“It’s okay,” Shandie assured the fifteen-year-old. Then, in a louder voice aimed at her daughter, Shandie said, “I mean it, Kayla. Come out here now!”
Giggles preceded the scant opening of the closet door as the tiny child peeked through the crack. “I’m pitty,” she insisted yet again.
“You know you aren’t supposed to touch those wigs. Get over here so I can take it off without ruining it.”
Her daughter finally complied and stepped from the closet. The black wig was even more askew after the little girl’s mad dash. It had slipped too low on her brow and was far enough over her eyes that Kayla had to tip her head far back to peer out from underneath it.
Dax had joined everyone in the living room by then, and Shandie caught sight of him. She was shocked to see that a small smile had eased the dark frown he’d worn since leaving the restaurant at the Thunder Canyon Resort. If Kayla’s misbehavior had accomplished it, it was almost worth it to Shandie.
But that still didn’t mean she could let the child get away with what she was doing.
Shandie bent over and very carefully removed the wig. “You know you are not to touch these,” she told her daughter firmly as she gently set it on an antique table against the wall.
“’Cuz they’re the sick ladies’ hairs,” Kayla responded, reciting by rote what Shandie had explained to her more than once. “But I was bein’ pitty.”
“You can be pretty some other way, but you never, ever touch these.”
Kayla rolled her big blue eyes and reluctantly conceded. “I won’t.” Then she noticed Dax and cast him a smile. “I played with the motorcycles. Misty helped.”
“And then I really did put her in bed,” Misty said meekly. “I really did, and I told her to stay there while I came downstairs just to get the blanket.”
“I’m sure you did. I know this isn’t your fault. It’s just something Kayla will do when she gets wound up,” Shandie told the teenager as she accepted the security blanket from her.
Then Shandie returned her attention to her daughter and said, “Kayla, go back to bed. I’ll pay Misty and then I’ll be there to tuck you in.”
“I don’ wanna go to bed. I wanna play motorcycles with Dax-like-Max-the-dog,” Kayla said.
Shandie had to lunge to catch the tyke as Kayla tried to run again.
“Like I said, wound up,” Shandie repeated to her onlookers as she settled her daughter on her hip.
“I’ll square things with Misty,” Dax said. “Go ahead and put Kayla to bed.”
Shandie hadn’t dated as a single mother and had no idea if it was customary for the man to pay for the sitter. But in case it wasn’t, she said, “It’s okay, I can—”
“Go on,” Dax urged. Then, to Misty, he said, “I saw that you walked down here, but I can drive you home.”
“I’d rather walk. I can talk to my…friend on my cell if I do. Otherwise I won’t be able to because it’s passed my phone curfew at home.”
Dax looked to Shandie once more. “What do you think? Is it okay if she walks home?”
“I guess,” Shandie said, knowing it was only a few houses up the block.
“Then I’ll take it from here and you can get that pint-sized troublemaker to bed,” he said, scratching the tip of Kayla’s nose with one finger.
“You’re positive?” Shandie asked.
“Positive,” he answered with no hint remaining of the dismal mood that had crept over him as the evening had progressed.
Shandie finally accepted that he was going to pay the sitter and said to Kayla, “Okay then. Say thank you to Misty for staying with you, and tell everyone good-night.”
“I don’ wannoo.”
Shandie decided against forcing the issue and merely said her own thanks to Misty. “I’d like to keep your number and have you sit again if you would.”
Misty seemed relieved that Shandie wasn’t holding Kayla’s behavior against her and swore she’d stay with the three-year-old any time Shandie asked.
Then Shandie said to Dax, “I’ll see you in a few minutes,” and headed for the stairs with an over-tired and very silly Kayla bidding Dax and Misty giddy good-nights over Shandie’s shoulder.
Shandie knew that any more reprimands of the little girl when she was this weary and stimulated at once were likely to result in tears, so she merely took Kayla to the child’s room, laid her in her bed and situated the covers around her the way her daughter liked them. Then she gave Kayla the security blanket.
