Christmas in Cambria

by Linda Seed

  He read Delilah’s body language, and when she was ready for him to go, he saw it.

  He got up from his seat, took his mug into the kitchen, and made some noises about having somewhere to be. When he said it, she sagged a little with relief.

  Gun-shy with men, maybe?

  I’ll see what I can do about that, he thought. Then: Oh, fuck off. No you won’t.

  There were more alarms going off in Quinn’s head than at a school fire drill. She’d been hurt by somebody. She was going through something. And she was a mother.

  Best to thank her, get out, and run like hell.

  He managed the first part just fine. He thanked Delilah for the coffee, said some pleasant, polite things, and went to the door. Then he made the mistake of crouching down to the kids’ level to say goodbye to them.

  Gavin, his thumb in his mouth, ran up to Quinn and threw his arms around him, tucking his little head against Quinn’s chest.

  What could Quinn do but hug back? The kid smelled like baby shampoo and Cheerios.

  And there was that sensation again, like something warm squeezing his heart.

  He disentangled himself from the boy, stood up straight, cleared his throat, and waved down at him and his brother. “I’ll see you, Gavin. Jesse.”

  “When?” Gavin said.

  “When what?”

  “When will you see us?”

  Quinn blinked once, thrown by the question.

  “Ah … I don’t know. Maybe your mom will call me about taking a hike.”

  Then he got the hell out of there before he could get any more captivated by this little family than he already was.

  Chapter 6

  “And then Gavin ran up and hugged him. God. Those boys need a man in their lives so badly, and they don’t even care who it is. I could strangle Mitch. I could light him on fire and spit on his ashes.”

  “Let me know if you need to borrow some lighter fluid,” Roxanne said.

  Delilah was sitting at a picnic table at Shamel Park, talking on her cell phone while the boys ran and tumbled and climbed on the play equipment. In the background, Delilah could hear the crash of the waves on the beach behind her.

  “I don’t know what to do,” she told Roxanne.

  “About Mitch, or about the guy?”

  “About the boys. There’s nothing I can do about Mitch, and there’s nothing I want to do about the guy.”

  “Really? You’ve got the phone number of a super hot guy who your kids love and who’s willing to show up at your house at the drop of a text, and you don’t want to do anything with that?”

  Delilah sighed and rubbed her forehead wearily. “In case you hadn’t noticed, Roxanne, I’ve got my hands full right now. I’m raising two children alone, and in less than two months I need to find a new place to live. I don’t have time for a relationship.”

  “Who said anything about a relationship? There’s no law that says you can’t have a little fun on your vacation. God knows you need it. And you deserve it. Plus, it might help you put Mitch in your rearview mirror. Emotionally. And that would be a bonus, wouldn’t it?”

  She supposed it might be. On the other hand, any benefit she might get would be outweighed by the damage she could do to her own heart—and her children’s hearts—if she got involved with anyone at this stage in her life.

  Besides, Quinn Monroe was so far out of her league he might as well be playing in the majors while she was in T-ball.

  “No,” she told Roxanne.

  “No?”

  “No.”

  “Well, maybe just keep your options open.”

  “No.”

  Shutting out the possibility of anything happening with Quinn—or with any other man—was so much easier than leaving that door open and then having it slammed in her face.

  Over the next few days, Delilah tried to keep busy.

  She took the boys to the beach; she took them to see the elephant seals; they visited Hearst Castle. Delilah did the grocery shopping and cooked nourishing meals, she kept Otter Bluff clean, and she tried not to think about what was going to happen when their time in Cambria was over.

  She told herself she would not have thought about Quinn Monroe at all if the boys hadn’t kept bringing him up.

  “I want to go hiking again,” Gavin said one morning over his bowl of cereal.

  “Me too,” Jesse said.

  “You guys know what happened last time,” Delilah told them. She sat down at the table with them, a mug of coffee in her hands.

  “Yeah, but that’s why we need to go with Quinn,” Jesse said.

  “He keeps people safe while they’re hiking,” Gavin put in. “That’s his job. He said.”

  “I know that, honey.” Delilah smiled at her youngest son. “But I’m sure he’s got more important things to do than leading us around on some trail.”

  “But we’d be paying him,” Jesse said. “And that’s his job. He doesn’t have more important things to do than his job.”

  “Oh, but he’s probably expensive. And—”

  “We have a lot of money. You said so.” Jesse’s expression was all stubbornness and persistence. “You said after our house got sold we don’t have to worry about money anymore.”

  “I said we don’t have to worry about it for now,” Delilah corrected him. The truth was, they wouldn’t have to worry about it for a long time, given the proceeds from the house and the spousal and child support Mitch had finally been ordered to pay. But Jesse didn’t necessarily need to know that. “That doesn’t mean we can just throw money around on—”

  “It’s not throwing money around if it keeps us safe!” Jesse insisted. “The last time we went hiking, I could have died! What are we supposed to do? Just die?”

  “You weren’t even hurt,” Delilah reminded him. “Except for a few scrapes.”

  “What if that had been a cliff? What if I’d fallen into the ocean and a shark ate me?” Jesse, like all boys of his age, liked to spin scenarios out to their most outrageous conclusions.

