Christmas Reunion Christmas Serial Chapter Nine by Cate Nolan

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Chapter Nine

Cate Nolan

Jeb and Mary Noel running interference. That was definitely a ‘thanks but no thanks’ situation.  “I appreciate the offer, but don’t you two have some business of your own to resolve?” Jericho glanced from one to the other. Their contented grins confused him.

Jeb leaned against Mary Noel, and she patted his shoulder. “We’re good. We just want to help you to be happy.”

Jericho shook his head. The last thing he needed was these two running off into the snow. “No. This is my mess. I’ll fix it.”

Mary Noel stood, hands on hips, and stared up at him. “Spoken like a man.”

Jeb nodded. “One hopeless in love. Trust me son, I know the feeling.”

Jericho lost all his bravado and slumped against the counter. “Why can’t I ever seem to do the right thing when it concerns Grace?”

Mary Noel reached up to lay a hand on his chest. “Because you’re thinking with your head instead of your heart.”

“What does that mean?”

Mary Noel laughed as the men’s voices chimed together with the same question.

“It means that you’re thinking too hard about what the right thing is. Just listen to what your heart says.”

Listen to what his heart said, Jericho muttered an hour later as he drove down yet another snowy road looking for Grace. Follow his heart. Well his heart had said to follow Grace, so he had.

But neither his heart nor his brain could tell him how to find her.

Where could one woman get to in this amount of time?

An airport.

The thought chilled him more than the freezing temps.

No, she wouldn’t abandon Jeb before Christmas. Of that he was certain. He just wished he was as certain she wouldn’t leave him.

What had he done wrong? Why had she left?

Listen with your heart.

Hard to do when your teeth were chattering louder than your heart was speaking.

“Okay, heart. Speak up. Grace is upset. Where would she go?”

Suddenly the answer was right in front of him. His heart may not have been calling him a dumbkopf, but he certainly felt like one for not realizing sooner.

Apparently he needed to listen to Grace with his heart rather than his brain too. She’d been trying to tell him, and he could kick himself for not understanding. All the clues had been there. The reason she had no boyfriend, no husband. The reason she lived alone in a tiny apartment.

Suddenly it was all clear. And he knew exactly where to go.

  

Snow was falling in earnest as he negotiated the narrow mountain pass. Nerve-wracking in even the best weather, it was a positively terrifying trip in snow and ice.

He was coming up on the outcropping now, the narrowest part of the road where the rocks created an overhang. As conditions deteriorated, he wasn’t sure whether to hope Grace was here or that he had been mistaken.

Wind gusted, buffeting his car as he pulled into the shelter of the overhang. The memorial had been carved into the rock, the bench where Grace huddled looked out over the sheer drop. The drop that had claimed her family.

Grabbing the blankets Mary Noel had sent along, Jericho climbed from the car and eased his way along the icy path.

Grace sat shivering, and he was struck by fear. If he hadn’t found her…

No. He had found her. His heart had found her.

“Gracie, talk to me.” He wrapped the blanket around her, holding her close against his body’s warmth.

“Do you remember what I told you?” she murmured.

He leaned down so he wouldn’t miss a word. “You told me lots of things.” Including that you loved me.

She looked incredibly sad in that moment.

“It’s okay,” she reassured him.

“What is?”

“I know you left because I told you I caused the accident.”

Jericho felt like he was playing some game for which he didn’t know any of the rules. “I left because you told me to go.”

She was silent. Snow continued to fall and he pulled the blanket more securely around them.

“I didn't want you to go, you know. I wanted you to convince me it would all be fine. That it was okay for me to be happy.”

Suddenly Jericho understood his mistake.

He loved her. He knew her secrets, but until this moment he hadn’t understood the darkest one. He hadn’t realized how much the accident had driven her life. How it had paralyzed her emotions.

It didn’t matter if it wasn’t her fault, not if she believed it was.

He could feel her slipping away from him. He had to get her away from this place and its memories before her misplaced guilt ate her alive.

Staring at the hopeless look on her beloved face, Jericho felt more alone and frightened than he'd felt in even the fiercest battle.

If they hadn't been at the edge of a snowy cliff, he would have fallen to his knees. He turned his face heavenward instead and prayed with all his heart.

Help me, Lord. Please help me save her.

Christmas Reunion, Chapter Four, by Debby Giusti

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Christmas Reunion

Chapter Four

By Debby Giusti

Grace jumped to her feet. “I’ve got hot chocolate warming on the stove,” she said over her shoulder as she scurried into the kitchen. Her cheeks burned with embarrassment at Grandpa Jeb’s comment about how she and Jericho should kiss and make up. Evidently, her grandfather didn’t realize that what she and Jericho had shared that special Christmas Eve had been as foolish as her dreams of a lifetime of white Christmases spent in the former Marine’s strong arms. What had happened was buried in the past and would never surface again, no matter how much she wished things could have been different. Jericho had moved on with his life and so had she.

With a determined sigh, she grabbed three red ceramic mugs from the cabinet and placed them on the table next to the open box of Christmas tree decorations. Working quickly, she lifted the pot of hot chocolate from the stove, poured the steaming drink into the mugs and topped the frothy mix with plump marshmallows, remembering the chocolate they’d sipped so long ago. Jericho had teased her about the marshmallow mustache on her upper lip. They’d laughed so hard until the world stood still for one long moment and--

Hearing footsteps in the hallway, Grace steeled her resolve. She wouldn’t allow the swirl of confusion that had unsettled her after seeing Jericho mar the few days she had with her grandfather. She grabbed the table for support, but as strong as she tried to be, her resolution evaporated as soon as Jericho stepped into the kitchen.

