One Winter's Sunset: The Christmas Baby Surprise / Marry Me under the Mistletoe / Snowflakes and Silver Linings

She laughed. “I have no idea.”

Cole read over the directions again. “Sure you don’t want to just call for pizza?”

“Cole Watson, you’re not giving up already, are you?”

“Me? Never.”

“Me, either.” She turned the book back toward herself. “Besides, I need to learn how to do this.”

“Why? Why now?”

“Because it’s about darn time I learned how to cook,” she said, instead of the truth—that she had this dream of baking cookies with her child. Of being in the kitchen with Sweet Pea on a stool, helping to measure and stir. Building a family life of just two. She’d wanted that for so long—

Then why did the thought suddenly sadden her?

Outside, she could hear the sound of Joe chopping wood. She gestured toward the door. “If you want to help Joe, I can handle this.”

Cole arched a brow.

“I can figure it out. And if I don’t, I’ll blame you and call for pizza.” She grinned, half hoping he’d leave, half hoping he’d stay.

“I’d rather stay and help you. I should learn to cook, too, since I’m living on my own now.”

She didn’t remind him that he could afford a team of chefs to make him food around the clock.

“After all,” Cole said, leaning in toward her again, “didn’t you say you always wanted me to help you instead of hiring someone to do the work? Let me help you, Emily.”

She considered him for a moment. What would it hurt? Maybe together they could puzzle through this whole roux and piecrust thing. He had a point. She couldn’t say no when he was offering the very thing she’d asked him for.

“Okay, then, you have onion duty.” She plopped the offending vegetable onto Cole’s cutting board.

“You just want to see me cry.”

“No, but it is definitely a bonus.” She took the celery, trimmed off the ends and began to cut it into little green crescent shapes. Across from her, Cole had peeled the onion and sliced it down the middle. He made slow, neat, precise slices in the vegetable, so exact it was as if he’d measured them.

Cole stopped cutting and looked up at her. “What?”

“You’re treating that onion like it’s a prototype or a stock report. It won’t break if you chop it fast, Cole. We only have so long to get dinner on the table.”

“I like things neat,” he said.

“Neat? That’s an understatement. You should have been an accountant, Cole, with all those straight lines. Though, there were a couple times you didn’t mind a mess. One in particular I remember.” The last few words came out as a whisper. “Remember the closet in our first apartment?”

“That wasn’t a closet—it was an overgrown shoe box. It was impossible to keep neat.” He stopped slicing and looked up at her, and a knowing smile curved across his face. The kind of smile that came with a shared history, a decade of memories. It was a nice, comfortable place to be.

“The ties,” Cole said. “You’re talking about the ties.”

Oh, how she would miss this when her marriage was dissolved. All the memories they held together would be divided, like the furniture and the dishes and the books on the shelves. She’d be starting over with someone else. A blank slate, with no inside jokes about food fights and messy closets.

Emily craved those memories right now, craved the closeness they inspired. Just a little more, she told herself, and then she’d be ready to let go. “Remember that day you couldn’t find the red one with the white stripes?”

He nodded. “The one you gave me for our first Christmas. I said it was my lucky tie and I wanted to wear it on my first sales call.”

Their gazes met, the connection knitting tighter. She smiled. “You were so mad, because you like everything all ordered, and this was out of order. So I tore the closet apart looking for it, and because I was frustrated and in a hurry, I just threw all the ties in a pile on the floor. You came in and found me—”

“And at first I was upset at the mess, but then you held up the tie—”

“And I told you that if you made a mess once in a while, maybe you wouldn’t be so uptight.”

They laughed, the merry sound ringing in the bright and cheery kitchen. “But you forget the best part,” Cole said, moving a little closer, his voice darkening with desire. “How we ended up making love on that floor, on top of the ties, and having a hell of a good time.”

“In the middle of a mess.”

It had been a wild, uninhibited moment. They’d had so few of those. Too few.

Cole caught a strand of her hair in his fingers and let the slippery tress slide away. “Why didn’t I do that more often, Emily?”

She ached to lean into his touch, to turn her lips to his palm, to kiss the hand she knew so well. “I don’t know, Cole, I really don’t.”

