Lone Star Holiday Proposal

Raina smiled back. “Would you like me to gift wrap the doilies for you?”

“Would you? That would save me the bother, thank you.”

“Come on over to the counter...unless you’d like to keep browsing?”

“Maybe I’ll come in some other time and have a good poke around. Perhaps a day when I’m a bit less distracted,” Clare laughed.

“Good idea,” Raina agreed and walked over to the counter where she rewrapped the doilies in fresh tissue and put them in a gold box that she covered in a vibrant Christmas paper. “There you are,” she said as she finished tying a red bow around the box.

“That looks far better than anything I would have done,” Clare said admiringly.

“I get a bit more practice. I’m sure you can still diaper and swaddle a baby faster and more effectively than I ever could.”

“You could be right,” Clare conceded. “How is JJ?”

“He’s doing really great, thanks. Of course he can barely sleep for counting the nights until Christmas.”

“Good thing there are only two more to go.”

“For my sake as well as JJ’s,” Raina agreed vehemently.

A thought occurred to Raina. She knew Clare was about the same age as Nolan and probably went to the local high school at around the same time as he would have. She’d told herself she wouldn’t probe into his past, but with the opportunity presenting itself, maybe it was time she did a little poking around.

“Say, do you remember Nolan Dane?”

“Nolan? Yeah, sure. Why?”

“You know he was working on behalf of Samson Oil, don’t you?”

Clare’s mouth twisted into moue of distaste. “Yeah, I know. Seems like Royal is evenly divided about whether Samson Oil is a good thing or not.”

Raina nodded. “I know. But he resigned from that position. He’s going back to family law.”

Clare’s face brightened. “Is he? That’s great. I know everyone around here was so shocked when he left. Of course, it was totally understandable after what he’d been through but no one really expected him to leave. He’d always been so woven into the fabric of Royal, y’know? Excelled at high school—popular and great at sports. It didn’t matter what he put his hand to, he did it brilliantly. Our Nolan was quite the golden boy but never arrogant about it. Everyone liked him.”

“What he’d been through?” Raina prompted, even though her stomach curled at what she might be told. Being nosy like this was wrong on so many levels—what if she didn’t like what she heard? Raina forced herself to clear her mind of anxiety. Yes, this was Nolan’s tale to tell, but to be honest, she was done with waiting. She wanted to know. And she’d have to take whatever she heard and deal with it.

“Oh, you don’t know, do you? I keep forgetting that you didn’t grow up here. That’s a compliment by the way,” Clare said with a warm smile. “Like I said, Nolan was always a high achiever but so was Carole, his high school sweetheart. They went to college together and then on to law school. Once they got their degrees they came back to Royal and married, and a year later they had a little boy, Bennett. Nolan and Carole were the couple everyone wanted to emulate. They were successful, sure, but they were also so in love. You couldn’t look at them without feeling it.”

Raina felt each one of Clare’s words as if it was a physical blow but she tried hard not to linger on the pain. He’d had a life before she’d met him. So what on earth had gone wrong?

Clare continued, oblivious to the turmoil Raina was going through. “Carole returned to work soon after Bennett was born and I think he was about eighteen months old when it happened.”

Raina hesitated to ask but couldn’t help herself. “What happened?”

“It was awful. Apparently Nolan used to take Bennett to day care each morning as part of their routine. This particular day he heard that one of his clients had been severely beaten by her husband the night before. She called and asked him to come into the hospital to see her early, so he did. Of course that meant that Carole had to take Bennett to day care. Trouble was, she was in the middle of some really important negotiations her firm was handling at the same time and apparently she got paged while she was driving. She called her office and completely forgot Bennett was in the back of her car. They think he’d probably fallen asleep, too. Carole drove straight to her office and went to work. It was July and her car was parked in direct sunlight. Bennett died of heat exhaustion.”