The Bachelor's Christmas Bride. Victoria Pade

      “Things were pretty run-down.”

      “My grandfather died the year before I was here last, I guess Gramma must not have kept up with things as well on her own. I didn’t realize.”

      “From what you said about your folks last night, it sounded like you had enough to deal with.”

      “And it wasn’t as if my dad could come here and help her out, or send money for her to hire someone,” Shannon added as they pieced together why her grandmother must have let the place fall into such disrepair. “But I’m sorry if you came in on a big mess—I had no idea….”

      “It was just an old house. I would have wanted to update it anyway. No big deal. And there are some pluses to the place—the crown molding everywhere, the hardwood floors and just the way the whole house is built makes it more sound and sturdy than newer construction. It gives me a good foundation to work from. Come on, I’ll walk you through what I have planned.”

      They spent the next half hour going room to room, with Dag explaining a complete plumbing overhaul that would leave all three bathrooms like new, a kitchen that sounded like it would be a chef’s dream come true, and even ideas for accent colors of paint here and there that left Shannon surprised by his good taste.

      When they reached the upstairs bedroom where she’d stayed on her visits here, Shannon said, “Have you found the secret cubby?”

      Dag’s eyebrows shot up in curiosity. “There’s a secret cubby? Whatever that is…”

      “I’ll show you.”

      Shannon knelt down in front of a section of flowered wallpaper a few feet to the right of the closet. It didn’t look any different than the rest of the loud pink tea-rose print but when she pressed inward and then did a quick release, that particular section popped open to reveal a two-foot-by-two-foot hole in the wall.

      Dag laughed. “I’m sure I would have found that when I stripped off the wallpaper, but I had no idea it was there.”

      “It 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.

      “Let’s see,” she said as she began pulling them out.

      Dag hunkered down on his haunches beside her to have a closer look.

      “This 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.”

      “At eleven?”

      “Uh-huh. I believe I wrote about two paragraphs…” she said as she turned the notebook upright and unveiled the 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.

      “Let 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.”

      “And 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.”

      “You were a brat?” he said as if the idea delighted him.

      “I 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—”

      “Stealing one of their chessmen so they couldn’t play?”

      “And 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.”

      “Shame on you,” Dag pretended to reprimand, but it came with a laugh.

      “I 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—”

      “Playing chess?”

      “Or 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.”

      “And 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.

      “Oh, 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.”

      “I 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 couldn’t stand the thought that he might get thrown away, so I brought him here with me and put him in the cubby for safekeeping.”

      She checked out the old toy, saying as she did, “Poor Poppy, I never sucked my thumb, but I chewed off both of his ears, he lost an eye and his nose, and my mom had to sew the holes. His tail is gone, and his seams split and had to be fixed more times than I can remember—he’s kind of a mess.”

      “He looks well loved,” Dag decreed, and Shannon appreciated that that was the perspective he took when she knew that Wes would have been impatient with her sentimentality over it.

      But Dag even waited while she hugged it for a moment before she set it down and took the last few items out of the cubby.

      “Love notes,” she confided as if they were a deep, dark secret. “This was from the summer I was ten—I was at camp just before I came to see Gramma and I had a sizzling romance with one of the boys there….”

      “How sizzling could it have been at ten?”

      “Hot, hot, hot!” Shannon said with a laugh. “He sat next to me on movie night and held my hand when the lights went out. And look at these notes—he thought I had nice teeth. And my woven pot holder was the best in the whole class. And he liked my eyes because they match! How much more sizzling do you want it?”

      “Oh, yeah, it doesn’t get better than that!” Dag agreed facetiously. “This cubby-thing is a treasure trove.”

      “Ah, but it looks like that’s it,” Shannon complained after poking her head into the cubby to make sure. “Now the place is all yours.”

      Which struck her with a sudden, unexpected sadness that made her think that maybe she had a few more attachments to her grandmother’s house than she’d originally thought.

      But it was done and she knew from the way Dag had talked about his plans for the remodel that he loved the place, so she comforted herself with that—and by