had a wife, and a life, and the next that everything had changed forever. What were his regrets? Had he called, I love you, as his wife had headed out the door for the last time?
His face was closed now, as if he already had said way more than he wanted to. Which meant he was the strong one who talked to no one about his pain.
She wanted to reach across the darkness of the cab, and invite him to tell her things he had told no one else, but she knew he would not appreciate the gesture.
Silence fell over them. Despite the quiet, there was something good about driving through the night with him, the soft music, the snow falling outside, his scent tickling at her nose.
Normally, particularly if she was driving by herself, the snow would have made Morgan nervous, but tonight she had a feeling of being with a man who would keep those he had been charged with guarding safe no matter what it took, no matter what it cost him.
But he hadn’t, and he wore that failure to protect his wife around him like a cloak of pure pain.
Even though Morgan knew he had not been there at the accident that killed his wife, she was certain he would in some way hold himself responsible. Did he think he should have driven her that night? Not let her go into the storm?
She could not ask him that. Not yet. Which meant she thought someday maybe she could. Why was she hoping this shopping trip was not the end of it?
Because she felt so safe driving with him through the snow-filled night?
Amelia wouldn’t have approved, but it was nice to rely on someone else’s competence. Even though it might be weak, Morgan felt herself savoring the feeling of being looked after.
She glanced at his strong features, illuminated by the dash lights. He looked calm, despite the snowfall growing heavier outside, the windshield wipers slapping along trying to keep up.
Nate Hathoway might not smile much, but Morgan suddenly knew if your back was against the wall and barbarians were coming at you with knives in their teeth, he was the one you would want standing right beside you.
It was weariness that had allowed an independent woman such as herself to entertain such a traitorous thought, Morgan defended herself. And then, as if to prove it, the warmth inside the vehicle, the radio, the mesmerizing fall of snow—and the sense of being safe and taken care of—made it impossible for her to think of clever things to say. Or even to keep her eyes open.
When she woke up, it was to absolute stillness. The sound of the radio was gone, the vehicle had stopped moving, the dashboard lights were off, and the vehicle was empty.
She realized there was a weight on her shoulder, and that it was his hand, not shaking her, just touching her.
Even through the puffiness of her parka, she could feel his warmth, and his strength. It made her want to go back to sleep.
“Morgan, we’re home.”
For home to be a place shared, instead of a place of aloneness, felt like the most alluring dream of all.
Recognizing her groggy vulnerability, Morgan shook herself awake. He was standing at her side of the SUV, the door open.
A quick glance showed the back was empty of every parcel and package. Ace was gone.
“Put her in bed,” he said before Morgan asked. “Thought you might wake up as I moved stuff and the vehicle cooled off, but you were sleeping hard.”
Morgan felt herself blushing. She’d obviously slept like a rock. She hoped she hadn’t drooled and muttered his name in her sleep. Had she dreamed of the smile she had tried so hard—and failed—to produce?
And then suddenly, when she least expected it, it was there.
He was actually smiling at her. A small smile, but so genuine it was like the sun coming out on a dreary day. He reached out and touched her cheek.
“You’ve got the print of the seat cover across your cheek.”
And then his hand dropped away, and he looked away.
“Miss McGuire?”
“Morgan.”
He looked right at her. The smile was gone. “You gave my daughter a gift today. I haven’t seen her so happy for a long, long time. I thank you for that.”
And then, he bent toward her, brushed the print on her cheek again, and kissed the place on her cheek where his fingers had been. His lips were gloriously soft, a tenderness in them that belied every single thing she thought she had ever seen in his eyes.
And then Nate turned away from her, went up the walk to his house and into it, shut the door without once looking back.
She sat in his truck stunned, wondering if she had dreamed that moment, but finally managed to stir herself, shut the door of his vehicle and get into her own.
The night was so bright and cold and star-filled. Was she shivering from the cold, or from the absence of the warmth she had felt when he had touched his lips to her cheek?
It wasn’t until she was nearly home that she realized that while she slept he had done more than empty his vehicle of parcels, and carry a sleeping Ace to her bedroom. Morgan saw he had put two more of the coat hangers on her front seat.
And she remembered she still had not gotten the permission slip for The Christmas Angel signed.
And she knew it was weak, and possibly stupid, and she knew it went against every single thing she had decided for herself when she had moved to Canterbury. It challenged every vow she had made as she devoured chapter after chapter of Bliss: The Extraordinary Joy of Being a Single Woman.
But Morgan still knew that she would use that unsigned permission slip as an excuse to see him again.
HE NEVER WANTED TO see her again.
Morgan McGuire was stirring things up in Nate Hathoway that did not need stirring.
That impulse to kiss her cheek was the last impulse he intended to follow. It had been like kissing the petals of a rose, so soft, so yielding. Touching the exquisite softness of her with his lips had made him acutely aware of a vast empty spot in his life.
As had spending a day with her, her laughter, her enthusiasm, contagious.
So, it was an easy decision. No more Morgan McGuire.
Nate, alone in his workshop, vowed it out loud. “I won’t see her again. Won’t have anything to do with her.”
There. His and Ace’s lives felt complicated enough without adding the potential messiness of a relationship with the teacher.
Relationship? That was exactly why he wasn’t seeing her again. A day—shopping of all things—made him think of the sassy schoolteacher in terms of a relationship?
No. He was setting his mind against it, and that was that.
One thing every single person in this town knew about Nate Hathoway: his discipline was legendary. When he said something, it happened.
It was that kind of discipline that had allowed him to take a forge—a relic from a past age that had not provided a decent living for the past two generations of Hathoway blacksmiths—and bend it to his vision for its future.
His own father had been skeptical, but then he was a Hathoway, and skepticism ran deep through the men in this family. So did hard work and hell-raising.
Cindy and David had been raised in the same kind of families as his. Solidly blue-collar, poor, proud. The three of them had been the musketeers, their friendship shielding them from the scorn of their wealthier classmates.
While his solution to the grinding poverty of his childhood had been the forge,