Issued to the Bride One Sergeant for Christmas by Cora Seton

Author:Cora Seton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Romance
Publisher: One Acre Press
Published: 2020-06-13T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 8

‡

“Everything okay?” Wye asked Emerson as they trailed after the rest of the party into the house. She brushed the snow off her coat the best she could.

Emerson helped her. “Yeah, I’m good.” Really good, actually. After the women had headed outside earlier, the house had seemed unnaturally quiet—until Connor had come and collared him.

“Come on, Myers. We’ve got work to do.” He’d dumped a string of Christmas lights in Emerson’s hands and led the way to where Jack, Brian, Logan and Hunter were lugging more of them up from where they’d been stored in the basement. All of them trooped outside where Emerson, Logan and Hunter had worked on detangling the long strings of lights while Brian and Jack climbed the ladder to hang them.

For once Emerson hadn’t felt any awkwardness with the other men. They’d ribbed him as much as they had each other. Ordered him around with the same casual goodwill. When they’d spotted the women trudging home with the Christmas tree, it was Jack who’d instigated the snowball fight, but everyone had expected him to join in.

Maybe he’d found a place here after all.

“You seemed a little distant last night,” Wye said.

He supposed he had. “Working things out in my head, I guess. Hard to know where I stand around here sometimes.” He was feeling more confident about his position now, though.

When Wye tossed her head back and laughed, he stuffed his hands in his pockets. “What’s so funny?”

“Cass and the others set me a straight concerning that tonight. And I think they’re right.”

“What did they say?”

“That you can’t wait for an invitation to belong. You have to decide that you do. That snowball fight was the first time I stopped asking whether they wanted me around and just assumed they did. It felt good. Maybe we should both stop fighting against this crazy family and let them adopt us.”

“I guess. Sometimes I can’t work out if Lena wants me around, though,” he said. “Or Cass, for that matter.”

“Maybe we keep taking every little hiccup too seriously,” Wye said slowly. “Maybe the fact that Lena and Cass can tell you how they really feel means they’re comfortable with you.”

“Maybe.”

“And maybe it means sometimes you have to decide what to stand up for and what to let go of.”

“Like letting Cass make the coffee for everyone else after I make it for the General.”

“Exactly like that.”

“What about living at the Park?”

“What about it?”

Following the others, they walked up the back steps and into the warmth of the house. Cass was already making more hot chocolate. Hunter and Jack were struggling with the Christmas tree in the front room. Alice was telling Brian and Logan where the ornaments were stored.

“Might as well pull them out now so we’re ready for tomorrow,” she said.

Emerson took Wye aside. “I thought it would be good for us to have some distance between us and everyone else, but the General says we should pick a building site close to the main house.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.