Married for Christmas (Willow Park) Read online

  Jessica hated the thought of his moving all the way to South Dakota. She hated the thought so much it made her want to cry. “I know. That would be a rough transition,” she said, taking another bite without really tasting it.

  He exhaled deeply and dropped his head against the back the couch. “Maybe I’m supposed to be in South Dakota, though. I thought it seemed so clear, when Willow Park was looking exactly when I was available. I’ve wanted to be the pastor of First Pres practically my whole life.”

  “I know you have.” Jessica stifled a flutter of fond feeling at the memory of him as a boy. His grandfather had been the pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Willow Park. She remembered, after church on Sunday afternoons, Daniel would get up behind the pulpit and pretend to preach to her and all her friends. They’d all been awed that he knew so many Bible verses and sounded as dignified as an adult.

  “But that just means it’s not likely to happen,” Daniel murmured, so softly he might have been talking to himself.

  Jessica stiffened. “What is that supposed to mean?”

  He gave a dry laugh, intentionally shrugging off any significance. “Nothing. Just that my dreams don’t come true.”

  It wasn’t hard to see why he’d say it, why he’d think it. He’d lost his wife. He’d lost his church here. He’d just about lost his chance to pastor the church he’d always wanted. But the words still made her chest clench. “Don’t say things like that. Maybe it’s not at all like you’d planned, but it’s not like God wants you to be unhappy.”

  He gave another huff of bitter amusement. “Well, he couldn’t have designed it better if he’d been trying.”

  It was just one of those things people said—thoughtless, mostly ironic, not intended to be taken seriously. But Jessica was suddenly afraid that Daniel did believe it. She stared at his tired, handsome face—intelligence and self-deprecation visible in his expression. “Daniel?” she asked, very softly.

  He smiled at her, his natural look, and shook off whatever he’d been brooding about the moment before. “I was joking. Just being stupid. You know I don’t mean that.”

  She was relieved he’d said it, although the thread of worry still remained.

  “Anyway,” Daniel continued, obviously reaching back toward a more normal conversation, “Micah said they’re still discussing it. The congregational vote isn’t until Sunday. Who knows what God has in mind?”

  It was the right time. Exactly the opening she needed. She might as well use it. “Yeah. I’ve been thinking about that.” She took a long, shaky breath and lost her courage before she could get out the rest of her planned words. She set her plate down, even though she’d only eaten half of it.

  “What do you mean?” He reached over to pick up her plate. “You done?”

  “Yeah, go ahead.” She watched as he started to finish her food and tried to remember what she needed to say.

  “What did you mean?” Daniel prompted.

  “I don’t know.” She couldn’t quite get to the marriage proposal yet, so she stalled a little. “I was just thinking about what God might have in mind. For me too, I mean.”

  “About what?”

  “About everything. You and I are kind of the same in some ways. My dreams never come true either. I just feel like I’ve been in a holding pattern. For years.” She hadn’t planned to approach the topic with that opening, but she realized it was true—depressingly true. When she saw Daniel was listening, was understanding, was genuinely interested, she went on. “I want to get married and have kids. I always have. So I just keep waiting for it to happen. And it hasn’t yet, so I feel like I haven’t really started life.”

  “That’s not true. You’ve got a great job, great friends—when you bother to hang out with them—you’re involved in the church, you’re more committed to your mom than anyone I’ve ever—”

  “I know. I know. I don’t mean my life sucks. It just feels like I’m always waiting, and I don’t want to do that anymore. I want to do whatever I need to do to get what I want out of life.” She wasn’t going to chicken out. She was speaking the truth—the deepest truth of her heart—but she couldn’t get what she wanted unless she had the courage to reach for it.

  He lowered the bite he’d been about to take. “That’s good. I keep telling you that you’d have better luck meeting men if you’d put yourself in the position to meet them. If you stay at home all the time, then—”

  “That’s not what I mean,” she interrupted, afraid the conversation would turn away from where she needed it to go. “I’ve tried all the dating sites and all the church singles groups, and none of them are going to work for me. I don’t mean I’m chasing romance. I want a family. A stable life.” Her voice broke as she added, “I want roots again, and I don’t feel like I’ve had them forever.”

  Daniel’s expression had sobered, and he set her plate on his empty one. “You have family, Jessica.”

  “I have my mom, but she...” There was no way she could continue, and she turned her head to the side to hide the sudden surge of emotion at the thought of her mom, who was declining every month, every week, every day.

  When she’d controlled herself again, she turned to meet Daniel’s eyes. “I don’t want to be alone when she dies.”

  “You’re not going to be alone.” He was dead serious now—as serious as she was. That was one of the best things about Daniel. He didn’t try to break every earnest conversation with a joke the way a lot of guys she knew did. “How can you think everyone who loves you would desert you?”

  “I don’t. I know my friends would be there. I know you’d be there. But I want more than that. I want roots. I want family. And I don’t want to wait around hoping for some magical romance to happen to me so that I can get it.”

  He was thinking hard now. She could see it in the way his forehead had wrinkled. “So what do you want to do?”

