RaeAnne Thayne - Coming Home For Christmas

She had forgotten. The angle of her nose and the little bump where she had broken it in second grade trying to ice-skate down the slide at the playground. The mouth that looked like the mother she had never forgotten, even during the time she considered the blank years.

Luke looked so young. Not at all like the hard, forbidding man who sat beside her. He had been closed off when they married, his spirit bruised by a cruel, abusive father, yet there had been a softness to him then. A sweetness. She had always attributed that to Megan’s mother, Sharon, his stepmother from the age of about six, who had loved and nurtured the lost little boy he had been.

She fought the urge now to rub her finger on that familiar, beloved face, as if she could absorb him through her skin and somehow resurrect some of that sweetness and joy.

“Well? Did you find a credit card?”

She jerked her gaze from the picture to the man beside her. “Sorry. Just a minute.” She dug out a card and flashed it to him. “Will this work?”

“That’s fine.”

With great reluctance, she closed the wallet on that picture and dialed the number to the hotel, then pushed the required sequence of numbers to connect with an operator.

The line rang at least ten times before a woman answered, sounding flustered.

“Riverside Inn.”

“Hi. I was...wondering about booking a room tonight. We are...traveling and stranded by the storm.”

She hated her hesitant, faltering voice and hated most of all that Luke heard it. So far she had been able to conceal the way her mind tangled sometimes over the right words. At other times, the right ones slipped away completely.

“You and everyone else, honey.”

“Your...your website said you had availability.”

“I’ve got one room left. How long will it take you to make it here?”

“I...don’t know. But I was...hoping I could reserve it with a credit card.”

“That works. Good thing you called. That’s probably the last available room in a hundred miles. Let me open up a reservation.”

After they went through the particulars of booking the room on Luke’s card, Elizabeth thanked the woman.

“I hear it’s ugly out there. Be safe, Mrs. Hamilton.”

No one had called her that in so many years. “I... Thank you.”

She disconnected the call and carefully slid Luke’s credit card back into the pocket of his wallet, fighting the urge to flip through the pictures again and stare at all of them. He probably had more of the children, maybe when they were younger.

“All set?”

She nodded and carefully closed the wallet again. “It was the last room. You were right about booking it over the phone. Here’s your wallet.”

“I can’t put it back in my pocket while I’m driving. Just set it on the console,” he said before turning his attention back to the road and the snow blowing across.

Now that she had nothing to do but focus on the storm, her anxiety increased. Even closing her eyes didn’t keep it at bay because she could still hear the wipers on high and the tires churning through the snowy conditions.

“I don’t know how to get to the motel,” he said as the next exit loomed ahead of them. “Can you find directions?”

Did he sense she could cope better when she had a task? “Of course,” she answered, and punched in the coordinates of the inn to her phone, then recited the turn-by-turn instructions to him. It seemed like forever but was probably only a few more moments before he found the building with the neon sign out front that read Riverside Inn.

He pulled into a parking space, one of the few remaining. “Took a while but we made it. You okay?”

Sure. She was going to be spending the night in a little hotel room with the only man she’d ever loved—a man who happened to hate her with every fiber of his being. Why wouldn’t she be okay?

“Fine,” she answered, quite certain he knew it was a lie.

The hotel’s website hadn’t exaggerated its charm, as websites often did. It was actually quite lovely. Red and green Christmas lights ran along the eaves and a brightly lit Christmas tree twinkled a cheery welcome through the blowing snow.

“You need help getting out?” he asked.

“No. Grab the bags,” she answered.

He nodded and went to the bed of the pickup truck to collect their luggage.

She opened her door and slid down into ankle-deep snow. Sometimes she could be so stupid and stubborn. She should have accepted his help. She could have used her cane but it was back with her suitcase. Stupid her.

The prospect of walking the twenty feet from the pickup truck to the front door of the inn through the snow was as daunting as climbing Mount Hood. Her balance wasn’t the greatest under the best of circumstances. Throw in icy conditions and she seemed predestined for a fall.

Still, she started out after him and had only made it a few faltering steps when he returned without the luggage.

He thrust out his arm. “Here. Grab hold. I should have thought to help you first before taking the bags.”

His words weren’t quite an apology but close to it. She was torn between embarrassment that she needed his help and gratitude that he saw the need and stepped forward so that she didn’t have to ask.

“Sorry. I’m not very...stable on ice.”

In her fleeting glance at his features, she saw questions in his eyes, but his mouth tightened and he remained silent. She turned her attention back to the sidewalk. He had to wonder about her physical condition and the obvious speech issues that were new since she had left him, but he didn’t ask.

Luke dropped her arm as soon as they walked through the outside door into the welcome warmth of the inn’s lobby. She told herself she had no right to be hurt by his obvious unwillingness to touch her, but it still stung.

A half dozen people stood in line, either looking for rooms or waiting to check in.

“I’m sorry but we don’t have anything left,” the flustered clerk was saying to a desperate-looking couple. “I understand an emergency shelter has been set up for stranded travelers at the elementary school, which is two blocks to the east.”

Oh dear. The situation was worse than she’d thought. She wasn’t looking forward to spending the night in a hotel room with Luke, but at least they had a room with beds and wouldn’t have to sleep on a cot in a classroom somewhere.

“Take a seat and I’ll check us in,” Luke said, gesturing to the only open spot in the lobby, next to a very pregnant woman who was trying to entertain a toddler on her lap with her cell phone.

Elizabeth made her way to the seating area, surrounding a river rock fireplace where a gas blaze cheerfully burned.

The woman with the toddler smiled at Elizabeth. “This is crazy, isn’t it? I thought we were taking a simple trip to visit my folks in Boise before the holidays. It’s my dad’s seventy-fifth birthday tomorrow. This blizzard came out of nowhere. When we checked the weather, they said it would only be a few inches, so we thought we were fine.”

Poor thing. Traveling with little ones had to be tough enough without road emergencies. “Do you have a room?” she asked, with some vague, crazy idea of giving her theirs. Elizabeth wouldn’t want to sleep at the elementary school, but it would be better than having to live with the guilt at knowing she sent this pregnant woman and darling little girl back out into that storm.

“We do. We called ahead and were fortunate enough to book one of the last two rooms in town.”

“I think we got the other one.”

The woman smiled at her. “Yay us.” She nodded to the line at the reception desk. “Is that your husband in line behind mine?”

She wanted to say Luke wasn’t her husband, but it seemed foolish to protest. He was, anyway. She just hadn’t been any sort of wife to him for the last seven years.