,” Ricky piped up in response to her question.

Like everyone else in the family, she indulged her son, but not when it came to his nutrition. “Yes, I do, and you know what I say to that.”

“What?” Shane asked, the exchange arousing his curiosity. He glanced from Cris to her son. “What is it you like, Rick?”

“Hot dogs!” the boy declared, his high-pitched voice all but vibrating with enthusiasm. Cris had a strong feeling that if she allowed it, the boy would eat hot dogs for breakfast, lunch and dinner. “I love ’em best of all!”

“I like them myself,” Shane told Ricky, getting a big grin from the boy and a reproving glare from his somewhat frustrated mother. “But you know,” he continued without missing a beat, taking his cue from the expression on Cris’s face, “they’re really not very good for your insides. That’s why they should only be eaten on very, very special occasions. Right, Rick?”

The boy appeared torn between siding with his newfound friend, whom he wanted to impress, and campaigning for his beloved meal of choice. When Shane continued eyeing him as if waiting for backup from an equal, Ricky finally capitulated, shrugging his small, thin shoulders as he did so.

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“You know what else I like, Ricky?” Shane asked the boy.

There was a wary look in the child’s eyes as he inquired, “What?”

Shane leaned in closer and ruffled the boy’s hair affectionately. “Vegetables.”

Ricky appeared horrified at the mere thought. “Oh, yuck.” The response rose to his lips automatically.

Shane pretended to consider what he’d said. “Well, maybe they don’t taste quite as good as hot dogs,” he allowed, “but they do taste pretty good. I like them mashed in with potatoes, or fried with a little oil and bread crumbs. And not only do they taste good,” he continued, focusing exclusively on Ricky rather than on his mother, “but they help make your insides healthy and they make you strong. Pretty cool, huh?”

Ricky regarded him with eyes beyond huge. “They really make you strong?”

“They really make you strong,” Shane echoed. He gazed at Ricky solemnly and drew his thumb across his chest in the form of an X. “Cross my heart,” he told the boy.

Ricky shifted on the stool, planting his seat on the plastic cushion, and looked up at his mother. “Can we have that, Mama? Can we have vegeta-bib-bles with mashed potatoes and bread crumbs?”

“No,” Shane said, laughing and jumping in to correct him, “it’s either with mashed potatoes or fried with bread crumbs.” It occurred to him that maybe he had overstepped his boundaries. Turning to Cris, Shane tendered a veiled apology. “I didn’t mean to put you out.”

“You didn’t,” she assured him quickly. “Trust me, any suggestion that’ll get this one—” she nodded at Ricky “—to eat his vegetables is greatly appreciated. Any particular vegetable I should be using?”

Shane thought only a moment, remembering the combination his mother used to make to get his elder brother and him to eat their vegetables. “Well, how about spinach? That goes pretty well with mashed potatoes.”

“Spinach?” Ricky cried, clutching his throat and pretending to fall over, poisoned, while emitting a rasping noise that, Shane assumed, was supposed to be a death rattle.

Shane laughed at the impromptu performance. “Oh, most definitely spinach,” he told Ricky with certainty. “That makes you really strong. You ever hear of Popeye the Sailor?”

“Uh-uh,” Ricky said, shaking his head so hard that if he’d been a cartoon character, his head would have gone spinning off.

The boy’s answer didn’t surprise Shane. He was convinced that kids today were missing out on a very special collection of imaginative cartoons from a classic era.

“No?” he said, pretending to question. “Well, have I got a treat for you. Why don’t I tell you all about him while your mom makes us lunch?”

She had to hand it to Shane. He was handling her son like a pro. She caught herself wondering if Shane had gotten married. He wasn’t wearing a wedding ring, but then a lot of men didn’t. And he seemed like such a natural with kids it was difficult for her to imagine that he’d gotten that way without having one of his own to practice on.

The thought of Shane having a family made her happy for him, but at the same time, it came with an accompanying sense of...well, sadness, for lack of a better word.

“Anything else you two men would like to go with those vegetables?” Cris asked, doing her very best not to laugh.

Shane shrugged casually. “Anything you’ve got will be fine.”

“Yeah, fine, Mama,” Ricky said, emulating Shane.

“How about fried chicken?” she suggested.

Rather than agree, Shane first looked at the boy to have him weigh in. “What do you say—you up for that, Rick?”

This time, Ricky bobbed his head with the same enthusiasm he’d displayed when asking for hot dogs.

“Fried chicken it is,” Shane told Cris, placing their “order.”

“One last question,” Cris promised. “Light meat or dark?” The question was for Shane, since she already knew which her son preferred.

“I’m a leg man myself,” Shane said with a hint of a smile that made Cris think perhaps the information applied to more than chickens.

“Me, too, Mama,” Ricky piped up right after Shane. “I’m a leg man, too.”

Cris banked the urge to hug Ricky to her and laugh. She knew that would only embarrass him before his new hero. But resisting the desire wasn’t easy.

“Two orders of fried chicken drumsticks coming up,” Cris told Shane and her son.

