The Gingerbread Girls

“It’s not a he. I’ve made a decision to give myself the most amazing gift.”

“What?” her friends asked in unison.

“I’m going to have a baby. I’m going to start investigating third-party reproduction and cryobanks right after the holidays are over.”

Her friends looked stunned. “Cryo what?” Emily asked weakly.

“You mean you’re going to raise a child by yourself?” Andrea finally asked.

“Why not? I’m well established. I’m financially able to afford the procedures. I’m ready. I think, on my own, I could provide as stable a family as most I’ve seen.”

“That seems very scientific,” Emily ventured. “Procedure as a way to make a baby?”

“I am a scientist!” And really, science had given her far more than her family ever had. “I’m done with romantic love. I’m saving all my love for my baby.”

Her friends were very quiet.

“Hey,” Casey said, trying for humor, when she was really disappointed they weren’t more supportive of her decision. “You’re both so serious. I said I was done with love, and that there could be a baby in my future, not that I was going to burn the Gingerbread Inn down!”

“You couldn’t,” Andrea said with dreamy satisfaction. “Rick would rescue it.”

Rick, the adorable Tessa’s father, was a fireman.

“I’m curing myself of romantic notions. I’m tackling my fatal flaw,” Casey surprised herself by announcing.

“Your fatal flaw?” Andrea said, frowning.

“I believed in romantic love,” Casey said. “Worse, I believed in love at first sight. It’s done nothing but cause me grief, and I’m done with it.”

“Love at first sight?” Emily said, puzzled. “I thought you and Sebastian worked together for some time before you agreed to go out with him.”

But her secret, even from Em and Andrea, was that Sebastian had not been her first love. Her first love she had loved at first sight. He was the one who had made her so foolishly long for love that she had been willing to overlook her own family’s history with passion, and imbue her former fiancé with characteristics he did not have.

“I’m done with love,” Casey repeated, even more firmly than before.

“You are not!” Emily said, dismayed. “How can anybody just be done with love?”

“We buried Melissa,” Casey said. “That’s enough all by itself.”

“I understand how you feel,” Andrea said softly. “After Gunter died I wanted to give up on love, too. But I’m so glad I didn’t.”

Though Casey could not say it, the death of Andrea’s husband—on their honeymoon, no less—felt like part of her disillusionment. Giving your heart was a risky business.

“No one would be more appalled than Melissa if you made fear of love her legacy!”

The Gingerbread Girls had always bowed to Emily’s leadership, and Casey conceded slightly now. “Okay. This kind of love I’m fine with. The bonds between friends. The love between a mother and a child. Romantic love I’m done with. Finis.”

“I always love it when you speak Italian,” Andrea said, deciding in the face of Casey’s intensity it was time to lighten up.

“It’s Latin,” she said. “Not Italian.”

Andrea rolled her eyes at the correction and went on as if she had not been interrupted. “You aren’t done with it. You’re hurting right now. But it has been a year, and I think you have healed more than you think you have. You are planning on having a baby, after all. Though I do wish you’d wait for the right guy to come along, and spadoodle, life as you know it, over.”

“Spadoodle?” Casey laughed in spite of herself.

“I thought it sounded Italian,” Andrea offered with an impish grin.

“Sort of,” Emily said, as if she was considering. “Like spaghetti and noodle mixed.” And then they were all laughing, like the carefree girls they had once been. It felt again like a homecoming, it was so good to be with them.

“I agree with Andrea, though. The right guy will come along and you’ll see that every single thing about your life, including the parts that seem bad, were getting you ready for that moment,” Emily said. “Should you put off having a baby until that happens? Really, I know that’s not for me to say.”

Casey felt her friend was not entirely approving and had decided to keep it light, and she was grateful for that.

“From spadoodle to deep philosophy in the blink of an eye?” Casey said, lightly. “It’s enough to make my head spin.”

Emily grinned. “Way too deep, eh, Doc?”

“Way,” Casey said with an answering smile, and it all seemed okay again. Her decision to come here had been a good one. The sisterhood between them that allowed them to squabble and exchange confidences and well-meaning advice, and then just rest in pure love and laughter again, was balm to her soul.

