Holiday in Your Heart

by Susan Fox

  * * *

  Maribeth sat atop Campion, keeping one firm hand on her horse’s reins and the other on Daybreak’s, but neither animal seemed inclined to startle. Caruso stuck obediently to Mo as the man and dog approached the horses.

  The only quickened pulse here was her own. Mo Kincaid had that effect on her. Partly, of course, it was his looks: the rangy body in casual outdoors clothes; the silver-shot black hair that despite its length and waviness looked 100 percent masculine; the gorgeous brown skin; and those stunning river-water eyes. Also, it was the way he related to that wary, abandoned dog, like the two of them were soul mates. Brooke had called Mo a lost soul, and that was a dangerous kind of man to get involved with. But yet this was the man—the one man in her entire life—who’d ever had this effect on her.

  Like her, he’d never fallen in love. Unlike her, it sounded as if he didn’t want to. Was she utterly insane to think that their relationship might go somewhere?

  She watched the dog and horses check each other out using their eyes and noses and ears. When none of them seemed fussed, Mo mounted Daybreak again and took the palomino’s reins from her. “Lead on, Maribeth.”

  She urged Campion forward, onto the road they’d driven in on.

  Mo brought his horse alongside, patting his left leg again and saying, “Here, Caruso. Stay with us as long as we’re on the road.” He glanced at Maribeth. “His training must have included traffic. In town he knows to stay clear of it.”

  A short distance down the road, a wide trail branched away, and Maribeth took it. “There’s a network of trails and farm roads,” she told Mo. “You can ride for miles, and the scenery’s wonderful.” Here the trees were deciduous, with leaves that unfurled jewel green in spring and turned vivid gold in fall. Right now, the branches were bare, stark against the gray sky, beautiful in a different way than during other seasons. Though there had been snow three or four times so far this year, the snowfall had been light and hadn’t stuck for more than a day or two.

  Mo said to Caruso, “You can go explore, but remember that we’re your ride home.”

  The dog gave a quick warble and then darted off, tail waving. He wove here and there through the trees, following intriguing smells or sounds.

  “In a month’s time,” Maribeth said, “the ranch land and hills will be white. Many of us still go riding, and there’s cross-country skiing as well.”

  “When I lived here before, I never much appreciated the scenery. Didn’t see myself as a country boy.”

  “You were from Los Angeles? Yes, that’d be a lot different from Caribou Crossing. What brought you and Brooke to our little town?”

  “I don’t remember. We moved around quite a bit. I wasn’t good at holding a job. Didn’t like taking orders, didn’t like showing up on time, drank too much. Brooke got part-time jobs sometimes, but her work record was no better than mine. We didn’t like any of the places we lived, so if we ran out of work or got restless, we’d up and move on.”

  “Why not go back to L.A.? And now that I think of it, how did you even get permits to work in Canada?”

  He didn’t answer for a moment. Finally, he said gruffly, “Long story, and not a nice one. If I tell you, our first date may end up being our last.”

  Startled, Maribeth gazed over at him to see him looking at her with a wry expression.

  “But yeah,” he went on. “You have a right to know.”

  A right? He must mean because they were dating.

  They came out of the trees and Maribeth leaned down from the saddle to open a latched wooden gate. “Caruso!” she called as she rode through.

  Mo followed her and bent to refasten the gate. “If the gaps between the bars aren’t wide enough for him to get through, he’ll just climb it.”

  Sure enough, as they started down a dirt-and-grass farm road that ran alongside a wooden fence, the dog bounded up to join them. On either side of the fence was rolling grassland, a bleached-out yellow. Maribeth had chosen a route where there wouldn’t be cattle or sheep in the fields, not wanting the dog to harass them.

  Caruso belted down the track ahead of them, scared a red-winged blackbird perched on a fence post, and then tried to chase it when it flew away. Maribeth smiled at the dog’s exuberance and then turned again to Mo, about to prompt him to share his story.

  Before she spoke, Mo said, “Want to pick up the pace?”