Ricky turned his attention back to Shane. “Who’s this sailor guy you said eats spinach?” he prodded. His expression clearly indicated he thought that anyone willing to eat the weed was less than a hero type, as well as somewhat weird.

With a smile, Shane proceeded to tell the little boy a story the way he recalled it from watching Saturday-television when he was about Ricky’s age.

As she listened to Shane, Cris concluded that the man was as wrapped up in the story as the boy was.

* * *

HE HAD A gift, Cris thought.

She’d gone to work the moment Shane had pulled his stool closer to Ricky’s and started telling the boy an elaborate story complete with a villain, a fair damsel in distress and the green seaweedlike vegetable that turned a somewhat aging sailor into almost a superhero with inflated forearms. Spinach gave the sailor, Popeye, the ability to pummel his enemy into the ground while rescuing a damsel only the one-eyed hero could love.

Cris caught herself listening to the details on more than one occasion as she prepared their lunches. It got to the point that she had to order herself to concentrate so as to block out Shane’s storytelling.

She noticed that Shane timed his story to finish almost at the exact same moment that she announced, “Lunch is ready.”

She placed both plates on the shiny stainless-steel counter, then slid one in front of Shane and the other in front of her son.

Ricky gazed at the vegetable combination a little uneasily, then raised his eyes to see what his newly discovered idol would do.

When Shane dug in, Ricky obviously felt compelled to follow suit, which he did, albeit reluctantly and in what seemed like slow motion. The first bite he took of the mashed potatoes and spinach combination produced a surprised expression on his small, angular face. His eyes looked ready to pop out. “Hey, this is good,” he told Shane.

Which was exactly the way Shane had reacted the first time he’d taken a bite. Ricky, Shane decided, reminded him somewhat of himself.

“Told you,” Shane said to the boy with a wide, satisfied smile.

Through hooded eyes, Cris watched in amazement as her son ate the spinach and potatoes she’d made for him. She expected him to leave at least half on his plate, but he ate until it was all gone. Not a moment’s hesitation, not a myriad of sour faces above his plate and certainly no begging or bargaining the way there usually was when Ricky faced something he would as soon walk away from than eat.

Ricky cleared his plate just as his hero did, then, still emulating Shane, pushed the plate back and patted his stomach.

“That was very good,” Shane told Cris.

“Yeah, very good,” Ricky echoed gleefully, emitting a huge, satisfied sigh the way Shane had half a minute ago.

“Well, I’ve got to be getting back to the job before your sister starts thinking she’s hired a freeloader.”

“What’s a freeloader?” Ricky wanted to know, looking from Shane to his mother for an answer.

“Something Mr. McCallister is definitely not,” Cris assured her son with certainty. The man more than earned his pay—in all departments. Her eyes met Shane’s and she murmured, “Thank you.”

The corners of his mouth curved ever so slightly as Shane said, “There’s no need to thank me.”

And with that, he left the kitchen.

Two sets of eyes watched him until he’d completely disappeared from view.

* * *

“THAT WAS NOTHING short of a miracle. I just wanted you to know that,” Cris said later on that day. Taking a break from her kitchen duties, she’d sought Shane out and found him exactly where he was supposed to be—hip deep in renovations. He was standing with his back toward her, intent on what he was doing on the workbench.

Coming up behind Shane, she was careful not to startle him. She didn’t want to be responsible for him making any unintentional cuts in either his project or himself.

Shane was running a power sander over the plank he intended to use for a new floorboard to match the ones throughout the inn, and he had on a mask to cut down on inhaling the dust.

Cris patiently waited until he’d stopped running the sander before she spoke again, knowing she’d either have to shout to be heard or get in his way so he could see her. Just waiting him out was simpler.

Turning the moment he heard her voice, Shane put the sander back down on the workbench he’d set up and lowered the mask from his nose and mouth.

He looked a little like a surgeon operating in the middle of a sandstorm, Cris thought with an unbidden wave of something that felt very close to affection.

“Excuse me?” he said, fairly certain he’d heard her wrong.

“A miracle,” she reiterated. “You performed a miracle,” she added in a clear, unshakable voice. “We could call it the miracle of the spinach and mashed potatoes, or just call it Shane’s Miracle for short,” she said, really grinning at him this time.

For a second, Shane watched in pure fascination as Cris’s smile coaxed the dimples in her cheeks to emerge, making her look even more appealing—something he hadn’t thought possible until he witnessed it himself.

He cocked his head a bit uncertainly. “Are you talking about lunch?”

“I’m talking about my son, the vegetable hater, eagerly eating spinach. To get him to eat any kind of a vegetable, I’ve tried to bribe him, coax him, do everything short of threatening to leave him wandering in SeaWorld on his own for a week, and you get him to do it in under ten minutes.

Cris shook her head in admiration. “You really must have been some teacher,” she told him with genuine awe.

