by Nina Lane
Julia smiled at the bad joke, but Marco’s shadowed expression told her he knew something was wrong.
“I’ll head back now.” She glanced at her watch and started toward her car. “Text me if anything comes up.”
“Don’t you need my help with your makeup and hair?”
“No, I’m good.”
Ignoring his puzzled look, she drove to her darkened studio. Everyone was downtown getting ready for the show. She dressed quickly in the dark green, fitted dress she’d chosen for the event. The dress skimmed her torso before flaring out into a full skirt around her calves, and the sweetheart neckline showed off her emerald necklace and earrings. She left her hair loose, brushing it until it shone in a curtain to her shoulders, and reapplied her makeup.
The whole process took her less than an hour, which accounted for Marco’s surprise when she returned to the stage.
“Well, fabulous, but what is going on with you?” His gaze skimmed her up and down. “You’re a little off.”
“Just a migraine yesterday. I’m fine now.”
“I didn’t know you suffered from migraines.”
No one had, except Warren.
She turned her attention back to the last minute details, though part of her mind remained on her worries about the boys and Hailey. A tight knot had formed in the pit of her stomach. She tried not to imagine all the possible consequences as she headed backstage, where the acts were busy warming up and getting increasingly jittery with nerves and excitement.
Jugglers juggled, magicians reviewed their tricks, singers vocalized, poodles barked, and musicians tuned up their instruments. Julia checked attendance to ensure everyone was ready to go and reminded them of their place in the line-up.
She found the Jingle Belles near the stage doors, looking resplendent in their deep red gowns and gold jewelry, their hair and makeup done to perfection. The sight of them eased Julia’s tension considerably.
“You all look lovely.” She stopped and gave them a genuine smile. “I can’t wait to hear you sing.”
“We are so grateful to you.” Sharon stepped forward to hug her, her own smile wide. “Thank you so much for your time and help.”
“We feel like queens.” Connie did a little twirl, letting her dress flare out. “Beverly has a—”
“I don’t wanna!” A sudden screech broke through the air.
Julia turned, her heart sinking. The Wee Tinsel Dancers clustered in the wings, a tapestry of adorableness in their sparkly red skirts with white ruffles and candy-cane striped bodices. A couple of them were busy practicing their tap dancing routine, but the rest were united in a Wee Tinsel pout.
“We all have to cooperate,” Miss Sarah was saying, her arms extended for emphasis. “And we have to do a run-through to warm up. We’re a team, remember? There’s no I in team.”
“There’s a T, though,” called the blonde angel.
“And an E,” added a curly-haired pixie.
Julia stopped beside them. “What’s the problem, girls?”
“Candy canes!” yelled the cinnamon-haired sprite.
“I don’t want to do it with Mark,” announced a pony-tailed peanut. “I don’t like his Gingerbread Man costume.”
“Candy canes. Candy canes.” The others started a loud chant and marched in a circle.
Sarah sent Julia a weary look. “Maybe we should just bow out. I really don’t think they’re going to do it. I can’t even get them to do a run-through.”
Julia groaned inwardly. If the dancers dropped out, she’d have to reorganize the whole timing of the show.
“Did I hear something about candy canes?” boomed a sudden male voice.
Julia and Sarah turned to see Adam approaching in jeans, a red sweater, and a Santa hat. He held a cloth bag in one hand.
“Candy canes!” shouted the sprite.
Adam stopped beside the girls and gave them his sternest look.
“What I have here in my hand…” he gestured to the bag, “…are not only candy canes, but Sugar Rush Chocolate Crunchies, Sparkle Pops, and Honeybee Toffee. They’re for the Deck the Halls performers after they’ve finished their act. Kind of like rock stars who return to their dressing rooms for hamburgers and M&Ms.”
The girls furrowed their brows and glanced at each other in puzzlement. Adam cleared his throat.
“My point is that they’re for after the performance. Now after your magic act, you can—”
“We’re not magicians!” yelled the pixie.
