Snow Angels (7 page)

Christmas Day, 2009

Grace paced back and forth inside her suite. She looked at her Rolex, a gift from Max. It was almost time. She couldn’t believe she’d agreed to this, but wanting to prove to everyone that she, Grace Landry, was anything but practical, when Max asked her to marry him, she agreed to his request about the location of the ceremony. And so, her wedding ceremony was about to take place on a ski slope at Maximum Glide. She smiled. She was anything but practical.

So there she was, thirty-six years old, decked out in a five-thousand-dollar
white
ski suit, waiting for Stephanie, who was now her dearest friend and also her maid of honor. Ashley, nine going on twenty, would act as lead flower girl, and, of course, Amanda would do whatever her sister told her to do.

A loud knock startled her. It was time.

“Don’t you look gorgeous, all decked out in white,” Stephanie remarked as she perused the white ski suit she’d chosen for Grace. Stephanie had become the manager of the sporting goods’ shop at Maximum Glide. When she wasn’t selling ski equipment, she acted as an instructor. Both her girls were now expert on the slopes. Max had high hopes for Ashley in the 2018 Olympics and her sister four years later.

Max had high hopes about everything. Grace couldn’t be happier. Though it had only been a year since she met Max, she’d fallen in love with him the very first time he kissed her. She wouldn’t have admitted it then, but now she would.

Bryce was beside himself when she told him she was marrying Max. He said it was a dream come true for him. Grace told him she was happy her dream made his dream come true, but if he thought for one minute that he was going to mooch off Max for free lessons, he’d better think again. He’d have to enroll in the classes just like everyone else.

Max was spending his time as a ski instructor at Maximum Glide. Eddie was still the manager. He and Stephanie were dating hot and heavy. Grace was sure there would be another wedding in the near future.

Glenn had been sentenced to eight years in prison, not for hurting Stephanie alone, but for escaping also. Their divorce had been final for almost eight months.

“It’s time, Grace. I think this is the most exciting thing that’s ever happened, don’t you?”

“It is, it really is. I thought I’d never get married, and look at me now.” She hugged her dear friend.

“We better go before all the lifts are taken,” Stephanie teased, knowing Max had reserved a lift for the wedding party and the guests.

“Let’s go.” Grace grabbed her twenty-pound ski boots, her poles, and her hat and gloves. Her new “Maxie skis” were stored at the lift.

Outside, the sun shone brightly. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky. The temperature was in the low twenties, but Grace didn’t mind the cold. She was about to marry the sexiest man alive.

He waited for her at the top of Gracie’s Way, a new trail named in her honor.

Max, Bryce, and her mother were all gathered at the top of the mountain when Grace and Stephanie jumped off the lift. She adjusted her sunglasses and skied across a small patch of ice to get to Max.

They opted for a simple ceremony, or as simple as one got considering they were going to take their vows at the top of the mountain, then ski to the bottom for the pronouncement that would unite them as husband and wife. A friend of Eddie’s, who was also a justice of the peace, had agreed to marry them.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Max asked as he bent down to kiss her.

“Get married? Are you kidding? I can’t wait,” Grace assured him.

“I meant are you sure you want to get married on the slopes?”

“I’m not a practical person, Max. You should know that by now. Frankly, I wouldn’t have it any other way. Now, let’s get this show on the slopes.”

“Grace, I love you,” Max whispered in her ear.

“I know you do, darling. The feeling is mutual.” Grace slid around to face the justice of the peace. Stephanie stood to her right, and Eddie, the best man, stood to Max’s left. Bryce and her mother stayed with Amanda and Ashley. Max had arranged for the lift to take Juanita back down the mountain.

Everything was perfect
, Grace thought as she cleared her throat. Nothing in her life had ever been as perfect as this moment on top of a cold, snowy mountain with the sun shining down on her.

“Dearly beloved, we are gathered here on this mountain to unite Max Jorgenson and Grace Landry in holy matrimony.”

After reciting the traditional wedding vows, with Grace and Max saying their “I do”s, the justice of the peace stepped aside and tucked his small black book inside his ski jacket before spinning around and directing his ski tips downhill toward the bottom of the mountain. “As planned, I will unite the couple in holy matrimony at the bottom of the mountain.” Max used his poles to position himself by Grace, and once there was a reasonable distance between them, he looked at her. “Are you ready?”

Her grin was so broad it hurt. “I don’t think I can wait another minute,” Grace said, before shoving off. “I’ll meet you at the bottom.”

Bryce, Stephanie, and her girls followed behind.