His answering smile carried a bit of irony. “Never really had the chance to flex my muscles, so to speak,” he said. “I got my degree and suddenly found that I could only get substitute teaching jobs where all they wanted was for me to be a glorified babysitter.” The trace of bitterness she also heard in his voice surprised her. Shane seemed like such a laid-back character, someone who let stress roll off him. “When I started teaching the kids, I wound up ruffling a few feathers, and the jobs, never really plentiful to begin with, started not coming at all,” he finished with an air of disbelief even now.

“Well, the world lost a fantastic teacher the day you were forced to walk away,” she assured him. “If I was in charge of a school, I’d want all my teachers to be like you. You really connected with Ricky, right from the start,” she marveled. “I mean, he’s a friendly little guy, but it does take a bit for him to warm up to a person. With you he showed all the signs of love at first sight.”

Shane self-consciously shrugged off the compliment, not willing to accept what he felt wasn’t rightfully his. “Maybe he just wants a male to connect with and I happened to be handy.”

“You might have been handy, but Ricky’s already ‘connected’ to my dad and he gets along well with Wyatt, Alex’s fiancé. He really wasn’t looking for a male role model or someone to act as a father figure. Nope, Ricky just took to you exceptionally quickly,” Cris told him.

Again he shrugged. He didn’t care to have a spotlight shone on him no matter what his accomplishment.

“Must be my winning personality,” he quipped.

She laughed, not because his personality wasn’t engaging, but because his humor was so droll.

“Must be,” she agreed. “Anyway, I just wanted to thank you. You’ve officially cracked the impenetrable vegetable ceiling,” she told him, amusement curving her mouth. “I was expecting him to turn green or look around for somewhere to ‘deposit’ his mouthful of spinach. Instead, he not only swallowed what was in his mouth, but polished off what was on his plate.”

“I know, I was there,” Shane said with a wink.

Not for the first time, Cris felt something quicken inside her in response and silently argued it was because she’d forgotten to eat again, the way she did all too often when she got involved with what she was doing.

She began to back away. “Well, thank you for being there.”

“Hey, anytime. Let me know if you have more trouble getting Ricky to eat his vegetables. Or doing his homework, for that matter,” Shane added, warming up to the subject. “I’m still awed that kids in kindergarten actually get homework. If he has any trouble at all—not that I think he will,” Shane quickly interjected in case Cris thought he was impugning Ricky’s mental capabilities. “But if he hits a snag while I’m here, let me know. As much as I enjoy working with my hands, I miss the challenge of finding new ways to get kids interested in what I have to teach.”

“Ah, a builder and a scholar,” she said. “I guess that qualifies you as a Renaissance man.”

“Either that or just a guy eager to earn a living and stay ahead of the bill collectors,” he joked.

Still grateful beyond words for the break-through, Cris wanted to show him how thankful she was.

The only thing she had to give was food—so she did.

“Listen, when you’re ready to turn in your tool belt and call it a day,” she said, waving at the work he was doing, “instead of just leaving, why don’t you come by the dining area for dinner. On the house,” she added. “The very least I can do is keep you fed.”

There was no need for that, he thought. He didn’t want her feeling she owed him, especially for doing something he enjoyed: telling stories and getting kids to come around. Ricky seemed like an exceptionally intelligent boy and was incredibly easy to talk to. Getting through to him hadn’t been a real challenge, just a pleasant diversion.

“I like paying my own way,” he told her.

Cris looked at him pointedly. “I guess we’re alike, because so do I.”

CHAPTER FOUR

ORDINARILY, CRIS WOULD have retreated at this point. She had never been known as the pushy sister—that title belonged to Alex. But for some reason, she caught herself digging in.

If asked, she wouldn’t have been able to explain why—she just knew she should.

So she did.

“Correct me if I’m wrong here,” she told Shane, “but you do have to eat at some point later on today, right?” Her eyes challenged his as she waited for him to reply.

A half smile curved his mouth because she’d managed to amuse him. “Right.”

As she recalled, he had been very logical as a teen, so she was approaching this evening meal issue as logically as she could. “Do you cook?”

Shane laughed outright before answering. “If I have to.”

“So your dinner is often what—takeout?” she asked.

But the moment the words were out of her mouth, she suddenly realized she was assuming things again, assuming he was single.

What if he wasn’t?

“I’m sorry,” she murmured, her voice hardly above a whisper. Distressed, she wished that she’d thought before speaking or, better yet, that the ground would just open up and swallow her whole.

“For?” he prompted, not following her.

“I just assumed you weren’t married and... Never mind,” she concluded uneasily, feeling that anything she said from there on in would just worsen the situation. She felt she finally understood the meaning of the phrase “sticking your foot in your mouth.” “Ever since I lost Mike, I just see everyone else in the same situation,” she apologized. “Without a partner,” she clarified, realizing that in her embarrassment, she was rambling.

In no way was she prepared to hear him quietly tell her, “I am.”

Cris stared at him, confused. “You are what—single or—?”

“Or,” he told her. At the bewilderment in her eyes, he took pity on her and explained. “I was married for a while.” He’d slipped a ring on Virginia’s finger the moment he got out of the service. “My wife was killed in a car accident a little more than three years ago.”

