by JoAnn Ross
“Okay.” Before she got into more trouble, Holly stood up. “On behalf of the female forces, I accept your surrender.”
“Consider this lone, lowly male your prisoner. Do with me as you please,” Gabe said.
“Funny you should mention that,” Holly shot back just as Dog, looking like the abominable snow beast, came loping up to him and swiped a huge tongue down Gabe’s face.
“God, I knew I should’ve left you back in the sandbox.” Laughingly pushing the ball of wet fur away, Gabe stood up and began brushing the snow off the front of Holly’s jacket.
She did not immediately brush his hand away.
Unable to remember the last time she’d felt so carefree, Holly laughed as they walked back toward the sleigh.
Memories danced through her mind. Of hot roasted chestnuts and gaily decorated store front windows, and holding the hand of a man she suspected she’d gazed up at in exactly the same way Emma was looking up at Gabe.
And, although it didn’t make any sense at all, Holly oddly felt as if having landed here in Santa’s Village, she was catching a glimpse of what her life might have been.
Thirteen
The excitement of the day had obviously gotten to Emma, who fell asleep in the back of the sleigh on the ride back to the inn.
“Blessed silence,” Gabe murmured.
“I think she’s darling,” Holly said.
“You’re not going to get any argument there,” he agreed. “Sometimes, like out of the blue, it’ll dawn on me that she’s actually my child, you know, the seed of my loins, all that sort of thing, and I’ll just feel knocked flat.”
“She’s fortunate to have you.”
He shrugged. “We’re both lucky.”
Gabe knew Holly was curious. Knew he was going to have to tell her what happened. But since his mother had already warned him about Emma thinking that this newcomer to Santa’s Village had been sent to be her new mother, he feared his daughter might just be pretending to sleep. She had, after all, proven herself to be a fairly good little actress.
He was going to have to talk with Emma about Holly. Explain that while Santa had many great qualities, and while maybe he might be able to fit a pony in this sleigh, which turned magical when he drove it, he wasn’t in the habit of delivering actual people to good little girls and boys. He wasn’t looking forward to the conversation. It seemed kids grew up way too fast these days, and his daughter was already five going on twenty.
“After I take her back to the inn and we drop off your tree, I’ll take you over to Olson’s, so you can talk to Ken about your Highlander,” he said to Holly.
“Thanks. I’d appreciate that. I also have some shopping to do.”
“If you want to make a list, I can pick some things up for you,” he offered. “Consider it part of the service.”
“That’s nice. But since I have a feeling I’m going to be here for a while, I might as well check out the town.”
“Your call,” he said agreeably.
Twenty minutes later, he’d carried his daughter—who actually did appear to be sound asleep—upstairs and tucked her into bed.
“An advantage of living above the store, so to speak,” he said as they drove the short distance to the center of town in the Expedition, “is that there are always a lot of people around willing to watch out for her. It makes it like a large extended family.”
“That’s lucky. Especially with your mother working there.”
“Not just my mother, but one of my sisters. Janice, who graduated from Washington State in Hospitality Business Management, is in charge of the rentals. From keeping housekeeping on their toes, to arranging for repairs, decorating, the whole nine yards. Even mostly the kitchen stuff, though Mom’s beginning to take that on more and more now that she’s retired. Which allows me to concentrate on the farm.
“I’d like to make it a year-round destination. Maybe have some classes on conservation, invite the school kids to have field trips during planting season, and since it’s located on the other side of the lake, maybe even get into boat rentals, bait and tackle, that sort of thing.”
“Sounds as if you’re really settling in.”
“Yeah.” Gabe was surprised about that. He hadn’t been sure the move from California to this small mountain town would work out. But at the time, not wanting to leave Emma with sitters while he worked some 9-to-5 job, or worse yet, become a cop like so many ex-military, and like his own dad had done, hadn’t been an option, either.
“Her mother left us,” he said, deciding the best way to handle those questions she’d been too polite to ask was the same way he’d done everything else in his life. Just straight out.
“I’m sorry.”
“I guess I was, too. For a while. But it was mostly wounded pride. And it wasn’t as if we’d had what anyone could consider a real marriage. I met Lila while I was stationed at Camp Pendleton. She was a civilian secretary working on base. I thought she was pretty, which she was. I also thought I was the hottest Marine ever to come down the pike.”
“I don’t know much about the military. But from all those commercials I see on TV and in the theaters, I’d suspect that’s pretty much the Marine mindset,” she said mildly.
He chuckled at that all too accurate appraisal. “Can’t argue with that. Neither one of us was looking for anything serious. Then she got pregnant.”
“I see.”
Gabe wasn’t certain anyone actually could understand his and Lila’s relationship. Since he hadn’t understood it himself at the time. Not even after it had crumbled down around them, leaving a vulnerable little girl amidst the rubble.
“She didn’t really want to be a mother. Had never planned to be.” He remembered the conversation as if it’d happened yesterday. “Said she liked kids okay. Other people’s kids.”
“Not every woman feels the need to define herself by motherhood,” Holly said quietly. He could tell she was walking on eggshells.
“How about you?”
