Chapter 16
Mark reached Natalie’s truck before she did and opened the driver’s door, but she did not climb in right away.
For a moment, she only stood beside him in the wash of porch light, one hand resting on the open door and her gaze fixed on the house behind them.
Through the front windows, Mark could see his family moving around the living room, collecting ribbon scraps, carrying empty mugs, and arguing without any real heat about who had misplaced the roll of gold twine.
Julia’s laugh carried faintly through the glass, followed by his mother’s voice and Samuel’s quieter reply.
Natalie watched it all as if she had meant to look away but could not quite make herself do it. “Your family is something.”
Mark leaned one shoulder against the truck, leaving plenty of room between them. His family had affected her. He could tell. She had grown quiet at supper, then smiled too brightly over the baskets, and then blinked a little too fast when his mother mentioned care making small things beautiful.
“Something good or something overwhelming?” he finally asked.
“Yes.” Natalie’s mouth curved, but the smile did not quite reach her eyes. “Both.”
“That sounds about right.” Mark glanced toward the house when Thomas appeared in the window holding two empty boxes stacked too high. James walked past and added a third box just because he could, and Thomas’s mouth moved in what was probably a threat. “They mean well.”
“I know.” Natalie drew in a slow breath and let it out carefully. “That’s what makes it harder.”
Mark looked back at her. “Harder?”
She nodded but did not answer immediately.
Instead, she ran her thumb along the edge of her truck door, tracing the cool metal as if it gave her something solid to hold.
“I’m used to loud rooms. I’m used to church suppers and market days and customers talking over one another at Winter Wishes.
I’m not shy, and I don’t mind being around people, but your house felt different. ”
“Because of the teasing?”
“No. Because everyone knew where they fit.” Natalie looked toward the windows again, her face softened by the golden light spilling across the yard.
“Julia could boss everyone because everyone knew she loved them. Thomas noticed what needed doing before anyone asked. James made everyone laugh. Samuel could say three words and somehow win the whole room. Your mom could correct someone and feed them in the same breath. Your dad could make a joke and still look at her like she was the best thing that had ever happened to him.”
Mark said nothing, partly because she was right and partly because hearing his family described from the outside made something in his chest pull tight.
Natalie’s fingers curled around the door edge. “It was beautiful.”
“And painful,” he said quietly.
She looked at him then, and the truth in her eyes made him wish he had not guessed right. “Yes.”
The wind moved lightly over the yard, stirring the dry grass near the driveway. Mark could have filled the silence with something easy. He could have made a joke about Julia needing less encouragement or Samuel weaponizing quiet. Instead, he waited.
Natalie’s shoulders lowered a fraction, and when she spoke again, her voice was softer. “I don’t have some dramatic story, if that’s what you’re wondering. No broken engagement. No grand betrayal that explains everything neatly.”
“I wasn’t wondering that.”
“No?” She glanced at him, not quite smiling this time.
“No.” Mark kept his voice steady. “I figured if there was a story, you’d tell it when you wanted to.”
Something in her expression changed, a small crack in the careful brightness she carried so well. “It’s more embarrassing than that, maybe. Not one big heartbreak. Just years of little ones.”
Mark shifted his weight but did not move closer. “Those count too.”
Natalie blinked then looked down at her boots.
“My mother died when I was young, and Aunt Eleanor loved me enough for ten people. I never doubted that, but there were still all these moments when I wanted my mom, and no one else could quite fill that space. Then I grew up, opened the shop, and made this whole life around Christmas and gifts and helping people celebrate, and I kept thinking surely there would be a season when it would be my turn.”
Mark wanted to reach out and touch her, but he didn’t want to interrupt, so he gripped the edge of the open truck door instead.
“My turn for what?” she continued, almost as if she were asking herself the question.
“A table full of people who were mine. A man who didn’t just think I was cheerful and festive and good at wrapping presents.
A family. Children, maybe. Someone saving me the last cinnamon roll because he knew I would pretend I didn’t want it.
” She laughed once, but the sound broke at the edge. “That sounds small, doesn’t it?”
“No, it doesn’t.”
Her eyes shone, and she looked away quickly.
“There were men here and there. Nice men. Men who liked the idea of me, I think. The Christmas shop owner. The girl who could make everything pretty. The one who remembered birthdays, found the right gift for their mothers, and smiled at church events. After a while, it became clear that they never saw past all that.”
Mark thought of her at the children’s workshop, her hands covered in ribbon and glitter, watching every child with full attention.
When they had been under the mistletoe, she had whispered about how it was supposed to be temporary, but her eyes hadn’t seemed to agree.
She had fit in so well with his family tonight, almost too well.
He had seen her brightness first because everyone did, but now he was beginning to understand how much it cost her to keep offering it.
Natalie rubbed beneath one eye with the side of her finger, careful not to smudge anything.
“I know people mean well when they ask if I’m seeing anyone or try to introduce me to someone.
They love me in their way, but after years of that, you start to feel less like a woman and more like an unfinished project everyone keeps checking on. ”
Mark’s jaw tightened. “That’s why the rumors helped.”
“Yes.” She gave him a small, rueful smile. “For a little while, everyone stopped trying to fix me.”
“You don’t need fixing.”
Natalie’s lips parted slightly.
Mark pushed away from the truck. “You don’t. Being lonely doesn’t mean something is wrong with you. Wanting more doesn’t either.”
Her gaze held his, and the night between them felt as still as the moment beneath the mistletoe. “You sound very sure of that for someone who keeps insisting this is temporary.”
He gave a quiet breath of laughter, though nothing about the conversation felt funny. “I’m better at seeing other people than myself.”
“That might be the first thing we fully have in common.”
“I thought we had peppermint bark.”
“That too.” Natalie smiled for real this time, small but warm, and Mark felt the force of it like a hand pressed to his chest.
He wanted to tell her that he saw her more than he had before.
He saw the woman who made beauty because she knew what ache felt like.
He saw the woman who poured care into other people’s celebrations while quietly wondering when she would stop standing on the outside of her own.
He saw strength in her that had nothing to do with cheerfulness and everything to do with continuing to hope when disappointment had been teaching her not to.
Instead, he reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out the small container his mother had given him before they had walked outside. “Mom sent you leftovers.”
Natalie stared at the container then laughed softly as she took it. “Your mother sent me food?”
“She sends everyone food.”
“This is exactly what I mean.” She held the container close with both hands. “It’s ridiculous how lovely that is.”
Mark opened his mouth then closed it again. A dozen careful answers passed through his mind, but none of them sounded right. Finally, he settled on the truth. “You can come back.”
Natalie went still.
He held her gaze even though his pulse had started beating harder than it should have. “For supper. For baskets. For nothing in particular. You don’t have to wait for Julia to order half your store.”
Her smile trembled. “Mark.”
“I mean it.”
“I know.” She looked down at the container, then back toward the house. “That’s the problem.”
He understood.
Natalie climbed into the truck, and Mark closed the door once she was settled. She rolled the window down before starting the engine, and the cool air carried the faint scent of rosemary and coffee from the house behind them.
“Thank you for walking me out,” she said.
“Drive safe.”
“I will.” She hesitated, her hands resting on the steering wheel. “Mark?”
“Yes?”
“I don’t feel like a project when I’m with you.”
Before he could answer, she started the truck and backed carefully down the driveway. Mark stood in the yard until her taillights disappeared around the bend, the leftover warmth of her confession still hanging in the cold air.
He had thought Natalie was bright because life had made her that way naturally. Now he wondered if she had chosen brightness again and again even when life gave her reasons not to.
That made her stronger than he had realized.
And far harder to walk away from.