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She suddenly couldn’t help yearning to feel those sexy roller-coaster lips pressed to hers…

Would they be as soft and warm as they looked? As supple? What kind of kisser was he? Not pinch-lipped the way Wes sometimes was, she thought. Relaxed, confident, natural—that was Dag and probably how Dag kissed…

But that wasn’t anything she should be thinking about!

She jerked her eyes away just about the time Dag said, more to himself than to her, “But you’re engaged… to a Rumson…”

Dear Reader,

It’s Christmastime in Northbridge and there’s no place Dag McKendrick would rather be. Family, friends, decorations, festivities and genuine goodwill toward everyone. It’s home.

For Shannon Duffy it’s something else. It’s a place to spend the holiday with the biological brother who has come into her life after a year of losses. Losses that not only included her parents and her beloved grandmother, but also the end of her three-year-long relationship with a politician all of Montana thinks she’s still engaged to.

Proximity—and the fact that Shannon is selling Dag her late grandmother’s house—brings Shannon and Dag together. But Dag’s dauntless high spirits are just what she needs. So like any Christmas treat, Shannon lets herself indulge a little. And then a little more. And then a little more.

But that’s Christmas for you…

I hope yours is wonderful, and that the new year brings with it only the best of everything!

Happy, happy holidays!

Victoria Pade

About the Author

VICTORIA PADE is a USA TODAY bestselling author of numerous romance novels. She has two beautiful and talented daughters—Cori and Erin—and is a native of Colorado, where she lives and writes. A devoted chocolate lover, she’s in search of the perfect chocolate-chip cookie recipe. For information about her latest and upcoming releases, and to find recipes for some of the decadent desserts her characters enjoy, log on to www.vikkipade.com.

The Bachelor’s

Christmas Bride

Victoria Pade

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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Chapter One

“Ho! Ho! Ho! What good skaters you are!”

Shannon Duffy smiled a little at what she saw and heard in the distance when she got out of her car.

After a long drive from Billings, she’d just arrived in the small town of Northbridge, Montana. At the end of Main Street, she’d spotted a parking space near the town square and pulled into it so she could get out and stretch for a minute.

Not far from the parking area was an open-air ice skating rink and it was there that a group of preschool-age children were apparently being taught—by Santa Claus—how to skate. Or at least they were being taught by a man dressed in a Santa suit, using the ho-ho-hos to encourage them.

Christmas was a little more than a week away and Shannon was anything but sorry to have it herald the close of the past year. It had been a rough year for her.

Very rough…

But as she breathed in the cold, clear air of the country town, as she watched the joy of kids slip-sliding around the ice rink that was surrounded by a pine-bough-and-red-ribbon-adorned railing, she was glad she’d come. She already felt just a tiny bit less disconnected than she had, just a tiny bit less alone, almost as if the small town her late grandmother had loved was holding out its arms to welcome her.

Shannon had suffered three losses this year. Four, if she counted Wes.

She’d lost her dad at the beginning of January, and her mom just three months after that. Their deaths hadn’t come as a surprise; both of her parents had been ill most of their lives. But when, in August, her grandmother had suddenly and unexpectedly had a heart attack and died, too, that had been a shock. And it had meant that her entire family was gone in just a matter of months.

Then her relationship with Wes Rumson had ended on top of it all….

But now her trip to Northbridge was twofold. Primarily, she was there to attend the wedding of and spend the holiday with the people she’d come to think of as her New Wave of family.

Two months earlier she’d been contacted by a man named Chase Mackey. Out of the blue he’d made the announcement that he was one of three brothers and a sister she’d been separated from when she was barely eighteen months old, when they’d lost their parents to a car accident and—with no other family—had been put into the system and up for adoption.

Shannon had known that she was adopted. She just hadn’t known—before Chase Mackey’s call—that she had biological siblings out in the world.

And not even too far out in the world at that since Chase Mackey had been calling her from Northbridge where her grandmother had lived and owned the small farm that Shannon had inherited at the end of the summer.

The farm was the second reason she was in Northbridge. Today she was to attend the closing on the sale of the property that she had no inclination to keep.

“Ooh, Tim! You okay?”

One of the little boy skaters had fallen soundly on his rump and Shannon heard Santa’s question as she watched him race impressively to the child, clearly not inhibited by the bulky red suit and what was obviously padding around his middle.

Tim was a trouper, though. He fought the tears that his puffed-out lower lip threatened, let Santa help him up and get him steadied on his feet again. Then, casting nothing but a glance in the direction of the adults who looked on from the sidelines, the child let Santa ease him back to the group without making a bigger deal of the fall than it had called for.

Shannon silently approved of how the whole thing had played out.

Not that she had any reason to approve or disapprove, it was just that she was missing her job and some of that kicked in as she watched the scene.

She’d taught kindergarten since she’d graduated from college. It was a job she loved, but she was currently on sabbatical. Her grandmother’s death had just been one blow too many and she’d needed to take some time.

It was a job she loved but might not be going back to. At least not exactly the way she’d done it before, not if she accepted her old friend’s offer and moved to Beverly Hills instead….

But that possibility was in the mulling stages and for the next week and two days she was just going to get to know her new brother, and her new nephew, and try to enjoy this first holiday without the only family she’d ever known.

She looked away from Santa and the skaters and took her cell phone from her coat pocket. She’d lost service just before getting to Northbridge and she wondered if she was back within range or if she was going to have a problem while she was here.

No problem, she had service again.

And a message…

The message was from Wes’s secretary, informing her that Wes wanted to know when she arrived safely at her destination.

Shannon appreciated the concern the same way she’d appreciated it when Wes had inquired about her plans for the holidays to make sure she wasn’t spending them alone.

But merely the fact that it was Wes’s secretary calling now rather than Wes himself was a glaring reminder of why she’d turned down the proposal of the man she’d been involved with for the last three years.

Wes Rumson. The Hope-For-The-Future of the Rumson family political machine that had provided a long history of Montana’s district attorneys, senators, representatives, mayors and now—if Wes’s campaign was successful—a governor.

The man who would have definitely provided her with the bigger life she’d always wanted, always dreamed of having. If she’d just said yes to his on-camera proposal.

But she hadn’t. Regardless of how it had appeared, she hadn’t. She’d said no.

Of course the general public didn’t know that yet, only a select few insiders did. But still, she’d said no.

And she wasn’t going to call and talk to Wes’s secretary now, so she sent only a text message that yes, she had arrived safely in Northbridge. Then she added a cheery Merry Christmas!

Maybe just being near a jolly old Saint Nick was giving her some much-needed Christmas spirit.

Although when she returned her phone to the pocket of the knee-length navy blue wool coat she was wearing, and glanced at the skating teacher again, it struck her that this particular Saint Nick wasn’t old at all. That behind the fake beard and mustache, under the red hat that he wore at a jaunty angle, was a much younger man with broad shoulders and impressively muscled legs that powered those skates expertly.

No, he was definitely not old. He was fit and trim and strong and…

And she didn’t know what she was doing standing there ogling him. Especially when she knew she should be on her way.

Taking one more deep breath of the clear air and a last glance at the snow-covered town square, at the festively decorated octagonal-shaped gazebo at its center, and finally at the tiny skaters enthralled with the somehow-sexy-seeming Santa, Shannon got back into her sedan.

The fact that she would be seeing her new brother again made her want to make sure she didn’t look too much the worse for wear from the drive, so she pulled down the visor above her and peered into the mirror on the underside of it.

