Their First Noel (12 page)

Now that she had a real name and a new perspective on what it meant to search for someone, how little effort it would have taken on his part to find them, Corrie saw her mother in a new light. How hopeful she must have been. And in love. So in love she had convinced herself that the two of them could overcome all the odds stacked against them. So that, when it all fell apart, it wasn't just her heart that was broken, it was her trust in the way she believed her life would play out.

Corrie had had a little taste of that today. Despite her mother's fear of being hurt, and her determination to teach Corrie to protect herself, Corrie had always taken chances. She'd always trusted God, the basic goodness of most people and her own common sense. Was that so wrong?

She looked up from her work to find Andy staring at her. She smiled, just a little.

He grinned at her. “Hungry?”

She hesitated. Not because she wasn't sure if she was hungry but because once again she didn't know if she could put herself in a situation with Andy and his sister that would only remind her later how very much alone she really was. The Corrie who had first shown up here days ago wouldn't have even considered that. She'd have done what felt right, expected the best outcome and if she ended up lonely and missing the good times, she'd have consoled herself that at least she had
had
those good times and celebrated that. She raised her head and looking at the man, thinking of his promise to make things right and the effort he had made already, a sliver of the old feelings peeked through.

Corrie smiled back. “I am hungry. Thank you for sharing your dinner with me.”

A few minutes later they had heaping plates in the cozy kitchen. To keep Greer away from the paint fumes, Andy had vetoed eating in the dining room. Greer pointed out that it also kept her away from the big sawhorse tables weighed down with the opened paint cans with the lids tapped back into place. And the trim work balanced across the backs of tarp-draped chairs to make them easier to paint. Not to mention the wrong color paint stacked like cans in a carnival ready to be knocked over.

Andy held up his hand to stop her from adding to the list and laughed at being caught once again manipulating his kid sister's environment to make things easier on himself. The guy had a sense of humor about himself.

And he could cook, too.

Corrie filled up on the delicious casserole. The three of them laughed and talked about the pageant practice. Greer went into elaborate detail about how she wanted her wings glittered and never once mentioned her mother's delay. Andy listened intently and decided that he could wait until they were done to check on the job the painters had done.

When the McFarlands gathered the plates to rinse and put in the dishwasher, Corrie returned to work. More relaxed than she had been earlier, it only took a few minutes before she had tweaked the last few wafers into place on her side of the roof.

“There. Perfect.” She stepped back and held her hands up. “Exactly the way I envisioned it. How's your side coming along?”

Andy and Greer both turned at the same time. Andy opened his mouth but Greer got her opinion out first. “Lousy.”

“Hey!” Andy scowled at his little sister. “Why don't you go get those wings so we can finish up with those?”

“Very funny, you two.” Corrie came around the island where they had been working fully expecting to find the roof as a mirror image or better of hers. She rounded the structure, and turned her head from the faces of her friends to the neat rows of chocolate wafers.

Only neat was not the right word for what she saw.

“Oh. Um, that's kind of…” She spread her fingers and jabbed them together so that they didn't quite fit. “Just in that one place, though. The rest of it is good. I mean…if you don't look too close at—”

“He busted every wafer on that whole section by the pointy part,” Greer volunteered, tipping up her chin and tossing her black hair in a smug sort of flip before heading out the swinging door. “And he wanted to keep
me
away from it.”

“Sorry.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Blame my big, clumsy, calloused hands.”

“I don't think they're clumsy.” Corrie liked his hands. They were rugged enough for his line of work and gentle enough to braid Greer's hair. How could you not like hands like those? “This just isn't your forte.”

“I was thinking I'd chip off the broken ones and the ones that slid a little then replace them with—”

“I don't have enough wafers to do that.” She brushed her fingertips over the imperfections in Andy's handiwork. The broken bits and wobbly row made her smile. A real smile. A smile that came from the depths of her being. Life wasn't perfect, no matter how hard you tried, no matter how much you planned or followed the rules or stayed on schedule. That wasn't the end of the world.