  “And then what if a whale ate the shark?” Gavin asked, giggling. “And then something bigger than the whale came along and ate the whale?”

  “There’s nothing bigger than a whale, dummy,” Jesse said.

  “Don’t call your brother dumb,” Delilah said.

  “I could pay him,” Gavin said.

  The suggestion was so surprising Delilah thought she’d heard it wrong. “What, sweetie?”

  “I could pay Quinn. To take us hiking. I’ve been saving my allowance. I have a hundred dollars in my bank account.”

  Jesse perked up. “I have money, too. If Gavin doesn’t have enough, I could help.”

  “No. Boys … no.”

  “But that money is ours to do whatever we want with it,” Jesse insisted. “You said.”

  Had she said that? She thought she probably had. She was running out of reasons to say no. The kids had backed her into a corner efficiently and effectively. But she couldn’t let them spend their allowance on something like this, when the very fact that they wanted it so desperately threatened to break her heart.

  With few options, she pulled out the answer every mother used when she was unwilling to relent but was out of other answers.

  “We’ll see.”

  “We’ll see always means no,” Jesse said.

  “It doesn’t mean no. It just means … we’ll see.”

  “It means no,” Gavin said.

  And he looked so damned sad, so defeated, that Delilah almost wept. She couldn’t do that, though—not in front of the boys.

  “We’ll see,” she said, ruffling Gavin’s hair.

  Quinn didn’t expect Delilah to call. Hell, he didn’t even want her to call. And yet he seemed to be checking his phone more than usual even as he went about his life over the next few days—leading tourists on trail hikes, working on the furniture website, and researching an article about salmon fishing.

  Thanksgiving was drawing closer, and he tried no
t to think about that. Maybe he would take a road trip over the long weekend. Yosemite, just him and his van. That ought to keep his mind off uncomfortable topics like family and the proper way to prepare cranberry sauce.

  He was at home thinking about all of that, working on the dinette set section of the furniture website on a cool Tuesday morning, when his mother called.

  He’d told himself to screen his calls—especially those from his family—but, God help him, he forgot. He picked up before he even thought about it, then mentally kicked himself when he heard his mother’s voice.

  “Quinn. Hello.”

  Before the blowup over his uncle’s will, she’d have said, Hi, honey. But now it was so much more formal. So much more distant.

  “Hi, Mom. What’s up?”

  Barbara sighed, as though the very act of talking to her son was more effort than she was capable of expending. “Well. I just wanted to ask you about your plans for Thanksgiving, and whether you’re going to come.”

  “I already told you my plans. I’m not coming.”

  “You’re being immature.” He could imagine her expression: the tight lips, the little lines that formed around her eyes when she was upset with someone—usually him.

  “I don’t think I am. Jared and Alex made it clear they don’t want to see me. I’m just doing what’s best to keep the peace.”

  The sigh again. “Your brothers are hurt. That’s all.”

  “Yeah? I’m hurt, too. The way they’ve been treating me? The things they said?”

  “Quinn, you can still fix this. Come to Thanksgiving, and we can all talk.”

  He was an idiot. He was an absolute fool. The proof was that he was just about to agree, just about to let himself believe it. Then she said, “I’m sure if you were to offer them each a share of the money—”

  It always came back to the money.

  “The money’s gone. It’s gone, Mom. You know that. I used it to buy the house. If they want a share of what’s left in my bank account, they can maybe use it to buy a latte at Starbucks. If they leave out the extra shot.”

  “You’re just being difficult.”

  Ah, yes. The you’re being difficult card, his mother’s favorite one to play whenever Quinn failed to do whatever it was she wanted him to do. The line that magically made everything his fault.

  “I don’t think I am,” he said.

  “Your brothers are Nathan’s nephews just as much as you are.”

  “Yeah. And they disowned him when he came out. I’m pretty sure that had something to do with Nate’s decision about his will.”

  “You can’t blame them if they—”

  He didn’t wait around to see what he could or couldn’t blame them for. Instead, he hung up on her.

  The familiar burning sensation jabbed him in his gut, and he grabbed the bottle of antacids he kept on his desk for just such occasions. He popped four of them in his mouth and chewed.

  Goddamn it.

  He’d let himself hope, just for a second, that she’d called him because she wanted to see him, that she’d invited him again out of love.

  No such luck.

  He tried to go back to work, but he couldn’t focus.

  Maybe a long walk would clear his head.

  Chapter 7

  Delilah tried to get the boys some kind of physical exercise every day—the more strenuous, the better. She’d found through hard-won experience that whenever they started to act up—talking back to her or just acting squirrelly, unable to sit still—it helped to wear them out.

  She’d tried taking them walking on the bluff trails at Fiscalini Ranch, with its stunning views just steps from the rocky shoreline. But the narrow bluff trail was popular with the locals, some of whom didn’t seem to appreciate the boys’ roughhousing and general shenanigans.

  So today, she took them to upper Fiscalini with its wider and less traveled network of trails. Up there, on the grassy hillside overlooking the ocean in the distance, the boys could get up to whatever they wanted without bothering anyone—and without the risk that one of them might tumble into the ocean.

