by Dani Collins
“Sit. Tell. Brock freaked out the first time he saw spit-up on his shirt. I cannot believe he caught your baby.”
Pandora laughed, revealed that he had almost fainted, but had to defend him since he’d been so wonderful throughout. They bonded over organic eggnog and sat on the sofa side-by-side when their babies insisted in unison that it was time for a feed.
The men cracked a bottle of scotch for a toast and Brock’s mom said it was time for ‘the rest of’ Christmas. “It wasn’t the same without you, Brock. But two Christmases are better than one, so thank you for this Pandora.”
“Oh, none of this is my doing.” Brock had broken up with his ex. Didn’t they remember that? “It’s just really nice of you to invite me to tag along today.”
She was trying to downplay things between her and Brock, but his mother gave her a funny look then looked to Brock.
“Well, we were excited that you could join us. I think Santa even had time to drop by with a few packages for you and little Nick.”
“What?” But she hadn’t got anything for them aside from the hostess gift! She looked at Brock, mortified, even as his father placed a package in her lap.
It was a diaper bag, one that Amber assured her was, “The only one worth having. Seriously, you’re going to love it.”
Subdued chaos ensued, which was fun in a heartbreaking way. They were all so great. If she could have anything, it would be this, every year, for the rest of her life.
“I think that’s it,” Brock’s father said, sitting back in his armchair and lifting his empty glass. “Pour us another one, would you, Terry?”
“I have one more,” Brock said, scooping the now sleeping Nick from Pandora’s arms and sliding him into his mother’s. Then he pushed back the coffee table and went down on one knee in front of Pandora.
“Oh, my God.” She picked up the baby quilt with turtles and surfboards on it that his mother had given Nick and used it to hide her face.
“Come on,” he chuckled, trying to make her lower it.
“It’s too perfect, Brock. All of this is way too good for me. You know that.” She blinked her wet eyes over the edge of blue into the vast, turbulent ocean of his gaze. “Whatever you think I am, I’m not. I’m just a runaway from—”
“Hey,” Brock said, firmer this time. “You’re the mother of my parents’ newest grandchild. You’re the new sister-in-law who brings a kickass cousin for my brother’s kid to grow up with. That’s who I think you are. I think you’re the woman I love, which is what I told this bunch when I said I was bringing you here today. I came to Tahoe for you, Pandora. You know I did. If you want a long engagement, that’s fine. But we’re meant for each other. You know we are.”
Was that why she had run away and zigzagged across the country with all the wrong men? So she would be in the right place at the right time when Brock walked into the Tavern?
Very, very slowly she let the quilt sink into her lap. Brock picked up her left hand. She was shaking and so was he.
“Will you marry me, Pandora? Be my wife and let me be the father of your children?”
Her trembling mouth didn’t know if it wanted to smile or what. She nodded jerkily, managing to say, “I would like that very much. I love you.”
He threaded the ring onto her finger and leaned forward to kiss her. His family was making happy noises and she was so full of joy herself, she could hardly breathe.
He drew back and the happiness in his eyes might have matched her own, but all she could see was him and a blur of Christmas lights behind him.
“You guys are okay to watch Nick for a few hours, right?” Brock said.
“Oh, nice try,” Amber said, giving his shoulder a shove.
He chuckled and shifted to sit next to Pandora, snuggling her in to his side and kissing her temple. The rest of the day was a fog of elation, one where her cheeks hurt from smiling so much. She kept looking at the diamond on her finger, finally confiding to Brock when they kissed at midnight, “I haven’t woken up yet, so I guess this is real.”
“It’s real. I love you.”
“I love you, too. Merry Christmas.”
“Happy New Year.”
“Very happy.” And they were.
*
Glory wasn’t. She hit ‘send’ on her latest revisions and felt like the biggest fraud alive. Pandora had entrusted her child to a man who wasn’t the father. Where was her courage to entrust herself?
She hated Seattle. October rains had arrived and it was nonstop gloom. Her father said they’d had their first snowfall last week, but it hadn’t stuck.
The soft opening for the lodge was this weekend. He wanted her to come.
She wanted to go, but she was afraid. Afraid she would see Rolf and… And what? Fall even more in love with him? She had demanded both he and her father support her by leaving her alone. They had and she was utterly miserable, wandering a studio apartment that she’d taken because it was cheap and furnished and who cared that there wasn’t an actual bedroom when she lived alone and only moved from her desk to the sofa to the refrigerator to her bed?
She was writing, yay, but doing little else. When she did come up for air, she saw nothing but emptiness. Not the terrifying emptiness of before. The quiet loneliness of being homesick.
She missed her friends. She missed her dad and she missed Murphy and she missed Rolf.
*
“You could thank me, you know,” Vivien said from the other side of his desk, list of questions still in hand. “Instead of acting as though this is time you could better spend elsewhere.”
Rolf sighed and said an impatient, “Thank you.” Then he pinched the bridge of his nose and said more sincerely, “Danke schön. I know you’re organizing more than the soft opening. I appreciate your stepping in to help hire Macy and get her up to speed as well.”
“My goodness. Is it Christmas?”
He gave her a look. “Sarcasm is my purview.”
