As Cameron let the engine warm up for a few minutes, she told Talon that it had been her landlady's old car, a VW Beetle she was too attached to get rid of because it was one of those rare automatic stick shift models but too lazy to have repaired. When Cameron asked if she could buy it, the older woman agreed to give it to her, telling her she'd need the money to get it running again.

You can have it if you can get it in running condition. Registration papers and all, her landlady told her. That car's a collectible, you know.

It cost Cameron over a thousand dollars to get it drive-worthy, the exact amount she got for selling the only jewelry she had left, a necklace and earring set that had belonged to her mother. But it got the car running even if she had to wait a few minutes for the engine to heat up in the cold mornings before they could go somewhere. It was better than nothing.

"Where's the clutch?" Talon asked, his tall frame folded uncomfortably in the front passenger seat that it made them laugh at how ridiculous he looked.

"There isn't any," she replied.

"So, how do you shift gears then?" He leaned towards her to peer at the space below the steering wheel. Now that he'd taken off his knit cap and pulled down the zipper of his parka the moment the heater blasted hot air in his face, Cameron could see that he had that major stubble action going on, revealing an almost dangerous and reckless look about him. But then it was probably pheromones, too, she thought as he drew away, as if suddenly aware of how close he was to her.

"It's an electric clutch that senses the weight of my hand on the shifter," she replied, resting her hand on the gear shift between them, "before it then engages the clutch, and you shift it."

Cameron eased her foot on the brake and shifted the car into first gear as Talon watched in amazement. Laughing at the expression on his face, she eased into light traffic.

If anyone who knew her while she was married to Edwin could hear the things she said about the gear shift and the clutch, they'd have insisted it wasn't the same Cameron they knew. The old Cameron wouldn't know how to work the clutch or how to open the hood of her Mercedes. The old Cameron who remained standing by her husband's side when the allegations first started trickling in about the missing millions, and Edwin assured them that it was nothing but a huge mistake and that further investigation into the matter would prove his innocence. The old Cameron whom the world saw on their TV monitors as she answered the door blinded by camera lights and flashbulbs and reporters demanded to get a sound bite from her about Edwin being spotted in the Cayman Islands with his personal assistant hours earlier.

What can you say about that, Mrs. Thomas? Did you know about the affair?

Cameron pushed the thoughts away and focused on the road in front of her. With the tree secured on the roof of the car, they were ready for Christmas. She and Jeremy would make a popcorn garland, and they'd decorate the tree with the ornaments she'd found in the dollar store along with the origami creations she'd made from an unopened set she found at the thrift shop. She'd already hung mistletoe above the front door–just for fun. It had come with the turkey and fixings from the church food drive along with a leg of ham and other canned goods.

"I'm so glad to see you," Talon said, glancing at Jeremy in the back seat, "and Jeremy, too. You didn't leave a forwarding address with anyone."

"You asked around?"

He nodded. "Phoenix."

"I'm sorry," Cameron said. "It was too crazy. I needed to go somewhere... well, somewhere safe. It's too cold for paparazzi to hang out in the bushes around here."

"I'm sorry to hear that," Talon said as Jeremy tapped him on the shoulder, and he turned his head to look at Jeremy. "Yeah, bud?" he signed.

Cameron wanted to ask Talon a million questions, but with Jeremy in the back seat asking Talon what type of Lego plane they would be building after they'd finish setting up the tree, she knew her questions would have to wait. And boy, did she have a lot of them.

What was Talon doing these days? And why was he in Ocean City of all places when last she'd heard, his grandmother had died, and surely the beach house where she and Talon spent that glorious summer together eight years ago must have sold to some developer by now? Was he married? Was that why he never bothered to find her the last eight years, not even a hello? Did he have a girlfriend? A wife? What about kids?

Cameron bit her lower lip, stealing a glance at him as she drove, the questions still coming.

Had it really been eight years since they'd last seen each other? Where had he been all his time? And why was the mere sight of him, the scent of him making her imagination run wild? And why was her heart beating so fast?

Did she still love him?

* * *

Cameron knew the answer to that last question long before they finished setting up the tree three hours later, complete with a popcorn garland. They could have finished setting it up sooner, but she took her time. And maybe Talon did, too. He certainly wasn't in any rush to leave, and Jeremy wasn't about to let him anyway. By then, they'd also finished eating dinner of garlic herb chicken she'd prepared in the crockpot that morning, cooked to perfection by the time they opened the door, its aroma filling the whole apartment.

