A Marine for Christmas

by Beth Andrews

  I’m in love with you.

  The bottle slipped from his fingers, dropping with a thud. It rolled, spilling beer over the carpet before he could grab it. Damn it. Damn it! Why couldn’t J.C. leave him alone? Every time he’d shut his eyes last night, he’d relived their lovemaking, the dreams so vivid he’d woken up reaching for her. Only to remember the look on her face when she overheard him claiming he didn’t want the baby. That he couldn’t love her because she wasn’t Liz.

  He tipped his head side to side until his neck popped. But he could still hear her voice in his head.

  My son and I will be just fine without you. But I wonder, Brady, how do you think you’ll be without us?

  My son, she’d said, claiming their baby as effectively as if she’d said straight out she was keeping him. And he didn’t doubt they’d be fine. J.C. was far more resilient than people gave her credit for. She’d be a terrific mother. And someday, she’d meet someone without so much baggage. A guy smart enough not to screw up what a good thing he had with her.

  Sitting up, he finished his beer. He needed another one. Or twelve.

  But to get one, he had to venture yet again into the party. This time he was bringing a six-pack out with him instead of one bottle.

  He got to his feet as the office door opened and someone flipped the lights on.

  “I thought you might be in here,” Matt said from the doorway. He looked at the beer bottle in Brady’s hand, his eyes narrowing slightly. “There’s a pretty brunette out on the porch to see you.” Jane.

  “Why didn’t you bring her up?” Brady asked roughly, already on his way toward the door.

  “I tried. She said she didn’t want to interrupt the party.”

  Brady brushed past Matt and was down the stairs in a few minutes. In the living room next to the foyer, the party was in full swing. Avoiding eye contact, he paused at the front door to comb his fingers through his hair and realized as he raised his hand he still held the empty beer bottle. He stuck it under the skinny fake tree in the corner his mother had decorated all in red.

  He stepped outside. Between the porch light and the white Christmas lights his mother had wound around every available surface, the porch fairly glowed, making it easy for Brady to see her sitting on the wooden swing.

  Just not the woman he’d hoped it’d be.

  “Hello, Brady,” Liz said, stopping the motion of the swing and standing.

  He exhaled. Mouth tight, he nodded.

  “I’m sorry to barge in on you this way,” she said, hunching her shoulders against the cold. “I forgot about your mom’s holiday party until I pulled in and saw all the cars.”

  “Is J.C. okay?”

  Liz looked at him speculatively. “As far as I know, she’s fine.”

  “Good. That’s…good.” He shoved his hands into his pockets. “Do you want to come inside?”

  “I’d rather stay out here if you don’t mind. This won’t take long.”

  He lifted a shoulder, then leaned back against the porch rail while she retook her seat on the swing. She cleared her throat. “Brady, I…I owe you an apology.”

  “Mind telling me what, exactly, you’re apologizing for?”

  Tipping her head back, she searched his face. “I’m sorry I wrote you that letter.”

  Out of all the reasons he could think of for Liz to show up at his mother’s house on Christmas Eve, her apologizing for writing him a Dear John letter hadn’t made the list.

  “After everything we’d been through,” she continued when he remained silent, “you deserved more than a letter.”

  It didn’t matter. No apology could change what happened or bring him back what he’d lost. But maybe he could get some answers to the questions that had plagued him for so long.

  “Why’d you write it?” he asked. “Why not break off things when I was home for leave that summer instead of letting me go overseas thinking nothing had changed between us?”

  She clasped her gloved hands together on her lap. “I should have. But I’d convinced myself my feelings for Carter weren’t serious.” She lowered her head, her gaze on the porch floor. “But the biggest reason I didn’t end our engagement face-to-face or even over the phone was because I knew you’d try to talk me out of it. I was afraid if you did,” she said thickly, “I’d let you. And then things would go on between us the way they always had.”

  “That would’ve been so bad?”

