Love Inspired December 2014 - Box Set 2 of 2: Her Holiday Family\Sugar Plum Season\Her Cowboy Hero\Small-Town Fireman (14 page)

Myra laughed. “Another thing I've learned over the years, Tina... You wanna hear God laugh? Tell Him your plans.”

Meaning God was in charge, first, last and always.

Tina had a hard time with that scenario. It seemed each time she tried to let go and let God take charge, something went awry. In this instance, that something was the broken heart she'd been nursing since Max had disappeared a week ago.

No call. No word. No email, no text.

Nothing.

As if Max had fallen off the map completely.

His mother had taken it in stride. She was Jenny Campbell, a woman of faith and grace.

Tina?

She wanted to go a few rounds with a punching bag, and not one of those big, heavy body bags, no, sir. The light, hanging-high variety would do, and she'd pummel away at that thing until she wasn't mad or disappointed or sad anymore.

Ever.

She crossed the street near the end of the day and entered The Pelican's Nest through the kitchen door. Han brightened the moment she stepped inside. “It's like old times again! Three nights this week make me so happy!”

“Me, too.” She pulled out a clean apron, and began setting plates for orders. “It feels good to be in here, working with you again.”

“It feels right because it is right.” Wisdom deepened the cook's lined face. “It was wrong to have you gone from this place. I like this better.”

Ryan came through the short passage leading from the dining room to the kitchen. He spotted Tina, stopped short and stared, then spun on his heel and walked out.

Tina turned toward Han. “He hates me.”

Han shrugged. “He doesn't know what he feels, I think. He spent too much time listening to his father, and all he heard was how you ruined their business, ruined their lives. And you did none of this,” Han reassured her as he grated cheese over a fresh pan of lasagna. “But Rocco always needed to blame others. You were an easy target. Now, we can fix this.”

He sounded so sure, so certain.

But could they fix things?

Laura came into the kitchen and gave Tina a spontaneous hug. “I'm so glad you're here tonight. I was just going to call you and see if you could come over. We just got a reservation for a senior citizens bus tour. They're coming to see the lights before they do some shopping in the village. Then they're gathering here for a late supper at seven forty-five. I don't think we could manage it without you, Tina.”

“Then it's good I'm here.”

Laura moved closer. “What's wrong? What's happened?”

“Ryan is rude to Tina and makes her feel bad.” Han minced no words. “He needs to be polite to anyone who helps. All of the time.”

“You're right,” Laura admitted. “I'll talk to him.”

“That might make it worse, Aunt Laura.” Tina shifted her attention toward the door. “He's already an angry kid. He lost his father six months ago, he's working all the time and doesn't appear to like it—”

Laura acknowledged all that with a nod, but said, “That doesn't give him the right to be mouthy and rude, Tina.”

“But that was the example he lived with for so long.” Tina scrunched her face and shrugged. “I'm hoping that time will help heal him. That if he's around me, he'll see that I'm not a terrible person.”

“This has not worked so far,” Han reminded them. “And Tina has been here many days to help. Ryan should be polite to all.”

“I agree.” Laura turned back to Tina. “The days of our family treating each other poorly are over. And I'll see that my son understands that, Tina.”

The back door slammed shut, which meant Ryan had been in the doorway, listening.

Laura's eyes darkened with worry. “When I see the anger in him, it reminds me of his father.”

Tina couldn't disagree. “But he looks like my dad, Laura. And there wasn't a kinder, more generous man than Gino Martinelli.”

Laura acknowledged that with a look outside toward the cemetery. “I go to their graves sometimes, Tina. To apologize. To beg forgiveness. But it's too late, of course, and they died hating me, thinking I was a terrible person.”

“They were angry, yes, especially at first.” Tina shrugged and shook her head. “They felt betrayed because they trusted you with the restaurant, with me, and when you let me go, Dad was too sick to do anything about it. So he was sad. But mostly they thought you married the wrong person, and that Rocco wasn't good for you. And I agree. But they never stopped loving you, Aunt Laura, and they did forgive you before they died. And the first thing my father would say if he heard you now?”

Laura lifted her chin, wondering.

“He'd say head over to that church and get right with God. Because He's the only one we ever need to please.”

Laura swallowed hard. One hand gripped the other, tight. “I haven't gone to church in a long time.”

“No time like the present to start.” Tina smiled at her. “If you want, I can go to the early service, then come here on Sunday and you can go to the later one. That way the restaurant is covered and we both have church time. And then I'll work at the festival booths as scheduled.”

“It's a very sensible plan,” Han told Laura. “How blessed are we to have a church right across the street?”

Laura looked from one to the other. “I'd like to try that, but not this weekend with the festival craziness on top of everything else. Maybe next weekend, okay?”

