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“We use the drafts to pull the sleigh,” Eliza continued.
“Used,” Sarah corrected dully.
Now Marcus knew something was wrong, and unless he was the one causing the problem, he didn’t want to leave until he’d uncovered the reason for her misery and discovered a way he could make her smile again.
Unfortunately, that was out of his hands. He was here to pick up the horses and go—as soon as the snow let up.
Sarah slouched into a shabby olive-green armchair and shifted the baby to her shoulder. She gestured to the little girl, who was still hiding behind Eliza’s ample frame, one big dark eye peering out at him suspiciously.
It was going to take some work for him to win Sarah’s trust when she obviously didn’t want him here, but Marcus suspected he knew how to deal with the little one, who was a pint-size replica of her beautiful mother.
He crouched to the child’s level and flashed his thousand-watt smile. He knew his strengths, and his grin topped the list, or so the ladies told him, both young and old. He hoped making friends with Sarah’s daughter might be the first step in repairing his relationship with Sarah.
He reached out his hand to the preschooler. “Hey there, little lady. My name is Marcus. What’s yours?”
He held his breath as he awaited her response. The moment stretched out indefinitely as the little girl stared at him, her lips in an adorable little pout. Second only to the first time he’d asked Sarah on a date, this was maybe the most important female he’d ever wanted to impress.
“I’m Onyx, and I’m three,” she declared, holding up three fingers. She stepped out from behind her grandmother and reached for his hand, her expression as serious as her handshake. “That’s my baby sister, Jewel, my mama is holding.”
“Pleased to meet you, Onyx—and Jewel,” he said, meeting her solemn tone with one equally as earnest. “I’m an old friend of your mama’s.”
“’Kay. Granny, can I go play with Buttons now?”
Marcus had never been quite so summarily dismissed by a female before. He turned to Sarah and arched a brow, grinning crookedly. “Buttons?”
“Her rabbit.”
He’d been bested by a bunny.
* * *
Sarah couldn’t believe how quickly Marcus pulled Onyx out of her shell. The little girl had been a precocious and outgoing toddler, but after the death of her father she’d become withdrawn and suspicious about everybody and everything. No matter what Sarah did to try to coax her into meeting people and trying new things, nothing seemed to work. All Marcus had to do was grin at her and the child immediately fell subject to his charm.
Sarah couldn’t blame her. It was hard not to respond to Marcus’s natural appeal, especially because he knew what he had and how to use it. The first time he’d turned that smile upon her she’d been a goner. Her heart fluttered at the memory. But that was a long time ago. Things were different now and she was well beyond the possibility of being flattered by a handsome face and charming smile.
Marcus moved to the front window, pressing his hands into the front pockets of his jeans. “I guess I’d better get going before the storm gets any worse.”
“What? No. You can’t go out in that!” Sarah’s heart leaped into her throat as Marcus swiveled toward her, clearly surprised at her outburst. Her exclamation had been one of sheer panic. She’d practically shouted the words. Poor Jewel gave a distressed yelp and flailed her little arms in surprise.
Heat rushed to her face as he narrowed his gaze on her, silently studying her, his jaw tight and strain rippling across his broad shoulders.
“You can’t leave yet,” she amended, consciously leveling her voice even though her pulse was hammering. “It’s not safe for you to drive in a whiteout, especially if you’re not used to this kind of weather.” She knew she still sounded flustered. How could she explain her irrational fear of snowstorms without going into personal details she’d rather avoid?
“It’s really coming down out there. I can hardly see my truck from here. How long do you think before it stops? I’d hate to put you out any more than I have to. Maybe another hour or so?”
“An hour?” Sarah forced a chuckle and shook her head. “I’m afraid you’re unfamiliar with Colorado blizzards. It’ll be a day, maybe more, before this storm blows over.”
His eyes widened and his jaw went slack. “A day?”
She nodded. “At the very least. I’m afraid you have no other option. You’ll have to stay the night here as a guest in our home. I don’t want to risk you putting yourself—or Mag and Jes—in danger.” She paused and worried her bottom lip with her teeth. “Oh. I didn’t ask about your family. Will your wife be worried about you?”
His eyes widened. “Wife? No—I’m not married. But I’d best call Grandma Sheryl and let her know there’s been a delay. I don’t want her to worry.”
She didn’t know why she breathed a sigh of relief when he said he was single. His marital status or the lack of was certainly no business of hers. But that didn’t stop her traitorous heartbeat from quickening.
“I’ll make up a guest room for you,” she said to hide her sudden disorientation. She felt a little dizzy, as if the ground was rocking beneath her. “It’s our spare room and we use it for storage, but there’s a bed you can use for the night.”
Marcus opened his mouth as if to protest, then glanced over his shoulder at the heavy snowfall and nodded. “I appreciate the offer. I hope I’m not putting you out too much.”
“Not at all,” Eliza inserted before Sarah could answer. “We’re glad to have you. I’m sure you and Sarah will enjoy catching up with each other.”
