A Love Inspired Christmas Bundle: In the Spirit of...Christmas / The Christmas Groom / One Golden Christmas

Chewing the creamy casserole, Lindsey had to admit the food tasted incredible. Could she credit the home cooking? Or the company?

Jesse absently handed Jade a napkin. With a sweet smile filled with yellow corn, she swiped at her buttery face.

Having a child—and a man—at her dinner table gave Lindsey an unexpected sense of fulfillment.

“What about your parents?” Jesse asked, coming right back to the conversation.

“Like Kim, they want me to come to them. Right now they’re in Korea, so that wasn’t possible this year.”

“You wouldn’t leave the trees anyway.”

“I might sometime if I could find the right person to run the place for a couple of days.”

He chewed thoughtfully, swallowed and took a drink of tea before saying, “I would have done it this year if you’d said something.”

Lindsey’s insides filled, not with the sumptuous Thanksgiving meal, but with the pleasure of knowing Jesse meant exactly what he’d said. She mulled over the statement as she watched him eat with hearty male abandon.

“I never would have considered asking you.”

Fork in hand, he stiffened. His silver eyes frosted over. “You don’t trust me to do a good job?”

“Of course, I trust you.” Almost too much, given how little she knew about him. “I only meant that leaving you to do all the work while I vacationed would be a huge imposition.”

His tense jaw relaxed. “Oh.”

He studied the rapidly disappearing food on his plate, some thought process that Lindsey couldn’t read running amok inside his head.

A vague unease put a damper on Lindsey’s celebratory mood. Why had Jesse reacted so oddly?

She bit into the tart cranberry-and-sage-flavored dressing, pondering. Had she offended him? Or was the problem deeper than that?

Jade, who’d been busily doing damage to the ear of corn, stopped long enough to take a huge helping of turkey.

“You won’t eat that,” Jesse said, reaching for the meat.

Jade slid the plate out of his reach. “It’s for Sushi. She’s hungry and lonely. She might be crying.”

Lindsey couldn’t believe her ears. Jade worried about the dog without any encouragement from the adults? Was this the break she’d been praying for?

Jesse seemed to recognize the moment, too, for he tossed down his napkin and said, “Can’t have Sushi crying.” Chunk of dark meat in hand, he pushed back from his chair. “Let’s take her this.”

Lindsey thrilled when Jade slipped down from her chair to follow her dad. She took his outstretched hand, her own tiny one swallowed up in the protective size of her father’s.

Unable to avoid the parallel, Lindsey thought of her heavenly Father, of how His huge, all-powerful hand is always outstretched in protection and care. The comparison brought a lump to her throat. She’d messed up a lot in her life, but the Father had never let her down. Even when she’d sequestered herself here on Winding Stair to hide from the hurts of this world, He’d come along with her, loving her back to joy, giving her this farm in place of the things she’d lost.

Jesse and his daughter took three steps across the sun-drenched kitchen before Jade stopped and turned. She stretched out a hand.

“Come on,” she said simply as though Lindsey was an expected presence, a part of her life.

The lump in Lindsey’s throat threatened to choke her. How long had she hungered for a child? A family? And now, on this Thanksgiving Day she felt as if she had one—if only for today.

Dabbing at her mouth with a napkin, she rose and joined the pair, asking tentatively, “Would you like Sushi to come out and play?”

“I don’t want to play.”

Before Lindsey had time to express her disappointment, Jade went on. “But she can come out and sit by you.”

At the bedroom door, Lindsey went down in front of the child. “You are such a big girl. I’m so proud of you for being nice to Sushi. She is lonely in there all by herself and she doesn’t understand why she’s locked up.”

Dark hair bouncing, Jade nodded. “I know.”

“We’ll give her this turkey.” She indicated the meat in Jesse’s hand. “And then I’ll pet her a little before letting her out. She might be excited and jump because she’s happy to see us.”

Jade reached both arms toward her father. “Hold me up, Daddy.”

With a sigh that said he didn’t consider this progress, he hoisted his daughter. Lindsey opened the door and commanded, “Sushi, stay.”

The German shepherd, already spring-loaded, wilted in disappointment, but she followed her owner’s command. Tail swishing madly, ears flicking, she waited while Lindsey stroked and murmured encouragements. Once convinced that Sushi’s self-control was intact, she gazed up at Jade.

“She’s all ready for that turkey. Hold it by your fingertips and give it to her.”

