Holiday Homecoming (16 page)

Epilogue

“M
erry Christmas.”

The roomful of Delacroix family members greeted Connor when he stepped through the door as if they hadn't just wished him a happy holiday two hours ago at church. Natalie's father closed the door behind him, and Connor searched for Natalie among the smiling faces. He found her peering around the dining room doorway and his heart skipped. Slipping off his jacket, Connor pulled at the neck of his sweater. Had she told them? Or was this the family's usual holiday exuberance? He tried to remember back to the few holidays he'd spent with Natalie's family. His mind was blank. Proposing to Natalie last night had been easy compared to what this afternoon looked like. What did he know about happy family holiday celebrations?

As if sensing the source of his unease, Natalie pointed to her bare hand and shook her head slightly—
no
. They'd agreed to wait and tell her family together. Everyone's eyes seemed to be on him. Maybe it would have been better if she'd gone ahead and told them. Yeah, told them and let him know their reaction. Then he wouldn't have to suffer through dinner and the family's gift exchange waiting for The Moment, wondering what it would do to the warm holiday mood.

“Is that Connor?” Claire shouted from the kitchen.

“Yep,” Natalie shouted back, her gaze trained on him, mouth curving in a slow smile that jacked up his already pounding heart rate to triple time.

He jerked his head to the side toward the front room, where the Christmas tree was. If he could get Natalie alone, maybe he could talk her in to going to Jared and Becca's for dinner as he'd originally planned. The invitation was still open.

“Then we're all here,” Claire's said. “Dinner will be out in a minute.”

Natalie wove her way through her brothers and sisters and their families, who were heading in the opposite direction into the dining room. She took his hand and threaded her fingers through his. Connor's gaze shot to the back of her father's head.

“Come on,” she said with a grin. “It's not like this is the first time you've had dinner with my family.”

“Yeah, but that was before.”

“Having second thoughts?” There was a hint of a quiver to her tease.

He squeezed her hand. “Not on your life.”

She led him into the dining room. Her grandmother, dad and most of the rest of the family were already seated at the table, leaving the two seats next to her father the only empty ones together. Natalie took the one farther away, putting him next to Mr. Delacroix. He tried to get comfortable in the wooden chair. What was with him? He liked Natalie's father. Her father liked him, or at least he seemed to. In the recesses of his mind, he remembered his mother saying his father had asked Grandpa for his blessing to marry her. Should he have done that? Should he do that?
No
, people didn't do that anymore. Did they?

“Hey, Connor, good to see you.” Natalie's older brother, Marc, walked into the dining room from the kitchen carrying an enormous turkey and saving Connor from his thoughts.

“You, too. I see they put you to work.”

“Occupational hazard.” Marc took the seat next to his wife and toddler daughter.

“New restaurant going well?” Connor asked.

“Great.”

Natalie's mother, along with Claire, Andie and her twins, filed in, carrying the rest of the food.

“Hope you don't mind if I say grace,” Natalie's father said. “Family tradition.”

“Not at all,” Connor said. He would
not
read anything in to that.

Natalie's father blessed the food and gave thanks for all of the family's good fortune the past year, ending with “Thank You for bringing Natalie home for the holidays.” With his “amen,” the room broke into a din of conversation and clinking forks and clunking serving dishes.

When dinner ended with the promise of pie and coffee after the gift exchange, they moved in a mob to the front room. Natalie grabbed them a seat on the couch beside her mother, while he settled Grandma Delacroix in a side chair. The twins began bringing gifts over from the tree to make a pile next to Natalie's mom. She passed them out one by one.

As Connor watched, calm settled over him. Family. This was his and Natalie's future. He glanced at her. His heart squeezed. She appeared equally fixated on everyone opening their gifts, a dreamy smile curving her lips.

“Connor.”

At his name, he leaned forward and looked past Natalie to her mother.

She smiled and handed him a rectangular-shaped present. “This one has your name on it.”

He looked at Natalie, and she shook her head. The tag said it was from the Delacroixs. He hadn't even thought about getting Natalie's parents gifts.

“Go ahead and open it,” her father said.

Connor tore off the paper. It was a bestselling thriller that he'd mentioned wanting to read at a church committee meeting her father had been at. He
knew
Nat's father liked him.

“Thanks. I can't wait to read it.”

“All right, then. Everyone ready for pie and coffee?” Natalie's mother asked.

“Wait,” Natalie said, as people started to rise. “There's one more gift. Connor's gift to me.”

“I don't see anything left under the tree,” Amelia said.

“No, I have it here,” Natalie said.

Connor sucked in a breath.