Enjoy wasn’t exactly the word Sarah would have used. The last thing she wanted to do was share with Marcus all the trials she’d been through recently, but she had a feeling she was about to do just that. He’d always had a way of drawing her out when they were dating in high school.
“Will your husband be able to make it home through the storm, do you think?”
Sarah choked on her breath and Eliza audibly inhaled. Carl coughed to fill the sudden silence.
Marcus looked from one of them to another, his brow lowering over the bright blue of his eyes. “I’m sorry, did I say something wrong?”
“Justin passed away last year at Christmas,” Sarah whispered over the lump in her throat.
“I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.”
“No. Of course you didn’t.”
“How about that coffee?” Eliza asked a little too brightly. She turned and bustled off into the kitchen.
Marcus threaded his fingers through his hair, ruffling the thick blond waves. He paced a few feet and then turned and strode back again, looking as uncomfortable as she’d ever seen him.
“Please sit down.” She couldn’t talk to him while he was pacing around like a caged tiger. “You’re making me nervous.”
He rubbed his palms down his thighs and gnawed at the inside of his cheek, eyeing the opposite end of the sofa from where Pops was sitting, but not moving to seat himself. The older man cleared his throat and stood.
“I think I’ll check on Onyx,” he said, his voice unusually scratchy. They didn’t often talk about Justin, and Sarah was afraid the topic was upsetting him—just what he didn’t need with his heart condition.
“Why don’t you go lie down and rest for a bit?” she suggested.
He nodded. “Maybe I will.”
Marcus waited until Carl had left the room before gingerly seating himself on the edge of the couch, his back ramrod straight as he leaned forward and clasped his hands between his knees. His gaze met hers, an outpouring of sympathy and curiosity.
Where did she even begin?
He smiled openly, encouraging her to speak without actually speaking. When he finally did say something, his words were the exact opposite of what she’d expected. “You don’t have to talk about it if you’d rather not.”
Suddenly the need to unburden herself flooded her chest and she was unable to stop herself. She’d carried this load alone for far too long. The farm and the girls kept her too busy to maintain close friendships with anyone in town, and she couldn’t burden her in-laws with her doubts and fears. Marcus would be leaving as soon as the snow let up. What difference would it make if she shared some of the more difficult portions of her life with him? It wasn’t as if she was going to see him again. And he always had been a good listener.
“No, I don’t mind. I just don’t want to upset Granny and Pops. Justin has been gone for a year now, but the loss is still tender for them.”
He nodded. “I can imagine. For you and the children, as well.”
She nodded and tried to swallow around the lump of emotion clogging her throat, blinking back the tears that burned in the corners of her eyes. She hadn’t allowed herself to cry in months, and now already today she’d been on the verge of tears several times.
Eliza returned with steaming red-and-green-striped mugs of coffee, then excused herself and followed her husband down the hall. Sarah watched silently until she was out of sight.
“How’d you meet Justin?” Marcus asked.
That wasn’t the question she’d expected and it took her off guard. Most people only wanted to know how he’d died, not how they’d met.
“In a marketing class my last year of college. He was twelve years older than me and I thought the fact that his family owned a Christmas tree farm was romantic.” She laughed drily at the irony. She and Justin had had a happy marriage, but nothing over-the-moon and starry-eyed. Not as she’d felt when she was with Marcus. “We dated for a little over a year and then he asked me to marry him.”
Marcus’s smile looked strained. She couldn’t blame him. It was an odd conversation to be having with an ex. “You said yes, obviously.”
“It seemed like the next logical step.”
His eyebrows rose. “Logical?”
She shrugged. “You know me. Ever the pragmatist.”
“I remember. You told me not to bring you flowers so often because they faded and died within a week and my money could be better spent on other things.”
“Which is true. As I recall, you never listened to me.”
“That’s because you deserve pretty things and I enjoyed giving them to you.”
Her stomach fluttered when she realized he’d used the present tense of deserve, as if he still felt something for her. He’d always had the habit of saying things that ruffled her. Apparently that hadn’t changed with time.
“The farm belongs to Justin’s family. I moved out here and did computer coding work at home until Onyx came along. After that I dropped back to part-time so I could take care of her.”
“And Jewel?”
“Jewel was born after Justin passed away. His accident was on Christmas Eve last year. I was three months pregnant at the time.”
Marcus captured her gaze with his, his eyes clouding with sympathy and concern.
She didn’t want him to feel sorry for her, especially since the story was only going to go downhill from here. She remembered how naturally empathetic and sensitive Marcus was, how he’d always seemed to be able to feel her emotions. He rode her roller coaster of highs and lows right along with her. The more she told him now the worse it would be. Her pride flared at the realization that he might pity her. She couldn’t even stand to think about that.
Her current position wasn’t entirely her fault. Most of the blame lay at Justin’s feet. But she owned up to her own role in the drama.
A deep, undecipherable sound echoed from his throat. He reached for her but she instinctively jerked back. If Marcus put his arms around her right now she would lose it, and she refused to cry in front of him.
He lowered his arms, his hands twitching into fists. The corners of his full lips bowed downward, and her stomach churned. She hadn’t meant to hurt his feelings, but she had only a tenuous hold on her own emotions and she simply couldn’t risk it.
