A Christmas to Remember (15 page)

“But the thing is, I don’t want to be your advocate. I want to be your friend.”

“Friend?” Maryanne whispered the word out loud. A friend was precisely what she wanted most of all. She wanted a friend like the boy next door. The one she had made up in her head.

Daniel took several steps toward her so that Maryanne had to look up to see his face. Dawn was breaking out, and his blue eyes looked so bright and earnest. His face was so kind, and he had this red-cheeked jolly kind of expression. It was definitely a Christmas kind of look.

“I didn’t tell you this before,” she whispered, allowing herself to give voice to the ridiculous notion that they
were
connected by something, maybe fate. “When my Momma died in Montgomery, I told the authorities I had a grandma and grandpa in South Carolina, but no one ever looked for them. I just got handed over to the foster care system. I used to think about what it would be like living here. I used to wonder about the neighbors, you know. I used to think about being friends with the blond-haired boy next door.

“And the funny thing is, if someone had looked, maybe I would have come here to live and then…”

“I really would have been the boy next door.” He completed her thought in a whisper.

They stared at one another for the longest moment as strange, miraculous possibilities unfolded.

“Come on. Let’s go get some breakfast, and then maybe we can get the car seat out of your car and go find Jenny,” he said.

A frisson of panic coursed through Maryanne. “But—”

He put his finger across her lips. His hands were surprisingly warm. “Hush, now. Jenny is a kindhearted woman who knows how to bake a mean apple pie. Her mother died not too long ago, and she truly believes she’s alone in this world. Y’all are her family—the only family she’s got left. You and Joshua are going to be the best Christmas present she’s ever gotten. Trust me on this.”

“I’m not good at trusting.”

“I know. But we’ll work on that.” His hand cupped the back of her head, and he leaned down and gave her a soft, gentle, and surprisingly passionate kiss.

Just then the sun peeked over the horizon, and the black cat meowed and wrapped herself around both of their legs. A rush of relief coursed through Maryanne. She threw her arms around Daniel’s neck and hung on.

“Merry Christmas,” he whispered against her lips. “I swear to you, Maryanne, this is going to be the first of many, many merry Christmases to come. For both of us.”

Molly Canaday pulled the tow truck in front of the silver Hyundai Sonata. She killed the engine and used her side-view mirror to assess the stranded motorist.

He was not from around these parts.

For one thing, he was driving a rental car.

And for another, he was standing in the hot May sunshine wearing a black crew-necked shirt, gray dress pants, and a charcoal gray worsted sport jacket.

The sun lit up threads of gray in his dark, chin-length hair. He hadn’t shaved today, but somehow the stubble looked carefully groomed.

This guy was seriously lost, like he’d made a wrong turn in Charleston and kept on driving.

She straightened her ball cap and hopped from the truck’s cab. “Howdy,” she said, putting out her hand for him to shake. “I’m Molly Canaday from Bill’s Grease Pit. We’re located in Last Chance, just down the road a ways. The rental agency sent your distress call to us. What seems to be the problem?”

Mr. I’m-so-cool-and-sexy regarded her hand, then let his gaze climb up to her battered Atlanta Braves hat, back down to her favorite Big and Rich T-shirt, ending with her baggy painter’s pants. His mouth curled at the corners like a couple of ornate apostrophes. The smile was elegant and sexy, and might have impressed Molly if it hadn’t also been a tiny bit smirk-like.

She forced a neutral customer-service expression to her face, even as she dropped her hand. She sure wanted to leave Mr. Urban Cool to burn up by the side of the road. Maybe walking the six miles into town in the blistering sun would help him lose that smirk.

He finally spoke in an accent that sounded like it came from nowhere. “Canaday, huh? Does Red Canaday still coach the Rebels football team?”

Whoa, this guy didn’t look like your average football fan. Much less like anyone who would know anything about Davis High’s football program. “Uh, yeah, he’s my daddy.” She studied his face, trying to place him. He had dark brown eyes and a sturdy, straight nose. He didn’t look a lick like anyone Molly knew.

His steady stare sucked her in and left her feeling unsettled. If he knew about the Rebels, then he wasn’t a stranger.

He wasn’t lost.

“Nothing ever changes here, does it?” he said.

“Do I know you?”

Something flickered in his eyes. Was it kindness? It was there and gone in an instant. “You might remember me. I mean, I knew your father. But that was a long time ago, and you were little.”

“Are you saying you’re from around here?” No way.

“I’m Simon Wolfe. Charlotte and Ira’s boy. I was a placekicker on the team a long time ago.”

Oh. Wow. Talk about prodigal sons. She didn’t really remember him. But she sure knew all about him. He had been a member of the 1990 dream team—the one that won the state championship. He was also the player who hadn’t attended a single team reunion. The guy who left home, the guy who never came back, the guy who broke his daddy’s heart.

And now his daddy was dead.

Two days ago, Ira Wolfe had keeled over right in the middle of his Ford dealership’s showroom.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Molly said. Although Simon didn’t look all that brokenhearted. In fact, he shrugged like a coldhearted idiot.

