She ducked her head. “It’s stupid.”
“You wished it, so it isn’t stupid. Tell me.”
“I wished that I could be a normal girl. Just for a little while.”
“You didn’t wish to dance again?”
“That seemed like reaching. And it felt selfish. But the chance to just be normal, without the worries and the burdens. You’ve gone out of your way to give me that. And it feels wholly inadequate to say thank you—which I know I’ve already done ad nauseum—but I just...I don’t know how to tell you what that means to me. It seems like so much for you to do for only a smile.”
Jace tightened his hold on her and rubbed his cold nose against hers. “I might have wanted a little more than a smile...”
Laughter burbled up and she brushed a quick kiss against his lips.
“Totally worth it.” He reached one hand up, stroking a thumb across her cheek. “No sad eyes.”
“Definitely not tonight,” she agreed, leaning in to press her cheek to his, chilled skin to chilled skin. “How is it you see what no one else does?”
“Mmm?”
Tara pulled back. “No one else noticed that I was sad. Or if they did, they certainly didn’t say anything or try to do something about it. Why did you?”
Something flickered in his face, a mix of regret and memory. “I recognize heartbreak when I see it. And I couldn’t, in good conscience, stand by and not try to do something about it. It’s sort of my Achilles heel.”
“Why?”
“Because you remind me of Jordan.”
“And Jordan is…?” Please don’t say a former girlfriend.
“Jordan Butler. My best friend growing up. You’re actually nothing alike on the surface. She’s short and dark, brash and reckless. But like you, she found her passion early in life. In her case, it was barrel racing. She was a really gifted rider, wanted to go pro. Probably would have.”
“I’m sensing a great big ‘but’ here.”
“Our junior year, she was in a car accident. She was lucky to make it out alive at all. They said it was a miracle she could even walk, but riding was absolutely out of the question. Her leg was too badly damaged.”
Tara’s heart squeezed. “Oh no. That’s terrible.”
“Jordan’s stubborn. She set out to prove them wrong. Endured countless months of physical therapy. Spent so many hours trying to get back in the saddle. But in the end, the doctors were right. It broke her heart. Her light went out. And nothing I could say or do could make it come back.”
“What’s she doing now?”
Jace twitched his shoulders. “I don’t know. Her family moved while we were in college and we lost touch. I think it was too hard on her to keep up with the people who’d been part of that world with her. I don’t guess I ever quite got over not being able to do something to help her, so when I saw that same look in your eyes, I had to try.”
Even though she’d been a complete stranger.
God, what a man he was.
Tara framed his face in her hands. “I’m sorry you couldn’t help your friend. But I’m grateful you decided to turn that big heart of yours toward helping me.”
Jace bowed his head, pressing his brow to hers. “I’m just glad I had better success.” He tipped forward, closing the faint distance between them in a soft, sweet kiss. “Come on. Let’s get to the show before we turn into frozen lawn statues for the green.”
~*~
“But I heard him exclaim as he drove out of sight, ‘Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!’” Jace closed the book and looked up to see Ginny sitting bolt upright in bed, all but bouncing with excitement. He wagged a teasing finger in her direction. “That doesn’t look like sleeping all snug in your bed. You know Santa’s got radar for stuff like that.”
“But I can’t sleep! It’s Christmas Eve!” she insisted. “And it might snow!”
“I knew we shouldn’t have watched all three of The Santa Clauses. Drink your Sleepytime tea,” Tara said, coming in behind him with two mugs. “If it snows, and I’m awake to see it, I’ll wake you up.”
Ginny’s lower lip poked out as she took her tea.
“Best offer you’re gonna get, Peanut,” Jace told her.
“Okay,” she sulked. “But one more story while we drink tea.”
“Which one do you want? And you can’t say any of the Harry Potters or Narnia,” Tara warned.
“The Nutcracker,” Ginny said.
“Okay.” Tara dug around in the pile of books on the floor before coming up with a slim volume. “Now say good night to Jace.”
