Home for Christmas (8 page)

“I don't think any of the stalls sell nativity sets,” Nash told her apologetically.

“It's been a while since you came to one of these though, right?” Libby zipped up her coat with a flourish and plopped her red knit hat over her messy blonde hair. The pom-pom on top bobbed merrily at Nash as they slipped into the crowd of festivalgoers streaming toward the town square. “Maybe there are some new vendors since the last Christmas Village you went to,” Libby continued hopefully.

“Maybe.” Nash couldn't help the skepticism weighing down his tone. “The stalls are set up by the businesses that line the town square, and I don't think there's been a new one or a change of ownership in the last two hundred years.”

“Gosh. Well, keep your eyes peeled anyway. This is amazing!”

She bounced, reminding him briefly of the little girl he used to tease and torment. “You don't remember any of this, do you?”

Craning her neck to try and see over the shoulders of the people in front of her, Libby shook her head. “Not exactly. I have … flashes, I guess? Little moments that might be memories, or they might only be pretty things I dreamed up. It's hard to tell the difference, sometimes.”

Before Nash could ask what kind of things, they'd reached the blockades keeping vehicular traffic off of Main Street. The sheriff's department had people out, lining the streets and keeping the crowds in check until the parade was over and everyone was allowed to rush across the street and swarm the town square.

Nash caught a flash of jet-black hair out of the corner of his eye, and his heart, which had quickened at the first sight of the khaki uniforms of the sheriff's department, took off like a runaway reindeer.

“Come on,” he said, grabbing Libby's mittened hand and tugging her through the throng of people. “We need to find a good spot to watch the parade. It'll be starting any minute.”

“Not so fast,” Libby panted along at his side, cheeks as red as the apples Miss Ruth draped in caramel and nuts and sold from a stand like the one where she offered homemade ice cream in the summertime.

Feeling guilty, Nash moderated his pace. But he couldn't stop scanning along the barricade for a glimpse of the woman he hoped to see.

“Nash, Nash, it's starting.” Libby tugged against his grip as the high school marching band struck up the first chords of what sounded like a version of Tchaikovsky's
Nutcracker Suite,
heavy on the trumpets and drums. The garland-wrapped street lamps shone down, glinting off the brass instruments as the kids marched down the street. And that's when Nash saw her.

Ivy Dawson. The one who got away. Dressed in a sheriff's department uniform that clung to her pin-up girl curves in a way that ought to be illegal and leaning one rounded hip on the do-not-cross barrier with a half smile on her red-lacquered mouth.

Nash had kissed that mouth. He'd seen that mouth kick up at the corners in a flirtatious smirk, he'd seen it open in a loud, generous laugh. He'd seen it thin and trembling with anger and suppressed hurt.

“This way.” Nash plunged into the crowd. With Ivy in his sights, he cut through the pile of parade watchers like an alpine skier through fresh powder. Within seconds, he and Libby were at the front of the audience in time to see Ivy waving to the first float to follow the marching band down Main Street.

It was the volunteer firefighters who manned Sanctuary Island's lone firehouse. Their float was a flat platform built to look like a fire truck, decorated with red tinsel and plenty of silver garland. The firemen were dressed in their turnout gear—or at least, their bottom halves were dressed in flame-retardant pants and heavy black boots, but their suspenders stretched up over tight white T-shirts.

One of the firemen, Nash noted with a hot feeling of possessiveness cramping in his chest, had foregone the white shirt and was giving a dazzled Ivy a quick wink while flexing his overdeveloped pecs in everyone's faces.

“Aren't you going to cite him for public indecency?” Nash snarled into Ivy's ear, relishing the way she sucked in her breath at his sudden closeness.

When she tilted her face up to his, however, there was no trace of surprise or embarrassment on her perfect features. “More like give him the keys to the city for selflessly devoting himself to beautification of our fair town,” she purred. “Yummy.”

“It's idiotic,” Nash pointed out, crossing his arms over his own chest, which was sensibly covered in multiple layers of shirt, sweater, and coat. “The temperature is dropping below freezing tonight. He'll be lucky if he doesn't get pneumonia.”