  “I have an idea,” she made herself say, although the words almost choked in her throat. “One that would help both of us. One that would help both of us get our dreams.”

  “What are you talking about?” He narrowed his eyes and frowned. “What do I have to do with it?”

  “Well, your dream is to be the pastor at Willow Park, right? And the only thing standing in your way is that you’re not married.”

  “Yeah.” He drew the word out slowly, his eyes searching her face. “But I’m not anywhere close to being married. I’m not even dating anyone. You know that.”

  He hadn’t dated anyone since Lila died. He hadn’t made the slightest gesture toward it. Jessica secretly suspected he’d erected an emotional shrine to Lila in his heart, and nothing would ever bring it down. She glanced back over to the photo of Lila, and it seemed to affirm her conclusions.

  That thought just depressed her, so she pushed it away as she continued, “I know. But I have an idea about how we can both get our dreams.”

  “If you’ve found someone to fix me up with, you know I’m not ready to…” He trailed off, as if his mind had caught up with his words and he had a glimmer of what she was about to suggest. He tensed up visibly.

  “I want to move back to Willow Park too. If I have roots anywhere, it’s there. And my mom’s there. It’s been so hard travelling every weekend to see her. I don’t have time for anything but work and mom and occasionally you. I can’t keep doing this indefinitely, and I don’t know how long she’ll...”

  She didn’t finish the thought, since he knew the backstory as well as she did. Jessica poured every spare dollar she made into a good nursing facility for her mother in Willow Park, since her mother had absolutely refused to move out of the town.

  Before the marriage idea, Jessica had been considering moving back home, but financially it would be a stretch for her. Willow Park was a small town, but it drew a lot of tourists and retirees because of the mountain scenery and the historic downtown, so housing was more expensive than the suburb where she lived now. Her job allowed her to live anywhere, but paying h
er mother’s expenses and housing in Willow Park would be a strain on her bank account.

  Plus, she hadn’t wanted to leave Daniel.

  “So, anyway,” she said, after clearing her throat. She wasn’t looking at him now. “I was thinking there might be a solution for both of us. You need a wife. I want to put down roots and have a family.”

  “I’m not liking where this is going,” he said in a low, gravelly voice.

  She was in it now. No going back. And it wasn’t as agonizingly embarrassing as she’d feared it would be. She remembered all of the clear arguments she’d worked out and moved into them quickly.

  “Just listen. Don’t overreact until you hear the whole thing. We’ve been friends forever. We get along well. There’s no reason to think we couldn’t get along as husband and wife. You’d have a wife, or at least a fiancée, so the Session would be comfortable calling you as a pastor. And I could move back to Willow Park and have the family I want.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding, Jessica. This is absolutely insane.”

  “It’s not insane. It solves both of our problems. Why shouldn’t we consider it?”

  He was almost sputtering in his outrage, which was not the reaction she’d been hoping for. Her head pounded with nerves, but she managed to keep her hands from shaking.

  “Because it’s not fair to you,” he burst out. “I’ve had a real marriage, and I know I won’t be blessed that way again. But you’ve never been married. You need to wait for the right man—someone you can really love, someone who loves you more than anything.”

  It hurt to hear him say that—reminded her of how, in the twenty-eight years she’d been alive, no man had ever been in love with her. No man had even been close.

  While Lila had been alive, Jessica had been casual friends with both of them, since they lived close and had come from the same hometown. She hadn’t gotten close to Daniel, however, until last year, when he’d started recovering from his grief and began spending more time with her. She’d allowed herself to hope something deeper might develop between them. It never did. He’d just never thought about her romantically at all. No man had.

  She pushed the ache aside. It was an old one. Familar.

  She said, “Well, I can tell you right now that the right man for me isn’t here. He doesn’t appear to exist. Do you have any idea how long it’s been since I’ve even been on a date?”

  It had been an embarrassingly long time for her. Over three years since she’d even been asked out.

  “That’s because you don’t put yourself out there. You hide away, never taking any risks, so no one is going to—”

  “I don’t hide away,” she interrupted, indignation overwhelming any self-consciousness. They weren’t in the habit of discussing her love life, but his assumption that she could easily find a man if she just went out looking made her furious. “I work. I go to church. I do errands. I’m around for men to find me if they want. In all those dating sites and singles groups, only the losers were ever interested in me. You can’t use this as an excuse. There’s no sign of some mythical ‘right guy’ who’s going to appear out of nowhere to sweep me away, and I’m not going to put my life on hold hoping and praying he’ll appear. I told you I don’t want to live in waiting anymore. This idea works well for me. It gets me what I want most—roots and a family. You can’t use me as an excuse not to do it.”

  His brow had wrinkled, but she could tell he was actually thinking about it now. “I can use you as an excuse if I want.”

  “Well, I’m not going to listen to any of those excuses.”

  He was silent for a long time. Then he finally said softly, “I believe in marriage, Jessica.”

  “So do I. I believe in it just as much as you do. What do you think this is all about? I’m not proposing anything that would somehow undercut the nature of marriage.” She took a raspy breath. “I would be faithful to you. I assume you would be too.”

