The Bachelor’s Christmas Bride (12 page)

After another moment of nuzzling her neck, he rose up enough to rest his chin atop her head and sigh. “Okay,” he said as if she'd spoken. “I s'pose we should call it a night.”

“I think it's late…” Shannon said by way of agreement.

Another sigh. “Yeah, probably is…”

Still they stayed the way they were—his arms wrapping her, cradling her, her head against his shoulder.

“I know you hate sports,” Dag said then. “But tomorrow night the local men's team plays their Christmas basketball game, and the school choir is singing carols at halftime. From what I hear nearly everyone in town is going. Can I persuade you—even if Logan and Meg and Chase and Hadley decide not to?”

At that moment Shannon thought he could persuade her to go to the moon with him.

“While I'm here I might as well get the full Northbridge experience,” she said as if that was the only reason.

“You might as well.”

He kissed the top of her head, and Shannon closed her eyes, drinking in the feel of his breath in her hair before she sat up to really let him go.

Then they both got off the couch and Dag shrugged back into his coat as they headed for the door.

There didn't seem to be anything to say but good-night, and that's what they did. Afterward Dag stood there for a moment looking down at her.

She thought he was considering kissing her again. Or maybe fighting not to. But either way, he didn't. He merely repeated his good-night and left.

Which was for the best, Shannon told herself.

Because the kissing they'd already done had gotten a little out of control and she wasn't sure if even a simple kiss at the door might have started it all over again.

And if a part of her wished it might have? Wished it had started all over again and gone so, so much further?

That was the part of her that she hadn't really known existed until tonight.

A part of her that she found unnerving, un settling…

And maybe a little more exciting than she knew what to do with.

“T
hree shopping days until Christmas and I haven't even
started
yet!”

“Then what are you doing on the phone with me instead of hitting the mall?” Shannon responded, when she answered her friend Danica Bond's call early Wednesday morning. She followed it with a belated, “Hi, Dani.”

“Hi, Shan. I haven't talked to you since you left for Northbridge. I just wanted to check in, see how you're doing—
then
I'm hitting the mall.”

“I'm doing really well,” Shannon said. “Much better than I expected, actually. It's like something out of a Christmas movie here and it's nice spending time with Chase and Hadley and Cody. Chase and I have even found out what family the twins ended up with….” She went on to explain how her younger brothers were part of the Kincaid family.

“And why haven't I heard a public announcement yet that you and Wes aren't engaged?” Dani asked then.

Dani was the one person on Shannon's side—before Dag—who was aware that there wasn't an engagement. Shannon had told Dani in advance that she was going to break up with Wes so Dani hadn't ever believed that Shannon had accepted the proposal. Plus she and Shannon had talked several times since then and Dani knew exactly what was going on. But she, too, had sworn to keep quiet.

“Wes is dragging his feet,” Shannon said.

“But he hasn't worn you down, has he?”

“No, he hasn't worn me down. He's trying, but not nearly hard enough. Every reason he gives me to marry him is still about votes and voters. He can be really clueless sometimes.”

But Wes was the last thing that Shannon wanted to talk about so she said, “What about you—have you honestly not even started Christmas shopping yet?”

“I honestly haven't. I've been too swamped with the school—there's even a temporary sign up now that says Coming Soon: The Early Childhood Development Center. I can't wait for you to get here after Christmas and see everything. We're about three-quarters finished with construction so it's easy to envision the way it will look in the end—just like the drawing I sent you from the architect. Only in real life it's much more impressive. You're going to love it! You're going to love California, too, and never want to leave—I just know it! I can't wait for you to
finally
get here!”

Dani's enthusiasm was infectious and it made Shannon smile. She missed her friend. Because of her own job and caring for her parents, she hadn't been able to visit Dani in Beverly Hills, and Dani hadn't come back to Montana nearly often enough since marrying Ronald Bond two years before and leaving. She had come back
for all three funerals during the last year but each of those trips had had to be quick and she and Shannon hadn't spent any real time together.

“I have your room ready,” Dani went on, “and it would be fine with me if you got here, decided to come on board with the school and just never left.”

Shannon laughed. “I would still have to come back to Billings and move my stuff.”

“Okay, one trip and that's all,” Dani said. “Because nobody can tell me that once I get you here it isn't going to hit you that
this
is how you can break out and move on to bigger and better things—the way we talked about when we were kids, the way we dreamed about, the way I have.”

