A Very Daring Christmas (The Tavonesi Series Book 8)

by Pamela Aares

  “I go to bed at eight thirty,” Dylan said with a long face. “I mean, you said I should clue you in. Mom always said to be honest, that honesty is the most important thing next to kindness. Kindness is number one.”

  They hadn’t even reached the kitchen and already the kid was breaking his heart.

  “I don’t like to go to bed early,” Dylan rattled on. “But Mom always said I had to. Except for Carnival and Christmas Eve. For those I got to stay up until midnight. For the parties. Can I stay up late for Christmas Eve here?”

  “Sure, sport.”

  They’d have to stay here until Christmas; he sure couldn’t take Dylan back to his condo. He didn’t even know which unpacked box held his toaster. His condo wouldn’t be a fun place to spend a first holiday as an orphan.

  “Food, Dylan,” Cameron said in her warmest, richest voice. She opened the fridge. “Let’s see what’s in here. Do you like peanut butter and jelly?”

  “Umm... I’m not sure.” He sniffed the jar Cameron opened, then looked up at her, adoration written all over his face. “Aderro says you’re a big movie star.”

  “We’re talking food here, Dylan.”

  “Are you?”

  Jake smiled. Peter had been persistent. He wouldn’t stop with questions until he was satisfied he had the best answer. He wondered what other traits Dylan had inherited from his dad.

  “Truth,” Jake said, crossing his arms and waiting for Cameron’s answer.

  Cameron pulled out a jar of blackberry jam and a loaf of bread. “Right now I am, yes.”

  Dylan yelped. “Wait till I tell Nonna!”

  “Who’s Nonna?” Jake and Cameron asked in unison.

  “She’s the elder of Alacenya. She loves movies. Do you think she’s ever seen one of your movies?”

  Jake had to smile. He could see the wheels in Cameron’s mind spinning. Neither one of them was cut out for orienting a kid to a foreign land.

  “I really can’t say.”

  “I’m going to email her. But sometimes email takes weeks. Sometimes the Internet goes down, and Nonna has to go all the way to Manaus to get someone to come back and fix it. It drove my mom crazy.”

  Dylan didn’t seem like a six-year-old. And if he hadn’t been the spitting image of Peter, Jake would have thought that someone was trying to foist a kid on him. But he had Peter’s eyes. And his gestures. The smile he must’ve gotten from his mom. The woman must’ve been a beauty.

  “How old did you say you are?”

  “Six. My birthday’s August nineteenth. How old are you?”

  “I’m twenty-seven.”

  “Nonna is a hundred and one.”

  Cameron raised a brow. But Jake was inclined to believe this Nonna probably was the age Dylan claimed she was. God only knew what other jungle oddities they’d hear about before the week was over.

  The peanut butter and jelly sandwiches were a big hit, and Cameron fixed them all frothy cups of hot cocoa too. The cheers that went up when Jake told them both that he’d be staying with the Giants only added to the chaos in the kitchen. He’d intended to tell Cameron in private, but even with the consternation ricocheting in his brain as he dealt with Dylan, he’d found he couldn’t wait. In the buzz of celebration that followed, Jake answered more questions than he’d known could be asked in such a short period of time. But Dylan’s yawns were coming closer together, and his eyelids were beginning to droop.

  “Would you like to see the Christmas tree?” Cameron asked as she rounded up their cups from the massive granite counter and placed them in the kitchen sink.

  “We got lights for our tree last year, first time ever,” Dylan said as he walked with Jake and Cameron into the foyer. “Nonna made the ornaments out of some of her old dresses. Do you celebrate Yemaya? Most of the people in the village like that holiday better than Christmas. Mom did. We got to travel to the sea.”

  “I have a girlfriend who celebrates Yemaya,” Cameron said.

  “Can I meet her?”

  Cameron looked to Jake, uncertainty clouding her eyes.

  “We’ll see,” she said. She pushed open the heavy doors leading to the Great Hall.

  Dylan stopped. Stared.

  “That’s a whole tree!” He ran the length of the room in a flash. He’d gotten his father’s speed, no doubt about that.

