Christmas Ever After

  A Cape Hope Romance

  Clare Connelly

  Christmas Ever After

  Copyright© 2021 Clare Connelly

  EPUB Edition

  The Tule Publishing, Inc.

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  First Publication by Tule Publishing 2021

  Cover design by Lee Hyat Designs

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  ISBN: 978-1-953647-28-3

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  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Epilogue

  Cape Hope series

  About the Author

  Prologue

  Christmas, 1999.

  “Here, this is for you.”

  Cassidy lifted her eyes to her grandfather’s face, brushing aside bangs that were in desperate need of a trim. “What is it?”

  Tommy chuckled, rocking back on his heels in a habit he had, passing the wrapped box over. “Open it and find out.”

  But Cassie hesitated. At seven, she wasn’t a fan of surprises—they’d been no friend of hers. Her fingers ran over the edges of the gift, feeling the angles, surmising it to be a cube of some sort.

  “It won’t bite.”

  Cassidy’s smile was distracted.

  He took the seat opposite her with a heavy sigh. “It’s Christmas. This is what people do.”

  “I know that. It’s just . . .” Her eyes shifted to the tree. “You’ve already gotten me so much.”

  “Barely anything.” He dismissed the few presents gathered beneath the fir branches with a wave of his hand. But to Cassie, who’d been accustomed to Christmases without any fanfare whatsoever, the selection of gifts represented a mountain. “Besides, this is special.”

  “Do you mean they’re not special?” She hitched her thumb toward the tree, teasing her grandfather.

  He rewarded her with a laugh but sobered a moment later. “I know Christmas is hard for you, Cass. Your mom . . . the last few years.” He shook his head, his eyes heavy with sadness and loss. “I wish—”

  Cassie looked away, blinking at unexpected tears of her own, and Tommy leaned forward, resting his hand over her much smaller one. “Go on. See what you think.”

  Cassie hesitated a moment more before peeling up a tab of tape and opening the paper to reveal another side of the box. She pressed her teeth into her lower lip as she separated another piece of tape, and another, until finally a blue velvet cube was revealed.

  She cracked the hinged lid, releasing a whoosh of air at what greeted her. A delicate brooch was inside, shaped like a butterfly, made of gold with pale blue and green gems used to decorate the wings.

  Cassie pulled it from the velvet nesting spot, marveling at the way the stones twinkled beneath the Christmas lights, casting hundreds of light prisms across the room. “Oh, Grandpa.” She lifted it closer, captivated by the seemingly fragile design. “It’s wonderful.”

  “Do you like it?” He leaned closer, as though Cassie’s approval was the most important thing in the world.

  She nodded. “Of course. It’s nice.” She traced the gems with her fingertip. “Is it old?”

  “Yes.”

  “How old?”

  “I don’t know, exactly.” The response was quiet, drawing Cassie’s curious gaze. She had developed an extra good radar for dishonesty in her short life.

  “Was it Mommy’s?”

  He shook his head, and the silence between them seemed to creak for a moment under the weight of their shared grief—and anger. After all, Cassie’s mother hadn’t needed to die. And she certainly hadn’t needed to take her own mother with her. In the days after the funeral, she’d heard Tommy remarking to someone on the phone that the only blessing he could count was that Cassie hadn’t been in the car with them when it had plowed off the road and into a tree.

  Cassie wasn’t sure yet if that was a blessing or not. She didn’t think she wanted to die, but it was strange to think of her mom and grandma no longer being here.

  “No.”

  Tommy’s uneasy response took so long to form that Cassie had almost forgot what she’d asked. She looked back at the brooch, moving her lips to one side as she considered that.

  “Then—”

  “It’s yours now,” he said, dropping his hand, turning his back on her. “I wanted you to have it.”

  The response was uncharacteristically sharp from her grandfather, a man whose voice she’d never heard raised, not once. Even when she’d first come to live with him and she’d knocked the fish tank off the sideboard, spilling pebbles, seaweed, and three very special and brightly colored fish all over the living room floor. Tommy had saved them, not because he particularly cared about the fish, but because he’d known Cassidy couldn’t handle any more death.

  “Now, there’s something else I thought we could do tonight.”

  At seven, Cassie was perceptive enough to realize what he was doing. It was their first Christmas without the others, so of course he wanted to distract her, and likely himself.

  “What’s that?” She contemplated attaching the brooch to her nightgown but thought better of it. It was far too special for such casual use. She’d save it for another time, when she was in fancy clothes and the occasion truly warranted it.

  “Let’s see if you like playing the piano as much as you do staring at it.” He gestured across the room to the upright instrument pressed to one of the timber walls.

  Cassie’s eyes grew round in her face, her breathing slightly rushed. “But I’m not allowed to touch it.” She recited the rule she’d been told when, as a three-year-old, Helen had driven across the country, one more eviction under her belt, and asked if she and Cassie could live at Ashdene for a while. “Just while I sort some things out.”