It never failed that when she talked to Dani about moving to Beverly Hills, about going in on the school with her old friend, Shannon was always tempted to just say
Sign me up!

But even without the possibility of a future with Wes holding her back, she still didn't do that. Her parents had lived a cautious life—financially and otherwise—and she supposed they'd passed on the need for caution to her. As a result, despite the lure of what Dani was offering, Shannon knew she had to see things for herself, get a feel for the school, for California and Beverly Hills, and seriously consider everything before she committed to anything. Even if Dani was involved.

So she merely said, “I can't wait to see you.”

“But you're really doing okay? I mean…the first Christmas without everybody…”

“I'm a little blue here and there.” She admitted to her friend what she hadn't said to anyone else. “But everyone is so nice and the whole town is—”

“Don't let it suck you in!” Dani ordered.

“Did I say it was sucking me in?”

“I can hear something in your voice—you like it there. Or have you met someone…”

Dani knew her much, much too well. “My brother's partner's brother—Dag—is helping to show me around, but it isn't as if I've
met someone,
no,” Shannon insisted.

Although that somehow felt like a lie. Especially when the image of Dag came so vividly to mind suddenly and sent a wave of warmth all through her. Warmth and the same eagerness to be with him again that she felt every minute they were apart…

“Well, don't let him suck you in, either,” Dani said. “This is your time and don't let anyone keep you from having it.”

Ah, but Dani hadn't met Dag.

And she certainly hadn't been kissed by him the way he'd kissed Shannon the night before….

“You know my coming out there after Christmas doesn't make this a done deal,” Shannon felt obligated to remind her friend then. “As much as I hate that you moved away and as much as I'd like us to be near each other again—”

“I know,” Dani interrupted her. “I won't blame you if investing in the school seems too scary—without Ron I wouldn't be brave enough… Well, without Ron I wouldn't be able to do it at all since most of the capital is his. But I've been thinking and even if you don't want to jump in right away, you can still think about just giving me a year—”

“A year?”

“You could set up the pre-K and kindergarten section, and when school starts in the fall, you could teach here instead of in Montana. It would give you a chance to
try it all out. You wouldn't even have to get a place, you could stay with Ron and me and just settle in temporarily to make up your mind. You can even invest after that, if you want to. Once you see that we can make a go of it, it will ease your mind.”

It was an offer too good to refuse.

Yet Shannon still said, “We'll talk about it when I get there.”

“Oh, believe me, I'm talking about it until I get you to say yes!”

Shannon laughed at her friend. “Now
that's
the kind of determination Wes should have had.”

“Isn't that the truth!” Dani agreed.

“Anyway,” Shannon said then, “for now I'm due to bake and decorate Christmas cookies with Hadley, Meg and Tia. And you'd better go shopping.”

“That's where I'm headed. I probably won't bother you again until Christmas day. But if you get too blue—day or night—you call me, okay?”

Shannon knew Dani meant that. The same way she would always be available to Dani day or night. “Okay,” Shannon agreed. “But go on—shop. And happy hunting.”

“At this point there's no time for hunting—I'm rushing in, buying and rushing on to the next store!”

 

While Chase and Logan helped Dag with some woodwork at Dag's place that afternoon, Shannon went to the main house to pitch in with the Christmas cookie making, and to lend Meg and Hadley a hand with Tia and Cody.

There was discussion between Meg and Hadley about whether or not to attend the evening's basketball game
that Dag had asked Shannon to, but in the end the other two women decided on another quiet evening in.

Obviously since Chase and Hadley were newlyweds, and Meg and Logan had only been married a few months, at that point nothing was quite as compelling for either of the two couples as time alone.

Meg and Hadley did encourage Shannon to go, however, and Shannon told herself she should do it for the sake of her brother and his bride, to give them that time alone.

Which seemed like a much better reason than that she might just want to be with Dag the same way Hadley and Meg wanted to be with Chase and Logan.

So after a quick dinner with Chase, Hadley and Cody at the loft, Shannon rushed back to the apartment to change into her best butt-hugging tan slacks. Gambling that it might not be warm enough, she nonetheless put on a U-necked T-shirt over a tight camisole top that gave her enough lift to form the hint of cleavage. Then she freshened her blush and mascara before she took her hair out of the ponytail it had been in all day and brushed it to fall free around her shoulders.

But again she swore to herself that sprucing up wasn't for Dag, that it was only because she was going out for the evening.

