"Elwww-saaa," Maddie added, her eyes rounding at the cardboard cutout of Elsa from Frozen that stood in one corner.
The little girls were awed by the sculptures, so whoever planned the ice castle for the town clearly understood their target market well. I could appreciate that. Cormac, for his part, tried to be enthusiastic, but I could see the exhaustion in his eyes and I sensed that the kind of tiredness he suffered wasn't related to sleeplessness, though I was sure that was part of it. I wished I could help him more, but I wasn't sure exactly how to do it. I did my best to offer him smiles and understanding, knowing it wasn’t enough.
Once the girls and their father had gone home, we went back to Callan's house again, and my week off stretched out before us, each day an unscheduled opportunity to spend time together. And that's what we did. I slowly brought things from the hotel to Callan's, without really realizing what was happening. But by Friday, I sat next to him at the breakfast table drinking coffee and checking email, and realized I hadn't spent a single night at the hotel since the week before.
A tiny finger of panic had threatened to rise in my throat now and then during the long peaceful week, but I ignored it. There was nothing to worry about, I told myself. I was living in the moment. And the moment was good.
"This is nice," Callan had said at multiple points. He'd said it at dinner as we sat on the couch with takeout and watched a Christmas movie marathon. He'd said it as we helped Annabelle unload the truck that brought the excess decorations from the inn to the outbuilding Callan had offered for storage. He'd said it as we walked the riverside, hand in hand, while the cold December wind whipped the surface of the water and my hair.
It was nice. It might have been the nicest week I had ever had—filled with companionship, warmth and a strange coziness that seemed to emanate from the twinkling tree and jolly stockings hanging at Callan's hearth. Seeing my name on one of the stockings had been a bit of a shock, but Callan explained that Maddie and Taylor had insisted upon it. And that was nice too.
It was more than nice, if I was honest. It was glorious. Callan's dark expressive eyes were almost always on my face, and he found reasons to touch me constantly. He whispered sweet things to me in intimate moments—things about my body, my hair, the way I smelled, my smile.
My heart was swelling with unfamiliar feelings related to Callan, and each day—each moment—that passed, grew the feelings. But the words that threatened to escape my lips seemed too big, too much for a man I’d known a short time, one whom I’d be leaving in another week.
As Callan buried himself inside me one night in his bedroom, the excitement of the sex ratcheted up several notches by the incredible day we’d spent shopping and seeing a movie, my ecstasy-soaked mind scrabbled for some coherent words. But when "dick wizard" escaped my lips and Callan stopped moving suddenly, I was pretty sure I had not found them.
"Did you just call me a dick wizard?" He moved his head away from my neck, still holding me pinned to the mattress, his mouth slightly open in surprise.
"No."
"You did. That's what you just said."
I thrust against him, hoping to distract him back into finishing what he'd started.
"Am I a dick wizard?" he asked, grinning now. "I like it."
"No, that's not what I said."
Callan chuckled and began moving again, much to my relief. But when we finished, he started laughing again.
"You gave me a nickname," he said. "And I like it."
"I did not," I insisted, hating that my stupid brain was still chanting the ridiculous phrase. "I said, 'sick lizard.'"
"You called me a sick lizard?" Callan sat up and crossed his arms in front of him.
"No. Not you, I was … I was thinking about a lizard my friend has. It's very sick."
"Really?" Callan's tone made it clear he was not buying this.
"Yes?" I tried.
He grinned at me then and shook his head. "Okay. Fine." But as we snuggled together and drifted toward sleep, I was pretty sure I heard him whisper, "dick wizard."
18
Park Your Sleigh at My Place
Callan
The week April spent at my new house was potentially the happiest I could remember. My ankle had still hurt, of course, but something about having April nearby made the pain less poignant somehow. Or maybe it was that the magnitude of other feelings growing inside me made my perception of the pain less, somehow. When pain had been the only feeling I’d had, I focused on it. Now I had other feelings to consider—some of which I was frankly afraid of.