“Awww, but Jace has to stay and listen tooooooo.”
“Jace has to wrap that thing we talked about.” He gave her the don’t-spoil-the-surprise eyebrow.
Ginny clapped a hand over her mouth.
“You got everything you needed?” Austin asked.
“Yeah, we’re good.”
Tara looked between the three of them. “What are you up to?”
“Nothing,” they all chorused.
Her face said she wasn’t buying it, but she didn’t press.
Jace bent to give Ginny a hug and Austin a fist bump. “See y’all in the morning.”
“Night, Jace,” sang Ginny.
“Night,” Austin said.
Jace and Tara exchanged a silent see-you-later look, and he headed back to the house. She’d be coming to join him on wrapping detail once the kids were good and down, but he needed to get a head start on her gift. The whole thing could potentially blow up in his face if he’d read her wrong. But he didn’t think he had.
Jace checked his watch. 10:45. Leo would be out to pick up the package in fifteen minutes. Time to get a move on. The bag was in his closet. He checked the contents over, praying Ginny was right when she’d said this was everything Tara would need. Settling all of it into a gift box, he covered the contents in tissue paper and put on the top. The ice skating penguin paper didn’t exactly echo the poignancy of the gift, but he’d executed enough low-level spycraft to get this far. He wasn’t about to fuss about the wrapping.
Leo pulled up to the front porch steps right as Jace came out, the box in his hands.
“How’d the final show go?”
“Off without a hitch. White Christmas is officially wrapped. Since it’s Christmas Eve, the post show cast party was possibly the shortest in history. Which is fine. I’m definitely ready to crash.”
“Thanks for delaying that for me. Everything set?” Jace asked.
“Yep. It’ll be waiting for you tomorrow. Just text me when you’re headed into town, and I’ll be sure I’m in position. But do me a favor and try to stall and make it after nine so I’m not running out in the middle of Christmas breakfast.”
“I’ll do my best. We’ve got kids around this year, so it’ll probably be an early morning for us.” And Jace found himself a lot more excited by that than he’d expected.
Leo tucked the box into the front seat. “This is either the best Christmas present ever or the worst. I hope it goes the way you want it to, man.”
“Me too. Now get on out of here before she sees you.”
By the time Tara joined him, Jace was safely back in the living room, surrounded by wrapping supplies. His parents had crashed after the movies, and he’d banished Livia and all her suggestive eyebrow waggles so they’d have some privacy.
“Got them down?”
“Finally. Ginny was in Energizer Bunny mode.” She looked around at the assorted gifts from Santa that everyone in his family had felt compelled to pick up. “What is all this?”
“So I wasn’t the only one who went a little overboard shopping for the kids. Santa will be well represented.”
“Good lord. This is so generous.”
“We had a blast.” He patted the sofa beside him. “C’mon. Grab some scissors and tape and dive in.”
Tara picked her way through the stuff and sank onto the sofa in one of those mindlessly graceful motions that always made h
im want to stare. “Before we get started, there’s something I wanted to give you.”
Jace put down his scissors, the better to free up his hands for the expected kiss.
But Tara wasn’t leaning in to kiss him. Instead, she pulled something out of her back pocket. “I did some poking around the other night.”
“About what?”
“Your friend Jordan.”
It was the last thing he’d expected her to say. “Why?”
“Because you aren’t the only one susceptible to sad eyes, and it seemed like you’ve been blaming yourself for not being able to help her all those years ago.”
That was true enough.
“Anyway, it’s not much, but I thought you might want to know what happened to her.”
Jace automatically took the papers she handed him. They felt heavier in his hand than they should. He told himself Tara wouldn’t have given them to him if they were bad news. With a bracing breath, he unfolded them. The first page was an engagement announcement. Jordan Marie Butler was scheduled to wed Ezekiel James Wiley, of Bozeman, Montana the coming May.
“She’s getting married. Good for her.”
“Got married. This was from last year. Look at the second page,” Tara prompted.
