Chapter 9
nine
WHITNEY LOOKED AWAY from Daniel quickly and pulled her scarf over her nose.
He raised his eyebrows. “What?”
Thankful her cheeks were probably already red from the evening breeze, she mumbled, “Nothing.” It wouldn’t do to get caught staring at him. Again.
It was just that she hadn’t seen this version of him before. Not even at the market in that silly turkey hat.
He was wearing jeans, and she’d glimpsed the uni sweatshirt under his puffy coat before he zipped it up. The bright red toque pulled low over his ears covered the thought wrinkles his forehead usually sported.
And, if she wasn’t mistaken, there was a hint of a smile at the corners of his mouth. No, that wasn’t quite right. He wasn’t smiling, but he was clearly relaxed. Which was quite a feat given the four-year-old tugging on his hand.
“Come on, Mr. Daniel. We can’t be late.” Julia Mae’s voice chirped from somewhere deep in her parka as her snow pants swished with hurried steps.
“We don’t have to rush,” Whitney said, shooting Daniel an apologetic smile. “Your brother is with your mom. He’s not going anywhere until we get there.”
The little girl stopped, pressing her hands to her hips, staring pointedly at them both. “But the sooner we get there, the sooner we can see the lights.”
“Of course,” Daniel said. “Lead on.”
Julia Mae required no further invitation, bounding along the boardwalk toward the center of town. Her roly-poly figure swung into and out of the pools of lamplight that glittered across the day-old snow, which had been pushed into piles against the embankment. Endless energy. Constant certainty.
“She always knows what she wants, doesn’t she?” Daniel said.
“And where she’s going.” Whitney chuckled. “It must be nice.”
He let out a low snort. “Jealous of a four-year-old?”
Yes. But she wasn’t going to admit that. “Have you ever been that confident?”
“What makes you think I’m not?” His tone took on a hard edge, like he was a goalie tending his net.
Suddenly she couldn’t blink. Her eyes ached in the cold as she stared at his profile. She must have forgotten how to walk too, because he was four steps ahead of her before she scurried to catch up. “Daniel, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean—”
He held up a gloved hand as she reached his side. When he looked down at her, the corners of his eyes crinkled. She almost missed the subtle movement behind his glasses because the rest of his face remained perfectly impassive. But right there—in the crow’s feet she’d assumed he’d gotten from hours of study—was all the evidence she needed.
“You’re teasing me,” she announced with a playful push against the sleeve of his coat.
He shrugged, his shoulders twice as wide as normal. “Maybe.” Still no smile. But the timbre of his voice had turned a distinct corner from Serious Street to Ludicrous Lane.
Infuriating man. How was a person supposed to know if he was making a joke if he never smiled? She’d have to spend every day studying him to figure him out. And she didn’t have time for that.
She didn’t want to do it either, of course.
Even if she did long for a chance to catch his blue eyes sparkling and his lips curving up. If she just kept watching him, maybe she could.
But she couldn’t watch him when she was supposed to be watching her young charges. So she swung her gaze onto Julia Mae as the little girl pranced along the empty walkway. Her arms stuck out at an odd angle, and her legs were forced into a waddle.
“It seems like you know what you’re doing and where you’re going.”
She jolted at his statement, and her eyes must have revealed her confusion.
“I mean with culinary school.” Daniel tipped his head until the pom on his toque flopped forward. “And your business. It seems like you have a good plan to make your dreams come true.”
“Right. Uh-huh.”
“You don’t?”
“I do. Just said so.” Which did not explain why her steps suddenly quickened and she was in a rush to pick up Jack.
“Yes...” He dragged the word across the harbor and back. “It sounded like maybe you ... Did I misunderstand?”
His words were so earnest, his gaze so intent that she couldn’t ignore him—even if she wanted to. With a slow shake of her head, she sighed. “No.”
Daniel opened his mouth, then closed it as his eyebrows met just north of his boxy glasses.
Not surprising. She wasn’t exactly making sense to herself either. Which was going to make this explanation one for the record books. One for the rattling, unintelligible record books.
There was no way a guy like Daniel would understand what had prompted her to decide on culinary school. Or prompted her to decide anything at all. But his eyes glowed with interest nonetheless.
With a shallow breath, she tried to formulate a short story. Beginning. Middle. End. She’d learned at least that much during her Woodward and Bernstein phase. All three weeks of newspaper her junior year of high school.
She started at the beginning—or at least, a beginning.
“My dad said he was tired of bailing me out every time I changed direction.”
“So . . . culinary school?”
“So, something.” She twisted her mittens around her fingers. “Anything, really. Something I could stick with. Something I’m reasonably capable of.”
He paused, digging the toe of his boot into a pile of snow that marked the end of the boardwalk. The white church steeple beckoned across the street, and Julia Mae gestured excitedly as her mom and brother exited through the double front doors. “Come on,” she called.
With a shrug, Whitney darted after her, snagged her little gloved hand, and ran across the street.