“I wish you’d give love a chance,” Andrea insisted.

“I have given love a chance,” Casey said firmly. “What’s that old saying? If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you always got. Falling in love, for me, equals heartbreak. And I’m not doing it anymore.”

“You sound sure of yourself,” Emily mused.

“I am.”

“Maybe Andrea’s right. Maybe you’ve spent too much time in the lab and it has given you this illusion about what you can control. Maybe before you fully commit to the idea of having a baby on your own, you should try getting out a bit.”

“I’m getting out. I’ve joined yoga! And I’m taking a calligraphy class. My life is exceedingly full.”

She inwardly begged Andrea not to mention that desperate call a few weeks ago when she had been so unbearably down.

Andrea, blessedly, didn’t.

But Emily said, “Full does not mean fulfilling.”

“That’s why I want a family of my own. Besides, when did you become such a philosopher? Now you two quit picking on me.”

“I’m sorry,” Emily said, “I didn’t mean to pick on you. If this decision makes you happy, I’m happy for you.”

Casey just wanted to change the subject. “Andrea, tell me what I should get the adorable little Tessa for Christmas. I was thinking a nice chemistry set.”

They all laughed, and it didn’t take much of a shove to get Andrea talking about her new life and her new family. “I’ve already tucked away the giant gingerbread man Tessa fell in love with at the shop.”

Andrea went on to talk about what she was getting Rick. She was glowing with passion, that thing that Casey was most suspicious of.

Both her friends knew what a philanderer her father had been. He’d no doubt made moves on both their mothers at some time over the summers here! And when her own mom had found out? Shrieking and pot throwing and breaking glass.

And then passion clouding the poor woman’s judgment all over again.

“How is your mother since your father passed?” Andrea asked suddenly, as if she had picked it up telepathically. Such was the way between old friends.

You don’t want to know. “Fine,” Casey said briefly.

“I wish she would come for the vow renewal,” Emily said. “She’s not going to be alone because you’ve come here, is she?”

“Oh, no,” Casey managed to squeak. “She’s not going to be alone.”

She could feel her throat tightening suspiciously, and she swallowed hard and focused quickly on the inn’s dog, a gorgeous golden retriever mix named Harper. The female dog came up with her happy grin and put her head in Casey’s lap.

“This kind of love I can live with,” Casey said lightly, scratching the dog’s ears and smiling at the tail thumping on the floor. “Oh, look! It’s snowing.”

She gently maneuvered free of the affectionate pet, then got up and went to the window. She shouldn’t have told her friends she had given up on love. Maybe she shouldn’t have told them she was thinking of alternative ways to have a family, either. She had left herself wide-open to a Christmas campaign to make her change her mind.

But she’d had enough proof of the folly of love to last her a lifetime, and it should be easy enough to change the subject when it came up.

As she looked out the window, headlights illuminated the thickly falling snow. A cab emerged from the night and pulled up in front of the inn, sliding a little when it tried to stop on the icy driveway.

A man got out of the back, dressed casually in a parka with a fur-lined hood, jeans tucked into laced snow boots. He strode around to the rear and waited for the driver to retrieve his bags from the trunk. Then, with his luggage at his feet in the snow, he paid the cabbie, clapping him on the shoulder at his effusive thanks for what must have been a great Christmas tip.

It was dark and it was snowing hard, but there was something about the way the new arrival carried himself that penetrated both the storm and the night.

Something shivered along Casey’s spine.

She had the alarming feeling it might be recognition, but she shook it off.

It simply was not possible that, following so quickly on her announcement to her friends that she had sworn off love, Turner Kennedy—the first man who had ever stolen her heart—would show up here.

CHAPTER TWO

“DID SOMEBODY JUST ARRIVE?” Andrea asked. “Another member of my little work party?”

“I thought we were your little work party,” Casey said, trying not to panic. “Emily and me.”

