A Mountain Springs Christmas

Chapter 9

nine

NOELLE

Noelle pulled up in front of her parents’ house in her own car. It was so nice to have Elfie back! It wasn’t as nice as the rental she’d been driving, but it was great to feel “home” again in her car. She opened the back door to let Aiden and his dog, Bailey, out. Aiden immediately grabbed Bailey’s leash and ran across the lawn, weaving between all the lawn decorations, to where her family was congregating around the hot chocolate before the hayride, excited to introduce his dog to her parents’ dog, Captain.

Noelle went around to help Rachel out of the car, but she was doing well enough that she was out before Noelle even got there. She looped her arm in Rachel’s like they were sisters, so she was right there if Rachel needed any help.

They walked through the mostly tramped-down snow, around the nativity and the giant ornaments. Rachel looked to where Aiden was making himself at home with Noelle’s family. “Thank you so much for all you’ve done for Aiden. You’ve gone well beyond everything I was hoping for him.”

Noelle looked at Aiden, too. “He’s a cool kid. I’ve enjoyed every moment of it. And I’m so glad you’re feeling well enough to join us for the hayride! It’s one of my favorite traditions, and if you’re going to experience one, this is it. It was my gran-gran’s favorite, too.”

Rachel smiled as they made their way across the snow-covered ground. “From what little I’ve heard of your gran-gran, she sounds like she was a pretty cool person.”

“She was. I was kind of worried about today because it was one of our favorite traditions, but I’m doing better than I thought I would. Last year, celebrating felt like we were just ignoring that she was no longer with us. This year, though, it feels like we are honoring her by continuing the traditions she loved.”

“It sounds like that’s what she would’ve wanted.” Rachel smiled and gave her arm a little squeeze. “Thank you for including me.”

Based on the Christmas decorations in Rachel’s yard, Noelle figured that she actually did like the holiday. She probably hadn’t been able to celebrate it much at all, though. “Do you think it might make you nauseous? We do go pretty slow, but it’s sometimes a little bumpy.”

“I’m doing pretty good today, actually. I think I’ll be okay.”

Noelle grinned and led them toward the table filled with hot chocolate supplies where all of her family was congregating.

This year, she was even more excited about the hayride. Not only was Jack coming, but Rachel was there, too. Which meant that she’d be able to get some more info about Jack.Now that she was seeing his personal side and finding out more and more about him, the more she wanted to know. She felt like she was stranded in the desert, and information about Jack was a jug of cool water—she just couldn’t get enough of it.

It didn’t take long after Noelle introduced Rachel to her parents and sisters and their spouses and kids that Rachel was chatting with her and her sisters like they had known each other their whole lives. And it didn’t take long for Noelle to start picturing her as a sister-in-law.

Stop that , she chided herself. Nothing is happening between you and your boss, so stop setting yourself up for heartbreak .

And then Jack pulled up in front of her parents' house and got out of his car. When his eyes found hers, he wore an expression that had her whispering out loud, “Or maybe I’m wrong.” Because the smile on his face felt like it was just for her. It quirked up on one side just slightly more than the other, and his eyes were all soft and warm, and it made her stomach flutter and happiness wash over her. And gosh, he looked good even in a wool coat, gloves, a hat, and a scarf.

His eyes stayed on her as he walked around the lawn decorations and across the snow, only leaving hers for a moment while he went up to Rachel, gave her a hug, then gave a nod toward the hot chocolate. She nodded, then his eyes were immediately back on Noelle’s. So, of course, she took a couple of steps to the hot chocolate table.

“Hi,” he said, and it felt like so much was loaded into that single word.

“Hi,” she breathed back, practically melting. Then, realizing that her dad was at the hot chocolate table, ladle in hand, she cleared her throat and said, “Would you like some hot chocolate?”

Jack nodded. “I’ll get some for Rachel first.”

Aiden noticed that his uncle had arrived, so he came running over from where he’d been playing with his new friends, Bailey at his side. Her dad ladled up hot chocolate into four cups, and Noelle helped Aiden make his—mixing in chocolate chips and a massive scoop of whipped cream—while Jack added caramel and a pinch of sea salt to Rachel’s.

Then she and Jack started making their own. She reached for the spoon in the raspberry jelly, her favorite hot chocolate mix- in, at the same time as Jack reached for it, their hands bumping. “You like raspberry in yours?” No one in her family liked it. Well, except for Gran-gran.

He looked at her, surprise on his face. “You do, too?”

The biggest shock, though, was when they both reached for the cayenne pepper next.

