Candlelight Christmas lc-10

by Susan Wiggs

  “You hate ghost stories.”

  “Right. That’s why I need you to pull cabin duty tonight.”

  “No can do,” said Logan.

  “Dad, it’s my last night with you.” Charlie played his trump card early.

  Logan felt torn—a familiar sensation. When you were a single dad, you felt pulled in a lot of different directions. “You and André can hang out. You don’t have to listen to the ghost stories.”

  “Dad—”

  “Hey, Logan,” said Darcy, “I’d better get going. We’re heading back to the city in the morning.”

  No, don’t let her go. “Then how about we—”

  “It was nice to meet you,” she said. “You, too, Charlie. See you around.”

  Logan watched her go, then swung back to face Charlie. “Dude, couldn’t you see I was busy?”

  “Hitting on some lady? Yeah, I could see that.”

  “And still you interrupted.”

  “I’m worried about the ghost stories.”

  “I’m worried about your manners.”

  Charlie gazed at the ground. “Sorry, Dad. I just really want you in the cabin tonight.”

  Logan was a sucker for his kid. He hoped like hell he wasn’t a pushover. Hoped he wasn’t spoiling Charlie. The truth was, Charlie had a true horror of ghost stories ever since his cousin Bernie had told him the tale of the bloody toe last summer. The kid had suffered from nightmares for weeks afterward, and to this day still slept with his socks on.

  Turning, Logan watched Darcy Fitzgerald as she walked along a lighted path toward the parking lot. For the first time in ages, he’d actually felt something strong and true, just talking with her. But one of the first things she’d told him was that she wasn’t into kids. It was just as well they hadn’t started anything, he told himself.

  Chapter Two

  “You are in such trouble,” Darcy said to India as they drove away from Camp Kioga to their hotel in the nearby town of Avalon.

  “What?” India offered an elaborate look of innocence.

  “You know perfectly well what. Your brother, that’s what. You couldn’t be more obvious if you tried.”

  “Darce. I am trying.”

  “And you’re totally obvious. This was supposed to be a relaxing, forget-all-your-troubles girlfriends’ weekend. You turned it into a setup.”

  “I introduced you to my kid brother, that’s all.”

  “He’s no kid.” She couldn’t get the image of Logan O’Donnell out of her head. Tall, athletic build. Blaze of red hair—not the dorky kind of red hair, but deep glossy waves of auburn, which she found ridiculously sexy. And his smile. He had an easy smile that made her forget, if only briefly, that she’d ever been hurt by a man. “He has a kid,” she added.

  “That would be my adorable nephew, Charlie,” India said. “Thank you for reminding me.”

  “Listen, because I don’t think you heard me the first time,” said Darcy. “The only thing I want less than a guy is a guy with a kid.”

  “All men are not all like Huntley Collins,” India pointed out.

  “I realize that. One day, I will embrace that truth. But I’m not ready to meet anyone.”

  “You’ve been divorced a year.”

  Divorced. Destroyed was a more apt word for it.

  She had married a man who had seemed perfect for her in every way. Huntley was a single dad, sharing custody of Amy and Orion with his ex. Darcy had fallen for the three of them, opening her heart to a ready-made family.

  Yet the children, dear as they had been to her, had also taken a hand in the demise of her marriage. As they grew older, they distanced themselves from Darcy, and eventually convinced themselves—or let their mother convince them—that their parents wanted to get back together.

  Darcy still recalled the day her marriage had unraveled, though the memory no longer made her cringe. Huntley’s daughter, Amy, had come to her with a bright smile on her face, false as sunshine in November. Darcy had learned to recognize that hollow smile. It was hard at the edges, the grin of a not-very-skilled actress who knew her range was limited, and didn’t care.

  “He’s cheating on you,” Amy had said. “With our mom.”

  Darcy’s heart had stumbled. Then, clinging to well-honed denial, she had dismissed the notion out of hand. “Your mom and dad are just friends.”