With the wind at their backs, they curved and zigzagged down the mountain in near-record time. When they reached the bottom, there was a crowd gathering. “Do you know these people?” Grace whispered to Max.

“No, but apparently they know us. Look.” Max pointed to several in the group who were holding signs that read
CONGRATULATIONS MAX AND GRACE
!!!

The justice of the peace cleared his throat. “By the powder, uh, I mean power vested in me by the good state of Colorado and by the fans cheering behind us, I now pronounce you man and wife. You can kiss her now, Max.”

Max dropped his poles and turned to his wife, who had dropped her poles, too. Together, they slid to the ground, embracing one another. When his lips touched hers, Grace was sure the world actually tilted. His kiss was deep and passionate. Her senses were alive and tingling.

“Max?” she mumbled while they were kissing.

“Hmm?”

“The snow is going to melt if we don’t stop!”

“I’m that hot?”

“Yes, Mr. Jorgenson, you are that hot. Now help your wife up, or I might break something. And if I break something, that means we’ll have to cancel our honeymoon, and I really don’t want to because I’ve never been to Hawaii, or Ireland, or Spain.”

“If you put it that way, I don’t have a choice, now do I, Mrs. Jorgenson?”

“Say it again, Max.”

“What?”

“Call me Mrs. Jorgenson.”

“Mrs. Jorgenson, you’re going to be so sick of hearing me call you that for the next two months, you just might resort to using your maiden name.”

“Never, Max. Never in a million years,” Grace said, as he lifted her into his arms.

“Mrs. Jorgenson?”

“Yes, Mr. Jorgenson?”

“There’s something I’ve been wanting to say to you all day, and now seems as good a time as any.”

“What would that be?”

“Merry Christmas, Grace. Merry Christmas.”

“Merry Christmas, Max. I think I’m about the happiest woman alive right now.”

“I love you, Grace. Always and forever.”

“Oh Max, I love you, too!”

“Hey, did we order a wedding cake?”

Grace looked at Max, the love of her life and now her husband. Her life was so very rich at that moment, she wanted to burn it into her memory.

Forever and always.

M
ARIE
B
OSTWICK

In the fourth month of her pregnancy and thrilled by the peapod swelling in her abdomen, Kendra Erickson Loomis packed her leotards away in a drawer and bought several two-sizes-too-large sweaters to wear over black maternity tights when she was teaching at the dance studio. After enduring weeks of morning sickness, Kendra was overjoyed that she was feeling better and finally
looked
pregnant.

When Andy came home from the church that evening, Kendra made him sit down on the sofa and watch as she modeled her new maternity wear.

“What do you think?” she asked, turning in a slow circle. “Don’t I look the very picture of maternal bliss?”

“You absolutely do,” Andy affirmed.

Unlike Kendra, Andy had traveled down the road of parenthood once before, when fourteen-year-old Thea was born. Having been through the emotional ups-and-downs of pregnancy with his first wife, the wife who had deserted them when Thea was just four, Andy knew that Kendra’s pride in her thickening waistline would wane in the coming months. But right now she was happy and nothing on earth pleased Andy Loomis more than that.

“You’re gorgeous,” he said.

As happened so frequently now, Kendra’s eyes glistened with unexpected tears. “Do you think so honestly? Or are you just saying that?”

Andy’s handsome face adopted a slightly offended expression. “Kendra, are you accusing me of dishonesty?” he asked, straightening his shoulders as though to underscore the unquestionable uprightness of his character. “I’m a minister! Would I lie to you?”

“Well…I guess not,” Kendra said. She ran her hands over her stomach, pulling the fabric of her sweater tight under her little belly to show it off.

“Oh, Andy! I’m so excited! I can’t believe this is really happening! Growing up in Ohio, I had only two dreams: to be a dancer and to get married and have children. After so many years alone I’d just about given up. Falling in love, marrying you, and getting to be Thea’s mom was the most wonderful thing…” Kendra sniffed.

“No one could ask for more than I already have and now…this! Andy! We’re having a baby!”

“We are. In five more months. January fifteenth.”

“Five months! That sounds like forever. I wonder if I can wait that long?”

“I don’t see as you have much choice in the matter. Believe me, it’s coming a lot faster than you think. Actually, I wanted to talk to you about that. Well, not exactly about that—about the Christmas pageant. With the baby coming so soon after Christmas, don’t you think you ought to hand the directing job over to someone else?”

“Someone else? No way! How can you even suggest that? The Christmas pageant is the whole reason we met in the first place!”