Kayla promptly located her favorite corner of the blanket, poked her index finger into a fold in the satin edging, put her thumb in her mouth and began to stroke her cheek with her satin-encased forefinger.
Shandie shook her head at her remorseless mischief maker, bent to kiss her forehead and said good-night.
“Night,” Kayla said around a mouthful of thumb before she closed her eyes.
“I love you,” Shandie whispered but Kayla was already asleep.
Shandie kissed her a second time and slipped from the room.
Which then left her in the same position she’d been in before Kayla’s comic relief—she was going to have to face Dax.
In the hallway outside her daughter’s door, Shandie took a deep breath to bolster her courage and then went downstairs.
Dax was just closing the front door.
“Is Misty okay out alone this late at night?” Shandie asked, hoping she hadn’t made a mistake in letting the teenager walk home.
“There isn’t much crime in Thunder Canyon, and I see her walking to and from friends’ houses all the time. But I just kept an eye on her. She’s letting herself in right now.”
Shandie nodded, appreciating that he’d been conscientious enough to watch the young girl get home safely.
But then she realized they were back where they’d started—in silence.
“Can I get you a cup of coffee or a drink?” she offered.
“No, thanks. I’ve had enough for one night.”
Enough of more than libations, she thought he meant. But she recalled the fact that he’d been smiling at Kayla and even though he wasn’t smiling any longer, his expression wasn’t as dour as it had been on the way home. She thought that if his spirits had been lifted by her daughter’s antics, maybe she could cash in on that to follow through with the apology she’d begun at the door.
“Why don’t we go in and sit down?” she said, not waiting for an answer before she led the way into the living room.
Shandie had decorated in warm brown, rust and cream colors with a few genuine antiques mingled with furniture that aimed for comfort. She sat on one side of the brown velvet sofa made up of cushions as fluffy as pillows.
Dax didn’t hesitate to follow her—something she accepted as a good sign—or to join her on the couch, at the opposite end.
Shandie took another deep breath, sighed it out and finally said, “Okay, I was wrong. So-o-o wrong. You probably wouldn’t have been sorry if you had missed that dinner tonight.”
“Ya think?” he said facetiously.
But his tone had more of a note of joking to it than of blame, and she took that as a good sign, too.
“Everything just kind of tightened up when we walked into the room,” she said, deciding that she might as well not pretend she hadn’t noticed the response that had been so strong it had nearly been palpable.
“I know. That’s how it’s been for a while now.”
“Why? I mean, it’s not my place to get into it, but you and your brother barely—barely—acknowledged each other from different corners of the room, you never even said hello and everybody made sure to keep you from getting anywhere near each other. Plus, your friends tiptoe around you. What’s up with all that?”
“There’s…stuff,” Dax said with a wry laugh.
“What stuff? Start with your friends—are you a time bomb they’re afraid will go off any second?”
“I don’t think it’s quite that bad,” he said. “It’s more that while they�
�ve all had one success after another and found their paths, I…haven’t.”
“Your business isn’t doing well?” Shandie asked.
“I haven’t had a customer all week,” he said. He shook his head and shrugged. “It’s more than that, though. I’m just not…into it. Into business. It isn’t what I want to be doing. What I’d planned to be doing.”
Shandie kicked off her shoes so she could pull her feet underneath her on the couch and face him. “What did you plan and want to be doing?”
Dax pivoted enough to stretch an arm along the top of the sofa back. “I was supposed to be racing motorcycles. That was all I ever wanted to do, what I was sure I would do. At least until I got too old for it. I figured then—and only then—I’d open a shop like I have now. But I thought I’d be a lot older than I am before it came to that. That I’d be ready to devote my energy to business—building it, running it, making a success of it. That it would be my choice—the next stage of life, somewhere far down the road.”
“So why are you in it now? Did you try racing and not make it?”
