Navy Christmas (Whidbey Island)

by Geri Krotow

  “I’m sorry, Jonas. This isn’t easy for you, is it? You didn’t get a chance to say a proper goodbye to Dottie. It all must seem surreal to you. Do you want to have some time alone in the house?”

  “I appreciate it but I don’t need to be alone, Serena.”

  That she understood.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “I DIDN’T SAY anything at the clinic because I didn’t think it was appropriate. It’s my place of work, and your son was there.” Serena sat across from him in the family kitchen, the kitchen in which he’d watched Dottie bake dozens upon dozens of Christmas cookies. He drummed his fingers on the table. “It wasn’t the time to bring up Dottie’s death, or your involvement in it.”

  They were alone at the oak table while Pepé played in the next room.

  She’d made them coffee and put out pumpkin bread that he hated to admit was as good as anything Dottie had ever baked.

  Serena’s eyes flashed a warning.

  “I had no involvement in Dottie’s death. Except that I went to answer the phone for my boss, which left her alone long enough for...for...” She looked down and the waves of regret were practically tangible as the remorse rolled off her.

  “I know you didn’t have anything to do with it. And I shouldn’t have pressed you in front of Pepé. Sorry about that.”

  “Thank you.”

  She leveled a steady look at him. Her emotional strength impressed him as much as it made him uneasy, and it seemed to drive his inexplicable urge to make her understand why he was so wary of her.

  “Can you blame my family for being suspicious of you? You blew in here from out of nowhere, and within six months Dottie was dead. Murdered. And, oh, yeah, she left you, a stranger, the house that had been in our family for generations.”

  “She left me the house that had been in her family for decades, yes. She was murdered, yes, by a psychopath who used to work at the clinic. I’m not responsible for Dottie’s actions any more than I am for those of her murderer.”

  Her skin developed a dusky rose flush at her cheekbones and her eyes blazed with warning. His awareness of her startled him. When his brothers had said “Dottie’s long-lost niece is a Marine widow from Texas,” he’d pictured a nondescript middle-aged woman. Not the sexy beauty who sat in front of him.

  “We didn’t know you weren’t responsible for her death, not when it first happened.”

  To keep from staring at her, he glanced around the kitchen. It seemed larger, warmer, than he remembered. The dark cupboards had been painted white and their trimmings were red. The woodworker in him hated any natural wood painted over, but the kitchen looked years newer. Children’s artwork, obviously Pepé’s, was taped to every cupboard door. The countertops used to be butcher block but now were hard marble or granite—he wasn’t a connoisseur of home decorating. They looked updated, clean. He liked it.

  “I’m sorry for your loss, Jonas.” As much as her pride must have stung at his comment, the gal had class.

  “Thank you. It was a huge shock.”

  “It was for all of us. The clinic staff was like a family, and our clients were part of that family. Not to mention Dottie was my family. If I’d stayed in the room instead of answering the phone—”

  She shook her head as if to clear out ugly thoughts, memories that burned. Jonas knew the feeling. Multiple wartime deployments didn’t allow him to ever pretend bad things didn’t happen to good people.

  “The physical therapist gave me the job as a favor to Dottie, since she was one of his favorite clients. I didn’t need the money, and I’d planned to go back to practicing law at some point. But I needed something to do while Pepé was in school, and this allowed me to meet a lot of the people in our community.”

  He wondered if she realized she’d referred to the Whidbey Island community as “our.” This wasn’t a woman who was going to pack up and leave anytime soon.

  It didn’t mean she had to stay in this house, though.

  Serena’s hands were wrapped around her mug and she stared into her coffee. Her silence reverberated with grief. Jonas had to fight like hell to keep from reaching across the table and grasping her hands.

  What was wrong with him?

  He wanted to comfort her? Serena? The woman who’d been all but responsible for Dottie’s being left alone with a murderer. The woman who’d walked away with the prize of his childhood.

  While Dottie had left him a more than generous amount of cash, she’d gone back on her promise of leaving him the house. Did Serena know why? He forced himself to look anywhere but on her. He noticed that the kitchen wall was bare where it had once held several shelves.

  “Wait, what did you do with all the frogs?”

  “Frogs?” Serena frowned and he realized he’d spoken too loudly.

  “Sorry, I have a bad habit of doing that. It’s from dealing with trauma situations where there’s always a lot of noise. I’m used to shouting medical orders over the din.” He consciously lowered his voice. “What did you do with Dottie’s frogs?”

  Serena looked over her shoulder to where his gaze aimed at the bare wall, then turned back to him.

  “Most of her figurines and wall hangings were gone by the time we moved in. Your brothers came and got all the family items that meant anything to them. I stored what they didn’t want, until I have time to sort through it all. She had a lot of knickknacks!” Serena smiled.

  Jonas scratched his chin. “She had a collection of frogs. They were her favorite. I loved buying them for her.” He fought back his defensiveness. Of course his brothers had cleaned out the house before Serena and Pepé moved in.

  He’d have to find out who got the frogs. He’d loved Dottie’s frogs as a kid, and had given her many of them for her birthdays and Mother’s Day. One of his brothers had probably boxed them up and forgotten it.