She’d tied back her long, dark, walnut-colored hair into a ponytail in order to keep it neat. The plan had been a success because it looked the same as it had that morning. She wasn’t sure she liked the new mascara she’d used to accentuate her blue-green eyes, but at least it had stayed on. So had the blush that dusted her cheekbones to add some pink to her pale skin and give her oval face some definition. But her glossy lipstick needed refreshing so she took the tube from her purse and did that.

Otherwise, she decided she was presentable enough to meet Chase Mackey where he lived with Hadley—the woman he was marrying on Saturday.

Take a left on South Street. Pass three mailboxes outside of town. Turn right at the fourth.

Shannon read her directions again to make sure she had the number of mailboxes correct.

She’d met Chase twice since he’d made contact with her, but he’d come to Billings each of those times—much the way her grandmother had over the years. This was Shannon’s first trip to Northbridge since she was barely twelve.

According to Chase, he and his business partner Logan McKendrick had bought a section of an old farm that they had converted to meet their private and business needs. Logan lived in the original farmhouse. There was work space and a showroom for Mackey and McKendrick Furniture Designs as well as a loft where Chase lived, and a separate apartment he’d offered to Shannon for the holidays. So she wouldn’t merely be visiting her newfound brother and the woman who would be his bride, she would apparently also be having a lot of contact with Logan and his family.

And with her nephew, Cody.

Cody was the fifteen-month-old son of Shannon and Chase’s oldest sister. The death of Cody’s mother was the reason Chase was now raising Cody, and what had revealed the far-reaching family ties that had brought Shannon and Chase together. Chase had brought the baby on both trips to Billings so Shannon had had the opportunity to meet the adorable baby and she couldn’t wait to see him again.

She flipped the visor back up, and when she did she saw that the skating lesson had apparently ended because Santa and his not-quite-elves were all taking off their skates.

Thinking to leave before the parking lot got busy, Shannon buckled her seat belt and turned the key in the ignition.

Click, click, click. Nothing.

“How can that be, you just got me all the way to Northbridge?” she said to the thirteen-year-old car as she tried again.

But the same thing happened—a few clicks and nothing.

Not that time, not the next time, not the fourth time. The car just wouldn’t start again.

And the only thing Shannon knew about a car was how to drive it.

“Great,” she muttered.

As if something might have changed in the few minutes since she’d tried, she tried again, just as Santa was headed in her direction.

Still the engine wouldn’t turn over. And then there Santa was, at the window right beside her, bent over so that a pair of thick-lashed, smoldering, coal-black eyes could peer in at her.

“Need help?”

He’d tied his black ice skates together by their laces and was wearing them slung over one shoulder as if having them there was second nature to him. The beard remained in place, but even from what she could see of his face she knew she’d been right in thinking that he wasn’t old Saint Nick. The man appeared to be about her own age.

Shannon rolled down the window. “It won’t start. There was no problem when I drove in. I stopped for two minutes and now it won’t start again.”

“Pop the hood and let me take a look,” he suggested in a deep, deep voice.

Shannon had no idea if her roadside service could provide a rescue all the way in Northbridge, so this seemed like the next best thing. She pulled the lever that unlocked the hood and then got out of the car to join Santa in front of it.

He was tall. Of course he’d seemed tall compared to the kids who had surrounded him in the distance minutes earlier, but when Shannon stepped up beside him, she was surprised by just how tall he was—over six feet to her five-four. He was also much more massively muscled within that Santa suit than she’d realized.

And she had no idea why she was taking note of things like that…

He slipped his skates off his shoulder and set them on the ground. Then he found the latch that still held down the hood, released it and raised the heavy front cover of her car to expose the engine.

Shannon looked at it along with him even though she didn’t have the foggiest idea what they were looking for.

“Your battery is new so it isn’t that, and a jump won’t get you going.”

Oh, the wicked places her mind wandered to when he said that!

And again, she didn’t know why. She didn’t ordinarily have sex on the brain.

Silently scolding herself, she curbed her thoughts just as he said, “Let me try a couple of things. Get back in and turn it on when I holler for you to.”

Shannon did as she was told but after several more attempts to get the engine to start whenever Santa told her to turn the key, it just didn’t happen.

“I think you have something more going on than I can fix,” he finally called to her.

Stepping out from behind the hood, he bent over, scooped up as much snow as he could and used it to clean his hands.

Shannon got out of the car and handed him several tissues she’d taken from her glove box.

“Well, thanks for trying,” she said as he took the tissues to dry his hands. She nodded toward Main Street. “I saw a gas station up there—do you know if they have a mechanic?”

“Absolutely. The best—and only—one around here. I can give him a call for you, have him come down and take a look. He has a tow truck, too, if he needs to take it back to the station.”

Shannon checked the time on her cell phone. The closing on her grandmother’s property was in little more than an hour.

“I guess that would be good,” she said tentatively. “Do you think the mechanic could come right down? I’m kind of in a hurry to get somewhere….”

“Even if he can’t, you can just leave the keys under the seat and Roy—he’s the mechanic—will take care of it. And if you need a lift somewhere, I can probably get you there.”

Nice eyes or not, she wasn’t getting into a car with a complete stranger.

“Thanks, but I can call my brother—”

“Who’s your brother? It’s a small town, I probably know him.”

“Chase Mackey?”

“Shannon? Are you Shannon Duffy?” Santa asked.

“I am. How—”

“I’m Dag McKendrick—I’m the one you sold the farm to. Chase’s partner, Logan, is my half brother.”

The local Realtor had handled the sale. Shannon knew the name of her buyer, and that there was a family connection with her brother’s partner, but they’d never met.

“Wow, this is a small town,” she said, thinking about the coincidence.

“And I’m staying at Logan’s place until I finish remodeling your grandmother’s house. You’re set to stay in the apartment above Logan’s garage, right? So that must be where you’re headed.”

“Right.”

“So we can call Roy and have him take a look at your car while you just go home with me.”

Oh.

He made that sound as if everything had worked out perfectly. But Shannon still couldn’t help being uncomfortable with the thought of taking everything this man said at face value and totally trusting him.

“Uhh… thanks, but—”

“Come on, it’s fine. I even have candy….” he cajoled, taking a tiny candy cane from his pocket.

“You’re a stranger masquerading as Santa Claus trying to lure me into a car with candy?” she said.

He laughed and while it wasn’t a Santa-like ho-ho-ho, it was a great laugh.

“I guess that does sound bad, doesn’t it?” he admitted. “Okay, how about this…”

He reached into one of the skates that he’d again slung over his shoulder and pulled out a wallet.

“Look—I’ll prove who I am,” he said, showing her his driver’s license.

Shannon took a close look at it, particularly at the picture. For the kind of photograph that had a reputation for being notoriously bad, his was the exception. Not only were those eyes remarkable, but so was the rest of his face.

Roller-coaster-shaped lips. A slightly long, not-too-thin, not-too-thick nose that suited him. The shadow of a beard even though he was clean shaven, accentuating a sharp jawline and a squarish chin that dented upward in the center ever so alluringly.

And his hair—like the full eyebrows she could see for herself—was the color of espresso. It was so dark a brown it was just one shade shy of black, and he wore it short on the sides, a little long on top and disheveled to perfection.

And yes, the name on the license was, indeed, Daegal Pierson McKendrick.

“Daegal?” Shannon said as she read the unusual name.