I’d known this girl a short time. This quirky, beautiful, honest and practical girl who was unlike anyone I’d ever known. As a pro soccer player, my life had been full of people who told me what they thought I wanted to hear and people who suggested the world should be exactly the way I wanted it just because I had some talent at driving a ball down a patch of grass. But April wasn't impressed by that. She seemed to focus on the present, on the moment—and that was good for me. God knew I’d spent enough time looking back at what I’d been, at what I’d lost.
And when she'd dubbed me the dick wizard … well, I had felt a twinge inside my heart. It had been a feeling that lay next to amusement and charm, somewhere near to sentiment and nostalgia, but squarely in the realm of adoration. Maybe even something deeper, I realized. Only April would accidentally utter such a ridiculous moniker and then try to cover it up with something even more ludicrous. I loved the raspberry stain of embarrassment on her cheeks as she explained that her friend had an ailing lizard. She was beautiful. She was adorable.
I wanted her to be mine.
"You look amazing," I told her when she emerged from my bathroom, her hair in an elaborate knot at the back of her head and the long velvet sheath dress we found for her to wear to the ballet showcasing every curve I’d come to know by heart over the past week.
"Thank you," she said, her eyes running the length of my body and slowly coming back to my face, more heat in them than had been there when the door opened. "You look good too."
I had broken out my favorite suit for the occasion, the dark grey Italian made for me last year. The cloth was fine and fitted, and paired with a deep green tie, I felt confident. The look in April's eyes only buoyed my confidence more.
I held the door for her in front of my house, helping her into the truck as she pulled her long coat tighter around her. "It's freezing!" she laughed, and the sparkle in her eyes as they met mine made my heart squeeze tightly inside my chest.
“I’m not used to the cold,” I told her. “Next time I’ll warm the car before I put you inside it.”
I went around, and once inside the car, I blasted the heater, wishing I’d thought to heat it ahead. It was freezing, and the predictions were calling for snow this week. I knew April had to get back to work, and that when she finished, she'd be leaving, so I didn’t feel guilty about wishing for a storm to dump feet on the area, making it impossible for anything to happen on schedule. I’d take whatever excuse I could get to keep her here now. To spend more time with her. To maybe find the courage to ask her to stay. Or at least to come back.
"Are you ready for The Nutcracker?" she asked me, a grin pulling her berry-glossed lips wide, and my mind jumping immediately to what those lips would look like wrapped around certain parts of my body.
"Your tone makes me think you're expecting something less than professional quality from this production," I said, forcing myself to think of things besides the fact that April called me "dick wizard" or how much I wanted to go on earning the name.
She lowered her brows and her hand squeezed my arm. "We did see the rehearsal," she reminded me.
"I liked the part where the little boy who is playing the mouse king ripped off a couple of the heads, screaming about how there should only be one head."
"Think he'll do that in the show?"
"We'll have to wait and find out." April had scooted as close as she could to me on the bench seat, leaning into
my shoulder as I drove, her hand resting on my thigh. I would have made the drive last forever if I could, but it wasn't long before we were pulling up in front of the little theatre and had to get out or risk being late for the curtain.
Cormac was waiting for us in the lobby, looking put together in a dark suit and a red tie.
"Hey," Cormac said, greeting me with a clap on the back and a handshake. "You clean up pretty good when you try. Hello, April." He kissed April on the cheek as she smiled up at him.
"Are the girls excited?" she asked.
"Over the moon," he confirmed. "Especially since they're the only girls in the dressing room to receive a dozen long-stemmed red roses each." He gave me a wry smile.
"Isn't that appropriate?" I asked innocently as I felt April's eyes staring intently at the side of my face.
"I had to explain what 'break a leg' meant," Cormac said as I helped April off with her coat.
I grimaced. "And maybe," I said, limping slightly toward the coat check. "Maybe 'break a leg' is a little too on the nose at this point." I nodded at my own leg.