Heart thudding with hope, Lindsey told the dog to sit and be gentle.

Worried green eyes shifting from the dog to Lindsey, Jade gathered her courage. When she looked to Jesse, he winked and gave her an encouraging nudge. “Go ahead.”

Taking the poultry, Jade strained forward. Jesse held on tight, face as tense and hopeful as Lindsey’s heart.

As if she understood the child’s dilemma, Sushi waited patiently, and then daintily took the meat between her front teeth.

Jade’s nervous laugh broke the anxious moment. Lindsey hadn’t realized she was holding her breath. As casually as she could while rejoicing over this huge step, she turned back to the kitchen. Sushi’s toenails tapped the floor as she followed. She pointed to a spot far away from Jade, and the dog collapsed in ecstasy.

To her delight, Jade slithered out of Jesse’s arms, unafraid to be on even ground with the animal.

“How about some pecan pie?” Lindsey asked, tilting the pie in their direction.

Jade shook her head. “Can I play with your playhouse?”

She indicated the extra room where Lindsey kept toys and games for her Sunday-school girls.

“Sure. Go ahead.”

As Jade skipped off into the other room, Lindsey lifted an eyebrow toward Jesse. “Pie?”

Jesse patted his flat, muscled stomach. “Too full right now. Later maybe?”

“Later sounds better to me, too. I’m sure there are plenty of football games on if you’d like to watch television while I clean the kitchen.”

“No deal. You cook. I wash.”

Lindsey was shocked at the idea. “You’re my guest. You can’t wash dishes.”

Already rolling up his shirtsleeves, Jesse argued. “Watch me.”

“Then I’m helping, too.” She tossed him an apron, the least frilly one she owned.

He tied it around his slender middle, and in minutes they had the table cleared and water steaming in the old-fashioned porcelain sink.

As Lindsey stacked the dishes on the counter, Jesse washed them. The sight of his strong dark arms plunged into a sink full of white soapsuds did funny things to her insides.

They were down to the turkey roaster when the crunch of tires on gravel turned their attention to visitors.

“Who could that be?” Lindsey asked, placing a dried plate into the cabinet before pushing back the yellow window curtain. “I don’t recognize the vehicle.”

Jesse came up beside her. A hum of awareness prickled the skin on Lindsey’s arms.

“I’ll go out and check.” Her breath made tiny clouds on the cool window. “Could be an early customer.”

Her prediction proved true, and though she normally didn’t open until the day after Thanksgiving, she was too kindhearted to turn them away.

Upon hearing their story, she was glad they’d come.

“Thank you for letting us interrupt your holiday,” the woman said as she watched her children traipse happily through the thick green pines. “We thought decorating the tree before their dad shipped out for the Middle East tomorrow would help the kids. They’ve never had Christmas without him.”

Lindsey placed a hand on the woman’s arm. “It’s us who owe you—and your husband—thanks.”

As they went from tree to tree, discussing the perfect shape and size, Lindsey realized that Jesse and Jade had disappeared. In moments, she knew why. Red and green lights, dim in the bright November sun, flicked on all over the lot. Then the gentle strains of “Away in a Manger” filtered from the stereo speakers Jesse had stretched from the gate into the trees.

When he returned, coming up beside Lindsey with Jade in tow, she couldn’t hold back her gratitude. “Thank you for thinking of that.”

He shrugged off the compliment. “Some people like this stuff.”

But you don’t. What could have happened to turn Jesse into such a Scrooge? She wanted to ask why again, to press him for information, but now, with a customer present, was not the moment.

The family found the perfect tree and Jesse set to work. In no time, the tree was cut, baled, and carefully secured on top of the family’s car. Three exuberant children piled inside the four-door sedan, faces rosy with excitement and cold. The soldier reached for his wallet, but Lindsey held out a hand to stop him.

“No way. The tree is a gift. Enjoy it.”

The man argued briefly, but seeing Lindsey’s stubborn stance, finally gave in. “This means a lot to my family.”

He got inside the car and started the engine.

“Merry Christmas.” Lindsey said, leaning down into the open window. “You’ll be in my prayers.”

With more thanks and calls of Merry Christmas, the family drove away, the Virginia pine waving in the wind.

“That was a real nice thing you did,” Jesse said, his arm resting against hers as they watched the car jounce down the driveway.