Sympathy flooded her and she ached for what Shane must have gone through.

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” she murmured. As her soul reached out to his, she took his hand in hers, silently sealing the painful bond they now shared. “I didn’t even know you were married. I lost touch with Nancy,” she confessed, referring to his sister, who had been one of her two closest friends in high school.

“There’s no reason for you to apologize,” Shane said. Although he had to admit she did look appealing as she was doing so. “Things change, people move on.” He shrugged. “That’s life.”

Nevertheless, she thought, she should have somehow sensed that someone as handsome and outgoing as Shane would easily have found someone to share his life with.

Wanting to change the focus of the conversation, Cris asked, “How is Nancy these days?”

Thinking of his younger sister, Shane smiled. “She lives up near San Francisco now. She’s married, with twin boys and is working for some big design company. I’ll let her know you asked about her,” he promised. “She’ll get a kick out of me doing some work for your family.”

“Give her my love,” Cris told him. Okay, now you can leave, she silently instructed herself. Yet she remained, as if glue had been applied to the soles of her shoes. She heard herself inviting him—again—to dinner. “So, despite my unfortunate foot-in-mouth moment, will you come to dinner tonight?”

He inclined his head. “I’d love to, but I hate to eat and run, and that’s what I’d be doing if I had dinner here,” he confessed. “I’ve got to be somewhere at seven.”

He’s got a date, you idiot, and he’s trying to be nice about it by not waving it in your face. When will you ever be smart enough to take a hint? Not that you have any designs on him, of course—but it certainly looks that way.

“Fair enough,” she said with perhaps a touch too much cheerfulness. “You tell me what you’d like for dinner and I’ll have it waiting for you by the time you come in to eat. Say at six?” she suggested, watching his expression for some sort of clue. “Or do you need to get going earlier? If you’re really in a hurry, I can have it wrapped to take out,” she volunteered.

That would be the easiest solution, but it had its drawbacks. “Tempting, but I’d just as soon eat here. If I brought the food with me, I wouldn’t be able to divide it into enough pieces to share it equally.”

She stared at him. That had to be the strangest comment she’d ever heard about eating one of her meals. What was he talking about?

“You’ve lost me,” she told Shane honestly. “Are you feeding something?” It sounded as though he was working with pets or at least some kind of animal. “Because I can certainly give you more than just a regular portion to take with you—”

“Stop,” he ordered before she continued any further down the wrong path. “You’re way too generous, Cris, but even an extralarge portion still wouldn’t be enough.”

Just what was he planning on feeding? “You realize you’re making me incredibly curious.”

As a rule, Cris didn’t believe in prying—what people did was their own business. But Shane was scattering just enough tasty bread crumbs before a hungry woman to make her ravenous for more.

He grinned at her. “And yet, you’re not asking questions,” he marveled. She had always been an unusual person, Shane recalled with more than a touch of admiration.

“Well, if you wanted me to know, you’d tell me—although,” Cris had to admit in all honesty, “I really do wish you would.”

Again he laughed, intuiting what was likely going on in her mind.

“It’s actually a lot less exciting than you’re probably imagining,” he told Cris. “I volunteer at a homeless shelter two, three evenings a week—more if I’m between jobs,” he confided. “I fix things at the shelter that break down, do whatever heavy lifting might be needed—literally and otherwise,” he tacked on before she could inquire. “In general, I pitch in wherever a body is needed. Kind of like ‘a jack of all trades, master of none’ thing,” he finished.

She took exception to how Shane just naturally played himself down. “I have a feeling you’re good at all,” she told him honestly. An idea hit her. She knew she didn’t have to run it past her father—or Alex, who were both very big on charity and doing their share. “I tell you what. Every night when I close down the kitchen, there’s usually leftover good food that we don’t use the next day—like the bread I bake and some of the extra portions of food. Once they’ve been served in the dining area, we’re not allowed to put them back into our refrigerator to serve the next day. Why don’t I set those items aside and on the days you go to the shelter, you can take them with you. Just give me a heads-up on the days you volunteer.”

He considered her offer less than a moment. “Well, I pass by the shelter on my way home from here. I can drop off your donation every night if you’re really serious.”

She thought that an odd way for him to word his acceptance. “Why wouldn’t I be serious?” she wanted to know, puzzled.

“Sorry, just my basic wariness rising to the surface.” He had to remember who he was dealing with. Cris had always struck him as one of the “good ones.”

“I deal with a lot of people whose favorite phrase is ‘the check’s in the mail’ when it isn’t. I tend to forget that there are really honest, decent people like you and your family around.”

That there were gave him hope, the will to continue in a world made suddenly and painfully empty three years ago. He was just now finding his way again, finding how to rebuild himself and be whole once more.

Shane also realized that he liked working at the inn, liked interacting with Cris and her entire family. He was getting a kick out of her son. He’d have to be careful not to allow that to influence him. If he wasn’t alert, his feelings might unconsciously cause him to slow down so he could continue working in this atmosphere, soaking in these people’s company.

The compliment he’d just paid Cris and her family caused Cris to blush. She sensed her cheeks growing warm. Which meant they were already turning pink.