Cameron couldn't help smiling as Talon helped Jeremy assemble a plane out of Legos. Usually, she'd help Jeremy build his creations but tonight, he was more excited to have his new friend help him. As they communicated in perfect sign language, Cameron tried her best not to eavesdrop but it was hard.

Do you live around here? Jeremy asked Talon who was sitting cross-legged on the floor, his thick parka and scarf hanging behind the door, and his boots sitting next to Cameron's boots.

My grandmother has a house not far from here, Talon replied. I'm fixing it up.

Is it close to the beach? Jeremy signed.

Talon nodded. Right on the beach.

Jeremy's eyes widened in excitement. That must be awesome in the summer!

Talon glanced at her, but he returned his attention to Jeremy before the boy would notice. Yes, it is. You and your mother should come by some time.

Jeremy paused, thinking for a few moments. Then his face lit up. Are you married?

Talon chuckled, shaking his head as he signed, No, I'm not.

Jeremy glanced at his mother, but before she could tell him to stop, he signed, are you seeing someone?

Cameron held her breath. She should put a stop to all the probing questions, but she wanted to know the answer to that last one, too.

No, I'm single.

Do you have plans for Christmas? Jeremy asked.

Not yet.

Jeremy tugged Talon's sleeve. Would you like to spend Christmas with us? It's just Mom and me-

"Jeremy!" Cameron tapped him on the shoulder, her cheeks burning in embarrassment. "You can't ask Talon such things."

"It's okay," Talon said, signing the words so Jeremy could understand, too. But Jeremy was no longer paying attention to them; his attention now focused on his newly built plane. He got up, holding the plane up over his head as if it were in flight, and began to run around the room.

"I'm so sorry about his questions."

Talon shrugged. "Kids don't beat around the bush. It's refreshing."

"It's still embarrassing," she said, still blushing.

He didn't answer right away, his eyes meeting hers. "How've you been, Cam?"

The sudden change of topic caught her by surprise, the tone of his voice lower now. Cameron cleared her throat. "I've been better, but it's all good. I don't have to go to parties anymore and pretend I'm having fun."

"You attended quite a few through the years," he said. "That's what Adele told me while I was overseas."

"Overseas? Where?" Cameron remembered Adele, his younger sister. They ran into each other once, after the charges had been filed against Edwin. Adele worked for the District Attorney, and Cameron could still remember how she expected harsh judgment from Talon's younger sister as she'd seen from everyone else. But there was none. Instead, Adele asked her how she and Jeremy were coping and, if ever she needed any help, to ask. But of course, Cameron never did. She couldn't bear to find out what Adele must have thought of her, never once asking about her brother.

"The Marines," Talon replied, his voice bringing her back to the present. "I've been a civilian roughly three months now, and I've been busy fixing up Gram's old place."

"I didn't even know you enlisted. But then we haven't kept in touch since..." Cameron's voice faded, and she glanced at Jeremy who was now sitting on his bean bag chair immersed in a game of Minecraft.

"–since that night, yes." He nodded slowly. "But then you've been busy with Edwin."

Cameron fought the urge to touch him, as if to remind herself that Talon was real and that he was sitting on the floor in front of her. He'd filled out since the last time she saw him. His neck was thicker, broader, his shoulders wider, and his forearms more defined. There was a firmness to his jaw that hadn't been there before, and his eyes seemed more haunted like he'd seen many lifetimes since they parted. But then, a lot had happened in the last eight years, with Cameron getting herself into a marriage of convenience before having Jeremy and Edwin running off with his lover and ten million dollars.

"And now here we are," Cameron said, shrugging as he looked at her, his blue eyes as magnetic as she remembered them. "I assumed your mother would have sold the beach house after your grandmother died."

"Probably, but Grams willed it to me, and so I've been fixing it up since I've been back. It hasn't changed much since I was last there..." his Adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed, "with you."

A choked sob escaped Cameron's lips. Why did he have to remind her of their last night together? Whether she'd been too young then or not, she shouldn't have been too quick to agree to her mother's plans, too eager to please her family and do what they told her to do, even if it meant abandoning her heart. While Cameron's family had the name but no longer the money that had been squandered on bad investments and expensive shopping sprees, Edwin's family was wealthy–the nouveau riche, as her mother used to say, their wealth coming from real estate when the markets went south.

Marry Edwin and you'll be set for life, dear. We'll all be set for life, she'd said. He's way better than that mechanic's son... what's his name? Even his name is strange. Who names their son Talon, like he's an animal or something?