“And you’re over-exercising your right to it lately, in my opinion.”
She sat back and crossed her legs. She was wearing boots with a stiletto heel made of snakeskin and satin with a cuff of marten fur—her idea of dressing rugged for her big adventure of driving her new four-wheel SUV from the lodge to the base. You could bring the redneck back to Montana, but you couldn’t make her dress like one.
“Is everything going all right here?”
“It’s not terrible.” Things had slowed down as the weather curtailed outdoor work and turned them toward procurement and logistics.
“Just like your father,” she murmured. “It’s like pulling teeth.”
“I’m not trying to be evasive. There’s nothing to say.”
“Except that you’re missing Glory and that’s why you’re being such a bear.”
He turned his head away, rolling his eyes at how pat that sounded. How right she was.
“Am I just like him? Because he was a jerk most of the time and you seemed to like him. What did you even see in him? I mean, I know he supported you once Trigg came along, but you weren’t angling for that from the beginning. Were you?”
“No.” She sighed. “And I did love him. He was… He was like you, Rolf. Trigg has it too. Star power. It’s very compelling. And then he could be very human at times. Your mother had another miscarriage and—”
“‘Another?’ I never knew she had one. Why am I kept in the dark all the time?”
“Perhaps it’s the snarling expression. I could be wrong.” She looked to her manicure, but spoke with affection. “I don’t think they were keeping you in the dark on purpose. You were a child and it was hard enough to get their own hopes up. Your mother was ready to give up and your father was quite upset and confided in me about their struggles. I was already in love with him. I consoled him a little too warmly, I suppose, and wound up pregnant. I couldn’t refuse to have his child when I knew what it meant to him, but I couldn’t have Trigg under your mother’s nose, could I? So I quit and moved back
to America. He came to see us when he could and was quite devastated by her loss. At the same time, we were still very close and we had a child. What else could we do? We had to marry.”
“I don’t blame you,” he said with a certain amount of resentment.
“No,” she agreed with a smirk that suggested she knew otherwise. “Not me.”
“I’m mad that he died before we stopped knocking heads, not because of you.”
“I don’t think that was ever going to happen. You were too much alike. So are you and Trigg, not that you want to hear it. Thick skulls and sharp horns.” Her brows went up with disdain.
“Well, this has been fun.” He picked up his phone and checked the time.
“Marvin has asked her to come back for this.” She ruffled the papers she held.
“Is she going to?”
“I don’t know. But if she does, maybe knock her up. See if that keeps her here.” She winked and walked out.
Chapter Twenty-Three
The days were already getting shorter, especially in the mountains. Glory had lost an hour while traveling and it was starting to snow for real by the time she was making the last leg of the trip.
She wasn’t even sure what she was doing here, but somehow she’d found herself on the road first thing this morning, wearing way too much makeup, hair done, and a cocktail dress hanging from the hook in the back seat.
He wasn’t even going to want to see her.
She wanted to see him, though. She wanted to see all of this, she realized, as the lodge came into view and she felt a glow of homecoming warm her all the way through.
It looked so cute, with white Christmas lights strung along the roofline and balconies. Floodlights angled upward beneath the boughs of the blue spruces at the entrance, catching the fall of snowflakes.
Her father’s dream, coming to life. It was so ridiculously quaint. He really was a romantic. That was probably what had made her mother fall for him.
Glory entered the finished lobby where the stairs gleamed and the chandelier sparkled. The doors to the dining room were closed, the ugly folding doors replaced with ones that had pretty, etched glass.
The desk had been refinished and a stranger stood behind it, a pretty young woman with clear English skin and a short bob of black hair, ruby lips, and a midnight blue dress.
“Oh, Marvin’s daughter,” she said warmly when Glory offered her name. “I’m Macy. Took your job, I think. Your father wasn’t sure if you’d make it tonight. He’ll be so happy to see you. Don’t worry about changing. You look great. Go right in.”
Glory followed the noise into the lounge where—well, look at that: Eden did know how to play guitar. She could sing, too. She was on stage and the rest of Haven seemed to have turned out for the event.
People greeted Glory with smiles and waves while she made her way to the bar where her father was pouring with a steady hand, all bright-eyed and bushy eyebrows.
“Oh, my girl.” He took her off her feet when he came around to hug her.
“I missed you.” She squeezed him back, not wanting to let go. If she did, well, she would have to look for the other man she had missed and she wasn’t ready. What if—
Her heart stopped. There he was. Her knees almost collapsed as her father set her on her feet.
Rolf stood with Nate and some other people, beer in hand. He wore what she thought of as his semi-formal clothes, a button shirt open at the throat, suit pants, no tie. His air of omnipotence was firmly in place.
She had no air at all as they stared at one another. Stared and stared and stared. She couldn’t make her feet move. Didn’t know if she dared anyway.
“Glory.” It was Suzanne, touching her elbow, looking thin and pale, but smiling, head covered in a silk kerchief.
Glory hugged her gently and asked after her and the girls, the shop. Trigg found her a minute later, “Hey there, stranger.” He kissed her cheek and pressed a drink into her hand. Then Devon wanted to catch up. People and more people. Friends. She hadn’t realized how many friends she had here.
