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

21. Grace

GRACE

Boone’s reservations from earlier that morning didn’t leave me alone. This time, I let him help me up. Together, we trudged to the sleigh and unburied as much snow as we could. I swiped the snow free from the bench and scooped it out of the sleigh while Boone fed and prepped Hazelnut.

And then, silently, we sat. Boone clicked his teeth and guided Hazelnut back through the woods. Back to the inn.

Our conversation tormented me the entire way. I couldn’t appreciate the splendor of the snow-capped trees or the sparkle on the newfound powder. Cold soaked into my bones once more, chasing away the last dregs of Boone’s warmth.

When he dropped me off, he didn’t kiss me.

I was pretty sure the kiss during our wrestling match in the snow was the last one I’d ever get from him. The thought carved a wedge into my chest that made it hard to breathe.

The minute I made it up to my room, I needed to warm up again. So I stripped down and turned the shower on as hot as I could stand it.

My shower lasted much longer than it should have. If I’d been at home, Mom would have been pounding on the door, demanding I shut the hot water off and save some for everyone else.

But I wasn’t at home. I was at an inn in northern Montana and had just had the most incredible, heartrending night of my life.

Boone had imprinted on the underside of my skin. I saw his face every time I closed my eyes. I heard his voice in between sprays of water.

What if I wanted to keep you?

I hugged myself, remembering how entrancing, how safe, being held by him had felt.

He kept himself closed off from people on purpose. A person who’d been so badly burned before would rarely put himself that close to a fire ever again.

That made the fact that he’d opened himself up to me pack that much more punch. It brought the things that had happened between us to unbelievable levels. Kissing by the fire. Hearing about his past, his heartbreak. Discovering the secrets he kept buried so deeply inside.

It’s for the best, I told myself as the memory of him guiding Hazelnut to the barn and then leaving again on her back—no sleigh this time—struck me.

I let the shower’s warmth and humidity enshroud me, and other conversations elbowed into the edges of my brain—conversations between my fictional characters that I’d been trying to tap into for days now.

Showering always loosened ideas and thoughts. It was like the hot water relaxed my muscles from the top of my skull, down my spine, and to the backs of my heels released some kind of inspirations endorphins.

There’d been so many times when I’d gotten stuck in a manuscript, unsure of where to take the story or what to have the characters do next, only to have the solution manifest itself unexpectedly while I was in the middle of a shower.

This was both awesome and frustrating.

It wasn’t like I had pen and paper in here. If there was anything I’d learned since becoming a writer, it was that once an idea dawned, like lightning, it wouldn’t last long.

The chatter in my head didn’t stop. This was a heart wrenching scene between the heroine and her hero—a gripping, emotional conversation where both characters laid out their hearts for the other to see after keeping their feelings to themselves for so long.

It was a pivotal moment in my book, people. I just knew it.

Hurriedly, I washed my hair, clutching the characters’ dialogues rambling in my mind. I turned off the water, barely dried off before knotting the towel around me, and skipped out from the bathroom into my room.

My crocheted bag slumped on the floor by the bed, right where I’d plopped it down when I came back in. I snagged it.

The bag wasn’t as heavy as usual. Ignoring this, I thrust my hand inside, ready for my notebook. But the more I dug for it, the less I found it.

My hand wept one direction, then the other, only to come up with a few empty gum wrappers and one of my pens.

“Oh, no,” I said with a breath.

Memory flooded my brain as I tried to retrace my steps. I’d gotten it out this morning and scribbled inside. Then I’d eaten breakfast and argued with Boone. Then…

Oh, no.

Just being around Boone, all notions of retrieving the notebook had been forgotten. Did I leave my notebook at his cottage? Or did it fall out of the sleigh on our way back?

I didn’t take it out at all during the return trip. Which meant…

My stomach sank.

“No, no, no.” I placed a hand on the knot keeping my towel in place. Panic pushed me to my feet with nowhere to go.

I’d written more than just stories in that notebook. After he’d kissed me, before drifting off to sleep, I’d poured a soap opera episode’s worth of romantic, stupid feelings in there. Things no one else was ever meant to read, least of all the man I’d written them about.