  “Not bad,” she said with a shaky breath, “but not what I wanted, either.” She raised her head, tears sparkling in her eyes. “I loved you, Brady. I loved you for half of my life but I…I didn’t want to marry you,” she whispered.

  “What the hell does that mean?” he growled, not giving a rat’s ass that she winced at his harsh tone. “You accepted my proposal. You wore my ring. Now you tell me you never planned on marrying me?”

  “It wasn’t like that,” she said, getting to her feet. “I didn’t even realize it myself until…until after I met Carter.”

  Brady stared at Liz as if he’d never seen her before. “All those times you pushed the wedding date back,” he said, “because you wanted to finish college first, then med school and your residency, those were excuses not to marry me?”

  “I kept thinking, hoping, something would change.” She pulled a tissue from her pocket and wiped her eyes then blew her nose. “I held on to you because I loved you too much to let you go.”

  “You loved me,” he said in a monotone. “Just not enough to commit to making a life with me.”

  “I was wrong. That’s why I’m here. It’s time I let you go for good, for both our sakes.” She reached past him and he stiffened. But she didn’t touch him, just set the blue jeweler’s box containing the ring he’d bought her on the porch rail. “Goodbye, Brady.”

  He watched Liz walk away and stood staring out over the driveway long after she left. But instead of thinking of Liz and what she’d confessed, one thought consumed him.

  J.C. had been right.

  He wiped a shaky hand over his mouth. He’d been holding on to his past because he couldn’t imagine loving any other woman but Liz. He’d thought they had the perfect love, but it had been a lie. All those years of waiting for Liz to set a wedding date, to be ready to marry him, he’d pretended everything was great because he wanted to hold on to the fantasy rather than face reality.

  While he’d been focused on what he’d lost, he’d ignored what he’d gained. A chance for the life he’d always dreamed of with a beautiful, warm, funny woman. A woman who’d give him a child. A woman who loved him.

  And he’d pushed her away.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  “YOU’RE LATE.”

  With a gasp, Liz whirled toward the sound of her husband’s voice. “Carter. You scared me.”

  “Sorry.”

  Frowning, she shut the front door and walked into their living room. Carter was slouched in an armchair staring at the flames in the fireplace. Other than the fire and the colorful lights on their Christmas tree, the room was dark.

  “I thought you were going to Mitch and Kelly’s for dinner,” she said, taking her coat off and laying it on the back of the sofa before switching on a floor lamp.

  Carter’s shirtsleeves were rolled up, the top three buttons of his collar undone. His pale hair stuck up at odd angles, as if he’d repeatedly run his hands through it. “I didn’t want to go without you. I wanted to spend our first Christmas Eve as a married couple together.”

  She crossed to him. “I’m glad. I want that, too.”

  “How was work?” he asked, sipping red wine as he regarded her over the glass. “You must’ve been busy.”

  Sitting on the arm of the chair, she slipped off her shoes and wiggled her toes. “You know how it is during the holidays. The E.R. was a madhouse.”

  “Is that why you’re late?” he asked in that calm way of his. “Why you’ve been crying?”

  She rubbed at the aching arch of her foot. Though she’d done a quick
repair job on her makeup in the car, she knew there were still traces of smudged mascara under her red-rimmed eyes. And the tip of her nose was still pink.

  She helped herself to his wine, took a long drink and prayed she’d done the right thing for her marriage. “I went to see Brady.”

  His fingers dug into the arm of the chair by her leg. “Why?”

  “To apologize.” She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “And because…we both needed…closure.”

  She just hadn’t realized how badly they’d needed it until yesterday after J.C. had left their grandmother’s house.

  Carter sat up. “You apologized for breaking up with him?”

  “No. For how I handled it. How I handled everything.” She stood and wandered to the tree. Traced a fingertip over a red ball before facing her husband. “He needed to know the truth about why I wrote that letter. And I had to return his ring.”

  “Did he take it back this time?”

  “I didn’t give him a choice.” She clasped her hands. “I left it there. What he does with it isn’t my concern. Not anymore.”