“I love to give trees to people like that. What a blessing.”

“You don’t make money giving them away.”

“No, but you create joy, and that’s worth so much more.”

Jade, who’d been listening, rubbed her hand across the needles of a nearby pine and spoke in a wistful voice. “I wish I could have a Christmas tree.”

“What a grand idea!” Lindsey clapped her hands. The sound startled several blackbirds into flight. “Let’s pick one right now. You and your daddy can decorate it tonight.”

Beside her, Jesse stiffened. A warning sounded in Lindsey’s head, but she pushed it away, intent upon this latest happy project.

“Come on.” She gestured toward the smaller trees. “You can choose your very own tree. Any one you want.”

Jade held back, her face a contrast of longing and reluctance.

The warning sound grew louder. “What’s wrong, sweetie? Don’t you want a tree?”

Small shoulders slumping with the weight, Jade wagged her head, dejected. “Daddy won’t let me.”

“Sure he will.”

But one look at Jesse told her she was wrong.

“Jesse?” With a sinking feeling, she searched his face. What she found there unnerved her.

“Leave it alone, Lindsey,” he growled, jaw clenching and unclenching.

“Daddy hates Christmas.” Tears shimmered in Jade’s green eyes. “Mommy—”

“Jade!” Jesse’s tortured voice stopped her from saying more. He stared at his daughter, broken and forlorn.

Jade’s eyes grew round and moist. Biting her lower lip, she flung her arms around Jesse’s knees.

Expression bereft, Jesse stroked his daughter’s hair, holding her close to him.

Heart pounding in consternation, Lindsey prayed for wisdom. Whatever had happened was still hurting Jesse and this precious little girl. And avoiding the issue would not make the pain go away.

She touched him, lightly, tentatively. “Let me help, Jesse. Talk to me. Tell me what’s wrong.”

“Talking doesn’t change anything.” His face was as hard as stone, but his eyes begged for release.

She hesitated, not wanting to toss around platitudes, but knowing the real answer to Jesse’s need. “I don’t know if you want to hear this, but there’s nothing too big for the Lord. Jesus will heal all our sorrows if we let him.”

“I wish I could believe that. I wish…” With a weary sigh, he lifted Jade into his arms and went to the little bench along the edge of the grove and sat down. With a deep, shivering sigh, he stared over Jade’s shoulder into the distance, seeing something there that no one else could.

Unsure how to proceed, but knowing she had to help this man who’d come to mean too much to her, Lindsey settled on the bench beside him and waited, praying hard that God would give her the words.

Something terrible had broken Jesse’s heart and her own heart broke from observing his pain.

After an interminable length of silence disrupted only by the whisper of wind through pine boughs, Jade climbed down from her daddy’s lap.

Her dark brows knit together. “Daddy?”

“I’m okay, Butterbean.” He clearly was not. “Go play. I want to talk to Lindsey.”

“About Mommy?”

Jesse dragged a hand over his mouth. “Yeah.”

Lindsey saw the child hesitate as though she felt responsible for her father’s sorrow. Finally, she drifted away, going to the parked wagon where she sat anxiously watching the adults.

When Jesse finally began to speak, the words came out with a soft ache, choppy and disconnected.

“Erin looked a lot like Jade. Black hair and green eyes. Pale skin. She was a good woman, a Christian like you.” He hunched down into his jacket, though the afternoon air wasn’t cold. “I tried to be one, too, when she was alive.”

So that explained how Jade had learned to pray and why she knew bits and pieces about Jesus. Jesse and his wife had known the Lord, but something had driven him away from his faith.

“Christmas was a very big deal to her. She loved to shop, especially for Jade and me. We didn’t have a lot of money.” He kicked at a dirt clod, disintegrating the clump into loose soil. “My fault, but Erin made the best of it. We always had a good Christmas because of her. She could make a ten-dollar gift seem worth a million.”

Something deep inside told Lindsey to be quiet and let him talk. Letting the pain out was the first step to healing, and the cleansing would give the Lord an opportunity to move in. Granny had taught her that when she’d wanted to curl into a ball and disappear from the pain of Sean’s betrayal.

“Two years ago—” He stopped, sat up straight and tilted his head backward, looking into the sky.

“What happened?” she urged gently.