There were moments when she would have killed for a darker complexion, she thought wistfully.

It was really time to retreat—before she started guiding in ships from the sea with her glowing cheeks. “Well, I’d better be getting back to the kitchen and start making dinner.” She paused one last time, cocking her head. “You’ll stop by?” she asked, realizing that the matter really hadn’t been settled.

“I’d be a fool not to.”

“Wouldn’t want that,” Cris declared, turning on her heel.

Cris heard Shane humming “What A Wonderful World” as he raised his mask again to cover his mouth and nose then lowered the goggles he’d had on when she’d walked into the work area.

Cris smiled without realizing it as she hurried back to the kitchen.

* * *

CRIS GLANCED AT her watch again. She’d lost count of how many times she had looked at it in the past half hour. Right now, it was a little past six o’clock and neither Stevi nor Andy had ducked into the kitchen to tell her Shane was in the dining area.

Where was he?

If he planned on being at the homeless shelter at seven, that didn’t leave him much time to eat and get there... That was when she realized she had no idea where this homeless shelter was located.

Also, as a volunteer, Shane didn’t punch a time clock, she reminded herself. He could be a few minutes late getting there—if he ever got here first.

You’re spending way too much time thinking about something you have no business thinking about, Cris upbraided herself.

But in a way, she knew why she was fixating on Shane. Seeing him after all these years reminded her of a far simpler time. A time when life, with all its promises, lay before her, fresh and new. A time before the scaly hand of death had twisted her heart from her chest. In short, a time when innocence still surrounded her and anything was possible because ugliness had not yet reared its head in her world.

And, she had to admit, when she saw Shane playing with Ricky, it also reminded her of what her life could have been like if Mike had returned from his tour of duty on his own power rather than lying in a coffin.

“That is the fifth time in the past few minutes I have heard you sigh,” Jorge, her assistant, observed. “Is everything all right?” he wanted to know, concerned.

“I can’t breathe,” she told him, the less-than-truthful reason coming automatically to her lips. “Allergies,” she added for good measure.

Jorge stopped stirring the giant pot of potatoes he’d already mashed, now warming to perfection, and reached beneath the white tunic he always wore while in the kitchen. He extracted a small rectangular package from his pocket and held it out to her.

“Here, have one,” he urged. “I take two a day for my allergies. They say to take one, but that doesn’t work for the whole day,” he told her. When she made no effort to reach for the small, over-the-counter medication from him, Jorge held it closer to her. “C’mon, try it, Miss Cris,” he coaxed.

Embarrassed because she’d lied, Cris shook her head, sinking a little deeper into her untruth. “No, I already took something. Wouldn’t want to mix the two medications, just in case.”

“No, of course not,” Jorge agreed, although his tone really didn’t tell her whether he believed her or was just playing along so she could save face.

Just then, Andy, the youngest of the Roman sisters, burst into the kitchen. “Red alert,” she cried. “Hunky contractor guy has just landed in the dining room.”

Cris caught Jorge looking at her knowingly. “I think that your allergy medication has arrived,” he told her just before he turned back to his work.

Maybe she should have sent a tray to Shane’s work area, Cris thought. Too late now.

“He’s an old friend,” she protested to Jorge, not wanting the man to think that anything was going on between Shane and her. She’d dated once in the five years since Mike’s death and had vowed never again.

Everyone at the inn had watched her one attempt at dating go down in flames when she’d started seeing a man who, it swiftly became evident, wasn’t fit to polish the boots of Mike’s shadow. In addition, he tried to isolate her from her family and felt she wasn’t being strict enough with Ricky. That had been the last straw.

After that little fiasco, she’d promised herself she would never date again—and if by some wild chance she did, she wouldn’t let anyone at the inn know, so when that, too, blew up on her, she wouldn’t be the object of sympathetic looks and peppy comments that were meant to raise her morale but only succeeded in lowering it.

“An old friend,” Jorge echoed, then nodded. “The best kind to have.”

Cris frowned, reading between the lines. “Don’t patronize me, Jorge.”

He frowned at the unfamiliar word. “I do not know what that means, but I am fairly sure I am not doing what you asked me not to do,” he told her. And then he became very, very serious. “Do not let one mishap make you close yourself off,” he warned. “Breathe with your whole body and soul,” he counseled, obviously building on the allergy excuse she’d given him to explain why she was sighing.

Cris’s hands were flying as she chopped celery stalks into tiny pieces. The staccato noise went to double time as she told her assistant, “Tell you what. You take care of your body and soul, Jorge, and I’ll take care of mine. Deal?”

“But of course,” Jorge agreed. “I would never try to argue with you.”

He wasn’t agreeing at all, she thought. His ironic tone told her as much. But she knew that if she said something to him about it, Jorge would simply feign innocence and somehow turn the whole thing into an object lesson with her being its unwilling recipient.

She would just have to get used to people looking out for her and worrying about her, she told herself. Everyone at the inn was like family, whether they shared DNA or not.

