Chapter 19

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Spencer checked his watch as he handed a prescription to his last patient of the day, seeing that it was five p.m. exactly. The clinic was about to close for walk-ins, and he didn't have any more scheduled patients. Short of an emergency, which happened occasionally—but not nearly as often as it had in San Francisco—he had the rest of the evening free.

He didn't want to seem too eager. But he hadn't been able to get Margo off his mind all day. Their date last night, for all his worries, had been perfect. The sleigh ride back and forth had gone off without a hitch, no pun intended, and it had all been so magical that he found it hard to believe he'd come up with it. It was something about Margo, he thought. He'd always been thoughtful, on the occasions he'd had time to date in the past, but there was something about her that made him want to go the extra mile. To be that truly romantic kind of man that he always heard that women swooned over. He wanted to wow her, to treat her the way she truly deserved, and make her feel as if she were the only woman in the world to him.

Truly, there wasn't any other woman who had ever made him feel the way she did. He had to remind himself that she wasn't sticking around, that anything they had together was temporary, and should just be enjoyed for what it was. But that was hard to keep in mind when he remembered kissing her in a horse-drawn sleigh under a spray of fireworks the night before.

Just text her, he told himself as the patient left, and he was alone in the exam room once again. He straightened up, heading to his office as he heard the receptionist leaving, and pulled out his phone

SPENCER: Hey there. How would you feel about dinner tonight? Rockridge Grill? I heard they have a duck leg special tonight that's to die for. Johnathon told me about it personally.

He paused for a moment, wondering if she'd get a joke over text, and decided to go for it anyway.

SPENCER: Maybe I could even text ahead and ask if he has any candles in the back. The nice ones.

A few minutes went by, and he felt a twist of anxiety. Maybe it was too soon. There were supposedly rules about this sort of thing, but he'd never paid attention to them, mostly because he'd never had the kind of schedule that allowed for it. But maybe Margo wanted to be given space. Maybe she wanted room to think things through before they went out again. Maybe all those rules mattered to her.

His phone chimed, and he grabbed it.

MARGO: Hey. Sorry, but I spent all day going over numbers and spreadsheets for the decorating contest and the roof at the inn, and helping Caroline with that since I can sit and do it, and she needs to be on her feet for other stuff. I'm really exhausted. Can we have a raincheck?

His heart plummeted. On the surface, everything about her text made sense, but he couldn't help feeling disappointed. He'd hoped that she would be riding the same high he was, that she would have been just as eager to see him after such a perfect night, but clearly, that wasn't the case.

She'd warned him that it was going to be casual, but last night had seemed anything other than casual. And he couldn't help wondering what had gone wrong.

It had all been so perfect. He didn't know what the problem was.

Which made it impossible to solve.

That evening, Nora climbed up into the attic of The Mistletoe Inn, looking for some boxes of Christmas decorations that her mother had remembered. She knew if Caroline was there, she'd have chided Nora for going up to the attic in her ‘condition,' but Rhonda couldn't be climbing ladders after her hip replacement, and Donovan was out at his weekly pub meeting with his fishing buddies. It could have waited until the morning, of course, but Rhonda had been so excited, and honestly, Nora had been curious to see what she would unearth.

She couldn't find the boxes anywhere though. She had a feeling Caroline had probably done a purge at some point, and the old decorations—probably ones that didn't have a lot of sentimental value—had been a casualty. She did, however, find a photo album under the stacks of books and tangles of old Christmas lights.

Nostalgia tugged at her, and she slipped the book under her arm, heading back down the ladder and into the living room where Margo was sitting by the fire with a cup of peppermint hot cocoa, Rhonda's homemade marshmallows floating on top. "Mom brought in a cup for you too," Margo called out as she twisted around, seeing Nora walk into the room. "She said you should be down from the attic soon. Did you find the decorations?"

"No," Nora admitted. "I think Caroline probably got rid of them. But I did find this." She produced the photo album, sitting down next to Margo as she opened it. She wondered if Margo would resist the trip down memory lane, but instead, Margo picked up her mug of hot cocoa and scooted closer on the couch, readjusting so she would be comfortable with her leg stretched out on the ottoman.

"Oh look, there's Aiden," Margo said, as Nora flipped it open to a series of photos. "I still can't believe the two of you ended up together. I remember you saying he was cute back then, but you thought he didn't like you."