Was he the kind of man who’d peek without permission? Last night, he’d asked if he could read what I was writing. Hopefully, he wouldn’t invade my written privacy, even if I was stupid enough to leave my notebook behind.

“It’ll be fine,” I told myself.

I wasn’t sure how, though. I didn’t have his number. I didn’t have any idea how to get back to his cottage on my own.

But I did know where the barn was.

“I’ll just see if he’s out there,” I said only to have a meddling thought stop that one in its tracks.

This was Christmas Eve. Boone hadn’t stayed. Once he dropped me and the sleigh off, he’d headed back to hide away like he always did.

There had to be some way to reach him.

I dressed quickly but with care, in my favorite Christmas shirt with the vintage truck on the front and a pine tree in its truck bed. I tucked my skinny jeans into the ankle boots I’d brought and dusted makeup on my face.

He’d seen me when I’d first woken up, but I still wanted to make a good impression, considering how we’d all but ended things between us the last time we’d spoken.

Even so, a ridiculous amount of excitement at the prospect of seeing him again kept up. I’d never been good at hiding my feelings. Undoubtedly, I wouldn’t be able to hide from him how much I wanted to be near him again once I was, well, near him.

I had to make it clear I only wanted the notebook.

“It’ll be fine,” I told myself, pausing at my room’s door with my hand on the handle. “We’ll keep our distance. I’m going home. I have to remember that.”

The minute I opened the door, voices resonated in the hall. The same woman I’d spoken with the night I’d heard the radio play was out in the hall again, but she wasn’t alone this time. Her auburn hair was in a bun on top of her head, and rather than the friendly smile she’d offered me the other night, agitation showed clearly on her pretty face.

She faced a handsome man standing at the other end of the hall and called out, “No, I’m not, because it’s not my room, remember?”

The man raised a finger to his lips to shush her and hurried toward her. “People are going to think we’re nuts, Lacie,” he said. “Will you please calm down.”

The woman folded her arms. “I want to go home.”

“Everything okay?” I asked.

I had a feeling I’d stepped right into a couple’s squabble, but since I was already in the middle of it, I couldn’t exactly pretend I hadn’t heard what they were saying, especially not when Lacie and I had chatted in such a friendly way before.

“No, it’s not okay,” Lacie said to me. “Since the minute we got to this inn, our lives have turned upside down. No one will believe we’re not married. Even the computers are showing my last name is something it isn’t!”

The man’s steely jaw was set. He closed the rest of the distance between us. I didn’t know what to say.

“What are you talking about?” I asked.

“I had my own room when we first got here. Your room, in fact.” She gestured to the door I’d just exited.

A fist clamped over my heart. Was she going to accuse me of kicking her out?

“I didn’t have anything to do with that,” I began, but she went on.

“Now, it’s gone, and all this snow closed the pass. So we’re stuck here. Sharing a room together. Do you know how hard it is to share a room with your ridiculously gorgeous best friend? This is Jared.”

He raised his hand in a little wave, and either wasn’t affected by the fact that she called him gorgeous—he kind of was, with dark hair and a stocky build—or he was too caught up in her explanation to do much about it.

And I kind of got what she was saying. I’d never had a friend who was a guy, but from the way he gravitated near her, from the tension I sensed budding between them, I suspected there was more than friendship going on.

All speculation aside, I still didn’t grasp everything she was saying. How could Lacie have a room of her own and not have one now?

I thought of the strange circumstances when I’d first arrived at Harper’s Inn.

“Weird,” I said. “Because when I got here, even though I had a room booked, the computers didn’t even have me in the system.”

“Really?” Lacie said. “What did you do? How did you end up in my room?”

She flapped her hand toward Room 13 behind me. Heat prickled along the edges of my skin.

“I don’t know. Junie just told me the next day that a room had opened up.”

“It sure did,” Lacie muttered. “The weirdest part of all is that she doesn’t remember that I had it before.”

“She doesn’t?”

“No,” Lacie said.

“So…” I didn’t know what else to say.

Lacie saved me the trouble. She pressed a hand to her forehead.

“Forget it,” she said. “But if you hear music from that fancy radio downstairs? Run.”

This warning prickled down my spine like a spider crawling down my back. A jolt of sizzling unease zinged through me, making me squirm. Because Boone and I had heard the radio play.

