Christmas at Bravo Ridge

by Christmas at Bravo Ridge (lit)

  "So that's it, then? That's your problem, that's why you've turned me down—what?—three times in the past month? You're out for revenge because I didn't marry you six years ago."

  "Revenge? What are you talking about? Of course, I'm not out for revenge."

  "The hell you're not—and you want me to beg you now, is that it? To fall all over myself trying to make up for what I didn't do back when?"

  "No, no, I—"

  "You want me on my damn knees?"

  "Matt…"

  He shoved the coffee table out of the way and sank to his knees at her feet. "All right. So here I am. On my knees. Please, Corrie. Marry me. I'm begging you. I'm at your feet, the way you've always wanted me to be."

  She wanted to slap him. He could see it, see the heat and fury in her eyes. She had her hands clenched tightly together, to keep from striking out, and she spoke in a voice that was as low as it was deadly. "I swear. You are just like your father, after all. Pig-headed. Blind. And the answer is still no. No, I won't marry you. And if you just have to know why, it's because…" She let the sentence trail away. Shutting her eyes, she breathed in through her nose. "Will you please get up off your knees?"

  By then, he was starting to feel a little ashamed of himself. Okay, he had behaved somewhat like the old man. He'd let his frustration get the better of him, said some things he shouldn't have. "Look, Corrie, I—"

  She was shaking her head. "Just get up. I mean it. Just please, get up."

  So he got up. And then he stood there, above her, looking down into her upturned face, feeling like an idiot, embarrassed at his own behavior and, at the same time, pissed as hell with her, for being every bit as pig-headed and obstinate as he was. For dredging up the way he'd blown it in the past instead of dealing with him as the man he was now.

  She threw up both hands. "Don't just stand there staring at me."

  So okay. He would sit down. He backed to a club chair across from her and lowered himself into it. "All right. I'm sitting down. Finish your sentence."

  "What sentence?"

  "You won't marry me because…?"

  "Oh. That."

  "Yeah, that."

  "You're serious? You really want to know?"

  "How many damn times do I have to ask?"

  "Fine. All right. You want to know, I'll tell you." She dragged in another deep breath, this time with her mouth open, like someone about to dive into very deep water. And then she said on a hard exhalation, "Because I love you."

  Love. The word echoed inside his head.

  He got the picture then. Crystal clear. He saw it all, and what he saw wasn't good.

  Love.

  He'd never actually said the word, had he?

  And that was a really big screwup. As big, in its own way, as forgetting the condom that night a month before.

  Why the hell hadn't he said it?

  He wasn't exactly sure.

  But he was sure that trying to correct himself now wasn't going to be a viable option.

  She had more to say. "I love you." She told him again, slowly, with painful precision. "I've always loved you, since that first night you walked into my bar and turned my whole life upside down. Loved you—though I've never been fool enough to even admit it to myself until tonight. I love you." Those blue eyes filled with tears. She blinked them away. "And you don't love me. And you know what? I can live with that. It's just…how it is. How it's always been with us. We can be friends. We can be lovers—oh, Matt. You are the best friend. And an amazing lover. And you are such a good dad to our daughter. I know you'll be good with our second child, too. But this—this marriage thing. Uh-uh. Forget it. I don't want a husband who's just doing the right thing. I want someone who loves me as much as I love him—all the way and over the moon. I won't spend my life wondering if my husband is going to wake up one day and realize I'm not the one for him, the way my dad did to my mother."

  He'd sat still for most of what she said. But that last, he couldn't let stand. "I'm not your dad. Don't even hint that I am."

  She swiped the persistent tears away. He wanted to reach for her, to comfort her. But he knew she wouldn't allow him that. She said, "Of course you're not—but I mean, seriously. What's the point in us getting married? Why take the chance on that kind of hurt and destruction? Our daughter is doing just fine the way things are. I'm sure our second child will, too."

  What she said made his anger rise again. Because he did believe in marriage. And he wanted it now—was ready for it now. With her. "It would be better for them, for the kids, if we were married. You know that."

  "No. I don't. Marriage isn't always the answer."

  "It is for us."

  "Uh-uh. I don't think so."

  How does a man make a blind woman see? "I'm not going to leave you, Corrie—not you or our kids. I never have, have I?"

  Her lower lip quivered. "No. No, you haven't."

  "And I never will. Isn't that enough?"

  "No. It's not."

  He felt like a drowning man. Flailing. Sinking. By then, he was willing to try just about anything. Even the thing that he already knew wasn't going to work. "Listen, I know you're not going to believe it if I say it now. But the thing is, I do lov—"

  "Don't." She stopped him, just as he'd known she would. Her eyes were dry now, her expression determined. She rose. "It's enough, all right? Enough for tonight. You know about the baby. And I've said way more than I should have about…all the rest."

  He stood, too. He gave it one more try. "Corrie, come on. We can talk this out."