  “Why?” he asked quietly.

  “I…I don’t understand.”

  He rested his elbows on his knees. “Why worry about closure now, after all this time?”

  She rubbed her hands over her suddenly chilled arms. “For you,” she told him simply. “For us. I want us to get back to how we used to be. And because…”

  When she’d seen Brady leave J.C.’s apartment, Liz hadn’t just been angry, hadn’t just felt betrayed. For one awful moment, she’d hated them both.

  Her throat burned with tears. “Because yesterday I realized I couldn’t move on with my life until I’d settled my past. Neither could Brady.”

  Carter watched her, his expression unreadable. “What if we can’t go back?”

  Fear immobilized her for one heartbeat. Two. Then she shook her head. “I’m not going to lose you,” she told him fiercely.

  Kneeling in front of him, she gripped his hands. Relief made her light-headed when he linked his fingers with hers. “Thanksgiving, when we argued about Brady, you…you asked me if I still loved him and I didn’t answer.” She drew in a breath, then said in a rush, “Ask me now.”

  Dropping his gaze, he rubbed his thumbs over the backs of her hands. “I’m afraid to hear the answer,” he whispered.

  She brought his hands to her mouth, kissed both in turn and waited until he met her eyes. “I don’t love Brady. I made a mistake, a huge one, in not telling you that before. You are the only man I love. And that is never going to change.”

  Carter searched her eyes and this time, instead of feeling guilty, as if she was hiding something from him, she let him see the truth.

  He pressed a soft kiss against her forehead, then on each closed eye before wrapping his arms around her and dragging her onto his lap. She curled into him and rested her head on his shoulder.

  “I love you so much, Liz,” he told her. “I never want to lose you.”

  “You won’t,” she promised, stroking her fingers through his hair. She took his wonderfully handsome face in her hands. “I love you,” she told him again.

  Then she tugged on his hand and pulled him to the floor. And in the flickering glow of the fire, she showed him just how much.

  WELL AFTER 1:00 A.M., when all the guests had gone and most of the cleanup was completed, Brady sat back in a recliner in his mother’s family room, staring at her tree so long, the lights began to dance and blur in front of his eyes. He shook his head and blinked several times until his vision cleared.

  The only reason he was still here was because Matt was freaking out about their mother’s engagement. And because he wasn’t in any hurry to go back to the cottage where he’d spend a restless night dreaming of J.C. Wondering if there was any way he could make things right between them again.

  Yeah, even listening to Matt bitch and moan was better than that.

  “You think Al would mind if I call him Daddy?” Matt asked from his spot on the sofa, his head propped up on his bent arm as he stared at the ceiling.

  Aidan was on the floor, his back resting against an armchair, his dog lying next to him, her head in his lap. He stared at his youngest brother. “You’re an idiot.”

  “Me? Hey, I’m not the one in this family who’s taking the marital plunge with a guy who looks like a horse when he smiles. All those teeth can’t be real. And if a man lies about his teeth, who knows what else he’ll lie about.”

  Aidan pinched the bridge of his nose. “He’s not that bad.”

  “He’s a politician,” Matt pointed out. “There’s nothing but bad about that.”

  “He’s retired,” Aidan said. “Trust me, he’s a decent guy.”

  “How do we know he’s not after Mom’s money?”

  “He could buy the Diamond Dust outright—twice—in cash, and still have money left over.”

  Matt raised his head and looked at Brady. “What about you? Do you think Mom’s making a mistake?”

  As if Brady had any right to judge someone else’s choices. “If she is, it’s her mistake to make.”

  “That’s such a cop-out. You don’t think it’s risky for a woman Mom’s age to jump into marriage with the first guy who asks her?”

  “He might not be the first guy to ask,” Brady said, lifting his bottle of beer to his mouth. Feeling Aidan watch his every move. “For all we know, it’s just the first time she’s said yes.”

  Scowling, Matt got to his feet. “If you two aren’t going to take this seriously, I’m going to bed.”