So she told Talon that night that it was going to be their last night together in that beach house before she'd become another man's wife in a few weeks. She knew it hurt Talon more since he and Edwin had been friends. Worse, Cameron hadn't stood up for Talon at all, too scared to go against her family's wishes and disappoint them.

And she spent the next eight years in misery, pretending to be happy and learning how to act a certain way, smile a certain way, to gain the public's trust. She was the wife of the city treasurer, after all, and Edwin had far to go. If she'd known he intended to go as far as the Cayman Islands with stolen money, she'd never have played the part of the perfect wife at all. She'd have traded it all to live a simple life instead.

At least, she now slept well at night, even if it was on a futon in the living room and not a king-sized bed that she had all to herself, for Edwin always slept in a separate room. His pretense lasted only for as long as they were in public, nothing more.

"Let me start the clean-up." Cameron gathered the dinner bowls and utensils, her fingers brushing against Talon's hand as they both reached for Jeremy's bowl. She quickly pulled back her hand, startled by the static electricity that had somehow built up between them from sitting on the carpet for so long.

But she also knew it was more than that. It made her heart ache for him, and she wondered how it would feel to be in his arms again. "Let me help." Talon took the bowls and utensils from her hands and brought them to the sink.

"You don't have to clean up." She reached for the bowls but Talon playfully brushed her hand away.

"I'm just putting them in the sink, Cam, nothing more. You did all the cooking–"

"I threw the chicken in the crockpot."

"Still counts as cooking in my book," he said as a strong wind rattled the windows.

"The storm," she whispered, her heart sinking that their time together was coming to an end. Behind her, Jeremy had abandoned his Minecraft game and was now playing with his Lego plane.

"I better get going before it starts to snow," Talon whispered.

Cameron's throat tightened. "I can drive you–"

"You don't have to do that, not in this storm. I can call a cab," Talon said, pulling out his phone from his pants pocket and dialing a number. In a low voice, he ordered a cab to pick him up, asking Cameron what her address was. Reluctantly, she told him, and he relayed it to the dispatcher before hanging up. "They'll be here in ten... twenty minutes, maybe longer."

Cameron followed him to the door where his boots were. As he bent down to slip them on, she touched his thick dark hair. It made her chest tighten as Talon looked up at her in surprise, one foot halfway into his boot. Then his expression changed just before he glanced at Jeremy. Hurt and confusion flitted across his face before he straightened and towered over her.

God, they had so much to say to each other, she thought then, and she cleared her throat. "I wrote you a letter eight years ago, but you never answered, so I thought–"

"I joined the Marines the day after you left, and shortly after boot camp, I shipped out to San Diego. I chose infantry of all things," he replied, chuckling dryly.

"I'm so sorry for everything that happened."

"When I heard about your grand wedding, all I could do was hope that you were happy." He frowned as he paused. "Were you happy, Cam?"

She swallowed nervously, not wanting to give him an answer. "I guess you never got my letter."

He exhaled. "I did read it... but not when you sent it eight years ago."

She frowned. "What do you mean, not when I sent it eight years ago? Where was it the whole time?"

"My sister found it wedged behind one of the boards by the back door six months ago. She never checked up on the place, not when she was too busy studying for her law degree elsewhere," he replied. "Your letter must have fallen between the boards when you slipped it through the door, and that's where it stayed for years. It's weathered, barely legible, but I scanned it on my computer and read it." He paused again, a pained expression on his face. His Adam's apple bobbed. "I never knew, Cam."

"When I didn't get an answer from you and you disappeared, I thought you didn't want me. Not that I could blame you, Talon. I should have fought for us harder," Cameron said, remembering the words she'd written to him eight years ago.

Say the word and I'm yours. The world can disappear, Talon, but so long as I have your love, you–and our future baby–are my world.

He exhaled. "Adele had always suspected Jeremy was mine, but there was nothing I could do while I was on my missions. I completed my contract the same time Edwin ran off, but by the time I made it to Arizona, you were gone. No one knew where you'd gone, and your mother refused to talk to me. Even Adele tried looking for you using the last address you listed with the DA, but the landlady said you moved away without a forwarding address."

"The reporters would show up anywhere," Cameron whispered. "Jeremy had panic attacks every time he'd see someone with a camera. I had to figure something out."

"If I'd known you were here all along–"

"Just the last three months," Cameron said. "I didn't think you'd still be here, but it was the only place I remember feeling the happiest, even if the town is pretty much deserted during the winter. But the landlady is nice."

