Ten Years Later
The smooth voice of Nat King Cole filled the interior of Hannah’s Jeep as it bumped along the snowy road. Her headlights caught the falling flakes, twilight giving the sky a purplish-gray glow, towering pines creating a now-familiar pathway on either side of her—a pathway home to her family.
After ten years of residing in Puyallup, it was hard to believe she’d ever lived in sunny Los Angeles at all. And she wouldn’t trade it for all the records in Washington.
Her eyes drifted to the rearview mirror, where she could see shopping bags filled to overflowing with elaborately wrapped presents in the backseat, and contentment swept through her chest, so intense it brought tears to her eyes. There would never be anything better than this. Coming home to her family on Christmas Eve after four days on the road. She missed them so terribly, it cost her quite an effort to drive slowly, carefully on the winter road.
When her house came into view a minute later and her tires crunched to a stop in the driveway, her heart started to beat faster. Smoke curled lazily from the chimney of their log-cabin-style home, sleds—man-sized and child-sized—leaned up against the wall by the front entrance. A Christmas tree twinkled in one of the many windows. And when her husband walked into view with one of their daughters slung casually over his brawny shoulder, a laugh filled with yearning and love and gratitude puffed out of her in the quiet car.
They’d more than made it work, hadn’t they? They’d made a life happier and filled with more joy than either of them could have expected.
A decade earlier, Fox and Hannah went to Bel-Air to pack her things. She could still remember the zero-gravity feeling of that trip. The lack of restraint that came with their commitment to each other, every touch, every whisper heightened, given new meaning. And yet, on the verge of what felt like true adulthood, they’d both been scared. But they’d been scared together, honest with each other every step of the way, and they’d become a formidable team.
Initially, they’d signed an apartment lease in town, this midway point between Westport and Seattle. She still missed that apartment sometimes, itched to walk the creaky floor and remember all the lessons they’d learned within those walls. How fiercely they’d loved, how loudly they’d fought and made up, the music they’d danced to, how Fox had gotten down on one knee on a night just like this and asked Hannah to be his wife, how they’d panicked when she got pregnant a year later. How they’d sat on the floor and eaten cake straight out of the box with forks—Fox in a suit, her in a dress—on the morning they bought this house.
Since then, they’d made a million memories, each day with a different soundtrack, and she cherished every single one.
Unable to wait another second to see Fox and the girls, Hannah opened the driver’s-side door, careful not to slip on the driveway in her fancy wedge boots. Not practical in this weather, but she’d gone straight to LAX after her final client meeting. Thank God she wouldn’t have to see the inside of another airport until mid-January, well after the holidays. Her travel schedule had definitely lightened over the years, the process more streamlined and virtual, but every once in a while, she discovered a band worth seeing in person, as she’d done this week.
Garden of Sound Inc. had started as Hannah’s baby, a way of connecting up-and-coming bands with film production companies seeking fresh voices for their scores—and years later, she’d found herself a staple in the industry. After Glory Daze released and the Unreliables blew up, her name got passed around more and more. She’d built a reputation for giving films their signature sound, adding an entirely new layer of creativity to the process, and she couldn’t imagine doing anything else.
Hannah opened the back door of the Jeep and considered calling Fox to help her carry the bags, but decided she’d rather walk through the front door and surprise the three of them. And she’d better get her butt moving, because Piper, Brendan, and their two kids would be arriving soon to stay through New Year’s. Not to mention, Charlene—aka Grams—would be here in the morning.
Draping a heavy bag over each arm, Hannah bumped the car door shut with a hip and headed up the path, her cheeks already aching from smiling. She set down the presents just outside the front door and dug in her coat pocket for her keys. They jingled only slightly, but that was all it took to set off their pair of yellow labs barking.
Shaking her head and laughing, distracted by trying to get the key into the lock, Hannah almost didn’t see the moose. But when the giant shadow moved in her periphery, she froze, slowly turning her head, mouth falling open in shock as the granddaddy of all moose moseyed toward her like they were going to have a casual chat in the supermarket. Moose were not especially dangerous animals, but they’d lived in this area long enough to hear about attacks. Usually the animals only reacted poorly when provoked, but she wasn’t taking any chances. That thing could mow her down like a semitruck.
