Page 48 of Wounded Christmas Wolf
She collected the plates and let the dogs out of the kitchen. Rocket had clearly been outside, her fur lightly frosted with snow. Dad was still out in the barn, it seemed, and Holly experienced a sad little pang. Whatever got him through the holidays, she supposed.
Cupcake seemed to like his new toys. Rocket promptly stole the pizza slice.
“Should we have gotten her one too?” Jace asked. Cupcake didn’t seem to mind; he had taken his bacon slice off under the dining room table, from which a series of squeaks could be heard.
“She has a million toys, she doesn’t need more.” Hollywent to make sure Cupcake wasn’t destroying the chew toy—the squeaking was getting aggressive—and the sight of the nearly empty dining room table reminded her of another promise she’d made today.
“Jace?” she called back into the living room. “See if you can find any boxes among the ornaments with a train set in them. I think we should set that up tonight, too.”
Her dad came in from the barn while they were working on the train at the dining room table, smelling of hay and cold. Rocket bounded in from the living room to say hi. Cupcake’s presence was indicated by the steady SQUEAKASQUEAKASQUEAAAAAAWWK~~ coming from under the table, which her dad wisely did not ask questions about.
“Dad! You’re just in time! We’re about to start the train.”
“Dang, I didn’t know we even still had that thing. Thought Merry took it with her when she left or something.”
“No, we just hadn’t set it up yet.” Holly held out the controller. “Here, take the first spin. Then it’s Jace’s turn.”
Watching her dad and Jace play with the model train seemed to cause something in her chest to settle, arranging itself into a new position.
Family. That’s what this is.
It was what she had been missing for the last few years.
She had grown up with a house full of people, filled with the noisy bedlam of four sisters and a mom who loved to fill the house with baking and decorations, no matter the holiday or the time of year. From turkeys on the fridge drawn around a child’s hand, to Easter egg hunts on the farm, or just the subdued chaos of evenings at the dining room table with five girls clustered to do their homework, art, or school science projects ... she had never been without it.
No wonder her clean, tidy condo had seemed so sterile and empty.
And Jace fit here. She could tell that he liked it, and she liked having him here. She experienced a little clutch in her chest, wondering how well he would get along with her sisters. Jace never had the experience of a noisy, chaotic, loving family; would it be too much for him?
Then the toy train derailed as it jolted over an uneven place in the tracks, and Jace and her dad burst into laughter. And she wondered why she had ever been worried at all.
“I’m headed off to bed,” her dad said at last, putting down the controller.
“Wait, come see the tree,” she begged.
They all went into the living room, and her dad dutifully made pleased noises over the tree and gave her a side-hug.
“You two don’t stay up too late, now. Take a flashlight if you need one, Jace, walking back up the hill in the dark.”
“Yes, sir,” Jace said.
The Colonel tromped into the back of the house. Water ran in the bathroom. Recognizing that the house was settling down for the night, Rocket flopped on her dog bed. Cupcake jumped up on the couch, slobber-covered squeaky bacon clutched in his jaws, and let out a sigh as he curled up beside Holly. She reached down to rub his fluffy head.
Then something clattered outside the house, and she nearly jumped out of her skin.
“It’s just a loose piece of metal on the dryer vent,” she said, grabbing Jace’s arm as he started to get up. “It—it startled me, that’s all. It always does that when the wind blows.”
The clatter sounded a few more times, then died away, but the damage was done. Her heart was pounding like a rabbit’s. She hadn’t realized she was so close to the edge. She’d thought the tree decorating had settled her down—and it had, but her fears were still there.
If Rob was going to try to cause trouble, tonight would be when he’d do it, riled up from their encounter and mad with jealousy that she had found someone who wasn’t him.
The noises from the back of the house settled down, with a final flush of the toilet. Her dad’s door closed.
Holly blew out her breath and rubbed her hand over her face.
“You want to stay up for a while longer?” Jace asked her quietly. “Unless he’s going to be keeping tabs on me going back up the hill.”
“I wouldn’t put it past him, but we can say we were just talking. Or heck, doing more than that.” Confronting Rob today had given her a courage she hadn’t had before. “I’m an adult. I’m freaking thirty-one. My dad can’t tell me not to bring a date home.”