“Hmm. Somehow I doubt a man like that is going to stay cold for long.” Ivy tapped her lower lip with a long, glittery red fingernail, as if contemplating the many wicked ways she'd be willing to help warm the firefighter up, and Nash's guts coiled into a knot.

This was why he'd agreed to help Libby. Ever since he followed Ivy back to Sanctuary Island, she'd been acting like he didn't exist. Or worse, that Nash existed only to annoy her. Every time he tried to apologize or explain what happened back in Atlanta, she shut him down.

But when she thought he wasn't looking, he'd caught an expression on her face that shredded his heart and choked his lungs—a look of longing so intense, it matched his own.

Not that it stopped her from paying attention to every guy on the island who wasn't Nash Tucker. Seeing her laughing and flirting with other men gave Nash the same sinking feeling he'd had in college during the tackle that had ended his football career forever—everything about it was wrong.

Well, maybe if Ivy saw him with another woman, she'd get the same feeling of bad wrongness in the pit of her stomach, and she'd have to admit that there was still something between them. At least, that was the plan—okay, it was a dumb plan, but he was desperate—until Nash actually got face to gorgeous, uninterested face with Ivy Dawson.

At that point, all plans flew out of Nash's head. Instead of suavely introducing Ivy to his new lady love—carefully omitting the fact that Libby was his cousin, obviously—Nash had to get all jealous and act like a big, dumb caveman about it.

“That firefighter is acting like a moron, and you're encouraging him,” Nash growled.

Ivy rolled her eyes, making him notice the sharp wings of her black eyeliner. “That was always your problem, Nash. You were never willing to put yourself out there, to do or look or say anything that might let the world in on your little secret.”

She leaned in conspiratorially, and Nash couldn't help it … he leaned in too, breathing in her cinnamon honey scent. “What secret is that?”

Her red lips curved in a smile that held surprisingly little humor. “You are not perfect,” she whispered, the words coming in puffs of warmth against his cold ear.

“Believe me,” Nash said hoarsely. “I know I'm not perfect. But at least I'm trying.”

A flash of something crossed Ivy's face, but as her gaze flitted away from his intent stare, her eyes widened and then narrowed until she looked like a suspicious cat. “Who is your friend, Nash?”

Oh, right. The plan. Tugging Libby awkwardly to his side, Nash wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “This is Libby. My wife.”

If he hadn't been scrutinizing Ivy's perfectly made up face for her reaction, he might have missed the way she went still and blank for a half second, as if she'd been struck on the back of the head with a hammer. But she recovered in time to take the hand Libby held out, murmuring how nice it was to meet her and starting up a quick patter of small talk without ever once meeting Nash's eyes.

Frustration burned in his gut. Even now, when he knew Ivy must want to tear him a new one, she was ignoring him instead. It drove him crazy … which she surely was aware of. She knew him, after all. Better than anyone else alive.

Lost in his thoughts, Nash turned his blind gaze on the parade while the stilted conversation between Ivy and Libby ground to a halt. He barely took in the floats, decorated with streamers and twinkle lights and pulled by tractors and pickup trucks. The charms of the high-school color guard were lost on him. He couldn't even muster up a smile for the band of farmers who showed up every year in kilts, wailing “Auld Lang Syne” on their bagpipes.

Cheers and shouts from the kids around them startled Nash out of his funk. The huge antique sleigh loomed into view, majestic as ever. Since there was no snow, it sat on a wheeled flatbed platform pulled by four brown horses whose bridles sported lightweight fake antlers. And at the reins was the most convincing Santa Claus that Nash had ever seen.

A huge white beard covered most of the man's face, and he wore little round spectacles under his fur-trimmed red cap. His rotund body was covered in a red velvet suit edged in more white fur, and when he boomed out a laugh and shouted “Merry Christmas!” his big belly shook.

“That's one of the things I remembered,” Libby gasped, pulling Nash down to speak into his ear. Her eyes were wide and amazed, fixed on the vision of Santa Claus. “I thought it must have been because I was a kid, but I was sure that the real, actual Santa came to Sanctuary Island every year—and now I see why! Who is he?”