  She shook her head. "I am so tired of talking. I need to go home now. I need to…throw up and take a bath." She sighed, a heavy, exhausted sound that made him want to grab her and shake her, to shout at her to wake up. To make her see that this was important and she was fading away on him. She added, "And about Kira? I'd rather let her sleep. Can you take her to school tomorrow? I'll pick her up, as usual."

  "Just like that, you're walking out on me?"

  "I'm not walking out. I'm going home."

  "You're walking out and you know damn well you are. You've laid the big love bomb on me, put me in my place as just another oblivious, insensitive, selfish guy. Like my father. Like yours. And now you're done. You're out of here."

  "Good night, Matt."

  What more could he say—given that she was through listening? He dropped into the chair again. She left without another word.

  Chapter Thirteen

  "Mommy, where's Daddy?" Kira asked Thursday morning at breakfast.

  Corrine's chest hurt—as if her heart were all swollen up in there, cramped against the walls of her ribs. She answered with a calmness she didn't feel. "At his house, I suppose. Or maybe at his work."

  She hadn't seen him since she'd left him Sunday night. He hadn't called her—and she hadn't called him. They were in a kind of holding pattern. A holding pattern that felt way too much like the one they'd gone into after the first time she told him she was having his baby.

  Things weren't working out with them—and yet, they had a daughter. And another child on the way. Saturday morning she would be seeing him whether she wanted to or not, at least for a few minutes when she took Kira to him.

  And speaking of Saturday, she'd invited Matt's mom to come and help decorate the tree that day. She needed to call Aleta and tell her it wasn't happening. Corrine didn't want to do the tree without Kira, who would be with Matt. And what about the big Deck-the-Halls party on Sunday at the ranch? Matt would probably take Kira for that. He'd taken her every year up until now….

  Corrine would have to tell Aleta that she wouldn't be at the ranch Sunday. Aleta was no fool. She would have questions. Corrine hadn't decided what, exactly, to say to her.

  It was so strange. Like going through all the pain and awkwardness of getting a divorce, when you'd never been married in the first place….

  "Mommy, did you hear me?"

  Corrine focused on her daughter. "I'm sorry, baby. What did you
say?"

  "I said, I like it when we all stay in the same house, so that we're all together. Me, you and Daddy, too. Maybe Daddy could come over tonight? He could stay with me while you're working."

  "Not tonight, honey. But you'll see him Saturday, just like you always do."

  Kira frowned, but she didn't argue. She picked up her spoon and finished her oatmeal.

  Corrine found herself considering trying to explain to her daughter that she and Matt were on the outs. But no. That was only guilt talking. It was nothing a five year old needed to hear. The thing to do now was wait, see if Kira brought it up again or seemed to need to talk about it. If that happened, Corrine would try to think of something clear and honest to say about the situation, something her daughter could understand.

  In the meantime, she felt like a lousy mother on top of everything else, like she'd dangled a carrot of family togetherness in front of her child and then snatched it away—which, come to think of it, was pretty much what she had done.

  * * *

  "Tomorrow is fine," Aleta said when Corrine called her that afternoon. "But doesn't Kira have dance classes?"

  "She can skip, just this once."

  "Well, all right. Shall I just pick her up at school and bring her with me?"

  "Perfect."

  "Anything else I can bring?"

  "Orange nut bread?"

  "As a matter of fact, I baked six loaves this morning—with cranberries this time, in honor of the season."

  "Yum. Bring two."

  Aleta promised she would.

  Friday morning, after Corrine dropped Kira off at school, she went back home and got the tree and the decorations down from the attic. She put the tree together in its usual place of honor in the living room, front and center at the picture window. Last year, she'd bought a new one, with a thousand white lights and little clusters of pine cones tucked here and there among the branches. She arranged the green and red velvet tree skirt around the base, thinking how her grandmother, who'd died before Corrine was born, had made it when her mom, Kathleen, was a little girl.

  Corrine set out the boxes of ornaments, so many handmade—some by her mother as a child, and then by Corrine. And now, last year and the year before that by Kira's small, clever hands. She ran the blinds up and left the tree lights on when she went into the kitchen to pop corn for stringing and heat up the spiced apple juice.

  Kira came in shouting, "Mommy, the tree! The tree's in the window!"

  Corrine poured the fluffy kernels of popped corn into the big red bowl that had been her mom's before it was hers and turned as her daughter burst into the kitchen. "It's pretty, isn't it, baby—even without the decorations?"

  "It's beautiful."

  Aleta appeared in Kira's wake, still wearing her coat and carrying the promised loaves of cranberry-orange bread. "Looks like everything's ready to go."

  Kira jumped around, spinning in happy circles, literally dancing with excitement. "Are we doing it now, Mom? Are we decorating?"