“No, I made it. I raced professionally for seven years. From right after high school until not quite two years ago. My name’ll still pop up here and there when it comes to winning streaks—I had some of the best. I was the man to beat…”
“Wow,” Shandie said, impressed despite a note in his voice at the end that she couldn’t quite pinpoint. Something bittersweet, maybe? “And you liked doing it?”
“Loved it. It was…” He shook his head, his almost-black eyes rolled toward the ceiling, and it was clear in every line of his handsome face just how much he’d loved motorcycle racing. “It was great,” he finally finished, obviously understating what he couldn’t find words grand enough to describe.
“Something big must have happened to make you quit,” she said.
“Something pretty big—I blew a tire and hit a cement wall. Smashed half the bones in my body, broke my spine in three places. Everybody was amazed I lived through it.”
“Wow,” she repeated, this time in dire awe.
“Yeah,” he agreed. “I spent months in a hospital, more months in a rehab facility. I did everything any doctor, any physical therapist, any trainer told me to do. I worked out, I lifted weights…” he chuckled “…I even did yoga to see if I could get back to racing shape—”
“You look like you’re in shape,” Shandie offered, to explain the fact that she was giving him the once-over in search of any residual clues to his accident. And in hopes that he wouldn’t realize how much she was admiring the view.
“I’m healthy,” he said. “I feel fine. I’m strong again. Everything works the way it’s supposed to. But my spine has pins in it and won’t let me bend over the bars the way I need to, to race. Plus, I somehow dodged the paralysis bullet the first round, but no one I talked to left me with any doubts that another injury to my spine would leave me in a wheelchair. And motorcycle racing is hardly a low-risk occupation. So in the end…that was it for me.”
“And your plans for later in life had to be moved up,” Shandie concluded.
“Yep.”
“And your friends all know this isn’t how you wanted things to play out. They know how much you miss racing. They feel bad for you. They know you can’t do what you want most to do at the same time they’re all achieving their own goals.”
Dax sighed. “I suppose. There’s been some personal stuff, too. A marriage that ended and a really dumb engagement. And I probably haven’t been exactly…chipper…about it all.”
Even though she was interested in the story of that marriage and engagement, Shandie opted for not prying into them right then. “Sometimes you just can’t be chipper about the hand you get dealt,” she commiserated instead, recalling some dark days of her own. “It’s nice of your friends, though, not to want to flaunt their own successes and make you feel worse.”
“Nice, but not a lot of fun for them.”
Shandie couldn’t argue that so she moved on. “What about your brother? What’s going on there?”
Dax gave her a semblance of a frown. She knew it was only a semblance of one because she’d seen enough of the real thing tonight to tell the difference. But even if she hadn’t, one side of his sexy mouth was also tilted upward to give him away before he said, “Don’t be shy, Shandie. If you’re curious, just ask.”
Shandie grinned at him. “I did. Don’t forget, I hang out with a three-year-old—I might be picking up some of her habits. But still, I earned an answer—I suffered through that dinner tonight, too, you know.”
“True,” he conceded, and she was grateful that he didn’t throw it up to her that she had been behind the push for him to go in the first place.
“The stuff between D.J. and me goes a lot further back than the wrong turns my life has taken. You couldn’t say we were ever close.”
“Not even as kids?”
“We fought like two mad dogs,” he admitted. “It’s a wonder we lived through it.”
“How far apart are you in age?”
“Only a year—he’s a year younger than I am. But we were different growing up—we liked different things, did different things—and there were some family dynamics that were a problem.”
“Family dynamics?”
“Our mother died in a car accident when we were little—I was eleven, D.J. was ten. I loved her, of course. She was my mom and it was terrible to lose her. But you could say that I was closer to Dad, and D.J. was closer to Mom, so I think Mom’s death hit D.J. harder, maybe?” Dax said, apparently feeling his way along, as if even he wasn’t completely clear about the details of what had gone on inside his brother’s head.
