Jonas remembered his father giving him a description of everything he did around the house. As if he knew he’d leave Jonas as a seventeen-year-old high school senior, far before he should have.
The pain of losing his father so young had never lessened, but it had become bearable over the years. Dottie had played a big part in that.
What would she think about his being here, with Serena and Pepé, trying to be helpful instead of figuring out how to manipulate Serena into giving up the house?
He looked over at Serena. Her hands were still as her brown eyes searched his.
“He’ll be okay, Jonas. He and Ronald play rough, but they don’t get too crazy.”
“I’m sure Ronald’s the wiser of the two.”
She laughed and he noticed the empty coffee mug on the end table next to her chair.
“Let me warm that up for you.”
He poured the freshly brewed coffee into Serena’s mug, which Pepé had painted at the pottery shop in downtown Oak Harbor. Pepé had proclaimed it “her favorite” when they’d fixed her first cup of coffee hours earlier.
A splash of half-and-half, and he walked it over to her.
“Here you go.”
“You’re spoiling me. I can get my own coffee.”
“Tell me that when I start to stink.” He was still wearing the same clothes he’d put on in the middle of the night.
“Did you get a shower earlier?”
“I did, yes, when you were sleeping. I hope you don’t mind that I used the upstairs bathroom.” She had a bathroom off her bedroom, but he didn’t want to wake her, so he’d found the one upstairs. It was obviously Pepé’s.
“Did the dinosaurs scare you?” The shower curtain was emblazoned with several different species.
“No, but I darn near had a cow when I stepped on a squeaky toy.”
Serena laughed. The sound was getting too familiar, getting to be something he craved. He missed it when she didn’t have anything to laugh about.
“Even though he’s a big boy, Pepé still likes toys that squeak and squirt in the bathtub.”
“Mom! Stop!” Pepé ordered.
“I have toys in my shower, too, Pepé.” Jonas smiled at him.
“You do?”
“Sure. I have a waterproof radio so I can listen to the news or a Seahawks game, and I have a long-handled brush to scrub my back.”
Pepé wrinkled his nose. “A brush isn’t a toy.”
“It’s a grown-up toy, Pepé.” Serena replied for him and smiled, but when her eyes met Jonas’s her smile faded. Blatant sensuality and unabashed lust flowed between them. He wondered if she could see the visions in his mind—of scrubbing her naked body with his bare hands, soaping her shoulders, her back, her ass, then reaching around her small waist to her breasts. Her nipples would be erect and—
Thud.
The front windowpane reverberated from the impact.
“What was that?” Serena was up and out of her recliner, her coffee sloshed on the carpet.
Jonas looked at the snow that had spattered against the picture window.
“My money’s on a hawk or an eagle. Probably lost its way in the wind and snow.”
Serena walked over to the large expanse of glass and peered at the snow print. “I think you’re right. See how the snowflakes hold the outline of the beak, Pepé? And the wings.” Pepé ran up next to her and Ronald stood behind him on the braided rug, tail wagging.
“Neat! Is the bird okay, Mom?”
Serena looked carefully out the window. “I don’t see any sign of it, so my guess is that it bumped the house and flew away.”
Pepé nodded, apparently losing interest. “Mom, I’m hungry.”
“I’ve got some peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with your name on them, buddy.” Jonas didn’t want Serena doing anything today. If she could get one day of complete rest, her bruises and aching muscles would heal that much sooner.
“That sounds great for me, too.” She offered him a sheepish grin. “I suppose you saw the inside of our refrigerator.”
Jonas grinned back.
Her fridge was stocked to the max with half-empty jars of sauces, pickles and yogurt containers.
“Don’t look so embarrassed. It’s nothing compared to mine when I’m working long hours at the clinic. I saw you have the fixings for lasagna, but I couldn’t find the tomato sauce.”
“It’s in what I think you used to call the sun porch. I had it closed in to give the stuff from Dottie’s attic a safe storage place and to give Pepé and me a decent pantry.”
“Smart thinking on your part.” He hesitated. Exactly what attic “stuff” of Dottie’s did Serena have?
She held up her hand. “Before you get worried, all I have of Dottie’s are her Christmas decorations. Mostly old plastic ones from the sixties and seventies. Like I told you, your brothers came and got whatever they wanted, but they insisted I keep the decorations she’d bought specifically for the house.”
“Some of those go back to her parents, her grandparents, even.”
Serena nodded. “I know, Paul explained that. I still have a lot of sorting to do but eventually I hope to salvage whatever I can and I’ll use it to decorate the house again.”
“Tell him about the airplane, Mom!”
Pepé stood next to her, holding a large jar of peanut butter.
“Put that back on the kitchen counter, Pepé, and don’t interrupt.”
When she looked back at him he saw the wariness in her eyes. Was she hiding something?
“What airplane, Serena?”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
SERENA COULDN’T BELIEVE Jonas had stayed the night.
Well, she could, considering she’d had a bad shake-up and he was a military man. A medical man used to helping others. It made sense when she looked at it that way.