Natalie held out her hand, displaying the sparkling ring on her finger.

“I'm so happy for you,” Natalie's mother said, hugging her tight. She turned to Connor with tears of joy in her eyes. “Come over here.” She opened her arms and gave him a hug, too.

“About time,” her dad said, grinning at Connor.

He released his breath.

“Welcome to the family. I'm glad someone came up with a way to keep my girl here.”

“Dad!” Natalie said.

“Well, I am.”

Natalie's sisters and nieces swarmed him with hugs, and his future brothers-in-law slapped him on the back.

“Congratulations.”

“Hope you know what you're in for.”

His gaze traced Nat's profile, his heart swelling. He did.

After everyone had congratulated them, Natalie's mother shooed the rest of the family back into the dining room for pie.

Natalie leaned her head on Connor's shoulder and gazed softly at the Christmas tree. “I truly am home. For good.” She lifted her gaze to him. “But Paradox Lake, Chicago, I'd be home anywhere you are.”

Pure joy pulsed through him. A man couldn't want for anything more. He pulled her into his arms and kissed her with all the love he had, not caring who might walk in on them.

* * * * *

Keep reading for an excerpt from SECOND CHANCE CHRISTMAS by Pamela Tracy.

Dear Reader,

I love holiday stories, any holiday story, but particularly Christmas stories. They've been my favorite since I was young and my mother used to read my brothers and me
The Littlest Angel
. So I was thrilled when I received the go-ahead to set the second book in my The Donnelly Brothers series—Connor's story—during the Christmas season.

As it is for too many people, Christmas is a bittersweet time for Connor Donnelly and Natalie Delacroix. But, as Connor and Natalie find, it's also a time of renewal, a time when we're washed free of the past. In that spirit, I wish you and your family and other loved ones a happy and holy Christmas, filled with love and fond family remembrances.

Thank you so much for choosing
Holiday Homecoming
. If you enjoyed it, please sign up for my author newsletter at
JeanCGordon.com
. And feel free to email me at
[email protected]
or snail mail me at PO Box 113, Selkirk, NY 12158. You can also visit me at
Facebook.com/JeanCGordon.author
or Tweet me at
@JeanCGordon
.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year,

Jean C. Gordon

Second Chance Christmas

by Pamela Tracy

Chapter One

S
torm clouds rolled in the Arizona sky, a black-and-gray blanket that sank lower even as Cooper Smith watched. One drop hit his forehead. He whooped, then turned and headed inside his store, AJ's Outfitters. His cell phone was out and in his hand before he made it to the counter. He had five regulars who went gold-panning with him on the Superstition after every rain. Plus, this trip, he had three other numbers to call: tourists who had come into his store to buy expedition gear and had shown an interest in going panning. That meant paying customers.

Something AJ's sorely needed.

He'd gotten hold of all but two when an incoming call interrupted him.

It wasn't someone wanting to go panning tomorrow. Instead a deep voice, one he recognized well, said, “I just saw your brother doing doughnuts in your truck in the parking lot of the Apache Creek fairgrounds.”

Cooper closed his eyes. Lately, it was one thing after another with his little brother and each and every incident landed at Cooper's feet. “You sure it was him?”

It was a stupid question, and Cooper didn't even bother to pray that Jacob Hubrecht was wrong. Still, there was nothing quite like having an elder of the church, and your ex-girlfriend's father, phone you right after you switched the Closed sign to Open.

Cooper's little brother, just turned eighteen and ten years younger but an inch taller, was skipping school again. Just six months to go and the kid would graduate. Maybe.

“Nothing wrong with my vision,” Jacob answered. “Even in the rain.”

There was nothing wrong with Cooper's, either. He opened his eyes and looked around the store. Only three customers, one family really, and only the four-year-old appeared to be the potential sale. He held a fool's gold necklace in hand. Cost: five dollars.

Business was down, and Cooper was still learning how to manage the storekeeping part of his responsibility instead of just the guide part. Going panning tomorrow meant Garrett had to work the store. Cooper would bring in three hundred dollars from the three tourists. That might just double their Saturday total.

Cooper didn't know what more he could do except pray. Lately, he'd not said any prayers for himself until after amen. Sometimes, before falling into an exhausted sleep, he added an addendum, a simple plea:
Help me, God.

Last time he'd prayed this much was a good ten months ago.

Mitch Smith, his father, had left a big hole to fill when he'd passed away in February, and the hole looked to be getting deeper as the first Christmas without him loomed less than five weeks away.

“I'm sure it was Garrett,” Jacob said. “And, it gets worse.”