“Oh, sorry. After your poodle act…”
The girls burst into giggles. “We’re not the poodle act!”
“You’re not?” Adam frowned in puzzlement and scratched his head. “Okay, after you finish juggling…”
The girls shrieked with laughter.
“We’re tap dancers!”
Adam widened his gaze. “You are? I never would have guessed. I don’t believe you.”
“Really!” The cherub got up and did a little shuffle to demonstrate. “See our tap shoes?”
“Those are tap shoes?” Adam squinted at their shiny black shoes. “I think I need to see this whole routine to believe it.”
“We’ll show you!”
The girls scrambled to get into position to perform their act. After giving Adam a relieved and adoring smile, Miss Sarah hurried over to supervise. Within seconds the girls were tapping away.
Julia approached her nephew with wary gratitude. He glanced at her, his expression shuttered but not angry. Awkwardness crackled between them.
“Thank you,” she said.
“No problem.”
“I… I’m sorry,” Julia confessed. “We should have told you from the start.”
He shrugged. “Luke said it was none of our business. I guess he’s right.”
“It is your business. He’s your father. And I was…” A stab of guilt hit her. “I’m just so sorry.”
“Look, don’t worry about it right now, okay? We all know how hard you’ve worked for this show. You need to focus on it now. We’ll talk later.”
“Okay.” She hesitated. “Have you seen your father?”
“He said he had an appointment this afternoon.” Adam glanced at his watch. “But that he’d be here as soon as it was over. Good luck with the show.”
As he turned to go, Julia grabbed his arm to stop him. “He said you’ve been helping him train for the Matterhorn.”
“Yeah.” Adam looked at her, his blue eyes serious. “Whatever else you’re upset with him about, don’t be mad about that. There’s a reason he’s been planning for so long. Dad doesn’t do anything half-assed. He and his buddies have been training to the limit. There’s no way he’d let any of them set foot on the mountain without knowing exactly what they were doing. And he’d never take any unnecessary risks.”
Her nephew’s certainty eased Julia’s discomfort, as did the knowledge that he was right. Warren’s risks were always calculated.
Even the one he’d taken with her.
She let Adam go and got back to work supervising the acts. The crowd outside grew increasingly bigger as it neared six o’clock, the seats filling and the air charging with excited anticipation. As the exterior lights dimmed, Julia forgot about everything but the show.
Adam was right. She had worked so hard for this production. Now it was finally time to celebrate both Indigo Bay’s talent and the holidays. The spotlight glowed onstage. The speakers burst out “Deck the Halls.” Applause rose from the crowd.
Julia took the wireless microphone from a stagehand and started to the stage for a welcoming announcement.
Marco suddenly grabbed her arm, pulling her to a halt.
“Houston,” he said. “We have a problem.”
“The contractions are three minutes apart.” Gail paced back and forth, fidgeting with her phone. “Peter said he’d text me after they check her dilation.”
“You need to go.” Sharon put her hand on her friend’s shoulder. “Laurie needs you there.”
>
“But the show…” Gail glanced at the other Belles, her face tightening with distress, though it was clear her thoughts were with her daughter and approaching granddaughter.
“We can handle it,” Beverly said unconvincingly.
Julia glanced at Marco, who shrugged. The Jingle Belles could certainly still perform, but it wouldn’t be the same.
“I can’t abandon you all right before the final performance.” Gail gripped her phone. “I’m the contralto. The harmony will be top-heavy.”
“So am I, but I’ve always managed fine,” Beverly remarked, eyeing her own abundant bust.
The women all chuckled, easing the tension for an instant before Gail’s phone pinged with a text. Her hand shaking, she swiped the screen. “She’s five centimeters dilated.”
“Gail, Laurie needs you far more than we do,” Sharon told her firmly. “And if you miss seeing your granddaughter in her first moments in the world, you’ll regret it forever.”