  “I know. She had us out here a lot. Treated us like family right from the start.” Unlike you and your brothers. He heard the unspoken accusation that glowed in her eyes. Serena squared her shoulders. “Mary took the frogs, against Paul’s wishes. She loves the frogs, too.”

  Jonas snorted. Leave it to Mary to convince Paul they needed the frogs. She already had a house full of collectibles, on top of the two kids.

  “I don’t want to be rude here, Jonas, but what do you really want from me?”

  Strike. Preemptive at that. Uninvited respect for Serena pushed at his pride.

  “What, don’t you think that family should get to know one another at holiday time?”

  She didn’t take his bait.

  “I’m sorry, Serena. I always seem to say the wrong thing with you. What I’d really love to know is why Dottie changed her mind about the house. I get that she wanted the farmhouse to stay in her family, but she’d always made clear that my brothers and I meant as much to her as any blood relative. It wasn’t like her to go back on a promise, either. She’d been a top Realtor on Whidbey, and the main reason for that was—because her word was golden.”

  “I’ve asked myself the same thing. If she hadn’t left you the cash settlement, I wouldn’t have taken the house, Jonas. I don’t expect you to believe that, but it’s true. As it is, she took care of you. I have to believe she had valid reasons for her decisions.”

  Pepé played with Lego in the family room, which was visible from the kitchen now that Serena had torn down a wall. The wall the family photos had been on. Jonas didn’t think Pepé could hear their conversation, though. Serena kept her voice low, forcing him to lean in to listen to her.

  “I’ve already been through all of this with your family. I had no idea Dottie was leaving me, us, the house. There was no reason for her to—Pepé and I are financially secure, as I’m sure you’re aware.”

  “No, I didn’t know that.”

  “Oh, really? You don’t realize that
military survivors get pretty decent life insurance? Or that I’m a successful attorney? I have a hard time believing Paul didn’t mention any of this to you.” She shook her head. “I only worked at the PT clinic while I was applying for my Washington State law license. It gave us extra time to get to know Dottie, too. Besides, Pepé needed me around more, at first.”

  “What kind of lawyer are you?”

  “Family practice. Not the typical mother who brings her kid into the clinic for a runny nose, am I?”

  Ouch.

  Another verbal punch to the gut. Serena had overheard more of his conversation with Doc Franklin than he’d realized.

  He needed her to understand that he had nothing against her or Pepé.

  “I asked for Whidbey as my shore duty station before I left on deployment. Usually I’m at a more demanding duty station at a larger hospital. I’m an emergency-room trauma nurse practitioner.” Damn it, why did he feel he had to give her his entire professional résumé? Why did he care what she thought?

  “I imagine you’ve seen a lot.” She stood up from the table and took her cup to the sink.

  He chalked up the long look he allowed himself at her bottom, displayed to perfection in her jeans, to having just gotten back from deployment.

  It’d been a few weeks. What was he going to do when he’d been home for several months, been on dates with different women, and Serena still turned him on?

  Because deep in his gut he had a hunch that his attraction to Serena wasn’t something that was going to fade easily.

  She turned around and he took in her full beauty. Damn it if she didn’t look like she belonged in this house, too.

  His house.

  “Did you want to walk through the rest of the house?”

  Her posture was casual as she leaned against the kitchen counter, her blue denim in sharp contrast to the white porcelain sink’s apron. He didn’t miss how her smoky-gray blouse accentuated her breasts and the curve of her hips.

  His body reacted like he was fifteen—immediately and without thought. The man he’d become in the Navy knew he’d just lost the day’s battle.

  “Sure, that’d be nice.”

  Did he want to see the house? Of course—and he wanted to be the one to update the rest of it. At the rate they were going she’d never let him back in here. He’d never get her to sell the house to him.

  Of course money was a factor and he was willing to offer her a hefty sum for his childhood home. Only a fool would turn him down.

  Serena was no fool, but she wasn’t like any other adversary in his life to date. Argument was her profession.

  He didn’t miss the unsaid portion of her query. Did he want to see the rest of the house in order to say goodbye to it?

  * * *

  THEY WALKED UP the narrow staircase in silence. Serena was eye level with Jonas’s butt—and a nice butt it was. He dressed simply in jeans and a thermal under a ski jacket. He looked like he skied; his long legs and light step fit his athletic build. She’d noticed his quiet strength at the base hospital, too. But she’d been too upset by his verbal slams against military spouses to pay much attention to his body.

  Now she sought anything to keep her attention off her own body’s awareness of him. It wasn’t a surprise; she’d known that her grief for Phil would eventually lessen and she’d find herself attracted to another man. It was just a shock that this was the first guy who’d turned her on. The man who wanted to take back the one thing she had as a permanent reminder of her father’s family.

  Once they reached the landing Jonas went straight to the room at the end of the hallway, Pepé’s room.

  “This place seemed so huge to me when we moved in here.” Jonas’s tone reflected the awe of the little boy he would’ve been.

  “You were what, two or three?”