  “Nope, they’re back together. Check his email,” Amy said, a clean blade of triumph sharpening her tone. “In the drafts folder. That’s how they communicate. They never hit Send, just log in to the same account and read the drafts. They’re so stupid about it, though. They don’t delete correctly, so the notes still are all there.”

  “Nonsense,” Darcy said. Yet the moment Amy had said those words—He’s cheating on you—her body was telling her to pay attention for once, to listen. Her heart knew the truth before her mind caught on to the situation. The blood in her veins congealed into ice. In that moment, she had felt weirdly detached from her own life, as though entering a different reality. “You shouldn’t be looking at your dad’s email,” she scolded. Classic nagging stepmom, as ineffective as a barkless Chihuahua.

  “Neither should you,” Amy shot back. Then the girl had burst into tears and collapsed, sobbing, into Darcy’s lap.

  And that, Darcy had realized, had been the first undeniable sign of her failing marriage—not the drafts folder, which of course completely confirmed Amy’s accusation, but the fact that, months earlier, Darcy herself had begun monitoring Huntley’s messages.

  He was both careless and unsophisticated about computers. She hadn’t been looking for anything specific. Just...looking. For answers. For the reason she couldn’t feel the love from him anymore. For the reason he had emotionally left the building, like a traveler checking out of a motel he never planned to return to.

  It was said that there are no winners in a divorce, but Darcy discovered that wasn’t true in her case. She had lost a husband, a family, a way of life. She had lost half her assets, her home and her belief in her own judgment when it came to men. Huntley had lost, too; the fling with his ex had flamed out, and these days, as far as she knew, he was alone. But there were winners—the crafty Amy and her brother, Orion. They had not wanted a stepmother, and now she was gone, vanished from their lives.

  And here was a surprise. She missed them. She had managed to stop loving Huntley. That was easy enough, crushing her feelings for someone who had crushed her heart with the most intimate of betrayals. She couldn’t simply turn off her feelings for the kids, though. When she’d married Huntley, they were eight and ten, filling her with joy. Five years later, they were teenagers, challenging her at every turn. Yet even at their most manipulative and obnoxious, they were children to whom she had given herself entirely. Even now she couldn’t stop remembering how it felt to be a family, swept up in the busy days of their lives together. Knowing she couldn’t see them, could never hold or touch them again was a special kind of hell.

  In the Fitzgerald family, Darcy herself had been the daughter most likely to procreate. After all, she had married a man with children, and she’d made no secret of wanting more. She’d loved being a stepmom to Amy and Orion—until everything had changed. The special, knife-sharp hurt of their campaign against her had caused a fundamental shift deep inside Darcy. She’d gone from being a woman who thought she could have it all to a woman who wanted none of it.

  “I’m not ready to meet anyone,” she said to India. “It seems like only yesterday, I considered myself a happily married woman.”

  “Now you’ll be happily single.”

  “And determined to stay that way. Not only do I want to stay away from guys, but I want to stay away from guys with kids. So quit trying to throw me together with your yummy brother.”

  “You think he’s yummy?”

  “Don’t you dare tell him I said that.”

  “I was just going to send him a text. Jeez, what do you take me for? The idea of ‘brother’ and ‘yummy’ do not
compute in my mind. Ew.”

  “Spoken like a true sister.”

  “I’m trying to help here, Darcy. Look at it this way—you got your starter marriage over early.”

  “It was supposed to be forever.”

  “The next one will be. Just you wait.”

  “Exactly. I’m waiting. Forever is worth waiting for. So don’t be trying to fix me up with your brother.”

  They rounded a bend in the road, and the main square of Avalon came into view. Gilded by sunset, the little lakeside village had the kind of charm seen in tourist brochures, touting the wonders of the Catskills—glorious rolling hills clad in end-of-summer excess, colorful painted cottages along the lake, catboats flying their white sails on the water, out for an evening sail. The sight was so pretty, it took her breath away for a moment—the deep purple of twilight reflected in the still water, the stars sprinkled above the distant hills, the fairy lights of the town.