  Was she willing to give him a few minutes’ grace? “Sure.” She urged Campion on, into an easy lope. The brisk air nipped her cheeks and she was glad of the wool hat that covered her ears. Still, it was invigorating being out on a day like this.

  Mo was bareheaded but showed no sign of feeling the cold. Rather than huddling into the upturned collar of his jacket, he held his head high as if he was savoring the wintry air. He looked comfortable in the saddle even if he hadn’t done a lot of riding. She got the sense that he was not only a physically attractive man, but a physically competent one, too. And from the way he kissed, she guessed he was more than merely competent in bed.

  Would she find out tonight? He’d said that if he told her the truth about how he came to Canada, this might be their last date. She already knew his history with his ex-wife and son. What could he possibly say that would be worse than that?

  Caruso ran back to them, like he was checking on them or reporting in, and then took off again.

  Maribeth slowed her horse and Mo did the same. When they were walking again, she said, “That’s not going to get you out of telling the story.”

  “I figured you weren’t a woman who gave up easily.” He ran a hand through his wind-tousled hair. “Okay, so when Brooke and I got married, I moved in with her family. But we both pretty much still lived the lives we’d lived before. She hung out with her girlfriends. I hung out with guy friends, didn’t hold a job, drank too much. Screwed around on her. Brooke and I fought, especially when I’d been drinking. She slapped me once and I grabbed her arm, twisted it, hurt her enough to leave bruises.”

  Maribeth stroked Campion’s neck and kept quiet.

  “Her dad gave me a talking-to. He drank, too. We even drank together. It was our common interest, beer and a game on TV. But he’d never hurt a woman. He told me that if I was going to live under his roof, I had to grow up and shape up.”

  “So you left and came to Canada?”

  He gave a rough laugh. “I left and joined the army.”

  “The army?” It was the last thing she’d expected him to say. “Seriously? I thought you didn’t like taking orders.”

  “Yeah, well I was too dumb to realize how much of that there’d be. I thought it’d be exciting, edgy. There’d be weapons. Physical challenges. I was even crazy enough to think it’d be cool to see action overseas. Anyhow, I did make it through basic training, though it was touch and go. Meanwhile, Brooke had the baby and then she went back to school. Her mom looked after Evan.” He broke off and glanced around. “Where’s that damned dog?”

  Maribeth had been so caught up in his story, she’d lost track of the animal.

  “Caruso!” Mo called. A few seconds later, the dog bounded into sight and came to join them.

  Maribeth gestured to another gate in the fence. “Let’s go that way. It leads to Eagle Bluff. There’s a nice view.”

  The two riders and the dog went through, and then she said, “Go on. What happened next?”

  “There was this lieutenant. He was an asshole, and he was always in my face about something. Maybe I didn’t bootlick enough for him, or maybe it was a racial thing, me being half Indo-American. I was chafing under all that discipline anyhow. Feeling resentful about the whole mess my life had turned into: a wife, a baby, the army. So I was like a powder keg ready to blow.”

  “And you did?”

  He nodded. “One night at a bar. The lieutenant and me, we’d both been drinking. A lot. He pushed me around. I pushed back. He called me a . . . well, it was a racist slur. That’s when I snapped. I was holding a beer bottle and I whacke
d it against a table and threatened him with the broken bottle. It was stupid. Totally stupid. A couple guys grabbed me, pulled me away. I don’t know whether I’d have cut the LT or not.”

  “My God, Mo.” It was horrible, and thank heavens those two men had stopped him before it got even worse. “You were arrested?”

  “I got loose from the two guys, and I ran. That sobered me up quick and I figured I’d be arrested, kicked out of the army, sent to jail.”

  “So what did you do?”

  “Went to L.A. and got Brooke and Evan, which in hindsight was the worst thing I could’ve done for them. We ran some more. I found this group of anti-war activists. Talked to a woman there and spun her a story about how I’d enlisted and then seen the error of my ways and deserted. She got fake IDs and other documentation for us so we could come to Canada. She changed my name from Mohinder McKeen to Mo Kincaid. Through her contacts, she even found me a job in Red Deer, Alberta, in an auto repair shop.”