Marie scooped her girl into her arms and asked in a hushed tone, “Are you excited to see the lights?”
“Uh-huh. And the mam-ger scene.”
“Manger,” Marie corrected her.
Julia Mae shrugged as though she’d heard it both ways. Then she pulled loose of her mom, grabbed her brother’s hand, and waddled toward the sidewalk.
“Thank you for taking them to see Mr. Huntington’s.” Marie wrapped her arms around her middle, shivering in only her cream-colored sweater. “Brooke needed me to cover the extra rehearsal for the soloists, and surprisingly Jack didn’t want to stick around.”
Whitney chuckled. “Of course. Happy to. I haven’t seen his new set.”
Marie’s gaze shifted toward the boardwalk, her eyes growing wide. A knowing smirk followed. “I see you’re not going alone.”
Whitney didn’t even need to look over her shoulder to know that Daniel had caught up. When she did anyway, he was all the way to her side, and she stumbled a few steps back. An uneven snowdrift caught her off guard, and she began to tumble. Until Daniel caught her elbow, setting her back to rights as though he did it every day.
He caught her eye, and something warm zipped through her. Straight from her chest to the tips of her toes inside two layers of wool socks.
It was definitely a by-product of nearly falling over. Undoubtedly.
“We should, you know, get going.” Whitney suddenly felt out of breath, so she pointed toward the kids and darted in their direction. She barely heard Marie’s low chuckle and Daniel’s much more formal farewell as she ushered the kids down the sidewalk. Their little faces were already glowing in the colorful Christmas bulbs that lined the eaves of the Rathbones’ one-story cottage. Eyes wide and little feet hopping with joy, they soaked in the merriment.
The Gingersols had lived next to the Rathbones for as long as Whitney could remember. They’d also insisted on outpacing their neighbors’ Christmas decor for just as long.
Though she’d never heard a peep confirming such a thing, Whitney suspected that the Rathbones had dialed their decorations down to a single strand of oversized bulbs at the roofline so that the aging Mr. Gingersol didn’t risk climbing onto his roof.
It didn’t seem to matter to the kids. Every home received equal praise from the little critics. Wide eyes, gaping mouths, and cheers of excitement.
As they strolled the several blocks toward Mr. Huntington’s home, Whitney let herself relax into the silent night, into the simple beauty of the village. It smelled of recent snow and wood fires, and she closed her eyes to enjoy the scent for a long second.
“Why are you working so hard to pay for culinary school if you don’t want to go?”
She sucked in a sharp breath, the air achingly cold as it reached her lungs. She should have known Daniel would circle back to their conversation.
Shuffling her feet against the broken pavement of the narrow sidewalk, she frowned. “I have to do something with my life.”
“Don’t you want to want to do what you chose, though?”
She snorted. “That was all sorts of creative grammar.”
He held up his hands in a retreat gesture. “I’m a numbers guy. Never said I was any good with words.”
“Fair enough.” Whitney shoved her trembling hands into the pockets of her coat.
“But don’t you?”
She didn’t think she’d get away with pretending she’d forgotten the question, so she tried another tactic. “Do you love being an accountant?”
“I’m not an accountant. I’m a CFO.” Her eyebrow rose, and he quickly modified his statement. “I’m about to be a CFO.”
“Okay, and is that what you always dreamed of doing?”
Those little lines above the bridge of his nose returned, his lips pinching together. “Maybe not. But I like numbers. I like how predictable they are. I like how they never lie.”
“But they can be manipulated.”
A muscle at the corner of his jaw jumped as deep lines appeared on either side of his lips. “We were talking about you and your dreams.”
Whitney sidestepped a crack in the sidewalk, crunching into a snow-covered lawn. “And then we were talking about yours.”
He shook his head hard. “Not anymore.”
“Fine.” She rolled her eyes toward the pale black sky above. Clouds had unfurled across the expanse, hiding the stars and reflecting the glow of the festive lights below.
It wasn’t really fine, though—having to reveal her worst trait to someone who actually had his life together. She sucked in a steeling breath through the knitted fibers of her scarf and shared anyway. “There are too many options.”
His head cocked, his question unspoken.
“What if I choose one thing and miss out on something I would have liked better?”
“Like a fear of missing out?”
Ducking her chin, she said, “Not exactly. It’s more like, I’m not sure what I want, so I try a little of everything.”
“ Little being the operative word there?”
“Yeah. A month here. A few weeks there.” Whitney stepped to the side to keep her eyes on her little charges half a block ahead. “I’ve been like this since I was their age. I played on a youth soccer team for all of thirty-seven minutes when I was seven.”
“Thirty-seven? That’s pretty specific.”
She chuckled at the memory. “I took a ball directly to the face shortly before the end of a forty-five-minute practice and promptly decided that soccer was not for me.”
She waited for him to smile at her poor athletic abilities, but he said only, “That makes sense.”
“There were a string of clubs in junior high and high school. Theater. Choir. Mathletes.”
His eyebrows rose, his eyes shining with clear interest at her mention of numbers.