“Fox . . .” Hannah called, way too quietly to be detected by human ears. And then she dropped her keys in the snow. Come on. No way she was bending down to pick those up. She’d have to take her eyes off the beast. Abandoning the presents and sidestepping off the porch slowly, she backed in the direction of the car. The moose watched from its height of at least thirteen, maybe twenty-nine feet while Hannah slipped the cell from her pocket and dialed HOME.
“You must be outside, since the dogs are acting like maniacs,” Fox answered, voice warm in her ear. “Thank God, babe. I missed you like hell. You need some help carrying in your suitcase? I’ll be right—”
“Moose,” she said in a strangled whisper. “There’s a moose right outside the door. Keep the girls inside. It’s eight hundred feet tall, I’m not even kidding.”
“A moose?” Concern hardened his voice. “Hannah, get inside.”
“I dropped my keys.” She turned and ran, squealing in her throat the whole way. “I’m hiding behind the car.”
He was breathing hard. “I’m coming.”
No less than ten seconds later, her husband skidded out onto the porch, barefoot in sweatpants and a hoodie, banging pots together and shouting obscenities at the moose, backing the animal up several paces. In the front window of the house, their girls—six-year-old Abigail and four-year-old Stevie—screamed bloody murder, their little palms slapping against the window hard enough to rattle it. The dogs howled. And crouching down behind the back bumper of the Jeep, Hannah absolutely lost it. She laughed hard enough to slip on the driveway and land on her backside, which only made her laugh harder. By the time she got control of herself, she was looking up at Fox through tears of mirth.
Oh, but then, there was just . . . a long, wobbly sigh of appreciation for the man holding out his rope-worn hand to help her up. Age had done him so good. Now forty-one, the Della Ray’s captain had a full beard and dark blond hair, just beginning to show threads of gray, that almost reached his shoulders. He’d cut it once, last year, and the girls cried when they saw the shorter length, so he vowed to keep it long forever. They had their father wrapped around their pinkie fingers, and he would admit it to anyone who listened. Hannah estimated the devotion to his daughters made him around 400 percent more attractive.
And as always, his devotion to Hannah shone in his blue eyes, which were twinkling over the chaos, just like hers.
“He’s gone,” Fox said gruffly, wrapping their fingers together. “Come inside now and make up for scaring ten years off my life.”
“Should be easy since I brought presents—”
She lost her balance, slipping on the ice, and Fox, his balance normally perfect thanks to his profession, went down with his wife. He tried to cushion her fall, but they just ended up sprawled on their asses in the driveway, snow falling around them, their howls of laughter bringing their daughters running from the house in flannel nightgowns and hastily shoved-on boots. While Abby and Stevie started an impromptu snowball fight, Fox pulled Hannah into his arms, tipping up her chin so he could look at her face, his heart knocking heavily against her shoulder.
“Jesus, Hannah,” he whispered in a rough voice. “Do you ever get so happy, you can barely stand it?”
“Yes.” She reached up and cradled his jaw. “With you? All the time.”
He made a sound in his throat, brushed some snowflakes from her cheek. “Doesn’t feel like enough to say I love you at this point.”
“Our love is always enough. It’s always more than enough.”
Throat flexing, he nodded. Looked into her eyes for long moments, before lowering his lips and kissing her slowly, sweeping his tongue through her mouth enough times and with enough promise to make her squirm, breathless. One kiss only ignited their appetite, and with the dogs happily chasing the girls through the front yard, they were in no rush to stop. Not until minutes later when another car pulled up and Piper’s giggle sailed out into the evening air, followed by Brendan’s exasperated sigh.
“Hey, Aunt Hannah and Uncle Fox!” their nine-year-old nephew, Henry, called. “Get a room.”
“We’ve got a whole house of them,” Fox said, finally standing and pulling Hannah to her feet, tucking her against his side. “We’ve got everything we could ever want,” he added, for her ears alone. And together, aunts, uncles, cousins, and dogs walked up the path to share Christmas Eve, same as they would every single Christmas, forever and always.