“My mother had visions of glory. She thought it sounded European and sophisticated. My sisters are Isadora, Theodora and Zeli. But you can see that I am who I say I am. And in an hour and a half we’ll be sitting across a table at the bank for the closing on your grandmother’s property. Plus, tonight we’re having a family dinner together, and we’ll actually be living within spitting distance of each other even when we aren’t together. I think you can risk a five-minute ride in my car.”

Shannon had no idea why, but she couldn’t resist giving him a hard time despite the abundance of reasons why she could trust him.

“How do I know that the person behind that beard is the person on this driver’s license?”

He looked to his right, to his left, over his shoulder, making sure none of the children he’d been teaching to skate were around to see. Then he eased the beard down just enough for her to realize that in reality he was even better looking than in the photograph.

It was only a split-second glimpse, however, before he released the fluffy white disguise that must have been held on by elastic because it snapped back into place.

Then he waved a finger between the driver’s license in her hand and himself and said, “Him, me, same guy. Not somebody who’s gonna drive you out into the woods and ravage you.”

Why did that make her smile? And maybe sound a little tantalizing?

She again had no answer to her own question but she did finally concede. “Okay. Let’s call the mechanic and then I guess I’ll have to trust you.”

Dag McKendrick took a turn at smiling at her—a great smile that flashed flawlessly white teeth. “You don’t have to trust me. You can walk—it’s about four miles straight down South Street—five minutes by car, maybe an hour or more on foot, your choice…”

“I’ll take the ride. But remember, the mechanic will know who I left with.”

“And the possible future-Governor of Montana will track me down and have me shot if anything happens to his soon-to-be wife.”

So the news had even reached Northbridge. Shannon had been hoping that somehow the media coverage might have bypassed the small, secluded town during the two weeks since Wes’s on-camera proposal.

But while she wasn’t Wes Rumson’s soon-to-be anything, she’d agreed not to refute it in public. She’d agreed to let Wes’s press people handle it in a way that saved face for him, that didn’t harm his bid for governor. And she couldn’t blurt out the truth now, on the street, to someone she didn’t know.

Even if she suddenly wanted to more than she had at any moment in the last two weeks.

Because, as she looked into Dag McKendrick’s coal-black eyes, she hated the idea that he thought she was engaged when she wasn’t.

And she didn’t understand that any more than she’d understood any of the rest of her response to this man.

But that was what she’d agreed to and she had to stick to it.

She had to.

So she bit her tongue on the subject and merely said, “I’ll get my suitcase out of the trunk while you call the mechanic. If you would, please.”

“Already sounding gubernatorial,” he teased.

Shannon merely rolled her eyes at him and reached beside the driver’s seat to release the lever that opened the sedan’s trunk.

“Just leave your suitcase, I’ll get it,” Dag McKendrick commanded as she headed for the rear of the car. “We can’t have the future First Lady toting her own luggage.”

Shannon ignored him and went for her suitcase anyway.

But as she was standing behind the car, she couldn’t keep herself from peeking around the raised trunk cover at him, telling herself it was to make sure he was using the cell phone he’d taken from the inside of that same skate his wallet had been in, and not just to get another look at him.

Dag McKendrick.

Why on earth would she care if he thought she was engaged? she asked herself.

She still didn’t have an answer.

But what she did have about five minutes later was a ride in a truck with Santa Claus behind the wheel, honking his horn and boisterously hollering ho-ho-hos to every child he drove by.

Chapter Two

On Thursday evening, in the upstairs guest room of his half brother’s home, Dag set the packet of papers for the property he now owned in the top dresser drawer. As he did, the sounds of more and more voices began to rise up to him from the kitchen.

A family dinner to welcome Shannon Duffy and celebrate his new path in life as a land- and homeowner—that was what tonight was, what was beginning to happen downstairs.

It was a nice sound and he sat on the edge of the bed to give himself a minute to just listen to it from a distance.

And to stretch his knee and rub some of the ache out of it.

He should have used the elastic support brace on the ice today but he hadn’t thought that teaching preschoolers to skate would put as much strain on his knee as it had. Plus he knew he was sloughing off when it came to things like that because on the whole, the knee was fine and didn’t need any bracing. It had been that quick rush to the kid who had fallen—that’s when he’d jimmied things up a little.

But just a little. The pain lotion he’d rubbed into it after his shower this afternoon had helped, the massage was helping, too, and he thought it would be fine by tomorrow. Every now and then it just liked to let him know that the doctors, the trainers, the coaches, the physical therapists had all been right—there was no way he could have gone on to play hockey again.

And he wasn’t going to. After returning to Northbridge in late September he’d done some house-hunting, and he was now the owner of his own forty-seven acres of farm and ranch land, of a house that was going to be really nice once he was finished remodeling and updating it. He was on that new path that was being celebrated tonight and he’d be damned if he was going to do any more mourning of what wasn’t to be.

He’d had a decent run in professional hockey. Hockey and the endorsements that went with a successful career had set him up financially. And even if it hadn’t been his choice to move on, even if moving on had happened a lot earlier than he’d hoped it would, a lot earlier than he’d expected it would, he was still glad to be back in Northbridge.

The positives were the things he was going to concentrate on—the new path, getting back to his hometown and the fact that it was Christmastime. The fact that this was the first Christmas in years that he was home well in advance of the holiday, with family. The fact that he didn’t have to rush in after a Christmas Eve game or rush out for a December twenty-sixth game. The fact that he wasn’t in a hospital or a physical therapy rehab center the way he had been the last two Christmases.

So things might not be exactly the way he’d planned, but they were still good. And he still considered himself a pretty lucky guy. A little older, a little wiser, but still pretty lucky. Lucky enough to have been able to go on.

The sound of a woman’s laughter drifted up to him then and he listened more intently.

Had Shannon Duffy come across the backyard from the garage apartment?

And why should he care whether she had or not?

He shouldn’t.

He didn’t.

But when he heard the laugh again and recognized it as his half sister Hadley’s laugh, he stayed put, continuing to rub his knee rather than go down the way he might have otherwise.

It was just good manners, he told himself. They were sort of the co-guests-of-honor. If Shannon was here, he should go down. If she wasn’t here yet, there was no rush.

Yeah, right, it’s just manners…

Okay, maybe he didn’t hate the idea that he was going to get to see her again. But only because she made for a pleasant view.

Dark, thick, silky, walnut-colored hair around that pale peaches-and-cream skin. A thin, straight nose that came to a slight point on the end that turned up just a touch. Lips that were soft and shiny and too damn kiss-able to bear. Rosy cheeks that made her look healthy and glowing from the inside out. Eyes that at first had seemed blue—a pale, luminous blue—and then had somehow taken on a green hue, too, to blend them into the color of sea and sky together. And a compact little body that was just tight enough, just round enough, just right…

A beauty—that’s what Shannon Duffy was. No doubt about it. So much of a beauty that he hadn’t been able to get the image of her out of his head even after he’d left her to her brother this afternoon when he’d come up here to shower.

So much of a beauty that he’d had to rein in the urge to stare at her every time he’d had the opportunity to see her today.

No wonder she’d snagged herself a Rumson….

Wes Rumson, the newest Golden Boy of the Montana clan that had forever been the biggest name in politics in the state. It had been all over the news a couple weeks ago that not only was he going to run for governor, he was also engaged to Shannon Duffy. When Dag had heard that, he’d figured that was the reason she was selling her grandmother’s property.