Worse than skipping school and abusing a 1962 classic Ford F-100, four-by-four, V8, four-speed transmission in the rain? Cooper had had a customer offer him five thousand for it two weeks ago, and Cooper had turned him down. They didn't need the money that badly.

Yet.

Cooper didn't want to know how worse his brother was making it. Each passing day just proved to him that he couldn't fill his father's shoes.

Jacob interrupted Cooper's meandering thoughts by sharing, “He had three other teens in the truck with him.”

“Great,” Cooper muttered. “One is probably David Cagnalia, right?”

“Pretty sure,” Jacob agreed. “Plus, two girls I didn't recognize.”

Girls? Oh, please no.

“Thanks, Jacob. I appreciate the call. You wouldn't by any chance have some advice on how I should deal with this, would you?”

Jacob Hubrecht had brought up three girls, pretty much on his own, and they'd all turned out perfect. Especially his middle daughter, Elise, who Cooper had been in love with from fourth grade until... Well, Cooper couldn't rightly say that he'd fallen out of love with Elise; it was more as if they'd fallen apart, literally and figuratively.

“Do what you're doing. Keep letting him know you're there. Also, when he decides to talk, listen.”

“I've been doing that.” Cooper watched his three customers leave the store without the five-dollar fool's gold necklace. They ran to their car, looking at the sky as if amazed at the Arizona rain. Some storekeeper he was, on the phone the whole time.

“Go fetch Garrett now,” Jacob said, grabbing Cooper's attention again. “Get him to school. He'll only be two hours late. Wait to talk to him until tonight when you're not so mad. Better yet, let your mother do the talking.”

“I don't know,” Cooper said slowly, even as he was thinking how much easier it would be on him if he could let his mother deal with Garrett. “She's not feeling well.”

She hadn't felt well since the funeral nine months ago.

“I'll ask Elise if she has any ideas,” Jacob said.

Cooper opened his mouth to say “Not necessary”, but Jacob wasn't finished. Quickly and proudly, he announced, “She's interviewing today at the high school for some kind of social worker position.”

Elise was coming home.

After a decade.

Home.

But not to him.

“No, thanks,” Cooper said. “I'll handle it on my own.”

* * *

Elise Hubrecht had never been a fan of the term
last resort
. Unfortunately, she wasn't a fan of the word
unemployed
, either. Just the thought of it gave her an upset stomach. She had a school loan, more than one credit card and daily bills. If she moved back to Apache Creek, she could live at the ranch for a while, maybe pay off the credit cards and buy a new truck—new to her, anyways. The way things were going, her old truck wouldn't last much longer. It hadn't started this morning, so she was in one of her dad's Lost Dutchman Ranch trucks, which had brought back memories of high school. All her best memories were here, in Apache Creek, Arizona.

And her worst memories, too. Those were why she had left, ten years ago. And why she hadn't planned to return.

Her father, who claimed he didn't have an emotional side, had all but killed the fatted calf when she'd told him she was coming home for a job interview. She had an eleven o'clock appointment with Principal Beecher and a few school board members who made up the hiring committee. Checking her watch, she figured she'd be a good twenty minutes early. For no other reason than curiosity, she turned left when she should have turned right, and headed down the rural road to AJ's Outfitters.

She passed the weathered white brick building with its dark blue roof. Odd, there was a Closed sign on the door. It was a Friday morning, late November. Perfect weather and the busy season for the Arizona outdoorsmen.

None of her business. She pressed on the gas and drove toward the street that eventually lead to the high school. She cracked the window and took a deep breath of the eighty-degree Arizona winter.

Just two blocks from the school, she caught sight of a red truck moving fast off-road, to her left, and bumping crazily on terrain never meant for tires. Then it abruptly turned and traveled down a fairly steep embankment.

Elise blinked. She recognized the vehicle.

The driver didn't even hesitate when he swerved in front of her truck, skidding slightly on the pavement, and finally straightening. Then the driver hit the gas and turned down the road that led right toward her family's ranch.

The Cooper she remembered drove slower than her great-uncle and never broke the law. Couldn't be him. Besides, the momentary glance she'd managed into the front seat of the red truck highlighted what looked like four teenagers, all laughing, maybe screaming, but definitely younger than Cooper and his friends.

More the age of Cooper's much younger brother. She'd seen Garrett briefly at his father's funeral back in February. Elise made a snap decision, turned to follow, all the while knowing she was getting involved and that would only make her even more desirable to the school board that so desperately wanted to hire her.