  “You were practically still a baby then,” he said with a shake of his head. “Anyway, pianos are made to be played.” He shoved his left hand in his pocket, concealing the missing fingers out of habit.

  “I don’t know what to do.”

  “Well, you’ve never learned,” he said logically, his voice steady and calm. “But in a few weeks, you’ll get to grips with your keys and scales. Just you wait.”

  “A few weeks,” she repeated as butterflies just like the one on her new pin exploded in her belly. Her grandfather could no longer play the piano—his injury made it impossible—but one July fourth, late in the evening, Cassie’s mom had told a boyfriend all about Tommy’s music, and how he’d been offered a scholarship at a famous music school in New York. He’d never gone—the war had made it impossible. “Show me.”

  Chapter One

  Christmas, 2019.

  Cassidy hated hospitals and she wasn’t really a big fan of Christmas either, so sitting in an empty emergency department waiting room with a flickering fluorescent light overhead and a plastic Christmas tree a few feet away, wrapped in tinsel as though it were a big, glittery bandage, was just adding salt to the wound.

  “Excuse me?” She pounced the minute a nurse clickety-clacked her way behind the counter. The woman—with curly black hair, bright-pink nails and a name badge that read Patricia—smiled politely.

  “Yes, ma’am?”

  Cassidy sucked in a deep breath. “I’m looking for information on my grandfather. Someone said they were checking on his condition, but that was fifteen minutes ago.”

  Patricia’s eyes softened at the corners. “And you’re anxious?”

  Another thing Cassie hated—small towns and the way everyone expected they had a right to know everything about your business. It was one of the reasons she’d left this place without a backward glance almost exactly ten years ago. She’d always hated busybodies, and the way they’d descended, vulture-like, after her mother’s car accident.

  “I’d like to know what happened, and when I can see him.”

  “I see.” Patricia’s sympathy was unchecked by the cool response. “Let me see what I can do for you. Name?”

  “Cassidy Hanna.”

  The nurse nodded. “And your grandfather’s?”

  She exhaled slowly, trying to focus. “Thomas Hanna. Tommy.” Her voice cracked a little as she used the shortened version of his name. She’d never heard anyone call him anythi
ng but Tommy. Thomas was so stuffy and formal, definitely ill-suited to a man who spent the long days of summer angling for fish in the shallow waters of the ocean that rolled into and wrapped around Cape Hope.

  The nurse’s finger tapped a name on a piece of paper. “He was brought in this morning.”

  Cassie nodded because she didn’t trust her voice to speak. She’d been running her usual route, looping around Bryant Park, breath fogging out in puffs courtesy of the subzero temperatures, when her phone had rung. “Ma’am, I’m Harrison Parker, a paramedic. Your grandfather had a fall, a bad one, and needs to be admitted to the hospital. He wanted you to know.”

  There were many alarming details in that succinct relaying of information. Things Harrison Parker didn’t say but that Cassie understood. The most terrifying of which was the fact Tommy had asked for her to be called. He hated to make a fuss and particularly hated to bother Cassie. It drove her crazy. The last time she’d come to visit he’d barely let her in the kitchen to fix a cup of tea for him, let alone do anything around the house that might make his life easier. And how she’d wanted to!

  Living alone had been bad for Tommy. When she’d first moved away, he’d kept things much as they’d ever been, but in the last few years he’d been getting sloppy, disorganized. The last time she’d visited, the place had been almost unrecognizable, with books stacked like towers in the hallway, boxes dragged out of the attic and left across the dining room, and dishes in the sink. There were some signs he’d tried to tidy up, but overall the sense had been one of chaos and mess. Tommy was fiercely independent. It wouldn’t have occurred to him to get someone in to help, nor to ask Cassie for it.

  So for Tommy to ask a paramedic to call Cassie, she knew he must have been really hurt or really scared and the latter almost cracked Cassie’s heart beyond repair. She had the sense that she was drowning, water pressing in on her, just to think of her grandpa, who was fearless and brave and had held her close on the nights when she’d missed her mom so much she couldn’t sleep, who’d let her cry into his side until the tears were all spent, the man who’d been to war and tackled bombs with his bare hands, to think of that man being scared . . .

  “Please, I need to know what’s going on.” Urgency flooded her voice. She lifted a hand to tuck her hair behind her ear, its thick dark length with natural honey-brown highlights unruly courtesy of her morning run, then a frantic day spent throwing whatever she could hurriedly find into an overnight bag, catching a cab to the airport, hopping on a hastily booked flight to Wilmington, and enduring an hour’s drive in a tiny rental car beneath a sky that had been thick and heavy with the threat of rain and thunder almost the entire time.

  “Of course you do,” the nurse agreed, reaching for the phone beside her. “Hang on. I’ll see what I can find out.”

