The sled veered unexpectedly. Brody landed in a heap, and Lila landed with a fierce thump on top of him.
He looked up into the laughter of her eyes, the joy on her face, and he let himself have it. He let himself have this moment.
Something inside of him let go: his need to protect himself, his need to be in control, his need to not ever be hurt again.
He looked into Lila’s shining face and he could clearly see she had risen to the challenge of allowing her heart to be made braver. She was welcoming whatever was happening between them.
He let go of his own desire to run from it. If she could be so brave, than he could be too.
It was not the kind of bravery that reached into a burning car and pulled out a woman stuck behind the steering wheel.
No, it was not that kind of bravery. That kind of bravery had its place.
But it did not hold a candle to the kind of bravery that was being asked of him now. To put his heart at risk. To say yes to the mystery of something bigger than he could control. Say yes to what was in the laughter of her eyes, and the way she had rested against his chest last night.
To say yes to life.
Cara Colter lives on an acreage in British Columbia with her partner, Rob, and eleven horses. She has three grown children and a grandson. She is a recent recipient of the Romantic Times BOOKreviews Career Achievement Award in the ‘Love and Laughter’ category. Cara loves to hear from readers, and you can contact her, or learn more about her, through her website: www.cara-colter.com
Dear Reader
There is something about turning fifty (two days after Christmas for me), that makes a person ask: have I used my life wisely? Have I done enough? Been enough? Have I achieved the things I hoped to achieve?
Sometimes answers come in unexpected ways. As I was working on this Christmas story, I heard Josh Groban sing ‘The Little Drummer Boy’.
It was such a beautiful reminder that we are all given a gift—perhaps humble, perhaps grand—and it is not the gift itself that matters, but how we use it.
I recall a waiter so wonderful I still remember him with more delight than the musical concert that followed; I have a hair stylist who loves her work so absolutely it is pure pleasure to see what she’ll do this time; I was at a hotel in Mexico where the maid radiated good cheer and amazed us over and over by sculpting the bathroom towels into swans and boats and other creations.
If you bring your heart to what you do, no matter what that is, it becomes a gift to others. And to Him. That is my intention with each story I write. May it bring joy.
With holiday wishes
Cara Colter
HIS MISTLETOE BRIDE
BY
CARA COLTER
To Pat Walls,
a man dedicated to family,
and a true romantic even after forty years!
CHAPTER ONE
OFFICER BRODY TAGGERT decided he was upgrading his mood from cranky to just plain foul.
“As good a time as any to go see Miss L. Toe,” he said, out loud, heavy on the sarcasm as he said the name. Tag’s dog, Boo, the only other inhabitant of the police cruiser, who was stretched out comfortably in the backseat, woofed what Tag took as agreement.
Actually, Tag thought, given his mood, now was probably not the best time to go see Snow Mountain’s newest business owner, resident, budding author and pain in the butt.
Unfortunately the new-in-town Lila Grainger, aka Miss L. Toe, unlike most people Tag ran into who had an alias—an also known as—was not a criminal at all. She was the chief of police’s niece.
Which was the reason Tag had to go see her.
Directly ordered.
Tag’s boss, Chief Paul Hutchinson “Hutch,” was notoriously mild-mannered, but he had a core of pure steel and he had not been amused that Tag had missed the first ever meeting of the Save Christmas in Snow Mountain Committee last night.
“She’s up to something,” the chief had muttered. “She’s crafty, just like my sister, her mother. And you missed the meeting, so now we’re in the dark.”
Tag decided not to point out that in the dark was a particularly bad choice of phrase, since that was what had ignited the Christmas fervor in Snow Mountain in the first place.
Town Council had decided to turn off the lights. The Christmas lights, that was. And the traditional Christmas display in the tiny Bandstand Park that was at the end of Main Street was to be no more.
Every year since 1957, the park had been transformed into Santa’s Workshop. Ingenious motorized elves made toys and wrapped gifts, reindeer cavorted and Santa ho-ho-hoed and waved. But those particular models of elves and reindeer did not have fifty-year life spans.
Santa’s ho-ho-ho had gone into slow mo. Last year one of the elves had seriously overheated and burst into flames. Unfortunately, someone with a cell phone camera had caught on film a child wailing in fear, his face dramatically backlit by the flickering blaze, and Snow Mountain had been put on the map.
The whole issue had been causing heated debates since last January. But at the October Town Council meeting, Leonard Lemoix, who was not Tag’s favorite councilor, had gone where no one had gone before. Leonard had crunched the numbers. The cost of the much-needed repairs, setting up, and taking down of the display could, in three years, added up to enough money to buy a new police cruiser.
That didn’t even include the cost of the power bill for running the Christmas lights, which were not the new energy-efficient variety, for between six and eight weeks every year.
Town Council had voted unanimously to shut down the display and Leonard had gone up a notch or two in Tag’s estimation.
“My niece thinks it’s my fault,” the chief had said glumly the day after the meeting. “I didn’t know anything about the police cruiser. Now Lila’s starting a committee to keep Christmas in Snow Mountain. You know what she said to me? Uncle Paul, do you want Snow Mountain to be known as the town that canceled Christmas?”
That’s when Tag found out he’d been volunteered to be on the committee.
“We can’t have the department looking like villains who want to trade Christmas for a new police cruiser,” Hutch said. The chief’s increasing concern about image seemed to coincide with the arrival of his niece, too.
Lila was a city girl from Miami, and was very savvy about what was and wasn’t politically correct.
Despite the fact Tag was developing a dislike for the niece he had not yet met, he knew better than to bother to protest, why me? about his appointment to Lila Grainger’s committee. After six years on the force he was still, unfortunately, its most recent recruit.
He had shaken the title of rookie, and finally refused to carry the humbling joke badge he’d been required to produce at the whim of anyone senior on the force that said, Be patient, I’m new here, but he still got every single assignment that no one else wanted.
Which described the committee to keep Christmas in Snow Mountain to a T. Karl Jamison, the oldest man on the force, kept threatening to retire, which meant there would be a new rookie someday, but not in time, obviously, to save Tag from being at the whim of Hutch’s niece.
And now he’d missed her first damned meeting.