The Stroke of Winter(53)

Wyatt’s eyes grew wide. “Oh no.”

“Yeah,” Tess said. “Car accident. Actually, his dad, Matt, came in from Las Vegas, where he lives now with his new wife, and spent several weeks with us as Eli got back on his feet.”

“It sounds like your relationship is okay now, then,” Wyatt said.

“Oh yeah,” Tess said. “It has been for a long time. We needed to be good coparents for Eli. And we were. It’s sort of wonderful now because so much time has passed, we can just appreciate what we genuinely liked about each other and don’t have to deal with what we didn’t.”

“Not all divorced couples are so civil,” Wyatt said. “I haven’t so much as talked to my ex since we split.”

“I get that,” Tess said. “You didn’t have any kids to tie you together.”

The conversation turned to other things, then. Where they went to college, significant experiences. Funny tales from childhood. Painful ones, too. “The great telling,” Tess’s grandmother used to say. The time in a relationship where you reveal who you are through the important stories that shaped who you were. Tess thought of Joe then, and realized these were the stories she’d remember if she were lucky enough to reach his age. She had a feeling that this night, with the way Wyatt was looking at her, and the way she was looking back, could become one of those stories.

She had a vision just then, a picture of the two of them snuggling together on this black sofa, a bowl of popcorn on Wyatt’s lap, and the three dogs curled up by the fire.

Was this a flash of their future? As she sat listening to this man talk about a crazy trip he had taken with some high school friends, the world seemed to melt away. All Tess could see was his chiseled face, his green eyes, and his infectious grin. And for the first time in a very long time, she had hope.





CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR



The walk back to La Belle Vie was chilly. Tess could see her breath. She took Wyatt’s arm and snuggled close to him as they walked.

She noticed his dogs pulled their leashes taut, straight out in front of Wyatt, as though they were pulling a sled side by side.

“They love this weather, don’t they?” Tess asked, warmed by what seemed like smiles on the dogs’ faces.

“They are in their glory in the winter,” Wyatt said. “If it’s not below zero, I’ll let them stay out in the backyard for hours. This year, there’s so much snow, both of them dug snow dens.”

“Just like wolves,” Tess said. “Or sled dogs on the trail.”

“Exactly like that,” Wyatt said.

Snow began to fall then, a light, dusty snow that clung to the branches of the majestic pines lining the streets and settled on Tess’s hat and eyebrows. She put her head back and stuck out her tongue to catch a few flakes. Wyatt did the same.

“December snow,” he said, grinning. “Nothing better.”

The two of them stopped for a moment, there on the sidewalk, and took in the scene around them. Snow frosting the pines and the malamutes’ fur. Lights burning in the windows of the grand and not-so-grand homes in the neighborhood, evoking thoughts of happy families enjoying meals around the table together. Utter silence—not a car or a pedestrian or even another dog traveling on the streets of town—as the snow fell lightly around them. It was like Tess and Wyatt were in their own magical, snowy world, inside a snow globe depicting the perfect winter night.

“This is so beautiful,” Tess murmured in a whisper.

“Yes, you are,” Wyatt said. He pulled her into a kiss, their mittened hands curling around each other as the snow fell. A surety descended upon her then, a certainty about what was electrifying the air between them. This is the man I’m going to grow old with. It was early in their relationship, and despite Tess thinking it was foolish to rush in so quickly, she simply knew he was the one for her, as surely as she knew Eli and her parents would love him. His humor. His steadfastness. His love of and loyalty to family. How easy he was to talk to. How she wanted to hear his voice first thing in the morning and last thing at night. And the intangibles, too, like the way he made her feel, deep inside.

As they walked, then, arm in arm, toward La Belle Vie, Tess silently decided she would ask Wyatt to stay. It had been a long time since she had slept next to a man, let alone done anything else, and a sizzle of nervousness flashed up her spine. She hoped her bathroom was clean and that her bedroom wasn’t strewn with yesterday’s clothes and underwear. But even if her bedroom was a mess, she knew she didn’t want this day, and evening, to end.

Tess realized it was time to get on with it, already. She had left the false hopes of reconciling with Matt well behind her. Now it was time to admit there was more to her life than being a single mom to a now-adult son, and begin to live again with, perhaps, this incredible man who was right in front of her. As the snow fell around them, it seemed like a blessing of that realization, an impossibly romantic blessing.

She and Wyatt shared a smile, and she wondered if he was thinking the same thing.

Two blocks away, they rounded the corner to Tess’s house, and the magic that had been swirling in the air between them took a dark turn, as magic often can. Whatever enchantment had been floating around them vanished. The snow globe fell onto the sidewalk with a thud and cracked.

All the lights in La Belle Vie were off, except one. The studio. The light was blazing there, and it shone through the whole wall of windows. It stopped Tess and Wyatt in their tracks. Even the dogs stood still.