25. Charlotte

25

CHARLOTTE

A few days later, Charlotte stood beside her mom in Maggie’s kitchen, sipping hot chocolate and feeling over-the-moon happy.

After all, it was Christmas Day, and her mom and Tag’s mom were making breakfast together and swapping silly stories while holiday music played on the radio and snow flurries danced outside the window.

It was hard to be anything but joyful.

The two women had hit it off immediately, and Charlotte was feeling a little sad that her mom would have to leave again after the holidays.

But today was a day for celebration, and it would start with seeing Tag and the kids.

Though she loved living in the house with them, once she and Tag started officially dating, it felt wrong to be staying in his home, even though she was up on the third floor and Tag was very respectful because they both wanted to set a good example for the kids. So, when Ellis let her know the space above the shop was ready again two days ago, she had packed up for the third time in a month, and moved back into the little apartment.

She would still see the children after school, once their break was over, and she would get to spend time with them at Daniel and Maggie’s place. More often than not, they shared dinner there too, along with Tag, Tripp, Zane, all the kids, and anyone else who made their way to the stone farmhouse.

Charlotte felt a little shiver of excitement when she finally heard the front door open.

“ Charlotte ,” Chance yelled out as he came inside.

“ Boots,” Charlotte and Maggie called back to him at once.

The two of them laughed, and a moment later, a sock-clad Chance came running around the corner, sliding a little on the tiles as he dashed in for a big hug.

Charlotte bent down to him this time, so that when he wrapped his arms around her shoulders, she could pick him up and spin him around.

“ Whee ,” Chance cried happily. “ Merry Christmas. ”

She smiled and soaked in the feeling of his happy little body in her arms before lowering him to the ground.

“Would you like to meet my mom?” she asked him quietly.

“Yes,” he said, ducking his head around Charlotte to peek over her shoulder. “Is that her?”

“Hello, Chance,” her mom said with a smile. “Yes. I’m Charlotte’s mom.”

“Hi, Mrs. Charlotte,” Chance said solemnly. “It’s very nice to meet you.”

To her credit, Mom didn’t even crack a smile.

“You can call me Mimi,” she said, offering him her hand. “And it’s very nice to meet you, too.”

Chance took her hand and shook it with an enthusiasm that had his whole arm moving.

“Do you like making pancakes?” he asked excitedly. Charlotte was pretty sure he had already spotted the big breakfast feast that was being prepared.

“I do,” she told him. “And I also like to paint. How about you?”

“Charlotte painted cows and things at the ice cream shop,” Chance said, nodding.

“That was mostly tracing from photos,” Charlotte said quickly. “My mom has a special talent for drawing things herself.”

“I don’t know,” her mom said. “I really like what you did at the shop. It has character.”

“ Firewood delivery ,” Tripp yelled from the front door.

“ Boots ,” all three women yelled back.

That struck Chance as so funny that he fell on the floor laughing and Charlotte had to scoop him up again so he didn’t get flour in his hair from the pancakes.

By the time they were on their feet again, Tripp and Zane had come in, and she could hear Tag and Olivia talking in the hall.

“Merry Christmas,” Tripp said, grabbing his mom and spinning her around. “West is outside with the kids.”

“Merry Christmas,” Maggie laughed. “This is Charlotte’s mom.”

“Hi, boys,” her mom said. “I’m Mimi.”

The men introduced themselves and Olivia slipped past to wrap an arm around Charlotte’s shoulder.

“Hi,” Tag said, his cerulean eyes flashing to Charlotte before he turned to her mom. “I’m Tag, and this is my daughter, Olivia. And I think you might have already met Chance.”

They all looked to Chance, who had picked the wrong moment to try and sneak a slice of bacon from the counter.

“Wait for the family, bud,” Tag reprimanded him gently.

“But Uncle Tripp took one,” Chance said.

Tripp shook his head in denial, but it was clear that his mouth was full. Charlotte’s mom laughed and everyone joined her, including Chance.

“You’ll get along here just fine,” Maggie said, patting Mimi’s shoulder.

“I was going to show your mom the living room,” Tag said to Charlotte a little too loudly.

“Oh yes,” Maggie said, nodding knowingly. “She’ll want to see the picture of Stone Lawrence and the one of Sugarville Grove when there was nothing but farmland all around.”

“I’d like to see that too,” Charlotte said, moving to join them.

Tag got a weird look on his face.

“Oh, you can see it anytime, sweetheart,” Maggie told her. “And I need you to help me with these eggs.”

“Of course,” Charlotte said, feeling silly.