He held her gaze for a moment, then a mischievous light appeared in his eyes and his hand dropped away. He shifted his attention to the onion again, and this time did a frantic chopping, sending pieces here and there, mincing it into a variety of tiny cubes. “There. Done. And messy as hell.”

She laughed. “I think the pie will be all the better for it.”

“Oh, yeah? Wait till we make the crust. You might not feel that way with flour in your hair.”

“You wouldn’t.”

He eyed the five-pound bag of all-purpose flour on the counter. “Oh, I would. And I will. I never did get you back for throwing my ties on the floor.” Cole came around to the other side of the bar, scooping up a bit of flour in his hand. “Are you sorry about that?” he asked.

There was a charge in the air, fueled by the innuendos and heat between them. It was delicious and sweet and she hoped the feeling stayed. “Not one bit.”

Cole held his hand over her head. “You want to rethink your position, Mrs. Watson?”

She hadn’t been called that in months, and the name jarred her for a second. She remembered when Cole had first proposed and she had written Mrs. Cole Watson a hundred times, until the proposal felt real and she could believe she was really going to marry the man of her dreams. Soon, she wouldn’t be Mrs. Watson anymore. Or a missus at all.

“I’m sorry, Cole,” she said softly.

He dropped his hand and met her gaze. “They were just ties, Emily. I didn’t really care.”

“I know,” she said. She was trying to hold on to the moment, but knew it was a butterfly, fleeting, impossible to catch. Eventually, Cole would go back to work, and she’d be on her own again. A single mom. Better to end it now than to prolong the inevitable. Emily returned to the vegetables. “Let’s, uh, get this pie made before Carol comes home.”

If he sensed the change in her, he didn’t say anything. He helped her finish chopping the vegetables and cooked chicken, then lifted the heavy food processor onto the counter and helped her assemble the ingredients for the piecrust. “Okay. Here goes nothing,” Cole said, pushing the pulse button. Several pulses later, the flour and butter and ice water had coalesced into a crust. “Voilà!” Cole said, lifting off the plastic lid. “Piecrust.”

“I am impressed,” she said. “What are you doing for your next trick, Superman?”

He grinned. “That you will have to wait to see, Mrs. Watson.”

She shook her head and dipped her gaze before he saw the tears that had rushed to her eyes. “Don’t call me that, Cole. Please.”

“Emily, Emily,” he said, tipping her chin until she was looking at him. “We cleaned up the mess with the ties. Why do you have such little faith that we can clean up the mess with our marriage?”

CHAPTER NINE

THE FOUR OF them sat around the long dining room table, helping themselves to big slices of chicken potpie and generous bowls of tossed salad. Carol had brought home a loaf of bread from the bakery in town, which served as the perfect complement to the meal. Cole sat beside Joe, across from Emily and Carol in a warm and cozy room filled with great scents, great food and great people.

This, he thought, this is what home feels like.

Was that what he and Emily had missed? Had they been so fixated on getting from A to B that they had missed that critical step of building a home, not just a house?

Or rather, had he? Emily had asked him to be home more often, and he’d promised over and over to do that, only to spend his time at work instead. Then they’d built that house on the hill, and despite the fact that it had a table in the kitchen, a handcrafted one in the dining room and another outdoor eating space, they rarely ate together. Most nights, she had been asleep before he got home, and then he was gone again before she was awake.

“Great job, Emily.” Carol gestured toward the chicken potpie. “Maybe I should hire you on as a chef.”

Emily laughed. Cole liked it when she laughed, because her face and eyes lit up, and the whole room felt lighter. “I am far from being a chef. Cole’s the one who mastered the piecrust. I just read the directions.”

“You did more than that, Emily,” Cole said. “You taught me how to chop an onion, too.”

She dipped her head, a flush shading her cheeks. “I just told you it didn’t have to be all perfect.”

Joe looked from Cole to Emily and back again. “You got this guy to loosen the reins a little? What’d you do, drug him?”

“Hey, I’m not that bad,” Cole said.

“Right. You are the only man I know who had a typewritten itinerary for your own bachelor party.” Joe chuckled.

Cole scowled. “I like to be organized. So sue me.”

Joe leaned toward Emily with a conspiratorial grin. He cupped his hand around his mouth, mocking a whisper. “If you want to drive Cole crazy, just hide his lists and his planners.”