“Oh, Corrie, I'm sorry, I—”

“It's no big deal.” She looked up at him. All day she had tried her best to be a stick-to-the-schedule, stay-on-track kind of person. Now, Andy's little mess up gave her a reason to chuck all that and go back to improvising and making do with what God gave you. “I'm going to use a gloppy white frosting-type stuff to represent snow. I'll just make sure to glop a little extra over your bloopers.”

“Corrie Bennington, you are the first woman I have ever met who offered to glop over my bloopers.”

Okay, she blushed.
Again.
And laughed. She had blushed and laughed more in the last few days than she had this whole past year, she believed. She liked it. She lowered her face, then looked up at the man responsible. “You know what I mean. I just cover up the irregularities with a little snow.”

“Snow!” Greer came bursting through the swinging door but instead of coming all the way in she stood there, holding it open.

“Not real snow,” Corrie told the child. “Frosting made to look like snow. We can use it to hide your brother's roof goofs. Couldn't exactly use real snow for that, huh?”

“Well, if you wanted to, all you'd have to do is go outside and scoop some up!”

“What?” Corrie looked at Greer, then Andy. “Really? A real snow?”

“Big, fat, fluffy flakes.” Greer swooped her hands down gracefully to demonstrate how they were falling. “It must have started a while ago because it's sticking already.”

Corrie could hardly catch her breath. She stared at the gingerbread inn, the copy of the snow globe that she had so often dreamed of seeing blanketed in a real, honest-to-goodness snowfall. What had started as a real stinker of a day had totally turned around. Not by Andy's plans or Corrie's determination, but by a wonderful surprise.

“C'mon.” Corrie looked up to see Andy holding her coat out to her. “You may get to use those boots after all.”

Corrie didn't care about coats or boots or scarves or anything. She dashed past the man without stopping.

He snagged her arm and began tucking her into her coat.

“Hurry up. I want to see the snow,” she protested.

“You're like a kid,” he told her as he had to bend at the knees to see to get the coat fastened up right.

Greer clapped her hands. “Can I put on my coat and go out, too, Andy?”

“Sure. Wear a hat and gloves,” he reminded her as he popped the collar of Corrie's coat up around her ears and brushed the hair back from the temples of her glasses. “I don't suppose you have a hat and gloves?”

“I'll be fine.” She had already begun to jostle up and down trying to get him to turn loose of her so she could get going.

“I'll get you a pair of mine.” He looped her polka-dot muffler around her neck, pulled it up like a hood on to her head then wound it around. “You can wrap up in this scarf to keep your head and face warm. Just as long as you don't stay out too—”

“Stay out? I can't even
get
out.” She gave him a playful push then used the moment to spin around and make her getaway.

Andy was right behind her.

Corrie had actually seen snow falling a time or two in her life. Once, they'd even had a dusting of the white stuff on the lawn. It had practically shut down the entire town for a day. The grocery stores were depleted of bread and milk. Her mom did a record business in hot chocolate and cookies.

But nothing about those experiences had readied her for what she saw when she went skating out the door of the Snowy Eaves Inn.

“It's like a Christmas scene from a wonderful old movie,” she said to Andy as he rushed out after her, wearing one pair of gloves and holding another set in one hand.

“Here, put these on.”

“Oh, stop it.” She pushed his hands away. “I don't want to put those on. I want to feel this. I want to feel the snow on my face and touch it with my bare fingers.”

She moved out from under the shelter of the entryway and raised her face skyward. Bits of crystallized cold dropped on to her cheeks and instantly began to melt. The wind stirred and the flakes plastered themselves on her glasses and clung to her lashes.

“You're going to freeze,” Andy warned her.

“I don't care if I do,” she said and did a slow spin, arms wide and eyes shut. “Tell Greer she's wrong. Twirling is not the best. Twirling in
snow
is the best.”

“All right, enough.” He caught her by the hand and let her finish her whirl right into his arms. “Let's get these gloves on you and then—”

“We can make a snowman?”

“Not nearly enough snow yet. Besides, with all that rain we had this afternoon, there'll be a layer of ice out there. You need to be extra careful moving around, especially without your boots.”

