The Bachelor’s Christmas Bride by Victoria Pade Read Free Book Online

have found that when I stripped off the wallpaper, but I had no idea it was there.”
    â€œIt makes a great hiding place,” Shannon said, peering inside to see if the things she’d hidden in it long, long ago could still be there.
    They were.
    â€œLet’s see,” she said as she began pulling them out.
    Dag hunkered down on his haunches beside her to have a closer look.
    â€œThis is the notebook I brought with me on my last trip—I was going to write a novel in it. An entire novel that I would write in secret and then surprise everyone with when I was finished.”
    â€œAt eleven?”
    â€œUh-huh. I believe I wrote about two paragraphs…” she said as she turned the notebook upright and unveiledthe first page. “Yep, two paragraphs. That was as far as my career as a great American novelist went. And I think it’s for the best,” she added with a laugh after glancing at what she’d written.
    Then she set the notebook down and reached back into the cubby.
    â€œLet me guess—those were from your great American artist period?” Dag teased when she pulled out several pages cut from a coloring book.
    Shannon flipped through the sheets. “Not a single stroke outside the lines—I was proud of being so meticulous. I think I was six.”
    â€œAnd this? You were going to be a chess master?” Dag said, picking up a carved horse’s head chess piece that had come out with the coloring book pages.
    Shannon grimaced. “ That was me being a brat.”
    â€œYou were a brat?” he said as if the idea delighted him.
    â€œI was five,” she said. “You have to understand, my parents were so close, so devoted to each other, so happy just to be together, that sometimes I felt a little left out. Not that I actually was,” she defended them in a hurry. “I was actually about as spoiled as I could be with their limited resources. But at five, when they were talking and laughing over a chess game…” Shannon shrugged. “One of those times I tried to interfere by—”
    â€œStealing one of their chessmen so they couldn’t play?”
    â€œAnd hiding it,” Shannon confessed. “I was leaving to come here the next day and I stuck it in my suitcase, so I ended up bringing it with me. By the time I was supposed to go home, I didn’t want to bring it back and admit I’d taken it and get into trouble, so I put it in the cubby.”
    â€œShame on you,” Dag pretended to reprimand, but it came with a laugh.
    â€œI know. Of course as I got older, the kind of relationship my parents had was what I realized I wanted for myself, but as a very little kid, there were times when I resented it because they were just so content being together no matter what they were doing—watching their favorite TV show or movie, or doing puzzles, or just talking or—”
    â€œPlaying chess?”
    â€œOr playing chess. I wanted to be the center of their universe—and I was—but they were also the center of each other’s universe, if that makes any sense…” Another shrug. “I think maybe I was a little jealous—it wasn’t rational, I was a kid.”
    â€œAnd now have you found that kind of relationship for yourself with the potential future-Governor?”
    There was no way she could answer that and luckily at about that same moment, she spotted one more thing in the cubby and reached in to retrieve a very ragged stuffed dog.
    â€œOh, Poppy! I’d forgotten all about you,” she said as if she hadn’t heard Dag’s question.
    She didn’t know if he recognized that she didn’t want to answer him or just went with the flow, but he didn’t push it. Instead he said, “That is one ratty-looking toy.”
    â€œI know. I carried him around with me, slept with him, played with him—he was my constant companion. When I got too old for that I