It was a start. “Good.” Tina nodded agreeably as she grabbed two new orders off the wheel. She handed them to Han as she prepped the plates, but she couldn't erase the anguish she'd seen in Ryan's gaze. He wasn't just angry, although that would be bad enough. He looked wretchedly sad, and seeing that look on her young cousin's face broke her heart. She didn't want her presence to deepen his sorrow, but Laura was right. Ryan needed to find some level of acceptance, and she hoped it would be soon.

The night proved to be as busy as Laura had expected and it was late by the time they closed things up. Tina walked home, missing Max, pretending not to, and half dreading the busy Main Street Festival weekend. She'd be up well before dawn, baking in the restaurant kitchen, getting a head start on a frenetic day. No major snowstorms were expected to mess with the festival, and that was a blessing right there.

She approached her door and sighed. She was surrounded by a Christmas village, lit up and sparkling against a thin layer of fresh, white snow, but her little apartment seemed bare.

She'd been running back and forth between the hardware store and the restaurant, barely stopping for breath, leaving no time to make her little apartment festive.

Because you don't feel festive
, her conscience reminded her.
You're mad at yourself for falling for Max, you're mad at Max for leaving and you have no real clue what you want to do with your life. Can't we go back to the “let go and let God” idea? Because it was a good one.

Life without a firm plan? Without a goal? Without a schedule of events?

The very thought made her antsy.

But then she paused with her key in the lock, turned and looked around.

What had all her perfect planning gotten her? An estranged family and a burned-out café.

Despite her devoted scheduling, life had turned the tables on her. Sherrie's face came to mind. So happy, so excited about the upcoming birth of her son. But she'd sat with Sherrie for long hours after her earlier miscarriages. She'd held her hand, taken long walks and prayed for Sherrie and Jim.

She hauled in a deep breath and scanned the old café site from her stoop.

Life didn't come with guarantees. Maybe, just maybe, she needed to let go more and plan less. She glanced at the clock tower, saw the time and hurried inside to catch some sleep, determined to adopt that mind-set more fully on Monday.

After the insanely busy Main Street Festival weekend.

Chapter Eleven

A
tiny
ping
against Tina's window disturbed her sleep. She rolled over, glared at the clock, saw the middle-of-the-night hour and went back to sleep.

Ping! Ping! Ping!

Hail? Freezing rain? A sleet storm?

Her brain pictured and discounted each of those possibilities as she squeezed her eyes shut and thumped the pillow into a better position. The repeated noise came again, sounding like pellets, lobbed against her window. She pried one eye open and peered at the night sky through her front window.

Starlit with a waxing crescent moon.

There was no storm, and barely a cloud in the chill, December sky.

So what woke her? Groggy, she hauled back the covers and crept to the window. Beyond the short space of Overlook Drive, the town lay quiet and still. The main holiday lights of the town-wide Christmas festival went dark at midnight each day, but the arched streetlights of Main Street still glowed. The white twinkle lights robing the village trees brightened the long, winter night.

All is calm.

All is bright.

Until another rain of pings pulled her to the other window. Careful, she tipped the edge of the curtain swag back to glimpse what was going on.

Max Campbell stood on the sidewalk below, gazing up.

He pegged a few more tiny stones at the glass. She flinched, and that tiny movement gave her away.

“Tina!” He'd spotted her. His voice was a loud whisper, one she intended to ignore.

“Tina Marie...” His voice came again, not quite so softly. Did he know the apartment downstairs was empty, or did he not bother to worry that he might be waking innocent people from a badly needed night's sleep?

Like her.

“Tina, I'm trained at breaking and entering as needed, but I don't want to spend the next five years in jail. Come down and open the door. Please?” He added the last as an entreaty, and if he was trying to be funny, well...he failed. And go downstairs and open the door for him after his little disappearing act that broke her heart into a million Max Campbell-loving pieces?

That wasn't about to happen. Not in this lifetime. She closed the curtain, put in a pair of cheap but effective earplugs and went back to bed.

Morning would begin their two-day festival of fun, food and frolic. Vendors set up heated tents along Main Street, and the high school opened its doors for cottage-style shops. Homemade pies, breads, jams, scarves, woolens, candles and art... Craftsmen from all over Western New York, Ohio and parts of Canada gathered to sell their varied wares this second weekend before Christmas. In less than two hours she needed to have the restaurant ovens cranking out baked goods. Rainey McKinney was doing the same on the farm, and Lacey Barrett would supply apple fritters, fried apple pies and glazed cider fry cakes.

Knowing how crazy the weekend would be, and how busy her past two weeks had been, the last person she wanted to see right now was Max Campbell.

