Chapter 17
seventeen
“COME ON, COME ON, COME ON. Zip up your coats and put on your scarves.”
Daniel felt the call almost as urgently as Whitney’s charges, and he poked his head out of the dining room to find the trio bundling up near the front door. Whitney squatted in front of little Jessie, closing her coat and popping her little hands into mittens before checking on the other kids.
“Where ya going?” he asked.
Jack looked up from the end of his zipper, which refused to stay in place. “I have rehearsal, and then we’re going to look at the lights again.”
“Wanna come with us?” Julia Mae asked. “I have to sit really quiet by myself ’cause Miss Whitney has to help Jack with his costume.”
Good luck with that. He caught Whitney’s eye and immediately recognized the same concern there. But she smiled up at him and responded with a wink.
As he knelt beside her on the entry rug, he reached for Jack’s delinquent zipper. “Sounds fun.”
“Oh, really?” Whitney raised an eyebrow that suggested he wasn’t telling the truth.
But any time with her sounded fun. They only had a week until Christmas, and he wanted to spend as many of those days with her as possible. “Let me turn off my computer,” he said with a nod toward the dining room.
“And change your clothes?” she said, but then she did a quick double take.
He swept his hand down his new sweater and motioned to his new jeans—ones he hadn’t even had to borrow.
“Where’s your school uniform, Mr. Daniel?” Jack asked.
He chuckled. “School uniform?”
“Yeah.” Julia Mae nodded as Whitney wound a scarf around her neck. “Jack wears a blue shirt and brown pants to school too.”
Whitney snorted at that. “Mr. Daniel isn’t in school anymore. He gets to pick what he wears.”
“But why would you wear the same thing every day if you get to pick?” Jack asked, his eyes as big as saucers.
“Good question, little man,” Daniel said as he pushed himself to his feet. He didn’t have much of an answer, so he told the truth. “I guess I never spent time thinking about it.”
At the same moment, Whitney said, “His blue shirts make his eyes pop.”
“They do?”
A lovely blush spread over her cheeks and probably reached her ears, which were hidden by her hair. “Yes.”
“Maybe I should keep wearing them.”
Whitney met his gaze and whispered, “Maybe you could find a sweater in that same blue.”
“Ew! Are you going to kiss again?” Jack spat the words out as if they tasted like dirt.
If Daniel had any say in it, the answer was a resounding yes.
Whitney giggled and shooed them toward the door. “We have to leave now or we’ll be late. But catch up to us?”
He made quick work of sending one more email, closing his laptop, and pulling on his shoes. His jacket was still in his hands when he slammed the door behind him and raced down the steps to the boardwalk. The wind off the water sliced through him, but he pressed into it as he slid his arms into the sleeves. Zipping up his coat seemed to just close the cold in with him, but it was worth it the moment he spotted Whitney with Jessie on her hip and two bouncing balls leading the way.
Someone had shoveled the boardwalk, but the gray wood blended into the little mounds on either side. He prayed there weren’t invisible patches of ice as he picked up his speed. His lungs pumped out regular puffs of air as he caught up with them.
“That was fast,” Whitney said.
He brushed a hand against the small of her back, and her eyes flashed with something that looked like joy. And for a split second he could picture their future. Quiet strolls in the evening light. Holding hands just because. And children.
Her children.
His.
Theirs.
His future that had been nothing but work suddenly felt full, and his heart skipped a beat. It wasn’t the dream that filled him. It was Whitney—her light. It was the way he could close his eyes and still see it shining through the darkness.
He pressed his lips to her cheek. It was chilly but immediately turned even more pink.
“Daniel.” She swatted his arm. “Not in front of the kids.”
But Jack and Julia Mae happily trotted several paces ahead of them, their focus on jumping into the patches of light from the old-fashioned iron streetlamps.
“They wouldn’t notice if I kissed you full on the lips.”
Her eyes went wide.
“Which I’d like to do, by the way.”
She swallowed thickly, her gaze dropping until it stopped at his lips. Good. She was thinking about it too. Probably not as often as he was. But he’d take whatever she could give him.
She shook her head. “Not here. Not now.” But she slipped her arm into the crook of his, falling into stride beside him. And he enjoyed every step up to the church building.
At the front door, he paused. He hadn’t been inside one since ... since he was supposed to get married in one. Strange. He’d thought it would bring a flash of regret. But when Jack wrenched the big wooden door open, the warmth inside beckoned to him.
From the far back corner, a piano pumped out the chorus of “Away in a Manger,” soft voices humming along.
He followed the others inside and paused, the closed door at his back. The sanctuary wasn’t overly large—two rows of wooden pews fourteen deep. On the end of each bench, along the center aisle, hung a small green wreath with alternating red and white bows. An upright piano sat on the corner of the stage that dominated the front of the room. Partially hidden by the piano, a twelve-foot fir tree had been professionally decorated in silver and red. It didn’t suffer from the same overdecorating that the kids had bestowed on the inn’s tree.
On the opposite side of the stage, a cardboard cutout of a stable sat among a haphazard spread of real straw. It didn’t have the brilliance of Mr. Huntington’s barn scene, but it left no doubt about what—or rather who—took center stage in their pageant.
