The Night Before Christmas Read online

  “Do you think she was surprised?” Caroline asked, after a moment.

  “I think so.”

  “You don’t think they’ll be out there kissing all night, do you?”

  “I hope not. They’ll freeze to death.”

  Caroline sighed contentedly. “It’s nice, though, isn’t it, that the four of us get to go back to the cabin now and have dinner together?”

  Jack didn’t say anything.

  “It’s just . . .”

  “Just what?”

  “Well, I wish maybe I hadn’t been so dead set on not having a reception after the White Pines fell through. Not that I’m not happy now,” she said quickly. “But it would have been nice, in a way, to share tonight with our friends, too.”

  “It might have been,” Jack said, noncommittally, and he was careful not to smile.

  Chapter Eight

  “JACK, DO WE really need to stop at Pearl’s now?” Caroline asked, as their pickup cruised down Main Street. Will and Daisy were cuddling in the backseat, talking quietly to each other, and Caroline was suddenly anxious to get back to the cabin. If they didn’t start dinner soon, she worried, they’d be eating at midnight.

  But as they crossed the next intersection, Caroline saw Pearl’s coming up on the right-­hand side of the street. The venetian blinds were drawn, but its lights were on, and its windows presented a cheerful square of yellow light to a mostly dark Main Street.

  “Jack,” she said, turning to him again, but he only smiled.

  “Patience, Caroline,” he said, reaching over and squeezing her knee as he angled into a parking space. And as he came around to her side to open her door, and helped her out, she could have sworn she heard music coming from Pearl’s, music and voices and laughter. Jack walked up to the front door of the coffee shop then and rapped loudly on the glass, and Caroline saw one of the venetian blinds crack open for a second and then snap back into place. And the next thing she knew, the door was opening, and Allie and Jax were both standing there, both of them dressed in bright holiday dresses—­and both of them were bubbling over with excitement.

  “What . . . what is going on?” Caroline mumbled, but Jack was already taking her by the arm and leading her into Pearl’s.

  “Congratulations,” Jax and Allie chimed, and as Jax pulled a stunned Caroline into a hug, she explained, “We figured surprising you was the only way you were going to have a wedding reception. I mean, no offense, Caroline, but your stubbornness is legendary.”

  “Amen to that,” Daisy said cheerfully, as she and Will came in behind them and closed the door on the icy cold.

  But Caroline was speechless, her eyes traveling around a room that only vaguely resembled the coffee shop that she spent three hundred and sixty days a year in. The lights were turned down low, and the tables that had been pushed together to form one long table down the center of the room were covered with white linen cloths, vases of white gardenias, flickering white candles, and her grandma Pearl’s wedding china. This table, and the white lights lining the windows, and the gold stars hanging from the ceiling, gave the room a fairy-­tale quality. Standing around the room, and beaming at her and Jack, were Allie and Jax, Walker and Wyatt, Jax’s husband, Jeremy, and their four daughters, Frankie and Jessica, and even Walt Dickerson, Jack’s AA sponsor and a man known for his legendary cantankerousness.

  “How . . . how did you . . . ?” she said, turning to Allie.

  “With a little ingenuity, and a lot of sneakiness,” she said, laughing. “First, we had to call the florist and the bakery and tell them that under no circumstances were they to give your flowers and cake away. Then, we had to have Jack and Daisy smuggle your grandma Pearl’s china out of your cabin—­no easy feat, by the way—­and then we had to enlist everyone’s help.” She gestured to the ­people standing around the room. “Frankie’s roasting the turkey in your industrial oven, Jax and her daughters made the mashed potatoes, Wyatt and I made the cranberry sauce, and Lonnie Hagan, bless her heart, made the stuffing and the rolls.”

