A Wedding for Christmas

“I’m a leg man myself,” Shane said with a hint of a smile that made Cris think perhaps the information applied to more than chickens.

“Me, too, Mama,” Ricky piped up right after Shane. “I’m a leg man, too.”

Cris banked the urge to hug Ricky to her and laugh. She knew that would only embarrass him before his new hero. But resisting the desire wasn’t easy.

“Two orders of fried chicken drumsticks coming up,” Cris told Shane and her son.

Ricky turned his attention back to Shane. “Who’s this sailor guy you said eats spinach?” he prodded. His expression clearly indicated he thought that anyone willing to eat the weed was less than a hero type, as well as somewhat weird.

With a smile, Shane proceeded to tell the little boy a story the way he recalled it from watching Saturday-television when he was about Ricky’s age.

As she listened to Shane, Cris concluded that the man was as wrapped up in the story as the boy was.

* * *

HE HAD A gift, Cris thought.

She’d gone to work the moment Shane had pulled his stool closer to Ricky’s and started telling the boy an elaborate story complete with a villain, a fair damsel in distress and the green seaweedlike vegetable that turned a somewhat aging sailor into almost a superhero with inflated forearms. Spinach gave the sailor, Popeye, the ability to pummel his enemy into the ground while rescuing a damsel only the one-eyed hero could love.

Cris caught herself listening to the details on more than one occasion as she prepared their lunches. It got to the point that she had to order herself to concentrate so as to block out Shane’s storytelling.

She noticed that Shane timed his story to finish almost at the exact same moment that she announced, “Lunch is ready.”

She placed both plates on the shiny stainless-steel counter, then slid one in front of Shane and the other in front of her son.

Ricky gazed at the vegetable combination a little uneasily, then raised his eyes to see what his newly discovered idol would do.

When Shane dug in, Ricky obviously felt compelled to follow suit, which he did, albeit reluctantly and in what seemed like slow motion. The first bite he took of the mashed potatoes and spinach combination produced a surprised expression on his small, angular face. His eyes looked ready to pop out. “Hey, this is good,” he told Shane.

Which was exactly the way Shane had reacted the first time he’d taken a bite. Ricky, Shane decided, reminded him somewhat of himself.

“Told you,” Shane said to the boy with a wide, satisfied smile.

Through hooded eyes, Cris watched in amazement as her son ate the spinach and potatoes she’d made for him. She expected him to leave at least half on his plate, but he ate until it was all gone. Not a moment’s hesitation, not a myriad of sour faces above his plate and certainly no begging or bargaining the way there usually was when Ricky faced something he would as soon walk away from than eat.

Ricky cleared his plate just as his hero did, then, still emulating Shane, pushed the plate back and patted his stomach.

“That was very good,” Shane told Cris.

“Yeah, very good,” Ricky echoed gleefully, emitting a huge, satisfied sigh the way Shane had half a minute ago.

“Well, I’ve got to be getting back to the job before your sister starts thinking she’s hired a freeloader.”

“What’s a freeloader?” Ricky wanted to know, looking from Shane to his mother for an answer.

“Something Mr. McCallister is definitely not,” Cris assured her son with certainty. The man more than earned his pay—in all departments. Her eyes met Shane’s and she murmured, “Thank you.”

The corners of his mouth curved ever so slightly as Shane said, “There’s no need to thank me.”

And with that, he left the kitchen.

Two sets of eyes watched him until he’d completely disappeared from view.

* * *

“THAT WAS NOTHING short of a miracle. I just wanted you to know that,” Cris said later on that day. Taking a break from her kitchen duties, she’d sought Shane out and found him exactly where he was supposed to be—hip deep in renovations. He was standing with his back toward her, intent on what he was doing on the workbench.

Coming up behind Shane, she was careful not to startle him. She didn’t want to be responsible for him making any unintentional cuts in either his project or himself.

Shane was running a power sander over the plank he intended to use for a new floorboard to match the ones throughout the inn, and he had on a mask to cut down on inhaling the dust.

Cris patiently waited until he’d stopped running the sander before she spoke again, knowing she’d either have to shout to be heard or get in his way so he could see her. Just waiting him out was simpler.

Turning the moment he heard her voice, Shane put the sander back down on the workbench he’d set up and lowered the mask from his nose and mouth.

He looked a little like a surgeon operating in the middle of a sandstorm, Cris thought with an unbidden wave of something that felt very close to affection.

“Excuse me?” he said, fairly certain he’d heard her wrong.

“A miracle,” she reiterated. “You performed a miracle,” she added in a clear, unshakable voice. “We could call it the miracle of the spinach and mashed potatoes, or just call it Shane’s Miracle for short,” she said, really grinning at him this time.

For a second, Shane watched in pure fascination as Cris’s smile coaxed the dimples in her cheeks to emerge, making her look even more appealing—something he hadn’t thought possible until he witnessed it himself.

He cocked his head a bit uncertainly. “Are you talking about lunch?”

“I’m talking about my son, the vegetable hater, eagerly eating spinach. To get him to eat any kind of a vegetable, I’ve tried to bribe him, coax him, do everything short of threatening to leave him wandering in SeaWorld on his own for a week, and you get him to do it in under ten minutes.

Cris shook her head in admiration. “You really must have been some teacher,” she told him with genuine awe.

His answering smile carried a bit of irony. “Never really had the chance to flex my muscles, so to speak,” he said. “I got my degree and suddenly found that I could only get substitute teaching jobs where all they wanted was for me to be a glorified babysitter.” The trace of bitterness she also heard in his voice surprised her. Shane seemed like such a laid-back character, someone who let stress roll off him. “When I started teaching the kids, I wound up ruffling a few feathers, and the jobs, never really plentiful to begin with, started not coming at all,” he finished with an air of disbelief even now.

“Well, the world lost a fantastic teacher the day you were forced to walk away,” she assured him. “If I was in charge of a school, I’d want all my teachers to be like you. You really connected with Ricky, right from the start,” she marveled. “I mean, he’s a friendly little guy, but it does take a bit for him to warm up to a person. With you he showed all the signs of love at first sight.”

Shane self-consciously shrugged off the compliment, not willing to accept what he felt wasn’t rightfully his. “Maybe he just wants a male to connect with and I happened to be handy.”

“You might have been handy, but Ricky’s already ‘connected’ to my dad and he gets along well with Wyatt, Alex’s fiancé. He really wasn’t looking for a male role model or someone to act as a father figure. Nope, Ricky just took to you exceptionally quickly,” Cris told him.

Again he shrugged. He didn’t care to have a spotlight shone on him no matter what his accomplishment.

“Must be my winning personality,” he quipped.

She laughed, not because his personality wasn’t engaging, but because his humor was so droll.

“Must be,” she agreed. “Anyway, I just wanted to thank you. You’ve officially cracked the impenetrable vegetable ceiling,” she told him, amusement curving her mouth. “I was expecting him to turn green or look around for somewhere to ‘deposit’ his mouthful of spinach. Instead, he not only swallowed what was in his mouth, but polished off what was on his plate.”

“I know, I was there,” Shane said with a wink.

Not for the first time, Cris felt something quicken inside her in response and silently argued it was because she’d forgotten to eat again, the way she did all too often when she got involved with what she was doing.