The Valentine Two-Step

Ellie made a face at her daughter, and Matt had to fight a chuckle. And he thought Cass and Lucy were bad at spilling family secrets.

“Be that as it may,” Ellie said, her cheeks tinged slightly pink, “I’m sure the Hartes have a lovely family dinner planned. They don’t need to be saddled with two more.”

“It’s no problem,” Cassie said. “We’d love to have you come. Wouldn’t we, Matt?”

He cleared his throat. Again, he couldn’t seem to make his brain work fast enough to come up with an excuse. “Uh, sure.”

Ellie raised an eyebrow at his less-than-enthusiastic response. He obviously didn’t want to invite her for Thanksgiving any more than she wanted to accept.

“Good. It’s settled,” Cassie said, oblivious to their objections. “It’s usually really casual. Just family—Matt, Lucy, our brother Jess and whichever of the ranch hands stick around for the holidays. We eat around two but you’re welcome to come out any time before then, especially if you’re into watching football with the guys.”

What she knew about football would fit into a saltshaker. Ellie sighed heavily. And what she knew about big rowdy Thanksgiving family dinners wouldn’t even fit on a grain of salt.

It looked like she was going to be stuck with both things. So much for her good intentions about having as little as possible to do with the man who somehow managed to jumble up her insides every time she was around him.

What choice did she have, though? She didn’t want to hurt his daughter or sister’s feelings by refusing the invitation. Lucy was a dear, sweet and quiet and polite. Exactly Dylan’s opposite! It was a wonder they were friends, but somehow the two of them meshed perfectly. They brought out the best in each other.

To her surprise, she and Cassie had also immediately hit it off. Unlike Matt, his sister was bubbly and friendly and went out of her way to make her feel welcomed.

She would sound churlish and rude if she refused to share their holiday simply because the alpha male in the family made her as edgy as a hen on a hot griddle and sent her hormones whirling around like a Texas dust storm.

“Can I bring something?” she finally asked, trying to accept the invitation as gracefully as she could manage.

“Do you have a specialty?” Cassie asked.

Did macaroni and cheese count as a specialty? She doubted it. “No. I’m afraid not.”

“Sure you do, Mom.” Dylan spoke up. “What about that pie you make sometimes?”

She made pecan pie exactly twice, but Dylan had never forgotten it. Hope apparently springs eternal in a nine-year-old’s heart that someday she would bake it again. “I don’t know if I’d call that a specialty.”

“Why don’t you bring it anyway?” Cassie suggested. “Or if you’d rather make something else, that would be fine.”

I’d rather just stay home and have our usual quiet dinner for two, she thought. But one look at Dylan revealed her daughter was ecstatic about the invitation. Her eyes shone, and her funny little face had the same kind of expectancy it usually wore just before walking downstairs on Christmas morning.

She looked so excited that Ellie instantly was awash in guilt for all the years they had done just that—stayed home alone with their precooked turkey and instant mashed potatoes instead of accepting other invitations from friends and colleagues.

Why had she never realized her daughter had been missing a big, noisy celebration? Dylan was usually so vocal about what she wanted and thought she needed. Why had she never said anything about this?

“Whatever you want to bring is fine,” Cassie assured her. “Really, though, you don’t have to bring anything but yourselves. Like I said, there’s always plenty of food.”

“I’ll bring the pecan pie,” she said, hoping her reluctance didn’t filter into her voice.

“Great. I usually make a pumpkin and maybe an apple so we’ll have several to choose from. Knowing my brothers, I doubt any of them will last long.”

She looked at Matt out of the corner of her eyes and found him watching her. What was he thinking? That she was an interloper who had suddenly barged her way in to yet another facet of his life when he had plainly made it clear she wasn’t welcome? She couldn’t tell by the unreadable expression in those startling blue eyes.

The timer suddenly went off on the oven.

“That would be the cookies.” Cassie jumped up and opened the oven door, releasing even more of the heavenly aroma.

A smell so evocative of hearth and home that Ellie’s heart broke a little for all the homemade cookies she never had time to bake for her daughter. She had shed her last tear a long time ago for all the missing cookies in her own childhood.

Cassie quickly transferred at least half a dozen of the warm, gooey treats onto a plate for Matt, then poured him a glass of milk from the industrial-size refrigerator.

She set both in front of him, and he quickly grabbed them and stood up. Ellie smiled a little at the blatant relief evident in every line of his big, rangy body.

“Thanks,” he mumbled to his sister. “I’ll let you ladies get back to whatever you were talking about before I interrupted you.”

The girls’ giggles at being called ladies trailed after him as Matt made his escape from the kitchen.

“Wow, Mom. You look really great,” Dylan said for about the fifth time as they made their way up the walk to the sprawling Diamond Harte ranch house.

Ellie fought her self-consciousness. Matt’s sister said Thanksgiving dinner would be casual, but she didn’t think her usual winter attire of jeans and denim work shirts was quite appropriate.

Instead, she had worn her slim wool skirt over soft black leather boots and a matching dove-gray sweater—one of her few dressy outfits that only saw the light of day when she went to professional meetings. Was she hideously over-dressed? She hoped not. She was nervous enough about this as it was without adding unsuitable clothes to the mix.

She shouldn’t be this nervous. It was only dinner, nothing to twist her stomach into knots over or turn her mouth as dry as a riverbed in August.

She cleared her throat, angry with herself, at the knowledge that only part of her edginess had to do with sharing a meal with Matt Harte and his blue eyes and powerful shoulders.

That might be the main reason, but the rest had more to do with the holiday itself. She had too many less-than-pleasant memories of other years, other holidays. Always being the outsider, the one who didn’t belong. Of spending the day trying to fit in during someone else’s family celebration in foster home after foster home.

This wasn’t the same. She had a family now—Dylan. All she could ever want or need. Her funny, imaginative, spunky little daughter who filled her heart with constant joy. She was now a confident, self-assured woman, content with life and her place in it.

So why did she feel like an awkward, gawky child again, standing here on the doorstep, hoping this time the people inside would like her?

Dylan, heedless of her mother’s nerves, rushed up the remaining steps and buzzed hard on the doorbell, and Ellie forced herself to focus on something other than her own angst.

She looked around her, admiring the view. In the lightly falling snow, the ranch was beautiful. Matt kept a clean, well-ordered operation, she could say that for him. The outbuildings all wore fresh paint, the fences were all in good repair, the animals looked well-cared for.

Some outfits looked as cluttered as garbage dumps, with great hulking piles of rusty machinery set about like other people displayed decorative plates or thimble collections. Here on the Diamond Harte, though, she couldn’t see so much as a spare part lying around.

It looked like a home, deeply loved and nurtured.

What must it have been like to grow up in such a place? To feel warm dirt and sharp blades of grass under your bare feet in the summertime and jump into big piles of raked leaves in the fall and sled down that gently sloping hill behind the barn in winter?

To know without question that you belonged just here, with people who loved you?

She pushed the thoughts away, angry at herself for dredging up things she had resolved long ago. It was only the holiday that brought everything back. That made her once more feel small and unwanted.

To her relief, the door opened before she could feel any sorrier for herself, sending out a blast of warmth and a jumble of delectable smells, as well as a small figure who launched herself at Dylan with a shriek of excitement.

“You’re here! Finally!”

“We’re early, aren’t we?” Ellie asked anxiously. “Didn’t your aunt say you were eating at two? It’s only half past one.”

“I don’t know what time it is. I’ve just been dying for you to get here. Dylan, you have got to come up to my room. Uncle Jess bought me the new ’N Sync CD and it’s so totally awesome.”