“First I’d have to pry his smartphone out of his hands,” Emily said, laughter in her voice. “And that’s almost impossible.”

Cole unclipped the phone and slid it across the table toward Emily. “Hey, I can disconnect the umbilical.”

Joe scoffed. “That’s not a challenge. It’s already after five.”

The cell phone sat on the table, one of the things that had built his company to its current position at the top, but also one of the things that had dragged his marriage to the bottom. That was one of the hazards of always being available—it was good for business, but bad for a relationship.

Emily glanced at his phone, then slid it back. “I don’t need it. I’m just glad you’re getting some time away from the office here.”

“Are you glad I’m here?” he asked, his gaze meeting hers.

A small, bittersweet smile crossed her lips. “Of course. You work so hard, I was always worried you’d have a heart attack. You need some time to destress.”

That wasn’t what Cole had hoped Emily would say. He’d wanted her to say she was glad he was here with her, finally trying to work on their marriage again.

“And in the process,” Emily added, “maybe you can get back to what’s important.”

The last few words had him trying to read Em’s face, but her gaze was on her plate, keeping whatever secrets she had hidden behind her wide green eyes.

“That’s what this inn was always about. Helping people get in touch with their lives, themselves,” Carol said. “And what I’d like to do more of if I end up keeping it. I think it’d make a great retreat for corporate types who want to get out from behind the desk.”

“You could make it a win-win,” Joe said with a grin. “Give them some hammers and nails or some paint and a paintbrush and put them to work on that project list that Cole drew up. You’ll get the stuff done around here, and they’ll get to do something other than sit around an office all day. Plus, Cole would get to check things off on one of his lists, and we all know how happy that makes him.”

Cole laughed. Damn, it was good to have Joe here. His friend kept him grounded, real. “Joe, only you would make people work on vacation.”

Emily dished up some more salad and grabbed another slice of bread. “Says the man who hasn’t taken a vacation in years.”

“True.” Cole gave her a nod, then leaned in with a grin. “Maybe you should have kidnapped me and whisked me away to an undisclosed location. Out of network range, of course.”

A mischievous glint shone in her eyes. “That might have been fun.”

“Just for the record, if you ever get the urge to do something like that, I’m game.” It seemed as if the room had closed to just the two of them. He held her gaze, and his heart skipped a beat. “But you might want to take my phone first.”

“If I get that thing in my hands, I’ll end up smashing it with a sledgehammer,” Emily said with a teasing smile. “It’s needier than a three-year-old.”

As if on cue, the smartphone began to ring and the caller ID screen lit. Doug, probably calling about another problem with the new product launch. Cole reached forward, pressed the button on the side of the phone, sent the call to voice mail and darkened the screen. The action sent a flicker of anxiety through him, but he pushed it aside. Emily was right. He’d spent far too much time letting work interrupt dinners, and the last thing he wanted was an interruption in this one, when things seemed to be going so well, almost like the old days.

“That’s a good start,” Emily said, and gave him a smile that he wanted to hold in his heart. “Thank you, Cole.”

The dinner ended too soon. Carol began to pick up the dishes and put out a hand to stop Cole and Emily when they rose to help her. “You two go off on a walk or something. Joe and I can get these.”

“Are you sure?” Emily asked. “You already do so much.”

“That’s my job. Your job is to go relax,” Carol said. “And that’s an order.”

“Don’t worry about Carol,” Joe said. He flexed his biceps. “She’s got a whole lotta help.”

Cole chuckled. “A whole lotta something, that’s for sure.” Then he turned to Emily, glad that Carol had made it impossible for Emily to say no. “Want to take a walk? It’s not too cold out tonight.”

She glanced at Carol, who nodded and waved her off. “Okay. Let me get my coat.”

A few minutes later, they were outside, breathing in the crisp fall night air. The scent of a wood-burning stove filled the air, mixing in the fragrance of cedar and oak. “It’s a beautiful night,” Cole said. “Look at the lake. It’s as smooth as glass.”

“It’s gorgeous. Like a postcard.” Her breath frosted in the air, surrounding her face with a soft cloud.