  "Oh, yes, we are." Corrine took the offered loaves from Aleta with a grateful smile. "Go with Grandma and hang up your coats. And then we'll get started—and Aleta, would you put on some Christmas music? I left a stack of CDs on the mantel."

  "Will do," Aleta promised, unbuttoning her coat and herding Kira back out to the coatrack by the front door.

  They worked for three hours, eating more popcorn than ever got strung; drinking hot cider; exclaiming over beloved, remembered ornaments to the accompaniment of six discs full of Christmas favorites. It was a beautiful, all-girls afternoon, one that a woman remembers for all her days.

  Kira, pink-cheeked and beaming, sang along with "Silent Night" as she looped the red-and-green paper chain she'd made herself across the branches. They hung the stockings on the mantel, including the one for Corrine's mom. Corrine hadn't the heart to stop hanging Kathleen's stocking, even though this would be the third Christmas since her death.

  "Do they have stockings in heaven?" Kira wondered.

  "There are mysteries to which we never find the answer," Aleta said. "It's one of the very best things about life."

  Kira looked puzzled. It was the expression she wore when she had no clue what the grownups were talking about. And then she burst into a bright smile. "Well, Granny Kate has a stocking at our house," she declared. "Even if she doesn't get one up there in heaven."

  Corrine touched her daughter's shining blond head and wondered how much her child really remembered of Kathleen Lonnigan. Probably very little. She'd been so young when Kathleen died.

  Kira ducked from under her touch, headed for the almost-empty popcorn bowl. Corrine glanced over to see Aleta watching. They shared a fond look and Corrine said a little prayer of gratitude to have Aleta now that her mom was gone.

  The shared glance with Matt's mom brought Matt to mind. It stirred that aching in her heart that came too often the past few days. All those years, she'd refused to acknowledge that she cared for him as more than a friend or a lover. So much more. That she was in love with him. The denial of her true feelings had been a form of self-preservation, she saw now. It had worked really well, too. She wished she could go back to not understanding her own heart. Life was so much easier when you had certain necessary lies in place.

  By four-thirty, Kira was starting to droop. Corrine and Aleta began arranging the manger scene on the mantel, setting the small plaster figures just so. Long ago, Corrine's mom had bought the figures—Mary, Joseph, the ox, the lamb, the shepherd boy, the three Kings, and baby Jesus in his bed of straw—one a year until she had them all.

  Aleta tapped her shoulder and then raised a finger to her lips.

  Corrine turned. Kira lay on the couch, her little hands tucked under her chin, her knees drawn up, conked out. Quietly, so as not to wake her, Aleta settled the afghan over her.

  They finished setting up the crèche and then tiptoed to the kitchen, where Corrine swung the door to the hallway shut. She put the teakettle on. Aleta cut the cranberry-orange bread. They sat down to enjoy the snack.

  Corrine stirred honey into her tea. "I…need to talk to you about Sunday."

  "What?" Aleta sipped. And then she frowned. "Oh, no. You can't make it?"

  "No, I can't. I'm gonna have to pass."

  Aleta set down her cup with care. "I've been so looking forward to having you with us this year. And it won't be the same without Kira. She's such a joy. Matt never mentioned you all weren't coming."

  Corrine stirred her tea some more, although the honey was already dissolved. "Um. Matt and Kira will be there, I'm sure."

  Aleta's expression turned sad as she got the picture. She asked gently, "There's a problem?"

  Corrine gave a shrug. "It's just not working out with Matt and me."

  "Oh, no."

  "Yeah. 'Fraid so."

  Aleta reached across the table. Corrine reached, too. They clasped hands and shared a loving glance before letting go.

  Matt's mom said, "If you need to talk about it, I'm always here to listen."

  "Oh, I…no. I don't think so. Not now. But thank you."

  "Any time. Just give me a call. Whatever you say will be kept strictly in confidence, I promise you—even from Davis. Yes, we tell each other everything. But I can make an exception for something like this. Believe me, he would understand."

  Corrine wasn't so sure about that. But it didn't matter if Davis would understand or not because she wasn't saying anything about any of it. It just wasn't right, to go whining about Matt to his mom. "I do appreciate it, that you would offer…"

  "It's open-ended. Remember. Any time, if you need me. You just give me a call."

  "I know. And I'm so grateful. And about Christmas day…"

  "Wait." Aleta's cup clinked sharply as she set it in the saucer. "Please. Christmas is almost two weeks away. Don't decide now—in fact, just be there if you want to be, on Christmas day. The door is always open for you, Corrine."

  "Oh, but I—"

  "Don't
say anymore. There's no problem. You're one of the family. And that means you're always welcome at Bravo Ridge."

  * * *

  Corrine dreaded Saturday morning. But that didn't stop the day from coming. She had it firmly in her mind just how she would handle herself when she dropped Kira off. She would be polite and distant, do what was required of her and then get the heck out of there.

  It worked out exactly as she planned it. She rang the bell. He opened the door.