Her father looked smug. “You really want to go there?”
She didn’t. No way. “He sent you after me?” It came out sour and accusing. Because it was.
“No. He asked me what I thought of the idea and I said I was all for it. That was more than two weeks ago. He said he would ask you and then he didn’t say anything more about it for days. So I asked him where we were on that. He said you were thinking it over. How long you planning on thinking about it before you actually give the poor man an answer?”
Her dad rarely annoyed her. But right now, he was definitely rattling her cage. “Liam Bravo is a long way from a ‘poor man.’”
“Well, I for one feel sorry for the guy when it comes to you—and no. I’m not saying you should give him more than you’re willing to give him. I’m saying it’s Thanksgiving. And I know that I’m thankful for a man who is turning out to be a real dad to little Riley and who has knocked himself out to help you any way he can and been stepping right up for your other two children, too, showing an interest in who they are and what they’re up to, driving them to and from wherever they need to go, even coming up with the perfect alternative when Halloween got rained out.”
Everything her dad was saying?
True.
She pulled at a thread on the comforter. “You’re right,” she muttered reluctantly. “He’s a terrific guy.”
“So show him you appreciate all he’s done. Say yes, we would love to go to Daniel Bravo’s house for Thanksgiving.”
When he put it like that, how could she say no? “Okay.”
“What’s that? Speak up.”
“Fine, Dad. I’ll accept Liam’s invitation to Thanksgiving with the Bravos.”
“Great. How ’bout doing that right now? All three kids are in bed and the lights are on over at the cottage.”
* * *
Liam heard the tap on the slider and glanced that way. It was Karin, in flannel pajamas printed with penguins, a pair of Uggs and old Portland State hoodie with the hood pulled up over her hair.
“Got a minute?” she asked when he let her in.
He stared down at her upturned face, at that smart little mouth he couldn’t wait to kiss again. “What do you need?”
She pushed the hood off her hair. “That Thanksgiving invitation still on the table?”
He felt a punch to his chest. The good kind, like his heart was reminding him that it was still beating. He could see her answer right there in those beautiful eyes. “You’re saying yes?”
She nodded up at him, eyes bright and full of light, her face scrubbed clean of makeup, her dark hair a nimbus of shiny, wild curls. “We would love to come. All of us. You really think Daniel and Keely will be able to handle the crowd?”
“No problem.”
“Well, okay, then. I’ll, um, let you go...”
He caught her arm. “Just a second.”
“Hmm?”
“This.” He wrapped his other arm around her and swooped down to claim her lips.
She didn’t resist.
On the contrary, she slid those pretty, slim, hardworking hands of hers up his chest and hooked them around his neck. “I didn’t come here to kiss you,” she said, as she kissed him.
He pulled her even closer. “Sometimes good things happen when you least expect them.”
She laughed, her breath sweet with a hint of minty toothpaste, her body soft and warm in his arms.
He’d spent a lot of his life avoiding giving his heart. It was all due, he’d told himself, to the tragedies in his family when he was a kid—the disappearance of a brother, the sudden death of both parents. Loving people hurt so bad when you lost them and he loved too many people already. It was too late for him with his brothers and sisters, with Great-Uncle Percy and Great-Aunt Daffodil. He loved them before he learned the sad lesson that love ended up meaning loss that ripped you up inside.
But at least, his younger self had concluded, he could avoid the awful emotional danger of loving a woman.
His younger self hadn’t known squat.
It took the birth of RG to show him the big picture. Karin had always been the one for him. All these years, he’d thought he’d dodged the love bullet. Wrong. He’d just been waiting for the right time to admit the truth to himself: Karin Larson Killigan owned his heart.
Sadly, Karin now seemed as determined as he used to be not to go there. He had a bad feeling that for her, the right time to give her heart to anyone was never.
She would probably mess him over royally. He’d get just what he’d always feared out of this deal: disappointment, hurt and the kind of loss that ripped a man’s guts out.
He’d get everything he’d always been afraid of.
And he didn’t even care. He wanted her and their baby. He wanted serious Ben, bubbly little Coco and stalwart, big-hearted Otto, too. He wanted to make a family with all of them, his deepest fears be damned.
If only he could find the way to get her to say yes to him.
“Liam.” She sighed, her soft lips parting. He tasted her, nice and deep and slow.
Until she pulled back and her eyes fluttered open.
He touched her sweet, pointy chin, guided a wild curl behind the curve of her ear. I want to marry you, Karin. It sounded really good inside his head.
He almost went ahead and said it.
But he had a crappy feeling that laying another proposal on her right now would just ruin a great moment.
She’d given him Thanksgiving. He’d kissed her and she’d kissed him back.
For now, he would call it a win and not push his luck.
* * *
As it turned out, Sten and Madison couldn’t make it home for Thanksgiving. Connor Bravo and his wife Aly didn’t come either. They were still in New York, where Aly was training her successor at the advertising firm where she’d worked for the past seven years.
