Mistletoe and Holly (18 page)

It was all so simple when put in that context. Leslie could almost feel the peace stealing over her as she accepted what he said. With new calmness and confidence in what lay ahead, she removed the star ring from its box and gave it to Tagg.

“Would you put it on my finger?” she asked, finding it suddenly so easy to take that last step.

It was as if he had braced himself for something else. For a pounding moment, Tagg could only stare at her, not quite believing she meant it. But her left hand was extended to him, steady and sure.

His expression became filled with highly charged emotion, a bursting of wild joy and inexpressible pride. He gripped her hand and slid the ring on her finger. Both of them looked at it, sparkling there with a radiant light that seemed to shine with the fullness of their love.

When he swept her into his arms and crushed her mouth under his, happiness spilled through her
like a raging torrent. All the doubts and fears were washed away by the flood of emotion. His mouth bruised her with his desire, but the pain was exquisitely sweet.

Dazed by the radiant joy that claimed her, Leslie was certain she heard bells ringing, muffled and far away, but it sounded very much like them. She wondered if she wasn’t a little bit crazy when the kiss finally ended and Tagg held her tightly in his arms.

“I can’t believe it,” she murmured.

“Believe what?” he asked thickly, drawing his head back to look at her.

Her fingers stroked his strong features in a tactile exploration. “I actually thought I heard bells.” She lazily studied his mouth, fascinated by its firm line and latent sexuality.

It quirked. “You did.”

“What?” There was a lilt of absent curiosity in her voice, too, intrigued by little discoveries to pay close attention to words when actions were more satisfying.

“You did hear bells,” Tagg repeated. “They were the church bells ringing out the message of Christmas.”

She laughed and traced a finger under his jaw. “Just think—we can tell our children that I heard bells the day you proposed to me.”

His eyes darkened with smoldering desire. “I
want you, Leslie. I want you. I want your children. I want your love for the rest of my life and beyond.”

The smile left her face as Leslie looked at him with sober intensity. “And I want you and your children—and your love for the rest of my life and beyond. Because I love you, Tagg.” She finally said the words that no other man had heard, the ones she’d saved so they would have meaning and commitment behind them.

As his mouth moved onto hers, her fingers curled themselves into his hair, the star diamond ring winking its light in the blackness. The driving force of his kiss pressed her backward on the ottoman while his restless hand traveled over the point of her hip and the curve of her waist, caressing and stimulating.

The slam of the front door sent a draft of cold air blowing over the intertwining bodies. There was no time to sit up or disguise the passionate embrace before Holly dashed into the room with the awkwardly galloping puppy at her heels. It was all done after she was there.

Leslie’s cheeks were flushed with an embarrassed heat, and Tagg noted the face with amusement. To avoid Holly’s wide-eyed stare of curiosity, Leslie made a show of straightening her robe and brushing back the ends of her hair.

“What are you doing, Daddy?” Holly asked.

“I was kissing Leslie,” he said candidly and reached out an arm to draw his daughter to his side.

“You kissed her the morning after we’d slept in front of the fireplace, but it wasn’t like that,” she said.

“That was a good morning kiss. There are different kinds of kisses,” Tagg explained, more accustomed to fielding such questions than Leslie was.

“What kind of kiss was that?” Holly asked, meaning the one she had interrupted.

“That’s the way a man kisses a woman when they are going to get married—and after they get married,” he added the last as an advance warning of other kisses to come that “big eyes” might see.

“Are you going to marry Leslie?” She seemed to hold her breath.

“Yes.” Tagg reached to clasp Leslie’s hand, the one with the ring.

“And when you marry her, she’ll be my mommy, won’t she?” Holly asked, excitement beginning to bubble from her.

“Yes.”

“I did get my present from Santa!” She began jumping up and down. “I did! I wanted Leslie to be my mother more than anything! I thought Santa couldn’t bring me a present like that.”

“I didn’t know anything about this.” Tagg
frowned and looked at his daughter curiously. “How come you didn’t tell me?”

“Because—I didn’t want to tell anybody,” Holly declared. “I was afraid Santa wouldn’t do it. That’s why I wrote him the letter all by myself.”

“The letter I mailed to Santa Claus,” Leslie realized.

“Yes, that’s the one,” she admitted with a quick nod of her head. “Now you’re going to be with us all the time—every minute. And you won’t be staying at Aunt Patsy’s any more.”

“Whoa! Wait a minute before you damage my future wife’s reputation.” Tagg called a halt to Holly’s opinion of how it was going to be. “Before Leslie can stay with us all the time, there has to be a wedding.”

“How would you like to be one of my bridesmaids, Holly?” Leslie asked.

“Can I?” she asked excitedly.

“I wouldn’t want anyone else.” She smiled.

“When can we have the wedding?” Holly wanted to know. “Can we have it tomorrow—on my birthday?”

“No, not tomorrow,” Tagg chuckled. “Not that it wouldn’t be nice, but it takes a little longer than that to arrange a wedding. But it will be soon.”

“Boy, just wait until I tell Sally Tuttle that you’re going to be my mother!” Holly exclaimed. “I can
hardly wait until the vacation’s over and school starts.” A thought suddenly occurred to her. “If Leslie is going to be my mother, then Aunt Patsy is really going to be my aunt.”

“That’s right,” Leslie nodded.

“Can I go tell her?” She was bursting to tell someone.

“Sure. Why not?” Leslie laughed softly.

In a flash, Holly was out the door and racing down the porch steps to run next door and break the news. With a hopeless shake of his head, Tagg turned back to Leslie and kissed the ring on her hand.

