“I have to know why we lost ten years, Faith.” When she said nothing, he turned her head toward him. Her eyes glistened in the shifting light but the tears didn’t fall. “Now more than ever I have to know.”
“No questions, Jason. Not tonight.”
“I’ve waited long enough. We’ve waited long enough.”
On a long breath, she sat up. Bringing her knees to her chest, she wrapped her arms around them. Her hair cascaded down her back. He couldn’t resist taking a handful. She’d been his once, completely. No one else had ever touched her as he had. He knew he had to accept her marriage, and thather child belonged to another man, but he needed to understand first why she had turned to someone else so soon after he’d gone away.
“Give me something, Faith. Anything.”
“We loved each other, Jason, but we wanted different things.” She turned her head to look at him. “We still want different things.” She took his hand and brought it to her cheek. “If you had let me, I would have gone anywhere with you. I would have left my home, my family and never looked back. You needed to go alone.”
“I didn’t have anything for you,” he began. She stopped him with a look.
“You never gave me a choice.”
He reached for her once more. “If I gave you one now?”
She closed her eyes and let her forehead rest on his. “Now I have a child, and she has a home I can’t take away from her. What I want doesn’t come first.” She drew back far enough to look at him. “What you want can’t come first. Before somehow I never thought you’d really go. This time I know you will. Let’s just take what we have, give each other this one Christmas. Please.”
She closed her mouth over his and stopped all questions.
CHAPTER 8
Christmas Eve was magic. Faith had always believed it. When she awoke with Jason beside her, it was more than magic. For a while, she simply lay there, watching him sleep. She’d imagined it before, as a girl, as a woman, but now she didn’t need the dreams. He was here beside her, warm, quiet, and outside an early morning snow was falling. Careful not to wake him, Faith slipped out of bed.
When he rolled over, he smelled her—the springtime scent her hair had left on the pillowcase. For a few minutes, he lay still and let it seep into his system. Content, he lay back and looked at the room he hadn’t been able to see in the dark.
The walls were papered, ivory, with little sprigs of violets. At the windows were fussy priscillas. There was an antique rosewood bureau cluttered with colored bottles and boxes. On a vanity was an old-fashioned silver-handled brush and comb. He watched the snow fall and smelled the potpourri on the stand beside the bed. The room was so like her—charming, fresh, and very, very feminine. A man could relax there even knowing he might find stockings draped over a chair or a blouse mixed with his shirts. He could relax there. And he wasn’t letting her go again.
He smelled the coffee before he was halfway down thestairs. She had Christmas music on the stereo and bacon frying. He hadn’t known it would feel so good just to walk into a kitchen and find your woman cooking for you.
“So you’re up.” She was wrapped from head to foot in a bright flannel robe. Desire dragged quietly at his stomach muscles. “There’s coffee.”
“I could smell it.” He went to her. “I could smell you the moment I woke.”
She rested her head on his shoulder, trying not to think that this was the way it might have been—if only. “You look as though you could have slept for hours. It’s a good thing you didn’t or the bacon would be cold.”
“If you’d stayed in bed a few more minutes, we might have—”
“Mom! Mom! It’s snowing!” Clara burst through the door and danced around the kitchen. “We’re going to go caroling tonight in the hay wagon and there’s snow all over the place.” She stopped in front of Jason and grinned. “Hi.”
“Hi yourself.”
“Mom and I are going to build a snowman. She says Christmas snowmen are the best. You can help.”
She hadn’t known just what reaction Clara would have to finding Jason at the breakfast table. With a shake of her head, Faith began to beat eggs. She should have known Clara would be willing to accept anyone she’d decided to like. “You have to have some breakfast.”
Clara fingered the plastic Santa on her lapel, tugging on the string so that the nose lit up. It never failed to please her. “I had cereal at Marcie’s.”
“Did you thank her mother for having you?”
“Yeah.” She stopped a minute. “I think I did. Anyway we’re going to build two of them and have a wedding and everything. Marcie wanted the wedding,” she added to Jason.
“Clara would prefer a war.”
“I figured we could have that after. Maybe I should have some hot chocolate first.” She eyed the cookie jar and calculated her chances. Slim at best.
“I’ll fix it. And you can have a cookie after the snowman,” Faith told her without bothering to turn. “Hang your things by the door.”