It was also one of the reasons that no matter how great-looking she was, he would be keeping his distance from her.

Engaged, dating, separated—even flirting with someone else—any woman with the faintest hint of involvement or connection or ties to another guy and there was no way Dag would get anywhere near her. And not only because he wasn’t a woman-poacher—which he wasn’t.

He’d learned painfully and at the wrong end of a crowbar that if a woman wasn’t completely and totally free and available, having anything whatsoever to do with her could be disastrous.

So, beautiful, not beautiful, he wouldn’t go anywhere near Shannon Duffy.

At least not anywhere nearer than anyone else who was about to share the holiday with her as part of a larger group.

Nope, Shannon Duffy was absolutely the same as the decorations on the Christmas tree, as the lights and holly and pine boughs and ribbons all over this house, all over town—she was something pretty to look at and nothing more.

But damn, no one could say she wasn’t pretty to look at….

“A neckruss goes on your neck, a brace-a-let goes on your wristle.”

“Right,” Shannon confirmed with a smile at three-year-old Tia McKendrick’s pronunciation of things.

After a lovely dinner of game hen, wild rice, roasted vegetables and salad, followed by a dessert of fruit cobbler and ice cream, everyone was still sitting around the table in the dining room of Logan and Meg McKendrick’s home.

Wine had also been in abundance and had left Shannon more relaxed than when she’d arrived this evening. She assumed the same was true for her dinner companions because no one seemed in any hurry to get up and clear the remainder of the dishes.

Tia, on the other hand, had ventured from her seat to sit on Shannon’s lap and explore the simple circle bracelet and plain gold chain necklace that Shannon had worn with her sweater set and slacks tonight.

“Can I see the brace-a-let?” Tia requested.

“You can,” Shannon granted, taking it off and handing it to the small curly-haired girl.

Looking on from Shannon’s right were Meg and Logan—Tia’s stepmother and father.

To Shannon’s left were Chase and his soon-to-be bride, Hadley—who also happened to be Logan’s sister.

On Hadley’s lap was fifteen-month-old Cody, and directly across from Shannon was Dag.

Which made it difficult for her not to look at him in all his glory dressed in jeans and a fisherman’s knit sweater, his well-defined jaw clean shaven and yet still slightly shadowed with the heaviness of his beard.

Their positioning at the table apparently made it difficult for him not to look at her, too, because his dark eyes seemed to have been on her most of the night.

“I think that brace-a-let is kind of big for you, Miss Tia,” Dag said then. “You can get both of your wristles in it.”

Tia tried that, putting her tiny hands through the hoop from opposite directions as if it were a muff. Then, giggling and holding up her arms for everyone to see, she said, “Look it, I can!”

That caught Cody’s interest and the infant leaned far forward to try to take the bracelet for himself. Luckily Shannon had worn two, so she took off the other one and handed it to the baby. Who promptly put it in his mouth.

“So, Shannon, you’re pretty much a stranger to Northbridge even though your grandmother lived here?” Logan asked then.

“I am. I only visited here a few times growing up and that was all before I was twelve. Between my parents’ business and their health, there was just no getting away.”

“What was their business?” Hadley asked.

“They owned a small shoe repair and leather shop, and the building it was in. We lived above the shop and they couldn’t afford help—they worked the shop themselves six days a week—so in order to leave town, they had to close down and that was too costly for them. Gramma would come to visit us—even for holidays. Plus with my parents’ health problems they were both sort of doing the best they could just to get downstairs, put in a day’s work and go back up to the apartment.”

“Did they have serious health problems long before they died?” Chase asked.

“My mom and dad’s health problems were definitely serious and started long before they died,” Shannon confirmed. “As a young man, my dad was in an accident that cost him one kidney and damaged his other—the damaged one continued to deteriorate from the injury, though, and he eventually had to go on dialysis. My mom had had rheumatic fever as a kid and it took a toll on her heart, which also made her lungs weak and caused her to be just generally unwell.”

“I’m a little surprised that people in that kind of physical shape were allowed to adopt a child,” Meg observed.

“The situation at the time helped that,” Shannon said. “What I was told was that my birth parents were killed in a car accident—”

“True,” Chase confirmed.

“There wasn’t anything about other kids in the story,” Shannon continued. “I didn’t know there was an older sister who had a different father to take her, or that there was an older brother and twin younger brothers, that’s for sure. What my parents said was just that there wasn’t any family to take me, that the reverend here had put out feelers for someone else to. When my parents asked if that could be them, the reverend helped persuade the authorities to let them have me despite their health issues—which weren’t as bad at the time, anyway.”

“I don’t know if you know or not, but that reverend is my grandfather,” Meg said.

“Really? No, I didn’t know that.”

“And sick or not, your folks must have wanted a child a lot,” Hadley concluded.

“A lot,” Shannon confirmed. “But having one of their own just wasn’t possible.”

“Did you have a good life with them?” Chase asked.

Despite the two occasions when she and Chase had met in Billings and the few phone calls and emails they’d exchanged, they’d barely scratched the surface of getting to know each other. And while she was aware that Chase’s upbringing in foster care had been somewhat dour, Shannon hadn’t gotten into what her own growing-up years had been like.

“I didn’t have a lot of material things,” she told him now. “But no one was more loved than I was. My parents were wonderful people who adored each other and who thought I was just a gift from heaven,” she said with a small laugh to hide the tears that the memory brought to her eyes. She also glanced downward at Tia still playing with the bracelet in her lap and smoothed the little girl’s hair.

When the tears were under control and she glanced up again, she once more found Dag watching her, this time with a warmth that inexplicably wrapped around her and comforted her before she told herself that she had to be imagining it.

“It must have been so hard for you to lose them,” Meg said, interrupting that split-second moment.

“It was,” Shannon answered, forcing herself to look away from Dag. “But at the same time, they had both gotten so sick. That’s why my grandmother left Northbridge a few years ago—to help me take care of them when it was just more than I could do on my own—”

“You took care of them?” Dag asked in a voice that sounded almost as if it was for her ears only.

“I did—happily, and they made it as easy as they could, but I still had to work, too, and do what I could to help the man I’d hired to keep the business running. Plus my parents needed someone with them during the day, as well, so Gramma came to stay. By the time my dad died last January I couldn’t wish him another day of suffering just so I could go on having him with me. And he and my mom were so close that she just couldn’t go on without him. I think her heart really did break then, so it was no shock when she died just months later. And to tell you the truth, after spending every day of their adult lives together—working together, going up to the apartment together, never being without each other—it sort of seemed as if they belonged together in whatever afterlife there might be, too.”

“And then there was just you and your grandmother?” Dag asked, his eyes still on her in that penetrating gaze.

“Right, Gramma was still with me. And she seemed healthy as ever. She helped me go through all my parents’ things—personal and financial and business. She helped me find an apartment so we could sell the business and the building it was in. She helped me move. She was just about to come back to Northbridge—which was what she really wanted to do for herself—when she had a heart attack in August. She didn’t make it through that….”

This time Shannon shrugged her shoulders to draw attention away from the moisture gathering in her eyes. When she could, she said, “Strange as it may sound, my grandmother’s death was actually the shock.”

“And just like that—within a matter of eight months—you lost your whole family?” Hadley marveled sadly. “Chase said you had taken some time off from teaching kindergarten then, and it’s no wonder!”

“But now she has Chase and two more brothers out there somewhere who she and Chase are going to find,” Meg reminded, obviously attempting to inject something lighter into the conversation.

