Page 70 of Mistletoe and Christmas Kisses
“I’m not taking it!” She waved the slip of embroidered linen like a flag. “Even if I never talk to him again, and I have to give enemas to Lilian Quinn’s cats for the rest of my life, I’m not leaving. The train departed this morning, with me not on it! I’ll haunt him, that’s what. Or put spiders in his bed. Spiders will show him!”
Savannah contained her smile, but just. “What is this about Lilian’s cats andenemas?”
“He told you about the spiders?” Elle questioned, her brows split by a neat fold of bewilderment. As if the conversation was taking a turn she had not expected.
“He told me a lot of things,” she said and dropped her head to her hands. In the distance, the ferry bell clanged. Maybe Caleb was on that boat, but he wasn’t sailing back to face her.I’m staying in Raleigh until after your train departs, the note had clarified, should she think the coming nights were theirs. As the sixteen before had been.Don’t make this harder, please. He hadn’t written the plea but had whispered it as she fell asleep in his arms.
Truthfully, waking alone had not been that immense a surprise.
The door to the parlor opened, and the stomp of boots sounded. Macy lifted her head to see Noah enter the room with Zach behind him.
“Where’s the fire?” Zach asked and wedged his shoulder against the doorframe. “Oh, crazy me. That’d be the one Rory lit in the backyard. The one I had a devil of a time putting out.” He dragged his arm across his brow, sending a streak of ash across his skin. “That boy is going to be the death of me. This better be important, my lovelies. God knows what he’s gotten into in the last five minutes.”
Savannah brought Caleb’s awful, tear-stained note to her lips and smiled behind it. “All boys start fires from time to time, of some sort or another. We should encourage his inquisitive nature, not try so decidedly to contain it.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Zach frowned, but the look he sent his wife singed the air. “You and your affectionate discipline are turning him into a hellion. Just like his mother. Damn, I hope Regina takes after me, or I may not live to meet my grandbabies.”
Noah fit his long body in the armchair opposite Macy and gave his spectacles a nudge. “Let me guess. You have a confounding case on which you’d like to collaborate, although I don’t know why a medical mystery would bring you to tears. In any case, one scientist to another, we shall collaborate. Because, sadly, we’re the only two in town. Except that ass, Leland. I’m not a doctor of medicine, true, but I love research almost as much as I love”—he jacked his thumb Elle’s way—“her.”
Oh, had Caleb been correct about his adorably intellectual younger brother. “I’m sorry, Dr. Garrett, I need a scientist who understands love, not fish.”
Noah slumped back in the chair. “I’m entirely confused.”
“Nothing new there, darling,” Elle said and slid into his lap like she’d done it a hundred times before. Savannah had moved beside Zach, and they’d laced fingers. Macy observed them, envious. A voyeur to a life she wanted but might never have. The Garretts were pieces of each other’s puzzles.
And it took each locked in place to make a family.
Savannah held the note before Zach’s face. He wrinkled his nose, squinted. Held out his hand to Noah, who sighed as he surrendered his spectacles. “You really need to keep yours in your pocket, Constable,” Noah muttered.
Zach fit a metal arm over each ear, then took the missive. Caleb was right about him, too, Macy concluded. The patriarch. The problem-solver.Even if he doesn’t want to solve them, Caleb had acknowledged during one of their impromptu picnics.
“He told her about the spiders,” Elle said as ifthatbit of silliness was significant.
Zach pressed his lips together to hold back a smile. Folded the note with neat tucks and handed it to Savannah. “Color me shocked.”
A blaze fueled behind Macy’s breastbone. Ire directed at a Garrett, but not the foolhardy one she loved to the depths of her soul. “Shocked. Of course.” She tossed the handkerchief to the settee and leapt to her feet. “Thisis the problem. He doesn’t believe he’s good enough. For anyone in this room. He thinks you’re”—she pointed at Noah—“the intellectual. And you’re”—Zach—“the saint. And his father the monsterheresembles. Heavens! Has anyone ever taken the time to tell him he’s wrong?”
Noah choked like he’d taken a blow to his solar plexus. “He told you about his father?”
Zach lifted from the doorframe. “Well, this answers the question of who my cantankerous baby brother is going to end up with.”
“Don’t count on it,” Macy whispered, “because he doesn’t understand.”
Elle tilted her head. “Understand what?”
“He’s anartist. Gifted beyond measure. Caring and dependable and considerate. And, yes, somewhat belligerent. Dreadfully stubborn. Setting broken bones is more fun than arguing with the man.” She gained steam as his family stared, blinding smiles lighting their faces. “This entire town has left him feeling like he’s inferior. When he’snot. He’s perfect. For me, anyway. And Iwanthim.” She exhaled and collapsed to the settee. “Also, lest you think he started this,Idid.”
Noah released a muted gust of laughter, then tried to wipe his face clean when he realized she’d heard it.
“Someone needs to make him understand.” Macy scooted to the edge of the cushion and sent Noah the somber look she employed before cutting someone open. “And you’re just the Garrett to do it.”
* * *
Caleb removed the sail from the halyard and ran his finger over the shackle. They were new ones he’d ordered from a supplier in Maine, and he wasn’t sure he liked them. The bolts were a little wide, maybe not the best fit with the grommets his sailmaker preferred. He groaned and stretched, looked at the material puddled like spilled milk around his feet. It reminded him of making love to Macy atop their twisted pile of clothing. Right on this spot, three horrendously forlorn days ago.
Goddammit. He crossed the room, heading for a whiskey bottle he knew wouldn’t solve his problems. With his luck, he’d drink too much, slice his finger open angling that hull and have to beg,beg, Magnus Leland to attend to him.
Glass in hand, he tossed back a shot, the liquid stinging his throat but providing some measure of comfort.