Lacie turned away, toward the door across from mine, but I stuck out a hand to stop her.

“Sorry, but what do you mean? The radio downstairs? Do you mean the one they claim was delivered here by Santa Claus himself?”

Conflicted rested in Lacie’s gaze, striking pity within me. Jared scrubbed a hand across his jaw.

Hm. Whatever was happening between these two, it clearly distressed them both. Did that mean they’d heard the radio play, too?

“I mean, that thing is wreaking havoc on our lives,” Lacie said, lowering her voice. “I’ve been snowed in here with my best friend. We were married by snowman, and now whatever supposed magic —” She bent the first two fingers on each of her hands. “—is streaming from that radio, it’s gone completely crazy!”

She lost me at married by snowman.

“Hang on. You mean you were married next to a snowman?”

Lacie peered at Jared behind her. He was quite a few inches taller than she was. He gave her an it’s-up-to-you kind of shrug, and she moved in, lowering her voice.

“No. We were married by snowman. I mean, a snowman pronounced us husband and wife. You know, like the song.”

She bobbed her head as if to lighten the impact of her words.

My brows shot upward. “You—a snowman married you two?”

Was Lacie serious? Was this some kind of joke?

“Yeah. I know it sounds insane, but we were building a snowman outside, and then we heard this music and our snowman, like spoke. I asked Junie—you know, the girl at the desk. And she admitted they have this joke in their family that the radio is some kind of matchmaker.”

“Junie said that?”

Did Boone think the same thing? Was that why he’d gotten so angry at the radio that day?

Lacie went on. “Once that pass opens, we’re going home, but I’m not even sure that will do anything. Will everyone think we’re married, too? Are we going to have to get some kind of divorce now?”

Jared tugged on her arm, luring her away before she said anything else. The two of them stalked toward the mouth of the stairs before I had the chance to ask them anything else.

I stood there gaping for several moments. What was that about? How could the mix-up with our rooms happen the way it did without Junie being the wiser? And I couldn’t completely buy the claim about them not being married—was she for real?

“None of your business, Grace,” I told myself, shaking the questions away.

They’d have to sort things out for themselves. Besides, the other claim in their story was unsettling enough.

The claim that the music from the radio downstairs was the cause of all this confusion.

It would have been laughable if I hadn’t heard it play, too. If I hadn’t heard the strains of sound out in the woods.

I’d heard it chiming several other times as well—once, before I’d found the necklace that had made him so angry, and again right before the snow had blasted seemingly out of a cloudless sky.

My heart stopped in my chest at the thought. Impulsively, I dashed forward and caught Lacie and Jared on their way to the stairs.

“Hang on a second,” I said, slightly breathless.

The two of them paused. Lacie gripped the banister and glanced up at me.

“Are you saying you think there’s something magical going on at this inn?” I asked.

Boone claimed to believe in Santa Claus. Did that mean he also believed in magic?

Not just jokingly in response to my questions. But honestly. Truly. Magic.

Did it really exist?

I wrote fantasy romance, but that didn’t mean I thought magic was real.

Lacie and Jared met one another’s eyes. His eyes darkened. Hers were devoted. And something unspoken passed between them in that glance. The charge between them made the air hum like standing close to an electric fence.

Much as they tried to deny it, there was more than friendship going on between these two. No wonder no one would believe they weren’t married.

They could have fooled me.

“Yeah,” Lacie said. “What else could it be?”

I blinked a few times, stunned by her simple response.

If there was actual magic at play here, did Boone know? He had to. He was the one who told me the radio’s origins in the first place.

Now, more than ever, I needed to talk to him.

“Are you going to the bonfire tonight?” Jared asked.

“What bonfire?” I was glad for a topic I could wrap my head around.

“It’s a Christmas Eve tradition here,” Lacie explained, propping her foot on the step above the one on which she stood. “The guests pile into the sleighs and ride up the mountain to the actual point they claim is America’s North Pole. There, they tell the story of the night Santa Claus stopped by, and everyone drinks cocoa and sings ‘Kumbaya.’”

“Sleigh rides?” I took heart in that.

I had to find Boone. From the sound of things, he’d be one of the drivers tonight.

I just hoped if he did find my notebook, that he wouldn’t read it before then.