Page 37 of Wounded Christmas Wolf
“Promise me,” the Colonel said, quiet and serious.
“I promise,” Jace said.
He must have been convincing, because the Colonel jerked his chin in a small nod of acknowledgement.
They walked back to the barn side by side. It felt different than it had on the walk out into the field, and not just because Jace was no longer fearing what might happen to him. It felt as if he had been given a test, and he had passed it.
Only Jace alone knew that he hadn’t. Not really.
HOLLY
Holly feltherself beginning to relax as the next few days settled into a kind of peaceful routine.
Cupcake was getting the hang of farm life, sort of. Holly found an old cat bed in the attic—it wasn’t like Cupcake would know the difference—and set it up in her room in the hopes of teaching him not to sleep under the covers with her. So far it wasn’t working; he might start out there, but she invariably woke with his small body radiating heat against her back.
At least he hasn’t decided to start sleeping with Dad ...
So far, at least, her dad was remarkably even-keeled with both Cupcake and Jace. As for Jace, it seemed to her that something had changed in him since he and her dad had their talk. He seemed more settled in himself. There was a quiet calm to him that she hadn’t noticed before. He was somehow morethere, an intense presence that made him impossible to ignore.
Well, to be fair, she’d always found Jace impossible to ignore.
But now it was like she could feel him, the heft of his eyes on her, the pleasantly prickling nearness of him.
He continued to spend the night, although after the first night they had switched, with Holly going back to her own bedroom and Jace sleeping in the adjoining one. Holly kept her door shut and she was aware that Jace had his cracked open, which would have been a problem if Jace overslept, or if her dad came up in the night ... but that wasn’t very likely, as long as they made sure they were both up on time. Jace was gone every morning when she woke up, slipping out of the house like a ghost. After the dogs gave the alarm the first night, Holly suggested that he try going out the kitchen door. It had the disadvantage of being closer to her dad’s bedroom, but it was farther from the living room, and Rocket was used to humans getting up in the night and going to the bathroom or the kitchen now and then.
It must have worked, because Holly slept through to her alarm. Sometimes she had the vague sense of awakening in the night, sometimes aware of Jace making some noise from the room beside her, or of the door closing quietly.
Some nights she lay awake for a while, acutely conscious of Jace just on the other side of the wall. Was he lying awake too, thinking about her?
Meanwhile, he kept himself busy fixing broken things around the farm. Farm equipment declared dead years ago got a new lease on life. The truck had never run so well.
Although Holly herself was not mechanically inclined, her dad and some of her sisters were competent at basic repairs and maintenance. But Jace was gifted. Even Holly could tell the difference. Under his capable, competent hands (encased in gloves most of the time as they were) machinessang.
The tree farm was open every day, and saw a steady stream of customers. It really was only a one-person jobunless it was really slammed. But having Jace around to help out made it a different experience. They chatted in between customers. She showed him how to pack and throw snowballs. Together they built a little crowd of snowmen around the shed, some of which Rocket knocked over, while the rest began melting into lumps in the sun.
And they talked.
“So how did the farm work with your family having a military career? Didn’t you guys move around a lot?”
“When I was little, we lived all over,” Holly said. “We were stationed on military bases all around the world. But around the time Merry was born, Mom started making noises about settling down. Dad had been promoted a few times by then, and he started looking for a stateside, stable post. And we found the farm.”
“You just had to have those Christmas trees,” Jace said, grinning.
“They weren’t even here then! It’s hard to believe now, but there was almost nothing here, just the farmhouse and barn, and a whole lot of overgrown pasture. The tree farm and the cottages came later.” Holly smiled nostalgically. “Most of it was Mom’s baby. She had wanted this her whole life, you know—a farm, a big family, a home. For those first few years after we got the farm, Dad was away most of the time at different job postings, coming home only on holidays and weekends. Then he retired, and they went all in on the tree farm and the other stuff.”
“I pictured you living here for your entire life. It’s hard to imagine you anywhere else.”
“It’s hard for me to imagine it now,” Holly admitted. “Even my city job feels like it belongs to another world. Back when I was growing up here, I kept thinking my real life was out there somewhere, and then I got out there and I—I justmissedthis. Like a piece of me was missing. After being usedto a house full of people, I was so, so lonely.” She picked up Cupcake, who was hanging out under her feet as he often did, and cuddled him. “Does that sound pathetic?”
“Not at all,” Jace said quietly. “I understand completely.”
He probably did. Maybe more than anyone she’d ever known.
Then a family arrived with four kids in an SUV, and there was a tree to harvest and no more time to chat for a while.
A few days before Christmas, it snowed again: soft fluffy flakes, at first just a few, drifting down to settle on the pines’ dark green boughs. But then the snow drew a whirling veil across the ranch, all but hiding the distant hills. Even the house could be only dimly glimpsed through the blizzard.
“I love when it does this!” Holly exclaimed. She climbed up on the back of the small wagon they used to transport the trees and tilted her head back, opening her mouth to try to catch snowflakes on her tongue.