“Go.” Connie clasped Gail’s shoulders and looked her in the eye. “Get in your car and go to the hospital now.”
“But what are you all going to do?” Gail asked.
Marco nudged Julia in the side. “Julia is a contralto.”
“That has nothing to do with anything,” Julia said.
“Well, yeah it does. You could take Gail’s place.”
“Oh.” Gail turned wide eyes on Julia. “Would you? That would be fantastic.”
When Sharon, Beverly, and Connie turned to Julia with the same, hopeful expectant expressions, her heart plummeted to her toes.
“I most certainly cannot,” she said. “First, I can’t remember the last time I sang in public. Second, I’ve never practiced with you three. Third, I am not a singer. Fourth—”
“She can sing,” Marco told the Jingle Belles. “Really. I’ve heard it with my own ears.”
“Well, it doesn’t much matter if you haven’t practiced with us, as long as you know your role and hit the notes,” Sharon said. “And they’re all Christmas songs.”
Oh my God. She was going to go onstage and sing. The Jingle Belles were looking at her with such hopeful expectation on their perfectly made-up faces, and they looked so pretty and sweet in the dresses she’d designed—and if she didn’t, they might not perform at all, and wouldn’t that be a shame because their voices were extraordinary.
“I’ll mess up the whole act,” she said. “I’m not a singer.”
“You won’t mess up anything.” Sharon waved a hand dismissively in a gesture Julia recognized a little too well. “But if you do, we’ll be there with you.”
Julia turned, her heart squeezing uncomfortably. She shot Marco a glare.
“You’re fired,” she hissed.
“Hah.” He fell into step beside her as she started back to the stage. “I’m like a stubborn zit. I always come back.”
Chapter
TWENTY
“I strongly suggest you don’t go. But ultimately it’s your call.”
The ENT specialist’s words rang in Warren’s ears as he left the office. Though he was grateful for the last-minute check-in on Christmas Eve, part of him wished he’d never bothered making the appointment. He should have gone with Julia to help her get ready for Deck the Halls. He should have stayed by her side, the way she’d always stayed by his.
He felt weighted, his insides knotted. His call. He was the one who made “the call” after Theo died. The one who’d set the plan into motion. He couldn’t quit now. Not after all the work, the preparation, the training they’d done.
But fear pushed at the back of his mind—a fear that had been planted when he’d first realized that his spells of intense vertigo weren’t going away.
What if one struck him on the mountain? What if he was scaling a rock face or hit a patch of ice on a slope? What if he made the mistake of looking down at the drop-offs? One slight miscalculation could be fatal—not only for him, but potentially for the other men in his party. He’d never forgotten the story of the first ascent of the Matterhorn, during which a rope had broken and four climbers had fallen over four thousand feet to their deaths. Every climber knowingly risked his or her life attempting to reach the summit… but none would risk the life of a fellow climber.
And by not telling his party what was going on, that was exactly what he would be doing.
He parked in the lot of the climbing gym where they’d scheduled an afternoon session, because with the climb so close they didn’t even want to take Christmas Eve off.
“Hey, where you been?” Justin called, waving from the spectator area. “Time’s almost up.”
Warren lifted a hand in greeting and waited for Dave to begin his descent from the wall. He joined them as they packed up their gear, all four of the younger men buzzing with conversation and adrenaline. Warren sat on a bench and tried to muster up the courage to say what he had to say.
“Check it out.” Dave dug into his duffle and pulled out five red T-shirts, each emblazoned with the words TEAM THEO. “Figured it would be a way to take him with us.”
He tossed a shirt to each of them. Warren caught his. Something stuck in his throat.
“I…” He swallowed, bunching the shirt into his fists. “I gotta tell you all something.”
The other men stilled, as if sensing a sudden change in mood.
“What’s going on?” Justin asked.
“I’ve had some health issues the past few months,” Warren explained. “Vertigo. Dizzy spells. The doctors haven’t found a cause yet, but they’re severe enough to make it necessary for me to drop out of the climb.”