"Cam, all you had to do was call me–"

"I didn't think you'd want to talk to me after I chose to be with Edwin," she stammered.

"Oh, Cam," Talon said as he tilted her chin up with his finger. "Why would I want nothing to do with you... or our son?"

"He doesn't know the truth yet... I haven't told him anything," she stammered. "As far as he knows, Edwin is his dad, but...they never got along. He was distant–"

"He was an ass, but that's a story for another day," Talon said through gritted teeth. He didn't have to tell Cameron what he'd heard, not when she'd overheard the stories people said behind her back, how Edwin was perfect on the outside, thinking only of the ideal photo opportunity to present his family to the public, made even more perfect because of Jeremy's disability which endeared him to his constituents. But behind closed doors, he barely spoke to Jeremy, choosing instead to talk in a loud voice, almost yelling as if the boy was hard of hearing instead of deaf. Cameron had played the mediator in nearly every encounter, more so after overhearing Edwin call him "a dumb idiot like your real dad" two years earlier and hoping that Jeremy hadn't read his lips.

She should have left him then, but she'd been too scared, too caught up in the image Edwin had presented their family to the world that she couldn't bear to tear it down. In the end, it would take a scandal, but she did it. She left that world, and here she was.

"It will take some time before we can tell Jeremy the truth," Talon continued. "But what matters now is that we're together again... even if it took eight years to get here. That counts for something, right? It's a start."

She nodded, the words caught in her throat.

He took a deep breath and exhaled. "But I mean it, Cam. I've been looking all over for you and Jeremy. Tonight, something told me to take a walk to clear my head, and I'm glad I did because here you are, you and Jeremy. You were right here all along."

"All I wanted was the perfect Christmas for him, small tree and all," she whispered. "I wish–"

Cameron paused when she heard Jeremy jumping off the futon and running towards them as if he'd looked up from whatever game he was playing at that moment and realized Talon was leaving.

You can't be leaving yet! It's Christmas eve. Please stay with us! It's snowing outside, and the car needs to warm up, and sometimes it won't even run when it's this cold! Jeremy's hands moved fast and with purpose, the sound of his hands slapping against each other with his words echoing in the room. Please ask him to stay, Mom.

"Jeremy, Talon needs to leave before the storm..." Cameron began to sign but stopped when Jeremy's eyes grew wide as he glanced up.

Look! You're both standing under the mistletoe.

Cameron froze, looking up just as Talon did the same. She'd forgotten all about the darn mistletoe. At best, she had hoped to dream of kissing the man standing in front of her, even though she knew he wasn't a dream anymore.

Jeremy tugged Talon's arm. Aren't you supposed to kiss her under the mistletoe?

Cameron swore she saw Talon's cheeks color beneath his stubble, his gaze lowering to her lips.

Only if she wants me to, he signed as Jeremy turned to face her, a broad grin on his face.

Of course, she wanted him to kiss her, she thought, feeling her cheeks turn warm as Talon cocked his head toward the mistletoe above them.

"What do you say?" he asked as she giggled.

"Why not?" As Talon dipped his head toward her, Cameron closed her eyes. She felt his lips touch hers, a soft kiss that warmed her all over like an embrace in the darkest of night when all she dreamed of was Talon coming back for her and his son.

Then with a choked sob, Talon pulled her in a deep embrace, reaching for Jeremy with his other arm and pulling him between them. As he held them tightly, Cameron felt hot tears flow down her face and she hastily wiped them away as Jeremy squeezed between them to open the front door.

Snow! Now you can't leave, he signed excitedly as he turned to look at them. Will you be able to spend Christmas with us now? Please say yes. I know Mom keeps saying our house is small but–

"–it's still home," Talon said, signing the words to Jeremy.

As Cameron looked up at him, something inside her lifted, as if all the regrets from the last eight years took flight. It no longer mattered that once upon a time she and Jeremy had lived in a grand house, or that she drove a gorgeous car, or that the Christmas tree they once had was over seven feet tall and that underneath were all the presents any boy could want. But even without all those, Cameron saw the look of happiness and excitement on her son's face, and she knew then that she had everything she needed around her... and that Jeremy did, too.

"Please say yes," she whispered as Jeremy pulled Talon back into the living room, toward the small Christmas tree. Laughing, Talon didn't need to say the word, but he did anyway, the one word Cameron had waited eight long years to hear.

"Yes."