“Why do you not take the cause of your allergies his dinner?” Jorge suggested, nodding at the tray she had prepared. “I will stay here and watch over the rest of the cooking for you.”

His offer was sweet, but if she accepted, she would be attesting that this man was special, someone apart from the others she helped. She was in no way ready for that and in no way was she even remotely searching for it.

“I don’t need you to watch over anything for me,” she informed Jorge. “Because I’m not going anywhere.”

“That much is true,” he concurred far too readily. “Unless, of course, you wake up and see that spending your life without someone there beside you really is like not going anywhere,” he told her pointedly. “It is not even really living.”

“I’m beginning to think that working in the inn’s kitchen is the wrong place for you, Jorge. You should be working in a Chinese restaurant, baking fortune cookies and stuffing them with your words of wisdom,” she told him with a laugh.

She gazed at the man who had been her assistant off and on for the past year and a half. She knew he meant well. But at the same time, he was making things difficult for her.

“Look, I know you believe you’re helping, but I’ve got to find my own way through things—without help. Okay?”

“I am just making sure you are able to see the road ahead of you,” he said. “A lot of people lose their way.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” she promised.

The next moment, she left the kitchen and took a peek into the dining room.

Shane was sitting at the table.

And Ricky was sitting on a booster seat right beside him.

CHAPTER FIVE

CARRYING A TRAY WITH the dinner she’d prepared for Shane, Cris made her way over to the table. She kept her eyes fixed on her son as she approached.

“Aren’t you supposed to be with Grandpa right now?” she asked Ricky. Shifting her eyes, she looked apologetically at Shane as she set his dinner in front of him. “I’m really sorry about this. He usually knows better than to bother people.”

“I’m sure he does,” Shane responded with amusement. “Which is why he’s not bothering me.” He glanced in Ricky’s direction. “We were just having a man-to-man talk about the holidays.”

“Holidays?” Cris repeated, a little confused at the reference. Just what was Ricky bending Shane’s ear about? “Thanksgiving?” she guessed since it was the next holiday to come up.

“No, Christmas!” Ricky corrected her with all the enthusiasm of a child looking forward to what he considered the absolutely best time of the year.

“Inside voice, Ricky. You know you’re supposed to use your inside voice when you’re inside,” Cris reminded her son, glancing around to see if anyone in the dining area appeared annoyed at the high pitch her son’s voice had reached.

At this hour, only half the tables were filled. The rest of the inn’s guests would be by later, unless they were eating out. She was relieved to see that none of the guests there seemed to have taken note of the exuberant boy.

“Sorry, Mama,” Ricky said, lowering his voice by two octaves.

That minor issue out of the way, Cris addressed the one that Ricky had brought up. “Okay, what about Christmas?”

Ricky instantly dove into his explanation. “He said—”

She needed to nip this in the bud. “It’s Mr. McCallister, not ‘he,’ Ricky. You know better than that,” Cris said, then tactfully suggested, “and why don’t you let Mr. McCallister speak for himself?”

Rather than become crestfallen because he had to be quiet, the boy grinned and said, “Sure,” then turned to look at his hero. “Tell Mama what you said.”

“Yes, please, by all means,” Cris added, “‘Tell Mama.’”

Shane grinned at the reference and something inside her stomach fluttered.

“Well, I hope I didn’t tread on any toes,” Shane prefaced before he went on to fill Ricky’s mother in on what he and her son had talked about. “But I told Ricky that I liked the smell and appearance of a real Christmas tree.”

Unable to contain himself any longer, Ricky all but crowed, “See, Mama? Him, too.”

Cris sighed. “Mr. McCallister agrees with me, too,” she said, rephrasing her son’s words.

“He does?” Ricky asked, beaming like a starburst. “Then it’s okay? We can get a real tree again?” He took her answer for granted, assuming that it would be positive.

Rather than argue with Ricky about whether they would get a real tree to celebrate Christmas, she slanted a glance toward Shane. She supposed that he deserved some sort of an explanation.

“Putting up an artificial tree instead of a real one is more practical,” Cris told him.

All the other years, they’d had a tall, real tree standing in the main room. But escalating costs was a practical consideration that had Alex and her father leaning toward the purchase of a tree that could be used over and over each year.

As Cris stated what she assumed was most likely Alex’s position, she saw a dubious expression on Shane’s face. Curiosity had her asking, “What?”

Shane debated saying nothing, but one glance at the hopeful look on the boy’s face had him making up his mind. After all, she had asked. “It’s just that my own feeling is that Christmas isn’t supposed to be about being practical. It’s about the magic of the season.”

Cris pressed her lips together, really torn. A few years back, she would have readily sided with him. However, she’d done a lot of growing up in the intervening years and was forced to look at things from a more practical point of view, which meant it was far more practical to buy a tree that could be used over and over than to throw away money on one that could only be used once.

“I understand what you’re saying,” she began.

That was all Ricky needed. “So we can go looking for a real tree, Mama? ’Cause Sha—I mean Mr. McCallister said he’d help—and he said he’d even bring his truck so we could bring the Christmas tree home with us when we find one.”