But even with two siblings and their spouses unavailable, Daniel and Keely’s big house on Rhinehart Hill overflowed with family on Thanksgiving Day. The rest of the Bravo siblings came, including Matt with his wife, Sabra, and Aislinn with her husband, Jaxon, and also the housekeeper and foreman from Wild River Ranch where they lived. Keely’s mom, Ingrid, and Keely’s aunt, Gretchen, had arrived at the crack of dawn to help with cooking and general holiday prep. The food looked amazing. They had turkey, a gorgeous ham and a beautiful prime rib. And more sides than Karin could count.
Harper and Hailey, the family event planners, had set up ongoing games of turkey bowling and pin the feather on the turkey for anyone who wanted to play. They had a big pumpkin-shaped jar full of candy corn and made everyone guess how many candy kernels were inside for a possible prize of...a big bag of candy corn.
Daniel’s twins, Frannie and Jake, were three now, happy kids who talked nonstop. Keely’s baby, Marie, born the previous January, was already learning to walk. Marie staggered around on her fat little legs, constantly falling and dragging herself upright to try again. She was also a big talker, though her endless chatter made sense only to her.
Coco found Marie enchanting and spent a good portion of the afternoon holding the baby’s fat little hand, helping her in her shaky efforts to stay on her feet. The attention delighted Marie to no end. She beamed up at Coco like she’d found a new best friend.
Ben took an interest in the twins. He bundled them up in their winter coats and took them out to the backyard for a long walk around the garden paths. The Bravo family basset hound, Maisey Fae, loped along in their wake.
Everyone made a big deal over Riley. Grace Bravo, the youngest of Liam’s siblings, offered Karin her bedroom off the kitchen for a private place to nurse. Gracie suggested that Riley could have her bed if he dropped off to sleep—which he did, about a half hour or so before the big meal. Keely gave Karin a baby monitor to use and she surrounded Riley with pillows an
d left him to nap.
When they sat down to eat, Great-Uncle Percy and Great-Aunt Daffy each gave a toast. Percy raised his glass to long life. Daffy, to true love. Aunt Gretchen said grace.
Karin, seated next to Liam at one of the two long pushed-together tables, felt his big, warm hand brush hers under the table as Gretchen recited her sweet prayer of thanks.
It was good, Karin thought, to catch up with the Bravos again. She’d put up a lot of resistance to coming here today. And now she found herself grateful that her dad had convinced her she needed to say yes to Liam’s invitation.
As amens echoed around the packed table, she gave the man her hand, even opening her fingers a little, lacing them with his at his urging.
He leaned close. “I’m glad you’re here.”
She met those beautiful eyes and almost wished...
Well, better not even to let herself complete that thought. “Me, too,” she replied. “I’m glad you invited us.”
He gave her a smile that made the tall white candles in the middle of the table seem to burn even brighter. “So, you’re having a good time?”
“I am. Very much so.”
A teasing gleam made his eyes look even bluer. “Clearly, you should say yes to me more often.”
Should she?
Doubtful. Coparents needed to respect each other’s space. However, Liam Bravo was turning out to be a whole lot more than she’d ever bargained for. He was not only hot and tempting, but so persuasively persistent, as well. He was good to her kids and friends with her dad and thoroughly determined to do right by his child. She would be lying if she tried to tell herself she didn’t find him extraordinarily attractive on a whole lot of levels.
He leaned a fraction closer. “What is that secretive smile you’re giving me?”
“Just thinking that you’re a really good dad.” And he was a good dad, so she’d only told him the truth—only not all of the truth.
He laughed. “Do you give that look to all the good dads?”
And she went ahead and answered honestly. “Only you, Liam.”
His thumb slipped in between their joined hands. He stroked her palm. It felt so good, so wonderfully thrilling and deliciously naughty.
And she was probably losing her mind a little what with all this...thankfulness she was feeling. Losing her mind and getting crazy ideas.
Ideas like how maybe she ought to be more open to him, to this attraction she felt for him.
Okay, yeah. She knew very well it would be better, smarter, not to mix their mutual parenting responsibilities with physical intimacy.
However, they were really good together in that way. They had chemistry, an excess of it. She’d always been drawn to him, since way back in high school. And the nights they’d shared at the first of the year still fueled her fantasies all these months and months later.
And now he lived right next door.
With every day that passed in which he was funny and kind and thoughtful, helpful and gentle and patient and so understanding—not to mention superhot—well, it just got harder and harder to remember that keeping a certain distance between them was key. It got harder and harder not to wonder why they shouldn’t enjoy themselves a little.
As long as they both went into it with their eyes open, as long as they agreed that it didn’t have to go anywhere, that they could be together just for now and just for fun. That if it didn’t work out in the long run, they would act like adults, reestablish the boundaries and go on as Riley’s parents who weren’t together but wanted the best for their son.
Didn’t divorced people do that all the time?
Really, if they kept it just between the two of them, didn’t let the kids or her dad know, so that no one got unrealistic expectations of how things might turn out...
Well, she couldn’t stop asking herself, what could it hurt?
Chapter Seven
The Larson-Killigan family had a tradition.