“No one knows,” Nash told her, enjoying the mystery. “It's the same guy every year. The parade organizers leave the horses hooked up to the empty trailer at the end of the staging grounds, and somehow, the sleigh and Santa appear every year to close out the parade. And then he disappears again.”

“Like magic,” Libby breathed, clasping her hands under her chin.

“Doesn't anyone ever try to stalk the guy down and find out who he is?” Ivy asked, her head cocked as she took in what must seem like a crazy spectacle to an outsider. For the hundredth time, he wondered what on earth made a city girl like Ivy move to a tiny town on an isolated island that she'd only heard about from an ex-boyfriend she clearly still hated.

“Oh, no.” Libby was shaking her head. “That's not any fun. Finding out how the trick works would take all the magic out of it, like letting the air out of a balloon.”

Ivy shrugged, frowning a bit as she scanned the crowd of grinning, waving, shiny-eyed children and their parents. The adults looked only slightly less entranced than the kids as the wonder and joy of the scene swept everyone up into the holiday spirit.

“I don't know,” Ivy said. “Mystery is overrated, in my experience.”

Libby bit her lip, looking torn between arguing her point and fading into the background, where she liked to be. “But … mysteries make the best stories. There's mystery in everything we do, because we never know for sure how it's going to turn out.”

Ivy arched her perfect brows. “And you like that?”

“Sometimes.” Pink burned across the tops of Libby's cheeks, but she didn't back down. “I mean, not every story has a happy ending. Believe me, I know that. But doesn't the suspense make a happy ending even better? Well. I'm not sure what we're even talking about anymore. This metaphor has maybe gotten a little over extended. All I wanted to say was that I love this town's mysterious, secret Santa—and I bet if you look around and see the happiness he's bringing to this town, you'll see a reason to love him too.”

Ivy blinked, bowled over by the barrage of words, as Santa's sleigh disappeared down the street and into the darkness beyond the lights strung around the town square. That signaled the end of the parade, and the crowd around them began to surge forward, pressing against the barricade in their eagerness to cross the street and be set loose in the winter wonderland awaiting them on the village green.

While Ivy turned her attention to enforcing what order she could on the stream of amped-up, bouncy kids and their only-slightly-less-excited parents, Nash gave his cousin a squeeze and said, “I like our secret Santa too.”

She gave him a brilliant smile that turned into a wide-eyed expression of discovery. “Nash! Look! A sign for a nativity!”

And with that, she was off, ducking around the barricade and joining the flow of foot traffic stampeding into the Holiday Village. Craning his neck, Nash peered over the heads of the townspeople and caught a glimpse of the signpost that set Libby off. At the entrance to the Holiday Village stood a candy-cane-striped pole hung with hand-painted signs pointing the way to the various attractions. Santa's Toy Shop, Mrs. Kringle's Kupcakery, and the Polar Express kiddie train whose tracks circled the square—and right there in the middle was a sign that read
NATIVITY
.

“I'd better go after her,” Nash said as Ivy waved through a few stragglers.

“Wouldn't want her to get kidnapped by a rogue elf,” Ivy agreed snidely, then she grimaced. “Sorry. What I meant to say was congratulations. She's really sweet, Nash. What on earth is she doing with you?”

Nash grinned, as he knew Ivy intended, but the joke fell flat between them. There was a look in Ivy's china-blue eyes that he didn't like, and he hated himself for putting it there. This was the dumbest plan of all time. “Don't apologize. I'm the one who's sorry. I shouldn't have sprung her on you like this.”

“Why not?” Ivy tossed her head. “It's not like I care who you marry.”

This woman, above all others, had the ability to make Nash want to tear out his hair. “Fine. And I don't care if you sleep with the entire Sanctuary Island Volunteer Fire Department.”

Her eyes flashed. “Maybe I will.”

“Maybe you should!”

“Maybe you should be glad I'm not writing you a ticket for being a dickhead!”

Nash threw his hands up. “Maybe you should just admit that things aren't over between us!”

Her mouth dropped open and she took a step back from where they'd somehow ended up standing toe to toe, leaning into each other's space and breathing each other's breath.

It was rare enough to catch Ivy Dawson speechless that Nash couldn't help himself. “Also, you're a dispatcher, not a deputy. You can't write tickets.”