The Gift-Wrapped Groom Read online

  Nicholas crossed his arms over his chest and stayed standing. Noel crossed her arms over her chest and planted her feet firmly in front of him. After a moment of this standoff, the anger in Nicholas’s eyes melted into sudden amusement. The corners of his mouth twitched. His arms uncrossed from around his chest.

  “Your grandfather is right. You are a most arbitrary and stubborn woman.”

  Noel did not uncross her arms. “Look who’s talking.”

  Nicholas shook his head. “In the spirit of détente, we will sit. Yes?”

  Noel unwrapped her arms and sat. “So, we’re sitting. You have my attention. What is it you want to talk about?”

  The smile faded from his face. He sat quietly for a moment, a very pensive look in the eyes above the stone countenance. When he finally spoke, Noel did not think it was on the subject that had claimed his thoughts so thoroughly.

  “I have shoveled the snow from your driveway. You are out of wood. I could not find any logs to cut. I did not wish to fell a tree. Green wood is not proper to burn. To gather other wood, I must know the limits of your land.”

  Noel frowned. She’d be the last one to admit it, but he had some legitimate concerns. After all, she had said he’d have to do his part and he couldn’t very well comply without certain information.

  “My house is in the northwest corner of a quarter section.”

  “Quarter section?”

  “The hundred and sixty acres that go with the house and barn. The corrals are long gone. As I don’t run stock on the land, I’ve let the fences go. But I have a surveyor’s map in my desk at home that you can see. Just the other side of the pond begins the Duncans’ spread, my neighbors. And for your information, I never cut any of the few trees on the land.”

  “You mentioned chopping wood. How can one chop wood without cutting down a tree?”

  “There’s a logger’s slash a few miles up in the mountains.”

  “I am not familiar with this word, slash.”

  “It’s wood that’s already been cut by loggers but thrown aside because it’s not the right shape or size to haul over to the mill.”

  “This mill is nearby?”

  “Quite a ways, actually. Other side of the eastern mountains, in the next county. I pick up the pieces from the slash, chop them up as necessary and use them in my fireplace insert, again, when necessary. I’ve been meaning to make a trip up to the slash to get a supply in for the winter, but what with planning for the festival and the busy Christmas sea—”

  “Winter is here. Your grandfather has generators because he says the power supply is not to rely on. What will you do if the power supply fails and you do not have this wood to burn?”

  “Yes, yes, I know. But, it’s a whole day’s work. Sharpening the chain saw blades. Driving up there. Cutting the wood. Loading it into the back. Tying it up. Driving back.”

  “You cannot delay this trip.”

  Noel had taken care of herself for a lot of years. She did not like Nicholas’s persistence on the point, despite—and probably because of—the fact that he was right. “Maybe if I work a long day today, I could take tomorrow off to—”

  “No. Not tomorrow. We will go this afternoon to get the wood.”

  “This afternoon?” Noel looked at her watch. “It’s already almost eleven. Even if we left now, we’d never—”

  “How long does it take to drive to this logger’s slash?”

  “An hour. But it’s not the drive that’s so time-consuming. It’s going through the slash for the proper-size pieces and getting them loaded into the truck that takes hours.”

  “We will get it done this afternoon.”

  “But my work—”

  “Some things can wait. Some things cannot.”

  Noel crossed her arms over her chest and stared stormily at Nicholas. This time, those black eyes gave not a centimeter.

  She sighed. Uncrossed her arms. “Okay. We’ll go this afternoon. But only because I also need to get a Christmas tree, and there’s a tree farm we can detour to on the way back.”

  “You will meet me at the house at noon.”

  He was not asking. Or suggesting. He was telling.

  Noel experienced a strong, sudden nostalgia for yesterday, that lovely last day of freedom before this dictating, interfering man had entered her life. Still, if he wasn’t right about needing to gather that wood right away, he’d be in for one hell of an argument.

  “Noon,” she repeated through clenched teeth. “Now, can I get back to work?”

