His Holiday Crush

by Cari Z

  Marnie interrupted my musings. “Did you bring presents?” she asked excitedly. “Can we put them under the tree?”

  “He already mailed them,” Hal reminded her from where he was hanging up his coat. “You asked him that on the phone last week, remember?”

  Her shoulders deflated. “Oh, yeah.”

  “Maybe they’ll get here tomorrow,” I suggested. “As soon as they’re delivered, you can put them under the tree with the others.”

  Marnie’s good humor was instantly restored. “Okay! Maybe Mom’s will come then, too!”

  I watched Hal take a deep breath and saw Steph look down at the floor. “Maybe they will,” Hal managed after a moment. “For now, it’s past your bedtime.”

  “Not mine,” Marnie protested. “Just Steph’s.”

  “Both of yours.” Hal reached his arms out to Steph, and she let go of my hand and folded easily into his embrace, still quiet. “It’s after eight.”

  “There’s no school tomorrow!”

  “Marnie Josephine Bell,” Hal said with all the authority of a tired, cranky parent. Marnie sighed heavily but began to stomp up the stairs. Hal followed, carrying Steph, and I grabbed my bag and came up last of all. The guest room was on the second floor, if I remembered right.

  Hal motioned to the right side of the hall. “Last door,” he said, nodding his head that direction. “Sheets are fresh, and there’s a clean towel and washcloth on the dresser.”

  “Thanks. I really appreciate it.”

  He made a face at me. “I invited you here. You think I’m not going to try and make you comfortable? You’re as much my brother as Nicky. You belong here with us.”

  I couldn’t have spoken then if I’d been on the witness stand—trust Hal to take the awkwardness out of being here in just five words. Luckily, Marnie made sure I didn’t have to talk.

  “Daddy!” She whirled on him with the air of a girl who’d just been struck by lightning. “Is Uncle Nicky still coming over tomorrow? I was going to call him and check, but I forgot!”

  “He’ll be here,” Hal promised her.

  “Are you sure?” she persisted. “Maybe we should call him now.”

  “Maybe you should go brush your teeth, how about that?”

  “Maybe we should call him first, and then I could brush my teeth.”

  Hal pointed a finger firmly at the bathroom door. “Maybe you should brush your teeth right now, before I take your phone privileges away for the rest of the week.”

  “God, Dad.” She turned and stomped into the bathroom.

  “Eight going on eighteen, I swear,” Hal muttered to me, absently rocking Steph from side to side. Her eyes were closed, her arms tight around her father’s neck. “The girls share this bathroom. Your room is the old master. It’s got an en suite, no worries there. I’m still downstairs.” Hal had helped rebuild the master bedroom downstairs when his mother’s knees got bad. When he’d inherited the house, he’d modified the new space for him and Ariel.

  “I’ve got it,” I said.

  “I’m wiped. I’m going to bed after I get the girls down.” I wasn’t surprised—I could see the exhaustion in his face. “I’m going in to the office tomorrow morning to handle some last-minute scheduling issues and a few things my lawyer has set up for me, but I’ll be back by noon. Nicky’ll be around to help take care of the girls, though, so don’t worry about having to look after them on your own.”

  “That’s reassuring for them, but I wouldn’t mind either way.” I’d known the girls since they were babies, and though I’d never visited them in their own home before, I’d taken care of them for short periods of time while their parents went on date nights in New York City.

  “Sure you won’t mind having Nicky around, then?”

  Would I mind having the ridiculously handsome guy who’d rescued me from the cold, chatted with me over dinner, and made me feel warm for the first time all day around? Hmm. “No,” I managed, trying to keep the rapid beating of my heart from reflecting in my face. “I definitely won’t mind having Dominic around.”

  Chapter Four

  Dominic

  I got to my brother’s house at eight in the morning then sat there in my Jeep for a minute, looking at the door. “It’s just another day with the kids,” I told myself. “You can do this. You do this all the time.”

  Except it wasn’t just another day with the kids. Max was there, too. Max who I’d spent all night thinking about. Max who I looked up in the high school yearbook I still had in a box just to check and make sure he really looked as good as I remembered.

  It was worse. He looked better than that now. He’d been cute verging on hot in high school—now he was hot, verging on nuclear. And I was supposed to while away an entire day with him, like I couldn’t remember his locker number or like I hadn’t creeped on him and Hal when Max came over by lingering in the hall outside wherever they’d parked themselves. I hadn’t been especially close to my brother back then, although he’d had my back no matter what. It wasn’t until he had the girls that we started to move beyond our childhood roles, and once I came back to Edgewood, we’d become practically codependent.

  Tap-tap. I startled and looked at the source of the tapping noise, which was—Hal, covered in flannel from chest to head, at the driver’s side window. Great. I opened my door. “Sorry,” I said, getting out and rubbing my hands together. Shit, it was cold.

  Hal frowned. “You sleep okay, Nicky? You look like hell.”

