Sunnyside Christmas

by Jacie Floyd

  Pointless speculation. He might have ended up in the same place with the same regrets.

  Now that the long-delayed conversation with Jillian was near, the same problem loomed. He wasn’t sure what to say. Didn’t know if he had the right words. He should have waited and let her see Adam for herself. She would have guessed the truth right away. And then it hit him. A picture, as they way, was worth a thousand words.

  “Come in.” She directed him to the barstools at the kitchen counter. Not to the more welcoming atmosphere of the family room, or even the friendlier setting of the kitchen table.

  “You look nice.” She gestured to his tux. “I’m decidedly underdressed compared to you.”

  She had changed from the shimmery off-the-shoulder dress she’d worn earlier into yoga pants and a snug-fitting top. The hair that had been confined in a bun except for a few curling tendrils was now contained in a loose braid. Instead of stylish heels, thick thermal socks covered her feet. The sophisticated make-up had been washed off and now her fresh and clean face looked at him with an expression that was a little defiant, a little uncertain—very much like she had looked at sixteen.

  As sexy and flattering as her wedding outfit had been, Liam found this look more appealing. This was the way he remembered her from their time together, and it hit him with a longing that took his breath away. Which was a bad place to start this conversation. “You look fine,” he said, with dismissive understatement. “There’s no dress code that I’m aware of.”

  She had poured herself a glass of wine and held it up to him with a questioning look.

  “No thanks.”

  “Can I get you something else to drink? Something to eat?”

  He shook his head. “Still stuffed from the wedding.”

  “God, that sea bass was good, wasn’t it?” she asked, as if grasping at any neutral topic. “I wish I had brought home a piece of cake.”

  “I brought you one,” he admitted. “But I left it in the truck. I’ll get it for you when I leave.” Maybe he should get it now. They may not be speaking by the time he left.

  She perched beside him on a barstool, gazing at him with wide eyes. Waiting for him to speak. When words failed him, he reached into his back pocket and pulled out his wallet. “Here.” He handed her the photo he’d fished out of it. “This is Adam.”

  Taking the picture, she held it at arm’s length, like it might be contaminated. But then she brought it closer, and closer still. Her gaze studied the snapshot, taking in every detail. “He looks like Caleb.”

  “Yeah, he does.” He swallowed the lump that formed in his throat. “And not just his looks either. Sometimes he does or says something that’s so exactly what Caleb would have done or said it’s eerie. And makes me wonder about reincarnation.”

  “Does that make it harder or easier for you?”

  “Sometimes one, sometimes the other.” He took her hand and kissed the back. In the end, saying the words was as simple as breathing. “Adam is Caleb’s child.”

  She gasped, not quite relief, not quite surprise. Her eyelids swept down, and she nodded. “I guess I half-way figured that out.”

  “What? How? Did your dad tell you?”

  “No! Did he know?”

  “He’s known for a while. Not that night at the lake house when it all went down or even the following summer, but later when I came back to Sunnyside.”

  She bolted to her feet and took a swift turn about the room, holding her hand out as if to steady herself. “I was outraged, humiliated, embarrassed, and betrayed that night at the lake house. I left town to put as much distance between us as possible. It was months before I could think rationally. When my head finally cleared, I always knew you loved me. I knew you wouldn’t betray me. So that meant, someone else you were equally devoted to had to be involved. Which could only be Caleb. He’d been home on leave in April before shipping out to Afghanistan, so the timing fit.”

  He could only stare. “And you didn’t say anything?”

  “I was never sure. It seemed like it was over between us, and you hadn’t said anything to me about it either.”

  “You didn’t give me the chance.”

  “That’s what I feel bad about. That I ran away instead of staying to deal with all of it. I was young, selfish, and stupid. I’m so sorry.”

  “Why did you run? Why didn’t you come back? Why wouldn’t you talk to me?”

  “Some of the reasons seem silly, some of them more valid. At first, Dad and I agreed it would be good for me to take a break from you. I found that I liked the freedom of being out of Sunnyside, away from the constant scrutiny and prying eyes. I liked life being an adventure instead of a script that had been written by a committee. You had a lot to deal with, and I wasn’t sure I wanted that to include me. If I hadn’t had an excuse to leave, I probably never would have broken up with you.”

  “And would that have been a bad thing?”

  “I don’t know. Dad said if we were the real deal, we’d eventually find our way back together. And if we didn’t, it wasn’t meant to be.”

  Liam rubbed his forehead. “He said the same thing to me.”

  “That first year, that theory seemed all wrong. Like, of course, we were meant to be together. It broke my heart to be away from you. But then it got easier, and then you went in directions I couldn’t even imagine. When you got married, I accepted that you were truly gone. And then the other things you did, the other things that happened. The crazy, wild, illegal things you did.” She waved her hand to encompass a whole array of activities. “That didn’t even seem like the same person I had known. Was that my fault? Would being with me have kept you from doing those things or were they inside you all the time?”