  He watched her a moment more before answering. “So, first you do not wish to show me your home or explain about your land. And now you do not wish to show me your Christmas store.”

  A flicker of discomfort settled a frown on Noel’s forehead as Nicholas’s redress hit a nerve. “You want to see it now?”

  “You planned for me to make an appointment to see it later?”

  Noel knew when she’d been outflanked. She got to her feet slowly and pasted a far-too-sweet smile on her lips. “It will be my pleasure to show you around my Christmas store, Dr. Baranov.”

  * * *

  NICHOLAS IMMEDIATELY decided that the best thing about being shown around Noel’s Christmas store was the feel of her warmth as she stood beside him, the scent of the light, naturally sweet fragrance from her freshly washed hair and skin.

  The shelves were clogged with tinsel in gold and silver. A dozen different shades of sparkling garland were wrapped tightly around skeins that should have held cloth for making useful clothes. Strings of red, green, gold and blue lights stuffed box after box, some that bubbled like air pockets rising to the surface, others that blinked on and off for no apparent reason. Bulb-shaped ornaments of every color, size and shape depicting snowflakes or vague, idealized winter scenes or cartoon characters or even the names of American football teams and universities occupied still more boxes.

  And then there was the motion and the noise.

  Tiny soldier-drummers marched in animated synchronization. Foot-high plastic figurines called “carolers” stood with their mouths open next to old-fashioned gas streetlamps, as music played out of their stands. There was also a musical holiday carousel with six horses riding up and down while a circus wagon organ played a selection of twenty-one different tunes. Next to that was a fat man with a white beard and red suit descending a chimney in a snow globe to voices that sang, “Santa Claus is Coming to Town.”

  Nearby, plastic Douglas fir wreaths and poinsettia plants gyrated against their hooks and in their flowerpots whenever the music came on.

  Plastic candy canes and pinecones, green holly with red berries, felt stockings of all sizes, these things hung on the walls in every available space. One entire shelf was dedicated to cards that were to be sent through the mail to someone who might only live on the next ranch.

  And still Noel showed him more. There was so much, Nicholas soon lost track. When he thought of the minds that had been so misused on thinking up, manufacturing and then marketing these silly, useless things, he no longer wondered at the long-rumored intellectual decline of American society.

  She had set up a tree in the center of the store—one of plastic green branches that tried to resemble a Douglas fir but failed. Its branches were so burdened with copious samples of worthless ornaments and tinsel and garland and lights that it sagged to the floor in dismay.

  Still, she stood in front of it all proudly.

  “So, what do you think?”

  Nicholas took one last look around the twenty-by-thirty foot crowded store, its stuffed, overflowing shelves and even its beautiful tongue-and-groove wooden floor, desecrated by the worthless plastic pieces.

  “It is truly amazing. I have never seen so much decadence in one place.”

  She said nothing. She did not have to. He could feel the anger in her. It flashed out of her eyes like green fire. It leapt at him from the flames beneath her cheeks.

  Her words crackled with ice, dramatically untouched by th
e heat of the furnace whence they had emerged. “Dr. Baranov, I’m going back to work now.”

  By the time she turned away and strode angrily to her workbench, Nicholas’s heart was racing. And his hands had begun to burn with the heat of her.

  She was so much woman, this wife of his. Every time he felt her emotions rise, his, too, seemed to burgeon, unbidden, to the surface. But he did not want these emotions to burgeon. He wanted them to sink deep to where they would be weighed down by the heavy coldness of his heart.

  She had sat down at her workbench and picked up the half globe she had set aside when he’d walked in earlier. In her other hand, she held a small paintbrush, which she lightly stroked over the surface of the globe.

  The light from the beautiful, stained-glass window at the entry to her store danced through her red-gold hair and stroked her pale cheeks. Her knobby, cream-colored sweater did not hide the gentle swell of her breasts. The faded blue jeans did not hide the arc of her hips, the long slim line of her legs.