  I shrugged. “Bit of a late night, but I’m all right.”

  “On call, huh?”

  No, just digging up the past, but he didn’t have to know that. “I get overtime and everything, like a real adult.”

  Hal snorted. “It’s overrated. You bring your gloves?”

  “No.” I’d forgotten them in my mad rush out the door, so that I could get here and sit like a stone in the driveway.

  “You know the girls are gonna want to play outside today. Take mine.” He pulled off his heavy workman’s gloves and handed them over.

  “Hal, seriously—”

  “I’m going to be in the office, remember? Not working at a site,” he insisted. “Just come on inside. Max made pancakes.”

  “He did?” Oh man, he could cook, too? I really wasn’t going to have anything to do here today.

  “Yeah, pretty good ones. They’re thin and lacy, the girls love ‘em.” Hal opened the door and ushered me inside, and for a second all my worries melted away at the cheery, slightly haphazard appearance of my nieces sitting in the dining room, surrounded by their homemade decorations and digging into a pile of pancakes. Max sat on the far side of the table, and he looked up as soon as I entered.

  The bruises on his face weren’t too bad—he didn’t seem to be in pain, at least not enough to keep him from smiling. I could take a lot, but that smile on his face literally made my heart beat faster. Jesus, this day was going to suck if I couldn’t get my nerves, not to mention my libido, under control. I waved. “Hey.”

  “Uncle Nicky!” Marnie called out. “Come look at our pancakes! They’re snowflakes!”

  “Snowflakes? Wow.” I slipped off my boots—I hadn’t bothered to tie them tight yet, knowing I’d have to leave them by the door once I got here—and came over to admire the pancakes. They were, in fact, lacy little snowflake pancakes. They were pretty, if not very filling. “Those are lovely.”

  “Max used one of the squirt bottles we used to keep the gecko food in to make them.”

  “I washed it thoroughly first, I promise,” Max said with a wink at me.

  I had to sit my ass down before my knees gave out over another innocent and totally not flirty gesture from Max. “They look pretty tasty…” I managed, and then my inner competitive jackass came to the fore. “But probably not as good as my snowman grilled cheeses.”

  “Snowman
grilled cheeses?” Max looked at Steph first, but she was doggedly focused on her pancakes. Marnie picked up the thread again.

  “They’re grilled cheese sandwiches with the bread cut like a snowman, and there’s so much cheese it oozes out the sides. They’re super good.”

  “Super good, huh?” Max looked at me. “That sounds like a challenge.”

  I shrugged. “I mean, I’m sure your pancakes are nice, but they won’t hold a candle to my grilled cheese.”

  “How can you be sure when you haven’t even tried my pancakes?” He nudged the platter my way, and I gave in and scooped a few onto the plate in front of me.

  They were dusted with powdered sugar. I tried not to let on how cute I found that. I doused them with syrup then cut a bite. Mmm…vanilla…raspberry? Oh man.

  I glanced over at Max. He looked smug. It suited him, but of course I couldn’t let him know that. “They’re okay,” I said after swallowing. “But I still think my grilled cheeses are better.”

  “You have to make them for lunch,” Marnie said imperiously. “That way we can eat both today and then pick the best!”

  “You’re absolutely right,” I told her. “What do you think, Steph? Grilled cheese for lunch?”

  She nodded, which I knew was about as good as I was going to get this early in the morning.

  “You two are gonna turn my kids into little bon vivants, and I’ll never be able to feed them Eggos and Hot Pockets again,” Hal commented from the closet, where he was pulling a heavy coat on over his flannel shirt.

  Max grinned. “I doubt that. Remember when we tried to get them to eat those cocoa-pistachio truffles last year?”

  “Those were gross,” Marnie chimed in. “Too bitter, and the nuts were green.”

  “It just meant more for me and Mom,” Hal said then made a face like he’d bitten into a bitter truffle himself. He shook it off and came over to the table. “You two have fun with Uncle Nicky and Max this morning.” He kissed Marnie’s head, then Steph, taking a moment to brush her bangs back from her forehead.

  “You’ll be back by lunch?” I confirmed.

  “Yeah, definitely. There’s plenty of cold cuts for sandwiches if you decide you don’t want to cook.”

  “Because toasting bread and cheese is super hard.”

  Hal rolled his eyes at me then glanced over at Max. “Don’t let them run you into the ground too hard,” he said, mostly joking, but I knew there was a thread of truth there. “Try to think of this as an unplanned vacation. You need to tap out, do it. Nicky can handle the girls by himself.”

  Max’s smile for Hal was small yet genuine. “I appreciate the concern, but I think I’ll be fine. Dominic can keep me on the level.”

  Warmth started to creep over my cheeks as he effortlessly included me. He also kept calling me Dominic instead of Nicky, like he understood the difference, and it was doing things to me. “Go on, worrywart, get out of here before you’re late,” I told Hal, partially because he really was running late but mostly because I wanted to forestall my blush.

