The Bachelor's Christmas Bride. Victoria Pade

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      “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. СКАЧАТЬ