"I bet they are thrilled," April said, moving along with me. "I can't wait to see them."
"The roses were from both of us," I said, earning a huge smile from April. I turned our coats into the coat check, not really noticing the action as I took the tickets and stuffed them into my pocket. My mind was stuck on that huge smile, on the very fact of being here with April, feeling like a couple. I liked it. Hell, I loved it. She was like a life raft that had appeared from nowhere atop a broad empty sea where I’d already resolved to spend the last of my days floating until the eventual end came. Instead, here was April, and the hopeless shipwreck of my life had turned into an exotic cruise.
April had my hand as we found our seats, and after the welcome speech from the woman who Cormac explained was the director, the show began.
All in all, it was only an hour long, something I found myself becoming more grateful for as group after group of tiny dancers took the stage. When Taylor and Maddie appeared for the Waltz of the Flowers, I was surprised at the way my heart fluttered and pulsed inside me—like there was a chance it just couldn't hold much more. Taylor kept her face serious, moving her arms with the other girls and performing a very respectable rendition of the steps she'd learned and practiced. Maddie started out with the group, but then she seemed to notice the audience seated out in the dark expanse of the theater, which had been empty during their one dress rehearsal in the space. Her eyes rounded, and gradually she stopped moving, except to take a few steps closer to the edge of the stage and to shield her eyes from the stage lights and peer out into the dark. My heart stuttered—was she scared? I hoped she wasn’t going to cry.
The audience chuckled and cooed appreciatively, but Maddie seemed fixated and had forgotten entirely that she was supposed to be waltzing, turning and leaping with the other flowers.
"Daddy?" She called loudly, searching for him. "Daddy are you ow dere?"
I poked Cormac in the arm, grinning at him as I urged him to answer her.
Cormac got to his feet awkwardly, but then Maddie went on. "Did you bring Uncle Cawan and Auntie Ape-will? I can't see you!"
Reluctantly, I stood took my feet too, and April followed suit. We waved, feeling awkward and fully aware we were causing a disturbance in the audience as other parents grumbled around us.
"Is dat you? It's so dark."
"Yes, honey," Cormac called back. "Now go ahead and dance. We're watching."
Maddie dropped her hands and straightened, clearly realizing the dance had gone on without her, and then she turned and scuttled into the center of the group of girls. She managed to pick up at the spot they'd reached, just before the final steps of the dance.
We took our seats again, Cormac sighing and sinking low in his seat.
April reached across and gave his arm a squeeze. "They're so great," she whispered. And then she looked at me, and my too-full heart stretched even further to accommodate the realization that I’d already fallen. In just over two weeks, at a time when I was sure there wasn't a thing that could pull me back to the land of the living, here was April. I took her hand, twining my fingers through hers, and I sat through the rest of the show, almost wishing it would never end so I could just bask in the nearness of her and the happy realization that life did, in fact, move forward, even when you thought it couldn't.
The girls wanted everyone to go together for ice cream after the performance, so that is what happened, and I was glad to prolong the evening. And when we’d parted ways and April and I were alone in the dark cab of my truck, I turned to her.
"Come home with me?" I wanted to hold her close, to feel her breath against my neck, to slide my hands into the hair I loved. I wanted to tell her how I felt, or at least maybe hint around it, find out if maybe she felt the same thing. I thought she did. Her eyes seemed to say she did.
"I didn't pack a bag," she said, her voice low and regretful. "I can't do the walk of shame in this dress tomorrow, and I sent the clothes I’d had at your house out to be laundered."
I grinned at the mental image her walk of shame brought up. "No, I guess not," I said.
"But you could easily do it in your suit," she added.
I glanced at my own attire and realized she'd just given me an invitation. "Your place then?"
"If you don't mind," she said. Her voice dropped even lower and she stared at her hands as she added, "I don't want to say good night to you. Or goodbye, actually."
"I'd see you tomorrow either way." I said this, hoping maybe she didn't just mean for tonight but unwilling to risk being wrong.