“Christmas Eve. Erin had a few last-minute gifts to buy. One present she’d had in layaway for a while, though I didn’t know it at the time. She’d been waiting to have enough money to pick up that one gift.” He swallowed hard and scrubbed a hand across his eyes. “Jade and I stayed at the house, watching Christmas cartoons and munching popcorn balls. We were waiting for Erin to get home before we hung the stockings. We never hung them because Erin never came home.”

Biting at her lower lip, Lindsey closed her eyes and prayed for guidance.

“Oh, Jesse,” she whispered, not knowing what else to say. “I’m so sorry.”

He shifted around to look at her. “I’m not telling you this for sympathy.”

But sympathy wasn’t the only emotion rushing through her veins.

She was starting to care about Jesse. Not only the way a Christian should care about all people, but on a personal level too. Every day she looked forward to the minute the blue-and-silver truck rumbled into her yard, and he swung down from the cab and ambled in that cowboy gait of his up to the front porch. She relished their working side by side. She enjoyed looking into his silvery eyes and listening to the low rumble of his manly voice. She appreciated his strength and his kindness.

She cared, and the admission unsettled her. He was too wounded, too broken, and too much in love with a dead wife for her to chance caring too much. She could be a friend and a shoulder to cry on, but that was all she could let herself be.

Jesse gripped the edge of the bench, needing Lindsey’s compassion and afraid of flying apart if he accepted it. Now that he’d begun the awful telling, there was no way he could stop. Like blood from a gaping wound, the words flowed out.

“Three blocks from our house a drunk driver hit her, head-on.”

He’d been sitting in his recliner, Jade curled against him watching Rudolph when the sirens had broken the silent night. He’d never forget the fleeting bit of sympathy he’d felt for any poor soul who needed an ambulance on Christmas Eve. Safe and warm in his living room, he had no way of knowing the holiday had chosen him—again—for heartache.

“A neighbor came, pounding on the door and yelling. She’d seen the wreck, knew it was Erin’s car. I ran.” He didn’t know why he’d done that. A perfectly good truck sat in the driveway, but he hadn’t even thought of driving to the scene. “Like a fool, I ran those three blocks, thinking I could stop anything bad from happening to my family.”

He relived that helpless moment when he’d pushed past policemen, screaming that Erin was his wife. He recalled the feel of their hands on him, trying to stop him, not wanting him to see.

“She was gone.” Stomach sick from the memory, he shoved up from the bench, unable to share the rest. Lindsey was perceptive. She’d understand that he’d witnessed a sight no man should have to see. His beautiful wife crushed and mangled, the Christmas gifts she’d given her life for scattered along the highway, a testament to the violence of the impact.

Back turned, he clenched his fists and told the part that haunted him still.

“The present she’d gone after was mine.” He’d wanted the fancy Western belt with his named engraved on the back, had hoped she’d order it for him. Now the belt remained in its original box, unused, a reminder that Erin had died because of him.

“Now you know why I feel the way I do about Christmas.” He spoke to the rows and rows of evergreens, though he knew Lindsey listened. He could feel her behind him, full of compassion and care. When she laid a consoling hand on his back, he was glad. He needed her touch. “Jade and I both have too many bad memories of Christmas to celebrate anything.”

Jesse looked toward the wagon which had already been outfitted for hauling visitors through the grove. Jade had crawled beneath the down quilt and lay softly singing along with the music, waving her hands in the air like a conductor. He’d somehow tuned out the carols until then.

Lindsey’s hand soothed him, making small circles on his back. “Don’t you want Jade to remember her mother?”

“Of course I do. How could you ask me that?”

“You said Erin loved Christmas and wanted the holiday to be special for you and Jade. Those times with her mother are important to Jade, and Christmas is one of the best memories of all.”

Not for him. And not for Jade either.

“I’d never take away her memories of Erin,” he said gruffly.

“When you refuse to let her have a Christmas tree, you’re telling her child’s mind to forget her mother and to forget all those wonderful times with her.”

“That’s not true,” he denied vehemently. “I’m protecting her. I don’t want her to relive that terrible night every Christmas.”

“Are you talking about Jade? Or yourself?”

He opened his mouth to refute the very idea that he was protecting himself instead of Jade. But words wouldn’t come.

“You can’t allow your own pain to keep Jade from having a normal childhood.” Her warm, throaty voice implored him.

“I’d never do that,” he said, but the denial sounded weak. With growing angst, he realized Lindsey could be right. In his self-focused pain, he’d hurt his little girl, denying her the right to remember her mother laughing beneath the tree on Christmas morning, the three of them dancing to “Jingle Bell Rock.”

