“It’s nice. I like it. It makes sense.” She looked so young then. Sad and sincere.
“Yeah, I think so.”
“Well, thank you. For inviting me. It sounds like it’s a really important holiday.”
“Yeah, but including people is what we do. We’ve always been like that. My cousin’s wife, Sammy, she moved in with us after... After everything. And she just fit. But having lots of people in the house always made it all feel less like we were missing someone. It was just what we did. What we did to survive it.”
For as long as he’d known Callie, they hadn’t really talked about this. Of course, he never really talked to anyone about it.
Their relationship had always been based on the way they felt about what they did. Not about talking.
Not about real things. They’d probably covered deeper territory than they ever had before since she’d come here.
And it didn’t bother him. Which was maybe the most surprising thing. That he actually...liked talking to her.
Liked listening to her.
“Sounds to me like you did a really good job,” she said.
“I don’t know about that. We just did the best we could. And if denial was part of it, then we were game for a little denial. I think the girls turned out really good, though.”
“Your cousins?”
“Rose and Pansy were really young. Iris was a little older, but still... Not as old as the rest of us. But especially Rose and Pansy. We just wanted to do right by them.”
“It sounds like you did.”
“Yeah, I hope so. I mean, they turned out all right. Pansy being the police chief, and Rose being the badass rancher that she is.”
“They seem really cool.”
“They are.”
They got into the truck and drove to Hope Springs, and Jake did his best to keep his mind out of the past. When they walked in, he introduced Callie as his wife, which was met with riotous applause from his family.
“Not his real wife,” Callie said, her cheeks turning red.
“They know,” he said.
“I think you’re kick-ass,” Rose said, coming up to them both. “You did what needed doing. I admire that. I’m not one to let the grass grow under my feet, either. I like to make things happen.”
“And when she says that,” her husband said slowly, “she means that she meddles where she’s not asked.”
“That’s true,” Jake said to Callie. “Rose is a known meddler.”
“Her meddling always works out in the end,” Iris pointed out from where she was sitting next to her husband, Griffin, holding his hand. “In fact, it was her disastrous matchmaking that set me on the course to get my bakery, and to meet Griffin.”
“Yeah,” Rose said, huffing. “I should get a lot of credit for the unintentional results of my matchmaking.”
“Why haven’t you ever tried to matchmake me?” Colton asked, a smart-ass smile on his face.
“I’m not a miracle worker, Colton.”
“Ouch,” Jake said.
It was right then that Ryder came through the door, dragging a gigantic Christmas tree behind him, baby Astrid strapped to his chest in a carrier, with West and Emmett bringing up the rear.
“That is an ugly tree,” Pansy said.
“Hey, squirt,” Jake said. “I didn’t see you putting in any of the effort to get that tree. Beggars can’t be choosers.”
“I could’ve got a better tree with my eyes closed,” Pansy said.
“You know, getting a Christmas tree is not like making an arrest, Pansy,” West said. “You don’t just apprehend it, honey.”
“You don’t just apprehend criminals, either. You read them their rights,” she said.
“Shoot,” West said. “We didn’t read the tree its rights.”
“I’m still saying,” Pansy continued, “that your tree selection leaves much to be desired.”
“Everyone’s a critic.”
She crossed the space to give him a kiss and West took a step back. “Come back with a warrant,” he said.
Then he relented and grabbed hold of her and gave her a kiss.
It still made him a little bit uncomfortable, the way all of his family had paired off except for him and Colt. Just change. The change of it all was weird.
And then he figured he probably couldn’t be pleased, because there was something about the sameness of home that depressed him a little bit, too.
Not because he didn’t like it.
Because it reminded him of family. What he’d thought it was. What it wasn’t really.
And only Jake knew the truth about his own parents.
But it was Christmastime. Not brood-about-family-bullshit time.
Though he supposed it was often one and the same.
When it was time to decorate the tree, the boxes of eclectic, crappy ornaments got dragged out from the corners of the room, and Colt picked up his guitar, playing a twangy, country version of “Silent Night.” Astrid toddled over and started to hit the front of the guitar with her open hand, not on beat at all.
“Well, if anybody can concentrate with George Strait and his band over here going nuts, it’s time to decorate,” Ryder said. Jake got up and went over to the boxes, starting to dig through them, looking for his dirt bike ornaments, which he’d had since his early twenties. A gift he’d gotten at some point, to go on the infamous Daniels Family Ugly Tree.
Some people had ugly sweaters, they had an ugly tree.
Full to the brim of hideous decorations—the worse, the better.
“I’ve never decorated a Christmas tree,” Callie said.
“What?” he asked. “You’re joking.”
“No. My mother takes her tree very seriously. She decorates it to a theme every year, and we are not allowed to touch it under pain of death.”
“Wow. We go out of our way to make ours as terrible as we can. We absolutely pile on the crap.”
“Yeah, those are ugly ornaments,” she said, looking at the dirt bikes.
“They are,” he agreed. “That’s the fun of them.”
Pansy was hanging her police cars, while Ryder had his Santa cowboys and Sammy her peacock feathers, which Astrid was placing in a bunch all in one spot. Logan was watching Rose hang her own ornaments, and Elliott was helping. Iris and her husband, Griffin, hung back, and after a couple of minutes, both of them went to the kitchen. Nobody in this house was inexperienced with loss. Griffin had lost a daughter tragically several years before, and from what Jake knew about him, this was his first Christmas back in the real world, so he had to wonder if holidays dredged up even more what-ifs for him. That was the kind of thing that...