Although he knew he was getting way ahead of the game, he’d wondered about that long into the night. As much as he wanted to take Holly Berry to bed, once his mother had told him about his daughter’s belief that this woman was destined to be her new mom, he hadn’t wanted to risk hurting Emma.
As Lila had told him when she’d greeted him at their house with her suitcases already packed, he’d already spent too many years thinking only of himself. Of his own wishes and needs.
Well, that had certainly changed. And although he wasn’t going to deny that he missed sex—a lot—and there were a lot of women in town who’d been more than open about their willingness to let him put his boots beneath their beds, if only for a night, he’d screwed around with too many of those sex candidates in the backseat of his Camaro IROC-Z back in high school. And although those days and nights parked out by the lake had been fun, he wasn’t really in a mood to relive them.
And then, as always, there was Emma. From what he’d been able to glean from their conversations, there had been more than one man in his wife’s life while he’d been away keeping the world free from terrorism. No way was Gabe going to put a revolving door in his bedroom.
Although celibacy definitely wasn’t a natural state, he’d been doing just fine. Until he’d driven around that S-curve and come across Holly Berry, who was causing all his good paternal intentions to pretty much fly out the window.
“If you’d rather not talk about it . . .” Her voice broke into his thoughts.
“No.” He shook his head to clear it. “You’ll probably hear different versions of the story anyway, if you’re going to stay here for any length of time. You might as well know the truth. I talked Lila into having the baby. I promised that it’d be good. That we’d be a family.”
“Like the one your mother and dad made with you and your sisters.”
“Good guess. Being a male and pretty clueless about the nuances of relationships, I didn’t realize that my parents’ relationship hadn
’t come easy for them. That they’d worked at it every day. And that part of the reason for them moving up here had been because Dad had gotten so stressed out at work it was impacting the rest of their lives.”
“Admittedly, I don’t have any experience with a close-up and personal view of marriage,” Holly said quietly. “But I suspect no child really understands what’s going on outside his or her own self-centered world.”
“That’s probably true.” He sighed. “So, Lila had the baby. I was in Panama at the time. During Emma’s very short lifetime, I’ve done two tours in Iraq, and another in Afghanistan.”
“That doesn’t allow much time for being a husband. Or father,” Holly allowed.
He slanted her a look. “Good point. And one Lila made right before walking out the door. She’s now married to her former boss. A property mogul who builds shopping centers. They live in some McMansion in a seaside development outside San Diego. He’s a nice enough guy. But he doesn’t want kids. Especially one who isn’t biologically his.”
“That’s his loss.”
God help him, he didn’t just want Holly Berry. He liked her. A lot. Liked her intelligence, her tenderness, and her matter-of-fact way of cutting to the chase. She might prove a challenge, but a guy would always know where he stood with her.
“Yeah. I remember standing there, thinking that here I was, a tough battle-hardened Marine who’d been on the front lines against al-Qaeda and the Taliban, but I had no idea how to take care of a little girl. Hell, the only thing in the house turned out to be Chunky Monkey ice cream and Lucky Charms cereal and since either my mother or the Marines had fed me all my life, I didn’t even know how to make out a grocery list.”
“So you came home.”
“Not at first.” He remembered those early days. “I didn’t want to run back home to my parents because I think it would’ve been too tempting just to hand Emma over to my mother and sisters, who were certainly more than willing to help out. I’d missed out on most of her life. I wanted, needed, to build a bond between us before I brought others into our life.”
“Well.” She blew out a long breath. Her eyes, including the one she’d put a little powder on while he’d been in the inn putting Emma to bed, were bright with a suspicious moisture. “That’s very impressive.”
“No.” Gabe might not be an expert in parenting, but of this one thing he was very sure. “It’s not. Because women do it every day. All over America. The world. Hell, look how well your mother raised you, and I’ll bet there weren’t any people handing out single mother medals.”
“She did the best she could,” Holly agreed. “Under difficult circumstances.”
Haltingly at first, she told him about her father’s murder. Although he’d seen death, killed bad guys himself, Gabe found the circumstances of George Berry’s death even more terrible. Especially given the way it had obviously shattered his daughter’s small family.
“So,” she wrapped up, “my mother moved to L.A. and, well, with all the palm trees and sunshine, we sort of just let the Christmas season slip away.”
There was a lot more there she wasn’t telling. Having spent the first thirteen years of his own life in southern California, Gabe knew that while it definitely wasn’t anything like here, most people still celebrated the holidays. Hell, each December his mother had put a tree in every room, created crafty, handmade ornaments, and directed the kids’ pageant at church, while his father would fill up the front yard with the plywood reindeer, snowmen, angels, and wise men he and Gabe would spend the summer making on the table saw in the garage. Thinking back on it, Gabe suspected their electricity bill between Thanksgiving and New Year’s probably doubled from all the lights.
Speaking of lights . . . Gabe was tempted to suddenly look up and see if a lightbulb had just lit up over his head.
“What?” Holly asked, sounding defensive. And no wonder. Here she’d just opened up and shared a story he suspected she didn’t tell often, if at all, and he’d laughed.