  The morning was foggy and cool, and Delilah pulled her sweater around her as she walked, the boys looking for squirrels up ahead.

  These walks weren’t just for the sake of the boys’ fitness and behavior. When they went well—when the boys became absorbed in looking for rocks or chasing lizards or playing whatever game they’d concocted for themselves—it gave Delilah a chance to turn off her mind and just be.

  And these days, she really needed time to just be.

  Once the holidays were over and they vacated Otter Bluff, Delilah would have to do no less than invent a new life for herself and her children. Sometimes, the prospect of that threatened to drown her in anxiety and doubt. A stretch of time in which she didn’t think of anything except the sounds of the birds and the feel of the wind was precious to her. She closed her eyes and tipped up her head to breathe in the ocean air.

  “Looks like this walk is going a lot smoother than the last one.” The deep voice interrupted her reverie, and her eyes flew open to see Quinn Monroe grinning at her.

  When Quinn had seen the woman and her two kids ahead of him on the trail, something about her silhouette had told him it was Delilah and her boys. He’d dismissed the thought at first. He was too far back to see her, really, and it had seemed like wishful thinking.

  As he got closer, he saw that he was right—it was her. And those were her boys gamboling around on the trail, letting out the occasional hoot of joy.

  He wondered for a moment whether he should turn around before she saw him. After all, he was undeniably attracted to her, and getting involved with a single mother was worse than opening a can of worms—it was more like diving into a swimming pool of worms. Carnivorous ones. With fangs.

  But he couldn’t seem to help himself, especially when she tipped her head back and closed her eyes, making him feel like he was privy to a secret, intimate moment that the two of them were sharing. Even if she wasn’t aware they were sharing it.

  So he spoke to her, and now she was looking at him as though she was returning to reality from wherever it was she’d been.

  “Oh. Quinn.” She blinked a few times, like she was just waking up after a restful sleep.

  “I love the fog,” he said, apropos of nothing. “The sun is too easy. Everybody loves sunshine. It’s a cliché. Fog is so much more mysterious. So much more complex.” And why was he doing a soliloquy on fog? No wonder she was looking at him like he was crazy. He’d have looked at himself the same way.

  “Me too,” she said after a while. “The fog. It’s soft. It’s gentle. Like all of the hard edges have been smoothed off of everything.” Now she was doing a soliloquy on fog, too, so he guessed his own didn’t seem so awkward.

  Now what? Should he wish her a good day and walk on ahead? Go back where he’d come from and leave her to it?

  He didn’t want to do either of those things. What he wanted was to walk with her, to talk about her day and his, to get to know her a little.

  The thing with Quinn and women was that he rarely denied himself what he wanted—no matter how many problems that had caused over the course of his lifetime.

  He was probably too set in his ways to change, though, so he put it out there.

  “Mind if I walk with you?”

  “Oh.” She looked surprised at first, then a slow grin spread across her face. “I suppose that’ll be handy if Jesse hurls himself into a ravine.”

  “See?” he said. “It’s just a matter of safety.”

  They might have exchanged more flirtatious repartee, but the boys chose that moment to look back toward their mother and notice that Quinn was there.

  At first, the tilt of Jesse’s head, the hesitation in his movements, suggested that he hadn’t recognized the man talking to his mother. Then, he jerked to attention and yelled, “Quinn!”

  Jesse, with Gavin at his heels, ran to where Quinn was standing, and the tw
o of them began peppering him with questions.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Did you come to see my mom?”

  “Are you walking here, too?”

  “Do you ever bring people here? Like, for your job?”

  “Have you ever seen a snake?”

  Quinn laughed and patted the air in front of him with his hands, willing them to slow down.

  “Lemme take those one at a time. I just ran into your mom on accident, because yes, I’m taking a walk, just like you are. No, I don’t bring clients here because it’s an easy trail and people don’t get lost or in trouble here. Not usually, although you might be able to manage it, Jesse. And yes, I’ve seen tons of snakes. Billions.”

  “Billions?” Gavin’s eyes widened.

  “Well, not really billions. But a lot. Most of them are harmless, and they’ll leave you alone if you don’t bother them.”

  “Boys, that’s enough with the questions,” Delilah told them.

  “We just started our walk,” Jesse said. “Mom says we have to get our ya-yas out, but I told her a ya-ya isn’t even a thing.”

  “I know it’s not a thing,” Delilah said gently. “It’s just an expression.”

  “So are they out yet?” Quinn asked.

  “I don’t think so,” Gavin said solemnly.

  “Well, then I guess we’d better keep walking,” he said.

  The look on Jesse’s face—the joy and excitement at the thought that Quinn would be proceeding on the trail with them—embarrassed Quinn because he knew he couldn’t possibly be worthy of that kind of admiration.

  As they began walking together, Quinn wanted to reach out and take Delilah’s hand.

  That would have felt so natural, so right. But that was crazy, since they hardly knew each other. Since they’d barely talked.

  His hand needed to get its damned impulses under control.