She didn't look up, but I saw her chest rise as she took a deep breath, steeling herself. "I mean at all. I don't know how I'm going to go home, knowing that you're here. That we're …" she trailed off, and then raised her eyes to meet mine. "We're … we're something, right? I'm not imagining things?"
I felt my skin heat as I realized I was not alone in my feelings, and I turned to face April in the close cab, ignoring the protest from my ankle as I pushed it into the floorboards so I could turn fully. "You're not imagining things."
She smiled wide for just a second, as if this confirmation was a relief to her too. She lifted a hand to the side of my face, letting it linger there a long moment before trailing it down and running her finger across my lips. Her touch left a trail of tingling skin, and I fought the urge to rocket myself into her. But as her hand dropped, so did the smile. "So what will happen? What will we do when I go?"
I smiled with a brightness I didn't feel. "They have these things called airplanes," I said.
April stuck her tongue out at me and poked me in the leg, but then let her hand stay there, palm flat to my thigh. "I'm going to take half your name away if you're going to be sarcastic."
"So I'll just be 'wizard?' I like it."
"You'll just be a dick."
I couldn't wait a second longer, and despite the protest in my ankle and the tightness of the fitted suit I wore, I leaned across and pulled April in hard for a kiss. I had to feel her softness in my arms, feel her lips against mine. Her arms went around my neck, and her side of the kiss was every bit as ardent and demanding as mine. When we pulled apart, each a little breathless, I said, "We'll figure it out. It'll be okay." I didn't have the confidence that colored my voice—I didn't like the idea of a cross-country relationship. But I had money. I could make it work. "We won't say goodbye."
"Okay," she said quietly, and I knew she wasn't sure she believed me either.
We drove back to the hotel, and April paused in the lobby to greet Annabelle, who was dressed like a nutcracker tonight, bright red circles pasted on her cheeks and a very tall soldier's hat on her head.
"Don't you two look lovely," Annabelle gushed, taking us in.
"We were at the ballet," I explained.
"Oooh, the Kennedy Center?" Annabelle clapped her hands together and looked wistful.
"Uh, no," April corrected. "Miss
Rosie's School of Dance. They put on The Nutcracker at the high school theater."
"Oh," Annabelle said, but she didn't look any less excited about that. "Well, you two have a good night," she said.
"You too," we said, almost in unison, before heading for the elevator.
"Don't crack too many nuts up there!" Annabelle added, giggling. April and I exchanged a look and then burst into laughter as the elevator doors closed on the lobby.
"My room isn't exactly … " April began, opening her door for me.
"I've seen it," I reminded her.
"Right, but it's just … it's not very homey."
"And for a hotel room in the most over-decorated inn on earth, it's painfully un-Christmassy."
April shrugged, dropping her coat over the chair once we’d entered. "Yeah. Sorry."
I smiled at her, and pulled a garland from where she'd stuffed it behind the armchair. "I can help." I crossed the room and draped it over the headboard, and then flicked the switch on it to turn on the lights. "There you go, that's a start."
"Yeah, that won't keep me awake," she said, smiling.
"I wasn't planning on letting you get much sleep anyway," I said, and everything in my body came alive when April pressed herself into my arms in response.
"Come on wizard," she whispered. "Keep me awake."
I held her against me, reaching behind her to unzip the velvet dress that had been holding in her delicious curves all night. The dress accentuated her softness, and rubbing my hands from her waist over the gorgeous swell of her ass under the soft material had me harder than I could ever remember being. Now, with the dress pooled at her ankles and April in my arms wearing only some very small, very lacy underthings, I thought there was a chance I might pass out, since all the blood in my body had clearly migrated to my wizardly dick.
"God, you're beautiful," I said, my tone holding all the worship I felt for the woman in front of me. I stepped back to admire her, and when she kicked away the pool of her dress, wearing black lace and high red heels, my heart stopped for a moment. "Fucking perfect."
Shaking the Sleigh Page 18