  “Merry Christmas,” Brady murmured as his brother left the room, adding to Aidan, “I would’ve thought out of the three of us, you’d be the one having the hardest time with Mom getting remarried.”

  While Tom Sheppard had loved his boys equally, he and Aidan had had a special bond. Probably because they were so much alike.

  “I like Al. More importantly, he makes Mom happy.” Aidan leaned his head back on the chair cushion. “Besides, Dad would want Mom to move on.”

  Seemed to be the theme in Jewell. His mother getting remarried. Liz moving on with her new husband. And eventually, J.C. would move on, as well. She’d give birth to their baby, raise their son.

  I’m in love with you.

  Even that would change.

  And that thought turned his blood to ice. He finished his beer and stood. “Want another?”

  “I’m good.”

  Brady tossed his empty into the recycling bin and grabbed a full bottle from the fridge. He flipped the cap into the garbage and then sat back down. “You have something you want to say?”

  “Do you hear me talking?” Aidan asked.

  “No. But I can feel all those waves of disapproval.”

  Aidan stroked Lily’s head, her eyes squinting in pleasure. “I’m wondering what happened to send you back to the bottle.”

  “Maybe I’m just thirsty.”

  “I thought Jane would be at the party,” Aidan mentioned way too casually for the comment to actually be casual. “Did she have other plans?”

  He scowled. “How the hell would I know?”

  “Thought you two were…friends.”

  Cold sweat broke out on his forehead. Friends. Jeez. “We’re not,” he said.

  Aidan bent one leg, resting his arm on his knee. “You blew it, huh?”

  “There was nothing to blow. She wasn’t what I wanted.”

  “Why not?”

  He froze in the act of raising his beer to his mouth. “She’s Liz’s sister.”

  “You don’t want her because she’s Liz’s sister? Or because she’s not Liz?”

  “Both. Neither.” Hell. He carefully set the bottle on the table. “It would never work out.”

  Aidan raised an eyebrow. “Your crystal ball tell you that?”

  “This isn’t how my life was supposed to be,” he said, feeling as if the words were being ripped from his throat. “Liz and me breaking up. My knee…” The
nightmares. The drinking. J.C. and the baby. “None of it’s what I wanted.”

  “And all this time I thought Matt was the idiot in the family,” Aidan muttered as he stood. “You think you’re the only person whose life is one hundred and eighty degrees from where you thought it’d be? If things went according to plan, Dad would still be alive and I’d be working my way up to partner at some high-end law firm in D.C.”

  “You could’ve still had that law career,” Brady said, feeling as if he were backed into a corner and the only way out was to start swinging. “No one forced you to take over the winery after Dad died. The only thing you didn’t choose was Yvonne leaving.”

  At the mention of his ex-wife, Aidan’s expression hardened. “Why don’t you take responsibility for yourself, for your decisions? It’s not as if your life turned out the way it has through no fault or conscious choice of your own.”

  Brady wanted to deny it. He hadn’t wanted Liz to end their engagement and he sure as hell hadn’t asked for his vehicle to run over that bomb. But, damn it, he had stayed with Liz despite her repeatedly pushing their wedding date back. He’d joined the Marines, stayed in the Corps despite the risks involved.

  He chose to spend time with J.C. even though his feelings for her grew more tangled, more confused with every one of her smiles. With every casual touch or soft kiss.

  He’d let himself fall completely for Jane Cleo Montgomery.

  Shaken, he rubbed the heel of his hand over his heart. “You were right the first time. I definitely blew it with J.C.”

  “So fix it.”

  If you ever start thinking you’d like to be a part of our lives after all—don’t bother. My son and I will be fine without you. We don’t need you.

  His pulse pounded in his ears. “I don’t think I can,” he admitted.

  “Want my advice?”

  “No.”

  “Don’t let her go. Do whatever you have to do or say to convince her to give you a second chance.”

  Brady brought his head up at the urgency in his brother’s voice. “Is that the voice of experience talking?”