“Joy to the world, the Savior reigns

Let all their songs employ . . .”

He didn’t find himself thinking about what had almost been.

“While fields and floods

Rocks, hills and plains . . .”

He didn’t find himself playing in his mind the alternative ending he’d tortured himself with through the years: if they’d waited and not left in the midst of snow that had turned into a violent storm. If he’d stayed behind with his wife, and they two had celebrated Christmas alone that year . . .

“Repeat the sounding joy

Repeat the sounding joy

Repeat, repeat the sounding joy . . .”

Nay, he found himself filled with the same joyous lightness that had always infused his soul when that song had played. A lightness made even more so by the pitchy singer belting out her lyrics.

“And wonders of His love

And wonders of His looo—”

“Val?”

Her voice cut in, screeching across his thoughts, the broken lyrics substituted with his name jolting him to and startling him into dropping the garments he’d collected for her.

“Is that you?” The water sloshed, creating more of those naughty visuals of her sitting upright, baring her breasts to the cool night air.

Sweat dotted his brow. “Yes,” he said, unable to keep the gruffness out of a reply that emerged sharper than even he intended. This time, however, it wasn’t annoyance that harshened his response, but rather . . . desire.

“Oh.” There came more sloshing, as if she’d sat back, slipping farther under those waters, once more. “I feared it was the men.”

“There are no—”

She interrupted his exasperated reassurances. “Did you get my garments?”

Val glanced down at the floor. “Yes.” Bending down, he scooped them up.

“Will you set them inside?”

Would he . . . ?

He broke out in another sweat.

She was asking him to open that door.

Had she been another woman, a more experienced one who didn’t wear white garments decked with pretty pink bows, he’d have believed her request was an attempt at seduction.

It did not, however, prevent him from conjuring more of those naughty images of her completely bare of anything more than the flush on her skin left by the heated waters she soaked in.

“Val?”

“I’m not opening the door, Myrtle,” he called out, his voice strained and laced with a new kind of pain.

“But I can’t come out there when I’m done with my bath.”

Which in speaking . . . when in hell would she be done with those waters? When, so he didn’t have to think of her in them any more than he already had?

“Fine,” he gritted between tightly clenched teeth. And squeezing his eyes shut, he opened the door a fraction and threw the garments inside.

They landed with a light whoosh.

“Thank you.”

He grunted in return, and his work being truly done here, he turned once more to go.