  “It’s like the thing you see in the movies. Those magic trees. Nonna says that spirits live in trees. This tree must have a huge spirit.”

  Dylan walked around to the back of the tree. Jake took Cameron’s hand.

  “Thank you.”

  “I can’t even imagine how you must feel right now.”

  “I can’t either.”

  “He needs a bath. Or a shower. And then bed. Maybe read to him a bit.”

  “Would you?”

  “He’s too old for me to give him a bath.”

  “I mean, would you read to him? I’ll help with a shower. I have a PhD in showers. Comes from a lifetime of sports.”

  “He’ll need some presents. To go under the tree.”

  “Old baseballs don’t count?”

  She laughed. God, he loved to make her laugh.

  “Eight hundred and fifty lights,” Dylan said as he came around from the back of the tree.

  Cameron pulled her hand away from Jake’s.

  “How do you know?”

  “I counted one strand and then figured out from the plugs how many there are. I might’ve missed one. I’m going to be an engineer. Or a marine biologist. Aderro said the ocean is only thirty miles from here. Can we go tomorrow?”

  “Let’s get you upstairs for a shower and then bed. We can talk about tomorrow in the morning.”

  “It’s only seven thirty,” Dylan said with a plaintive glance to Cameron.

  “How do you know?” All Jake needed was a wizard savant on his hands.

  Dylan gave an impish grin. A grin Jake had seen from his brother all his life.

  “There’s a clock behind you. A big one.”

  Cameron’s laugh mingled with Dylan’s.

  Jake turned. He’d never noticed the towering grandfather clock at the back wall of the room. Charades and Christmas trees and Cameron had taken up all of his attention.

  “Upstairs. Cameron has offered to read to you.”

  “But I don’t have a book.”

  “I’ll bring one up from the library. It’ll be a surprise,” Cameron offered.

  Jake was so grateful, he could kiss her. Hell, grateful or not he wanted to kiss her. But he kept his distance as the three of them mounted the stairs, Dylan peppering them with questions about the castle the whole way.

  “I’ll go down and fetch a book,” Cameron said at the top of the stairs.

  The shower part was easy. Jake handed Dylan a towel, turned on the water and left him to it. He came out fifteen minutes later, red-skinned and glowing.

  “That shower is as big as Nonna’s hut,” Dylan said. “Everything around here is so big. Is the baseball field big too?”

  “All baseball fields are the same size,” Jake answered. He didn’t have it in him to do another hundred questions.

  Cameron knocked at the door.

  Dylan snugged the towel tighter around his body.

  “We’re just getting to the pajama part,” Jake said.

  Dylan dug in his bag. To Jake’s astonishment, he came up with a kid-size jersey with Jake’s name and number.

  “Aderro got me this. In case I get lost. This way I’ll remember your name. My name now too, right?”

  Cameron turned away and appeared to be examining the grout in the stone fireplace.

  “Yeah,” Jake heard himself say. Whether it was true or not, right then wasn’t any time to be sorting out Dylan’s future. “What book did you find?” he asked Cameron.

  He saw the question in her eyes. A question he wasn’t ready to answer for himself or for Dylan, and so he couldn’t begin to answer it for her.

  She held out a book.

 
; “A Friend for Dragon.”

  “I love dragons!” Dylan took a flying leap and landed on the bed. “We had two big beds like this in the airport hotel in Manaus. Me in one and Nonna in the other. I could barely see her over the covers.” His face clouded. “Can Nonna come here and visit me?”

  “Sure, sport.”

  How he’d convince an Amazon village elder to come to Sonoma, he had no idea, but she could maybe help. Even if she was a hundred and one. He needed all the help he could get. Hell, he hadn’t even figured out the future of his dog. A sting of guilt laced through him. He needed to call the kennel and check on Buster. His mom had been very clear that after the holidays, he was to bring the dog to San Francisco or find a home for him.

  God, he needed to call his parents. They had a grandson. His mom was gonna flip.

  “Where will you and Cameron sleep?”

  “I have another room,” Cameron said quickly.

  “Is it big like this?”

  “Bigger.”

