Page 71 of Mistletoe and Christmas Kisses

It wouldn’t last.

Not when Macy occupied every nook and crevice of his mind, his heart. His home. His warehouse. The scent of lilacs and memories crowded each corner. Of her eyes flooding sapphire when pleasure took her. Of her running her thumb across his wrist as he told her all the stories he’d bottled up for so long. He’d never had a real friend outside his brothers. A person he wanted to tell, well,everything. Not even Christabel. Loneliness was tearing at him until he wondered if he’d ever crawl away from it. Why, this morning he’d found Macy’s hairclip tucked beneath his counterpane, and for a long moment, he’d wondered if he was going to cry.

The jolt of anguish had nearly knocked him from his feet.

Only so much pressure you could put on even the finest quality sail. Folds and creases stressed the fibers until they broke, and he was beginning to feel stressed to the limit. Close to breaking.

She hadn’t used the train ticket. This he knew. His lady doctor was still here, maybe missing him as much as he was missing her. Probably mad as a hornet, too.

Which he guessed meant he needed to make it up to her.

Tell her he didn’t want her to go to Philadelphia, even if itwasthe adventure of a lifetime. The start of an amazing career. His fear of her regretting it one day, beingsorryshe chose him—and a modest medical practice in a town it was going to take time to win over—was the lone thing keeping him from breaking down her door. That, and the thought of her having to practice on those cats.

Going home to his achingly solitary house was breaking his heart in two. Macy was the one for him. It was no longer a question, if it ever had been. If he could only find the courage to claim her. Totellher. “Coward,” he whispered and whipped his glass at the wall, droplets of whiskey staining his sketches and trailing to the floor in rivulets. Like he’d told her, he ruined things. It was a family tradition.

“Whoa!” Noah danced aside to avoid the spray of glass as he shot through the doorway. Frowning, he stepped over the carnage. “Your temper is a sight to behold, Cale, it truly is.”

Caleb yanked his hand through his hair.Great.“You lose the bet? Or Zach chicken out? Giving advice is usually his job.”

“Boy, do you have it wrong. I’m here under doctor’s orders.” Noah held his hand chest high. “Yea tall. Blonde. Dictatorial. Good with a needle, thread, and torn skin. Remember her?”

Caleb knelt next to the sail and began a haphazard job of folding it. Kept his hands busy, maybe, but it was frankly a two-person job. More if you were trying to complete the task on a deck or over the lifelines onto the dock. Noah went to the other end and stretched the material taut.

“Stack the luff on top of the tack, Professor, or it’ll stretch down the length of the bag.”

Noah snapped the cloth. “How many times do you think I’ve done this? Larger folds on the tack end and smaller folds at the clew. Pretty simple geometric principles in play. Angles and diameter. I think I have it.”

“Amazing. You can even make folding a sail sound boring.”

Noah paused, tilted his head in thought. “This is actually an advantageous ingress into the conversation. Iamboring. But Elle doesn’t see me that way. She sees me in a way I don’t see myself, Cale. And didn’t for a long time. Sometimes still don’t when I look in the mirror, truth be told.”

Caleb did a quick pleat. Too quick. He sighed and adjusted it. “Everyone knows about your fascinating love story. Attached since you were children, made for each other. And if they didn’t, her carvingElle loves Noahinto all those oaks kept it for, what would you call it, posterity?”

“As usual, you’re missing the point. I left Pilot Isle because finding out my father wasn’t the same one you and Zach shared changed the way I thought about myself. And there was Elle with her starry eyes and, yes, her decimated tree trunks, expecting me to be her champion when I’d lost my way. Completely. I couldn’t save her when I had mislaid myself. But I could have stayed—and I think she would have helped me find the answers long before I did. Painfully, and on my own. Apart from everyone I loved.”

Caleb lined up the edge of the sail, shadowing Noah’s movement. “You ran away, you mean,” he whispered, still irritated over an issue they had mostly settled when Noah returned last year.

“Thought we worked through my leaving, Cale.”

Caleb shot a glance at his brother, took in the light winking off his spectacles, the solemn gray eyes so like his own. The tug to his heartstrings was expected. He and Zach were as close as brothers could be, but somehow, it was Noah who got to him. Always had. Like Macy did, in a way. The pleasure and pain of insurmountable love. “We did,” he muttered and threw his concentration back to the sail, “you know that.”

Noah worked to contain the middle folds as they closed in on completing the job. “Start a war with yourself over this, if you must, but you won’t win. I tried, believe me. Wasted ten years. Without Elle, without you. Zach, Rory.”

Caleb took the sail from Noah and shoved it in the bag, destroying half of what they’d accomplished. “Doctor’s orders, huh?” he asked, keeping his gaze nailed to the floor. The flush sweeping his face was not one he was disclosing to his baby brother.

Noah walked to the wall of sketches, trailed his finger over a roughly drawn cutter. “Why not accept the way she sees you? Maybe she’s right.” He traced the lines, bow to stern. “Very determined. Reminds me of Elle when she has the bit between her teeth. Downright fearsome, the intensity. Love provides a microscopic view, a viewpoint Macy is quite experienced with, I should add. Science requires one who is comfortable examining the details.”

Caleb’s heart gave three hard knocks. She loved him, and she’d admitted it.To his family.“I told her I loved her, if you think that’s the problem. You and Zach misplaced the most critical information, and I remembered the confusion. Getting a woman to listen when it’s basically too late has got to be the hardest ask on the planet. So, I admitted it, flat-out. And she…” The glimmer in her eyes when he’d whispered those words wouldneverleave his mind. “She heard me.”

Noah settled his long body against the wall. “Hooray. You’re more than halfway there,” he said and gave a slow clap. “With all the packages arriving from Raleigh, Atlanta, New York, I suspect there’s an incredible gift in there somewhere. The foundation, not the whole, mind you, of an amazingly humble apology. Tomorrow’s Christmas, if you haven’t checked the calendar of late. You’re right on time, if a gross display of supplication is on the docket.”

Caleb gave the sail bag a shove with his boot. “Supplication your fancy word for begging?”

“Absolutely.”

Caleb looked to the window. Periwinkle and a buttery gold were painting a dimming sky. If he closed his eyes, he could hear the sea rolling into shore. The squawk of a seagull as it searched the wharf for scraps of food. A sail snapping in the wind. The sounds he’d heard every day of his life.Shewas the change in how he was starting to feel about himself. She was the difference. “I’m just learning to like myself, and she thinks I’m perfect already.”

“Perfect forher, Cale. That’s the magic. I’m a scientist, but in this case, I’ll tell you, don’t deconstruct. Accept it. Trust her. Trustyourself.”