“I just realized why, of all the towns in America, my parents moved to this one. They’ve always been Christmas junkies.”
“I’m beginning to think that may not be such a bad thing,” she admitted.
“Well, you’re definitely going to be making up for lost time.”
They shared a laugh, putting their individual difficulties behind them as they enjoyed the moment. And each other.
Fourteen
“A week?” Holly blew out a frustrated breath. Dragged a hand through her hair.
“At least,” Ken Olson, of Olson’s Auto Repair, repeated. “Sorry. But this isn’t the city. It’s hard to get parts over the holidays. Especially with all the roads closed.”
“But surely you have radiators.” She looked around the garage that was packed concrete floor to ceiling with car parts that Ken, a major packrat, had collected over more than fifty years in the business. “Maybe a refurbished one that’ll get me back to the city?”
“Well, now, I might be able to find one that’d fit your vehicle,” he allowed, the unlit cigarette Gabe had never seen him without bobbing between his lips. “But the thing is, you’ve got more trouble than a radiator. Your fuel level float’s flat busted, and the flange on your alternator’s cracked, plus, your power steering pump’s leaking fluid, the front struts don’t look good, and I sure wouldn’t want to send you back down the mountain with those brake linings.”
He took off his red and green plaid wool cap with the shearling earflaps and scratched his head. “No telling what might happen. And without you having an airbag anymore. Well, shoot, I’m sorry, ma’am, but my conscience would just eat away at me like battery acid if anything happened to a pretty young thing like you.”
Holly dragged a gloved hand down her face.
Then turned to Gabe. “I don’t suppose there’s a car rental place in town.”
“There’s a small Avis outlet,” he allowed. “Out at the airfield. But they ran out of cars two days ago. And right now . . .”
“I know,” she huffed, “with the roads closed, they can’t bring any more in.”
“That’s pretty much it,” he said sympathetically. “If you need transportation, the family’s got enough vehicles to lend you one.”
“That’s very generous. And I might take you up on that,” she said. “But that doesn’t get me back to the city.”
“What happened to Leavenworth?”
“I’ve changed the story. I don’t need the cookie lady anymore.” She drew in a deep breath. Let it out. Repeated. Remembering when his sister Janice was studying yoga, Gabe figured she was trying to find her center.
“Why don’t you let me take you shopping,” he suggested. “Whatever happens, you’re going to want some coffee and chocolate, at least.”
Her eyes narrowed. “How did you know about the chocolate ?”
He shrugged. “Hey, I have a mother and three sisters. Plus, I may not write mystery novels, but the M&M wrappers stuffed into your Highlander’s ashtray were sorta a clue.”
Despite her obvious frustration, more, he suspected because she’d lost control over the situation, than the actual problems with her SUV, she laughed at that.
“You’re right. It’s the obvious solution. And I appreciate the offer.”
After she’d settled back into the Expedition, Gabe said, “I just remembered. Mom asked me to give Ken a message to take home to his wife about the inn’s Christmas Eve party. I’ll be right back.”
“I’m sure not going anywhere,” she said.
He walked back into the garage where Ken was standing beneath the lift, changing the oil on an old Dodge Charger Gabe’s brother-in-law Jack had spent two years restoring to its old muscle car–days glory.
“Thanks,” he said. “Appreciate it.”
“No problem,” Ken said, the cigarette clenched between his nicotine-yellowed teeth. “Glad to be able to help out by keeping the little lady in town a bit longer. Writes books, the missus told me. About m
urders and such.”
“Yeah. She’s good, too.” Gabe had stayed up most of the night reading Blood Brothers, a story about good and evil twins.
“Doesn’t look like she’d write them kind of stories,” Ken said. “Figure that’s more along the lines of a guy job. She’s a looker, that’s for damn sure.”
“You’re not going to get any argument from me about that.”
Gabe was halfway to the Expedition when the older man called out, “Good luck.”
As he headed off to the North Pole Mercantile, drinking in the scent of sugar cookies and very desirable woman, Gabe figured that thanks to Mother Nature, he’d already gotten pretty damn lucky.
The market was a surprise. Although there were fresh trees and wreaths, which Gabe confirmed were from his farm, for sale in front of the store, and the expected towering pyramid of poinsettias inside, it was as well stocked as the neighborhood grocery store around the corner from her apartment. In fact, Holly thought, as she put a bag of pebbly Clementine oranges into her cart, it seemed to have even more fresh fruits and vegetables.
Gabe, it seemed, was particularly popular. They couldn’t get down an aisle without some female stopping to chat. Most often that chat included an invitation.
“Sorry,” he said, after the third such interruption, this one by a brunette wearing ski pants so tight she must’ve had to lie down to zip them up, a sweater beneath her open coat that looked as if it’d been sprayed onto her double-D silicone-enhanced breasts, and a pair of high-heel boots that were admittedly good-looking, but ridiculously impractical. If she wasn’t careful, she could slip on the ice and break her neck.
And wouldn’t, Holly thought acidly, remembering the way she’d put her hand over Gabe’s on the cart handle, that be a terrible shame.
“Must be tough, being the town’s hottest bachelor,” Holly said dryly as the brunette sashayed away.