Firefly Glen: Winter Baby (Harlequin Signature Select) (17 page)

Sarah felt her heart wrenching. So much pain lay behind that question. And what could she say that would help? She hardly even knew the details of the accident. It had been last winter, the final night of the festival, and Ward had been at the wheel. That was all she'd ever heard. But winter driving was always tricky….

“Well, what did
she
say?” Sarah wished her uncle would turn around. She wanted to judge from his eyes the depth of his guilt. “Did she blame you?”

He laughed harshly. “Of course not. It wasn't in your aunt to be cruel. She never said one word about it.”

“Right.” Sarah smiled, remembering her aunt's warm, perceptive concern for everyone she met, including her little thirteen-year-old great-niece, who was so morose and unlikable that summer. “And if she didn't want you to be unhappy, if she didn't want you to feel guilty, don't you think you owe it to her to be happy? In a way, haven't you dishonored her memory by suffering over it so much?”

He turned, then. His shaggy eyebrows were thrust down hard over his intelligent eyes. “That's a pretty low blow, Short Stuff. Tell me. Are you trying to manipulate this pitiful old man into something here?”

She grinned at him. “Chapter Twelve of
Make Anyone Do Anything.
How to get your great-uncle to drop that heavy load of unnecessary guilt and get on with being happy. As happy as his wife would have wanted him to be. As happy as she spent her whole life trying to make him.”

To her shock, Ward's eyes suddenly were moist and gleaming. She held her breath, disbelieving. Never, never had she seen her uncle shed a tear.

And apparently today wasn't going to be the first time. He cleared his throat and scowled at her in the old, familiar way. He seemed to have forced the moisture back in place with a sheer, stubborn will.

“I knew it. Throw that ridiculous book away, Short Stuff. I told you it was garbage.”

She met his gaze and, with relief, she recognized the old-time twinkle. “Yes, sir,” she agreed meekly, holding back her smile. “Yes, I suppose you're right.”

He grumbled under his breath, but the words didn't matter. She knew it was going to be all right. She gave him a quick kiss.

“I'd better get back to work,” she said. “I've still got two snowflake costumes to finish.”

He nodded absently. She was almost out the door before he spoke again.

“Hey, Short Stuff,” he said gruffly.

She paused. “What?”

“I've been thinking. Why don't you stay?” He asked the question casually, as if it were as unimportant as a query about the weather. “Why don't you just tell them down in Florida to take that teaching job and shove it? Have your baby here. At Winter House. We could use a little life up here in this frozen hole we call a town.”

Sarah was strangely paralyzed. Everything she considered as an answer seemed to lodge in her throat
like pebbles clogging a stream. She looked at him, trying not to let the ache in her chest reach her face, where it would become visible, and he would know how much she wanted to say yes.

“So why not?” He shrugged. “I mean, what do you need to go back for? So you can find another constipated jerk like Ed? Hell, no. You fit better here, Short Stuff. Can't you feel it?”

“Here?” The word sounded tight and thin, as if it came from someone else's mouth. “In Firefly Glen?”

“Right.” His brusque, no-nonsense tone helped her to stay in control. “It's small, and it's colder than God's basement, but it's never boring. You could live here with me. Winter House is a creaky, weird old mansion, but it's seen a lot of love in its day. I'm going to leave it to you eventually anyhow, so why wait till I'm dead? As far as I'm concerned, it's your home now, Sarah. And the baby's. If you want it.”

Home.

She fought back a strangled sound. Did he know, she wondered, what mystical, aching power that word held for her? Did he know how many years she had longed to find a place that could deserve that hallowed name?

All those terrible childhood years. As her mother had tugged her from one house to another, from one stepfather and stepfamily to another, she had searched in vain for “home.” That paradise other people seemed to take for granted.

But “home,” she had discovered, was more than
a bed, a warm meal, an address. It was even, to her surprise, something more than love.

It was a complicated concept built on a foundation of the completely unconditional, the wholly reliable, the intangible, unchangeable something you knew you could always trust, no matter what.