Untrue, untrue, untrue!

Tina hushed the internal chastisement and curled up under the covers, ready to ignore everything in favor of a few hours of sleep. Whatever Max had been doing, whatever his vitally important role in the world was, she didn't care.

So there.

* * *

“Tina.”

She turned from the double oven in The Pelican's Nest kitchen when Max called her name the next morning. Her flat expression said she wasn't one bit happy to see him. “You're back.”

Her cool tone said his rapid disappearance put them back at square one. He had no choice but to own this guilt. Procedure dictated that he had to follow orders and maintain radio silence, but now he was back, and this time? He was here to stay, even if it took a while to convince her of that.

“Yes.” He moved forward, but she waved him back, away from her domain.

“In case you haven't noticed, the entire town is busy this morning because it's day one of our Main Street Festival weekend, so I have a lot to do. In ninety minutes, people will be streaming in from all over. We have shuttle busses coming from the south end of the lake every quarter-hour so we don't over-tax the parking up here. Your mother is running the hardware store—she could probably use a hand there, and as you can see, I'm swamped.”

“Tina, I know you're angry with me,” he started, but she pivoted sharply, shot him a look and shook her head.

“I'm not. I'm angry with me because I knew better, Max. And that's not your fault, it's mine. I should have left well enough alone. Blame it on sentiment, hormones, whatever you'd like, but I'm over it.”

“Over us?” He took a small step closer, encroaching.

“There is no ‘us,' Max.”

“I disagree.”

“Well.” She slid one tray of old-fashioned sugared Christmas cakes out of the oven and slid another tray in, set the timer and turned. “It's not up for argument. I'm glad you're around to help your parents. They're definitely more relaxed when you're here, and that's good for both of them. Now if you don't mind—” she indicated the door with a cool glance “—I've got work to do.”

The chill in her voice matched her remote expression. He wanted to stay and state his case, but a public forum during a crazy busy morning probably wasn't the best choice.

“I'll see you later, then. And Tina?” He waited until she turned his way once more, her face void of expression. “I didn't have a choice about staying or leaving or talking about my assignment. I couldn't tell you or anyone else what I was doing, and that's how my life's been for the past ten years.” He raised his shoulders, hoping she'd understand. “But for the first time ever, I wanted to.” He turned and strode out the door, letting it click softly behind him.

He walked across the street to the hardware store, went inside, punched a back room cutting block several times, then sighed.

Tina wasn't just angry.

She was tomboy spittin' mad, and that meant a bouquet of flowers wasn't going to fix this. He'd only done his job, and done it well, but having to disappear when he'd gained her trust betrayed her growing faith in him. Knowing her history, he understood.

But that didn't change the bad timing, and Max's track record didn't gain him any points.

He manned the first floor of the store for the day while most of the action was in the streets of the lakefront town. People milled about, some dressed in Dickensian costume, mobs of families, carolers, and a horse-drawn carriage ride that took people up and around the old cemetery and through the park before bringing them back down into town, ready to shop and eat.

This festival hadn't existed when he was young. The whole thing was new, busy, saturated with people and goods, and totally Christmas-themed. A huge red-and-green arrow pointed to the back door of the hardware store, emblazoned with the words Jenny's Country Cove. His mother had taken domain up there for the day, because her old-fashioned housewares store was the perfect go-to site for reasonably priced country and Americana-themed gifts. Streams of people came in throughout the day, taking the stairs to the second-story shopping space, buying bags of country-themed items. They'd broken sales records by midafternoon, and that level of business commanded respect.

No wonder Tina was run ragged.

It wasn't just that he was called away at a busy time. He'd left others holding the bag, leaving them to make good on his promises.

A town-wide family festival, a marvelous cooperative endeavor, and the person he most wanted to share it with wanted nothing to do with him.

Mrs. Thurgood stopped by the store an hour before closing time with a small sack of roasted nuts and a little bag of Tina's sugar cakes. “I brought you a treat,” she exclaimed. She handed over both bags.

“I couldn't, Mrs. Thurgood,” Max protested, but the old woman wasn't about to hear any such thing.

“You can and will,” she insisted. “I wanted you to know how much I love the light display in the park. Butch would have loved it, too. He'd be so tickled to have his things out like that! At night, they light up so perfect that I don't think it could be better, Max. And that's what I wanted to talk to you about. You know I'm moving, don't you? This week, actually.”

Max shook his head. “I wasn't aware.”

“Oh, that's right, you've been gone.” Her expression said that had slipped her mind. “Well, I'm moving into the place below Tina's. It's just freshly painted. I used Vanilla Latte Romance from right over there.” She pointed to the paint chip display on the far wall. “And Tina's going to help me hang pictures to make it homey.”