Shannon looked at her newly discovered brother. “Whatever I can do on that score…” she said to him.

“I’ve hit a wall trying to find the twins,” Chase said. “I’m thinking about hiring a private investigator after the first of the year. But we can talk about that later.”

To change the subject completely then, Shannon said, “So I know Chase and Logan grew up together as best friends and then traveled the country and ended up starting Mackey and McKendrick Furniture Designs, but were you all friends in school?”

“Actually, no,” Meg answered. “I know—small town, you’d think we would have lived in each other’s back pockets. But I was younger than Chase and Logan, so I was barely aware of who they were and they say the same thing about me. I knew Hadley a little better, but again, we weren’t the same age, so we didn’t hang out together.”

“But, Hadley, if Logan and Chase were close, you must have known Chase,” Shannon observed.

“Oh, she knew him all right,” Dag said, goading his half sister.

Hadley didn’t rise to the bait beyond throwing her cloth napkin at him before she said, “I knew Chase. I had the biggest crush on him ever. But we didn’t get together until this past September when he moved back here—”

“When I really got to know her,” Chase contributed, putting his arm around the back of Hadley’s chair and leaning in to kiss her.

And why, when Shannon averted her eyes, her gaze landed instead on Dag, she didn’t know. But there they were, suddenly sharing a glance while the soon-to-be-married couple shared a kiss. And to Shannon it almost seemed as if something couple-ish passed between them, too.

Which, of course, couldn’t possibly have been the case and she again questioned what was going on with her.

Wanting whatever it was interrupted, she focused on Logan to say, “And there are three more McKendrick sisters with unusual names, right?”

“And another McKendrick brother—Tucker,” Logan answered. “You’ll meet them all tomorrow night at the rehearsal and dinner.”

Cody threw Shannon’s bracelet then, letting everyone know that he was no longer content.

“Oh-oh, I think it’s past a couple of bedtimes,” Meg said.

“Not me!” Tia insisted. She was still on Shannon’s lap but now she’d taken off her shoes and was trying unsuccessfully to put both of her feet through Shannon’s bracelet.

“Yes, you, too,” Logan interjected.

“And that’s our cue for dish duty,” Chase added with a grimace tossed at his friend.

“That was the deal,” Hadley reminded. “Meg and I will put kids to bed, Logan and Chase get to show what they learned as dishwashers on their grand tour of the country, and Dag and Shannon are off the hook because the dinner was for them.”

“I don’t mind helping with clean-up,” Shannon said.

“Shhh,” Dag put in. “Don’t ruin a good thing.”

“Besides,” Meg added. “You’ve had a long day, Shannon. You drove the whole way in from Billings and had the closing, and all of us plying you with questions tonight. You have to be worn out. I know I would be.”

“How about if I walk you out to the apartment?” Dag offered before she could respond to what Meg had said.

“Oh. You don’t have to do that,” Shannon demurred, not because she didn’t want him to, but because the minute he suggested it she wanted him to too much….

“I think that’s a great idea—Dag should walk Shannon to the apartment so she doesn’t just have to trudge out there alone,” Meg agreed.

“Really—”

“Go on,” Hadley urged. “I’d walk with you but I have to get all of Cody’s gear ready to take with me to our place.”

The spacious, luxurious loft was what Hadley was referring to. It was in the building beside the apartment over the garage where Shannon was staying. The same building that housed the work space and showroom for Mackey and McKendrick Furniture Designs on the ground floor.

Hadley’s urging seemed to have ended the discussion because everyone got up from the table and Meg came to take Tia from Shannon’s lap.

“Give back Shannon’s bracelet and tell her thank you for letting you play with it,” Meg told the three-year-old.

“I could keep it….” Tia whispered to Shannon.

“No, you can’t keep it,” Meg said before Shannon had the chance to answer, taking the bracelet from Tia and the other one from where Cody had thrown it, and giving them both to Shannon just before she picked up Tia.

Shannon said her good-nights while Dag ran upstairs for a jacket. A brown leather motorcycle jacket that made him look every inch a bad boy when he returned with it on.

But Shannon told herself that wasn’t anything she should be noticing. Or appreciating. And she curbed it.

She had her own coat on by that time, too, and the next thing she knew, they were out the back door and into the cold, crisp night.

“It’s so quiet here,” she said softly when Dag had closed the door behind them.

“A nice change from inside?”

“It wasn’t that dinner wasn’t nice,” she was quick to say as they headed for the garage in the distance, not wanting him to think there was anything about the evening that she hadn’t enjoyed. “I guess it’s just that I’m not used to having so much family around.”

“Because there was always just your mother, father and grandmother?” Dag said as they fell easily into step with each other.

“Yes. And really, until the last few years, it was just my parents and me. But here I am now with a brother and a nephew and Hadley will be my sister-in-law, and there’s all of you McKendricks, too, who seem to be like family to Chase—”

“Not to mention two more brothers if and when you find them,” Dag reminded.

“It’s a lot for someone who’s always been part of a small group, a small life.”

“A small life?” Dag repeated with a laugh. “What exactly does that mean?”

“You know, just a small, simple, workaday life. Certainly no living in Italy and France the way Hadley did. Or even the kind of travel Chase and Logan did around the country for years. Teaching kindergarten isn’t a high-powered career. I’ve been to a few fancy parties with Wes, and there was a trip to Europe, but I haven’t done anything that would qualify as a big life.”

“So far,” Dag amended. “But marrying into a rich and powerful family and possibly becoming the First Lady of Montana? That ought to pump up the volume considerably.”

Shannon hoped that dropping her head when he said that only seemed to be because she was watching her first step up the outer wooden staircase alongside the garage to the apartment. But really she was hiding her expression so she didn’t give away that she wasn’t going to pump up the volume of her life by marrying Wes Rumson.

“Becoming the First Lady of Montana would be a bigger life all right,” she muttered noncommitally. “And a bigger life is always what I’ve wanted. But we were talking about what I’m used to and neither a bigger life nor a lot of large family gatherings like tonight are it.”

“So you’ll have some adjusting to do and tonight was good practice,” Dag said as he followed her up the stairs.

“Tonight was just nice,” she said quietly again.

They reached the landing and she unlocked the apartment door, reaching inside to turn on the light and wondering suddenly if she should invite Dag in. She couldn’t think of any reason why she should. And yet she felt some inclination to do it anyway.

“Want to hide out here until the dishes are done?” she asked with a nod in the direction of the main house where Chase and Logan were visible through the window over the sink.

Dag glanced in that direction, too, but then brought his gaze back to her, accompanied by a grin that was disarmingly handsome. And made her think that he was tempted to accept her invitation to stay.

But after a moment he seemed to fight the urge and said, “I might not have been able to hold my own with those two when I was eight and they were making me pick up their smelly socks, but now? They don’t get anything over on me.”

Still, he didn’t seem in any hurry to go and Shannon wasn’t sure what to do about that. Standing there facing him, staring up into features any movie star could have used to advantage, wasn’t giving her answers.

Then Dag said, “Those movers you hired to pack everything and clear out your grandmother’s house missed a few things. Nothing big—just some odds and ends I’ve come across working on the place—”

“Like?”

“Like some clothes and a blanket that were stuffed up high in a closet. Some kitchen things. A couple pictures that had fallen behind a drawer. An old jewelry box—I can’t even remember what all. I’ve been putting them in boxes when I come across them because I didn’t know if there was anything you might want—”

“Most of what the movers brought to Billings I sold in a yard sale at a friend’s house. There was so much of it that I can’t imagine that they missed anything.”