“Oh, you, with your boots and gloves and hats.” She rested her hands on his thick coat and tipped her head back to look at his face. “What are you worried about?”

“You,” he said softly.

“You don't have to worry about me,” she murmured in return. She meant that.

“I don't? Why not? Because you're going to look after yourself?”

“Maybe. Or maybe because I'm going to look out for you.” She hadn't planned it. Of course not. She didn't plan much of anything in her life. She couldn't be like Andy. Or like her mother. She followed her heart and believed in the best.

That's exactly what she did when she threw her arms around Andy McFarland's neck and standing in her very first, honest-to-goodness snowfall kissed him like she had never kissed anyone in her entire lifetime.

And like so often was the case when she didn't think things through, she regretted it almost instantly.

H
is strong arms folded around her, making her feel small and safe and as if no one else in the world existed. Her legs went weak. Her fingers, which had begun to stiffen with the cold, tingled down to the very tips. She was in Andy's arms. For the first time in her life, she felt she was where she truly belonged.

“Wow! It happened! It happened! Andy got a girlfriend for Christmas!” Greer peered out the door but didn't come outside.

“No.” Andy took Corrie by the shoulders and put some space between them. “Corrie is
not
my girlfriend. This is not the answer to a prayer.”

Where once there had been the two of them in each other's arms and a kiss that fanned the flames of the emotions that had been building in them all week, now a cold wind whipped between her and Andy.

Corrie brushed the back of her bare hand over her still trembling lips and shut her eyes. Andy had not meant to hurt her with his reaction. He'd been caught off guard. He hated getting caught off guard and had little patience
with having to come up with new directions on the fly. So she'd help him out a little.

She placed her hand lightly on the man's arm and bent to speak to his excited little sister. “What Andy means, Greer, honey, is—”

“I said what I meant.”

“Oh.” Her palm dragged over the suede of his coat as she dropped her hand from his sleeve.

“I wanted to tell you I can't find my boots. Can I come out without them?” Greer said softly, her precious little face crestfallen. “But now I don't want to.”

“Greer!” he called out after her.

The door shut.

He hung his head and flexed his gloved fingers. He shifted his boots to backtrack physically as he shut his eyes tight and muttered, “I'm sorry, Corrie. That came out harsher than I intended, but I have charge of Greer's physical, emotional and spiritual well-being here. Without Mom here, it's all up to me.”

“Of course, the great Andy McFarland couldn't possibly need any
help.
He can do everything all by himself.” That also came out harsher than
she
intended. It's just that her rotten day had finally seemed to turn around and now…

Now she just wanted to get out of here and deal with all this tomorrow.

“I'm sorry. This has all gotten way off track.” She took another step away. Her foot slipped. The treads of her inexpensive shoes couldn't create enough traction to grip the snow and ice-covered sidewalk. Her breath snagged in the back of her throat as her stomach lurched and she pitched backward.

Andy lurched out to snag her by the arm but she shooed him away, grabbing on to the column that supported the portico instead.

“Look, I'm just trying to make sure that Greer doesn't come away from her stay with me thinking that prayer is like some online shopping site. Place your order and expect delivery in two to seven days.”

“And that's admirable. But did it ever occur to you that by snapping at her like that you might send the message that you don't think God ever answers prayers?” She clutched the column and worked to get her feet under her. “Have you even tried to point out that what she's seeing might not be an answer to her prayer but to mine?”

He cocked his head and rubbed his thumb over the bridge of his nose. “Yours?”

“I prayed to see snow.” She took a small step of faith, turned loose of the inn and held her hands out to her sides. “And here it is. I'm sorry if I let my excitement get out of hand about that.”

“You have nothing to apologize for.” He lowered his thumb to touch his lower lip then smiled and held that hand out to her. “I'm fine with it.”

“I know you think that's a good answer, Andy. As long as you're fine and in charge and things are going your way…” She threw her hands up and groaned. “Speaking of going, I need to get moving before the roads get bad.”

“They're already bad enough, Corrie, especially for someone who doesn't know how to drive in snow on top of ice.” He kept his hand extended toward her. “Give
me a minute to get my keys and I'll drive you back to the Maple Leaf.”

