Connie hugged her again. “I’m scaring you aren’t I?”
“A little.” Georgia looked at her frazzled friend and chuckled. “But isn’t this how all pregnant women act?”
Her friend’s jaw dropped. “You can tell? I’m not that far along.” She looked down at herself and started sniffling again. “It’s my breasts, isn’t it? Lori Ann said she couldn’t really notice the difference, but I could barely get that seatbelt across them this morning.”
She comforted her friend, acknowledging with a silent nod of thanks when Flynn brought out her jacket and placed it over her shoulders.
Simon was talking to Jimmy. “Good thing you took your vacation time this week. Some of your buddies spent the last few days snowed in at the station. You can imagine what a fun slumber party that was.”
Jimmy shook his head. “I’ll be hearing about it for months to come I’m sure. I should check on them. Make sure they aren’t planning any shootouts.”
Georgia patted Connie’s hand. “I’m just going to go get our things, then we can get you back home where it’s warm.”
She heard Jimmy’s sound of disagreement but kept walking. This was already going to be difficult. Now it would be difficult in front of a friend with matchmaking tendencies and wild hormone fluctuations, as well as a stranger.
It was no surprise when she turned around, her bag over her shoulder, to find the three men right behind her. Jimmy got to her first. “You’re going? Just like that?”
Georgia didn’t know what to say. “She drove here in a wildebeest of a vehicle, a day before your road would be cleared. Pregnant. Who knows how she’d react if I didn’t go.”
Jimmy opened his mouth to argue, but Chris shot him down. “She’s right, James. Connie is too early in her pregnancy to be this worked up. And she did come to spend Christmas with her…not us.”
Jimmy turned to Flynn. “What about you? Are you fine with this?”
Flynn glanced at Chris, then Georgia. “We knew she would be leaving us, Jimmy. And Chris is right. We don’t want to be responsible for turning a pregnant woman gray.”
Georgia’s vision blurred with tears. This was crazy. They were all reacting to the timing. That was all. Last night had been intensely intimate. It was bound to spill over into the next day. “Thank you all. For the snowmen. For bringing me here. For everything.”
She quickly kissed Chris and Flynn on the cheek, but Jimmy grabbed her arm. “What the hell is going on? What did I miss?”
“I missed it.” She tugged away from his touch regretfully. “I have to go.”
She walked out to find Roux poking her head out of Flynn’s bedroom. The snowcat, it seemed, had scared her. “Come on, girl. Time to take a ride.”
Her tail started wagging. She loved riding in the car. Roux had no idea yet that she was leaving her new best friends for good. That she’d never see them again. She’d be brokenhearted when she figured it out.
Georgia’s eyes were caught by a glimmer of silver. Her locket on that raggedy tree. Her throat closed. It was a gift from one of the most wonderful men she’d ever known, but she just couldn’t take it with her.
Nicholas deserved it far more than she did.
***
She wasn’t sure she would ever be able to face Simon again. Georgia sighed as she rolled out the pie dough with a bit more enthusiasm than she needed to. Not that she had any choice in the matter, since he and the rest of his quartet were coming over for dinner tonight.
Christmas Eve.
After they’d gotten on the road and headed out to the ski lodge, Connie’s hormones had calmed enough for her to realize something was very wrong with Georgia. It didn’t take much for the entire story to spill out into the air for Connie…and Simon to hear.
When she got to the part about her book, her reaction, Connie tried to be understanding, but it was plain to see she was just as confused as Chris had been.
Georgia had known she’d overreacted. That she hadn’t needed bad holiday karma to hurt three men who had been nothing but wonderful and kind and generous with her. She’d done the job just fine on her own.
Grandpa Bale would be ashamed to discover that his holiday happy granddaughter had become a Grinch.
She tossed more flour on the damp dough, peeling it off the rolling pin with absent-minded skill as she thought about him. And them. And the book.
If she had taken a moment she might have marveled at the synchronicity of it all. The tree. Their brother. Her book. In fact, someone without her grinchy blinders might call it fate.
She shook her head. Wishful thinking. She hadn’t been good enough for that stocking stuffer if you combined all her years on the planet. Who had? Three men just for her? Women everywhere would lead mass protests. Her name would be vilified. They would refuse to have sex with another man again unless she shared the wealth, and a national emergency would be declared.