Page 31 of All I Want for Christmas

As the first tear spilled over, he moved to her, brushed it away with his thumb. “Don’t cry, Nell. I hate knowing I made you cry.”

“Don’t touch me.” She whirled away and fumbled a tissue out of the box.

He was discovering exactly how it felt to be sliced in two. “I’m sorry.” Slowly he lowered his hand to his side. “I know how you must feel about me now.”

“You don’t know the half of it.” She blew her nose, struggled for control. “What’s this about the boys and Santa?”

“They wrote a letter back in the fall, not long before they met you. They decided they wanted a mom for Christmas. Notamom,” Mac explained as she turned back to stare at him. “Themom. They keep correcting me on that one. They had pretty specific ideas about what they wanted. She was supposed to have yellow hair and smile a lot, like kids and dogs and bake cookies. They wanted bikes, too, but that was sort of an afterthought. All they really wanted was the mom.”

“Oh.” She did sit now, lowering herself onto the arm of the sofa. “That explains a couple of things.” Steadying herself, she looked back at him. “Put you in quite a spot, didn’t it? I know you love them, Mac, but starting a relationship with me to try to please your children takes things beyond parental devotion.”

“I didn’t know. Damn it, do you think I’d play with their feelings, or yours, that way?”

“Not theirs,” she said hollowly. “Certainly not theirs.” He remembered how delicate she had seemed when they made love. There was more fragility now. No roses in her cheeks, he saw with a pang of distress. No light in her eyes. “I know what it’s like to be hurt, Nell. I never would have hurt you deliberately. They didn’t tell me about the letter until the night … You weren’t the only one I made cry that night. I tried to explain that Santa doesn’t work that way, but they’ve got it fixed in their heads that he sent you.”

“I’ll talk to them if you want me to.”

“I don’t deserve—”

“Not for you,” she said. “For them.”

He nodded, accepting. “I wondered how it would make you feel to know they wished for you.”

“Don’t push me, Mac.”

He couldn’t help it, and he kept his eyes on hers as he moved closer. “They wished for you for me, too. That’s why they didn’t tell me. You were our Christmas present.” He reached down, touched her hair. “How does that make you feel?”

“How do you think I feel?” She batted his hand away and rose to face the window. “It hurts. I fell in love with the three of you almost from the first glance, and it hurts. Go away, leave me alone.”

Somehow a fist had crept into his chest and was squeezing at his heart. “I thought you’d go away. I thought you’d leave, us alone. I wouldn’t let myself believe you cared enough to stay.”

“Then you were an idiot,” she mumbled.

“I was clumsy.” He watched the tiny lights on her tree shining in her hair and gave up any thought of saving himself. “All right, I was an idiot. The worst kind, because I kept hiding from what you might feel, from what I felt. I didn’t fall in love with you right away. At least I didn’t know it. Not until the night of the concert. I wanted to tell you. I didn’t know how to tell you. Then I heard something about the New York offer and it was the perfect excuse to push you out. I thought I was protecting the kids from getting hurt.” No, he wouldn’t use them, he thought in disgust. Not even to get her back. “That was only part of it. I was protecting myself. I couldn’t control the way I felt about you. It scared me.”

“Now’s no different from then, Mac.”

“It could be different.” He took a chance and laid his hands on her shoulders, turned her to face him. “It took my own sons to show me that sometimes you’ve just got to wish. Don’t leave me, Nell. Don’t leave us.”

“I was never going anywhere.”

“Forgive me.” She started to turn her head away, but he cupped her cheek, held it gently. “Please. Maybe I can’t fix this, but give me a chance to try. I need you in my life. We need you.”

There was such patience in his voice, such quiet strength in the hand on her face. Even as she looked at him, her heart began to heal. “I love you. All of you. I can’t help it.”

Relief and gratitude flavored the kiss as he touched his lips to hers. “I love you. I don’t want to help it.” Drawing her close, he cradled her head on his shoulder. “It’s just been the three of us for so long, I didn’t know how to make room. I think I’m figuring it out.” He eased her away again and reached into his coat pocket. “I bought you a present.”

“Mac.” Still staggered from the roller-coaster emotions, she rubbed her hands over her damp cheeks. “It isn’t Christmas yet.”

“Close enough. I think if you’d open it now, I’d stop having all this tightness in my chest.”

“All right.” She dashed another tear aside. “We’ll consider it a peace offering, then. I may even decide to …” She trailed off when the box was open in her hand. A ring, the traditional single diamond crowning a gold band.

“Marry me, Nell,” he said quietly. “Be the mom.”

She raised dazzled eyes to his. “You move awfully quickly for someone who always seems to take his time.”

“Christmas Eve.” He watched her face as he took the ring out of the box. “It seemed like the night to push my luck.”

---