“I don't need you to do anything else for me, Andy.” She stuck her hand in her pocket and pulled out her own keys. “I'll be fine. I'll come back tomorrow, finish the inn and get it out of your kitchen.”

“Corrie, you can't—”

She turned and marched toward her car, slipping at least twice along the way but managing to right herself.

He sighed loudly enough to make himself heard even as she walked away, then called, “I'll go inside and get your purse.”

“My purse.” Corrie flinched. She'd need that, of course, for her license and room key and money. Not only did that oversight make her fabulous exit scene fall flat, it reinforced Andy's notion that her capricious approach to life was really half-baked. She clenched her teeth and turned to say— “Who-oo-a!”

Her feet went flying out from under her. She flashed like a fish out of water, wrenching her body around, her arms flailing, and latched on to the fender of her small hybrid car.

“Stay put. I'll get my keys and we'll take you back over to Hadleyville.”

“You can't tell me what to do,” she called back. With one shove and a lot of false bravado, she righted herself enough to get to her car door and tug it open. “I'm going to warm up the car then drive up to the door. You can just leave my purse out front.”

“I'm not going to leave your purse, or
you,
out here.
You're not going anywhere without me. I'm taking you and that's the last of it.” He went inside.

Corrie plopped into the seat. She slammed her car door and jabbed the key into the ignition.

The engine seemed to side with Andy's assessment that she wasn't going anywhere without him.

“C'mon. I can't stay here or depend on that man after I kissed him like that, then told him off.” She didn't believe the engine actually heard her, but after a few more tries, it growled. It sputtered. Finally, it sparked and started. “Okay. I can do this.”

She put the car in gear and pressed her foot lightly on the gas. The car began to roll. She gripped the wheel. She
could
do this. Just move slowly, exert a steady but firm pressure to guide the car.

The wheels turned. The car moved, only not in the direction she had been guiding it. Slamming on the brakes did not fix that. The small car went skidding in what she imagined must have been a graceful spiral through the parking lot.

Corrie's performance was less than graceful. She stomped on the brake. She yelled at the top of her lungs for the car to stop. She looked to the still-closed door of the inn willing Andy to appear. If he did, she didn't know because seconds later she couldn't see the building anymore.

Once, twice, three loops then back end first off the lot and into the shallow ditch she went. Her heart pounded. She could hardly breathe. She made a quick mental survey. No pains. No injury but to her pride. She laid her head on the steering wheel.

A sharp rapping on the window startled her into looking up and finding Andy and Greer peering in at her.

“The Chinese judge gives you a…” Andy looked down at Greer.

She held up all of her fingers, spread wide. “Ten!”

Corrie could have just cried. She could have crawled down deep into her car and told them to leave her there to freeze and put them all out of their misery. Instead, she laughed. It was the ultimate example of rolling with the punches. As Andy assisted her out of the car, she looked him right in the face and said, “I've decided not to drive myself home tonight.”

“Yeah! Corrie is staying!” Greer took the purse from Andy's hand and headed for the door of the inn. “Us girls can have a slumber party in the lobby by the Christmas tree and watch it snow all night long.”

“I'll still take you to the Maple Leaf if you want,” Andy said as he slung her car door shut and followed her making her way back to the parking lot. “But you're welcome to spend the night here. You know, like Greer said, you and she having a slumber party. Me tucked safely away upstairs.”

“You mean you'd trust me, after that wild kiss I gave you?” Making light of the situation had worked a minute ago, Corrie decided to try it again. And if she got to hear Andy ask her to stay, even for just this one night, or tell her that he trusted her, even in good-natured jest, well, that wouldn't be so bad, either.

“I have Greer as a chaperone. She's so watchful in fear of something getting into the inn, she won't let you get out of her sight all night.”

Another really crummy answer, she thought. But a
truthful one. She smiled and gave a half shrug. “Okay. At least if I'm out here I can keep working on my contest entry until the roads are cleared.”