  “Wow.” Maribeth knew her eyes must be round as saucers. “That’s quite the story.”

  “The activist woman recommended that Brooke and I be careful about getting in touch with our families because Uncle Sam and the police would be looking for me. That didn’t prove to be very hard because once our parents found out what I’d done, they didn’t want anything to do with us.”

  “You were what, twenty-one then?”

  He nodded.

  “And Brooke was even younger. The two of you had a baby and you were living in a strange place, a whole different country, with no family support. That must have been incredibly hard.”

  “Yeah, it was hard. Brooke was royally pissed off, and rightfully so.”

  “But she didn’t leave you. And you didn’t leave her.”

  “Guess we had some misguided sense of duty, of being a family.”

  Maribeth felt so blessed to have had such wonderful parents, even if they’d been taken from her far too early.

  “Anyhow,” Mo said, “to finish the story. Seven or eight years ago, I found a lawyer on the Internet and said I wanted to turn myself in. She represented me, contacted the military authorities, and negotiated a kind of plea bargain. I had to pay a fine and I got an administrative discharge.”

  Past mistakes could never be undone, but Mo had done the right thing in the end, as he was trying to do with Brooke and Evan.

  They’d reached the foot of Eagle Bluff, and Maribeth turned Campion onto the zigzag trail that led up the increasingly rocky incline. The dirt-and-rock path through scrubby trees was narrow and they had to ride single file. Mo brought Daybreak in behind her and Caruso ran ahead. They didn’t talk for the five minutes it took to ride to the top of the bluff. Maribeth thought about the young couple: the pretty, immature blond girl who had within her the seeds of alcoholism and bipolar disorder; the unhappy, rebellious boy who hadn’t found a place in the world where he fit. If they’d been more careful about contraception, who knew what their lives might have been? But then there wouldn’t have been Evan.

  When they reached the summit, Maribeth dismounted, tied the bay’s reins to one of the scraggly trees, and patted the horse’s neck.

  Mo, still quiet, did the same with Daybreak, and Caruso ran off to wherever his nose led him.

  Maribeth walked to the edge of the bluff and gazed out at the view. It always reminded her of a crazy quilt. Each time she saw it, the patterns and shades were different. Today, under a snow-cloud sky, the colors were saturated and intense. The wooded areas were a particularly dark green, the lakes and streams held the charcoal gleam of graphite, and the dried-out grasslands had the burnished glow of old gold.

  Mo had come up beside her and she was aware of him standing there, silent, staring out at that same view. She wondered how he saw it. This was probably the first time he’d viewed the region from this perspective.

  Perspective. So much in life depended on the perspective from which you viewed it. And depended also on the crazy quilt of circumstances that brought you to a particular moment in time.

  When Mo turned to face her, she turned, too.

  Grim-faced, he said, “Now you know the worst about me. I wasn’t just an abusive husband and father, but an army deserter and fugitive.” One corner of his mouth curled downward in a self-disparaging expression. “What do you think of me so far?”

  “I was thinking that life’s such a combination of circumstances.”

  “Huh?”

  “I started dating when I was thirteen. I first had sex when I was sixteen. We used condoms, but they’re not one hundred percent reliable, right? What would my life have been like if I’d gotten pregnant?” Now it was what she wanted most in the world, but in her teens she’d been nowhere near ready.

  “What would the baby’s father and I have done?” she went on. “Get married or break up? If we’d married, what chance would we have had of being happy? Of growing to love each other and building a good marriage, good careers, a happy family?” She waved a hand. “Yes, it can happen. But it seems to me, you and Brooke had the odds stacked against you. One stupid mistake, and the consequences were huge.”

  “Really huge,” he said grimly. “But that didn’t mean I had to be such a shit.”

  “No, it didn’t. You didn’t react well. But you were a kid, and it sounds to me like you didn’t have a whole lot of helpful adult guidance.”

