God, this was all just so humiliating. How was she supposed to look any of these people, her mother included, in the eye again? Did they all think she was as pathetic as Mack obviously did?
She was so lost in the awfulness that was her headspace that she moved on autopilot. The box was just tall enough to obscure her vision, but it didn’t matter. The door was directly in front of her, and then it was a straight shot down the hall and to the kitchen. As long as she put one foot in front of the other she should make it there without running into a wall or bursting into tears.
“That’s mine!” Maddie’s voice pierced through the brain fog, but not quickly enough for Spencer to react. Before she knew what was happening, something small and mighty crashed into her legs, causing Spencer to lose her balance. She went to the floor, her butt colliding with the floor with enough force it jarred her teeth. She had kept a good hold onto the box until the moment she hit, and then it went flying as well. The sound of glass breaking was nearly deafening in the brief moment of silence, and then a scream like nothing on this earth was all anyone could hear.
No one offered to help Spencer up. No one rushed to pick up the collection of shattered ornaments scattered all over the hallway. And no one noticed that while they all either consoled Maddie or ushered the other kids away from the broken glass, Spencer went to the basement, filled her suitcase, and then walked out the door.
Chapter 16
Kit scowled at the screen of his phone. It wasn’t that he disliked the record executive who had messaged him or didn’t want to build the man a custom-made liquor cabinet. In fact, the guy was one of his favorite clients and had given him a ton of referrals. But he wasn’t her.
It had been two days since he’d come back from helping Tinsley buy and hang a new door to find Spencer gone. He’d been fed some story about broken ornaments and being overwhelmed by their big family, but he knew he was the real reason she left. How many times had he woken up to find the bed next to him already empty? How many times had he realized his bedmate wasn’t crying out his name because she had no idea what it was? He wasn’t the kind of man a woman stuck with, even if it meant leaving her family and spending Christmas alone.
Except he’d thought Spencer was different. There had been something there. Something more than the desire the get naked and sweaty. Something that felt a whole hell of a lot like affection. He’d felt it the moment he saw her and the pull only got stronger the more time he spent with her. He thought she’d felt the same.
And then she had left.
He’d texted that night. Just a simple, “Are you OK?” She’d replied back with, “Needed a breather. Timber isn’t really my scene. You can have your bed back.” He’d typed out at least a hundred responses, but hadn’t hit send on any of them.
What was he supposed to say? That he couldn’t sleep without listening to her soft sighs from across the room? That he now had to press his nose deep into the pillow she slept on to catch the vanilla and jasmine scent of her? That he missed her more than he knew it was possible to miss someone he’d only met days before?
He didn’t believe in love at first sight — he wasn’t certain he believed in love at all — but there was no denying that Spencer had become important to him in a ridiculously short period of time. And maybe his heart wasn’t exactly broken, but it wasn’t functioning properly either. If it was, it wouldn’t ache so damn much.
Fuck. The more he stood around thinking about Spencer, the more of a depressed asshole he was becoming. He needed a drink. Thanks to Mack being BFFs with the Jesus who turned water into Welch’s grape juice instead of actual wine, there wasn’t anything stronger than Mello Yello to drink in the house, and he would be politely asked to leave if he considered bringing any in. If he were in Nashville, he would have headed out to a bar, but Lake County was dry, which meant they had never voted to repeal Prohibition. No bars. No liquor stores. Hell, you couldn’t even grab a beer at the gas station.
He could have called up some old friends and driven over the county line for some margaritas and Mexican food, but he wasn’t feeling very social. Truth was, he’d been hiding in the basement for most of the day. He loved his family, but their presence was wearing on him. Still, he was going to have to do something other than sit around and mope. Not to mention the smell of freshly popped corn was like a siren’s call, wafting down the stairs and making his stomach grumble.
The purpose of the popcorn was evident the moment he made it to the top of the stairs. Tim Allen’s bearded mug was plastered across Mack’s TV screen, reminding him this was The Santa Clause movie marathon night.
He freaking hated The Santa Clause.
“There you are.” He hadn’t noticed Rita sitting at the kitchen table because he’d been so focused on scoping out which kids were where. If any of them noticed him, there would be no escaping. “Hungry?” she asked, already laying her book down and pushing her chair back.
“Don’t get up,” he said, patting her shoulder as he passed. She’d put on a good show the last two days, but he knew he wasn’t the only one affected by Spencer’s abrupt departure. Even now Rita’s eyes looks red and puffy. “I know my way around this kitchen. Before you came, Mack made each of us take turns making supper.” He’d always made tacos. Tacos were easy, and who didn’t love tacos? Well, who besides Maddie, The Queen of Picky Eaters, didn’t like tacos?
A giant red kettle sat on the stove, half full of popcorn fixed the old-fashioned way Mack always made it. Kit scoped up a bowlful and then slapped together a peanut butter sandwich. He grabbed himself a soda and settled in across from Rita, who had resumed reading her book. It was the one with the purple-dress-lady cover Spencer had been reading her first night here.
The vice around his chest tightened a notch.