“Like I said, I don’t think there’s anything important. It’s stuff that was probably jammed somewhere because not even your grandmother needed or wanted it. But still, I don’t want to be the one to throw out anything that isn’t mine. There’s only two boxes and I can bring them home, but I thought you might want to see what I’m doing to the place. Maybe have one more walk through it for old time’s sake…”

Was that what was appealing to her about his suggestion?

Or was it the thought of going out to the ranch and seeing him?

It had to be the nostalgia—the house had been her grandmother’s after all. And she had spent some time there with her grandmother when she was a child.

Plus there was some curiosity to see what Dag was doing to the place, she told herself. That had to be what was behind her wanting to take him up on his offer.

“I think I might like to walk through the place one more time,” she said. “Just tell me when it’s convenient for you.”

His grin returned even bigger than it had been before, but Shannon refused to allow herself to read anything into it—like the fact that maybe he wanted the visit from her just to see her, too….

“Tomorrow? I’ll be working out there all day. You can swing by anytime.”

“Shall I take your cell phone number and call first?”

“Nah. Anytime. Sleep in in the morning, unpack, do whatever you had planned and when it works out for you, just drive over.”

“Okay.”

And why did they go on standing there, looking at each other as if there should be more to say?

Shannon didn’t know but that’s what they were doing—

she was just looking up into those black, black eyes of his, lost a little in them….

Then he finally broke their stare. “Great. I’ll see you tomorrow, then.”

“Sometime tomorrow,” she reiterated, thinking that the minute it came out of her mouth it sounded stupid.

But it didn’t seem to affect Dag because he just tossed her another thousand-watt smile and turned on his heels on the landing. Then he called a good-night over one of those broad shoulders and went back down the steps.

Which was when Shannon stepped into the warmth of the apartment and closed the door.

And realized that she was suddenly eager to get to bed, to get to sleep, to get tomorrow to come.

Chapter Three

“Yes, I got here, I did the closing on Gramma’s farm yesterday, and it’s nice to be spending time with Chase and Cody—I had breakfast and lunch with them and Hadley, and then Hadley took me to have my bridesmaid’s dress fitted so it will be ready for the wedding tomorrow. And tonight is the rehearsal and the rehearsal dinner,” Shannon said into the phone.

“Doesn’t sound like you’re missing me at all,” Wes Rumson said on the other end.

“Wes…”

“I know, there’s no reason you should be missing me—even if we were engaged you were used to not having me around for most things. It’s the curse of the Rumson men.”

And of his own parents’ marriage and one of the reasons Shannon had turned down his proposal.

But she didn’t say that.

Instead she said, “I appreciate that you called, though.” Which was true. She honestly did hope they could remain friends.

“It feels a little weird to be so included in this wedding,” she admitted then. “Hadley told me it was important to her and to Chase that the family he’s found be a part of everything. But as nice as they all are—and they all are wonderfully nice people—they’re still basically strangers to me.”

Wes made no comment and she had the sense that he was at least half occupied with something other than their conversation.

Still, she felt the need to fill the silence he’d left and she said, “How are things going on your end?”

“Great!” Wes said in his most enthusiastic politician’s voice. “We’re looking good in the polls, we’ll likely have the endorsements we need, even the President has promised to stop here sometime in the spring to throw his weight behind me.”

“So maybe this would be a good time to make the announcement that there isn’t any engagement….”

“I keep hoping we might not have to make that announcement.”

“Wes—”

“The voters love you, Shannon. They love the idea of a little romance in the wings, of a wedding. And you know how I feel….”

That what the voters loved was of first and foremost importance to him? That how he felt about her was merely an afterthought?

But Shannon didn’t say what ran through her mind. Instead she said, “You have to make the announcement, Wes.”

“The First Lady of Montana—that would be the Bigger Life you’ve always wanted,” he said as if he were dangling a carrot in front of a donkey’s nose. Bigger Life was the way he’d come to refer to her desire—as if it were an entity of its own. “No tiny apartment above a shoe repair shop—you’d live in the Governor’s mansion. And this is only the start—you know we’re shooting for the White House. You can’t get a Bigger Life than that.”

“I couldn’t marry you just to have a bigger life, Wes. Any more than you should marry me to win votes.”

“That’s not fair—we talked about getting married before—”

And even then Shannon had had doubts about it. Yes, she’d always wanted a life that was bigger than the very small, limited life her parents had lived and Wes knew that. But when it came to a relationship, to marriage, she wanted exactly what her parents had had. And that wasn’t the way she felt about Wes. She knew that wasn’t the way Wes felt about her. Which was the real reason she’d said no.

“You don’t really want to go over this again, do you?” she cajoled.

This time rather than silence giving away the fact that Wes’s attention was split, he proved it by saying something away from the phone to someone else.

And since he never did answer her question, Shannon let it drop so she could persist with what she needed to get through to him. “I’m sorry, Wes, but you need to break the news publicly. And isn’t sooner better than later? Don’t you want to get it out there and get it over with so it will be genuinely old news and forgotten by election day?”

“Rumsons aren’t quitters, Shannon. If there’s any chance—”

“But there isn’t,” she said as kindly as she could. “I’m not an undecided voter who needs to be swayed, Wes. This really is just a no.”

“Because of that Beverly Hills deal,” he accused. “When it comes to a Bigger Life, Shannon, wiping the noses of movie stars’ and moguls’ kids can’t compare to being—”

The hanger-on to Wes’s Bigger Life?

Shannon thought that but she didn’t say it. What she said was, “The Beverly Hills deal was also not the reason I said no—I told you that, too. It’s just a new avenue I may take. But no matter what, Wes, you need to have your public relations group get on the announcement that there isn’t any engagement. Even people in the boonies of Northbridge think I’m going to marry you.”

“Then let’s not disappoint them.”

Shannon closed her eyes, dropped her face forward and shook her head. “Wes…”

“All right, I have to hang up, too,” he said as if their exchange had involved something different than it had. “I’ll check with you in a couple of days to make sure you’re still okay. But if you need anything—anything at all, day or night—”

“I know I can call you. I appreciate that.” Even though she also knew that rather than reach him, her call would automatically be rerouted to his voice mail or his secretary or his campaign manager—depending on how many numbers she tried—and that there would never be an immediate callback. Like when her grandmother had died so suddenly…

They said their goodbyes and Shannon hung up.

With a quick glance at the time, she grabbed her car keys and went out the apartment’s door and down the steps to her car—freshly back from the local garage where it had required a new starter.

Wes’s call was making her late. Dag had said she could come by her grandmother’s house anytime to see what he was doing with the place and to pick up what remained of her grandmother’s things, but it was already after four and she was afraid he would give up on her. And she didn’t want that.

Behind the wheel, she turned the key in the ignition and was pleased to see that the repair had been a good one—the engine started on the first try.

On her way to what was formerly her grandmother’s place, she kept an eye out for Dag’s big electric-blue truck coming in the opposite direction, just in case, and that was all it took to replace thoughts of Wes with thoughts of Dag.

Until she turned onto the road that led to her grandmother’s house and it came into view.

The two-story wedding cake–shaped farmhouse was the home her grandmother had come to as a bride. Shannon’s eyes filled with tears when she suddenly pictured her grandmother sitting on the big front porch, snapping green beans fresh from the garden.