He squeezed his eyes closed as memories washed over him.

“Not intentionally, but don’t you realize that she reads everything you do or don’t do, interpreting your actions in her childish understanding? She wants to have Christmas, but she worries about you.”

A great blue heron winged past, headed to the pond. Out in the pasture, the black horse grazed on an enormous round bale of hay, summer’s green grass a memory.

“I don’t want her worrying about me.”

“You can’t stop her. She wants you to be happy. She loves you. God loves you, too, Jesse, and He wants to help you get past this.”

“I don’t know how.” And even if he did, he wondered if “getting past” Erin’s death wouldn’t somehow be disloyal.

“Erin’s death wasn’t your fault. Start there.”

“I can’t help thinking she would be alive if she hadn’t gone shopping.”

“Those are futile thoughts, Jesse. You would be better served to wonder how you can honor her life.”

He turned toward her then. She’d hit upon the very thing he longed for. “I don’t know how to do that either.”

“You already are in one way. You’re raising Jade to be a lovely child. But God has more for you. He wants you to have a life free of guilt and anger. Full of peace.”

Jesse felt the tug of that peace emanating from his boss lady. A fierce longing to pray, something he hadn’t done in two years, gnawed at him.

“Let’s go choose a tree,” Lindsey urged, holding out a hand. “For Jade.”

He took a breath of clean mountain air and blew it out, his chest heavy and aching. He could do this for his baby. A Christmas tree wasn’t that big a deal, was it? He’d worked in the things for a couple of months now without dying.

His eyes drifted over the acres of pines, noting one major difference. These were bare. If he took a Christmas tree back to the trailer, Jade would want to decorate it.

He turned his attention to the wagon where his brave little trooper no longer sang and conducted. Huddled down into the quilt, her black hair tousled, she lay sleeping.

Last Christmas, the first anniversary of Erin’s death, he’d done his best to ignore the holiday altogether. Erin’s family, far away in Kentucky had sent gifts, but he’d tossed them in the garbage before Jade had seen them. The few times she’d mentioned presents, he’d reacted so harshly she’d quickly gotten the message that the subject of Christmas was off limits.

But she’d cried, too. And that forgotten memory of her tears tormented him.

Fighting down a rising sense of dread, Jesse took Lindsey’s hand. “Let’s go wake her.”

Lindsey’s quiet eyes studied him. “Are you okay with this?”

Though uncertain, he nodded.

They went to the wagon where Jade lay sleeping like an angel, her black hair a dark halo around her face. Sooty lashes curved upon her weather-rosy cheeks. One arm hugged the covers, rising and falling with the rhythm of her silent breath.

“Look at her, Jesse. You have so much to be thankful for. I know people who’d give anything to have a child like Jade.” Her voice grew wistful. “Including me.”

Her soft-looking lips turned down, one of the rare times he’d seen her unhappy. He didn’t like seeing her sad.

“I thought you were perfectly content up here alone.” They spoke in hushed tones so as not to startle the sleeping child. But the quiet created an intimacy that made him feel closer to Lindsey than he had to anyone in a long time.

“I’m learning to be content in the Lord, but that doesn’t mean I don’t think about having a family someday.”

Something stirred inside Jesse. Lindsey would make a great mother—and a good wife to the right man. Someday one of those holy churchgoers who’d never committed a sin in his life would marry her.

Already miserable with the forthcoming Christmas tree, he didn’t want to think about Lindsey with some other man.

Fighting off the uncomfortable thoughts, he stroked a knuckle down Jade’s cheek. “Hey, Butterbean. Wake up. Ready to get that Christmas tree?”

His little girl blinked, her green eyes sleepy and confused, but filled with a hope that seared him. “Really?”

With a nod, he swallowed hard and helped her down from the wagon. As if she expected the offer to be rescinded at any moment, Jade wasted no time. She grabbed each adult by the hand and pulled them toward the grove.

An hour later, laden with lights and tinsel and lacy white angel ornaments Lindsey had given Jade from a box in her Christmas building, they’d headed back to the trailer. Jade had been ecstatic over the three-foot tree, raising the level of Jesse’s guilt as well as his anxiety. All the way into town he’d wondered if he could actually go through with it, if he could spend a month staring at a reminder of all he’d lost.