“By blowing my marriage to smithereens and having to fight like hell to get it back,” Ronnie said. “Take it from me, it’s smarter to appreciate what you have before it gets away from you.”
Appreciating Jeanette wasn’t the problem. Understanding her was the hard part, but Ronnie was right about one thing. He didn’t want to lose her and take a chance on spending the rest of his life without her.
* * *
Jeanette was standing alone under a tree watching Mary Vaughn and Sonny. They’d set up chairs side by side in front of the stage and were seemingly listening to the concert by the town’s choirs, though from what she could tell, neither one of them had glanced at the stage in the past half hour. They were totally, one hundred percent absorbed in each other. She envied them.
“What are the odds at Wharton’s on those two getting back together?” Tom asked, coming up beside her.
“Probably higher than the bets they’re placing on the two of us,” she reported glumly.
He turned her to face him. “I’m sorry about earlier. For too many years just the sound of Christmas music was enough to put me in a foul mood. You have no idea how much hypocrisy there was in my house. Our celebration didn’t have anything to do with love or goodwill. It was materialistic in the extreme. There were mountains of presents on Christmas morning, though they had little to do with anything my sisters or I wanted. Instead my parents bought what they thought we should have so they could gloat to their friends that they’d found the impossible-to-find latest toy or technology gizmo. You would have thought the holidays were invented to advance my mother’s personal social agenda.”
“Didn’t you ever wonder why that mattered so much to her?” Jeannette asked.
He regarded her with puzzlement. “There you go again, hinting that there’s some deep dark secret I’m missing. If you know something, tell me.”
“It’s not my place.”
“Then excuse me if I go on hating the holidays.”
“Okay, you were a classic poor little rich boy,” she said. “Am I supposed to feel sorry for you?”
Tom winced. “No. I’m just trying to make you understand.”
“I do understand. We all have things in our pasts we’d like to forget, things that didn’t go the way we thought we deserved or the way we hoped they would. Grow up. Get over it.”
“The righteousness of the recently converted,” Tom commented.
Jeanette stared at him in shock. “What does that mean?”
“Not all that long ago, you were letting the past rule your life, too,” he reminded her. “Now you’ve found a way to reconcile with your parents and to look at the holiday season from a new perspective. And that’s wonderful. It really is. I wouldn’t want anything less for you. Just give the rest of us time to catch up.”
“I never meant to...” Her voice trailed off.
What had she meant? Maybe she had been judging him too harshly for not adapting and rejoicing at the same pace she had—especially when she knew about his mother and why she placed so much emphasis on status when he didn’t. What was wrong with her? She of all people knew that pain and heartache were individual. What her father and mother had felt wasn’t the same thing she’d experienced. Their grief had taken them in one direction, leaving her out and causing her to suffer in a different way entirely.
Perhaps Tom hadn’t suffered the major loss she and her family had, but she knew all too well how being disconnected from those you loved could hurt. Chances were, his relationship with his family had been awkward and difficult all year long, but it had probably felt a thousand times worse during the holidays when other families were celebrating together. She had no right to minimize any of that.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I just wanted us to be able to share this, to enjoy the magic of the holidays together.”
“And we will,” he promised. “I will get there, maybe not before we run out of eggnog tonight, but I will get there.”
She pulled his head down and kissed him slowly, feeling the tension in his shoulders ease, breathing in the scent of him, which mingled with the scent of pine in the air.
“You know,” he said softly, his lips against hers, “I think some of the magic of the season is rubbing off on me, after all.”
* * *
Mary Vaughn felt as if she’d never thrown a party before in her life. She’d been dashing around the house for the past hour double-checking every detail, making sure that the caterer had the food displayed just right for the buffet, that there wasn’t a speck of dust on the chandelier in the dining room, that not one single bulb had blown out on the dozens of strands on the massive tree in the living room.
“Will you settle down?” Sonny pleaded, trailing behind her in a way that seemed wonderfully familiar. “Everything’s perfect.”
“What if no one comes?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Your parties are always the highlight of the season. And every single person we spoke to at the festival tonight said they planned to drop by.”
“I know, but people get tired. They think it will be packed and no one will miss them.”
He stopped her as she was about to count the cloth napkins for the second time. With his hands on her shoulders holding her in place, he looked into her eyes. “Why are you so nervous?”
“Because...” she began, then couldn’t bring herself to finish.
“Because people are going to know we’re back together?” he asked. “Is that it?”
She nodded. “I want to make you proud.”
“You’ve always made me proud.”
“But I want people to see that I finally really get what an amazing man you are.”
He tilted her chin up. “The only one who needs to believe that is me.”
“And quite likely your father,” she said ruefully. “He may not be thrilled that we’re getting back together.”
“You’re wrong about