  “Four. I remember it as though it were yesterday. My brother John and I got this room, and my two older brothers were in the bigger room. I didn’t complain—their room scared me with all the dormers and eaves. To me it looked like a haunted castle.”

  Serena laughed. “Pepé said the same thing about that room.”

  “No, I didn’t, Mom. I didn’t say it was a castle.” He’d come upstairs with them.

  Serena smiled at him. “You said it looked like the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland.”

  “Well, it did.”

  “Same difference, kiddo.” She ruffled his hair and he squirmed away, not wanting to look like a little boy in front of Jonas, or so she surmised.

  She turned back to Jonas. “I made the scary room into my office. I haven’t had time yet, but I plan to hire a contractor to put in some shelves, to make it into more of a library. I don’t want to change the lines of the house at all. Simply add to it for comfort as needed.”

  “This house could bankrupt a person.”

  “I think I can handle it.”

  “It’s not just any old house. It goes back—”

  “It was built in 1908 by Dottie’s grandfather. He and her grandmother, along with their young children, had previously lived in a smaller place on the southern part of the island. He brought his dairy cattle up here. Later, Dottie’s father let the dairy business go and made a living as a potato farmer. Your uncle was born here, a surprise midlife baby for Dottie’s parents. He was stationed in Texas for a short time when he had a tour in the Army. That’s where he met my mother.”

  She didn’t mention that Jonas’s uncle, her father, had left Whidbey to go back to Texas after her birth, to see if the woman he’d met during his military time was still there. He’d said that he’d never stopped loving her. Serena felt her mother had still loved him, too, but he’d been too deep into his drinking by then to be the kind of husband Juanita Rodriguez would accept. Juanita had seen their reunion as closure. She’d refused to marry him unless he agreed to stop drinking. Unfortunately, it left her a single mother with Serena.

  “My uncle Todd was the nicest man when he was sober.”

  “I imagine he was. I wouldn’t know.”

  Jonas turned stormy eyes on her. “If he thought for one minute that he was worthy of your mother’s love, I know he would’ve gone back to Texas and claimed you. He wouldn’t have given up so easily.”

  “You can’t know that—none of us can.”

  “He died a horrible death.” Jonas said what she already knew from Dottie. Her father had died of cirrhosis of the liver.

  “Alcoholism’s an ugly disease.”

  “I take it you’re not a medical professional? With that gentle bedside manner?” Jonas kept his tone light but the steel blue of his eyes warned her—don’t judge my uncle.

  He’d been her father.

  Serena shook her head. “I prefer to deal in facts. I’m a lawyer.”

  Jonas’s head moved back. Slightly, but she saw it.

  “Fair enough.” Now he tilted his head to the side. “So tell me, what was a lawyer doing working in a PT clinic as a receptionist? Why didn’t you get a job assisting in a law firm until your license came through?”

  “I told you, I wanted something to do when we first arrived here. Pepé was in school full-time, and while I didn’t want to hang out all day, I wasn’t ready to dive into law again. I wasn’t sure we’d be staying, either.” She didn’t rehash the fact that she’d failed as a receptionist—at least as far as Dottie was concerned. Jonas knew that part.

  She’d never forget it.

  “Did you practice law in Texas?”

  “Yes, I’d been working at a family-owned legal office out in town, off base. They provided family law services to many base personnel. Not too different from Paul’s practice.”

  “What kind of family law?”

  She looked at him. It was the second time he’d asked. What was his motive for finding o
ut more about her?

  “Family court, estate planning, small civil suits. I never wanted to be tied down to a corporate position, not once we had Pepé.” As she said “we” she realized it was merely from habit. She wasn’t thinking about Phil, and more notably wasn’t feeling the pangs of regret she’d experienced throughout her grieving process.

  Jonas had her complete attention.

  This is a first.

  She looked around for Pepé.

  “He went back downstairs.” Jonas interpreted her body language correctly. She wanted to toss him down the stairs.

  “Thanks.” She looked at Jonas. His eyes were still on her but when she met them he shifted his gaze to something outside the low-slung window in Pepé’s room.

  “I used to sit on that window seat for hours and imagine what kinds of ships were out there. When it’s clear, you can see the gray whales migrating. You need binoculars, of course.”

  “I’ll have to tell Pepé. He’ll be thrilled.” And he would be. Pepé had taken to their surroundings like a native. He was more fascinated by nature with each hike, each trip. Puget Sound and the ocean yielded breathtaking displays of killer whales, gray whales and other sea creatures. The tidal basins along the coast became teaching laboratories for the elementary school at low tide. Serena had accompanied Pepé on a field trip with his class and had fallen in love with the assortment of starfish, mussels and crabs that lived in a two-foot basin.

  She had to remain focused on Pepé and ignore the way Jonas aroused her.

  “So you really want to stay here? This far from Texas, from your family?”

  “Pepé’s my family.” She’d parted on bad terms with her mother after finding out she’d lied about her biological father all these years. That was finally mending. But for now, she needed to find out more about who she was. Who Pepé was, too.

  “Let me guess—your mother never wanted anything to do with my uncle on account of his drinking?”