Of course she was, because Tina was about the nicest, most helpful person on the planet. Not that she realized that about herself.

But Max did. “It will be beautiful, Mrs. T.”

“Thank you.” She smiled up at him. “But here's the thing. I'd like to donate all those Christmas decorations to the town, if that's okay.”

It took a few seconds for Max to get the gist of what she was saying. “All of them? Mrs. T., that's thousands of dollars' worth of decorations and lights. Are you sure you want to do this?”

“Absolutely certain!” Smiling, she reached up to pat his cheek. “You know, you remind me of Butch.”

“I do?”

She nodded. “Tallish, broadish, kind of strong and square. My mother used to say he was ‘barrel-chested' and that was a good thing in a man. You know, Max...” She looked off to the left for a few seconds, then drew her gaze back to his. “I was real mad when I lost him. Real mad. I was mad at God, at Butch, at the flag, at just about everything that came around. And I could not get over it for the life of me.”

“But you did.”

“Because your mama came and saw me regular. She'd stop by and bring me a piece of cake or a slice of pie or a dozen cookies, always saying she had this bit left over. Now, no one in their right heads thought anyone raising seven kids had a bite left over, but as she kept doing that, I stopped being quite as angry.”

“Time?” Max suggested.

Her expression said yes and no, but her words went further. “Prayer, more than anything. And those little visits, Jenny Campbell stopping by to chat. She never minded the clutter or the dust, she just sat down, happy as could be, and let me talk until one day she grabbed my hand, gave it a squeeze.” Mrs. Thurgood wrapped her hand around Max's and pressed lightly. “She said, ‘Elsie Thurgood, if any of my boys grow up to be half as tough, faithful and courageous as your Butch was, I will consider myself a success at motherhood.'”

That sounded exactly like his mother. Warm, affectionate and able to look beyond the chaos and the clutter of life.

“When I saw you come home, I knew,” Mrs. Thurgood added.

“Knew...what, exactly?”

“That she was right,” Mrs. Thurgood declared. “With all the problems in the world, one good man
does
make a difference, Max. A big difference. And I see that man in you, just like your mother saw it in my Butch.”

His heart melted.

He'd watched men die. He'd watched as they gave up their lives for their country, fallen in a new kind of war that broke all the rules.

He'd stood at funerals and weddings, he'd held the children and babies of fellow soldiers, but this old woman's words, going beyond the obvious and seeing the heart and soul of the soldier within?

That meant the world. He reached out and hugged her. “Thank you, Mrs. Thurgood. And I do believe I can eat a few of those cakes, after all.”

“Well, our Tina made them, and they're worth every penny we pay for them. Such a treat each Christmas!” she exclaimed. “And now if only we could find a way to keep her here...” She slanted a bright look of interest his way.

Max half laughed, half groaned. “That will take some doing. She's not all that happy with me right now.”

Mrs. Thurgood waved a hand that said Tina's anger was no big deal. Clearly she hadn't seen the steam puffing out of Tina Martinelli's ears that morning.

“She's been crazy busy for two weeks straight, and what that girl needs is some old-fashioned courting.”

“I can't disagree, but in case you haven't noticed, we don't live in or near the courtship capital of the world, Mrs. T.” Max swept the view of Main Street a quick glance.

“The
Kirkwood Lady
has their holiday dinner cruise going on,” she replied. “And I just happen to have two tickets right here.” She stuck two rectangular pieces of cardstock into his hand.

“My father said these were mighty hard to get.” Max tipped a grin down to the older woman as he scanned the printed admissions. “How'd you score these tickets, ma'am?”

“That's for me to know,” she sassed back, smiling. “One way or another, you talk our Tina into getting on that boat with you. Nothing like a peaceful dinner for two, surrounded by Christmas lights, to show a woman how you really feel.”

“Thank you.” He reached out and gathered her into another hug. “This is very nice of you.”

She waved it off as if it was nothing, but Max knew better. In a small town like this, folks pretty much knew one another's financial status because they all shared the same nosy mail carrier. Mrs. Thurgood wasn't poor, but she had little put away for old age, and now she had to move out of a home that was already paid-off and into an apartment where she'd have to pay rent, utilities and medical bills?

Max was pretty sure she'd fallen on some tough times. Still, he knew better than to embarrass her. He tucked the tickets into his pocket as a small crowd of customers came down from upstairs while another group went up.

* * *

Ryan's obvious misery made Tina sad.

She'd waved it off with Laura, but the reality of the teen's frustration bit deep.

He avoided the kitchen when she was in it. He averted his eyes whenever he could. And when they did make eye contact, he was quick to drop his gaze.