  He told himself it was not the beauty in that face and form that urged him to speak. He told himself it was because there were important things to settle, and he needed her cooperation to settle them and that was the only reason he would make an attempt to reestablish communication with the proprietor of this silly, decadent shop.

  He approached her workbench. But when he spoke, the words were not the ones he had rehearsed.

  “Noel, I did not volunteer my opinion of this store. You asked me. I answered you with the truth.”

  She neither looked up nor responded.

  He stood still for several minutes more, trying not to watch the light rippling through her hair like liquid fire. He dropped his eyes to her hands. “This is your work?”

  “I’m busy.”

  “This is obvious. I am asking at what you are busy. I am interested.”

  Noel leaned back and looked up. No thawing yet—not in those cold, Siberian silver-green eyes. “Yes, this is my work.”

  He reached over and plucked the wooden half-sphere from her hand, careful not to touch the image on its surface.

  She rose to her feet and leaned across the workbench to take it back. He raised his other hand in a halt motion. She halted.

  He studied the wooden half-sphere. “This is very beautiful. It is an image of Miss Lydon, is it not?”

  The sincerity in his tone seemed to mollify her somewhat. She retook her seat and didn’t try to reclaim the sphere.

  “When it’s finished. May I have it back, please?”

  “Yes. Of course.”

  He handed it to her, formally, showing great care.

  “It is very beautiful, Noel. I do not lie. This is not like these other...spiritless things in this Christmas store. This has a...heart.”

  She took it from his hand but couldn’t bring herself to meet his gaze, clearly chagrined and losing some pugnacity in the warmth of his praise.

  “It’s one of my ‘Family-Tree’ Christmas ornaments, the specialty of my store.”

  “Specialty?”

  “The other decorations in the shop represent an assortment of seasonal merchandise from wholesalers. But these ornaments I make right here, either for people in Midwater or in response to orders from other parts of the country.”

  “How do these people outside Midwater know about your ornaments?”

  “After a few tourists saw them at our Christmas festival several years ago, I began receiving requests through the mail. About three years ago, I decided to run an ad in a mail-order catalog.”

  “So people read this ad and make their orders?”

  “I do most of my business through mail order now. Without it and these Family-Tree ornaments, I wouldn’t be able to make the mortgage payments on my store. I get more orders than I can handle, particularly around Christmastime.”

  “So you refuse some?”

  “Yes. I have to. It takes time to do these right. First, I must select the right kind of wood for a family theme—like this cherry wood for the Lydons.”

  “You have cherry trees here?”

  “I don’t cut down trees to get my wood. The owner of the local mercantile store down the street, Seth Carson, is the village’s major supplier of outside goods and our unofficial carpenter. I use the wood waste from his shop.”

  Nicholas looked again at the beautiful ball. “That comes from waste?”

  “And lots of elbow grease. Using rasp, file and sandpaper, I shape the wood into a hollow ball, then I use a wood preserver. After it dries, it’s ready for cutting into two, and each half becomes the back of the painted portrait on the flat side.”

  “But this does not remain a flat side and this is more than a painted portrait. It is like a sculpture with raised forehead, nose, cheeks, chin.”

  “I manage that by layering, finding the right pieces of wood and fitting them one over another until I have the right contours. Their different grains help to give the impression of skin texture and hair when I paint them later.”

  “You call these ornaments. Why?”

  “Well, after I complete this contoured portrait of Lucy and it dries, I’ll soak it in a colorless hardening liquid, like this cellulose preparation, to protect it. Then it remains a preserved memento to be hung on a Christmas tree as a keepsake each year.”

  “How is it hung?”

  “Here. Let me show you. I’ve got a box of finished ones ready to be shipped, with the images of three generations of a Connecticut family.”

  Noel leaned beneath her workbench and took out several large gold-foiled boxes. On the top of each box was a bright green Christmas tree, the silver bulbs of which spelled out Family-Tree Ornaments in red velvet script. The Christmas Store and address were embossed in smaller letters on the bottom.