She missed her so much….

She missed them all so much….

But even though the memories of being at that house brought on some pain as Shannon parked in front of it, she wasn’t sorry she’d come. To her this was still her grandmother’s house no matter who owned it on paper and she did want to touch base with it one last time.

Then the front door opened and Dag McKendrick appeared behind the screen. And somehow seeing him bolstered her and made it easier for her to actually go through with it.

As she turned off the engine, Dag shouldered his way out onto the porch. He was wearing jeans that Wes wouldn’t have considered owning—low-slung and faded. Wes also would have had no use for the equally antique chambray shirt that Dag wore over a white T-shirt peeking above the unfastened top two buttons.

Shannon wasn’t sure why she was mentally comparing the two men but she couldn’t seem to stop herself as she took in the sight of Dag’s shirtsleeves rolled midway up his massive forearms. Drying his hands on a small towel, he tossed her a smile that wasn’t at all the kind of practiced-in-case-a-photographer-might-be-nearby smile she knew she would have received from Wes.

Both men were handsome, she admitted, but in different ways. There was never a hair out of place on Wes’s dusty blond head while disarray was part of the style for Dag’s dark locks. Wes was lean and wiry and stiff backed where Dag was muscular and powerful looking, his posture relaxed—as if his confidence came from knowing he could handle himself rather than from the entitlement that came with being a Rumson.

Rugged versus refined—that’s what Shannon concluded. Dag’s good looks were rough and earthy, while Wes’s were polished and sophisticated.

“Hey there! I was beginning to give up on you,” Dag called to her as he came down off the porch.

And that was when it struck Shannon that it wasn’t only their looks that were different.

Wes would have waited for her within the shelter of the house. He wouldn’t have come out into the cold December afternoon to greet her. But that was what Dag did. Because their styles were entirely different. While Wes was known for his charisma, what she’d already seen from Dag just in the brief time since they’d met was a special brand of charm that—while equally as smooth—was more natural than slick.

And when it came to sex appeal?

When it came to sex appeal, Shannon had no idea why anything like that had even popped into her mind as Dag opened her door.

She recalled belatedly that he’d said something a split second earlier that she’d heard through her closed window.

What was it…?

Ah, that he’d just about given up on her….

“I’m sorry I’m so late. It took longer with the seamstress than I expected it to and then I had a phone call I had to take. I kept an eye out for your truck the whole way here in case I passed you on the road.”

“Another ten minutes or so and you would have.”

And the sound of his voice—there was absolutely no reason why she liked the deeper timbres of Dag McKendrick’s voice better than the slightly higher octave of Wes’s but in that instant it struck her that she did.

Then she told herself to stop this right now! She had no interest in this man. He was nothing but a friend of her brother’s and the buyer of her grandmother’s house and someone she just happened to be acquainted with for the time being. Her relationship with Wes was barely cold—not even cold enough for anyone else to know about. Her entire life had changed in the last year, she could very well be headed to a new life in Beverly Hills, and in all of that there was no room, no time, no reason, for her to be even remotely interested in this man.

And she wasn’t.

She wasn’t…

“Is it too late? Do you need to get home?” she asked then, stiffening her spine a bit to resist his appeal.

“Nah. We can have a little time here and still get back for a shower before the rehearsal.”

Had he meant to say that as if they’d be showering together? Or was this just another of those crazy blips that made her mind wander into territory where it had no business going?

“Not that we’ll be showering. What I meant was that I’ll still be able to get back to take a shower,” he amended then, letting her know that she hadn’t misheard him. But the cocky grin that went with the amendment told her that the slip of tongue didn’t embarrass him at all.

Mischief and teasing—two more things Wes never indulged in. Not even with her, let alone with someone he barely knew.

“Yeah, I think I’ll leave you alone to shower,” Shannon answered the way she would have addressed a kindergartner who had said something inappropriate, even if she couldn’t help smiling at their exchange.

“Probably for the best,” he said, undaunted by her tone.

“I didn’t realize the outside of the house needed painting so badly,” Shannon said as she got out of the car, staring at the farmhouse in order to avoid looking at Dag and obviously changing the subject.

“Yep. I don’t know when your grandmother had it done last but it has to have been decades ago. It’ll all have to be scraped and power-washed then re-primed. What do you think about the color when I get around to painting? Back to the yellow or shall I go with white?”

“I know I don’t really get a vote, but I always liked it yellow—it looked warm and homey and sunny to me that way.”

“Trimmed in white?”

“I would, but it’s your house now.”

Dag motioned for her to go ahead of him up the porch steps and when they reached the house, he held the screen door open for her.

There were no signs of her grandmother in what Shannon stepped into. The inside of the house was empty of furniture and all the rooms she could see from the entry were in various stages of repair, remodel or renovation with the necessary tools and supplies littering them.

“Wow, you’re really gutting the place,” Shannon observed. “I know the appraiser said it needed work—that was why I reduced the price—but I had no idea it was this extensive.”

“How long has it been since you were here?”

“The summer just before I turned twelve, so almost eighteen years….”

“Things were pretty run-down.”

“My grandfather died the year before I was here last, I guess Gramma must not have kept up with things as well on her own. I didn’t realize.”

“From what you said about your folks last night, it sounded like you had enough to deal with.”

“And it wasn’t as if my dad could come here and help her out, or send money for her to hire someone,” Shannon added as they pieced together why her grandmother must have let the place fall into such disrepair. “But I’m sorry if you came in on a big mess—I had no idea….”

“It was just an old house. I would have wanted to update it anyway. No big deal. And there are some pluses to the place—the crown molding everywhere, the hardwood floors and just the way the whole house is built makes it more sound and sturdy than newer construction. It gives me a good foundation to work from. Come on, I’ll walk you through what I have planned.”

They spent the next half hour going room to room, with Dag explaining a complete plumbing overhaul that would leave all three bathrooms like new, a kitchen that sounded like it would be a chef’s dream come true, and even ideas for accent colors of paint here and there that left Shannon surprised by his good taste.

When they reached the upstairs bedroom where she’d stayed on her visits here, Shannon said, “Have you found the secret cubby?”

Dag’s eyebrows shot up in curiosity. “There’s a secret cubby? Whatever that is…”

“I’ll show you.”

Shannon knelt down in front of a section of flowered wallpaper a few feet to the right of the closet. It didn’t look any different than the rest of the loud pink tea-rose print but when she pressed inward and then did a quick release, that particular section popped open to reveal a two-foot-by-two-foot hole in the wall.

Dag laughed. “I’m sure I would have found that when I stripped off the wallpaper, but I had no idea it was there.”

“It makes a great hiding place,” Shannon said, peering inside to see if the things she’d hidden in it long, long ago could still be there.

They were.

“Let’s see,” she said as she began pulling them out.

Dag hunkered down on his haunches beside her to have a closer look.

“This is the notebook I brought with me on my last trip—I was going to write a novel in it. An entire novel that I would write in secret and then surprise everyone with when I was finished.”

“At eleven?”

“Uh-huh. I believe I wrote about two paragraphs…” she said as she turned the notebook upright and unveiled the first page. “Yep, two paragraphs. That was as far as my career as a great American novelist went. And I think it’s for the best,” she added with a laugh after glancing at what she’d written.

Then she set the notebook down and reached back into the cubby.

“Let me guess—those were from your great American artist period?” Dag teased when she pulled out several pages cut from a coloring book.