“Like daughter, like mother, huh?” he said because apparently he was into masochism these days. He didn’t want to hear anything about Spencer. He didn’t want to think about her or the shape of her legs or the scent of her skin or the feel of her wrapped around his cock or that fucking red and black bra.
He was never going to be able to see a piece of red satin or black lace again with getting a simultaneously hard and pissed.
Hard because… Well, that was obvious, wasn’t it? He’d never seen anything as sexy as Spencer’s pert breasts decorated by that scrap of material. He couldn’t close his eyes without reliving the moment he’d pulled off her tank top. His heart had stopped beating in that moment as he took in her perfection.
And that was what pissed him off. Because he still thought of her as beautiful and perfect even though she’d gone and pulled a dick-around-and-ditch on him. He was pissed because he still wanted her. He missed her for God’s sake. How could you miss someone you’d only known for a few days? How could you miss them so much you thought you might never feel whole again without them around?
The simple answer was, you couldn’t.
The more complicated answer was, he did. Hell, he missed her so much it hurt.
Which was why he was willing to bring up the one person his brain knew better than to discuss. No matter how much his brain protested, his heart needed something, anything, to ease the pain for just a few moments.
“I think a love of books might be the only thing Spencer got from me,” Rita said, folding down the corner of one page and closing the book.
Kit was very willing to lay money on the fact that Spencer hadn’t carried on that particular habit. In fact, he could almost hear the lecture she would give her mother for defacing a book in such a careless way.
“That’s blatantly false,” Kit said with a smile so Rita would know he was only teasing her. “I’m pretty sure she didn’t pick up those gorgeous blue eyes of hers from a roadside stand.”
Rita’s hand flittered up to her gravity-defying hair and her eyelashes fluttered as a blush stained her cheeks.
Yet another thing mother and daughter had in common. How many times had he seen Spencer blush over the five days t
hey were together?
“My eyes set in a face just like her father’s. I always thought of him such a handsome and masculine-looking man, but turns out those same features look just as at home on a girl.” Rita was looking at some far-off place in the past. Kit didn’t doubt that she loved Mack — it was impossible not to love the guy — but there was so much heartbreak written on her face as she thought about her first husband Kit had to fight to keep his composure. What would it be like to love someone that much and then lose them? How did someone survive it?
“She misses him so much,” Rita said as a tear slipped past her false eyelashes and trailed down her cheek. “They were so close. He was smart, like she is. By the time she was ten I couldn’t keep up with their conversations. I let her start reading romance novels when she was probably too young to understand some of the steamier scenes just because I wanted to have at least one thing for us to share.” And then, without any warning, Rita’s single tear turned into a deluge. Like all of her other emotions, Rita gave into her heartache with everything she had. Mascara painted her cheeks as great gasping sobs rose from her chest.
Kit wasn’t used to such outpouring of emotion. His mother was entirely too calculating and controlled to fall victim to such an outburst, and while he’d seen more than his fair share of tears from Beth and Amanda, they tended to be more of the crocodile variety than genuine grief.
There weren’t any tissues in the kitchen, so he grabbed a handful of napkins decorated with candy canes and holly leaves and shoved them in Rita’s direction. He considered wrapping her up in his arms like he would have one of his nieces or nephew, but she was still sitting at the table and he stood over six feet tall. To say the positioning for such a gesture would be awkward was an understatement. Instead, he rubbed one hand up and down her back while looking around to see why in the hell none of his other family members were coming to the woman’s rescue. Surely this was a job better suited to a husband or stepdaughter.
“It should have been me,” she squeaked out. “Jeff would have known how to take care of her. How to protect her.” She briefly squeezed her eyes together, causing a fresh wave of tears to break through. “He never would have had made her feel like he had chosen a new family over her. He never would have left her all alone like I have.”
Kit froze with his hand pressed between Rita’s shoulder blades. “Did she say that? Did she make you chose between her and Mack?”
Rita jerked back as if his words were a physical blow. The movement caused his hand to fall away. There wasn’t a single tear floating in her eyes when she turned to glare at him.
“Of course not,” Rita said, her voice low and thick from tears.
“Then why do you think—”
“She left.” She said it the same way a person might say, “She died.”
“All she wanted was something familiar in all this chaos I threw her into. Something to make her feel like she had a place here, and I couldn’t even give her that.”
Christ. What a perfect shitstorm this was. Rita was blaming herself for Spencer leaving when it was all his fault. He was the one who let his dick take control of his brain. If he hadn’t been so dead set on getting Spencer naked and writhing beneath him — and Jesus Christ, did that girl writhe — then she wouldn’t have felt the need to flee the scene of the crime. And Rita wouldn’t feel like the worst mother in the world.
There was only one thing he could do. It wasn’t going to be easy, and God knew he really didn’t want to do it, but he’d been taught at an early age that a real man cleaned up his own messes.
If only this one would be as easy picking LEGO pieces up off the carpet before slamming his bare foot down on one of the tiny instruments of torture.
“Tell Mack I’ll be back tomorrow,” he said, already moving towards the basement door. He didn’t have time to waste. It was a two-hour drive to Nashville, and there was snow in the forecast. He needed to get on the road.