“It seems both Holly and me got our present from Santa Claus,” he murmured and started to draw her back into his arms.

She snuggled into his arms, enfolded in their warmth and his love. “Why did you pretend my ring was a present from Santa Claus?” she asked. “Why didn’t you simply propose to me?”

“How could anyone turn down Santa Claus?” Tagg countered, murmuring the question against her hair.

“That isn’t an answer,” she declared with amused reproach.

“Because I wanted you to believe in the goodness of Santa Claus and to know that he gives from the heart. He’s love and he lives in the heart.”

“Christmas is going to be my favorite time of the
year from now on,” Leslie sighed in contentment. “In the past, it has been such an unhappy season. Until this year when I came here and met you. Now it’s the happiest.”

“I still remember how you looked that day when you helped Holly make the paper chain for the tree.” Amusement riddled his voice. “You were so indignant when I said I believed in Santa Claus. I expected any minute to be accused of corrupting my daughter with fairy-tale nonsense.”

“If Holly hadn’t been there, I probably would have,” she admitted, remembering well how she had scorned any perpetuation of the Santa Claus myth.

“Indignant and so vulnerable,” he murmured. “It was an intriguing combination. You tried to be so tough—and so cynical.”

“You made me laugh at myself, and not take everything quite so seriously,” Leslie realized.

“All of us have to believe in Santa Claus and Peter Pan. We need to keep a bit of a child’s faith,” Tagg said.

“I can see that now,” she agreed.

“And you can see that I love you and want you to be my wife.” The roughness of need was in his voice, making it husky. “How soon can we set the wedding date?”

“I’ve been thinking about that,” Leslie admitted
with a faintly troubled sigh. “Naturally my father is going to want to give me away. And if he comes, my mother won’t.”

“That’s easily fixed,” Tagg told her. “We’ll elope—and not invite either of them.”

“Tagg,” she said in a reproving tone.

“I’m serious,” he insisted. “There aren’t going to be any undercurrents of unhappiness on our wedding day. After we’re married we’ll fly to Baltimore to see your mother, then honeymoon in Hawaii and see your father.”

“It sounds wonderful,” Leslie agreed and wrapped his arms a little tighter around her. “What about Holly? Are we going to take her along?”

“I love my daughter very much but I have no intention of taking her on my honeymoon,” he stated without hesitation. “There will be plenty of opportunities in the future for us to vacation together as a family. This trip will be ours alone.”

“Maybe Aunt Patsy will look after her,” she suggested the possibility. “I think Holly would like that. And my aunt seems to have become quite fond of her.”

“We’ll ask, but either way, we’ll make some kind of arrangements to have the time alone,” Tagg answered her. “When we get back, that will be soon enough for you to assume the responsibility of being a mother.”

“And a legal secretary?” she teased.

“I’ll make sure your duties are light,” he promised. “I know what a demanding husband you’ll have at home.”

“And how demanding is that?” It was a deliberately provocative challenge, fully aware that Tagg would show her, and he did.

Here’s an exciting look
at four novels from
one of Janet Dailey’s most
beloved series:
The Calders

This Calder Range
Stands a Calder Man
This Calder Sky
Calder Born, Calder Bred

All available from Pocket Books

I
T WAS A COUNTRY
of benchlands and breaks, coulees and cutbanks—and grass that stretched a hundred miles in every direction. The dominating expanse of blue sky overhead seemed to flatten it, but this vast northern range undulated like a heavy sea. The lonely grandeur of it gripped at the heart of the strong and intimidated the weak.

A pair of riders leading packhorses topped a crest of this virgin Montana Territory and reined in. From the stout, double-rigged saddle to the shotgun chaps and the low crown of their cowboy hats, their clothes and their gear marked them as Texans. They were covered with a thick layer of travel dust.

They walked their horses partway down the gentle
slope and stopped again when they were no longer skylined by the plain’s swell. Saddle leather groaned as the taller of the two men swung to the ground in a fluid motion. The chalk-faced bay he was riding blew out a snort and dipped its nose toward the grass.

Rawboned and lean, Chase Benteen Calder carried his near-six-foot height with the ease of a shorter man. His weight was distributed in hard muscles that lay flatly across his chest and broad shoulders and the long girth of his legs. The twenty-six years of his life had beaten a toughness into his boldly spaced features. It showed in the quickness of his dark eyes, the small break along the bridge of his nose, and the pale track of an old scar on his right temple. Experience had made him closemouthed and vigilant, and the sun had darkened him.

He kept a hold on the reins to his chalk-faced bay while it lowered its head to graze. The rattle of the bridle bit briefly drew his glance to the horse tearing at the curly, matted grass growing close to the ground.

It was native buffalo grass, more nutritious than any other kind. Heat and drought couldn’t kill it; cold winters cured it into hay; the trampling of hooves couldn’t destroy it. It was said this short grass could put two hundred extra pounds on a steer
at maturity. A few minutes ago they had ridden through some ripening blue joint. Taller than the buffalo grass, its wheatlike heads had brushed the stirrups of his saddle.

The great herds of buffalo that had once roamed this range were well on their way to being exterminated by buffalo hunters and hiders. It was an act encouraged by the government in Washington in a deliberate attempt to break the spirit of the Plains Indians and subdue them once and for all. A year before, on October 5, 1877, Chief Joseph of the Nez Percé had surrendered over in the Bear Paw Mountains. Most of the Sioux and the Cheyenne were corraled on reservations, and the rest had fled to Canada with Sitting Bull and Dull Knife. After years of pressure from clamoring ranchers and railroads, the government was finally throwing open the last isolated island of open range. All this land was going to be free for the taking.