“Is my hair standing straight up?” she asked him.
He cocked his head. “No. More sideways.”
That’s what wasn’t so great about sleepovers. And what now? Did she offer him breakfast? Did she show him the door?
He had his cell phone out of his pocket, scrolling through it. “No calls from Ace,” he said with relief.
It was the mark of what kind of man he was that Morgan had not even known he had a cell phone until that moment.
Karl’s had been more than a cell phone: it could practically start his car on command, and she realized now that Karl’s cell phone had been like a third party in their relationship.
And that it would never be like that with Nate Hathoway.
“But I think I better go get her. Saturday is our day. She’s pretty fussy about that.”
“Okay.” Was she being dismissed? That made her feel so bereft she couldn’t even tease him about not going shopping this time.
“You want to spend our day with us?”
Her mouth fell open.
“I promised Ace a sleigh ride.”
A sleigh ride?
She had to say no. Look at how she had just spilled the beans to him last night about her whole life history! Look how she had reacted when she thought she was not going to be included in his plans for the day!
Bereft.
No, throwing out the rule book did not mean leaving herself wide-open to hurt. And to get involved with this man had the potential to make her redefine hurt.
On the other hand, a sleigh ride?
Morgan nearly sighed out loud. It was the kind of family outing her childhood dreams had been full of. Despite her mother creating a picture of a perfect Christmas, there had never been the connection of a perfect Christmas. Christmas activities had involved entertaining, not playing.
Morgan had dreamed of tobogganing and skating and sleigh rides. She had dreamed it in such perfect detail that she could picture it already, with startling clarity. The three of them—her, Nate, Ace—nestled in a sleek red sleigh, their legs covered in a soft, plaid blanket.
He would be holding the reins of a spirited white stallion. The horse would snort, throw up clouds of snow with each prancing footfall. The air would be full of diamond ice crystals and the sound of bells.
There was an old-fashioned romance about his invitation that was irresistible.
“I’d love to join you and Ace on a sleigh ride,” Morgan said.
Even though it was against her better judgment, this thing was unfurling inside her, like a flag. More than happiness. More than excitement. More than anticipation.
This time it was familiar to her, so Morgan identified it much more quickly.
“Happy,” Nate said.
She preened that he had recognized her mood so quickly.
“That’s Ace’s pony’s name. It’s kind of like when people name a Great Dane Tiny. He’s not that great with a sleigh.”
Okay, so he hadn’t recognized her mood. And the white steed was out. Still, gliding across snow-covered fields was gliding across snow-covered fields.
“I’ll come back for you in an hour or so,” he promised.
And he was gone, which was good, because she had been gravely tempted to lean forward, close her eyes and offer her lips as a form of goodbye.
“You’re dreaming,” she warned herself as she heard his vehicle roar to life outside.
In fact, it would have been too easy to dismiss the whole thing as a dream, except that her coat hangers were hung and her Christmas tree was up. Except lights winked from the branches, and the star, that age-old symbol of hope, shone bright from the very top of that tree, a pinnacle she could not have reached without a ladder.
It would be easy to dismiss the whole thing as a dream, except that when Morgan looked in the mirror, her hair was standing up sideways and her cheek held the perfect imprint of his shirt.
“MRS. MCGUIRE, this is Happy.” Ace patted the Shetland pony vigorously, kissed his nose. Ace’s lips were stained an unnatural shade of red as if she had smeared them with raspberries.
“You were right about the lipstick,” Nate had told Morgan, rolling his eyes, when they had picked her up.
“And you were wrong about—”
“Everything,” he admitted. “No hazards of any kind. Don’t ask me to admit I was wrong ever again. It unmans me.”
He was teasing her, and Morgan was coming to enjoy the growing ease between them so much. But she liked the underlying message, too. That somehow their lives were linked, and ever again suggested it might be staying that way.
Even this outing suggested that. By inviting her to this Christmas-card-pretty farm—red barn, snow-covered fields, cows behind white fences—that belonged to his and Ace’s family, weren’t the links that connected them growing stronger?
Now Nate was trying to get a harness on the uncooperative, chunky brown-and-white pony. So far his hand had been stepped on twice. He had said something—both times—quite a bit stronger than “damn,” then shot Morgan looks that dared comment.
But she did not want to be the schoolteacher today. Just a woman enjoying the extraordinary bliss of not being alone, of sharing a wonderful winter day with a glorious man and his adorable little girl.
“This is the meanest horse ever born,” Nate grumbled. “Keep your face away from his teeth, for God’s sake, Ace. He might mistake your lips for an apple.”
“He loves me,” Ace said with certainty. “He won’t bite me.”
“I don’t know why he doesn’t bite her,” Nate told Morgan, apparently not convinced it was love. “He’s bitten me at least six times since our unhappy first meeting. Mostly, now I can manage to outwit him.”
“But not the time he bit you on the bum,” Ace said. “Remember, Daddy?”
“Speaking of being unmanned,” he muttered with a sigh. “That’s kind of a hard one to forget. I couldn’t sit down for a week.”
She shouted with laughter.
The sleigh ride might not be turning out quite as she’d expected, but Morgan loved the feeling growing inside her. It was blissful. She didn’t just feel as if she was being included in this little family outing. She felt as if she belonged.
If she contemplated it, she might find it just a little bit frightening that she was feeling something right now, in this very moment, that she had been waiting her whole life to feel.
But she determined not to contemplate it, not to wreck these precious moments by trying to look into that foggy place that was the future. For once, she would just enjoy what she had been given, no worrying, no analyzing, no planning, no plotting.
“He’s going to be good today,” Ace predicted. “Be good, Happy.”
“Ace thinks he’s going to pull the sleigh. I think he won’t. Unless there’s a cliff nearby that he can pull us all off.”
“I don’t think horses are that…devious, are they?” Morgan asked. The stocky miniature steed trying to sidestep the traces was so different from the stallion of her imagination she laughed out