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

24. Grace

GRACE

I felt so sneaky, so discreet. Boone took my hand and led me toward the dining room. To the left was the spa section of the inn that I had yet to visit. To the right was the corridor Boone had stormed down when he’d taken the radio from the front room the day we’d heard it play.

The “old” part of the house, Junie had called it.

“Everything was remodeled but this section,” he said. “We don’t generally bring anyone else back here, but I figured since Junie already did, I could make an exception.”

I giggled.

“This was my parents’ room.” He pointed to the door on the right. “Junie’s is there. She’s had the same room her whole life. And her mom’s is here.” He pointed to the next one. “And then this…”

He dug a set of keys form his pocket. They jangled in his hand, and he selected a slim key, inserting it into the lock. “As you know, this was my room.”

He opened the door and waited for me to enter before clicking on the lamp situated on the dresser by the door.

My heart lodged itself in my throat. Even though I’d been here before, I saw everything with new eyes. This was what I’d hoped to find back at his cottage. Evidences of his personality, his interests—of who Boone Harper was.

A calendar from 2005 hung on the wall featuring pictures of horses. Prize ribbons created a montage of color above the narrow bed. The cowboy hats that had hung from pegs on the wall above the closet door were still there, as was the poster labeled Roadkill Café, which listed all kinds of gruesome offerings with goofy names for people to choose from like a fake menu.

The room was tidy and clean. I had a better idea of who Boone had been than I would have it he’d just told me that he’d rodeoed or loved horses and weird humor.

“It looks like sixteen-year-old you will be back any minute,” I said.

He pulled at his neck and leaned against the dresser. “Yeah, that was my mom. She wanted me to have a place of my own if I ever needed it.”

“Then why didn’t you move back here when you came back?”

He stared at his hands. “They needed someone to keep an eye on the old cottage. Local kids kept breaking into it and trashing things inside. And I wanted solitude.” He gave me a sad smile.

My heart pricked at his words. “I get that.”

I took a few steps farther into the room, holding out an arm before resting it at my side. The other still held my leatherbound notebook.

“All right, we’re inside,” I said. “And I’m dying to know: Did you read my stuff?”

It felt like my nerves were jackhammering my body.

“I…saw a page or two.”

Oh, boy. My eyes closed as I waited for the floor to open and swallow me whole. That was never meant to happen. No one was ever meant to see those words but me.

The personal ones. The Boone-obsessed ones.

“Is it true?” His whispered voice tiptoed to me.

I opened my eyes. His voice wasn’t the only thing that had come closer. He had, too.

Boone was only a reach away, and his proximity lit the very air between us with an electric charge that made it hard to breathe.

“Is what true?”

After another step, he tapped a finger to the notebook currently clutched against my chest. Tap. Tap. Even though he didn’t even touch me, each impact sank straight into me.

“Are these really your feelings? Or am I only going to become a character in your book?”

Was he bothered by that prospect? Or was the low timbre of his voice a result of something else?

I didn’t know what to say. From the minute I’d met him, he’d gotten under my skin, and I couldn’t help trying to craft a character after someone so interesting. So un-ignorable.

This was one of those points of no return. The train chugging rapidly, faster and faster on the track regardless of the fact that the bridge hadn’t yet been completed.

I had two options: I could play it off, keep my feelings to myself, go home, and live with regret that I’d never taken a chance while it’d been right in front of me.

Or I could confess this everything inside of me. See what happened. That way, even if nothing did, at least I wouldn’t have the regret of not trying.

I was a lit match leading its way to dynamite.

It was time to see if Boone was fireproof…

“They’re true,” I said, pinning my eyes to his. “I kept trying to write, but all I could think about was you, and I couldn’t concentrate on anything else until I got down how you made me feel?—”

“That’s all I needed to know.” He pushed me against the door, his fingers digging into my hips.

I wrapped my arms around him, taking everything he wanted to give. His mouth had urgency, a parched sort of thirst only for me. I matched his pace, allowing his lips to part mine, to deepen the taste, the feel, the wanting flourishing inside of me.

His kiss answered a call that only he could. He kissed me long, slow, and hard, his body flushed against mine. His mouth trailed to my throat while his hands roved, lifting me from the ground. I was in a haze, so much so that when he lowered me until my feet returned to the floor, I had to lean against him for several moments.