“I don’t know,” he confessed when he continued. “I just know that I went on being really close to Dad. We were both into motorcycles and racing. He bought me my first bike, taught me to ride, got me into some amateur races as soon as I was old enough and good enough. We worked on the bikes together—we spent a lot of time at it. We just…we were a lot alike, and that was never more true than when it came to being motorcycle-crazy—”
“And your brother?”
“D.J. couldn’t have cared less about motorcycles or racing. He sure as hell never seemed to want in on any of it.”
“So he was just left out?” Shandie asked, feeling some sympathy for Dax’s brother.
Dax scratched a spot just below his earlobe with a long index finger, his square brow pulled into deep furrows. “That sounds bad. It wasn’t like we purposely excluded him or anything. D.J. could have been right there with us if he’d wanted to be. I know Dad wished D.J. wanted to be. But D.J…. It just wasn’t his thing.”
Shandie didn’t think Dax deserved any blame for his brother’s not sharing in what Dax and their father had had in common, but she did think that he felt a little guilty for how the family dynamics had evolved.
Then, with what seemed like reluctance, he said, “And then there was Allaire.”
“D.J.’s new wife.”
“My old wife,” Dax said under his breath.
There had been some talk at the dinner about D.J.’s and Allaire’s recent marriage, but Shandie didn’t make any comment because she didn’t know how sore a subject it might be with Dax. She merely let him go on.
“I don’t have the details or the timetable, but I guess D.J. was in love with Allaire when we were all in high school—and maybe even earlier. Not that I knew that, because I didn’t.” Dax was quick to defend himself. “If I had…Well, there were a lot of girls. I might not have gotten in his way with Allaire if I’d known. But I didn’t have a clue he wanted her. Everybody there tonight? We were all friends and none of them knew, either. D.J. kept it top secret—that was just like him, Mr. Suffer-In-Silence.”
“But he did have a thing for Allaire, and you ended up with her,” Shandie said, piecing it together.
“Yeah,” Dax said regretfully. “I didn’t catch on to how he felt until my own wedding to her.” Dax shook his
head as if he still couldn’t believe it. “Everything was going along great—I thought. Nice wedding, good time, everybody seemed happy. Then I looked up as Allaire and I were doing that arms-linked-to-drink-champagne wedding thing, and there over my glass was D.J.’s face. And that was when I knew. It hit me like a ton of bricks. His expression was just…raw…and I knew he was in love with her.” Again Dax shook his head, this time as if he still couldn’t believe what he’d seen. “My brother was sick in love with the person I’d just married,” he said more to himself than to Shandie.
“That couldn’t have helped your relationship with him,” Shandie interjected.
“Not by a long shot. D.J. left town right after that. I don’t think he could stand to be anywhere around the two of us. And things went downhill from there. That was nine years ago, and until he moved back to Thunder Canyon I didn’t see him or hear from him more than a handful of times—we’d exchange a card here and there, an e-mail, he came to the funeral when Dad died of a heart attack five years ago, but that was pretty much it.”
“What about when you had your motorcycle accident?”
Dax’s eyebrows arched. “I was unconscious for four days. D.J.’s face was the first one I saw when I woke up,” he mused as if he’d almost forgotten that. “I’m still foggy about most of what went on for those first few weeks after the accident, but I’ve been told that D.J. came as soon as he heard, stayed at the hospital, made sure I had the best orthopedic surgeon there was to put the pins in my spine, to set the rest of my bones. But when he knew I was going to be okay, he left. So by the time I was really alert to things again he was gone.”
“He just couldn’t handle being too close?”
Dax nodded. “I’m only now beginning to see that when it comes to D.J., there’s been a lot of resentment that I didn’t even know was there. I just thought—” Dax shrugged yet again “—you know, that we were different. That he didn’t get me, and I didn’t get him. It happens.”
“But now you’re realizing how hard it must have been for him to lose the person he felt closest to in the family, to be odd man out with you and your dad, and then to watch you sail off with the person he was in love with on top of it,” Shandie observed.
Family for the Holidays Page 5