  It seemed like a sincere question. He wished he had a good answer. “I don’t blame you, Caleb’s death, Adam’s birth, or my shitty childhood for any of it. It might have had a domino effect, but in the end, it was all on me. When I was a child, I had you in my life to balance my shitty childhood and keep me grounded. When you left, I might have kept my act together if Caleb hadn’t been killed. I might have accepted Adam as an amazing gift if I hadn’t felt like the responsibility for him and Leah was crippling me. It was a perfect storm, pushing me along the road I went down, but I made the decisions every step of the way.”

  “What were you trying to achieve? Was it success? Money? Didn’t you make good money almost immediately?”

  Not good enough. Not soon enough.

  He’d had a lot of responsibilities. He needed to make big money to get through college, support Adam and Leah, make sure Missy made it through college, help his grandparents hang on to their farm. When he got married, he wanted to maintain a lavish lifestyle well beyond his means. One that lived up to his wife’s expectations. “I was considered a whiz kid on Wall Street and made excellent money, but there was a fire raging in my blood that propelled me to make more. Drugs and alcohol accelerated that. I was easy prey for unscrupulous partners. One crisis led to another, one moral and ethical lapse led to two more. Making obscene amounts of money gave me a rush like nothing else until I wasn’t just dabbling around the corners of illegalities, I was pushing the boundaries on everything.”

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered and twined her fingers through his. “How did you get caught?”

  “I didn’t get caught so much as woke up. Literally. In a fancy hotel room with an empty bottle of scotch in my hand, several lines of coke on the dresser, and an unknown naked woman passed out in my lap with her hand down my pants. The phone rang, and it was Pops. Gram had had a stroke and he needed me to come home. My first thought was to refuse, but then as this strange woman started kissing her way down my chest, I wondered who in the hell’s life I was living. I’d sold my soul to the devil, my marriage was a joke, I was terrified of the feds finding out what I was doing, and incapable of stopping on my own.”

  “Where was your wife?”

  “I didn’t even know.”

  “What happe
ned then?”

  “Being back home with Pops for a few weeks was the incentive I needed to get my head on straight. I started facing my problems and assessing how to correct them. Made corrections where I could to minimize the damage to the clients, started compiling evidence and documentation, then I contacted some federal agents I knew and cut a deal. And the rest, as they say, is history. I ruined my career and am considered a cautionary tale in financial circles. How to ruin your life in eight easy steps.”

  “Who did you have in your corner when you came back?”

  “Zach. Your dad. Jimbo. Pops’ health was starting to fail, but he commanded respect in the community. Between the four of them, I got through the worst times.”

  “Why do you think my dad stood by you?”

  He’d been wondering about that. “Lingering fondness from when I was young maybe. He’d started to need some business help by then and realized my master’s degree in business might come in handy.” He rubbed his ear and added a new reason to the list. “And now, I’m starting to think he felt bad about the role he played in sending you away.”

  “It wasn’t like him to meddle without good reason, but once Leah accused you, he felt it was in my best interest to step in.”

  “A lot of missteps along the way. Starting with that one night. Can we go back in time?”

  “I don’t think that’s possible.”

  “Let’s try this.” He placed his hands on her shoulders and faced her squarely, prepared to rewrite the past. “Leah has announced to a group of people that I’m her baby’s father.”

  “And I need some time to think. I leave.”

  As much as he would have liked to have followed her, he knew he wouldn’t have left Leah in the hands of her crazy-ass father. “And I need to get Leah to a safe place.”

  Jillian slid him a challenging look. “Instead of driving straight to St. Louis, you and she come here first.”

  And then she would have thrown a fit. But would she have calmed down and listened to reason? “Is that all it would have taken?”

  “I don’t know, but if we’re going to re-write history, that’s one place where we could have done things differently.”

  “Let’s say I take Leah straight to her aunt in St. Louis. Even though you’re mad at me, you stay put and wait for me to return.”

  “Either way, you get the chance to tell me that Leah was using you as a cover with her parents until Caleb could get back home and take her away from them.”

  “But you still would have been embarrassed about being caught at the lake and looking like a pushover for sticking with me when the town thought I was fooling around with Leah.”

  “So, you think I might have left anyway?”

  “Maybe. That would have been a tough call.”

  “But I would have come back when Caleb died. I knew how devastating that news was for you.”

  “Or I would have come looking for you first chance I got, instead of feeling like you had been waiting for an excuse to cut me out of your life without giving me a chance.”

  “Is that how you felt?”

  He nodded, staring into her eyes, sharing that moment of unworthiness in silence. Her hands cradled his jaw and she leaned in for a kiss. Gentle, comforting, and supportive. He pulled her into him, urging her back home. And she came.

  Wasted time. Lost time. Time apart. Maybe it was all meant to be, all roads leading back to this moment. “We were young, and I was stupid.”

  “I especially regretted that we never got to say good-bye.”

  Was this it? Was this the time for that?

  “You’ve always had a place in my heart,” she said. “I was wrong to leave you when I did.”

  How many women had he had since he’d been with her? Fifty? A hundred? How many of them had meant anything to him beyond the thrill of the moment? None. He pulled back to tell her. “I’ve never wanted anyone but you.”

  She rolled her eyes but didn’t argue. Her fingers travelled down his shirt studs. “Should we see if we still fit?”