What Kendra said was absolutely true.

When she came to Maple Grove three years before, it was the church Christmas pageant that brought her. At the time, she was a Radio City Music Hall Rockette, the iconic chorus line known for its intricate precision dance numbers, gorgeous costumes, and perfectly executed “eye-high” kicks. Every Christmas, for four shows a day, thousands of theatergoers lined up outside New York’s Radio City Music Hall, waiting to see the Rockettes perform in the world-famous Christmas Spectacular. Kendra was a ten-year veteran of the show. If she hadn’t slipped and broken her ankle during rehearsal, she might have continued on that path, living alone in New York and spending every Christmas season dancing at Radio City, and wowing the audiences who crowded the Music Hall to see the Christmas Spectacular, but never entering into the spirit of the holiday herself or even stopping to consider what Christmas was really about.

But Providence had other plans for Kendra.

After Kendra broke her ankle one of the other Rockettes, a nineteen-year-old rookie named Stacey, newly arrived from Vermont, made a few calls home and got Kendra a job directing the Maple Grove Community Church Christmas pageant.

It was supposed to be a temporary job, something to pay the bills until Kendra’s foot healed and she could return to New York. She never counted on liking Maple Grove so much and she certainly never planned to fall in love with Stacey’s brother, Andy, pastor of the church, but that’s exactly what happened.

“You can’t expect me to let someone else direct,” Kendra insisted. “That show is my baby!”

Andy got up from the sofa, stood in front of his wife, and laid his hand gently on her stomach. “No, Kendra.
This
is your baby.
Our
baby. And it’s going to be born just a couple of weeks after Christmas. I know how much you want to direct the pageant again and I know that no one can do it as well as you, but…so late in the pregnancy?

“Think, Kendra. Think about how exhausted you were last year. It took you weeks to recover. And that was before the dance studio had really started to take off. You’re busier now than ever before. Nine months pregnant—how do you think you’ll be able to direct the show and teach full-time at the studio?”

Kendra was silent, not wanting to concede Andy’s point, but realizing that he was probably right.

Before Kendra took over as director, the audience for the annual Christmas pageant was small and getting smaller every year. But Kendra’s fresh vision had breathed new life into the show, transforming it from a tired old holiday chestnut into a magical and inspiring production.

Come December twenty-third, the Maple Grove Community Church Christmas Pageant was the hottest ticket for miles. People loved the pageant, but few understood how much work went into coordinating and directing such a huge production, especially with a cast that was made up entirely of local teenagers. The kids worked hard, but they were still kids. Sometimes Kendra felt more like she was herding cats than directing actors. Andy had a point. In her condition, so late in the pregnancy, could she possibly handle directing the show? Could the baby?

Andy tucked a finger under her chin and tilted Kendra’s face up so she would look him in the eye. “Face it, sweetie. You’re a victim of your own success.”

Kendra sighed. “I guess you’re right. Have I ever told you that I hate it when you’re right?”

“You may have mentioned it once or twice.” Andy smiled. “Cheer up. It’s just for one year.”

“I know.”

“And just think! Before too long you’ll have one more little dancer to join the chorus line.”

“What makes you think the baby will grow up to be a dancer?”

“With her pedigree? Are you kidding? I expect her to be born wearing tap shoes and tights.”

“And what if it’s a boy?”

Andy shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. Boy or girl, the kid’s born to dance. After all, this baby has Rockettes on both sides of the family tree: you, plus my sister, Stacey.”

Andy grinned and laid his hand on Kendra’s stomach for a moment, then rocked backward as if stunned by the strength of his unborn child’s kick. “Whoa! Did you feel that? What did I tell you? Dancing already.”

A smile tugged at the corners of Kendra’s lips. “Andy, right now the baby is only about five inches long. You can’t feel a thing in there. I only started to feel it move last week, this little gurgling shift inside me, more like gas bubbles than anything else. In fact, it probably was gas bubbles.”

“Well, call it whatever you want, but I felt kicking. I’m telling you, Kendra, our baby is in there right now, doing a double-time step.”

Kendra laughed. “All right. You win. I am officially cheered up.”

“Good,” Andy said. “That’s one problem solved, now we’ve just got to figure out who will direct the show. That’ll be harder.

“Before you took over, expectations for the Christmas pageant were so low that I just had to find a warm body. If Stacey hadn’t called from New York to say that one of her Rockette friends had broken her ankle and needed a job, I probably would have asked Marty Kemper to direct it. But now that you’ve raised the bar so high…”

Andy ran his thumb and forefinger down the ridge of his jawline, thinking. “On the other hand…maybe Marty wouldn’t be so bad…”

“Marty Kemper!” Kendra shouted. “Are you out of your mind?”