He came up behind her, causing her heart to skitter in her chest. Needing to distance herself from the woodsy smell of his after-shave and the magnetic pull that was as intoxicating as ever, she reached for the plate of sugar cookies on the counter.

“I thought you and Grandpa Jeb might enjoy a snack after your long ride up the mountain.”

“Shhh,” Jericho placed his finger to her lips. His touch--light as a feather--caused her head to spin.  “Your grandfather’s drifted to sleep.”

Glancing down at the plate of cookies, he reached for a roly-poly sugar snowman and then flicked his gaze to the box of decorations open on the table. She swallowed hard, realizing her mistake as he stared at the one ornament she should have buried along with her memories.

“You kept the keepsake bulb I gave you.” His voice was husky with emotion that tugged at her heartstrings. As much as she wanted to counter with a flip retort, she couldn’t think of anything to say except the truth.  

“Silly of me, wasn’t it?” She tried to laugh but the sound wasn’t humorous. Instead it told of the heartache she’d carried for too long after learning Jericho had left Reunion.

“’Let’s make a memory,’ I told you that night.” Jericho turned to face her, his gaze filled with expectation. “We wrote notes to one another and tucked them in the ornament’s keepsake box, promising to read them the next Christmas we shared together.”

She stared into his eyes, wondering if he remembered her reply.

As if he could read her thoughts, Jericho leaned closer. “I’ll never forget what you told me that night.”

Grace closed her eyes. Her heart thumped in anticipation of his kiss until footsteps on the back porch and a rap-tap-tap at the door pulled her out of the moment.

Both Grace and Jericho turned as a full-figured woman, early seventies, wearing a red sweater and Santa hat cocked over white curls, opened the door, a swirl of new fallen snow entering the kitchen along with her.

“Mary Noel,” Grace exclaimed, working hard to control her surprise. “What brings you back to Reunion?”

“I came to see Jeb and clear up everything that happened on our last Christmas Eve together.” Long lashes fluttered over Ms. Noel’s blue eyes. “Where is he? Where’s Jeb?”

“Tarnation, can’t a man nap without an interruption?” Grandpa Jeb pushed his wheelchair into the kitchen and stopped short when he saw the visitor. His eyes widened and a hint of a smile tugged at his full lips. Slowly, he let go of his chair and straightened his spine. “Welcome home, Mary.”

           

Christmas Reunion--Craftie Ladies of Love Inspired--Lenora Worth

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Christmas Reunion
Chapter One
Lenora Worth

Silver water glistened just beyond the tree line. The view hadn't changed. But her world view was different now. The log cabin her grandfather had built in the sixties still stood as sturdy as the day he'd hewn the first logs. He'd tried to teach her to be sturdy and strong like the stunning snow-covered aspens and blue spruce trees of this quaint ski village in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. But she'd always be a girly-girl. With a spine of steel.

Reunion. What kind of name was that for a small town? And why had Grandpa insisted they have one more Christmas here? Sure, he was old and ornery but he needed to stay down in the valley at the nice retirement center where he'd be close to doctors and friends. And she should have stayed in Denver, in her tiny apartment where she had a good job and good friends. But not much else.

Grace Holly turned from the ceiling-to-floor window and remembered laughter and a lot of happy Christmases here with her grandparents. Grandmother died four years ago and this old cabin had become too much for Grandpa Jeb. She and Jericho had a hard time convincing her stoic, proud grandfather that he couldn't live here alone anymore.

Jericho Walker. Grace hadn't though about him in years. He'd moved away, too, after that one Christmas when they'd fallen in and out of love. All that mistletoe and snow could get to a girl and that's exactly what had happened to Grace for one blissful week. Mistletoe. And a man who made her heart melt like marshmallows in hot chocolate.

"Enough about him," Grace said out loud. Pushing a hand over her always unruly dark hair, she said,  "I have to get this place in shape for Christmas. A tree and some decorations, a fire. And one missing grandpa. Where are you, anyway?"

She heard a rattling at the door. "Ah, I guess the aide got you here in one piece."

Grace rushed to the front door and opened it, a blast of misty snow obscuring her view and rattling her ornament-inspired earrings. "Grandpa, I was getting worried ...."

She stopped in mid-sentence. Grandpa wasn't alone. Jericho Walker stood there behind Grandpa's fancy wheelchair, his deep blue eyes bright with expectation. "Hello, Grace. We're here."

Grace swallowed and ignored the current that rushed over her like Christmas lights flickering to life. "Jericho? What on earth are you doing here?"

"He's with me," Grandpa announced with gruff pride. "He's my aide. We'll all be here together."

Grace's unsteady gaze met Jericho's unyielding eyes. "For the entire week?"

"Yes," Jericho said. "Where he goes, I go." The look he shot her dared Grace to argue.

"Merry Christmas," Grandpa said with a triumphant huff.

"Ho, ho, ho," Grace retorted. A whole week in a cabin with Jericho?

She'd been set-up. Big time.