“No way,” Noelle’s dad said. “I thought Noelle was the only person on the planet who liked raspberry and cayenne in hot chocolate.”

Jack gave her that smile she loved that quirked up more on one side. “I’ve always thought she had impeccable taste.”

“Corbin,” Katie said to Becca’s husband as she pulled her phone out of her pocket. “Are you ready for an interview?”

As the two of them headed away from the crowd and the kids running underfoot for a bit, Noelle and Jack took Rachel’s hot chocolate to her.

Her mom came over at the same time and said, “Rachel, we’re so glad to have you here! And if you’re feeling up to it and don’t have other plans, you should join us for Christmas Eve dinner. It’s Noelle’s birthday, too, so we always have a big celebration. We would love to have you.”

Rachel looked like she was touched to be invited and said she would attend if it was at all possible, and it looked like she really meant it. Jack looked happy to be asked, too. This might end up being her favorite birthday / Christmas Eve ever.

Her mom motioned to the truck that had two flatbed trailers connected to it like a train. Both had hay bales arranged in a rectangle, with bales stacked two high in the middle for backrests so that people could sit on all four sides on each trailer. They had already laid blankets across all of them so they wouldn’t be itchy. “I want to make sure you’re in the spot that’s going to be most comfortable. I know that chemo can make you really nauseous; which spot do you think will be best for keeping that at bay?”

“Oh, um, probably facing the direction we are driving. Maybe on the second trailer?”

Her mom winked. “I’ll get it ready for you.”

Then they all headed toward the trailers and found seats. Noelle’s mom had put extra padding in the spot where Rachel would be sitting, and her dad told all the little kids they couldn’t jump around on that trailer. Rachel seemed to love having Noelle’s parents fawn over her. She glanced at Jack. He was watching Rachel, too, seeming to love seeing her love it.

“Okay, how this works,” Noelle said as she leaned over Jack, who was sitting by Rachel, “is that we drive around and look at all the lights. But every once in a while, we’ll stop at a house, jump off the trailer, then all go up to sing Christmas carols.”

Then her mom turned on the Christmas music and her dad, who was sitting in the driver’s seat of the truck, pulled it gently away from the curb. They started heading down the street, the chill in the slight wind causing all of them to pull their hats on a little tighter and to reach for the extra blankets piled on the top of the middle hay bales. Jack stood up and grabbed one of the blankets and placed it over Rachel and Aiden, tucking it in at their sides. Then he grabbed a second one, sat down, and wrapped it around himself and Noelle.

Was it wrong to snuggle into him? Because it was so cold, and he was so warm, and the blanket was kind of pulling them together a bit. Plus, he smelled divine. She took in another deep breath just to smell the sweet pine scent again, even though the cold burned her nose.

His hand was on his leg, but his pinky rested up against her thigh. As they drove past all the beautiful lights people had used to decorate their houses and yards, his finger moved, hesitantly at first, brushing so slightly against her jeans, sending thrills up her spine. It was the slightest touch, but it felt monumental.

She hesitated a very long moment, then decided to just take a gamble and reached for his hand. She heard him suck in a breath like she had surprised him, but then he entwined his fingers in hers as the music played and the lights sparkled, and a light snow drifted down from the sky.

“Hey, Aiden,” Katie said as she took a seat next to him and Bailey. “Are you going to dress this cute dog of yours up for the pet costume parade?”

Aiden looked to Noelle. So she nodded and said, “You bet we are. My gran-gran and I used to dress up her dog Daisy every year—it’s so much fun.”

He grinned and turned back to Katie, so she said, “Can I interview you for the video I’m putting together to watch on Christmas Eve?”

“Yes!” Aiden said, pumping a fist. “I was hoping I’d get to be in it!”

With her phone aimed at Aiden, Katie said, “What’s your favorite part about Christmas?”

“Being with my mom.” He paused for a moment, then he added, “And making decorations, like the snowflakes that are hanging from our ceiling. And doing all of the activities with Uncle Jack and Noelle.”

“You’re new to this hayride,” Katie said. “Tell us about how you’re joining us this year, so when we watch this when we’re old and gray, we’ll remember why.”

“Well,” Aiden said, settling against the hay bale at his back, his voice ringing out loud and clear, “I heard my mom telling Uncle Jack that she wanted me to do fun Christmas things, and he got Noelle to help. At first, my mom wasn’t all the way happy about that, but only because we hadn’t met Noelle yet.