The weight of stunned silence bore down on him.
“Man, you can’t quit,” Rick said. “You’re the leader.”
“No. And believe me, I don’t want to quit. I’d do anything to get to the summit… except put any of you at risk.”
“We can take care of ourselves.”
“Yeah, I know. But we also know this climb is more dangerous than high-season climbs. The descent will be brutal. Too many unknown factors. I can’t be one of them.”
“When the hell did you become an unknown factor?” Dave paced a few steps away in frustration. “You’ve been a fucking rock all this time, man.”
Warren shook his head. Rocks didn’t feel like the earth was rotating too fast.
“I don’t know what happened.” He tightened his jaw against a sudden stab of fear. “I’ve never had health problems. My son Evan… That kid’s dealt with a heart condition his whole life. Three surgeries before he was ten. And Hailey… Jesus Christ. I’m not going to bitch about a little dizziness after what two of my children have gone through.”
“Yeah, so you quitting is total bullshit,” Justin argued.
Warren leaned his elbows on his knees. “You know why I wouldn’t let Adam go with us? Because I knew I’d be too focused on him. Even though he’s more experienced than I am, I wouldn’t be able to help looking out for him, being concerned. I wouldn’t have been able to focus well enough on what I was doing. Which would have put my own safety at risk.”
“So Adam’s not going with us,” Peter said.
“Yeah, but…” He cleared his throat. “I can’t let that happen to any of you. I won’t.”
The other men exchanged glances, their expressions somber and dark.
“Well, that wouldn’t happen.” Dave spread his hands out, a belligerent note entering his voice. “We know you can handle yourself. We’re not going to be concerned about you.”
“Yeah,” Justin agreed. “We won’t give a shit about you on the mountain. Every man for himself, right?”
Affection rose in Warren. He got to his feet and held up the shirt. “I’ll wear this when you guys are climbing. I’ll always be on Team Theo. And you’d better reach the fucking summit or I’ll kick your asses one by one when you come back down.”
He turned and walked away, trying to ignore their voices rising behind him. Like retirement, now that he’d made the decisio
n, he wasn’t going to revisit it again. Wasn’t going to let anyone talk him out of it.
But damned if it didn’t hurt like hell.
He went home to change into a navy suit, knotting a candy-cane patterned tie before leaving for the Holiday Festival. The bright lights and festivities of downtown did nothing to lighten his mood. He maneuvered through the crowd, his thoughts focused only on Julia. He didn’t want to interrupt her preparations for Deck the Halls; he just needed to see her.
All the seats around the stage were taken, and more people stood on the perimeter. A salty wind blew in from the ocean. Multicolored lights sparkled and glowed. Throngs of people held paper cups of cocoa and coffee, their faces bright.
The show had already started, everyone’s attention focused on a dozen little girls and a Gingerbread Man energetically tap-dancing to “Sleigh Ride.” Warren made his way to the side of the stage, scanning the crowd for Julia. He’d have to wait until the show was over.
To tell her the truth. The reason why he’d kept the Matterhorn climb from everyone. Despite all his training, he had never been entirely sure his body wouldn’t fail him. Not because he wasn’t strong but because he’d lived long enough to know that no one was immune from anything. Evan and Hailey had been his starkest evidence of that fact.
Sometimes you didn’t meet the challenges you set for yourself. That was life too.
“Ladies and gentlemen, our next act is Jingle Belles, a marvelous acapella group.” Julia’s assistant Marco stood on the stage with the microphone, a clipboard in one hand. “We need to announce a slight change in their program. One of their members had to leave and meet her new granddaughter, so the group has a substitute alto for Gail. Please welcome the Jingle Belles. Sharon, Connie, Beverly, and Julia.”
Warren’s heart jolted. Numerous surprised glances and murmurs accompanied the crowd’s applause. Three women decked out in red dresses and one woman in green walked out on to the stage.