  For the second time that day, Caroline blinked back tears, and for a moment, the combination of the magical beauty of the room, the delicious smells of the dinner, and the feeling of being surrounded by all her favorite ­people on this most important of nights was almost too much for her. But then Will was helping her take her coat off, and Daisy was pressing a glass of punch into her hands, and everyone was coming up to congratulate her and Jack, and even Walt, who Caroline had long since labeled a cranky old man, was gracious and complimentary.

  “You look beautiful tonight, Caroline,” he said, his handlebar mustache tickling her as he kissed her lightly on the cheek. “And congratulations,” he added. “You and Jack are very lucky to have found each other again.”

  “Thank you, Walt,” she said, surprised by his new gentleness. And when he’d retreated, she turned to Jack, whose eyebrows were raised in surprise.

  “Who knew he could be so charming,” Jack said.

  “Not me,” Caroline said.

  “What do you think?” Jack asked her then, surveying the warm, festive, and lively room.

  “You know what I think?” Caroline said, realizing she was going to have a wedding reception after all, even if it was a wedding reception that doubled as a Christmas Eve dinner. “I think I’m glad I let Daisy talk me into wearing this dress.”

  Chapter Nine

  “DAISY, SHOULDN’T WE go back now?” Will asked into the hollow at the base of her neck, which he was kissing lavishly. No, not kissing. Not exactly. Kissing didn’t quite do justice to what it was he was doing to her neck. Because the truth was, he wanted to simultaneously kiss every single inch of her. He wanted to inhale her. The taste and touch and feel of her, after four months apart, was such that he simply couldn’t get enough of her. Wouldn’t get enough of her, he suspected, until they were truly alone later that night.

  Now he pulled his mouth away from the pale, silky hollow of her neck and said, though he was already dreading having to leave this cramped little room, “We should go back now. They’ll notice . . .”—­he stopped to kiss her neck again—­“they’ll notice we’re not there.” Not long after they’d arrived at Pearl’s, amid the music and the laughter the two of them had slipped out of the coffee shop’s back door, and into a supply closet that was wedged between the office and the walk-­in refrigerator.

  “No, no, they won’t notice we’re gone,” she said. “Not yet.”

  “But the turkey . . . ?”

  “That turkey’s huge,” she murmured, her fingers skating up under his combat fatigues and running hungrily over his back. “It’s going to take Frankie forever to carve it.”

  Will wasn’t so sure. Frankie was a big man, and a twenty-­five-­pound turkey was hardly a match for him. But the feel of Daisy’s hands on his skin temporarily clouded his judgment. He went back to kissing her neck, then changed his mind and kissed her mouth—­marveling again at its almost indescribable sweetness—­then changed his mind again and kissed her temple, her forehead, her cheek, any part of her that his lips could reach. And as he was doing this, Daisy ran her hands around to his chest and, palms splayed open, ran them up to his sternum, his collarbone, his shoulders.

  “I like your uniform,” she said.

  “I like your dress.” He ran a hand down its silky front. “But I also want to take it off you.”

  “You better take it off me.”

  “Later,” he promised. “But I don’t have to wear my fatigues to this dinner. There’s something else in my duffel I could—­”

  “No, don’t change. Really, it’s true what they say about a man in uniform.”

  “What do they say?”

  “I . . . I can’t remember right now. But it’s something good.”

  “I was going to wear regular clothes today, but I didn’t have time to change.”

  “When
did you know you were coming?” she asked, their bodies pressed together.

  “Honestly, not until five minutes before I needed to leave for the airport.”

  “Why such short notice?”

  “I’d put in for the leave. Called your parents. Made all the reservations. But my commanding officer didn’t decide until the last minute.”

  “What did you tell him when you asked for the leave?”

  “I told him I wanted to ask my girlfriend to marry me.”

  Daisy stopped breathing. He knew she did because her chest, which was touching his chest, stopped rising and falling.

  “And I do, Daisy, I do want to ask you to marry me. I told myself I’d do it the first time we were alone tonight. But I didn’t know the first time we’d be alone would be in a room that had mops in it.”