  His hands closed over hers, holding them still, afraid to want too much. “Are you giving me a second chance to say good-bye?”

  “A chance for tonight.”

  Right, sure. He should have expected that. “No commitments?”

  “Neither one of us ready for that.”

  He was ready. He wouldn’t hesitate over making a commitment to her, but she had her doubts about him. And she should have them. He was the boy who had had won her heart, but he was also the crook who had scammed hundreds of investors. No telling if he’d go off the deep-end again. Destroying his future. And hers. He had to be cautious. Think every single detail through to know where they were going. Hoping they would end up there together.

  But for now, he needed this connection. This reunion. This resurrection of the boy he used to be. With the girl he’d always loved.

  “But you’re ready for this?” With his finger tweaking a diamond-hard nipple, his hips pressed against hers.

  She slept her lashes downward and traced her fingers across his chest. “You said you’ve learned a lot. I’m ready for a hand’s on demonstration.”

  “Hang on, Princess. Class is about to start.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Memories mingled with crazy-hot reality and sent Jillian into an almost euphoric state. In many ways, Liam was the boy she’d known, but his fully developed physicality, discipline, and sexual expertise took her to the edge of fulfillment again and again just to bring her back down and further up on the next wave. Every nerve ending in her body pulsated with desire as the heat of his mouth claimed her neck, her mouth, her breasts. Every pulse point vibrated with need as he lavished attention on skin long dormant from lack of stimulation. His magical hands stroked her to unknown levels of bliss.

  Good Lord, it had always been good with him. But not this good. Nothing, no one had ever come close. Liam took his time. He sucked and savored and wooed. He stroked and soothed and explored. He dominated at times and surrendered at others. He led the way and followed her lead.

  A mound of pillows and blankets in front of the fireplace in the family room encompassed their own private island for sharing and luxuriating. After another earth-shattering orgasm, Jillian crashed onto Liam’s chest and gasped for breath. “Dear God. I think you’ve ruined me for all other men.”

  “I did that when you were sixteen.”

  “True, I just didn’t know it then. I thought everyone had your stamina and skill for pleasuring women.”

  “Other men should be so lucky.”

  “And other women.” She plucked at his chest hair and stroked her hand along his hard abs. “In retrospect, this is why I didn’t want to see you before I left. If you had turned your attention to convincing me to stay, I would have.”

  “And now?”

  “Now?” She flipped her hair back and shrugged. “We see what happens.”

  “Any guesses? I don’t want to pressure you, but there’s a lot on the line.”

  Chewing on her bottom lip kept her from blurting out her response. She should send him on his way, but she couldn’t. If only there was room for some middle ground. The thought of being in Sunnyside for Christmas made her a little nauseous. Being here without her mom was bad enough, but without her dad, too? No way. “I’ll stay in Sunnyside a couple more weeks but not indefinitely. And I’m guessing you don’t want to come to New York.”

  “Right.” His fingers massaged her shoulders, releasing the tension pulling them tight. “So we have a couple of weeks to figure it out.”

  She lifted her head and looked him in the eye, hoping he could read her mind like he used to be able to do. “About tonight…”

  “I know, I got the message earlier. It was a one-time deal.”

  “Not necessarily.”

  His arms tensed around her. “You’re going to have to spell it out.”

  “I wouldn’t mind doing this again. If you want to.” She assumed he wanted to as mu
ch as she did, but he shook his head.

  “Adam will be here the next few weeks. And me having a relationship with you while he’s visiting would include him on the bad side of a ton of gossip. Except for the head-banging sex with the woman I’ve loved my whole life, I don’t see how this is going to benefit me.”

  Whoa, he’d just admitted he’d loved her his whole life. That would take some getting used to. “The town won’t know about us unless you spread it around.” That was the last thing she wanted. “But I see your point about Adam. Let me know when you’ve figured out what you want to do.”

  “Can we take it day by day?”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning, in the morning you can go with me to work out and have breakfast at the club.”

  Her heart about stopped. They had just agreed to keep their pseudo-relationship quiet, but he was already challenging her to go out in public with him. “I don’t want the town involved in whatever this is we’re doing.”

  “We had one night of explosive, unforgettable sex. No one knows about that except us. Between now and whatever we decide for the future, it won’t hurt to share a few days of friendship. If people suspect something more, it won’t be because of anything I say or do.”

  He made it sound so simple, when it was far from that. But a few more days of friendship did sound nice. She couldn’t picture them having anything else while Adam was here anyway. “Do we have to go to the Old Barn? We’ve been awake most of the night, and I’d rather sleep in.”

  “You don’t have to work out if you don’t want. But I’d like you to go The Kitty Kat with me for brunch before I leave for St. Louis.”

  She gave him the side-eye look. She’d been avoiding visiting The Kitty Kat for days and would prefer to avoid it for the rest of her life. “The Kitty Kat,” she said in her flattest, least receptive tone.

  Holding up his hand, he flicked up a digit to emphasize each point. “You need to look over the operation before you make a decision about it. Tyrell makes an amazing brunch. You can meet everyone while they’re off work and relaxed.”