Even this situation should be showing him something important. He had vowed he did not want to tangle any further with the young schoolteacher.
And yet, here he stood in her front hallway.
Nate knew, the hard way, that life could be wrested out of his control. His young wife had gone out the door, Christmas Eve, for one more thing.
One more thing for Ace’s sock. He could even remember what it was, because she had told him as she went out the door laughing. Reindeer poop. Chocolatecovered raisins that one of the stores had bagged and labeled in tiny ziplock bags.
He’d been so glad to see her laughing, so happy to see her engrossed in getting ready for Christmas that he hadn’t really paid any attention to the snow outside.
Why had he let her go? Why hadn’t he offered to drive her?
And then, instead of Cindy coming back with reindeer poop, there had been that awful knock on the door, and a terrible descent into hell.
So, he knew, firsthand and the hard way, life could be snatched from your control.
It only made him more determined to control the things he could.
And he could still exercise some control over this. And he was aware that he needed to do it. The last thing he needed to do was give in to the insane desire to kiss Morgan again…And not on the cheek this time, either.
Congratulating himself on the return of his strength, feeling as Sampson must have done when his hair grew back and he pulled that building down, Nate dropped his arm, backed away. He needed to go now.
“Look, I’ll make you a mounting board for the coat hangers. I’ve got some really nice barn wood at home that I’d been planning to reclaim. I’ll fasten the board to the studs, so it’s nice and solid, and then put the coat hangers on that.” He looked at his watch. “Rehearsal is nearly over, Miss McGuire.”
And he was aware as he said it that it could be taken a number of ways. That their rehearsal was nearly over. And what would that mean? The real thing to follow?
He hoped not, but now that he had promised her the barn board, he knew his escape was temporary. He was going to have to come back and put it up.
Hopefully he would have time to gird his loins against her before he did that!
They got back to the auditorium just as Mrs. Wellhaven was wrapping up. Ace flew off the stage and into his arms, seeming remarkably unscathed by her hour in the clutches of the dragon.
He lifted her up easily, and he felt the weight and responsibility of loving her, of protecting her from hurt, from more loss.
He glanced at Morgan over his daughter’s head. His tangling with her teacher had the potential to hurt her. Bad.
“Guess what, Daddy?”
“What, sweetheart?”
“Mrs. Wellhaven says one of us, somebody from our class, is going to be the Christmas Angel! They get to stand on a special platform so it looks like they are on the top of the tree. They sing a song all by themselves!”
He knew this latest development had the potential to hurt Ace bad, too. His love for his daughter might blind him to her—like every father he thought his little girl was the most beautiful in the world—but he knew Ace’s was not a traditional beauty. With her croaky voice and funny carrottop, she was hardly Christmas-angel material.
“She’s letting all twenty-two of you think you have a chance of being the Christmas Angel?” He could hear annoyance in his voice, but Ace missed it.
“Not the boys, silly.” She beamed at him. “Just the girls can be Christmas angels. It could be me!”
Ace’s voice was even more croaky than ever, excitement and hope dancing across her very un-angel-like features.
Hope. Wasn’t that the most dangerous thing of all?
Nate’s eyes met Morgan’s over the top of Ace’s head. She didn’t even have the decency to look distressed, to clearly see how unrealistic his daughter’s hopes were.
He felt the weight of wanting to protect his daughter from all of life’s disappointments, felt the weight of his inability to do so.
“I should have beaned Mrs. Wellhaven while I had the chance,” he said darkly. And he felt that even more strongly the next morning at breakfast.
“Daddy, I dreamed about Mommy last night.”
Nate flinched, and then deliberately relaxed his shoulders. He was standing at the kitchen counter, making a packed lunch, his back to Ace, who was floating battle formations with the remains of the breakfast cereal in her bowl.
He knew his own dreams about his wife were never good. Cindy swept away by a raging river, him reaching out but not being able to get to her. Cindy falling from an airplane, him reaching out the door, trying desperately to reach a hand that fell farther and farther away…
He often woke himself up screaming Cindy’s name.
Nate hadn’t heard Ace scream last night. He tried not to let his dread show in his voice, but didn’t turn around to look at her.
“Uh-huh?” He scowled at the lunch ingredients. If he sent peanut butter again was Morgan going to say something? When had he started to care what Morgan had to say?
Probably about the same time he’d been dumb enough to plant that impromptu kiss on her cheek.
It was ridiculous that a full-grown man, renowned for his toughness, legend even, was shirking from the judgments, plentiful as those were, of a grade-one teacher.
“It was a good dream,” his daughter announced, and Nate felt relief shiver across his shoulder blades. Maybe finally, they had reached a turning point. Ace had had a good dream.
He recognized that he, too, seemed to be getting back into the flow of a life. If going shopping and volunteering to help with a town project counted. He suspected it did.
And did it all relate back to Morgan? Again, Nate suspected it did.
In defiance of that fact, and the fact that some part of him leaned toward liking Miss McGuire’s approval, he slathered peanut butter on bread. Ace liked peanut butter. And she liked nonnutritiously white bread, too.
“You rebel, you,” Nate chided himself drily, out loud.
“Do you want to hear about my dream?”
He turned from the counter, glanced at his daughter, frowned faintly. Ace was glowing in her new sparkle skinny jeans and Christmas sweater with a white, fluffy reindeer on it. Even her hair was tamed, carefully combed, flattened down with water.
He turned back to the counter. “Sure. Raspberry or strawberry?”
“Raspberry. In my dream, Mommy was an angel.”
Something shivered along his spine. You’ve been my angel, Hath, now I’ll be yours.
“She had on a long white dress, and she had big white wings made out of feathers. She took me on her lap, and she said she was sorry she had to leave me and that she loved me.”
“That’s nice, Ace. It really is.”
“Mommy told me that she had to leave me right at Christmas because people have forgotten what Christmas is about, and that she was going to teach them. She said she’s going to save Christmas. Do you think that’s true, Daddy?”
After David had died, Cindy had found respite from her grief in that time of year. By the time Ace had come along, she loved every single thing about Christmas. Every single thing. Turkey. Trees. Carols. Gifts. Reindeer poop.
After David’s death, she’d developed a simple faith that she had not had when they were children. Cindy believed