He thought of what she had said before, about how he should learn to make a mess more often, to be less uptight and rigid and planned. Spontaneity had never been Cole’s strong suit, yet the happiest times he could remember were when he went off schedule. Maybe that was the key to finding his way back to where they used to be—throwing out the plan and just...

Being.

A rowboat lay on the beach, flanked by a pair of oars. The moon glinted off the wooden boat’s hull, making it look like a giant smile in the dark. “Hey, let’s take the boat out,” he said.

“At night? In the middle of November?”

He leaned in close, catching the sweet scent of her floral perfume, a fragrance he knew as well as he knew his own name. Her hair drifted across his lips. “Live on the edge, Emily,” he whispered. “With me.”

She turned to him, her lips an inch away from his. Her eyes widened, she inhaled, and Cole wanted her more in that moment than he could remember. “On the edge? But it’s dangerous. It’s nighttime, the water is cold and...well, things could go wrong. Remember the story Carol told?”

He brushed the hair off her forehead and let his touch linger there a moment. “Don’t worry. I’ll be there to catch you.” His hand drifted down, along her jaw. “I always will be.”

She shook her head, and tears glimmered in her eyes. “Cole—”

“Trust me, Em. Just tonight.”

She bit her lip and watched him for a moment, wary, hesitant.

“It’ll be fun. Unscripted, spontaneous, fun. I promise.”

Then the hesitation disappeared and she smiled. “Okay. As long as you don’t rock the boat.”

He took her hand and led her down the hill. Her hand felt good in his, right. Long ago, they had stopped holding hands. Why, he couldn’t remember. If they ever got back together, he vowed that if Emily was nearby, he would always hold her hand. “Of course. Not rocking the boat is my specialty.”

“You’re wrong about that, Cole. I’m the one who never likes to rock the boat,” she said, bending to help him right the boat and slide it into the water. “You’re the one who takes chances.”

“In business, yes. In my personal life—” he took an oar, then waited while she climbed into the rowboat before handing her the second oar “—not so much.”

Cole gave the boat a push, and it slid into the water with a gentle ripple. He took both of the oars, positioned himself on the bench, then began rowing away from the shore. The oars made a satisfying whoosh sound with each stroke, while his back and shoulder muscles jerked to attention. A fish jumped out of the water behind them, then flopped back in, spattering them. Emily watched him row, a smile playing on her lips. “What?” he asked.

“You look...well, you look sexy and strong doing that.”

“Then maybe I should do this more often.”

She didn’t respond to that, just smiled again and leaned back on the bench. “All the times I’ve been to the Gingerbread Inn, I’ve never been out on the lake after dark. It’s so peaceful out here.”

A perfect setting for a man to propose, Cole thought. When he’d proposed to Emily all those years ago, he’d done what he always did—he’d created a plan for the evening and stuck to his timetable, almost to the minute. Dinner in the city, followed by the ubiquitous and clichéd carriage ride along New York’s streets, then pausing by Central Park to slip onto the carriage’s carpeted floor and pop the question. He’d known Em was going to say yes before he even asked, because they’d talked about getting married a half dozen times before.

Out here, alone in the dark while fish bobbed in the water around them and geese swam silently along the banks, he had the perfect setting for something unexpected. Something that would show Emily he wasn’t here to fix the porch or chop firewood. He was here for them. For a second chance. He gave the oars a final tug, then set them across the center of the boat. Then he leaned forward, dropping to one knee, and reached for his wife’s hands.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Living on the edge,” he said. “Emily, I don’t want a divorce. I don’t want us to live apart anymore. I want to try again, to give our marriage the chance it needs. Will you try again?”

Her eyes widened, and she backed up a bit. Damn. This was why he planned these things out. So he could have time to write a good proposal, to plan out what he was going to say. That had to rank up there with the top ten least romantic proposals in the history of time. “Cole, there’s a lot we need to discuss. Things we haven’t settled yet.”

“What’s to settle? I love you.” He held her hands, but noticed she didn’t hold his back. Nor did she tell him she loved him. Had her feelings for him changed? Was he reading her all wrong?

“It’s about more than love, Cole. It always was. We’re...not on the same path anymore.”

He grinned. Okay, so she hadn’t said she didn’t love him, either. He’d take that as a good sign. “We are now. A path that’s kind of going in circles in the middle of the lake.”

