Merry Mended Hearts (Santa’s Radio Christmas Romance #1)

19. Boone

BOONE

I laid in my bed and stared at the dark ceiling for a long time, listening to the wind. My heart paced, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t shake how good it had felt to hold Grace, to have her in my arms. To kiss her.

The mellow tone of her voice refused to leave my brain. The idea of sirens calling sailors to their deaths had always been a fictional notion. I’d loved Amy and I’d been attracted to her, too.

But I wasn’t sure I’d ever had anyone call to me like Grace did.

With her as striking and lovely as she was, wearing my clothes as she had been, with our conversation coming so easily, with her body so close to mine—the guard I’d worked so hard to maintain around her had completely crumbled.

I’d opened up to her. Said things I never should have said. Done things I never should have done. Yet, it took everything in me not to go back out there and kiss her again.

I rolled to my side, hoping a new position would be the key to relaxing, to drifting off like I wanted to. The wind continued wailing against the window, seeping through its cracks like it always did.

The cold was welcome against my flushed skin, but I could imagine how someone who wasn’t used to it might be that much more affected by it. That thought only resonated with me that much more because that was what Grace was to me.

She was a weather change I wasn’t prepared for. A heat wave my icy heart couldn’t withstand. I’d given in. I’d melted. And I didn’t regret that fact for a second.

That thought gave me pause. I shifted beneath the blankets, thumping onto my back once more.

It wasn’t only her kisses that wrecked me. Her comments about her job wouldn’t leave me alone, either. What kind of life would that be, to sit at a desk all day and talk to strangers on the phone? She clearly wasn’t happy doing it.

I grunted at this. I shouldn’t care what made her happy. I should never have let her in, and now that she’d wriggled her way into my brain, she wouldn’t leave.

The wind outside rattled the window panes. It was a good thing this cottage was made of stone, or it would do some serious damage against its structure. I hoped the barn held up.

Tossing the covers back, my flushed skin welcomed the icy cool. I placed my feet on the cold floor and strode to the window, parting the curtains and feeling the sheer chill coming from the glass.

Sure enough, the snow continued to swirl, eddying through the darkness. Kind of like the storm that Grace presented coursing through me right now.

Resting my hands on the windowsill, I pressed my forehead to the chilly glass, letting the bite seep into my skin. I had to get Grace out of my personal space.

I’d never seen a storm pick up the way this one had. It went from still and calm to chaos in seconds. And what was with the melody in the air just before the weather started its tantrum?

“No way,” I said, inhaling and staring out into the night once more.

This time, the chills sweeping down my spine had nothing to do with the room’s temperature. I crossed to the bed and sank onto its edge, staring at the window. Staring at nothing.

Junie had said the radio had been meddling in others’ love lives. Even her own.

But that was ridiculous. Santa’s radio couldn’t be the reason for the storm.

I rose and shuffled the curtains closed, leaving the room in complete darkness rather than the slices of moonlight that had swept in. As much as I tried to deny it, I couldn’t think of any other explanation for the melody that both Grace and I had heard.

My hand scraped over my face, and I rubbed my arms, returning to the blankets and sinking back onto the bed. It wasn’t that I didn’t believe it?—

The problem was, I did.

I’d been told the story enough times it had become gospel truth. Was Santa out there, somewhere? Spying on Grace and me? Interfering with our lives?

Were the feelings mushrooming in my chest real at all, or were they a magical result of the radio’s interference?

That was what I got for considering again. Grace’s comments earlier had had me momentarily rethinking my lack of Christmas tree—something I hadn’t even contemplated opening my life up to again.

But she’d gotten me to consider it. To give Christmas a second chance.

It wasn’t that I no longer revered the Christ child or feel that St. Nick existed. I’d simply done away with the fripperies and overdone extravaganza of trees and reindeer, of gifts and bows and music.

It’d been too painful to even consider.

Amy had loved all of that. She would go overboard turning our apartment into a shrine to all things red and green. Paper-cut snowflakes dangling from the ceiling, twinkling lights in the windows, cinnamon sticks, and pine-scented candles—she’d done it all.

She’d been wrapping presents for days, piling them around the tree in our apartment, which had been overladen with huge, shining bulbs that took up half of our living room. I’d slid the couch closer to the corner just to make room for that thing.

“Why are you wrapping the baby’s clothes?” I’d asked when I’d come home from work one day and caught her wrapping a pair of tiny pink booties.