“I had to see you again,” he said, holding me tightly. “I’ve thought about nothing but you since you left.”

I couldn’t grasp this. My head was still trying to come back to earth. “I thought you couldn’t have the reminder of your daughter’s name.”

His thumbs stroked my cheeks. The light was dim, but I saw well enough how dilated his pupils were. “I was trying to convince us both it would never work because you nearly undid me this morning, Grace. You looked so amazing in that just-woke-up kind of way, and it was all I could do not to take you back to the couch and kiss you then and there.”

My heart was a hot air balloon, swelling and rising in my chest.

“Were you really going to name your daughter Grace?”

A muscle ticked in his jaw, and while he lowered his hands back to my waist, he didn’t take his chocolate brown eyes from me. “Yes. But I owe you an apology.”

“Another one?”

He pressed another kiss to my lips. “Yes. You aren’t a painful reminder. I’ve been hiding from my heart for so long. I hide away at the cottage until Christmas is over because I can’t bear the reminder, but now, you’re everywhere there, too. I was going to wait out the holiday, except you left me this love note.”

“Love note?”

“That entry you wrote. Your notebook.”

It was only then I realized I no longer held it. Peering around, I saw it lying on the floor not far from our feet. I must have dropped it when he’d kissed me.

Boone bent for it, placing it on the dresser before sliding his hands around me once more.

I was overwhelmed, utterly and completely. It was a good thing he was there, holding me, keeping me on my feet. I pressed my forehead to his chest, feeling his heart thrum.

“I can’t believe I’ve only known you for a matter of days,” I said. “It feels like I’ve known you so much longer.”

“I know.” His voice was a rumble. “I’ve been trying to figure that out, too. It’s like something inside you calls to something inside me. It’s done that since we met, and I tried ignoring it. But when things are true, you can’t ignore them. And I couldn’t ignore that part of you that belongs with me.”

He brought his mouth back to mine once more, and this time, the kiss was more tender, as though it held a promise inside that was only for me.

This moment, his words. I didn’t know what to say. I defaulted to joking since that was what I could wrap my head around right now. Maybe it was because it felt like he was making promises he couldn’t keep.

“Just what did you read?” I asked when he pulled back, half joking and half dying to know. With a lurch in my stomach, I gripped his shirt in my fists. “Please tell me you didn’t read the Demon Boone parts of my story.”

Laughing, Boone pulled away to look into my eyes. “The what?”

I toyed with the hair on the back of his head. “Back when I was angry at you, I made you the villain.”

He laughed harder, pulling me close to him once more. “I didn’t read anything like that. Except now, I want to.”

His hands settled in at my waist, his inquisitive gaze poured into me, and his voice lowered. “But I did read how you were confused by my actions.”

Oh, right. That part.

His hands relocated to my face. Like he couldn’t get enough of touching me. “Are you confused by me, Grace?”

I hooked my hand around his wrist, and he continued to stroke my cheek. “Absolutely. You are a mystery to me. This whole situation—why you’d even want me—is a mystery.”

“I told you. No woman has caught my eye since my wife died. And plenty of them have tried.”

“But why? I can’t read you. Sometimes you’re so open and expressive, and I think you’re okay with me. That you like me.” Hello, pushing me against the door for that kiss that I was pretty sure would ruin any other kisses I’d ever have again.

“Like this morning, you push me away and have this mask, this wall, like you don’t want me anywhere near you.”

He brought his forehead to mine and ran his fingers down my arms, sending tingles across my skin the whole way down until his hands threaded through mine.

“I’m sorry for that. It’s my own inner battle, I guess. It doesn’t mean I don’t want you. If anything, it means I want you more than I should.”

I shook my head. “I don’t get that.”

“I’m not sure how to explain. Letting you into my life…after I’ve shut everyone out for so long. It’s not easy.”

“I get that. It’s just?—”

“Just what? What else confuses you?”

I left his embrace, stepping away, needing to think. He’d shown me his past. I could do the same.

Keeping my eyes closed, I spoke. “Because I’m so unwantable. Rejection is my lot in life—with my writing, with my love life, with my career. It’s why I’ve been stuck at that stupid job, because every other job I’ve tried for turned me down. I’ve just gotten used to it.”

“You got rejected?”

“My first book, yeah. I submitted it to agents, and none of them wanted it.”