But the only reason she went into the kitchen again that night was to make a snack that Greer had insisted they needed. Only by the time she brought the tray with hot chocolate—heavy on the milk, light on the chocolate to help with sleep—and cookies out, the eight year old had drifted off.

Corrie settled the tray down on the floor between the two mattresses Andy had brought down for them to cushion against the hard concrete. She arranged the triple thickness of golden bedspreads, layered on for warmth, to cover the child then bent to give her a kiss on the head.

“Thank you.”

It should have startled her to hear Andy's hushed voice in the large room lit only by the twinkling lights of the Christmas tree. But it didn't.

She looked up from where she knelt on the floor. “Thank
me?
”

“It occurred to me that you've thanked me several times. For my opinions. My expertise. My tallness. My kitchen. My ability to find my way around my own church.” He came to her and offered a hand up.

She slipped her fingers into his and stood before him with Greer at their feet, the tree and the two-story windows to one side.

“You even thanked me for things I have no control over, like this snow.” He turned his head toward the scene outside. The flakes whirled in the wind like millions of bits of down falling, dancing against the near-
black sky. It had begun to collect on the limbs of the tall pines and blanket the ground to reduce the rocks and bushes to bumps and suggestions of shapes. “I just thought it was time I made it clear that it's me who should be thanking you.”

She cast her eyes down and for once she didn't blush. She didn't feel ill at ease or embarrassed by her own misplaced or reckless feelings. He hadn't said any of the things she had so wanted him to say and yet, she had such peace about his nearness and her own place in his world, even if that place was only temporary. “I haven't done anything.”

“You've done plenty and you know it,” he whispered. “And now that it looks like the inn is going to get finished on schedule and you're going to find your father, maybe we'll both have some time soon to—”

He moved in close.

She tipped her head up.

He put his arms around her.

She drew in a breath, thinking she should say something. But no words could express what she felt to be here by the Christmas tree in the Snowy Eaves Inn with a real snowfall outside with Andy.

He kissed her softly on the lips, then on the cheek then finally on the forehead. “We'd better say good night now.”

She nodded, still unable to speak.

“Sweet dreams,” he said as he backed away.

“I plan on it,” she said softly. Though she couldn't imagine any dream as sweet as this evening's reality. Tomorrow, everything would look different, she knew. The snow, the condition of her car, even the dining room
when the painters got the new blue color on the wall. She had no idea how she and Andy would view their relationship by the light of day and the harshness of her realities. But for this night, Corrie could have peace and love and—

“Did you hear that?” Lying low on her own mattress, with the bedspreads thrown over her head and clasped tight under her chin, Greer's expression seemed even more anxious than her hurried whisper sounded.

“Greer, I didn't hear anything.” Corrie lifted her head slightly to look out the window. “But if you did, it was probably just an animal moving around in the snow.”

“Yeah, a bear moving around in the snow looking for something to eat, and when it can't find anything it could come in here.”

Corrie yawned. “Bears hibernate in the winter.”

“Great. If it's not a bear then it's probably a bad guy.”

“Why would a bad guy come all the way out here in a snowstorm?” Corrie shifted her weight to try to get more comfortable on the thin mattress so she could get a little bit of sleep and have a shot at those dreams before daylight reordered her world. “It's nothing. Go back to—”

A muffled clunk cut Corrie off midsentence.

“You heard it, too, that time, didn't you?”

A crunching noise followed, then a low guttural sound.

“We should yell for Andy,” Greer whispered, then took a deep breath.

“No!” They had said good night on such a perfect note of mutual appreciation. It could well be the basis
for a whole new way of looking at each other. Corrie couldn't bear the thought of him rushing in to rescue her from something she could easily have avoided with a little forethought—
again.
“Don't yell! I can—”

Corrie lunged across to the other mattress. The mugs of once hot chocolate crashed against the hard floor.

Greer yelped once quietly then louder when the front door of the inn went banging open and a darkened figure stood framed against the hushed background of the snowy night.

“Get in the kitchen,” Corrie commanded Greer in a raspy whisper. “It's probably a lost traveler like I was, looking for shelter from the storm but just in case… Andy left his ax by the tree over there. I'm going to get that.”