  Cassie offered a small smile, but inside, her nerves were stretching tighter and tighter, almost to breaking point. Her stomach was empty—she’d had a packet of crackers on the flight and nothing else all day—and even though she was too worried to eat, she recognized that her body craved food and her mind would work better if she had some energy. Her eyes strayed the length of the corridor, skipping over the garish Christmas tree and falling on a vending machine propped behind it.

  “He’s down the hall and to the right.”

  Cassie spun on her heel. More garish Christmas decorations greeted her—garlands of tinsel adorned the ceilings and plastic casts of Father Christmas danced along the walls. “And?”

  “He had a fall.” The nurse lifted a shoulder. “Looks like he broke his arm, but it’s a weekend and the specialist won’t be in ’til Monday.”

  “I can go see him?”

  The nurse’s eyes lifted to the clock. “It’s outside visiting hours.” Cassie’s heart plummeted to her toes. “So don’t stay too long, okay?”

  “Thank you.” She nodded jerkily. She just needed to see him tonight, make sure he was okay and that he knew she’d come. Guilt bubbled inside of her, a guilt she often felt when she thought of how she’d turned her back on Cape Hope, not coming home for several years when she’d first left, desperate for a clean break, and terrified of seeing Phoenix again, of being confronted with the man who’d broken her heart. Man? Could he be called a man at only nineteen? And had her heart really been at stake? Theirs had been a childhood romance, that was all. Meaningless. They might have thought they were in love at one time, but really, it had been a stupid, naïve fantasy that had fallen apart like a house of cards. What was that if not evidence that it had never been love?

  Still, she’d felt heartsore for a long time, and embarrassed, so the idea of coming back to Cape Hope with all its memories was daunting enough that she’d avoided it like the plague. Tommy had traveled to Manhattan, but Cassie had still nursed a sense of guilt for a long time, because she’d left him completely alone—a man who’d once had a wife, a daughter, and a granddaughter suddenly had no one.

  Her feet moved faster, carrying her down the corridor, past more enthusiastically pinned tinsel and the occasional bauble, past noticeboards stickered with posters reminding her to get her flu vaccination and that regular checkups saved lives. Rounding the corner, there were several doors to her right.

  She hesitated, not keen to go poking her nose into each room until she found her grandfather’s. She looked around, but there was no one who could help her, so Cassie moved forward, casting as brief a glance as was possible into the rooms as she passed. Only one was occupied—a young girl had her leg in a cast. It was just past eight o’clock and she was asleep, her head lolled to the side, a book open on the edge of the bed. Cassie resisted an impulse to step in and shift the novel to a more secure spot. Light arced from the next room and Cassie held her breath, pausing for a moment as her eyes swept in and landed on the sleeping form of Tommy Hanna.

  She pressed a hand to her mouth, her body very still, hovering just outside the room. He looked so frail suddenly, so much older than he was. He’d turned sixty-eight over the summer. She hadn’t been able to come home for his birthday. She’d wanted to, but the concert series in Vienna had sold out twelve months earlier. Tommy had insisted she go. I’ll have lots more birthdays, Cassie. No need to make a fuss. It’s just another spin around the sun.

  She’d consoled herself as she always did, that she was making him proud. Her renown as a classical pianist was something he’d always wanted for her. And for himself, before the war had stolen that dream. She’d dedicated her performance to her grandfather, and had described him as an instinctive musician who could no longer play. The crowd had given her—and Tommy—a standing ovation.

  More guilt punched her in the gut. She moved into the room quietly, wincing when one of her sneakers squeaked against the linoleum floor. She paused, breath held, and, when she was sure Tommy hadn’t been disturbed, kept going. There was a chair beneath the window. She’d have liked to drag it closer to the bed, but that would have increased the likelihood of Tommy’s waking, so she left it where it was, perching on the edge with a growing sense of unease.

  Sitting wasn’t right. She stood, pacing quietly to the bed, studying him up close.

  Her pulse grew tight in her body, her fingers tingling.

  She’d thought she’d loved Phoenix, but she hadn’t. And he sure as heck hadn’t loved her.

  She thought she’d loved Mark, but she hadn’t, not really. Otherwise she would have accepted his proposal when he’d surprised her at dinner two weeks ago.

  Love could be complicated, whether romantic or familial, but in this case, it was straightforward. She loved Tommy more than she’d ever loved anyone. Even before the accident, that had been the case. Helen had been Cassie’s mom but it had never been straightforward. Drug addiction was a terrible thing and Helen had made a series of choices that terrified Cassie. She hadn’t loved her mother so much as depended on her for survival, and instinctively Cassie had understood that she needed to fulfil a certain role to stay safe and alive.

  Cassidy stood, watching Tommy for several minutes, wondering how much longer she should stay. He had a cast on his arm, and she thought how much he’d hate that, an additional limitation on top of what he’d already suffered with his fingers. Though, he was an expert at accommodating his injury now.