Shannon flipped through the sheets. “Not a single stroke outside the lines—I was proud of being so meticulous. I think I was six.”

“And this? You were going to be a chess master?” Dag said, picking up a carved horse’s head chess piece that had come out with the coloring book pages.

Shannon grimaced. “That was me being a brat.”

“You were a brat?” he said as if the idea delighted him.

“I was five,” she said. “You have to understand, my parents were so close, so devoted to each other, so happy just to be together, that sometimes I felt a little left out. Not that I actually was,” she defended them in a hurry. “I was actually about as spoiled as I could be with their limited resources. But at five, when they were talking and laughing over a chess game…” Shannon shrugged. “One of those times I tried to interfere by—”

“Stealing one of their chessmen so they couldn’t play?”

“And hiding it,” Shannon confessed. “I was leaving to come here the next day and I stuck it in my suitcase, so I ended up bringing it with me. By the time I was supposed to go home, I didn’t want to bring it back and admit I’d taken it and get into trouble, so I put it in the cubby.”

“Shame on you,” Dag pretended to reprimand, but it came with a laugh.

“I know. Of course as I got older, the kind of relationship my parents had was what I realized I wanted for myself, but as a very little kid, there were times when I resented it because they were just so content being together no matter what they were doing—watching their favorite TV show or movie, or doing puzzles, or just talking or—”

“Playing chess?”

“Or playing chess. I wanted to be the center of their universe—and I was—but they were also the center of each other’s universe, if that makes any sense…” Another shrug. “I think maybe I was a little jealous—it wasn’t rational, I was a kid.”

“And now have you found that kind of relationship for yourself with the potential future-Governor?”

There was no way she could answer that and luckily at about that same moment, she spotted one more thing in the cubby and reached in to retrieve a very ragged stuffed dog.

“Oh, Poppy! I’d forgotten all about you,” she said as if she hadn’t heard Dag’s question.

She didn’t know if he recognized that she didn’t want to answer him or just went with the flow, but he didn’t push it. Instead he said, “That is one ratty-looking toy.”

“I know. I carried him around with me, slept with him, played with him—he was my constant companion. When I got too old for that I couldn’t stand the thought that he might get thrown away, so I brought him here with me and put him in the cubby for safekeeping.”

She checked out the old toy, saying as she did, “Poor Poppy, I never sucked my thumb, but I chewed off both of his ears, he lost an eye and his nose, and my mom had to sew the holes. His tail is gone, and his seams split and had to be fixed more times than I can remember—he’s kind of a mess.”

“He looks well loved,” Dag decreed, and Shannon appreciated that that was the perspective he took when she knew that Wes would have been impatient with her sentimentality over it.

But Dag even waited while she hugged it for a moment before she set it down and took the last few items out of the cubby.

“Love notes,” she confided as if they were a deep, dark secret. “This was from the summer I was ten—I was at camp just before I came to see Gramma and I had a sizzling romance with one of the boys there….”

“How sizzling could it have been at ten?”

“Hot, hot, hot!” Shannon said with a laugh. “He sat next to me on movie night and held my hand when the lights went out. And look at these notes—he thought I had nice teeth. And my woven pot holder was the best in the whole class. And he liked my eyes because they match! How much more sizzling do you want it?”

“Oh, yeah, it doesn’t get better than that!” Dag agreed facetiously. “This cubby-thing is a treasure trove.”

“Ah, but it looks like that’s it,” Shannon complained after poking her head into the cubby to make sure. “Now the place is all yours.”

Which struck her with a sudden, unexpected sadness that made her think that maybe she had a few more attachments to her grandmother’s house than she’d originally thought.

But it was done and she knew from the way Dag had talked about his plans for the remodel that he loved the place, so she comforted herself with that—and by petting her old stuffed dog the way she had when she’d needed solace as a kid.

“I’ll get a box for this stuff,” Dag suggested then, as if he knew she could use a minute alone with her things, with the cubby, with the house. She was grateful for that, and once he’d gotten to his feet and left the room, she swiveled around to take one last glance at it.

The wallpaper was gaudy and overwhelming but she still had fond memories of being here with her grandmother on those few visits, of the fact that despite not spending much time here, it had still felt like an extension of home.

“I think he’ll take good care of your house, though, Gramma,” she whispered as if her grandmother might be listening.

Then Dag came back with a cardboard box.

“It must be late—it’s starting to get dark,” Shannon said with a glance out the window as she accepted the box from Dag. “We should probably be going.”

“Probably,” Dag confirmed, holding out a hand to help her to her feet once everything was in the box.

She could have stood without aid but she didn’t want to offend him by refusing, so she accepted the hand up.

“Thanks,” she said, wishing she wasn’t quite so aware of how big and strong and warm his hand was. And how well hers fit into it.

But wishing didn’t make that awareness go away and as soon as she could, she took her hand back. Somehow regretting it when she had—another of those crazy blips, she decided.

Dag seemed completely oblivious to the odd effects he could have on her and once she was on her own again, he bent over and picked up the box. He tucked it neatly under one arm and motioned for her to lead the way out.

“I have a favor to ask you,” Shannon said as they went back downstairs.

“Sure,” Dag responded without hesitation as he set the box from upstairs on top of the two boxes of things he’d been keeping for her in the entryway and picked up all three as if they weighed nothing.

“I can take one of those,” she said before saying more about the favor.

“They aren’t heavy. Just lock the door and pull it closed behind us.”

Shannon did, returning to the subject of the favor as they went toward her car.

“What if the favor I have to ask is something you’ll hate? Shouldn’t you hear what it is before you say sure?” she teased him, having no idea where the flirtatious tone in her voice had come from.

“I think I can handle whatever you dish out,” he flirted back. “What is it?”

As Shannon unlocked the trunk of her car, she said, “When the wedding is over, could you spare some time to go Christmas shopping with me? I bought Chase and Hadley’s wedding gift at a store in Billings where they’d registered, but Christmas gifts are different. I thought I might get an idea what to buy after being with them, and then it occurred to me that since you’re here and you know everyone better than I do, you’d also know what they might like.”

“I could probably do that,” Dag said as he put the boxes in the trunk. “We can go on Sunday—ordinarily not all the shops in town are open on Sundays, but this close to Christmas everything is.”

“I would be eternally grateful.”

“No problem.”

And there would be no scheduling conflicts or meetings or public appearances or other obligations that prevented him from accommodating her request—the things that would have kept Wes from doing it at all. Shannon had become so accustomed to Wes putting her off if she did ask something of him that Dag’s ready agreement seemed unusual to her.

But she didn’t say that. Instead she closed the trunk and headed for the driver’s side of the car. Dag managed to reach it at the same time and leaned around her to open her door.

Again she thanked him.

“I’ll see you back at Chase and Logan’s place,” she said then.

“Right behind you,” he answered, closing her door with that same big hand pressed to the panel that had been wrapped around hers a few minutes earlier.

That same big hand that her eyes stuck to when he waved it at her and even as it dropped to his jean pocket to dig out his keys.

It had felt so good….

Shannon yanked her thoughts back in line and started her engine, putting her car into gear and heading for the road that led away from the house just ahead of Dag.

Dag, who did stay right behind her all the way home, making it difficult for her to keep from watching him in her rearview mirror.

Dag, who she was thinking about seeing again tonight during the rehearsal dinner.

Dag, who she knew she shouldn’t let cloud her thinking at all.

And yet somehow he seemed to be anyway.

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