She looked at her uncle. Was it possible that finally, after all these years, she was standing on ground firm enough to support such a concept?

“Well, come on, Short Stuff. What do you say? Will you think about it, at least?”

“Thank you, but I—”

She stopped.

“I—”

She swallowed back the jagged pebbles and took another risk.

“All right,” she said. “I'll think about it.”

 

T
HE SNOW STOPPED FALLING
at eight in the morning the first day of the festival, as if under orders from the Firefly Glen City Council. The weather held its breath at a crisp, clear, blue-skied and perfect twenty-eight degrees.

Bravely Sarah offered to stay at home with her uncle, but he shooed her out of the house, saying Parker would never let him hear the end of it if he allowed Sarah to miss a single event.

She couldn't remember ever having so much fun. On Friday, she cheered as Parker's team won the hockey game, and the sleigh from Autumn House
won the decorated sleigh rally, in spite of stiff competition from Theo Burke's Candlelight Camaro.

And she got her first look at the finished ice palace. It was simple but beautiful, a square building with a tower at each end. Its pure, translucent walls caught the sunlight and fractured it into a million prisms, so that the entire structure seemed to sparkle.

But Saturday was the most important day of the festival. Sarah woke that morning with a bubble of excitement that nothing could pop, not even knowing that her efforts on behalf of the Firefly Girls had prevented her from creating a costume of her own for tonight's ball.

When her uncle joined her at breakfast, Frosty trotting at his heels, he carried a large, flat box with him. “From your aunt,” he said tersely, setting it down beside Sarah, then turning his attention to his cereal and his newspaper.

Sarah opened it slowly. Inside, shimmering like a sheet of ice crystals, was the most beautiful dress she'd ever seen. A simple, ankle-length sheath, with a fur-trimmed ballerina neckline and long, fitted sleeves, it was made of white velvet encrusted with seed pearls and clear glass beads.

Sarah was speechless.

“She wore it years ago, when she wasn't much older than you,” her uncle said without looking up from the sports page. “It's supposed to be an ice angel. It should fit.” He sneaked a sly glance at her. “Of course,
she
wasn't pregnant at the time.”

Sarah laughed, holding it up against her breast with
a deep, inarticulate joy. It was exquisite. She could imagine how beautiful her aunt had looked in it. And how her uncle's eyes would have glittered with pride when he looked at her.

She kissed her uncle softly. “Thank you,” she said. “It's perfect.”

He fidgeted, as if the kiss annoyed him. “There's a white fur coat in the upstairs closet. I had it cleaned. And she did this thing with her hair—” He waved his hands around his head hazily. “You know, powdered it, or glittered it or—” He frowned, realizing that this wasn't “men's” talk. “Hell, I haven't got a clue how women do that. Your aunt looked great, that's all I know.”

From then on, Sarah counted the dragging minutes until nine o'clock, when Parker was going to take her to King Frosty's ball. It was the highlight of the entire festival, with music and dancing inside the ice castle, which would be lit by dozens of swirling multicolored spotlights.

She got through the day somehow. She walked with the Firefly Girls in the children's costume parade, and then she manned the giant snow slide for several hours, until her ears were ringing from the high-pitched squeals of delight and terror.

Finally darkness fell. Still buoyed by that bubble of anticipation, she went home, bathed and dressed. She was glad to discover that the slight thickening of her waistline didn't prevent her from wearing the ice angel costume. Finally she rummaged through the
scraps from the snowflake costumes to find tiny silver sequins to arrange on her softly powdered hair.

Her uncle stopped in his tracks when he saw her. “I wouldn't say you're more beautiful than Roberta.” He cleared his throat roughly. “But you're a close second, Short Stuff. A mighty close second.”

If she still had any doubts, Parker's reaction told her all she needed to know. It wasn't what she expected. He didn't smile with misty pride and compliment her effusively. Instead, as he looked at her, his mouth tightened to a fierce hardness. His eyes glinted, and suddenly his face looked intensely male, and hungry.

“I'm not letting you out of my sight all night,” he said as he helped her into the car. “You look so gorgeous it's damn dangerous.”