  “Of course, I would.” He looked offended at the suggestion that he would move outside the bounds of marriage—even an unconventional, practical marriage.

  “So what’s the problem?”

  “I don’t know,” he admitted. He flopped back against the couch and looked rumpled and tired and bewildered. “It just seems crazy.”

  “That’s because you haven’t thought about it enough. It’s really very practical, thoughtful, and reasonable. Just like me.” She felt better about everything now. She’d gotten most of it said, and maybe there was a way he would agree to it.

  He gave her a faint smile. “I still think I’d be getting most of the benefits, and you’d be the one cutting off your future.”

  “I told you already. This is the future I want.”

  “You’d really be okay with it?”

  She could tell she was gaining ground now, and it made her blood pulse even more. “Of course. I think it’s a brilliant plan. Only…”

  “Only what?”

  “Part of what I’ve always wanted is children,” she admitted, looking down at her hands. “There’d be no obligation or anything, but I’d like for children to be a possibility.”

  She waited nervously in the silence that followed. What she’d said implied they’d have sex, and she wasn’t sure how he would react to that.

  “I always wanted kids too,” he said at last. “Lila and I had been trying for a couple of years.”

  “See?” she said, pushing past the poignancy. She’d had no idea Lila and Daniel had been trying unsuccessfully to have kids. Just another heartbreaking note in their story. “It’s perfect for both of us. I know you’d never admit it, but I think you want a family too. We can both get what we want.”

  Daniel reached over and put his hand over hers in her lap. She knew by the nature of the touch that he was trying to soften whatever he was about to say.

  She was right. He said, “Jessica, you should marry a man who can love you the way you deserve.”

  She swallowed hard, although she’d never been deceived about his feelings for her. It didn’t matter. She was serious about no longer looking for romance. Being part of a family was most important to her. “I know you don’t love me romantically, but weren’t you even listening? That’s not the point. We love each other in the way it most matters. We’re friends. We support each other. We have a good time together. We can be partners. We’d be good together as parents. I really think we would.”

  He let out a strange breath and glanced away from her, staring at a spot on the ground. Then he heaved himself to his feet and carried the plates into the kitchen.

  She knew he was just thinking, so she didn’t let his abrupt departure bother her. It wasn’t a small thing she was suggesting, after all. It would change the course of both of their lives—the entire course of their futures.

  When he came back, his expression had changed, and she knew he’d made his decision. She just wasn’t sure what the decision would be.

  He reached over and took one of her hands in both of his big, warm ones. It wasn’t exactly a display of affection, more to make a serious point. He met her eyes and said hoarsely, “Jessica, promise me that you’ll be happy in this sort of marriage. Promise me that being friends and partners with me in a home and family is exactly what you want out of your life. Because marriage for me is forever, no matter what the reasons for the marriage. Of course, if you want out later on, I wouldn’t stop you, but I’d be committed to this for the rest of my life. This shouldn’t be something either of us does lightly.”

  She gulped, her heart racing so wildly it hurt her ribs. For some reason, she felt closer to him, in all of his earnest concern and intensity, than she ever had before. “I’m not doing it lightly. I’d be committed for the rest of my life too.”

  “So promise me that this is what you really want. I couldn’t stand for you to be unhappy later on when you realize you settled, you didn’t get it all.”

  “No one has it all. That’s not the way life works. We decide what’s most important
to us, and we pour ourselves into that. This is what’s most important to me. I promise this is what I want.”

  His lips parted slightly. A slight kink made a piece of his dark hair stick out strangely just at his temple.

  No particular reason why she would have noticed that.

  “I really think it is what you want,” he breathed.

  He believed her. She could see that he believed her. The tension had relaxed in his shoulders, in his eyes.

  “It is,” she said, trying to hold back a grin. She was so excited that she was practically hugging herself. “So what do you say? Will you marry me? You’re not going to make me go down on one knee, are you?”

  He couldn’t quite hide an answering smile, and she knew that he’d silently said “yes.”

  ***

  The next day was Saturday, so they went shopping for rings.

  “It’s too expensive,” Jessica said, eyeing the diamond solitaire in the case Daniel had just asked her about. This was the third jewelry store they’d visited. Jessica kept gravitating toward the cases with the cheaper rings, but Daniel refused to consider them.

  “It’s an engagement ring. I’m not going to pull it out of a cereal box.” Daniel was starting to look a little grumpy, since their shopping expedition hadn’t been very successful so far, and they’d been looking now for over two hours.

  “Yeah, but it’s not like there’s a huge romantic gesture to be made here.” The store was mostly empty, except a salesman who was discreetly standing out of their way, since they’d told him they would let him know when they needed help. But Jessica kept her voice low instinctively. “We shouldn’t waste money on an expensive ring for me.”

  He slanted her an annoyed look, which she dutifully ignored.

  She scanned the case. All of the rings looked great to her. She’d had as many romantic daydreams as any other girl about the love of her life offering a ring like these. But that wasn’t what was happening here. It wasn’t even what she wanted. She wanted exactly what she’d told Daniel, and she wasn’t going to make up silly fantasies, even about him.