“Mr. McCallister has better things to do than play deliveryman with our Christmas tree,” Cris patiently pointed out.

But before her son could digest the information and offer a rebuttal, Shane said, “No, actually, I don’t. I’d kind of like coming along to pick out and bring back the Christmas tree.” When Cris looked at him quizzically, he explained, “It’s been a few years since I went Christmas tree shopping.” He shrugged haplessly. “What with Nancy living up north and my brother stationed back east, there’s really not much of a reason to put up a tree.”

“How about your parents?” Cris asked automatically, then immediately regretted it when she saw Shane shake his head. She knew what he was going to say before he said it.

“They’re both gone.”

What he had left unspoken—and that she understood—was that since his wife wasn’t around to share in the season, even to acknowledge the day, much less get caught up in the season for its own sake, seemed pointless.

Part of the magic of the season was having someone to share it with.

“We hafta get a real tree for Sha—I mean Mr. McCallister,” Ricky insisted, stumbling over Shane’s surname again.

Shane made an appeal on Ricky’s behalf. “Can he call me Shane?” he asked, looking at her. “It would be a lot easier on him,” he added with a grin, ruffling the boy’s hair.

She supposed that if Shane didn’t mind, she could bend the rule in this instance.

“I guess we can make an exception,” Cris allowed. “As long as you remember that it is an exception,” she told her son.

In response, Ricky enthusiastically nodded like one of those bobblehead figures some people attached to dashboards.

“An ’ception,” Ricky echoed—or did his best to.

Shane eyed her. “And the tree?” he asked, knowing she had to be the one to rule on that in this case. “Real or not?”

Cris caught herself giving in with ease. “I suppose we can get a real one again.” Most likely, she had a feeling, her father was just waiting to be persuaded. Alex was the one they would need to win over. “To be honest, I think everyone prefers a real one. It’s just that Alex has been trying to be extra conscientious about the bottom line—”

He knew all about bottom lines, but these days, he was living exceptionally frugally because he saw no reason or need to spend money beyond getting the essentials.

“Well, since I’ll be one of the ones to enjoy seeing a real Christmas tree, I’ll be happy to contribute to its final cost.”

“That won’t be necessary,” Cris quickly told him, vetoing the idea of his paying a single red cent toward the tree. As it was, he was charging them far less for handling the renovations and additional construction than the other contractors had quoted.

Slanting a glance toward her son, who looked ready to levitate from his seat at any second, she interjected, “But if you don’t mind coming along and allowing us the use of your truck as well as giving us the benefit of your opinion, that would be greatly appreciated.”

The grin had his eyes crinkling appealingly. “Consider it done,” he readily agreed. “Just tell me the day and time you want this expedition to get under way and I’ll be there with bells on.”

Hearing that caused Ricky to cover his mouth with his hands to contain the fit of giggles that descended over him.

“What’s so funny?” Shane asked the boy, certain he’d said nothing to earn this level of levity.

“You’re gonna be wearing bells?” Ricky asked, still giggling at the image that description conjured in his young head.

“It’s just an expression, honey,” Cris told the little boy. “Shane won’t really be wearing bells.”

“How do you know?” Shane asked, deliberately playing the scene out for Ricky’s benefit. “Maybe I will be wearing them.”

He saw the boy looking at him with huge, stunned eyes that contained a sliver of amusement in them, as well. Obviously Ricky couldn’t make up his mind whether his new hero was putting his mother on.

“Can I wear ’em,’ too, Mama?” Ricky wanted to know. “The bells?”

“We’ll see,” she said. She found that answer far easier to deliver than a straightforward no, which might stir up an argument. She glanced at the watch on her wrist. “Right now, Mr. McCallis—Shane has to be leaving.”

Both Ricky and Shane turned to her, puzzled—and then, like a man waking from a quick nap, Shane laughed at his momentary lapse.

“You’re right. I do. Thanks for reminding me.” He looked at Ricky. “I guess I was just having too much fun and leaving slipped my mind.”

“Where do you gotta go?” Ricky wanted to know.

“Ricky, don’t pry,” she admonished, but not as firmly as she might have. Ricky, she had to admit, got his inherent curiosity from her.

“It’s okay,” Shane told her, then addressed the boy’s question. “I’m going to a homeless shelter.”

The answer seemed to horrify Ricky. “Are you homeless?” he cried. “’Cause if you are, my grandpa’ll let you stay here for free.” Dorothy had told him about how kind his grandfather had been to her when she’d first come to the inn. The next moment, Ricky’s face lit up as he got an idea. “You can stay in my room with me. I’ll let you have my bed and I’ve got a sleeping bag I can put on the floor for me.”

Impressed with the impromptu generosity the boy displayed without any prodding from his mother, Shane smiled at him warmly.

“That’s really very generous of you, Ricky, but I’m not staying at the homeless shelter. I just go there to help out.”

Wheat-colored eyebrows knit as the boy tried to absorb every word he’d been told.

“Help out what?” Ricky asked.