“ But Mrs. Sowards brought us over a meal one night. They thought I was in my room, but I was actually sitting under the kitchen table. And I heard Mom tell Mrs. Sowards that she was glad that Jack asked Noelle for help because Jack has been more smiley since he started hanging out with Noelle.

“And,” Aiden said in a whisper loud enough that everyone on both trailers heard—and probably her dad, too, since he had his window rolled down, “she thinks he’s pretty much in love with her. You know, the kind of love where there’s kissing and marriage and sneaking food off each other’s plates.”

Noelle felt Jack stiffen.

Rachel gasped. “Aiden!”

“What? I whispered it, so they didn’t hear.”

Then Rachel turned to her and Jack. “I am so sorry. And I didn’t say anything about the kissing and plates and marriage thing. That was all him.”

There was an uncomfortable, awkward silence. But also, it came with a feeling of hope.

Her dad must’ve either heard Aiden or sensed the tension because he pulled over to the side of the road, giving everyone something else to think about.

“Hop off for a caroling stop!” her mom called out, and everyone threw off their blankets and got off of the trailer, the two dogs included.

“Are you coming?” Noelle asked Jack.

He shook his head. “I need to stay here and help my sister.”

Rachel didn’t look like she needed help, but if she had been Jack, she would’ve stayed behind, too. She got off the trailer and grabbed hold of the hand Aiden wasn’t using to hold Bailey’s leash and walked with everyone else up to the porch of their neighbor’s house.

She took one glance back at the trailers as Hope knocked on the door and saw Jack straightening Rachel’s blanket and making sure it was tucked in around her so the cold couldn’t get in. It was so sweet that he was so protective of her.

After a rousing rendition of " Silent Night," where the dogs joined in and did their best to sing, too, they headed back to the trailer. This time, Jack didn’t sit close enough that their legs touched. He didn’t reach out with a pinky to brush her leg, and he didn’t take her hand in his. She felt the loss keenly. That hope Aiden had given her felt a little less potent.

As they turned down another road, Rachel said, “Hey, my friend Amy lives in that house up there on the left. She has brought me so many meals while I’ve been going through chemo.”

Noelle’s mom, who was riding in the closer trailer, called out to her dad, “Stop at that blue house on the left.”

Before Jack got any other ideas, Noelle said, “I’ll stay with Rachel this time—it’s your turn to go up and sing.”

He shook his head. “I don’t—”

But Rachel interrupted with, “Will you tell Amy I said hi?”

Noelle was close enough to see the muscle in his jaw working, but then he gave a nod and called out to where Aiden was now sitting with Noelle’s nephews. “Come on, buddy. Let’s go sing.”

Aiden and Bailey both leaped off the trailer and ran around to take Jack’s hand before walking up to the home. Noelle watched them, impressed that Jack was willing to go, even though he had such bad associations with Christmas, he didn’t sing, and he probably didn’t know Christmas songs very well.

“What’s Jack like at work?”

Noelle scooted closer to Rachel so they could talk more easily. “Very professional and closed off. He doesn’t get personal, ever.”

Rachel laughed. “I wondered if that was what he was like since he always seems so concerned about professionalism. Well, that and the fact that he always goes to work dressed in a suit. But outside of work, he’s sweet. Thoughtful. Fun.”

She had seen a lot of that over the last couple of weeks. It was a side of him she was growing to love. “What was he like as a kid?”

Rachel looked up like she was thinking about where to start. Then she said, “When our parents died, he hit a bit of a rebellious stage. Which I totally understood—it was such a hard time. I was eighteen, and suddenly I was his guardian, and I had no idea how to be the mom of a fifteen-year-old. I had mothered him a lot all of his life, but this was different.

“And it wasn’t that he was rebelling against me—it was more that he was mad at the world because so many things had been stacked against us. He just stayed out past curfew, got some questionable friends, started dressing differently, things like that. I knew it was likely just part of the grief process and how he dealt with it. But I was so worried for him and didn’t know how best to help.

“After a few months, there was a night when he’d left with friends and hadn’t been in the best headspace. Before, he’d missed curfew by an hour or two. That night, it was four hours past, and I worried myself sick every single second of those four hours. By the time he got home, I was a complete wreck.

“He came home and saw exactly what that night had done to me. I swear, he stopped being rebellious right then.” She snapped her fingers. “Like flipping a switch. He somehow figured things out and pulled himself out of it. I think he realized that he was piling even more stress on me when things had already been hard enough for both of us.