How he was looking at her was another matter. His gaze set her skin on fire and made her forget that they’d known each other for less than a month. What did they really have in common, anyway, except for a house that she wasn’t going to give up and that he’d never get over losing—to her?
She followed him into the storage room.
“You showed me this before, but I didn’t realize all those bins were filled with Dottie’s Christmas ornaments.”
Serena laughed at that. “What, did you think I had some kind of rock collection?”
Jonas stood beside her in front of the shelves that held her numbered plastic bins.
“I didn’t know, honestly. I’m impressed with how well-organized you are. I had no trouble finding anything in your kitchen. Where did you learn to be so neat?”
“My mother’s a stickler for tidiness, and law school taught me that the answer is always available in the law, somewhere. You just have to be able to find it. Once I became a Marine wife, my obsession with organizing took over our household goods, too.”
“The movers must have loved you.” Jonas smiled.
Serena smiled back, not fazed by the reference to her military life with Phil.
Her heart didn’t squeeze shut every time a memory came up, nor was she reminded of what she and Pepé had lost.
Your heart has healed.
She gave a quick shake of her head. “I don’t know about that.”
She removed the clipboard she’d hung on a nail and handed it to him. “Here’s the list of what I’ve found, but it’s preliminary. I don’t know which lights are still working, for example, or if they’re safe enough to be plugged in. Some of the strings are from the forties, if you can believe it.”
“Oh, I believe it,” he said. “Dottie inherited her parents’ Depression-era habits of saving everything that had the remotest chance of being useful in the future. At one point when I was
young, my father had to convince her that she didn’t need to save twist-ties anymore.”
“My mother’s frugality was the same. She’s eased up as the years have gone by, but it’s hard to shake the lessons learned in poverty, when a family’s in pure survival mode.”
“Dottie was a product not only of the Depression but of World War II. I think that’s why it took her years to let go of her tendency to make everything from scratch and accepting that modern conveniences aren’t all a waste of money.”
“Yes,” Serena agreed with a laugh, “but she still insisted on preparing homemade meals for Pepé and me, and she never failed to bake him cookies and cupcakes.”
Jonas nodded absently, studying each page of her inventory, stopping at items as they jogged his memory.
“The star! Red lights on a tin shape, right?”
Serena nodded. “Yes. It was definitely handmade.”
“By Dottie’s grandfather. It was made for her mother when she was a girl.”
“Most of the lights look like they’re probably burned out but you can buy those new vintage-style lights now, and I thought I’d get some, try to string them around it. Do you know where they hung it?”
“Over the highest roof point. There’s a ladder back in the big shed.”
“I saw it.”
“I’m sure you have that inventoried, too.” He glanced up from the clipboard and stared at her. “Is there anything you’re not good at?”
Serena’s stomach grew hot and her lips twitched, which made her grimace.
“You have to keep your lips covered with the ointment so they’ll heal more quickly. Your cheek took the worst of it, but your lips have to be feeling raw.” He’d found all her first-aid supplies and added some from the medical kit he kept in his car. The healing balm for her lips was a godsend.
“I know.” She swallowed. “I’ll never be able to repay you for all your help last night and today.”
He placed his hand on her shoulder. “Stop. I didn’t do anything but show up. You would’ve made your way back to the house.” He raised her chin so that she had to look at him. His eyes reflected sincerity, warmth and something more. Something she didn’t want to face, not now, not with Jonas.
“You kept Pepé safe, and let’s face it, this is normally one of the safest places on the planet. It’s remote enough that even Whidbey locals don’t know about it. It’s a fluke that the drug addict showed up here.”
“I realize that, in my head. The odds of losing someone in the war were supposed to be on my side, too, but, well, look where that got me.”
“You’ve had some rough knocks. But this will pass, Serena.”
Who was this Jonas standing in front of her? Where was her nemesis, the man who wanted her house?
Did he mean all of this would pass when she agreed to sell the house to him?
“It will. Hey, I’m a lawyer, and family law has its risks, too. I’ve been threatened by my clients’ ex-husbands when I’ve had to get restraining orders against them, and I’ve had more than my share of unhappy survivors who didn’t get what they expected from a family estate.”
“Like me?”
“I didn’t mean it that way, Jonas. Sure, you’re not happy, but I’m not afraid you’re going to do anything nefarious to get the house back. Except...you did purchase the surrounding land.”
“Yes, I did.”
“Feeling guilty?”
“Not one bit.”
Her familiar annoyance at his arrogance returned and none too soon. Jonas’s effect on her was intense, and it would be easy to convince herself that she’d been wrong about him, about their chances of starting a relationship.
“What was the airplane Pepé mentioned?”
She glanced at the small worktable where she’d left the bin in which they’d found the stocking and ornament.
“We came across a hand-carved plane that I think is a Flying Tiger from World War II. It’s next to my laptop in the dining room. I’ll show it to you when we go back inside.”