  The bucolic allure of scenery and serenity tugged at her heart. She’d been living in Manhattan for too long. It was good to get out into nature for a while, to see the sky above and the scenery all around her.

  “Okay,” Darcy said, “you’re forgiven. It’s beautiful here. A nice change from the sock warehouse out my window in the city.”

  “Agreed. We should come up to see Logan more often.”

  “He said he moved here to be near Charlie.”

  “That’s right. Charlie was born the summer after they got out of high school.”

  “So young,” Darcy mused.

  “Never underestimate the power of a teenager to do dumb things. I worry constantly about my boys. Logan definitely had a wild streak in high school. Daisy—that’s Charlie’s mom—came here to be with her family. She thought she’d be raising the baby alone, but Logan surprised everyone, including our parents. He got his act together, moved up here to be near Charlie, and turned himself into an awesome dad. Put himself through college and started a solid business. I adore him for turning his life around, but the path he took still makes our parents mental.”

  “You can’t be serious. Aren’t they proud of him?”

  “Yes, but they had other plans for him. He was supposed to go to an Ivy League school like all good O’Donnells, and then he was supposed to take over the reins of the family business. Instead, he wound up here, running an insurance office and being Charlie’s dad. I guess our folks have made their peace with it, but they still think he took a wrong turn.”

  “Parents,” Darcy mused, gazing out the window at the play of light on the water. “What is it with parents, projecting all their expectations on their kids? I’ve been in violation of my folks’ expectations since the moment I was born a girl instead of a boy.”

  “Yes, how dare you?” said India.

  “Such a burden, having five daughters,” said Darcy. “And now only one of us is decently married. Lydia and the oh-so-perfect Badgley Collins.”

  “Huntley’s older brother. How is everyone handling that?” asked India.

  “We’re all so terribly civilized about it. My folks and the Collinses go way back to their college days. We are meant to get along no matter what.”

  Darcy had not been able to bring herself to tell her family about the cheating. They had no idea how hard it was for her to simply grit her teeth and pretend she had smoothly moved on with her life, to pretend that the Collinses’ son Huntley had not shredded her heart into irreparable bits. “I’m already dreading the holidays,” she confessed. “Our families have been swapping host duties for decades. My mom and Rachel Collins are already planning the usual joint celebration at Thanksgiving.”

  “You could spend the holidays with us,” India said.

  Darcy imagined her family’s horror at the prospect of her defection. Their holiday traditions were chiseled in stone. The season always started off with a Thanksgiving feast that would make Martha Stewart green as collectible glass with envy. After that, the holidays kicked into high gear—the plans, the shopping, the food, the music. The previous year, she had made the mistake of trying to join in, and the stress had nearly wrecked her. The prospect of enduring even a salmon mousse canapé in the presence of her ex-husband made her nauseated.

  “What do you say?” asked India. “I swear, my family would love to have you.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Sure. We usually all go to my folks’ place in Florida, at Paradise Cove. The house is huge, and located right on a private beach, a surfer’s mecca. You can sit on the sugar-fine sand, sipping a fruity drink, and let your ex deal with the mess he made.”

  “Surfing? Do you know how tempting that sounds?”

  “That’s the idea—to tempt you.”

  “I might take you up on it. Wait a second. Is your brother going to be there?”

  “Yep.”

  Darcy couldn’t stop herself from flashing on an image of Logan O’Donnell in board shorts and flip flops, on a sugar-sand Florida beach.

  “I’ll think about it,” she said. She probably wouldn’t be able to stop thinking about it.

  India peered at the shady street ahead and switched on the headlamps. “Hey, do me a favor and see if the hotel brochure has directions. We’re staying at the Inn at Willow Lake.”

  Darcy found a colorful flyer and angled it toward the light. “There’s an annex in the middle of town, and the main location is on the lake.”

  “We’re staying at the one on the lake.”

  “It’s easy to find, then. Just stay on the Lakeshore Road and we’ll come right to it. Looks gorgeous in the brochure.”

  “I’m sure it is. Just as an aside—the owners, Nina and Greg Bellamy, are Logan’s former in-laws.”