  She started to breathe again, and then to laugh, and to cry at the same time. “I love you,” she said, pulling him against her. “I love you so much, Will. And I don’t care if you propose to me now, just as long as you propose to me sometime, okay? Sometime in the not-­too-­distant future.”

  “I will,” he said, carefully brushing her strawberry-­blond hair off her now wet cheeks. “Because I want the next wedding either of us attends to be ours.”

  “Actually, it might be Jessica and Frankie’s.”

  “Then the one after that,” he said, kissing away a salty tear.

  “You don’t think . . . you don’t think my mom’s going to flip out about this, do you? I mean, eventually?”

  “Last summer she would have. But not anymore. Daisy, she’s been great. So supportive about my coming here. Your dad, too. He’s getting up at six A.M. tomorrow morning to drive me to the airport in Minneapolis.”

  “Six A.M.? Will, you just got here.”

  “I know. I only have a forty-­eight-­hour leave, and I couldn’t get a direct flight.” He felt the sting of her disappointment, then her acceptance of it, and then a new resoluteness animating her.

  “Never mind,” she said, kissing him. “It doesn’t matter. We’ll just make the most of the time we have. And I’ll drive you to the airport tomorrow.”

  “No, you can come, but you can’t drive.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because you’re not going to be getting any sleep tonight,” he said.

  “You’re right about that,” she murmured, as he ran his hand down one of her stocking-­covered legs and back up again. The feel of this silky material was a new sensation for him. Theirs had been a summer romance, a warm weather romance, and Daisy’s unofficial uniform had been one of cotton sundresses, and short-­sleeved T-­shirts, and denim shorts. Still, he liked her stockings, he decided. He liked everything about her, no, he loved everything about her, and he told her that now.

  She cried a little more and hugged him to her. “So you’re okay, Will? Really okay?”

  “I’m okay,” he said. “The only time I was really less than okay was when we’d have to go a ­couple of days without talking, and I’d think—­I know this sounds crazy—­I’d think, just for a second, what if you weren’t real? What if I’d somehow imagined you?”

  “Will, that is crazy.”

  “I know,” he said, running his hands through her soft, sweet-­smelling hair and thinking that she couldn’t possibly be more real than she was right now. This would hold him, he knew, this night, at least until he could see Daisy again in two months. There was only one thing that was worrying him now. He skimmed a hand down her body again. It felt different. Thinner.

  “Did you lose weight?” he asked.

  “Yes. But it’s okay. I’ve done nothing but eat since I got home, and now I’m about to have a five-­thousand-­calorie meal. Which reminds me . . .”

  “I know. We need to go,” Will said, kissing her, tenderly. “I love you, Daisy.”

  “I love you, Will,” she said, wiping a final, latent tear off her cheek. And then they left the storage room, turning off the light behind them, and they headed back toward the sounds of the celebration. As it turned out, this was the first of many trips they made to that funny little room over the years ahead. Whenever they visited Pearl’s, one or the other of them would inevitably drag the other one in there for a kiss. Because as unglamorous as the space itself was, with its mops and buckets and cleaning supplies, it had for them an almost incalculable sentimental value.

  AS CAROLINE AND Jack sat down at the head of the table, now practically groaning under the weight of all the food, Caroline caught sight of Daisy and Will letting themselves in through the back door of Pearl’s. They looked flushed, happy, and only slightly disheveled. She suppressed a smile and looked tactfully away. Ah, young love, she thought fondly, though, if the truth be told, she was feeling plenty young herself tonight.

  Daisy and Will slipped into their seats now, beside Caroline and Jack, and Jax herded a few of the younger children into their places at the table, too. And when they were all sitting down, Caroline leaned over and said, “Do you want to say a few words, Jack?”

  Ho nodded and, a little shyly, stood up. The table fell quiet. “I’m going to try to keep this brief,” he said. “Because I know ­people who’ve worked as hard as all you have worked to bring us this wonderful dinner, and who have traveled as far to be here with us tonight as Will has traveled, deserve to be fed without further delay.” Here he smiled and reached for his glass of punch on the table. “So, to Christmas,” he said, raising it up. “To friendship. And to love.”