“Well, you were, but Cole pointed out to me he doesn’t want Emily to do any heavy lifting, and he didn’t really think you would want to be up on the roof replacing strings of Christmas lights. He wanted another guy, even though I asked Martin to help with the electrical. He said he’d be happy to do it for nothing. Isn’t that nice?”

Casey was having trouble focusing on Martin’s niceness.

“Who is it?” Emily asked. “He wouldn’t tell me who he invited. He just said it would be a surprise. I’m guessing Joe.”

“I’m not sure who it is,” Casey said, though she was guessing it was not Joe! She was amazed at how normal her voice sounded, considering she was forcing words out past constricted vocal chords. Because if it was who she suspected, it was a surprise, all right. Of the worst possible sort!

And why wouldn’t Turner Kennedy be just the surprise Cole would bring to the inn? the scientist in Casey insisted on asking. It was certainly one of the available options!

Turner had been the best man at Emily and Cole’s wedding. Why wouldn’t he be here as they assembled as much of the original wedding party as was possible for their renewal of vows? Why wouldn’t he jump at the chance to help get the old inn ready for their magical day, just as she had?

Because he disappeared, Casey wailed to herself.

Still, at one time, he and Cole had been best friends. Casey had assumed the friendship had been left behind, because when she had asked—not nearly as frequently as she wanted to, and with only the most casual interest—Emily had been vague.

“Oh. I’ll have to ask Cole. I think he said Turner is overseas. He’s some kind of government contractor.”

She’d thought, in those three magical days they had spent together following the wedding, that they had known everything about each other. Government contractor? Casey had felt the first shiver of betrayal at that. He hadn’t mentioned anything about being a government contractor. But in retrospect, he had headed her off every single time she had tried to delve into his life.

Just pretend I’m a prince who found a glass slipper. And that it fits you.

“If Turner is somewhere amazing, like France or Italy,” Emily had said, thankfully not reading her friend’s distress, “Cole and I should go visit!”

And when, after waiting an appropriate amount of time, Casey had screwed up the nerve to ask if Emily had asked Cole about Turner, her friend had replied, “Cole said he’s lost touch. Men! Relationships are a low priority.”

That was actually the first time Casey had heard bitterness in Emily’s voice in reference to her busy husband. But not the last.

Why would Turner be here now? Well, why not?

Why wouldn’t he come and help celebrate Christmas with his best friend’s newly reunited and rejoicing family? It went with everything Emily had been saying about the changes Cole was making. Her husband was giving a new priority to building and keeping relationships.

That’s what Casey was doing, too, wasn’t it? Making a vow to realize the importance of friendships before it was too late? Celebrating Christmas and the spirit of love with her best friends instead of that crazy, unpredictable, painful conglomeration of people sometimes known as a family?

Even her decision to create the kind of family she had always wanted for herself seemed to be wavering, perhaps due to some combination of her friends’ lack of enthusiasm and his arrival.

Stop it, Casey ordered herself. She didn’t even know if it was Turner. But all the ordering in the world would not slow her heart as the cab pulled away, and the man bent, effortlessly picked up a duffel bag and looped the strap over his shoulder, before turning to the steps that led to the front porch.

Casey was aware she was holding her breath as he stepped toward the faint light being thrown by a string of Christmas lights with too many burned out bulbs.

The light may have been weak, but it washed the familiar contours of his face, and turned the snowflakes caught in the glossy darkness of his hair to gold.

Her gasp was audible, and she covered it with quick desperation by clearing her throat. Casey’s wineglass trembled in her hand. She set it down. She told herself to move, to get out of here fast.

Instead, she was glued to the spot, her feet frozen, her eyes locked on his face.

It was him.

It was Turner. It was Turner Kennedy in the flesh.

Not unchanged, though the changes were subtle. Something in the way he held himself made a shiver go up and down her spine. As he arrived at the bottom of the step, he paused.

He had broadened in the years since she had last seen him, youthful litheness giving way to the pure power of a man completely in his prime. What hadn’t changed was that he was exuding an almost sizzling sense of himself, who he was in the world, and what he could take on.

Anything.