"I still thought that when I came back," Nora laughed. "But it all worked out in the end. I'm glad it happened now, and not back then. It was all the right timing."

She flipped through some of the pages, smiling as she landed on a spread of a "career day" event that the school had held. "Look at that," Nora said, pointing to where the three of them were standing. "Caroline didn't dress up at all, just wore her jeans and a flannel, so she got that right. And I wore a pencil skirt and one of mom's button-downs and a blazer, and you talked Dad into letting you bring his camera." Her finger rested on the photo, and she smiled at Margo. "Businesswoman and photographer. We really both did what we wanted to do, didn't we?"

She laughed as she said it, but she saw the lopsided smile that crossed Margo's face. "What is it?" Nora pressed, and Margo let out a sigh.

"This is nice," she admitted. "Going down memory lane with you, being back here in this cozy little town, feeling safe and surrounded by family. It feels different than it did back then, you know?"

"I do." Nora nodded. "I felt the same way when I came back. It wasn't so—suffocating, anymore."

"Except it still is, sometimes. Sometimes there are moments like sitting here with you with old pictures and hot cocoa or being up on a hilltop in a sleigh with Spencer watching fireworks, and I feel like I could really be happy here. And then something happens like running into Chris in the coffee shop?—"

"You ran into Chris?" Nora interrupted, and Margo nodded.

"Yeah. And he acted like we were just old pals now. Like it was all water under the bridge from here on out. He suggested that Caroline and I bring Jay by the farm and talked about how well it was doing, telling me all about his girlfriend. Said he was thinking about proposing to her over the holidays. As if I would want to hear any of that."

She grimaced. "And that just reminded me how small this town really is, and how I would always run into him, and it brought back all the reasons I left. All the reasons why I needed the world to be bigger than Evergreen Hollow, you know? So I don't know if…"

Margo trailed off, but Nora thought she understood, that she could hear the rest of what her sister was thinking, because she'd been there too.

"I left here feeling like I wanted to get away from it too," Nora said quietly. "You know that. I wanted to escape just as badly. And I did, just like you. But when I came back… I don't know, my perspective has changed since then. It's nice to be in a place where everyone cares so much. The older I get, the less I like being as alone as I was in Boston. You know, I had my friends and my work colleagues and all of that, but it was always an effort to get together. And a lot of the time, the effort felt one-sided. My apartment was gorgeous and perfect, but so is my house here, just in a different way."

Nora let out a breath before continuing, a soft smile pulling at her lips. "You know, I was always afraid of what I'd be missing out on if I stayed in Evergreen Hollow. But then I came back and realized I was missing out on a lot by being gone too. So I had to decide what was more important to have in my life, and by then, well—it was all of the things here."

There was a long pause before Nora spoke again, the crackling of the fire filling the quiet. "I'm sorry I was cold to you at first," Nora said, glancing over at Margo with the photo album balanced between their laps. "I was hard on you for being gone for so long, but that wasn't exactly fair. I didn't come home all that often after I left either."

"I wouldn't have, if I hadn't lost my job," Margo admitted. "And I am glad I came back. At least for a little while."

"This place has a lot to offer, if you let yourself look at it with different eyes," Nora said quietly. "Through how our lives are now, not how they used to be. You've gone to so many different places and done so many cool things. Maybe now is a time to try something quieter. Maybe even fall in love," she added pointedly, and Margo gave a small laugh.

"I appreciate it," she said after a moment, taking a sip of her cocoa. "But I don't know if my heart is ready for that. Look how long it's been since Chris, and it still hurts seeing him. If things don't work out with Spencer, I just don't know if I want to go through that again."

"You're older now," Nora pointed out. "It won't be the same. It's different, going through heartbreak when you're an adult, instead of freshly out of high school."

"It still hurts. And you had a handsome carpenter to distract you after your engagement fell apart," Margo added. "I have unemployment and a very drab apartment."

It was blunt, but Nora had to concede that she had a point. "Still," she said, "you can't avoid it forever, just because it might hurt."

"I can. It's just whether or not I want to." Margo flipped a page in the photo album pensively, sipping at her cocoa. "I really don't know what I want, right now."

Nora could remember how that felt. And she could sympathize, remembering how worried she had been about risking her heart with Aiden.

But she hoped her sister would take the chance.