She smiled. He looked fairly amazing tonight himself, though he wasn't technically wearing a costume. Emma had warned her that most of the men compromised by pretending to go as lumberjacks, which meant they could use their everyday clothes.

Parker wore a thick, white Irish wool sweater over black slacks. And he looked as sexy as any man she'd ever seen.

“You may have to let me out of your sight,” Sarah said. “What if you're elected king? You'll have to sit on the throne beside your queen. And I'll be left to dance with whoever takes pity on me.”

Growling, he took her in his arms. “You won't dance with anyone but me.”

“But I've heard people talking. They think you'll be elected king, and then you—”

He shook his head. “I won't be.”

“How can you be—”

He put his finger over her lips. “Trust me. I won't be. And if I were, I'd give up my throne. I won't leave you, Sarah. How could I ever leave you?”

He was so close his breath misted white against her mouth before he kissed her. She felt herself melting as his arms closed around her, and his chest pressed hard against hers. The temperature might have fallen to nineteen degrees outside the car, but in here her body was practically on fire.

But they were expected downtown in a very few minutes, so somehow they pried themselves apart, and Parker started the car.

They arrived just in time for the ritual storming of the palace by the new king and his army, a mock battle that included fireworks and a homemade cannon that fired snowballs at the castle walls.

Hundreds of spectators, many of them visitors from neighboring towns, had gathered to watch. Emma rushed up to join them just as Mayor Millner prepared to announce the royal ice court. “Found you,” she said triumphantly.

Emma had told Sarah she was coming dressed as the moon queen, and her silver-and-blue costume couldn't have been more lovely.

“Hey! I thought you weren't going to have a costume,” Emma said as she hugged Sarah warmly. “Darn. That was the only hope I had of outshining you.” She knocked Parker on the chest. “Hi, bro,” she said playfully. “Love
your
costume!”

Parker shushed her. “They're about to announce the queen. Show some respect.”

“Sorry,” Emma said, making a face. “No can do. Wrong queen.”

The name was announced over the microphone with a flourish.
Justine Millner.
Emma growled as the blond, smiling mayor's daughter accepted her crown from her father with a graceful, but not entirely convincing, display of surprised humility.

Justine was beautiful, Sarah thought, but she looked like trouble. Poor Mike Frome. He was going to get his heart broken, she suspected.

The king was next.
Harry Dunbar.
Sarah applauded vigorously, surprised but delighted. She looked over at Emma, who was clapping harder than anyone.

In contrast to Justine, Harry looked utterly stunned. He glanced around him at the others, as if to say there must have been a mistake. But the crown was placed upon his head, his people cheered, and he was told to give the order to storm the castle.

Sarah looked at Parker, wondering if he minded losing, especially to Harry. But Parker was studying Emma, who was watching her estranged husband with a proud, protective, bittersweet smile.

“You knew,” Sarah whispered. “You knew it was going to be Harry.”

Emma turned to Sarah with damp, happy eyes. “It's called stuffing the ballot box, my friend. It's a time-honored tradition in Firefly Glen.” She rested her head on her brother's shoulder briefly. “Besides,
Parker actually would have won, and he wouldn't have accepted the crown, so…”

She looked up at Parker. “Thanks, bro,” she said.

“No problem, sis,” he responded lightly. “Now how about you scram? I'm trying to have a date here.”

With Emma gone, Parker put his arm around Sarah and drew her close, warming her as they watched the mock battle raging in front of the ice palace.

This was the first time Sarah had seen the palace at night. She hadn't thought it could be any more beautiful than it was in the daylight, with the sun setting it on fire. But tonight it was like something out of a dream.

Its icy profile seen by moonlight was infinitely romantic, deeply mysterious. Its two towers rose into the starry night like knives of flashing crystal. Its clear, frozen walls undulated with color from the constantly turning spotlights.

When the fireworks exploded overhead, signaling the victory by the king, the crowd roared its pleasure. King Harry led his men inside the gates, and hundreds of fairies and princesses followed, each escorted by a rugged lumberjack or a white-velvet prince. The costume ball was officially underway.