Above it all, a cross hung, its beams made of rough-hewn logs. There was nothing clean or precise about it, but he couldn’t seem to look away.
“Come on, Mr. Daniel.” Julia Mae tugged on his hand, pulling him from his inspection. Whitney, Jessie, and Jack were already halfway down one of the side aisles. Marie met up with them, reaching for Jessie and hugging her close as she pointed Jack toward a door to the side of the stage. He and Whitney quickly disappeared.
In a move far too much like an adult, Julia Mae pointed to the back pew. “Sit here.”
“All right.” He slid along wood smoothed by years of churchgoers, and Julia Mae clambered up beside him. “Do you want to take off your jacket?” he asked as he unzipped his own.
“No. I want to be ready when it’s time to go.” She pursed her lips to the side. “But maybe I could take my mittens off. They’re attached.” She showed him the string that connected the buttons from her cuff to her homemade mittens.
“Sound planning.”
Julia Mae sat on the very edge of the bench, leaning forward as a dozen kids began filing onto the stage, her feet swinging with endless energy. Out of nowhere her little voice broke the silence. “You’re not lonely anymore, are you, Mr. Daniel?”
He jumped at the whispered words. They were spoken more toward her knees than to him, but they still packed a wallop. The swish-swish of her snow pants didn’t stop as she bobbed her curly head in time to the Christmas carol floating from the piano and the youthful voices adding the lyrics.
Clearing his throat, Daniel tried to make sense of what she’d said. “What makes you say that?”
Tilting her head, she looked up at him through squinting eyes. The narrow slits somehow made the blue even more vibrant, more intense. And he wondered if a four-year-old could read his mind.
She’d laugh if she knew he’d just been thinking about her nanny.
Julia Mae smacked her little lips. “’Cause. You don’t look like Eeyore anymore.”
Holding up his hands, he wiggled his fingers in front of her face. “I was thinking I never did. I’ve never been gray, as far as I know. And I don’t have a tail. Not even a lost one.”
“Mr. Daniel.” She giggled. “Not like that. Like there.” She waved a hand in his general direction.
“Like where exactly?” He suddenly needed to know what she meant.
She hopped up on the wooden seat, knelt next to him, and clamped her little hands on either side of his face. The mittens swinging from their ties bounced against his shoulders as she squeezed only hard enough to keep his attention. Then one hand moved, and she pressed the cool pad of her finger against the line next to his mouth. “Right here.” Her finger moved to the space between his eyebrows. “And here.” She squinted harder at a spot below his nose, finally pressing against the center of his scruffy mustache. “Here too.”
He couldn’t help the rise of his eyebrows and didn’t have any words to follow her proclamation.
Clearly Julia Mae didn’t need him to. She flipped around, plopped back down on the pew, and proclaimed, “And I know why.”
His stomach did a full loop. He’d promised Whitney he wouldn’t say anything. For whatever reason, she wasn’t ready for the inn’s residents to know, and he’d much rather have her and a secret than neither.
It wasn’t possible the little girl—precocious as she was—had clued in to their budding relationship. Was it?
“It’s ’cause it’s Christmas.”
“Huh?”
“’Cause of Mam-nuel.”
He nearly choked on a cough. “I’m sorry, what?”
“Mam-nuel. My daddy told me all about him.”
Daniel leaned forward to watch her face, to see if she was teasing him. But there were no signs that she was anything but earnest.
“Mam-nuel?” He tried it out on his tongue, but it still didn’t make sense.
Julia Mae rolled her eyes like he was clearly out of the loop. “You know. When Jesus was born in the manger. God came to be with us.”
“Emmanuel.”
The word came out so loud that the pianist hit a sour note, and every pint-size head on the stage swiveled in his direction. Even Whitney shot him a sideways look from the wings.
He held up his hands and mouthed a quick apology as the choir found their place and fell back into the carol’s verse.
Turning back to Julia Mae, he whispered, “Emmanuel?”
“That’s what I said.” Making her mittens dance like a marionette, she didn’t bother looking in his direction again. “My daddy said that God didn’t want us to be alone, so he sent Ee-man-ee-al.”
He smiled at her exaggerated pronunciation efforts. Or maybe it was the truth of her words.
“You’re not lonely because God’s with you, right?”
Daniel tried to croak out an agreement, but the truth wasn’t so easy. Honestly, he’d decided God had given up on him years ago. Right about the time Lauren had walked out the door. About the same time he’d decided she might be right that he didn’t know how to feel anything.
His gut twisted at the memory, which was almost immediately replaced by the sure knowledge that he had feelings. Big ones. For Whitney.
A tiny hand pressed on his thigh right above his knee. “Mr. Daniel? That’s why, right? ’Cause you’re not alone.”
Slowly he nodded, swallowing against a lump that had found purchase in the back of his throat.
He’d been alone for so long that he’d almost forgotten what it meant that God loved him. That God could be with him. That God loved to give good gifts.
Maybe Julia Mae was right. Those gifts felt a lot like walking beside Whitney.