Boone leaned his elbows back on the dresser behind him. “Yet you’re not giving up on your writing.”

“No, I’m not,” I said, not sure where he was going with this.

He stepped away from the dresser. “That doesn’t sound like a woman who’s accepted rejection. Or a woman who’s unwantable. It’s just some words on a page. It doesn’t reflect who you are as a person.”

His tender words rang with so much truth they brought tears to my eyes. “Thank you.”

“And from what I read, your words aren’t the problem.”

My breathing stilled, making my heartbeat that much more noticeable. “How much did you read?”

He inched closer. “Enough to know that you’re crazy about me.”

“You mean you couldn’t already tell?”

His fingers found mine again. Just a touch, but its warmth seeped into me. “Then you should know, you’re having the same effect on me.”

“I am?”

“Yes. That’s why I’m having such a hard time staying away from you. Even though I know I should. So, know this, you tantalizing woman, that from what I can see, and taste” —he dipped in for a kiss— “and smell and touch, you and completely wantable.”

My body lost every ounce of solidarity. I was goo, a puddle on the floor under the weight of his words. In one fell swoop, he’d told me everything I didn’t know I needed to hear.

Tears welled in my eyes at his sincerity, at his admission, at his everything, and I struggled to take a breath.

“I know you’re leaving,” he said. “I know we can never have more than tonight.”

“I know,” I breathed, inhaling the scent of two-stroke exhaust still embedded into his skin.

I loved that smell. That was the smell of impulsive action just to get to me, and it meant so much. More than he could possibly know.

His hands settled around me, and we stood there in a motionless dance, our bodies barely skimming, our breath heating the air between us, our foreheads together while dreams and desires of what could never be were shared like unspoken secrets.

“They’re going to be gone until at least midnight. While I can think of a few ways we could pass that time?—”

He bent in, pressing a kiss to the hollow beneath my air and making my whole body tremble.

“—it might be better if we get to know each other better first. So tell me more about you.”

I blinked at this and reared back enough to look into the glimmer of his dark eyes. “More about me?”

“Yes.” He kissed me again. “I want to know everything.”

We settled onto his bed with our backs to the wall and our feet hanging over its end. Boone held my hand while we talked.

I told him how about how close I was to my mom, how even though she got a little insistent at times, she was my best friend, how hard it had been for my sister to marry and have a family of her own and to feel like I was the black sheep because I wasn’t married yet.

I told him about my degree in English literature, how useless it was, but how I didn’t regret getting it because that degree meant I’d gotten to study important, timeless works of classic literature, which I loved.

“No wonder you can’t find a job,” he joked at that.

I smacked his leg playfully before laying my head on his shoulder.

We talked about his childhood, racing through the halls of a much smaller version of this inn, of his parents and how they’d supported his ambition to rodeo, of the time he’d gotten bucked from a crazed stallion and nearly been trampled.

We talked about his wife, how much he missed her, how much it had hurt to lose his daughter before she was even born.

“I’m so sorry,” I told him, stroking his long fingers with mine. “I can’t even imagine.”

And I couldn’t. I’d never been in a relationship like that before. I wanted kids, but I hadn’t achieved that point in my life yet, either. I’d heard of the love a parent has for their children, but experiencing it was something else entirely.

We’d reached a warm level of emotional intimacy—something else I’d never had with a man before. I hoped he wouldn’t take what I was about to say wrong.

“Boone.”

“Hm?” He leaned his head against mine and traced the back of my hand with his thumb.

“I didn’t know your wife, but I doubt she would want you to hide away. It’s okay to live your life, and there’s no better time than Christmas to find healing. If it were me, I would want you to find happiness, even if I wasn’t there.”

Maybe that was why he was here. Maybe deep down, he wanted to awaken from the sleep he’d drifted in for far too long.

The movement of his thumb on my hand stilled. He lifted his head away from mine. But he didn’t argue with me or ask me to stop. I took that as encouraging and went on.

“Maybe that’s why the radio played for us.”

He leaned his head back against mine, nosing in against my temple, and groaned. “Not you, too.”

“Me, too?” What did he mean?

He crossed one ankle over the other. “Junie has been going on about it.”

I lifted a single shoulder. “Junie hasn’t said anything to me, but I did hear this random couple arguing. They warned me that if I heard music from the radio, I needed to run.”