“But he’d always been a sweet, thoughtful kid. When we were little, our dad would drink a lot and get verbally abusive. Just mean. Sometimes physically mean. We learned to just stay away whenever he was drinking. Our mom dealt with it by closing herself off and shutting down, so Jack and I had to rely on each other a lot. Since I was the big sister, I acted like the mom when our mom wasn’t.

“When we were small and putting ourselves to bed, he always thanked me for taking care of him. I’ve never known anyone to be as grateful as he is. One night, after he thanked me, he said, ‘But there’s no one taking care of you.’ There wasn’t. And I really felt it, you know? I nearly started bawling right then and there just to have it acknowledged.

“So from that night on, he always told me a bedtime story, so I’d be taken care of, too. He made up his own before he was old enough to read and did a mix of reading stories to me and making up stories as he got older. I swear that was what made me survive our childhood. I’m lucky to have him as a brother.”

Noelle’s eyes were misting at hearing how his childhood was and how sweet he was through it. She looked over at where he stood at Amy’s porch, holding Bailey’s leash in one hand and holding Aiden, who was perched on his shoulder, with the other hand.

“He’s going to make a really good dad someday.”

Rachel nodded. “The best.”

Noelle tried not to imagine him being a dad to their own kids. She knew how dangerous that kind of thinking was.

Yet, a part of her still imagined it anyway. And it must’ve been showing on her face because when Jack and everyone else came back to the trailers, he was giving her a curious look like he was trying to interpret her expression.

And this time when he sat down, he pulled the blanket around them snugly, so she cozied right into him.

When they made it through all the lights in town and back to her parents’ house, everyone started saying their goodbyes. Jack had planned to take both Rachel and Aiden home, but Aiden said, “Can I please ride back with Noelle? She has windows that you roll down by turning a handle instead of pushing a button!”

Okay, her little Kia Rio was not that old—it just happened to have manual windows. Hearing Aiden talk about it made it sound like it was several decades old.

“It’s freezing out here, buddy,” Jack said, his hands deep in his pockets, shivering a bit as he said it. “You shouldn’t be rolling the windows down.”

“I only roll them down when we’re at a stoplight, so no wind blows in. Noelle said it was okay. Please?” he said, dragging out the word to the full extent his lungs could manage.

Rachel and Jack both looked at Noelle as if asking for permission. So she smiled at the adorable kid. “Sure thing, kiddo.”

True to his word, he only rolled down the window when they were stopped. But it was at every stop sign and stoplight on the way home. At least they were already used to the cold temperatures.

After getting Aiden and Rachel inside their home and saying their goodbyes, Jack walked her out to her trusty car.

He leaned against Elfie, which made her smile. It meant that he wasn’t planning to leave super quickly, and she was in no way ready for him to go. “Thanks for making me come tonight. I actually rather enjoyed it.”

She grinned and stepped a little closer to him. She didn’t lean against the car—that thing was freezing cold—but she got within a foot of Jack’s warmth. “Are those negative feelings about Christmas changing yet?”

This time, he reached out for her hand. And, even though they were wearing gloves, the feel of his hand in hers still sent shivers of happiness up her. “They are. I think they started changing before I even noticed it.”

His voice was low and gruff, yet with the perfect amount of smoothness, too. It was mesmerizing, and she just wanted him to talk to her with that voice all night long. It didn’t even matter what he said—it could be his to-do list for tomorrow, and she’d still be enthralled.

He gave her hand the slightest tug. An invitation to come closer if she wanted to, but still slight enough that she could pretend she didn’t notice. But it wasn’t like she was going to ignore it. She stepped even closer, her leg pressing against his. “I am more than happy to keep helping with that exposure therapy. You’re coming to the Santa Mystery Hat thing tomorrow, right?” They were so close that her words came out as a whispered breath in the crisp night air, the words making little puffs of warmth in the cold night air.

“Of course,” he breathed, his lips just inches from hers.

Her eyes searched his, trying to unravel everything he might be thinking, and his eyes searched right back, probably trying to guess what she was thinking, too. She could search his eyes all night long and not tire of it.

And then a car drove past, and whatever spell they had been under was broken in an instant. Jack stood up straight and said, “We shouldn’t. I’m your boss.”

“Yeah,” she said, acknowledging the part about him being her boss, wishing it hadn’t sounded like she was also acknowledging the “we shouldn’t” part.

He gave her hand a squeeze, then said, “I’ll see you tomorrow night?”

She nodded as he opened Elfie’s door, then she gave him a smile as she sat in her seat. At least they had tomorrow.