Chapter 17
Spencer’s plan had been to drive back to Nashville, lock herself in her apartment, and pretend like it was the middle of January. How she’d ended up huddled on the couch beneath a pile of blankets watching Watson shoot pornos and Professor Snape cheat on his wife in the world’s most screwed up holiday movie was anyone’s guess.
God, she was such an idiot.
She’d made so many bad choices it was hard to pin down which was the most humiliating. Running away from Mack’s cozy family Christmas like some petulant teenager? Throwing herself at a guy who was so far out of her league she didn’t even understand how he kept score? Or was it drinking an entire bottle of wine and then turning on a holiday movie marathon?
Rick Grimes held up his infamous To me you are perfect sign for a married Elizabeth Bennett and Spencer raised her middle finger to the television screen. “I hope the walkers get you, Rick,” she told the screen, wincing at how raw and unused her voice sounded.
Well, there weren’t exactly a ton of opportunities to talk to anyone when you lived alone, had no significant other, and managed to alienate your only living relative.
And the award for the Most Pathetic Human Ever goes to… Spencer Nation!
Seriously, all she needed was a herd of cats and she would be every stereotype her entire high school had assumed she’d become.
“A cat wouldn’t be the worst idea,” she said to the empty room. “Talking to a cat is slightly less crazy pants than talking to the ottoman.” Not to mention, the ottoman never had the manners to reply. At least a cat would throw her a couple of condescending meows every now and again.
Too bad her crappy apartment didn’t allow pets. Pot was apparently okay since her neighbors toked up so often they were single-handedly keeping the Nashville drug scene alive, but harbor a kitten and you would be out on the street before you could say Rum Tum Tugger.
Cats.
Rum Tum Tugger.
Was it possible for her to be any more of a loser? No wonder Mack had to beg Kit to sleep with her. God knows no man that good looking was going to do so of his own free will. Travis was right. She wasn’t the kind of girl to invoke passion. She was, in a word, unfuckable.
Okay, so maybe it was a made-up word, but women drowning their heartache and holiday blues in a bottle of wine so sweet it probably qualified as adult Kool-Aid were allowed a certain amount of poetic license. She was a literature professor. She knew these things.
A knock on the door interrupted her attempt at coming up with a pronunciation guide for unfuckable.
Carolers. She’d already been duped once. She’d opened the door expecting a pepperoni pizza and instead had to endure a quartet of kids from the Christian college singing about silent nights and managers in far away lands as part of an effort to collect canned goods for a local homeless shelter. She’d given them nearly everything in her cabinet, saving the bottle of wine she’d found in the process. Their earnest faces and Christmas cheer were her tipping point. The moment the door shut, she went looking for a corkscrew.
And now they were back. She knew she should’ve just sent them packing the first time. But no, she had to go and be moved by the idea of people being alone and hungry on Christmas. Somehow she forgot the fact that she was going to be alone and eating cold pizza on Christmas. No, it wasn’t quite the same as being homeless, but it was enough of an excuse for her to pull a blanket over her head and pretend she wasn’t home.
“Spencer, open the damn door.”
Spencer’s first thought was, How do the carolers know my name?
Her second, slightly more coherent thought was, What is Kit doing here?
Spencer tossed the blanket off and risked a look in the full-length mirror hanging on her bedroom door. She was wearing the same pajamas she’d put on yesterday and her hair looked like she’d thrown it back in a messy bun and then wallowed on in for two solid days, which was exactly what had happened. Dark bruises shadowed her puffy red eyes and her skin looked pale and dry.
Fan-freaking-tastic.
It was the look every woman hoped to have when coming face-to-face with the guy who had pity-fucked her just a few days before.
“Spencer!”
“Coming!” she called out, quickly redoing her bun. Not that her efforts were going to make a hill of beans of a difference, but she had to do something.
Kit stepped into the room the moment she jerked the door open, clumps of snow falling from his shoulders and onto the stained indoor-outdoor carpet of her apartment.
“Is it snowing?” she asked, feeling like an idiot even as the words tumbled out of her mouth. Kit, the one person she most wanted to avoid in this world, was standing in her apartment instead of pulling a Griswolds at Mack’s house two hours away, and she felt the need to start by asking him a question with an answer so obvious it was melting onto her now frost-bitten toes?
Most Pathetic Human Ever indeed. I’ll just accept my trophy and then go die in a deep, dark hole somewhere.
“It’s the closest thing to a blizzard anyone’s ever seen below the Mason-Dixon,” Kit said, rubbing his hand over his hair to dislodge the flakes that had gathered in the thick, dark locks. “There is a wreck blocking both lanes of traffic in front of the bakery, so I parked at the gas station and walked the rest of the way.”
Spencer’s apartment was in no way big, so it only took a few steps for her to get to a window and pull back the curtain. In the glow of the street lights she could see flakes the size of snowballs coming down so fast and hard it was impossible to see the buildings on the other side of the street. Kit had driven from Kentucky to Nashville in this? He’d walked over a block with nothing more than a fleece jacket protecting him from this? Was he insane?
Spencer Nation's Christmas Miracle Page 7