  She removed the tops of the boxes and proudly displayed the ornaments, sitting inside and separated by elegant red velvet.

  Nicholas stared at the charmingly rendered images of a new baby and several other children, along with at least ten adults ranging in age from their twenties to their fifties. Each ornament image was circled with a colored band and a matching colored loop on the top.

  The females of the family had a golden band and loop. The band and loop on the images of the males were silver.

  “This is the Crisalli clan of Connecticut,” Noel explained. “Bonnie commissioned the ornaments. She’s the lovely young mom here—” Noel pointed to an ornament “—and the beautiful baby boy, Nicky, is her first, born last April. Then there’s her husband, Anthony, there, her parents, Paul and Charmaine, over here, sisters Karen, Nancy and Mary Beth, brother, Jim, and her nieces and nephews, Dion, Jeremy, Christie, Jamie, Danny, Dennis, Ethan, Benjamin—now let me see who did I miss?”

  “These two.”

  “Oh, yes. That’s Karen’s husband, Daryl, and Jim’s wife, Mary. Nineteen of them this Christmas. It was one of my biggest orders.”

  “This is their entire family?”

  “Oh my, no. None of Anthony’s side has an ornament yet.”

  “Yet?”

  “That’s scheduled for next Christmas, so I have some time.”

  “How do you know who is related to whom?”

  “Push gently sideways on the baby portrait of Nicky you have in your hand. See, it slips on this brass hinge just like a locket to reveal a miniature flowchart of the three-generation family tree.”

  Nicholas slipped the locketlike hinge back and read the entries inside, delicately scripted by hand. He slipped the image of the beautiful baby back in place.

  He was reminded of a rare trip he had taken to a museum behind the fortress of the Kremlin. There he had seen a 1913 jeweled enameled egg from the House of Fabergé, embellished with portraits of the Romanovs, opening to a display of a world globe that depicted Russia’s growth during their three-hundred-year dynasty.

  He had been properly impressed by that Fabergé egg. These Christmas tree ornaments of Noel’s left him similarly in awe.

  “How could y
ou do these portraits without seeing these people?”

  “Bonnie Crisalli sent me photographs.”

  Noel removed the photographs from the center drawer of her workbench. Nicholas took them from her and compared them to the contoured, hand-painted images on the ornaments. The painted images were scrupulously accurate in terms of features, but something more had been added to those faces as they emerged under Noel’s brush. The miniature paintings glowed with what the photographs had not possessed—life.

  Noel closed the boxes and replaced them beneath her workbench.

  “I’ve been commissioned to do a Texas couple and their two children, and I haven’t even started yet. I’m also trying to complete the Lydons’ before this Christmas. Lucy has been the holdup. She’s not the kind who can sit still.”

  “She cannot sit still?”

  “She’s a ‘day-work’ cowboy. Means she hires on by the day to the valley’s ranches. She’s always in demand. Few can match her in riding, roping and branding.”

  “An American woman does this?”

  “Actually, there are a lot of women out riding the range right alongside the men. Have been for generations.”

  “So, ranching women ride the range.”

  “Well, not all of them, of course. Some do take care of the home, the account books, the banking. But some ranchers have only daughters to pass on their ranching skills to. Those daughters learn to be cowboys with the best of them. And when they have daughters, they teach them to do the same.”

  “You are the only daughter of a ranching family. You have learned these skills?”

  Noel smiled with her memories. “My mother taught me how to ride, how to rope at brandings and sort the heifer calves from the steer calves at the weaning corrals. This was when our ranch still ran livestock. Dad sold it off.”

  “Your father did not like livestock?”

  “Actually, I think the problem was he liked the livestock too much. As Mom used to say, you cannot get too fond of Bessie when you know one day you might be serving her for dinner. That kind of acceptance of the relationship between people and animals on a ranch was something my dad said you learned young or not at all.”

  “So, he did not learn this young.”