And there Jordan was, beaming from the saddle. A tall, rangy guy stood beside her, hand draped along the back of the saddle, grin stretched wide as the Rio Grand. The caption of the photo read Snake River Stampede barrel racing champion, Jordan Butler Wiley and her trainer/husband, Zeke Wiley.
“This was six months ago,” Tara said.
“She’s riding again.” Jace ran a finger down the leg that’d been so mangled in the accident. “She did it. She really did it.”
“More to the point, she’s happy. Look at her.”
There was no denying that. She fairly glowed with it.
Something in Jace loosened, the long-held guilt and worry leeching away. “Good for you, Speedy,” he murmured to the picture.
“I bookmarked the link to her Facebook page if you want to try to reconnect.”
“I’ll do that.” Jace set the papers aside and slid his hands into Tara’s hair, tugging her in for a kiss. She melted into him and he had to remind himself they were in his parents’ living room and had half a toy store to wrap. He eased back before he forgot himself. “Thank you.”
“I figured it was the least I could do.”
“That’s quite a bit more than the least. The least you can do is go on bow duty for all these packages.”
“That I can do. Movie accompaniment?”
“How do you feel about Holiday Inn?”
“Amenable,” she said.
“Then pop it in. We’ve got a lot of work to do.”
Chapter 9
Christmas morning began with a snowball fight. Sometime between when she’d stumbled to bed at one and when Ginny woke her at 6:30, three fluffy inches had fallen. Given the rarity of such an event in Mississippi, everybody opted to play first and do presents later. For all they knew, it could disappear by mid-morning. It was all Tara could manage to get the kids into actual clothes under their winter coats instead of their pajamas.
Austin woke Jace with a well-placed snowball to his bedroom window. He rousted everyone else, and the entire Applewhite clan joined in the fun, hair still messy from sleep. While the boys duked it out with freezing ammo, Tara and Ginny made snow angels and started a snowman—though there was only enough snow to manage a small one. Ginny fitted her mittens on the ends of its branch arms and Linda retrieved a carrot for its nose.
“There now, that’s a fine snowman,” she declared.
“Seems like it should be taller,” Ginny said.
Evan looked up at the sky. “Snow’s still coming down. There might be enough for a bigger one later.”
“Meanwhile, I’m freezing and starving,” Livia announced. “Let’s get breakfast.”
They all tromped, half-soaked, into the big house.
The kids were so excited about the snow, it took them halfway through breakfast to even notice the spread under the big blue spruce in the living room.
“Holy cow!” Her sister gaped. “Tara, do you see all that stuff?”
“I do. Looks like someone was especially good this year.”
Ginny bounced in her chair. “Everybody eat fast!”
“Oh, you mean like this?” Jace asked, moving a piece of bacon toward his mouth at a snail’s pace.
Ginny darted in and nipped it neatly out of his hand.
“You little imp!”
“You snooze, you lose,” she said, without contrition.
Tara all but doubled over with laughter.
“Well, I guess you showed me.”
They plowed through bacon, eggs, and biscuits, then the adults took their coffee into the living room.
“I hereby dub Austin the official elf of this morning’s festivities.” Livia produced the elf hat Jace had worn Christmas shopping and plunked it on Austin’s head.
Her brother began passing out gifts. For nearly an hour, they lost themselves in the happy chaos of ripping open paper, and prying open boxes. Ginny tried unsuccessfully to keep hugging the model horses, while opening the rest of her gifts. Austin ended up with a mountain of art supplies to go with his new drafting desk. Linda and Livia ooed and ahed over the custom earring and necklace sets Tara had made them. Jace immediately put on the leather cuff bracelet she’d fashioned to resemble horse tack. All four of the Applewhites proudly put the ornaments the kids had made them on the Christmas tree.
As the pile dwindled, Austin brought one last box over to Tara. “From me and Ginny.”