  “Really?” Jake said, trying to return the evening to something normal. “You outrank me?”

  “Definitely. By a mile.”

  “A mile is one point six kilometers,” Dylan said.

  Jake nodded toward the bed. The bed he’d wanted Cameron in more than anything for a long time. And now she was headed toward it.

  She fluffed the pillows, and Dylan snuggled up beside her. Then he patted the bed at his other side.

  “You can sit here, Jake. So you can see the pictures too.”

  Jake sat on the bed. He couldn’t read the slight smile curving Cameron’s lips. Had she softened toward him? Or was she charmed by the child? She drew her legs up under her. He felt her eyes on him. The bed shifted as he walked on his knees to Dylan’s other side. He smiled at Dylan’s laugh, but hey, there was no less clumsy way to maneuver. His smile grew wider at the thought that grace in bed had always been one of his strong suits. But that wasn’t working for him now. No indeed. The bed sagged with his weight as he stretched out beside the grinning boy.

  “You’re tall,” Dylan said. “Was my dad tall?”

  Cameron caught Jake’s eye. Maybe she was right about grief needing to be shared.

  “Very tall.”

  “Do you have pictures?”

  “Yes. I promise to show them to you. And I have his bat. You can have it.”

  “Otimo,” Dylan said with a huge grin.

  “But for now I think we should let Cameron get on with our dragon.”

  Dylan eyed him. And to his dismay, tears welled in the boy’s eyes. He snuggled close to Jake and buried his face between the pillow and Jake’s body.

  “I miss my mom,” he sobbed. “I try really hard not to, but I miss her.” His little body trembled with his sobs. Jake stroked his hand along Dylan’s back, unsure of what to say. “Nonna says she’s with the spirits.” Dylan pulled himself up and looked into Jake’s eyes. “Do you believe in spirits?”

  Jake darted his gaze to Cameron. She wiped a tear from her cheek. But it was clear she was leaving it to him to answer. “Well...” Damn, he wanted to be honest. “I do, in fact.”

  “What kind of spirits?”

  Were all kids this direct? “Well, mostly the good ones.”

  “I like them the best too,” Dylan said, his sobs slowing and his breath returning to normal. “Nonna has ways of getting rid of all the bad spirits. She did it for me. Maybe she’ll do it for you.”

  God, he hoped so.

  Cameron smiled. She handed Jake a tissue, and he handed it to Dylan. “Maybe she’d do it for me too?”

  Dylan cracked a smile. The smile that had Peter written all over it. “She’d like you a lot. She likes movie stars.”

  Jake was dying here. He helped Dylan sit up and move the book between him and Cameron. “Want to hear about the dragon’s friend?” he coaxed. He was about at the end of his emotional leash.

  As Cameron began reading, her first words got lost in Jake’s jumbled thoughts. He had a dog he needed to deal with, a woman who had turned his world upside down and had him breaking all his longstanding rules, and now, at least for a while, the sweetest rascal of a kid, and he was sitting in a bed beside the woman and the kid while they read a bedtime story and took a crowbar to the deepest regions of his heart. Nothing else could possibly surprise him after all that.

  But as Cameron continued to read in her honey-sweet voice, the thump in his heart was like being broadsided by a wave of love slamming into him with a force that, had he been standing, would’ve sent him to his knees. She might be an A-list actress, but there was no doubt she was loving everything about reading to Dylan.

  When she’d read through the book once, Dylan asked her to read it again. Jake felt his eyelids drooping. He’d close them for just a moment. As he drifted, he felt a warm little hand slip into his.

  When he woke in the morning with Dylan curled between him and Cameron, he was surprised as hell.

  Jake slipped out of bed without waking either Cameron or Dylan. Dawn was just breaking, casting the hills in the east in a golden glow. He walked the silent corridors. He hadn’t heard the gang come back in the night. He hadn’t heard a thing. He hadn’t even had dreams.

  He crossed the courtyard. Sounds of clanging pots and running water came drifting from the kitchen. Coffee could wait. The shock of waking up in a bed with Cameron—with Dylan—had him needing a very big dose of fresh air.