On the Saturday after Thanksgiving, they all went out together and chopped down their Christmas tree. They brought it home and stood it up in the picture window in the great room. From the attic, they hauled down box after box, each one packed full of Christmas decorations collected over the past three generations.
Then they all worked together decorating the tree, decking the fireplace mantel with boughs and twinkly lights and setting up the crèche that had belonged to Karin’s mother’s mother.
That morning, Liam appeared on the back deck just as Karin, Otto and the kids were sitting down to breakfast before heading to Oja’s Christmas Tree Farm.
Karin glanced up and saw him standing there. She knew what was going on without having to ask, but she turned to her dad, anyway. “Looks like someone invited Liam.”
“That’s good!” enthused Coco. She bounced from her seat and darted over to the door, the black towel she wore for a cape flopping in her wake.
Otto swallowed a bite of pancake. “He has that Supercrew F-150. The console in front turns into a seat, so there’s room in the cab for all of us and the long bed is perfect for hauling the tree home.”
“Good thinking,” Karin said wryly.
Coco, all in black to match her “cape,” shoved the slider wide and threw out her arms to the sides. “Hi, Liam! I’m Raven. I have instant healing for me and for others. I travel to different dimensions. I teleport and astro projet—”
“She means ‘astral project,’” Ben corrected.
Coco turned and glared at him. “You interrupted me. That’s rude.”
“Sorry,” said Ben and crunched a bite of bacon. “But you might as well get it right.”
Coco sighed, the sigh of all sisters put-upon by older brothers. “Now I can’t ’member the rest—but come in, Liam. Have some pancakes. We got blueberry syrup and plenty of bacon.”
Karin, who found she was not the least annoyed that her dad had invited Liam without consulting her, started to rise. “I’ll get you a—”
“Don’t get up.” He was smiling at her, the smile she somehow felt was only for her. “I know where the plates and coffee mugs are.”
“Well, all right.” They shared a long look full of humor and promise and banked heat, one of those looks she decided she didn’t need to think too deeply about. Not now, not on tree-decorating day.
It was good, what she felt for him. She might as well enjoy that goodness, whatever might or might not happen next.
Bottom line, she was getting used to having Liam in her day-to-day life. He wasn’t going away and she could either accept the situation gracefully or grump around like a shrew trying to protect herself from some possible future heartache.
And yeah. Overthinking. She needed to cut that out, too.
Liam poured himself some coffee and carried his full mug and a place setting to the empty chair across from her. Karin pushed the platter of pancakes his way and he took four. Otto passed him the bacon.
Coco announced, “Here’s the butter and the blueberry syrup for you, Liam.”
“Thanks.” He captured Karin’s gaze again. Little zings of fizzy excitement went zipping all through her. “RG?”
“He went back to sleep after I fed him.” She tipped her head at the baby monitor perched on the counter. “So far, not a peep.”
“Eat up, folks,” said Otto. “The tree farm opens at ten.”
* * *
For once, the weather cooperated. It was cold out, but clear. They bundled up in winter gear and piled into Liam’s big pickup. Otto and Ben sat in front with Liam. Karin sat in the middle in back, Riley in his car seat on one side and Coco in hers on the other.
At the farm, they wandered up and down the rows of trees, finally settling on a nine-foot noble fir with gorgeous, thick branches in majestic even tiers.
Back at the Cove, they took a break for hot chocolate with miniature
marshmallows. Then Karin cued up her holiday playlist. To the holiday stylings of Bette Midler and Michael Bublé, Weezer and NSync, they brought the tree in and stood it up in the tree stand. After that, they trooped up and down the stairs until every box of tinsel, lights and decorations was stacked in the great room, ready to roll.
Once they had the lights on the tree, they stopped for soup and sandwiches.
Karin was having a ball. She loved getting out all the old decorations, remembering who had made or bought or gifted the family each one, and when. They took turns holding Riley when he wasn’t napping. Karin got out her phone and snapped lots of pictures. Liam did, too.
It was great, the perfect family activity, all of them working together to kick off another year of Christmas memories, the house all warm and cozy, full of holiday tunes and the smell of evergreen. Karin missed having Sten there, but Liam fit right in. Everything was perfect.
Or it was until they got around to setting up the crèche and Liam suggested, “The baby Jesus in the manger should be right in the middle, under the star.”
And Ben piped up in his coolest, most dismissive Little Professor voice, “We like it a little to the side. And I don’t think you even really need to be here, Liam. We’ve been doing this for years without you and we don’t need you now.”
Poor Liam, standing there with Riley on one arm and the manger with its glued-in hay bedding in his opposite hand, didn’t seem to know what to say.
Otto stepped in. “Liam’s here because I invited him,” he said in a careful tone.
Ben chewed his lower lip. He looked miserable. Had he been this way all day?
Karin couldn’t believe she hadn’t noticed till now that her serious, levelheaded older son wasn’t his usual agreeable self. She asked gently, “What’s going on, Ben?”
He stuck his hands in the pockets of his tan jeans and hunched his thin shoulders. “Well, I just mean, we do Christmas with the family and he’s not our family. He’s not my dad or Coco’s dad. He’s just the baby’s dad.”
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