“Not so fast. I stuck with that for exactly two meetings. Solving math problems under pressure was not my thing.”
“So then, how does that lead to culinary school?”
She shook her head at the memory of her dad’s stony face when he had sat her down four months before. “My parents wanted to retire—and they wanted to know that I could take care of myself.” With a lift of one shoulder, she continued. “I’ve been baking something or another since I was in high school. I even made it all the way through a summer cooking class at the Red Door. So I figured ... it seemed like the safest option.”
“But not your dream?”
“I don’t even know if I have a dream.”
She expected him to look shocked, maybe to stop dead in his tracks. Who didn’t have a dream for their life?
Whitney Garrett. Nice to meet you.
But Daniel didn’t say anything. He didn’t trip or even slow his pace. They strolled in silence for several long seconds, his gaze sweeping over the rows of lights on a green house. She wasn’t even sure he’d heard her until he said, “Clearly Marie and Seth trust you to care for their kids. There must be a reason for that. What have you stuck with?”
His question wasn’t accusatory or biting. But it stuck in her chest all the same, pinching a nerve deep inside, demanding an answer. Maybe it wasn’t so much that he deserved an answer. She did. And she’d never been able to give herself one.
With a shake of her head, she sighed. “I don’t know.”
“I bet you can think of at least something.” His voice carried a note that warmed her from the inside out, but she didn’t have even a moment to enjoy it.
“Miss Whitney, hurry up! We’re almost there!” The kids had stopped at the end of the sidewalk and waited impatiently, hopping from foot to foot, dancing with unrestrained excitement.
She couldn’t blame them. Tugging on Daniel’s sleeve, she began to run. “Come on.”
They rounded a small bend in the road, and the whole street suddenly glowed.
Mr. Huntington had outdone himself. Again. Every year bigger and brighter. Every year more beautiful than the last.
Julia Mae squealed with delight, her clapping hands muffled by woolen mittens. Her joy, however, could not be stifled. “Jack. Jack. Jack. Look!”
She needn’t have prompted him. His little brown eyes were wide, mouth open in silent wonder. Even Daniel’s expression matched.
The two-story home sat back from its neighbors. Each window was draped in flickering white lights that chased each other around the exterior. Faux icicles hung from the eaves, descending blue lights making them appear to drip to the row of bushes before the wraparound front porch. Colors exploded from the hedges, reds and blues and pinks and yellows netted across the rounded plants.
The usually white siding had turned molasses brown, the door bright white and sporting a wreath of green boughs adorned with a floppy red bow. Colorful dots covered the sloped roof, connecting every shingle. Waist-high candy canes marked a path around the side of the house, the stone steps clearly red and green gumdrops. The snow sprinkled across the lawn couldn’t have been more perfectly piped.
“It’s a ginber-bread house,” Julia Mae announced, racing along the path. “I bet there’s candy in the barn!”
Sure enough, Mr. Huntington had left a bucket of classic red and white candy canes along the path. Jack and Julia Mae barely slowed to pick theirs up, tear into the plastic, and suck on the end.
Just as the little girl made the turn around the side of the house, Jack snagged her hand, pulling her to a quick stop. When Whitney caught up with them, she saw why. The doors of the barn-shaped shed stood wide open, embracing a life-size nativity scene. Joseph with his staff stood protector over a kneeling Mary, who cradled baby Jesus beside the manger. Wise men, shepherds, donkeys, and sheep surrounded them.
Fifteen feet above them all, a bright star cast its glow. Strings of white bulbs reached from the top point of the star to the ground, encircling the scene.
An internal light shone from the heart of every single figure, illuminating the straw spread across the ground, glowing with hope. From the depths of the barn came a soft medley of “Silent Night” and other Christmas carols.
It could have been cheesy or commercialized. It wasn’t. It was an invitation into a sacred moment.
“Whoa.” The word seemed to escape from Daniel without his consent. It didn’t come with a laugh or even a hint of a grin. But there was a subtle relaxation to the lines of his face, which had been so strained the last few days.
Whitney let herself just breathe in the scene. Fresh snow and pine. Laughter and life. It filled her to the brim, overflowing in gentle waves of peppermint-scented joy.
Maybe she didn’t always know what she was supposed to do. But right now, right this minute, she was where she was supposed to be.
She could have stood there through the night, so long as there was darkness and light to break it. Daniel didn’t seem any more eager to move on.
After several long minutes, Julia Mae sighed. “I’m cold.”
Jack quickly agreed, and only then did Whitney realize the wind had bitten through her coat, making her teeth chatter and her muscles stiff.
The kids moved a lot slower going than they had coming, and Julia Mae soon lagged behind. Whitney was afraid she’d have to pick the girl up, but Daniel beat her to it, scooping the round figure into his arms. Julia Mae made no protest, and within a few steps, her head fell against his shoulder, her eyes drifting shut.
For the briefest moment, Whitney thought she saw the hint of a smile break through his stone facade.
Yep. This was exactly where she was supposed to be.