“Oh. Thank you.” She ran her hands over the package, wondering what they’d made. It had some pretty serious heft. Tara ripped off the paper to find a magnifying lamp. Definitely not made.
“For your jewelry work,” Austin told her.
“We sold ornaments to pay for it,” Ginny said proudly.
“And had enough left over for a trip to Chuck E Cheese at some future date,” Jace added.
Tara felt her heart swell, both that her siblings had thought of this and that Jace had helped make it happen. She tugged both of them in for a hard hug. “Thank you, both.”
“Looks like that’s everything,” Austin said.
“Nope, there’s one more for Tara,” Jace announced.
Everybody looked reflexively under the tree, but the space around it was empty.
“We have to go into town to get it.”
“Town? But it’s Christmas morning. Nothing’s open,” she said.
“This will be.”
Tara narrowed her eyes at him. “What are you up to?”
“A surprise. Everybody load up.”
So they did, piling into two cars and caravaning into Wishful. She’d though maybe he’d done something at the house, but Jace drove them into town proper, down Front Street and turning onto Broad. When he parked in front of The Madrigal Theater, she frowned. “Did you leave something here the other night?”
“Just wait.”
Everybody else spilled out onto the sidewalk.
The lobby doors were open. Jace ushered her into the quiet hush and pulled open the door to the auditorium.
“After you,” he said.
Tara stepped into the theater and stopped almost at once. A single spotlight was trained on the stage, illuminating a package. In the shadows beyond its glow, she could see that the set from the final scene of White Christmas was still in place.
Jace took her hand and led her down the aisle and up the steps onto the stage. “Go ahead.”
After a moment’s hesitation, she stepped into the light, feeling her pulse trip as she picked up the box. Her hands shook as she tore the paper and slid her finger under the tape.
“Here, let me help.” Jace held the box so she could open the top.
Nestled in the tissue paper were her pointe shoes, the pale pink satin gleaming in the spotlight. Beneath them, some of her
dance clothes were neatly folded. “You’ve been in my closet.” It was the only thing she could think to say.
“More properly Ginny has been in your closet. It was a necessary evil for the rest.”
“Jace, what’s going on?”
“You never got to take the stage as the Sugar Plum Fairy. Now you can.” He lifted his free arm. “The stage is yours. For today, anyway.”
“You—” Her throat locked up so she swallowed and tried again. “You’re giving me the gift of performing.”
“I am. If you want it. If it upsets you or brings back too many painful memories—”
Tara stopped his apology with a kiss, crushing the box between them. Never in her life had anyone done anything for her with so much care and thought. Her heart felt full to bursting.
Dimly, she heard cheering and remembered they had an audience. But Jace was the one blushing as she pulled back.
“Do you like it?”
“I love it.” She looked around the stage, then back at him. “It’s perfect.”
“Then will you dance for us?”
“I’d be honored.”
~*~
“Nicely done, little brother,” Livia said, as Tara disappeared to the dressing room to change.
“I’m not through yet,” he said, catching sight of their last guest coming through the doors of the auditorium. He hurried to greet her. “Thank you for coming.”
“I admit, you’ve intrigued me, Mr. Applewhite.”
“Come on down toward the front so you’ll have a good view.” Jace escorted her himself, seeing her comfortably seated on the second row as Leo changed up the lighting scheme to something blue and wintery.
“You’re a genius,” Livia whispered when he took his seat.
“We’ll see.” He wouldn’t agree with her and jinx it.
Tara stepped out onto the stage, her long blonde hair bundled neatly into a bun. The black leotard had a short, flowy, semi-translucent skirt that drifted around her long, lean legs as she moved out to take center-stage. Maybe it wasn’t the perfect costume for the Sugar Plum Fairy, but none of that detracted from the picture she made as she took her position.
God, she was so beautiful.
The familiar plucked string opening of “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy” poured out of the sound system. On the stage, Tara began to dance, her movements as light and airy as the chimes from the celesta. And Jace forgot about his sister, forgot about his parents, forgot about everything but Tara.