Marty was a nice guy who owned an auto body shop in town and fancied himself something of an actor. And though Marty was an artist with a metalworking hammer and a spray-paint gun, taking dents out of cars was the extent of his talent. Still, that didn’t stop him from trying out for and occasionally landing small parts in community theater productions where he delivered his lines with overly dramatic grimaces and gestures in a loud, slightly squeaky voice that set Kendra’s teeth on edge.

“Over my dead body are you letting Marty get his hands on my production! Andy Loomis, I will deliver this baby backstage during intermission before I’ll let that happen! I mean it!”

Andy laughed and held up his hands, giving way in the face of Kendra’s ire. “Okay, okay. I guess Marty’s just going to have to stick to hammering dents out of Subarus. But who do you think can take over for you?”

Kendra didn’t hesitate before answering. “Darla Benton.”

“Darla Benton? Your former arch nemesis—that Darla Benton?”

“Don’t exaggerate,” Kendra said dismissively. “Darla was never my arch nemesis. We just had a few artistic differences, that’s all.”

Andy raised his eyebrows. “A few artistic differences? Funny. That’s not how I remember it.”

Mrs. Benton was the widow of Jake Benton who had written the script for the original pageant and had directed it for thirty years. As far as Darla was concerned, her late husband’s play, a version of the Christmas story told entirely in rhyming couplets, was absolutely perfect. She didn’t want it altered by so much as a comma. So when Kendra came to Maple Grove and scrapped the entire script in favor of something she felt was more “entertaining,” basically leaving out the entire story of the Nativity, Mrs. Benton was livid and determined to see Kendra fired.

And she might have succeeded had not Kendra, faced with the choice of either making up with Darla or having the show cancelled completely, added a second act that put Jake Benton’s words to music and focused entirely on the real Christmas story, the Nativity. And that one decision, more than anything, accounted for the show’s success.

Without the second act, Kendra’s show had been exactly what she’d set out to make it—entertaining.
With
the second act the play became something much more powerful, a story that reflected the beauty, wonder, and true meaning of Christmas to everyone who saw it, Kendra included.

While sitting in the darkened church-turned-theater, watching little Thea, as a humbled and awestruck Mary, sing about the miracle of Christmas, Kendra felt an unfamiliar stirring in her soul. The flame of her faith was ignited that night and Kendra’s life was changed forever.

And she wasn’t the only one. The revised Christmas pageant so delighted Darla that she became Kendra’s biggest supporter. Not only did she enlist the help of the Quilting Bees, the church quilt circle of which Darla was definitely the Queen Bee, to help sew beautiful costumes for the performers, but she appointed herself Kendra’s assistant director. At first, Kendra hadn’t been exactly thrilled at the prospect of having an eighty-year-old assistant, but Darla had proven herself energetic, helpful, and incredibly supportive. Despite their age difference, Kendra and Darla were now fast friends.

“Kendra, are you sure?” Andy asked. “Darla just celebrated her eighty-second birthday. Do you think she’s up to it?”

“Absolutely. Darla’s got more energy than anybody I know. She can run me into the ground most days. She understands the show. After all, she’s been working alongside me for the last three years. She’ll be a great director.”

But Andy still wasn’t convinced.

“Are you sure you don’t want someone younger? Maybe we could find another Rockette who’s on injured reserve. Of course,” he mused, “you can’t count on finding a Rockette with a broken ankle every day of the week. But maybe…”

Andy narrowed his eyes, feigning deep concentration. “If Stacey ‘accidentally’ spilled some water on the floor of the rehearsal space. You know, a thing like that might just make a girl slip and fall and then…”

“Andy!” Kendra slapped her husband playfully on the arm. “I will not have you involving your sister in one of your nefarious schemes. There will be no new Rockettes coming to Maple Grove—especially no newer and younger Rockettes. You’re just going to have to live with the one you have, even if she is old, and worn out, and simply enormous with child.”

“I can live with that. Come here.” Andy smiled and reached for his wife, pulling her into his embrace. “Can I tell you something, Mrs. Loomis? You’re the only Rockette I’ll ever want—the only woman for me, for now and forever. Got that?”

“I’m not sure. Would you mind repeating that?”

But Andy ignored her request, pulling her even closer, putting his warm lips on hers and letting the sweetness of his kisses speak for him.