Page 137 of Mistletoe All the Way

I grab the ribbons next, pretty red and green ones and silver too.

“I love ribbons,” she says, and her eyes dance with dirty memories that match mine.

She sets them down on the table with the other gifts.

“There’s one more thing,” I tell her, and this is the real “lords a-leaping.”

This is the big chance I have to take.

It’s full of presumptions and wild, daring hope. I offer her the bag, and she dips her hand in, her eyes edged with curiosity.

She takes out…

“A silver bell?” she says, but it’s more of a question.

I’ve got the answer. I take a beat, letting all the confidence and certainty I felt across the twelve-hour drive fuel me once more.

Sometimes you just know.

“Eloise, I’m moving here to run Silver Bells.”

She gasps. Her hand flies to her mouth. But she bangs the bell against her lips and lets go. She rubs her bottom lip.

I lean in and kiss it, savoring the taste of her again.

When I let go, she asks, “You are?”

“I am. I hope it’s not presumptuous, but sometimes at Christmas you have to take a big chance. I love you, and I want to be with you, and I want to be here near my family too,” I tell her, my voice raw, my heart in my hands.

Or, really, in her hands. If she’ll take it. “I’d like to run the farm, and work with my brother at the clinic, and get to know my home-town again, but mostly I want to come home to you every night if you’ll have me.”

She licks her lips, nodding furiously, feverishly, then grabs my face. “Do you want to know why I was texting you?”

“Yes. I want to know everything about you.”

“I wanted to talk to you on the phone. I planned to ask you if you wanted to try a long-distance thing with me. To see if I could fly out over New Year’s and maybe you’d come here in January, and we’d make plans, but this—”

“This is a better plan,” I say, and I fall in love with her a little more.

“So much better. Because I love you so much too.”

Then she kisses me as the clock ticks closer to midnight and everything starts to feel right in the world.

But when she breaks the kiss, she says, “But what about your practice, and your cabin, and your horses and everything? The surgeries and all the other work today?”

I smile softly. “I went for a run this morning with a friend, and all at once I realized work doesn’t always have to come first. Sometimes people can,” I say, then tell her the rest. “And it turns out my friend Jamie missed the veterinary work. His year off as a park ranger reset him.” I pause thinking of this morning, and the red bird, and the clarity of the quiet run in the snow as the world started to shut down. “We… switched. He spent the day working. Very happily. He looks forward to working there again all next year. And now I’m here. The horses can come stay. And I’m here. Very happily.”

“With me,” she says with the most lovely smile, then she shoves the gifts to the table, tosses off her hat, pulls me on top of her, and kisses me like this won’t ever end.

Rusty barks happily, and I reward him by pushing the Santa hat off his head.

Eloise takes off mine, and brings me close to her, right where I belong.

EPILOGUE MISTLETOE ALL THE WAY

Eloise

In the morning, I wake before the sun rises, head to the bathroom with my eyes barely open, brush my teeth, and return to bed.