  “To love,” the room echoed, as fifteen more glasses were raised in unison.

  Back Ad

  New to the New York Times and USA Today bestselling Butternut Lake series?

  Then be sure to read Allie and Walker’s story in

  Up at Butternut Lake

  and find Caroline, Jack, Daisy, and Will in

  Butternut Summer

  Available now in print and

  e-­book from William Morrow!

  And don’t miss

  Moonlight on Butternut Lake

  the next charming novel from

  New York Times and USA Today bestselling author

  Mary McNear,

  coming May 2015 from William Morrow Paperbacks!

  Read on for a sneak peek . . .

  An excerpt from Moonlight on Butternut Lake

  Chapter One

  “MISS? MISS?”

  Mila jerked awake, and stared, uncomprehendingly, around her. “Where are we?” she asked, and her voice sounded strange to her.

  “Butternut,” the bus driver said. “This is the last stop.”

  The last stop. That sounded ominous, she thought as her hand moved to massage her stiff neck.

  “I saw you’d fallen asleep,” the driver continued, almost apologetically. “But I remembered your ticket said Butternut. And I thought if you could sleep through that baby’s screaming, you must really need the rest.”

  Mila nodded, annoyed at herself for falling asleep. That was stupid. She was going to have to learn to keep her guard up. And not just some of the time, but all of the time. She started to stand up, but her cramped legs rebelled. She sat back down.

  “Take your time,” the driver said, genially, looking every bit the grandfather Mila imagined he must be, with his thick shock of white hair and pleasantly crinkled blue eyes. “You’ve been the only passenger since Two Harbors. Not many ­people travel this far north, I guess. Why don’t you take a minute to stretch and I’ll get your baggage out for you.”

  Mila nodded, then stood up again, slowly this time, and tested her legs. They were stiff, but otherwise functional. She gathered up her handbag, which she’d been careful to wedge between herself and the side of the bus, and made her way down the aisle.

  When she climbed down the bus’s steps, she saw that the driver was holding her suitcase and looking, doubtfully, aro
und.

  “Is someone meeting you here?” he asked.

  “They’re supposed to be,” Mila said, a little uncertainly.

  “Good,” he said, handing her a slightly battered suitcase. “Because they don’t get much traffic out this way. I don’t know why they have the bus stop out at this junction, instead of right in the town.”

  But Mila had no opinion about this. Until six days ago, she’d never even heard of Butternut, Minnesota. Still, she had to admit, what she’d seen of it so far didn’t look very promising. There was no bus station here, for instance, only a rest area, whose cracked asphalt was overrun with weeds, and whose sole amenities were an old bus shelter and a lopsided bench.

  “I hope your ride comes soon,” the driver said. “I hate to leave you here alone, but I’ve got to be getting back to the Twin Cities. My grandson’s got a Little League game tonight,” he added.

  “Well, good luck to him,” Mila said. “And thank you.”

  He started to get back onto the bus then, but Mila had a sudden thought. “Excuse me, sir,” she said. “Can I ask you a favor?”

  He stopped, halfway up the bus’s steps, and turned around. “Name is Bob,” he said, indicating his name tag. “And you can ask me a favor. I’ll be happy to do it for you, too, if it doesn’t take too long.”

  “It won’t,” she said. “I was wondering if . . .” Her voice trailed off. She had no idea how to phrase this. She thought about it and started over. “I was wondering, Bob . . . if someone was looking for me, and they tracked me down as far as, say, the bus station in Minneapolis, and they asked you if you’d seen me . . . if they, you know, described me to you, or showed you a photograph of me, could you . . .” She hesitated again. “Could you tell them you haven’t seen me?”

  Bob frowned. “Are you asking me to lie, miss?”