1
TOLLY
As an English lord, I’m expected to spend Christmastime at my rather impressive estate south of Manchester or my private island off the British Virgin Islands, but no. There’s nowhere else I’d rather be than at a small family farm in rural Texas, nervously juggling an armful of Christmas presents while building up the courage to knock on the damned door.
I nearly jump out of my skin when the phone buzzes in my pocket but I ignore it. Whatever disparaging thing my father has to say to me can wait until after Christmas.
I’m visiting the Hernandez family, whose homestead is next door to the Wild Heart Ranch. The ranch is run by my friends Charlie and Erik, who help save victims of human trafficking. Erik fell in love with Ant Hernandez, a man he rescued, and I’ve been more than happy to assist them in their endeavors. When they needed support in one of the places where Ant was most hurt, I readily offered my yacht and willing crew.
Ant has since been reunited with the Hernandez family, including Gael, his cousin, who is more like a brother to him.
And Gael… well. He’s the reason I’ve flown halfway around the world to spend Christmas in a small Texas town where the sun is shining and the temperatures hover near thirty degrees. Celsius, that is.
I don’t think there are words in the English language to convey how I feel about this man. I first laid eyes on Gael when Ant, wanting to support his cousin’s shoemaking business, sent me and others a link to Gael’s website. I was quickly taken by the craftsmanship and had to know more about the man who’d made such beautiful shoes.
I clicked on the About tab and was immediately and fully smitten. The first photograph on the page was a black-and-white candid of Gael laughing with his head thrown back. The subsequent photos were a series of posed shots, each more gorgeous than the last, but I kept going back to that one picture.
Gael and Ant share a lot of features, though Gael is slightly taller, his nose a bit longer, and his hair less tame. God, he is beautiful.
I have an open invitation to Wild Heart’s Friday night dinners, and after visiting Gael’s website, I promptly found an excuse to attend. I had no expectations with that first visit, not really. Just a beautiful photograph and this quiet voice in my heart telling me to go to him.
The moment I was let in the bunkhouse, though, my eyes found him, and I don’t think I saw anything else for the rest of the evening. While the pictures on his website are lovely, they’re the equivalent of a small child’s crayon drawing next to the vibrant man in the flesh. He was effervescent, full of joy for his cousin, and witnessing how they reconnected after years of being apart was something I’d carry with me always.
Gael and I had a moment when we first met, I know we did. But, the universe had other plans. I’d done my best, drawing him out, getting him to talk about his craft, hoping he felt the same buzz under his skin that I did.
However, over the course of the evening, I couldn’t help but notice a reticence under his natural happiness. I knew there had been an awful incident at his and Ant’s abuela’s house and asked Erik about it, wondering what I’d missed. He explained that Gael had been mistaken for Ant and had to fight off multiple armed attackers, maiming one of them. He was even briefly taken until Ant chased after him and pushed him out of the kidnapper’s truck.
In that short, awful window of time, Gael learned more about Ant’s history than he could process. Erik said he’d thrown up recounting what the kidnappers had threatened to do to him. Gael realized they were speaking of revisiting that which Ant had already survived—grotesque horrors he’d scarcely been able to imagine prior.
I was already half gone for the man based off a few photos on a website and was instantly besotted the second I spoke to him. By the time I’d seen his gentle humour and fierce loyalty to his family, and especially Ant, I was willing to sign my life away just to be with him.
The thing I’d learned about helping those who’d survived awful experiences was that you let them heal on their own timeline. Gael—beautiful, perfect Gael—was recovering, and it certainly wasn’t the right time to declare my feelings.
Still, I had to do something. I marched myself to the ranch next to the Hernandez land, found the owner, and made him an offer so ridiculous he didn’t even hesitate to agree to my terms.
When questioned, I tell people it’s an investment property and I’m considering rental cabins or some such, which on its face is not a terrible idea. That’s how I pay for my island retreat and partially fund rescue operations with Wild Heart. But my friends know I couldn’t care less about profit. I need to be close to Gael, and he needs to be close to his family, and I made sure he’d never have to decide between us.
After razing the old, decrepit buildings, I hired an architect to sketch out a private cabin on the heavily treed property. The builder finished last month, and the decorator is nearly done with the interior. I could have managed all of this remotely or handed it off to any number of competent managers once I’d made my choices, but then I wouldn’t have been able to use that project as an excuse to visit the Hernandez family when I was in town.
Erik thinks I’m being a masochist, but that’s only partially accurate. The way Gael hugs me is life-giving, but it kills me not to know what he tastes like. Over time, I’ve built on our physical interactions. I started out by kissing the top of his head, then moved to kissing his cheek. I nearly caught the corner of his lip on my last visit, and that was enough to leave me spiraling for days.
I crave him the way my lungs crave oxygen, but it doesn’t stop there. I love being around his family, too. They are so warm and welcoming, and I don’t think it’s delusional to imagine that they are rooting for me. I love the thought that maybe everyone wants us to be together… when the time is right.
Every indication from Gael is that maybe that time is now. All of which is to say I’ve firmly put the cart before the horse, and whatever else I do next with the land will depend on what happens when I walk into the Hernandez home this afternoon.
My sister, Beatrice, definitely thinks I’ve gone ’round the bend, but in her quietly supportive way she helped me find a few of Gael’s Christmas presents. Speaking of which, I may have gone a tiny bit overboard. It’s a good thing I flew private because I’d filled the cargo hold of my Learjet with presents for the Hernandez family.
Shifting to avoid a present catastrophe, I eyeball the doorbell. I can do this. I can do this. I can—
The door flies open and the woman I hope to someday call my mother-in-law greets me with an enormous, warm smile.
“Tolly,” Yaya cries, her heavenly Mexican accent a balm to my soul. “We were so worried you wouldn’t be able to join us!”
“My apologies for not coming sooner. I had a small project to complete on the other side of the planet.”
Cambodia, to be exact. Erik and Charlie had freed a large group of domestic traffic survivors, reuniting the vast majority of them with their families. Unfortunately, one little girl could not be reunited with her family and had needed a safe place. I have connections with the British embassy in Cambodia, so I took a quick flight over there, arranged things, and now she’s spending her first nights with a Cambodian family in Jersey. Hopefully it will be a foster to adopt situation, but either way, she’s safe.
“Oh, so fancy,” Yaya says, stepping back to allow me and my ridiculous pile of presents entrance into her gorgeous living space.