She pulled her hands back and tucked them inside her coat. The air between them dropped a few degrees, and the grin faded from Cole’s face.

“I want a family, Cole. I always have. We’ve put it off forever, and honestly, it’s gotten to the point where I don’t understand why. You’ve achieved what you want with the company, I’m writing my book...what more is there to do or get before we have kids?”

Just the word kids made him freeze. When he’d first married Em, he’d told her he wanted children, and maybe for a time, he had. But as the years had worn on and he watched his friends have kids and have trouble and turmoil in their families, trouble and turmoil that affected the kids and ruined their childhoods, the more Cole didn’t want to change the status quo. But he knew that telling Em would drive her away for good. She had always been set on having children, the one risk Cole didn’t want to take. “We always wanted to travel, Em. Have fun, live our lives, before we added kids into the mix.”

She let out a gust. “Let’s go back to shore. This isn’t getting us anywhere.”

“Let me ask you this.” He leaned toward her, causing the boat to make a gentle rocking motion. “Why do you think having kids will improve our lives?”

“How can you say they won’t?” She shook her head. “I don’t get you, Cole, I really don’t.”

“I’m just trying to make sure we have everything in order first.” He didn’t want to tell her that the thought of being a father was the only thing that truly scared Cole. He knew what he was good at and what he wasn’t—and parenting didn’t make the list of talents.

“You and your lists and timetables.” She let out a gust. “For once, I wish you would just let all that go.”

He was losing her. He could hear it in her voice, see it in her face. They had reached a moment of no return, a time when he had to act, instead of just talk. Their relationship stood on a fault line, and only a dramatic shift would keep it from falling apart.

“I can, if you want me to, Em.” He tugged his cell out of his pocket and held it over the water. “I can drop this in the water, and not think twice about it. Devote myself entirely to us for the next week or month or year or however long it takes.”

“You’d do that? Walk away from the company?”

“If it brings us back together, yes.” Then, as if God was testing his resolve, Cole’s phone began to ring. Doug, again. The little notification bar under the caller ID showed Doug had called four times with no answer. Definitely an emergency, if he was trying that hard to get hold of Cole.

He glanced at the screen, his stomach churning. The urge to answer the call, to solve the problem, burned inside him. The company had taken so much of his life in the past ten years and even now, even when it mattered, he couldn’t let it go. He could feel the need calling to him, like the business held an invisible string to his gut. He wasn’t sure which direction the need went—whether it was the company that needed him or him who needed the company. The phone dangled from his fingers, inches from the water. Then his fingers tightened their grip and the decision was made. He realized that at the same time Em did.

Emily gave him a sad little smile. “You might as well answer it.”

“What about us?”

“Us?” She took the oars and put them in the water, then began rowing back toward shore. “The only thing I know for sure is that I’m done going in circles.”

CHAPTER TEN

COLE CAUGHT UP to her after the boat was back on shore and Emily was already striding up the hill. “Where are you going?” he asked.

“Back inside.” Where she belonged. Where she wouldn’t have to think about that little rise of hope she’d had a few minutes ago when Cole had offered to throw his phone away—and answered it instead. She should have known better. He was doing what he’d always done—making promises that would dissolve as soon as they got back to real life.

“I thought we were talking.”

She spun around. “I am tired of talking, Cole. We’ve done nothing but that for years. And where did it get us? Nowhere but divorced.”

“We’re not divorced yet, Emily. There’s still—”

“I don’t want to hear one more second about how there’s still a chance. How many times did I say that to you? How many times did I try to make this work? Try to change our lives? And what did you do?” She cursed under her breath and shook her head, hating the pain in her chest, the tears burning the back of her eyes. God, why did this hurt so much? When would Cole stop having a hold on her heart? She wanted to scream at him, to tell him to stop putting her through this emotional roller coaster. The same one she’d ridden so many times in the past ten years, she could predict the next loop. There’d be a high, a wonderful honeymoon period of flowers and dinners out, followed on its heels by the plummeting lows of Cole’s absence, an empty house and an empty bed. “You made a bunch of promises and then went to work. Which is what you’re going to do this time, too, Cole. I know you. That is the curse of being married to you for so long. I know what you’re going to do, and I keep coming back even though I know it’s going to hurt.”