  When he returned to the castle an hour later, Alex met him as he entered the kitchen.

  “Heard you had a visitor,” Alex said. “And perhaps a rather unusual evening?”

  Jake took the mug of coffee Alex held out.

  “Not what you’re thinking.” He filled Alex in on Aderro’s surprise visit. On the greater surprise of finding out he had a nephew who was in need of a parent.

  “You can stay here as long as you need to,” Alex said.

  “What I need is to use the phone and call my parents to let them know they have a grandson.”

  “I’ll leave you to it,” Alex said. He handed Jake his phone and left him alone in the kitchen.

  His mom’s recorded message wasn’t the answer Jake was hoping for. It was early evening in Rome, so they were probably doing up the holiday in style somewhere in the city. He couldn’t bring himself to leave anything more than a request that she call him when she got in. It just wouldn’t be right to lay such news on her in a message. Deep down he was already anticipating hearing his mom’s thrilled reaction to the news that they now had a piece of Peter that they’d thought they’d never have.

  He took a deep breath and headed upstairs. Prepared himself to face Dylan and the many questions for which he had no ready answers. To face Cameron and the questions he didn’t even want to ask. But when he opened the door to his guest room, the bed was empty. Cameron’s lingering scent was the only evidence that the previous night had been more than a dream.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “This is Tamara Brent, Features editor. I will be out of the office until January third. All of us at the Times wish you and yours a very happy holiday season. Please leave your message at the sound of the tone.”

  Cameron huffed while she waited for the beep. It was only December twenty-second, for goodness’ sake. Had all of the East and West Coast movers and shakers gone on the same holiday cruise? The absurd image didn’t even make her smile.

  “It’s Cameron Kelley,” she said into her phone. “I was just following up on the feature I suggested on the Water for Life project in Dominia.”

  She didn’t bother to pitch to the recording. Roberta had taught her to never give someone a chance to say no unless you had them in direct conversation.

  Her phone pinged before she could stash it in her purse.

  Her mother.

  Though her first impulse was to let the call go to voice mail, she answered.

  “Darling, I’m so proud of you!”

  “Hi, Lucinda.”

  “When did you start c
alling me Lucinda instead of Mama?”

  Her mother wanted something; Cameron could feel the beginning of a ploy across the cell waves, across the thousands of miles.

  “When I was about seven.”

  “Well, there’s always time for a fresh start. We should get together. Sorry about missing you for the holidays, but I’ll be back from Monaco after the first of the year. We can catch up. You can tell me all about this project of yours. The one in the Caribbean. I love the Caribbean in the winter. Too bad about that ballplayer, though.”

  “Ballplayer?”

  “Well, the article I saw said you dumped the ballplayer. Drake.”

  “Jake.”

  “I do think you saying that you wanted a regular man was good. You’ll have them lining up now. I always thought carpenters would make great boyfriends if you were into the down-to-earth sort.”

  “They twisted my words. You know the drill.”

  “They always do, darling. Ask for review approval. Surely you’re a big enough star to get that now. I was thinking, honey...”

  She paused.

  Cameron braced for the ask.

  There was always an ask when it came to Lucinda.

  “I was thinking that since you got that new film, I thought that maybe you could put a word in for me with Hanks. The wizardess role would be perfect for me.”

  Wouldn’t it just?

  Oddly, this time Cameron didn’t say no. This time she wanted to help. Dylan’s words about kindness rang in her ears. It didn’t cost her much to help her mom. In fact, as she’d dressed that morning, she’d considered how much she’d learned from her mercurial parent. To be curious and to use her imagination. To go after what she wanted. And if nothing else, riding the crashing waves of her mother’s failed romances had taught her resilience. Trained her up for life in the real world.

  “Okay, Mama.”

  “Music to my ears.”

  Cameron wasn’t sure if it was the Mama part or the career-enhancing part that pleased her mother more. As she ended the call, she realized it didn’t matter. Must be the holiday spirit finally taking hold.

  She poured orange juice from a carafe beside her bed. And eyed the two glasses that had been delivered on the tray with the juice. Maybe Spencer had a sense of humor.