  He snorted. “Sounds like you’ve met my parents.” Then he quickly added, “And that’s blaming, which is wrong. I guess they tried their best, they were just such different people and had conflicting ideas of who they wanted me to be. None of which had anything to do with who I was and what I wanted. So I acted out. They tried to crack down harder and I rebelled even more.”

  She’d suspected something like that. “My parents were wonderful. That was a lucky circumstance for me.” Reflecting, she said, “And sometimes even the unlucky ones result in amazing things.”

  “In my case, not so much.”

  She gazed into his eyes, which looked more jade than blue today, under that sullen sky. “Evan. He’s an amazing man.”

  He swallowed. “Despite me.”

  “Perhaps. Still, he wouldn’t exist but for you. And maybe he wouldn’t have had the same drive and worked so hard if you and Brooke had been better parents.”

  “I hope I get to meet him. I hope he’ll let me apologize.”

  “I hope so, too.”

  Mo reached a gloved hand toward her shoulder, and then let it fall again. “How about you, Maribeth? Now that you know all my dirty secrets, do you still want to spend time with me?”

  “No one’s perfect.”

  “Yeah, but I’m less so than most.”

  She considered. “Actually, I’ve dated worse.”

  “Jesus!” The exclamation burst out of him. “Like what, a sociopath?”

  She gave a surprised laugh, and then sobered again. “No, but I’ve dated people who weren’t honest. Who shaded their stories to always put themselves in the best light.” She certainly couldn’t accuse Mo of doing that.

  “That’s human nature, isn’t it?”

  “It’s a natural instinct, I guess. We all want people to like and respect us. But I’m not a fan of ‘little white lie’ dishonesty.”

  “You never tell little white lies? Never tell a customer that she looks good in a dress when in fact it makes her look fat?”

  “No, that would be wrong. Unfair to her, and bad business as well because she’d eventually figure it out herself. Oh, I’m polite. Like if a woman asks, and the dress actually does make her look fat, I’ll say it’s not the most flattering style or color for her, and I’ll find something that suits her better.” She considered. “Okay, I’m not totally opposed to the tiny deceptions that we use to make someone else feel better about themselves. What I don’t like is when someone uses deception to make himself look better than he really is. Besides, it’s a sign of low self-esteem. It means he thinks that the real him isn’t good enough.”
/>   “In my case, that’d be the truth.”

  “Don’t confuse the old you and the new you,” she said, a touch of impatience in her voice. “You said you’ve changed.” Her instincts told her it was true, and every hour she spent with him confirmed it. “If you’d gone to jail, you’d have been out years and years ago. Free to make a new start, to be a better person. Well, you didn’t go to jail, but all the same you learned your lesson and have become a better person. Right?”

  “Yeah,” he agreed quietly.

  She tilted her head up to him, seeing him against a backdrop of winter sky and thinking how ruggedly handsome he looked in that denim jacket, his hair stirring in the slight breeze. She’d ridden out here a number of times, sometimes with girlfriends, sometimes with friends’ children, sometimes with boyfriends. With some of the adults, even the kids, she’d had some reasonably heavy conversations. There was something about horses and the outdoors that seemed to free constraints so people opened up.

  But today felt different. Being with Mo made the familiar sights even more special, the same way the November lighting made the colors more intense. As for Mo opening up, he’d pretty much done that from the beginning, and this afternoon’s revelation was the backstory to give context to the rest. Why had he told her?

  “When you’ve been interested in other women,” she said, “did you give them your whole history right up front?”

  “Uh, no. But this is different.”

  “You mean because I know Brooke and Evan, and already knew a bit about their history?”

  “Well, yeah, but . . .” He frowned.

  “But what?”

  His brow was still furrowed. “There’s something different about you. About you and me.”

  Yes, there was. She was so relieved that he felt it, too. She cocked her head, the gesture asking him to go on.

  “Before, it’s been, like, I’ll meet a woman in a bar. Maybe she’s alone. Lonely, horny, just looking for a night’s company. Or she’s with a pack of girlfriends and they’re all hustling guys, chalking up notches on their belts.”