I hadn’t bothered fighting my amusement at the sight. Amy sat on the floor, but her belly was so round she could barely bend forward to cut the paper, so I’d sat down to help her, cutting paper and handing her pieces of tape.

“The baby won’t be here to open them yet,” I added.

Amy sank back, resting her hands behind her, allowing her swollen stomach to bulge in front of her.

“I may still have two months left,” she’d said, “but if you could feel what I feel with how she moves around, you’d know our Baby Grace is already here.”

Arching forward, she took the tape I offered and placed it on the last bit of paper she’d folded around the booties.

My heart ached at the memory, but the pain wasn’t as profound as it had once been. It was true that time had a healing effect—but time didn’t completely erase every part of the pain her loss had caused me.

Fragments of sorrow surfaced now. Losing my wife had gutted me. I’d lain beside Amy every night, resting a hand on her stomach to feel our baby kick, talking about the best ways of parents and arguing over who our little girl was going to look more like.

Amy had rolled over and smiled that smile I loved. She’d rested her hands on my face.

“I hope she looks like you,” she’d said. “You were always better looking.”

I’d stopped her argument with a kiss, holding her tight as if that would help keep the excitement inside of me from bursting out of my chest. I couldn’t wait for the day our baby would b born. For the day I’d be able to hold the small girl in my arms.

But that day never came.

A teenaged boy driving a pickup truck had run a red light because he was texting. The roads had been too slick. He’d slid through the intersection and crashed into the side of Amy’s car, killing her instantly. The baby’s heartbeat faded in the hospital as the doctors had tried to save her.

Tears pooled in my eyes at the surge of memory. I hurried to wipe them, choking back a sob, not wanting give Grace any indication that I was in here, hurting.

Grace.

I closed my eyes. From the minute she’d told me her name back in Harper’s Inn the day she’d arrived, I’d been determined to keep my distance from her.

What was I doing? How could I be remotely close to this woman who shared the name my late wife and I were planning on giving our baby daughter? Why would I let Grace get this close to me when I knew she couldn’t stay that way?

I couldn’t let her get close to me. Not after the pain I’d experienced in losing Amy.

My wife and child had been pronounced dead on Christmas Eve. I’d returned to our empty apartment and knocked down the tree in an emotional rage. I tore every strand of light from the windows. I kicked all the presents she’d wrapped into a corner. And I’d crumpled to the floor because I had nothing to keep me upright any longer.

Now, every Christmas tree I saw was a reminder that my wife and baby were gone. But when Grace had mentioned Christmas trees, the charge igniting my defenses like an electric fence didn’t surface.

That was the reason I’d invited her to share a blanket with me. Why I’d told her about my wife and let her see into my life. Once I’d held her, I’d only wanted her closer. When she wove her fingers through mine and shared secrets about her life, when I caught the glittering light in her eyes, when I’d been able to draw in a fuller breath than I’d managed in years, I’d lost my senses.

I’d pushed away the possibility of loving someone again for so long, but I’d let those uncertainties go.

And she’d let me. She’d wanted me as much as I wanted her.

Junie had beaten the idea of loving someone new over and over again in my head so many times I should have a concussion by now. Her attempts had only irritated me—but was she right?

Could I allow myself to feel the things Grace made me feel?

I’d loved Amy with all my heart and soul and everything in between. She’d meant more to me than my own life. I wasn’t sure I’d fully breathed since the day she died.

Not until I held Grace.

One tick at a time, my body relaxed. I stretched my legs out beneath the quilt until they reached the coolest part of the mattress—a sensation I loved. I rolled onto my back and stared up at the ceiling while possibility floated before my eyes.

Could I love again? Could I feel this—take in full breaths, smile, hold her, want her?

I was alive with Grace. I didn’t realize just how much of my time was spent going through the motions. But buying her that ornament, taking her out in the sleigh, working to get the horse in the barn, cooking, everything with her made my blood beat with purpose.

It was as though my heart pulsed for the first time, until the flicker of light in her eyes and the softness in her smile made me want to never let her go.

But Grace lived in Arizona. She was leaving. It was stupid and reckless to put my heart on my sleeve again, not when attaching myself to her now would only end in more heartbreak.

I had to keep my distance from her. I had to go on eking out my fraction of a life. No radio or Christmas magic was going to change my mind.