If only Mike Hamm, her favorite minister and now apparently a member of the school board, hadn't seen her résumé posted on a job-hunting website and called her with an offer. It was the only job available for five hundred miles. She knew this. But coming home felt like such a step back—from everything she'd accomplished in her current home of Two Mules, Arizona, and everything she'd hoped to achieve there in the next few years.

She'd just been starting to make headway with some of the local teens. Her work there was supposed to make up for her failures in the past. She couldn't walk away now. Especially not to come back here—the site of those painful failures.

What she really couldn't seem to do was stop following Cooper's truck even as it veered from one side of the road to the other. It was an accident waiting to happen and she the only witness. Where was everyone?

The truck in front of her turned again, Elise on its tail. She'd be late for her interview, that was for sure, but clearly the teens in front of her needed a reality check.

The truck careened across the dirt road and into the remnants of Karl Wilcox's cotton field. When she was a teen, Mr. Wilcox owned a shotgun, which he filled with buckshot and was quite willing to use on anyone who messed with his land. She doubted that had changed in the years since then.

Elise honked her horn, trying to get the teens to pull over. It took a good five minutes, time Elise spent with her cell phone aimed out the window taking a video. She knew a picture was worth a thousand words, especially when parents wanted denial more than truth. Finally Elise cornered them when a dirt road they'd turned on dead-ended. She stepped out of her vehicle and waited, noting that a rainbow had already formed above the Superstition Mountains that towered over the landscape.

A tall brown-haired boy stepped from the vehicle. Her breath caught. Cooper ten years ago.

“Garrett,” she said. “I just took a video of your little adventure with my cell phone.”

He blinked as recognition set in. “Does Cooper know you're here?”

“No, but we can talk about that later. I'm on my way to speak with Principal Beecher about a job opening. That makes it very convenient to just follow you four to school. That's where you were heading, right?”

She worded it carefully, hoping they'd realize that a
Yes
answer might mean fewer consequences. From where Elise stood, she could see relief on the girls' faces. The boy standing by the red truck never changed his angry expression. As for Garrett, he merely nodded his head, lips pressed together, and then marched back to his truck.

“Get in,” he told his friends. After a deliberate few seconds making a point, they crawled in the front seat.

Later, slightly late and a little damp from the rain, Elise sat at a conference table and studied the three men sitting across from her. The principal of Apache Creek High, David Beecher, still looked annoyed. Not at her, but at the four seniors who'd showed up right behind her late to school and with an escort. They were now with the vice principal.

She hoped that on their own the teens owned up to their responsibility, not just about ditching school but about where they'd been and what they'd done. Wilcox's cotton field was pretty much destroyed.

She hadn't shared with the principal the lack of respect shown by the two boys when she'd mentioned showing her video to their families. Not without knowing more about the situation.

Of the four teens, she only knew the background of one, and she remembered him at age seven or eight, building a tree house in the backyard, a place where he and his friends could play their handheld electronics without being disturbed. He'd had a slight crush on her, and oh how big brother Cooper liked to tease. She wanted to believe that sweet kid was still there inside that surly teen.

“Tell me again what you saw,” Mike Hamm asked.

“I recognized the trunk and knew Cooper wasn't driving. It was easy enough to figure out they weren't on their way to school,” Elise said. “I followed, managed to get them to pull over, and suggested a tardy would be better than an absence.”

“Good thinking. I hope there's someone like you around when my children get to high school.” Mike had two children, both under the age of three. He had a while before he needed to worry. She, however, knew what he was doing. He was letting her know how very much she was needed here.

She knew she was right when he leaned forward, hands folded in front of him, a sincere expression on his face. “Situations like these are why we petitioned for funding to hire a guidance counselor.”

“We have a school counselor,” Beecher said, “but quite honestly, she knows more about getting kids on track for college than on getting them back on track for life.”

“Miss Sadie's still here?” Elise asked.

“For three more years.” The principal smiled as if he'd heard the threat before. Miss Sadie had been advising students of future opportunities since Elise's mom had been a student.

“Once the funding came through for a school counselor, Mike found your résumé online and we read about what you've been doing up in Two Mules.” This came from an imposing man who sat on Mike's left, and the only one Elise didn't know from her years growing up in the area. Mike had introduced him as the new chief of police, Ethan Fisher.

The principal nodded before adding, “Three new teen programs in under a year.”

That I'm still developing
, she thought but didn't say.

“Your résumé is impressive,” Mike said. “But we didn't think we were looking for a social worker. Then we started looking at the successes happening where schools employ one.”

“Of course, those schools are a lot bigger and have more tax dollars and such. We would need you to wear a couple of hats,” Principal Beecher said. “You'd not only be a social worker dealing with crisis intervention within the school walls but also working outside the school with families and the communities.”