“No,” she countered. “Not wrong. It’s true I was in limbo, but the emails really helped me get a sense of your life.”
“The same for me, Lanza.”
“I’m glad things worked out this way.”
He covered her hand and squeezed it. “You really mean that?”
“Yes.”
“Then let’s go downstairs and get ready to enjoy this day.”
She followed him below. He opened the closet door for her. A few minutes later she appeared in his sister’s ski outfit. Her womanly figure drew his attention. No matter what she wore, he found himself unable to keep his eyes off his new wife.
He carried the box outside with some food. “If you want, we’ll put on our snowshoes and trek across the property to that pine tree. Maybe he’ll follow us. I’ll tuck a bag of food inside my parka in case he trails us.”
Together they strapped themselves into their snowshoes and started across the expanse, retracing their own former tracks that stood out in the snow. Every so often they looked back, but the fox had stayed in the box. Eventually, they reached the pine tree where they’d found Fausto.
Lanza shot him a guilty glance. “Maybe I did the wrong thing to feed him. Now he’s spoiled and doesn’t want to leave our protection.”
He put his hands on his hips. “You did the right thing. Not everyone would have done that.”
She bit her lip. “But it might have been a mistake.” In the next breath she turned and started walking farther into the trees. She handled the snowshoes like a pro.
“Stefano!”
Her cry drew his attention and he started after her. It was an older stand of forest. He noticed a lot of debris and some trees had been downed during the ferocity of the storm. “What is it?”
“I need your help.”
Alarmed, he hurried toward the sound of her voice. When he came upon her, she was standing at the end of a toppled tree that was dead in spots. “What’s wrong?”
“This top would make the perfect Christmas tree. If we could break it off, we could drag it back to the chalet and pretend it’s Christmas Eve. All the pine cones make perfect ornaments. Thanks to the wedding, I feel like Christmas passed me by this year.”
He stared at her in disbelief. “You didn’t celebrate Christmas?”
“We had a tree at the palace, but getting ready for the wedding took precedence over everything. I feel like I missed it altogether. From
childhood I dreamed of finding my own little tree in the woods near the palace and putting it in my room. But that was never allowed.” She averted her eyes. “Please forget I said anything. It was a silly idea.”
With a flushed face, she worked her way past him to reach the clearing.
Stefano walked over to the tree and took a good look to see if separating it was possible. After bracing his boot against the dead part near the top, he grasped the trunk and pulled hard. To his surprise it gave. He kept tugging until he pulled it free.
The little tree couldn’t be more than five feet in length, light and easy enough to pull behind him. Over the years he’d often spent the holidays at the chalet, but he’d never put up a tree, let alone one from his own property. The novel idea seemed to be important to his wife and he wanted to please her. When he got it back to the chalet, he could fix a stand for it and set it up in the living room.
All these years he’d put off the idea of getting married because he loved being free. When he thought about it, he realized that the relationships he’d sought over the years had always fallen short of anything lasting.
Though his mother had hit a nerve, she hadn’t been off the mark when she’d reminded him he hadn’t brought a special woman home for them to meet. That was her argument to convince him he had no reason not to marry Lanza and fulfill his duty.
But now he was beginning to think that wasn’t the real reason that had stopped him from settling down. Maybe it was possible that the only reason he’d remained single this long was because he’d never met the right woman until Lanza...
CHAPTER EIGHT
LANZA KEPT WALKING toward the chalet, feeling like a fool. It had been the height of idiocy to talk to him about a Christmas tree. He must think she was stupid. But she knew she’d fallen in love with her husband and was living out her private fantasy of sharing Christmas with the man she wanted to spend the rest of her life with.
As she trudged on, there was no sign of Fausto. Maybe he’d run away while they’d been gone. That would be a good thing. He belonged in the wild.
Maybe her eyes were deceiving her, but when she reached the chalet she saw the fox creep out of the box, almost as if he was greeting her.