Boone chuckled at this.

I went on, staring at our entwined hands. “They told me the radio thinks it’s some kind of matchmaker, and that you and I aren’t the only ones who’ve heard it.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah. The woman said she talked to Junie about it, and Junie told her that any time anyone hears music come from the radio, strange things happen in their lives. Some of them ended up married.”

“I know. I’ve heard the stories my whole life. But marriage is a normal thing.”

“The events themselves are normal enough. But the circumstances?” Lacie had claimed a snowman had pronounced her and Jared husband and wife, after all.

That was anything but normal.

“Junie tried to convince me of this, too.”

He lifted his head away from mine, and this time, though he didn’t move much from me physically, I felt the distance increase in other ways.

“We’re in the mountains, Grace,” he said with a crooked smile. “It snows here.”

“Yes, but that wasn’t regular snow. The music…”

He shifted on the bed, shaking the mattress beneath us. “Even if a magical song we both happened to hear is exerting the forces of nature to bring us together, that doesn’t mean we don’t have a choice.”

“Maybe,” I said. “And maybe not.”

“What does that mean?”

“I only took my notebook out once at your cottage, Boone, and then I put it right back again. I’m not sure how it got left there, let alone how it ended up on your dining table of all places for you to read.”

Had the Santa magic been behind that? For some reason, Santa Claus—wherever he was—believed we should be together. Who was I to argue with Santa and his enchanted radio?

I tilted in to kiss Boone’s cheek, but he only frowned at me. “So you’re saying you don’t think you have a choice in this? You’re just going along with it because you think a radio should dictate your life?”

I couldn’t figure out this change in him. “Why is this bothering you so much all of a sudden? I thought you said you were a believer.”

Boone’s eyes closed. He exhaled long and hard. “I’m such an idiot. What are we doing here?”

He was upset by this? I retraced our conversation, wondering where things had gotten off.

“What’s wrong?”

He slid off the bed. The floorboards creaked beneath his steps as he paced toward the door. His shoulders hunched, and he paused to rest a hand on the wall and speak over his shoulder.

“I am. I believe in magic, Grace. That’s the problem.”

“How can that be a problem?” Things were slipping from my grasp, too rapidly for me to understand. He’d said he knew we only had tonight. Why was he pulling away again?

“I’m such an idiot,” he said again.

I pushed off the bed and strode toward him. “You’re not an idiot. Tonight has been amazing. I don’t get what the problem here is.”

“I’m an idiot because I forgot.”

“You forgot what?”

“About magic. About this between us.”

My brows snapped down. “What’s wrong with this between us?” I’d been floating on clouds since he’d blazed in on his snowmobile. I’d been trying to soak up as much time with him—and as much of his kisses—as I could.

What was so wrong with that? Did he regret this?

He raked his hand through his hair. “We’ve been pushed together by a magical radio, Grace. I’ve been able to fight off feelings for every other woman for three years now, except you.”

“So?”

His face hardened. His jaw went tight. “So that makes me think what I’m feeling for you isn’t real at all.”

His words were a thunderclap. Minutes before, he’d told me how wantable I was—and now, he was taking it back?

“How can this not be real? I’ve never felt anything so strong for anyone before.”

“Exactly.”

He sniffed and lifted his hands only to lower them again. The distance I’d sensed building between us reached its peak, the sides growing steeper and being covered by loose gravel, so my every step began to slide. I had no footing in this conversation anymore.

He risked ruining Harper’s Inn’s landscape by traveling via snowmobile just to rush here, to see me again and return my notebook. He’d admitted how I made him feel, and now, he was denying it?

Boone backed away another step, closer to the door. His retreat severed the connection we’d been building since he made his gallant arrival.

“The pass should be cleared tomorrow,” he said, a hard edge in his voice. “You should be able to catch your flight.”

Tears stung my eyes. “Boone, don’t do this.”

“None of this was real. It never was, not from the minute we heard that blasted radio play. I’m sorry. Goodbye, Grace.”

He pressed his lips into a thin line and then strode from the room. I followed him out to the inn’s entrance. The bell over the door jingled as he thrust it open, and I allowed the frigid air to overtake me as I watched him storm down the front steps, kick his snowmobile to life, and drive it back through the trees.

And I stood there, feeling certain I’d never see Boone Harper again.