“There you are!” Leni said, blocking her way. “We were looking for you. They’re about to announce Santa. We have to get in line.”
“I don’t want to sit on Dad’s lap,” Jules snapped.
“But we always sit on Santa’s lap, no matter who’s playing Santa,” Sutton said. “It’s our sister thing.”
“You’re the one who made us do it for the last twenty years,” Leni reminded her.
Jules rolled her eyes. “I’m just not in the mood.”
“Tough cookies, sweetheart.” Leni took her arm. “You forced us to do it when we didn’t want to; now it’s your turn.”
“We found her!” Sutton yelled to Bellamy and Tara, standing a few feet away looking out over the crowd.
Bellamy and Tara ran over, and they all talked at once, but Jules couldn’t focus on anything they said as they dragged her toward Santa’s workshop, collecting Keira and Daphne along the way. Someone asked where Hadley was, and Daphne said she was sledding with Jock, Levi, and Joey.
Jules felt like Grant, gritting her teeth to keep from blowing up. Didn’t they know her life was about to implode? They got in line, talking excitedly and joking about what they were going to ask Santa for this year.
“A new boss,” Sutton said.
Tara said, “A place of my own.” She still lived at her parents’ house.
“Some of that magic pixie dust Jules used on Grant,” Bellamy said.
Jules’s mind reeled back to her almost kiss with Grant on Halloween and their first dinner together on the deck of the Bistro when he’d started opening up to her. Memories peppered her of the next night at his place together and the special things he’d done and said. It must be something living in that beautiful head of yours…
She thought about the first time they’d delivered wreaths together and how he’d opened up more with each shop they visited, and the romantic night that followed, and how fun it had been delivering the Christmas wreaths. Their weeks together played in her mind like a movie—the first time they made love came back in luxurious detail. He’d been so vulnerable and still so strong when he’d shown her his leg. She remembered their afternoon in Seaport, and how affected he’d been by Saul’s pain, and after talking with his parents, how hurt he’d been with the news about his father. She thought about finding him in the studio that night, pouring his pain into the painting. Every memory brought a tightening of her throat.
They’d built a nest of memories.
A foundation of love.
She dragged air into her lungs, and she realized how ridiculous she was being. So what if he decided to take the job? She was his, and he was hers, and that was all that mattered.
Daphne nudged her. “What do you want for Christmas, Jules?”
Everyone was looking at her expectantly. How long had she been zoned out? Her father was sitting on the big, fancy chair with a little boy on his lap, and there was a line a mile long behind them.
“Nothing,” Jules said softly. “I have everything I could want.”
Leni rolled her eyes. “Can you not be Jules for ten seconds and pretend you’re just a normal girl who loves gifts? If you could have anything in the whole wide world, what would it be?”
For Grant to turn down the job flew into her head, but she didn’t really want that unless it was what he truly wanted. She watched the little girl in front of her climb onto her father’s lap and pat his white fluffy beard. Jules was next, and she supposed she needed to think of something to ask for.
“I could have come up with fifteen things by now,” Keira said.
The girls laughed.
Archer stormed up to Jules, huffing angrily. “Where the hell is Grant? I can’t find him anywhere.”
She turned her back to the girls. “Archer, you promised,” she warned.
“I’m just going to have a talk with him,” he fumed.
Archer talked with his fists. Jules crossed her fingers behind her back and said, “He’s over by the sledding hill.”
He stalked off, and Keira said, “I guess Grant put coal in his stocking, huh?”
Jules shrugged, wondering how long Grant was going to be inside with his brothers.
The girls started asking her what she wanted for Christmas again.
“Come on, Jules,” Bellamy said. “Isn’t there anything you want?”
“Yes.” I want Grant, naked and in our bed right this very second. I want to be wrapped in his arms, and I want to love him with everything I have so when he’s a million miles away, he can feel me with him. “I want this forever. No more family feuds, just my pushy friends and annoying family all around me.”
“You are hopeless.” Leni gave her a gentle shove toward Santa. “Go sit on Santa’s lap and ask him for world peace or something.”
Jules climbed onto her father’s lap and rested her head on his shoulder. “Hi, Daddy.”
In a Santa-like deep voice, he said, “Ho, ho, ho. What does my Bug want for Christmas?”
Hearing the nickname made her feel safe and happier, and she decided to take her sister’s advice and ask for a very special gift. “You can’t tell anyone, Daddy, but Grant has a job offer that will take him far away and could put him in danger.” Tears welled in her eyes. “I know he has to go. It’s what he was meant to do. But I just want him to be safe. I wish you could promise me that.”
He took her hand in his soft white glove, cleared his throat, and said, “Is that all you want, Bug?”
She shook her head, looking past him at the building where Wells and Fitz had taken Grant, and put her mouth beside his ear, shielding it from the rest of the world. “I want him to want to stay.”
“I’m not going anywhere, Pix.”
It took her a second to connect the dots between Grant’s voice and the man she thought was her father. “Grant?”
She couldn’t see his smile beneath the beard, but it lit up his eyes as he said, “I love you, Pixie. I love the life we’re creating and the foundation we’re building to help others. I can’t imagine a single day without seeing you. I’d never make it for weeks or months.”
Tears spilled from her eyes. “But the job is everything you wanted. It’s your brass ring.”
“No, baby. It’s what I used to want before us. Everything I want and everything I need is right here on my lap, and everything we need as a couple is right here on this island. You are my brass ring, Jules. I want a lifetime of listening to you sing the wrong words to every damn song and finding silver linings in the roughest of situations. I want to wake up and see your beautiful smile and find silly elves on our coffee maker and little naked men in our studio.”
She laughed as tears streamed down her cheeks and murmurs of “Naked men?” sounded behind her.
“I want you to wake up safe in my arms every single day and never have to worry about whether I’ll be walking in the front door at the end of the night. I want to bring our kids to Seaport breakfasts to meet Saul and the cookie lady and add their dirty elves to our Christmas trees. I want to take them to dinners with my family and breakfasts with yours.”
“I want that, too,” she said through her tears.