If the door of the inn had suddenly crashed open and a horde of bandits had fallen upon him, she had the sense he would be ready for it. He might even enjoy it!

Casey shook the picture off, annoyed that she could be so susceptible to the whisper of imagination. She knew nothing about him. She had once convinced herself otherwise, and she had been wrong.

The faint light illuminated his face, and she shivered again, despite herself. There seemed to be a certain remoteness in his expression that was different, but what did she know? She’d been a naive young bridesmaid when Turner Kennedy had been Cole Watson’s best man.

She had been the geeky girl, the science nerd, the brain, who had been noticed by the most popular boy in the school, the captain of the football team, the boy whose picture in every girl’s yearbook was marked with inked hearts.

Despite his closed expression, Turner was still the most astonishingly handsome man she had ever seen, so good-looking that a girl could fall for him.

At first sight.

So much so that when he had taken her chin in his hands as dawn broke, the morning after Cole and Emily’s wedding, and said, “Run away with me,” she hadn’t even hesitated.

Casey had tossed years and years of absolute control right out the window.

“Three days,” he’d said. “Spend the next three days with me.”

She should have known better than to share her new resolve about love with her girlfriends. It seemed she had thrown a gauntlet before the gods and they had responded with terrifying swiftness.

“Casey?”

She turned to her friends and saw the instant concern register on both their faces.

“What’s wrong?” they asked together.

What’s wrong? She was a scientist. Andrea had been right; she spent too much time in the lab. And nothing in that carefully controlled environment had prepared her for this encounter.

She was amazed when her voice didn’t shake when she said, “It looks like Turner Kennedy is here.”

“Turner?” Emily said. “I can’t believe it! We haven’t seen him since our wedding. I thought Cole had lost touch completely.”

Emily got up, raced to the front door and flung it open. “Turner Kennedy! What a wonderful surprise!”

Casey was experiencing that trapped feeling, a sensation of fight or flight. When Andrea went into the front hallway to greet the newcomer, too, Casey quietly set down her unfinished wineglass, left the parlor by the back door and slipped up the rear staircase to her room.

She went in and softly closed the door, leaning against it as if she had escaped a twisting, foggy London street with the Ripper on her heels.

Her heart was beating hard and unreasonably fast, not entirely the result of her mad dash up the stairs.

She turned and looked at her suitcase.

Good. Not completely unpacked yet. She could throw the few things she had unpacked back in it. She could wait in here, quiet as a mouse, until the old inn grew silent, and then slink out that door and never come back.

She could spend a quiet Christmas in her apartment. Never mind that she had yearned for the company of loving friends. Never mind that she had longed for holiday traditions, for bonfires and impromptu snowball fights, hanging stockings on the hearth and making gingerbread cookies with the Gingerbread Girls. Never mind that she had longed for a little taste of the kind of Christmas she would create for her own child someday soon!

Never mind all that. She would go to her little apartment, where it was safe and everything was in her control. She could look up everything she needed to know about third-party reproductive procedures.

Maybe she’d even go to the lab for part of Christmas Day. Why not?

Her research there could be her greatest gift to the world. Ask any parent whose child had been diagnosed with cancer!

Another option would be to accept her mother’s invitation.

To join her at the Sacred Heart Mission House, where the Sisters of Mercy would be serving Christmas dinner to the poor. Where her mother, glowing with a soft joy she had never had while Casey was growing up, would remind her, ever so gently, not to call her Mom.

It’s Sister Maria Celeste.

There. Both the Caravettas—except her mother did not consider herself a Caravetta any longer—selflessly saving the world at Christmas.

Her crazy family, the reason Casey had sought refuge with her friends at the inn.

But she couldn’t stay here now.

It was one thing to say you were sworn off romantic love. It was another to be tested.

And Turner Kennedy had that indefinable something that would test any woman’s resolve, never mind one who had been locked away in a lab nursing a broken heart for nearly a year.

Or had it been longer? Had it really been ever since that three days together in a fairy-tale kingdom he had created? Just for her. A Cinderella experience. The little scrub-a-muffin noticed by the prince. The prince enchanted with her.