And he proved his cool nature a moment later when he said, “So Red Canaday’s little girl grew up to become a mechanic. I guess that was totally predictable.”

She clamped her back teeth together before she said something un-ladylike. Not that she was much of a lady. Instead, she took a deep breath and tried to be
mindful
of her feelings, like Momma was always telling her to be. She sucked at being
mindful
, and she was not about to take up meditation the way Momma had.

“What seems to be the problem?” she asked in her sweetest voice, which admittedly was not very sweet. Sweet was definitely not her normal MO.

“I have no clue what’s wrong with it. It stopped running,” he said.

Boy, he might have been born in the South and even played football once. But he’d clearly lost his southern accent and attitude somewhere. Any local man worth his salt would have already popped the hood and taken a look. Local men would also have dozens of theories about what had gone wrong.

Not this guy. This guy spoke in short sentences, dressed like a
GQ
model, and didn’t want to get dirty. Of course, he
had
been a placekicker on the team, and a good one, too. But placekickers avoided dirt. It was a well-known fact.

“Did it make any funny noises before it died?”

“Nope.” He looked at his watch.

“I’m sorry. You have a wake to get to, don’t you?” She didn’t mention that she, also, had to get to Ira Wolfe’s wake. She owed that man a great deal.

Simon turned his back on her. He walked a short distance away toward the edge of the road and put his hands on his hips. He studied the soybean fields like he was looking at some alien landscape.

“God, this place is like being nowhere at all.” The words were spoken in a soft, low voice and not intended for Molly to hear. But she was just annoyed enough not to let him get away with them.

“Yeah, well, some of us like living here,” she said, investing her words with all the civic pride she could muster.

She popped the hood and started poking around in the engine. “So, I take it you’re not planning to stay very long.” She aimed her flashlight down into the engine to check the fan belt.

“No, I have to get back to Paradise.”

“Paradise? Really?” The fan belt looked okay.

“It’s a place in California.”

“Of course it is.” He would live in a place called Paradise. She had a feeling he was about to discover that there could be hard times in Paradise, but far be it from her to be the bearer of bad news.

Instead she inspected the battery terminals and connections but didn’t see anything obvious. There was probably a problem with the generator, or alternator, or maybe the voltage regulator.

She pulled her head out of the engine. “I’m going to have to tow it.”

He checked his damn watch again. Boy, this guy was wound up tighter than a spring.

“Don’t worry, I’ll get you to the church on time. Or the funeral home, as the case might be.”

* * *

Simon stifled the laugh that wanted to spring from his chest. It wasn’t right to find Molly Canaday amusing on the day of his father’s wake. But it sure wasn’t surprising.

She helped him transfer his luggage from the Hyundai’s trunk to the back of her truck. Then he stood back and watched while Coach Canaday’s daughter hooked the Sonata up to a heavy chain and then winched it onto the truck’s flatbed. The woman sure had a way with machinery.

Which didn’t surprise him either.

The last time Simon had seen Molly Canaday, she’d been a little kid in overalls, not much older than four, standing on the sidelines with Coach. She never missed a game. She never whined like other little kids. She never failed to inspire them all.

And Simon never attempted a field goal without first patting Molly’s head. Her hair had been short and soft under his hands. It was longer now, but still dark and barely contained by her ball cap. He had the sudden desire to paint a portrait of her, with all that glorious hair undone and falling like a curly black waterfall to her shoulders.

“It’s going to be tomorrow before we can figure out what’s going on with the car. So I’ll drop you by the funeral home. I’m sure Rob or Ryan Polk or one of their kids can give you a lift home from there. And you can use Ira’s car. God knows he has a lot of them.” Molly’s words pulled him away from his suddenly wayward muse.

He climbed into the passenger’s seat and checked his watch.

“So, I guess you’re just counting the hours until you can leave again? Paradise is calling, huh?”

He kept his gaze fastened to the soybean fields that whizzed past as she pulled the truck onto the road and headed into town. He saw no point in responding to her question. She had summed up the truth. He needed to get back home and back to work, especially since the work hadn’t been going well.

The fields gave way to houses with big yards, and then he caught his first glance of the Last Chance water tower—painted like a big, tiger-striped watermelon.

This scene was frozen in his memory. And yet, nothing was quite the same as he remembered it. A large commercial building with a big parking lot occupied what had once been cotton fields just north of town. A big sign at the gates of the facility said “deBracy Ltd.” Not too far away, someone was developing a neighborhood of new single-family homes.

The Last Chance of his memory was gray and used-up and on its last legs. But in this town, bright awnings hung over the shop windows. In this town, pedestrians hurried about their business on the sidewalks. In this town, the movie theater was no longer an empty eyesore, but covered in a scaffold where workers were bringing it back to life. This town looked alive.

He wasn’t prepared for the tight band that squeezed his lungs like a tourniquet, cutting off his oxygen. He refused to feel any nostalgia for this place. He’d buried a piece of himself here a long time ago, when he’d been just a boy. He’d never planned on coming back and unearthing it.

And yet, for all the pain he’d suffered here, Last Chance would always be home.