She figured they just wanted her to stay and help with breakfast and let her mom take a break, but were too polite to say so. It was hard to get her mother to relax. That was for sure. So she was grateful the Lawrences could see she needed it. She’d had a long drive here, but at least she was flying back again afterward.

Maggie handed Charlotte a spatula and she got to work scrambling eggs.

Two hours later, they were all piled into the living room, full of breakfast and watching all the kids play with their new toys. Chance was sitting on the new red sled Charlotte had got him at the toy store, looking at a wooden puzzle from his grandfather. The sled wasn’t quite as fancy as the pirate ship one, but Chance had been thrilled when he opened it, and immediately gave everyone a rundown of the best hills to test it on.

Olivia sat on the couch beside Charlotte, her nose deep in the copy of Pride and Prejudice Charlotte had found for her at Clever Fox Books in town. She was probably a little young for it, but Charlotte had a feeling she would like the book anyway.

Zane’s twins were playing with the other cousins, all of them darting in and out of the room as they tried out their plastic light sabers and action figures.

The Lawrence kids had exchanged gifts with each other too, and Charlotte’s mom had brought Maggie a nice apron she had made herself, with great big pockets that Maggie said were perfect for a farmer-woman.

Allie was chatting away with Charlotte’s mom now. They had met lots of times during Charlotte’s college days, but there was plenty of catching up to do.

Tag caught Charlotte’s eye from across the coffee table.

“I have something for you,” she told him with a smile, pulling her car keys from her pocket and tossing them to him.

“Is it in the trunk?” he asked, hopping up, like he was ready to go out and retrieve his own gift.

“Nope. It’s the car,” she said. “It was my dad’s, and I know he would want you to have it. It deserves to be someone’s dream car.”

She’d had a hard time coming up with a gift for Tag, but as soon as she had this idea, she’d talked it over with her mom, and they had both agreed that it was perfect.

Now that she had made it a reality, she swore she felt her father’s joyful presence, and she pressed her lips together, willing herself not to cry.

“But… what about you?” Tag asked, looking completely stunned.

“I’m not going anywhere,” she teased. “And besides, Mom drove out here in Dad’s old SUV, and she’s leaving it here when she flies back. It’s just fine for me. Plus, it has all-wheel drive.”

Tag had mentioned more than once that he didn’t like the idea of her driving the Mustang around in the snow, so she knew he would feel better about her being in a safer car.

“Really?” he asked, finally looking like he might believe the gift was real.

“Really,” she said, smiling up at the sweet man she adored.

His eyes lit up and he fingered the keys in his hand, looking like he was so pleased that he didn’t know what to say.

“This is such a generous gift, Charlotte,” Daniel said quietly from his seat near the big Christmas tree. “And we all know Tag will love it. He had a poster of that exact car in his room when he was a boy.”

“Now, we have a gift for you, Charlotte—” Maggie began.

“Me first,” Tag said suddenly.

It was unlike him to cut his mother off. But Charlotte couldn’t help noticing Maggie’s happy smile, or the way she patted her husband’s knee.

When she turned back to Tag, he was kneeling in front of her, his sapphire eyes dark with emotion.

“Charlotte,” he said roughly.

But then he didn’t say anything else because he was pressing his fisted hand to his mouth, as if to hold back tears.

“Charlotte, we love you,” Olivia said, moving quickly to his side, and wrapping her arm around his waist. “You always listen to us, and you understand us, even when we’re not at our best.”

“And you tell us to be brave,” Chance said excitedly, hopping up from his sled to join his family. “Because you want to not be afraid of anything too.”

“We’ve lost a lot,” Olivia said softly. “But you helped Dad open up his heart.”

The rest of the room had gone silent.

“And if you say yes, you get to have a pretty, pretty ring,” Chance whispered to her loudly, with an encouraging nod.

That broke a chuckle from Tag, who pulled his hand away from his face and let her see his glistening eyes.

“Charlotte,” he said. “You do make us happy, and we want to spend a lifetime doing our best to make you happy too, if you’ll have us.”

He held out his hand, and cradled in it was a little pink box. Something gleamed inside it, but Charlotte couldn’t see it because of the tears in her own eyes.

“Will you marry me?” Tag asked.

“Yes,” she said, moving to the floor to join them. “Yes, yes, yes !”

He pulled her close and brushed her lips with his—a sweet, chaste promise. And then Chance was wrapping his arms around her too, and Olivia laughed and joined the group hug.

Charlotte closed her eyes, soaking in the warmth of the amazing people who were going to be her family.

“You’re going to be one of us now,” Tripp yelled out. “Look out, Sugarville Grove, you’ve got another Lawrence woman to contend with.”

“Tripp,” Maggie scolded him lightly.