And all the while she was aware of Rolf over there, not approaching. Staring at her? Or not? She couldn’t look to find out. Not without lightning striking her heart again.
Eden finished her set and came to hug her. Even Nate came by to say hello, which made her glance over to where Rolf had been standing. He was gone. Her heart went into free fall. She scanned the room. Nope. Totally gone.
Without speaking to her.
And now she was going to cry.
“Glory, dear, did you see what your dad put in your office?”
“What? No.” Didn’t care, either. Because Rolf didn’t. Not for her. She was too big a dumbass.
She was going to cry so she let Vivien drag her past Macy’s curious look toward the office that belonged to that cute girl who was probably fucking Rolf’s brains out now that Glory had stupidly walked—
Oh. There he was, putting the phone into its cradle on the desk, looking up with confusion as they walked in.
“Marvin said I had a call, but—” He cut himself off as he saw her.
Vivien gave Glory a not-so-gentle shove so she could pull the door closed. She shut off the light as she did.
“Well, that was subtle,” Glory muttered, stumbling to a halt. She cleared her throat so her voice wouldn’t sound so pathetic.
“Do you want to turn the light on?”
“No.” She buried her head in her hands, heels of her palms pushing into her eye sockets to hold back the pressure there.
“How are you?” He didn’t sound like he had moved from behind the desk.
“Fine,” she lied. “You?”
“Fine.”
“Are you lying?”
“Yes.”
Hot tears leaked out enough she could feel the sting of her mascara smearing. “I put on all this makeup so I would look pretty for you, and now I’m going to look like a raccoon.”
“To make me jealous?”
“To make you not hate me.” She lifted her head and blinked. The light from beyond the windows was enough to turn the room into a black and white movie, his expression shadowed and unreadable, her emotions too raw for technicolor. “Maybe want me again.”
“I didn’t stop. I’m not the one who left.”
“But you let me go.”
“What else was I going to do?” His voice was so hard it was made of compressed ice. Glaciers. Diamonds. “How is it going?” That was a little gentler. Like he was genuinely curious.
“Okay. Really good, actually. I think I’m going to sign a three-book contract with a publisher.”
Silence, then: “I see. How long will that take? To write them, I mean.”
His hand was on the edge of the desk, thumb working against it, but otherwise he was very still. Something in his voice had her taking a step toward him, though. It almost sounded like he would wait for her, but she couldn’t ask that of him.
“Rolf—”
This was it, the moment where she would have to push off and navigate the turns no matter how gut-wrenchingly hard and terrifying it was. She might cross the finish line with a gold medal or crash and burn along the way and have to be carried off the course.
He might laugh at her if she did.
“I always thought Mom resented having to get married and raise a child when she had all these other things she wanted to do. I thought I was being smart, going after that before making promises to people I wouldn’t be able to keep.”
“You are. I’m not asking you for any promises.”
“I know you’re not.” Damn. One of those flag thingies had just slapped her in the face. It stung like hell. “But it wasn’t being married that held Mom back. It was choosing to stay in a loveless marriage. She tried to fill that emotional void with her career. I see that now, because that’s what I’m trying to do.”
She heard his breath draw in, kind of a protest, almost like he was girding himself.
“I’m trying to ma
ke sure I have something big enough to sustain me so I don’t have to risk falling in love. Because that’s scary and hard and if we fail I don’t know if I will survive that. But writing isn’t enough. I need you. I want you.”
She couldn’t read his expression. Was he staring at her like he couldn’t believe her gall? Like it was too little too late?
“Does that mean you want to come back here?”
“To be with you, yes. To see. To try. Properly this time.”
“Do you understand that I’m not letting you go again? Be sure, Glory. Because I’m not trying again. We’re fucking doing this.” His finger pointed to the desktop, which was very cryptic since she didn’t know what ‘this’ was. “Turns out it doesn’t matter how you part from someone you care about. If they don’t come back, and don’t talk to you, it fucking sucks regardless. You’re in my bed from now on.”
“My room is better.”
“I’m in your room. It is better.”
She bit her lips and looked at the floor. “You said ‘fuck’ twice, but you haven’t said anything about whether you think you could fall in love with me. That’s kind of—”
“Would you get over here?”
She swallowed and edged closer.
He took hold of her arm and dragged her close. Her hands automatically came between them, more to hold off the way he overwhelmed her just by being him.
“You asked me if I got the call today, saying I’m good to race again, would I go? No. I wouldn’t. Ten years ago, maybe. I don’t know, because I didn’t know you.” His thumb moved on her skin, restless. “I’m kind of glad I didn’t know you yet because that would have been a really hard decision. Today I can say easily that racing is not as important to me as you are. If I had to—and don’t ask me to do this because I would be really fucking pissed—but if I had to, I would walk away from all of this. I’ve been trying to figure out how to make this place happen from Seattle, but haven’t come up with a solid enough plan to present it to you. And the board. Please tell me you can write from here.”
“Will you run interference between me and Dad if he goes mafia and tries to draw me back in?” She let her fingertip weasel between his buttons, seeking the fine hairs on his sternum.