  “Wait, what? His ex is their daughter?”

  “Hazard of life in a small town—eventually, everyone is connected.”

  “So, was he married to Charlie’s mother for long?”

  “No. They tried to make it work for Charlie’s sake, but they realized it wasn’t right and never would be. It was hard, watching him struggle to hold them together. There was...drama. Maybe someday Logan will tell you all about it.”

  “Assuming I want him to tell me. Assuming he wants to.”

  “Ah, Darce. I know you’re still raw, but I promise, things will get better. After his breakup, Logan was kind of a mess for a while, but he came out of the fog.”

  “Meaning he climbed right back on the horse, so to speak.”

  “I think it’s a guy thing. They tend to start dating right away. He hasn’t had a serious relationship yet, though. Just a string of...distractions, I guess you’d call them. Daisy, his ex, is remarried now, living in Oklahoma with her new husband. That’s why Logan’s time with Charlie is so precious—he has to split custody with Charlie’s mom.”

  Darcy pictured the little boy, an adorable mixture of sweetness and mischief, his wavy red hair matching his father’s. “Just so you know, Charlie is one of the many reasons I’m not interested in hooking up with your brother. I’m sure he’s a nice little kid, but I’ve been with a man who has children, and I’m not going there again. I intend to remain happily childless for all of my days.”

  Chapter Three

  Saying goodbye to Charlie had become steeped in ritual. First Logan took him to the house and they arranged his room so that when he returned, he’d find everything in place. Then they packed his duffel bag and drove to the center of town for a snack and to say goodbye to friends and neighbors.

  Signs of autumn and back-to-school were already popping up. Suzanne Bailey of Zuzu’s Petals boutique was on the sidewalk in front of her shop, arguing with Adam Bellamy, a newcomer to town who happened to be from an old Avalon family. He’d recently moved to Avalon and worked as a fireman. He and Logan were buddies, both of them fans of outdoor sports—mountain biking, snowboarding, white-water kayaking, rock and ice climbing. Suzanne’s husband, Jeff, was also a firefighter, probably on duty at the moment. She and Adam were like oil and water; at the moment they ap
peared to be bickering about the placement of her sidewalk sale racks.

  “Sorry to interrupt the fun,” said Logan, “but I brought Charlie to say goodbye.”

  Adam turned, his scowl at Suzanne turning to a grin for Charlie. “Hate to see you go, my brother. I’ll keep an eye on your old man while you’re away.”

  “Cool,” said Charlie. “Don’t let him give you any trouble.”

  “He’s always trouble, but I think I can handle him.” Adam looked like the kind of guy who could handle anything. Built like a linebacker, he was a three-time winner of a seventy-story stair-running marathon in the city.

  Suzanne gave Charlie a quick hug. “I remember when you got all your back-to-school clothes from me. I miss that.”

  Something must have shown on Charlie’s face, because she added hastily, “Here’s a little something for you.” She handed him a small solar-powered reading light, something she sold in her shop. “For your travels.”

  “Wow, thanks,” said Charlie.

  “Will you be back for Thanksgiving?” she asked.

  “We always go to Florida.”

  “That’s rough,” Adam said, patting him on the shoulder.

  “Christmas, then?” Suzanne asked. “Or will you be basking in the Florida sun then, too?”

  “Unless we get a better offer,” Logan said.

  Charlie tugged at his sleeve. “Bakery next, Dad?”

  “Bakery next.”

  “Cool, I’ll get a table.” Charlie headed down the block toward the Sky River Bakery for his last visit to the beloved place for the holy grail of pastries, the iced maple bar.

  “He’s really grown this summer,” said Suzanne. “He acts more grown-up, too.”

  Logan nodded. “I guess having to shuttle back and forth between parents is making him grow up fast.”

  “Charlie’s an awesome kid,” said Adam. “If I ever have kids, I’m coming to you for advice.”

  “Thanks. I’m trying to get used to the part-time parenting thing, but it sucks. Love that little guy, and I miss him so damn much when he’s not around.”