As planned, at six forty-five, she heard Dag drive his truck around to the garage to get her. She was just putting on her coat and tying a matching scarf around her neck when he knocked on the door.

Opening it to him, she could tell that he'd put a little extra thought into his own attire tonight, too. He had on a very dashing-looking calf-length black wool coat over a pair of charcoal-colored slacks that fit him so well they had to have been specially made to accommodate his
hockey player thighs. He also had on a cashmere polo-style sweater that caressed his upper body in a way that made Shannon's hands want to do the same thing.

He was freshly shaven, his almost-black hair was shiny-clean and artfully disarrayed, and all in all, he had more of an air of a take-charge corporate raider than a jock or a cowboy. And were Shannon to hazard a guess, she would have said that that was how he had dressed to go out clubbing after hockey games when groupies had gathered and—no doubt—swooned at the transformation he was capable of making. She, herself, certainly had to put a whole lot of effort into not swooning….

“This is a good look for you,” she mentioned casually when she realized she was staring and mentally kicked herself.

Dag merely smiled, gave her an up-and-down glance and said, “I haven't seen a look that isn't good on you yet.”

Then he swiveled away from blocking the door and with a sweep of his arm, he invited her to go ahead of him out of the apartment.

The basketball game was being played in the school gymnasium by the local men's team that played baseball, basketball and football against each other year-round. But despite the loud and jocular participation of the crowd, despite the humor and festiveness exhibited by the players in the holly crowns, the bell-adorned wristbands, and the red-and-white or green-and-white striped knee socks they wore to designate teams, Shannon was no more enthralled with this sport than with any other.

She liked the choir concert of Christmas carols sung by the school children at halftime, but she was glad when Dag suggested they leave after that.

“I'm sorry if I was a drag,” she apologized as they
left the school. “I just can't begin to tell you how sports-stupid I am and it's hard to get into something when I honestly don't have any idea what I'm watching.”

Dag leaned sideways and said, “To tell you the truth, I didn't make it back to Logan's for dinner tonight and I'm starving. I thought I might be able to persuade you to grab some takeout with me and go back to your place for a bite to eat. That's what I was fantasizing about through “Silent Night”—you, me, another fire and a burger.”

Shannon had to laugh at the rapture with which he'd said
burger
. “Even though I came first on that list, why do I still get the feeling that the hamburger is the biggest draw?” she teased him.

He grinned. “Low self-esteem?”

“That must be it,” Shannon said facetiously before she agreed to his suggestion.

A quick stop at the Tastee Dog's new drive-through window and within fifteen minutes they were back at Shannon's place with Shannon taking a turn at building a fire while Dag ate.

Then they were once again where Shannon secretly most wanted to be—sitting on the center of the sofa in front of that fire. Alone, together…

“So what did you think of our school, Ms. Kindergarten Teacher?” Dag asked as they began to share the brownie-mint ice cream sundae that was the dessert Shannon had agreed to partake in.

“I didn't see much of it,” Shannon said.

There were three buildings that housed it—one each for the elementary, middle and high school grade levels—and Shannon had only seen the gym. Since that was also the site for the elementary grades, she
had
seen the kindergarten classroom.

“It looks like a nice school, though,” she said. “For such a small area I'm kind of surprised by how nice it is.”

“It probably doesn't compare to whatever is going on in Beverly Hills with your friend's school, but still—”

“It gets the job done,” Shannon finished for him. Then she said, “I actually talked to my friend Dani this morning. She says her school is shaping up.”

“And that it could all be yours?”

“Not all of it, no. But a small piece of the pie.”

“So I'm curious,” Dag said as they finished the sundae, set the container on the coffee table and moved on to the spicy tea Shannon had brewed for them. “This Dani is your best friend, right? You're not marrying the Rumson. You've sold your parents' business and the building that was home to you all. You've sold your grandmother's house here. It seems like you've cut all the ties in Montana in order to move on and that you kind of like the idea of going out to California with your friend. But you haven't actually made that decision?”

“I didn't sell anything to
cut ties,
” Shannon amended his assumption. “I had to sell the business and the building it was in to pay off the last of my parents' medical bills. I wasn't going to move to Northbridge to live, so there wasn't a reason to keep Gramma's house—especially since I couldn't afford any kind of upkeep or the taxes or insurance on it. And between what little was left of my parents' assets after the bills and the sale of Gramma's place, that still only gave me a small nest egg.”