“There was an unexpected storm on the day before Christmas last year—much like this one. It came out of nowhere and created whiteout conditions on the roads.
“Onyx had seen a television commercial for this specific doll and it was all she talked about for a good month solid. Naturally it was the top-selling girl’s toy that year. We’d planned to do our shopping on Black Friday but no matter how many stores we hit, we couldn’t get our hands on that exact doll, and we knew nothing else would do for her. We called dozens of stores but couldn’t find it anywhere. We checked online but people were selling the doll at ridiculous prices, as if it were some kind of collector’s item and not a piece of cheap plastic in a fabric dress.”
He chuckled softly. “Crazy, right? I remember desperately wanting a Tickle Me Elmo toy for Christmas when I was a kid. I didn’t get it, although I sincerely doubt my mom put much effort into finding one.” Marcus’s voice lowered, rough with bitterness, and Sarah knew why.
His mother was an alcoholic who’d abandoned her family when Marcus was five. Unless something had changed in the years since Sarah had last seen him, he hadn’t heard from his mother even once since she left, not even when he graduated from high school.
And as if that wasn’t enough trauma for a child to go through, his dad had died in a tractor accident when he was nine, leaving him and his older brother, Matt, to be raised by Sheryl, his grandmother on his father’s side of the family. She was a faithful and kind woman who’d given him a good Christian upbringing and had showered him with love. At the end of the day, his grandma had turned out to be a great blessing to him, but Sarah didn’t blame him for harboring a bit of resentment in his heart toward his mother. He’d been through a lot.
“I remember Elmo, too. What a silly little toy that was. The doll Onyx wanted had a different cry for when she was wet or hungry.”
“A doll that bawls when she gets hungry? That sounds kind of creepy to me.”
Sarah nodded. She agreed wholeheartedly about that doll and she hated it for what it represented. Justin’s death. Her deep and abiding sense of loneliness. Even though she still had a loving family surrounding her, sometimes she felt as if she were all alone in the universe. Even her prayers seemed to bounce back at her.
“On the morning of Christmas Eve, we got a call from a local toy shop in Golden. They had one doll available if we could get into town before the store closed. I told Justin that I didn’t think it was worth going out in the storm. The weather conditions were terrible. Onyx had plenty of other gifts to open. She wouldn’t have felt deprived. But he was always a stubborn man, and he insisted he could make it if he went out on his ATV. He would have done anything for his precious little girl.”
Marcus nodded.
“He phoned me when he made it to town safely and picked up the doll for Onyx.” She could barely force the words through her dry lips. “He said the roads weren’t as bad as he’d thought they would be and not to worry about him. But he never made it back. He hit a patch of black ice on the road and slid into a tree. Died instantly.”
Marcus reached for her again, and this time she let him envelop her free hand in his large, steady one. He pulled her gently to her feet, careful not to wake Jewel, who was now sleeping in the crook of her arm.
He swept a stray lock of hair behind her ear and let his palm linger on her cheek. “I’m so, so sorry for everything you’ve suffered. My heart goes out to you. And it explains a lot.”
She wasn’t sure what he meant. Explained what?
She tried to read his gaze, but it contained such a mixture of emotions that she couldn’t even begin to sort them out and make any sense of them.
Truthfully, she was afraid to try.
She wondered if he could feel her tremble under his touch as he brushed the pad of his thumb across her cheekbone.
“I’m going to make you a promise right here and now,” he declared, his voice raspy. He put the palm of her hand on his chest, over his heart, which was beating rapidly. “I won’t leave this house until you’re certain it’s safe for me to do so. Okay?”
His thoughtfulness overwhelmed her and she blinked back the tears stinging her eyes. “What about Christmas? Isn’t your grandmother expecting you?”
His smile returned, gentle yet confident. “I’m sure she’ll understand. Besides, I’ve still got a couple of days yet, and it’s only a ten-hour drive to get to Grandma Sheryl’s ranch. Twelve if I stop for meals and to stretch my legs. Plenty of time to make it home for the holidays.”
He reached for his cell phone in his back pocket. “I should probably call her before it gets too late and let her know I’ll be staying over here tonight. That way she won’t worry and she’ll know when to expect me.”
He glanced at his cell and frowned. “Hmm. No bars.” He held the phone above his head and did a little dance, walking around and waving his arm in an attempt to find better reception.
“The storm is probably messing with the cell tower. You may have to step out on the porch to get any bars. I sometimes find better reception when I go outside. Bundle up, though, or you’ll freeze to death out there.”
He winked at her. “No need. I’ll only be a moment.” He strode to the front door, yanked on his boots and put on his hat. He ducked his head as he stepped out into the blizzard, only looking back long enough to grin at her and make a shivering motion with his arms.
As he closed the door, she could hear him laughing. It had been a long time since there had been laughter in the house.
Far too long.
Chapter Three (#ulink_92ae262b-6c9c-51c6-8259-8417fe0e3817)
There was no cell phone reception at Sarah’s ranch.