Jonas stood while he thought aloud. “It could very well be a P-40 Warhawk. I know Dottie’s father was a pilot in the war, but she said he didn’t talk much about it once he came home. She was five or six when he left for flight training. He didn’t come back until she was nine or ten.”
“Pepé’s age. When her father went to war, I mean.”
“Yes.”
Did he think she’d used Pepé as another means to manipulate Dottie? Didn’t he see that it was all a coincidence? Dottie hadn’t told her anything about her father fighting in World War II. She’d had no control over when her mother was going to tell her about her biological father.
“Did you ever meet Dottie’s dad?”
“No, he’d passed on before Dottie met my dad.”
“Was she a lot older than your father?”
Jonas smiled. “By twelve years.”
“Really!”
“Yeah, but you know, she and my dad were perfect for each other. She was a beauty, a real product of the summer of love, the whole hippie thing. She was in her forties when she and Dad met. I never looked at her as older. She was a stunning woman in her day—just look at some of the photos in Paul’s house. I think my dad needed someone like her—a real live wire. Dad was quieter—an engineer. He’d come here to work on weapons systems at the base and to train the aircrew. He’d lost my mother to a drunk driver right after I was born. He deserved a break. Dottie was it.”
Compassion surged in her chest for the little boy Jonas had been when he met Dottie. Had his eyes widened at her full-throttle laugh like Pepé’s had?
“I only knew her as an older woman,” Serena told him, “but she looked at least twenty years younger than she was, and acted forty years younger.” She paused, not sure if Jonas wanted to hear what she had to say. When he stayed silent, his expression relaxed, she continued.
“We communicated by email at first. My mother gave me Todd’s name and told me he was from Washington State, from some island. Between the internet and my legal connections, it didn’t take long to track him down. He was deceased by then, but I found out he had a sister. Dottie.”
She shoved her hands into her hoodie’s pocket.
“I had no idea what to expect. But as soon as I talked to her on the phone, I knew we had a connection, something more than blood. I brought Pepé out with me to meet her, before we went to BTS. Our weekend trip ended up being our house-hunting trip. It felt right. Pepé and I had stayed in the same place for a year after Phil died and it was time to move on.”
“Your family couldn’t have been too pleased about you leaving your home state.”
“My siblings understood, I think. I’m the oldest, the oddball, as they’re all my half siblings. My mother married their father, Red, when I was very young.”
“Yet you needed to find out about a man who’d been nothing more than a sperm donor.”
“I really hate that expression. From what Dottie told me he suffered horribly because of his addiction and never felt he deserved a family.”
“My uncle was a good guy, despite his heavy drinking. I can’t believe he knew about you—it wasn’t in him to ignore family.”
“I don’t know what to think anymore.” She looked at the floor, the shelves, anywhere but at Jonas. “It doesn’t matter anymore. I’m grateful that I found Dottie and was able to give Pepé a sense of his family history.”
“Like I said, Uncle Todd was a great uncle when he was sober. We were all he had, really. He put in his time at his job on base, and went home to hole up with a bottle all weekend.”
“You remember him like that?”
“Not specifically. I remember him as the uncle who brought us the biggest chocolate Easter bunnies, who gave us the most money in our birthday cards.”<
br />
“What about Christmas?”
“He used to really piss Dottie off!” Jonas grinned. “He’d bring us whatever the latest and greatest toy was—you know, the one that was advertised on television and cost too much. Dottie would yell at him and tell him to save his money.”
“What did he do when she yelled at him?”
“He’d laugh and tell her he wasn’t going to live long enough to spend it all.”
“He was right.”
Jonas sobered. “Yeah, he was right. He did himself in with booze and cigarettes, the classic combo.”
He must have noticed her silence. “Are you feeling okay, Serena? You’ve been on your feet for a while now and it’s a good idea to take it easy for a couple of days.”
“I’ll go crazy if I sit anymore. Besides, it’s time to get dinner started.”
“Nope. Not happening. I’m making dinner for you.”
“You need to go home, Jonas.”
“I don’t need to go anywhere. The roads are a mess and the base is closed. It’s emergencies-only at the base hospital, and I’m not on call. Doc Franklin knows I’m here.”
“Did you tell him what happened?”
“Not all the details, no. You know the assault and arrest will make it to the police blotter, right?”
“Yes. I can’t tell you how many of these reports I’ve read over the years, or how many cases like this I’ve handled. Mostly, I made sure the victims’ medical bills were paid if they didn’t have insurance.”
“But now it’s your life. You’ve been the victim of a crime.”
She nodded. “I know it could be a lot worse, and it’s going to pass, this feeling of helplessness. It’s strange, that’s all. A home is where you’re supposed to feel the safest.”
“Come here.”
She didn’t fight him. Strong arms and a warm, solid chest under her cheek were the best medicine Jonas had offered all day.
“It’s okay, Serena. You can let go. It’s not always your job to be the tough girl.”
Harlequin Superromance November 2014 - Box Set 2 of 2: Christmas at the CoveNavy ChristmasUntil She Met Daniel Page 47