“He’s not wrong,” Allie told her mother. “We’re a force of nature.”

“I hate to rush it, but I think we should talk dates,” Daniel piped up.

Chance peeled out of the hug to go visit with his sled again, but Olivia stayed close to Charlotte, leaning against her right shoulder after they ended their embrace, as Tag wrapped his arm around her left.

“Well, I mean my mom is out here now…” Charlotte began.

“I had a talk with Maggie two days ago,” her mom said with a gentle smile. “And another this morning with Tag, when he asked my blessing to propose to you.”

So that was why he had dragged her mother off to the living room, and Maggie had kept Charlotte in the kitchen. They’d been in on the whole thing.

“Anyway,” her mom went on. “I know you may be busy with other things after the wedding, and the ice cream shop is a real hit in town. If you think it’s a good idea, I was thinking that maybe I would stay right here. I could move into the apartment and help with the shop so you could expand the hours, and you wouldn’t have to be there all the time. There’s no need to answer now though.”

“That would be amazing, ” Charlotte said. “Are you really sure you want to do that?”

“There’s no place I’d rather be than close to my daughter,” she said. “And to my new son-in-law and grandchildren. I’ve only been here a few hours, and it already feels like home.”

Charlotte certainly knew that feeling well.

Olivia let go of her shoulder to go hug her new grandma-to-be as Charlotte shook her head in wonder at how quickly her life was coming together into something she could only have dreamed of.

“Now, we don’t want to overwhelm you, Charlotte,” Maggie said. “But we’ve got a gift for you too. This is from the whole family, and it’s not anything new. But we’re told it’s a hardworking machine that will last you a while.”

Daniel made his way through the discarded wrapping paper and toys to hand Charlotte a laptop, with a bow on it and a card.

“You don’t have to look at it now, sweetheart,” he told her. “And there’s no pressure. But if you want to go back and finish your last semester, your fees are paid, and your professors are excited to have you back as an online student. The details are all in the envelope.”

“It’s too much,” Charlotte murmured, gazing down at the envelope and feeling like she must be dreaming.

“You turned around our little shop,” Daniel said fondly. “It’s the least we can do.”

“If you go back to school, it’s good your mom can be here to run the shop,” Tag told her quietly. “You’ll be able to focus on graduating.”

“You knew,” she murmured, turning to him.

“We all want this for you,” he told her. “We want the world for you.”

“Now it’s time for our present,” Chance squeaked, brandishing a small, wrapped object. “Come on, Olivia.”

“Oh, kids,” Charlotte said. “You didn’t have to get me a present.”

“It’s not a big present,” Olivia warned her worriedly. “There’s not like a car or a computer or anything in there.”

“Anything from you will make me smile,” Charlotte told her. “Because it will mean you were thinking of me.”

“Open it up,” Chance advised her, handing over the package.

She did as she was told, and when she revealed what was inside, she found herself crying for the second time in a day.

“It’s your picture with your dad, Charlotte,” Chance told her. “You love that picture.”

“We took the messed up one to the print shop in town,” Olivia told her. “And Josh scanned it and fixed it up for us and then printed out a new one. I think it turned out great.”

“That’s my thumb in the picture,” her mom was telling Maggie. “Al liked to say that made it a family photo.”

“Oh, you guys,” Charlotte said, trying to stop the flow of her tears. “You’ll never know how much this means to me. I love you both, so much.”

“We love you too, Charlotte,” Chance said happily. “Can we go play with my sled now?”

Everyone laughed and Charlotte wiped her eyes with the hand that wasn’t hugging the photo to her chest.

“Definitely,” she told him. “I think a nice walk and watching you sled sounds like the perfect Christmas to me.”

As the rest of the family moved to start cleaning up, and Olivia went with Chance to look at his sled, Tag scooted closer to her.

“I know all of this is… a lot,” he said. “I hope we didn’t hit you with too many surprises at once.”

“I think I’m starting to like surprises again,” Charlotte admitted, smiling up at him.

“Good,” he told her. “Then I’d like to actually put this on your finger now.”

He took her hand, and her heart threatened to burst with happiness as he slid the ring into place. Chance was right. It was very pretty. And it looked right at home on her finger, like it had always been there.

“What do you think about a New Year’s wedding?” Tag asked, his gaze a flash of blue fire as he kept her hand in his, stroking her wrist with his thumb.

“Yes,” she whispered, glad their family was all around them so that her resolve to be a good example wouldn’t be tested. “Let’s get married as soon as we can. I don’t want to wait an extra minute.”

He laughed with joy, and she gazed up at the man she loved in wonder.

How did I ever get so lucky?