Only in the end, the fairy tale had been reversed. He had been the one with secrets. The one who had resisted her every effort to find out why only three days, where he was going, what he would be doing next. He had been the one who had disappeared into the night, only unlike the fairy tale, Turner had not left a single clue.

She had been left holding a memory as fragile as a glass slipper, only she had never again found the person who fit it.

But now he was here. Yes, Turner had a raw masculine potency combined with a roguish, boyish charm that had completely bowled her over on their first encounter.

Casey turned off the lights in her room and lay on her bed, staring at the glow of the mostly burned out string of Christmas lights outside her window. They were making a really ugly pattern on her waterstained ceiling. She contemplated how the hurt Turner had caused her felt recent, more recent than the hurt of her broken engagement!

In a different part of the house, she could hear everyone’s voices, Cole’s and Turner’s, raised in greeting, followed by laughter and conversation. She could, after all these years, pick out the tone of Turner’s voice. It was deep, a masculine melody touching the harp her spine had become.

It was obvious the men were now in the front room where the Gingerbread Girls had been earlier.

No chance of sneaking down the staircase without being seen. Casey fervently wished they would shut up and go to bed, so she could get out of here.

Instead, Turner’s voice triggered powerful memories of a presidential suite at the Waldorf Astoria. Jumping on the beds. Sitting in front of the fireplace wrapped in a luxurious, pure white robe, while he painted her toenails red. Walking to the theater. Taking a carriage ride through Central Park.

Three days of barely sleeping, of living with an intensity that was exhilarating and exhausting, of being on fire with life and love... Strip away all the luxury, and it was his hand in hers that had caused her to feel so exquisitely alive, his eyes on her face that made her feel as if she had never felt before.

Enough! Casey shook her head clear of the memories. Finally, after experiencing what she had once seen described in a poem as the “interminable night,” she felt it was safe to creep out of her room, jacket on against the cold, suitcase in hand.

She checked the hallway. Nothing. Not a sound beyond the wheezing of an exceptionally cranky old furnace. She was pretty sure Harper slept with her owner, the innkeeper, Carol.

Casey tiptoed through the house and out the front, where the screen door shrieked like a cat whose tail had been stepped on.

She froze, listened, waited for lights to come on. It was really dark out here. Even the Christmas lights had been turned off, no doubt part of the Gingerbread Inn’s austerity program.

Stumbling through the inky darkness found only in the country, Casey finally made it to her car, where she opted to use the key so there would be no blink of headlights or short blast of the horn when she unlocked it. She actually had her key in the door when it hit her.

She could not let Emily and Andrea down like this. It wasn’t about her. It was about making Emily’s day the most incredible experience of her life.

Besides, what explanation could she offer to her friends for her sudden defection? As close as she was to them, she had never let on about those three days she and Turner had spent together. Had never breathed out loud that she harbored a crush on the man, that she had waited and hoped and prayed that he would contact her again.

The memory of that—of waiting—made her cheeks turn crimson with anger.

She was acting like a thief! Acting as if she had done something wrong.

It was Turner who had breathed fire into her soul in those three days that had followed Cole and Emily’s wedding. And then he had walked away, and never, ever called. Or written. Had disappeared as if they had not shared the most intense of all experiences.

As if they had not fallen in love at first sight.

Slowly, she pulled her key out of the car door.

Casey was a scientist. She didn’t believe in the phenomena of coincidence, certainly did not believe in the universe conspiring to help people out. But really, in terms of her vow never to love again, could there be a more perfect test than this?

Could there be a better conclusion than coming face-to-face with the man who had made her aware of her fatal flaw?

It was perfect, really.

The perfect ending.

Not the one Andrea and Emily wanted her to believe in. No, in this story, the princess was not kissed awake by a prince. In this ending, the princess came awake all by herself. In her new happily-ever-after, Casey would walk away, sure of herself, entirely certain of her ability to be completely independent, to live with purpose and joy without being encumbered by a belief in the fairy-tale ending of love.