“Ricky—” Cris said, her tone warning the boy not to continue on this path. Not everyone liked being interrogated by a five-year-old.

But clearly Shane didn’t belong to that group. “I don’t mind him asking questions,” he told her, then faced Ricky. “That’s how he learns. Right, Ricky?”

Ricky seemed thrilled to be championed in this manner. “Right!”

“To answer your question, Ricky, I go there to help out any way I can. The people staying at the shelter aren’t as lucky as you and I and your mom are.”

Ricky appeared to take every word to heart. “We can give them our Christmas tree,” he told Shane.

Shane laughed softly at the offer, putting his hand on the boy’s shoulder. “I believe this comes under the heading of giving them the shirt off your back,” he quipped, directing his comment to Cris.

The expression on Shane’s face made her feel, just for an isolated second, as though they were actually sharing a moment. The very thought stirred a warmth within her as unexpected as it was comforting.

Meanwhile, Cris noticed that her son was glancing from her to Shane, as if doing his very best to understand what had just been said.

“I gotta give them my shirt?”

Even as he asked, Ricky tugged the bottom of his pullover out of the waistband of his pants. In another minute, he would have the shirt up, over his head and off his small body, fully intending to surrender it to Shane so he could do what he needed to with it. All Ricky knew was that he wanted to help Shane.

Laughing, Shane quickly stilled the little boy’s fast-moving hands.

“No, stop,” he said to Ricky. “I didn’t mean you had to take off your shirt. It’s just another way of saying you were being very giving.”

“Oh,” Ricky said, struggling to look as though he understood what was being said. Cris had a feeling that the boy didn’t but was unwilling to let on in case his new hero would find him lacking in some way. “But you don’t really want me to give my shirt to you?”

“Not today,” Shane assured him with affection as he patted the boy’s shoulder. And then he looked at Cris. “I’d better be going,” Shane said again, attempting to come to terms with the sudden reluctance he was experiencing.

Was he just reluctant to leave, or was he reluctant to leave her?

He really wasn’t sure.

Maybe it would be better if he didn’t explore what might lie beneath that question, at least not yet. Right now, his life was relatively uncomplicated. Lonely, but uncomplicated. And he wanted to take some time deciding exactly what complications he would welcome into it and be equipped to handle. Not to mention what complications might just trip him up and take him in a direction he wasn’t, as yet, prepared to go.

Even so, as he rose, Shane couldn’t help thinking that staying here, talking to Cris and enjoying the unfiltered responses of her son, was really not a bad way to spend the rest of his evening.

You’ve got people waiting for you and responsibilities to meet, remember? Shane reminded himself.

He really had to get going. Shane nodded at his cleared plate. “Thanks for the meal. I intend to pay you back in trade since you won’t let me pay you for the food.”

“You already have paid me back,” Cris insisted, adding, “just by putting up with certain people.” She deliberately kept her statement vague since Ricky was right there, absorbing every word between Shane and her.

“No ‘putting up’ involved,” Shane assured her, indicating her son with his eyes. “I enjoyed every second of it.”

He sounded sincere, but that could just be because she was hearing something that appealed to her. There was reality and then there was the reality she wished she had. This might well be the latter.

“I find that difficult to believe,” she told Shane.

Cris recalled the one person she had dated in the past five years. The man had made it clear after a couple of dates that he didn’t regard her as a package deal, meaning that he didn’t want to interact with her son if there was any way he could avoid it.

She had sent him packing that same day.

Shane’s dark blue eyes met hers and she saw that he was completely serious as he told her, “Don’t.” She assumed he was telling her that she shouldn’t be having any difficulty in believing he liked dealing with Ricky and putting up with the boy’s somewhat demanding personality.

Shane McCallister won a place in her heart that very moment.

It took her a second to realize that Ricky was trying to get her attention. After a beat, she looked at him and he asked, “Can I go with him, Mama?”

Getting the boy to speak properly felt like a never-ending battle. “May I go with him,” Cris corrected him patiently.

The lesson was lost on Ricky. He took her words at face value.

“You wanna go, too? Then we can both go, right?” Ricky asked eagerly, swinging his little feet beneath the table. Any faster and Cris was certain he’d take off like a miniature helicopter.

“No, Ricky, I was just trying to correct your grammar. And no, you can’t go with Shane. You have homework to do and I’ve got more dinners to serve, so we’re both grounded.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Shane pause at the dining area’s threshold, turn around and wave to her and Ricky. She waved back, as did her son.

Cris stood there, firmly telling herself that her stomach hadn’t just leaped up in response, that if anything, it was only reacting to something she’d eaten earlier in the day.

But she knew she was making excuses. Poor ones, at that. They certainly weren’t convincing her of anything other than the fact that Shane’s proximity created mini tidal waves in her stomach.

Cris forced herself to focus on the immediate situation: she needed Ricky escorted back to his grandfather.

Glancing at the boy, she had a feeling that if she sent him off on his own the way she normally did, he would probably race after Shane and attempt to talk his way into going to the shelter with him. Most likely he’d tell Shane he had her blessings.

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