  “Yeah, yeah, I’m going. Ruthless taskmaster.” Hal gave the girls one more kiss apiece then walked out the door. It shut with a gentle creak and carried away the easy atmosphere with it.

  Or so I thought, before Max nudged my plate. “Eat up before they disintegrate,” he said. “They’re nice, but they won’t last under that much syrup for long.”

  I gratefully turned my eyes back to my breakfast. “You admit they have a weakness, then.”

  “A minor design flaw, really more of a motivational challenge than anything else. Who could leave something like this on the plate for long, after all?”

  “Not me.” I grinned and ate another bite.

  …

  The girls polished off their pancakes then put their dishes in the sink and headed upstairs to finish getting dressed without me having to say anything—damn, I had them trained. I grabbed Max’s plate along with mine and went to load everything into the dishwasher.

  “You don’t have to do that,” he said, getting up to help.

  “You cooked, I’ll clean,” I told him. “You can tidy up for me after lunch.”

  “Thanks.” He poured himself another cup of coffee and took an appreciative sip—I didn’t blame him; Hal was frugal in a lot of areas, but he liked good coffee—and leaned his hip against the counter. I turned my attention back to the dishes fast before I took an appreciative look at him and made a fool of myself. “The girls told me they wanted to do all sorts of things today,” he said, “including ‘go ice skating with Mrs. Jackson’s dog’ and ‘ride a unicorn reindeer to see Santa at the mall.’ What’s on the actual agenda?”

  “The Santa thing is happening closer to Christmas,” I said after taking a second to recollect Hal’s list of to-dos for the girls. “Minus the unicorn reindeer, I’m sad to say.”

  “Pity. That was the part I was really looking forward to.”

  I risked turning around to smile at him. “If you really want to court the impossible, you can go grab Phee’s ancient Chihuahua and see if he tolerates you skating around an ice rink with him instead of barking his head off, but I doubt it’ll happen.”

  Max shook his head. “I’ll pass. What else?”

  I shrugged. “The usual stuff. Snowmen in the backyard—although they’ve melted and been rebuilt so many times at this point they’re kind of hideous. We can put some hot cocoa into thermoses and go on a walk in the park—the girls like to look for animal tracks. We can visit the library or go to the children’s museum—it’s like an indoor playground that nods in the direction of education here and there,” I added when I saw the confused look on his face. “What sounds good to you?”

  “The snowmen and hot cocoa would be fun.” He scratched his chin, which he hadn’t shaved that morning. The hint of golden scruff looked good on him. “Maybe the park, too. It’s been a long time since I’ve been for a walk in the woods. But I’ve got to schedule in some time for work today at some point.”

  Of course he did. Were all lawyers this busy? I almost thought better of it, but eventually the question slipped out. “Why did you stay away for so long?”

  Max looked down into his coffee mug. “Edgewood didn’t have anything I wanted that I couldn’t get in New York,” he said after a minute. “And Edgewood has plenty of things I don’t want, so on the whole I figured it was better to ask Hal and Ariel and the girls to come to me and leave all the rest of it behind.”

  That sounded kind of grim. I mean, I could understand avoiding the reminders of his family’s worst days and the car accident. Plus, his mother didn’t live here anymore, but… “Why did you decide to come back now, then?”

  A second of awkward silence later, I realized how invasive I was being. “Shit. I’m sorry. Don’t answer that.” If I could have reeled the words back in, I would have. “I get stuck in cop mode sometimes,” I said. “I really didn’t mean to pry.”

  “I don’t mind telling you,” Max said, sounding a little surprised at himself. “It’s because of the girls. Marnie called me up and basically begged me to come visit, and I’d been planning on saying no, but after talking to her…” He shook his head. “It’s hard having a parent suddenly vanish from your life. I didn’t want to make their first Christmas without Ariel any tougher for them.”

  Oh wow. That was actually really sweet of him. I knew he got along with the girls—everything they ever said about Max was positive, and of course he was best friends with Hal, but until right now I didn’t know he felt so strongly about them.

  Max smiled and tilted his head, and I tried hard not to stare. “Anyway, I—”

  Whatever else he had been going to say was cut short by the sound of elephants tromping down the stairs. A second later, the girls careened into the kitchen, dressed in weather-appropriate and vaguely matching clothes. “We’re ready!” Marnie announced. He
r snow pants were electric purple, whereas Steph’s were neon pink. I think Ariel had been afraid of losing her kids in the snow or something when she bought them.

  Not that she ended up giving a shit about losing her kids in the end.

  I tried to turn my mind away from her—thinking about Ariel always put me in a bad mood fast. I could understand wanting to get a divorce and even understand her divorcing my brother. I couldn’t understand how she could just pick up and leave one day, leave everything, leave her children, and not give a shit about the turmoil her leaving produced. Edgewood PD had looked for Ariel for three days before she finally bothered to make contact from two states away.

  No, I couldn’t think about her now. I shook my head a little and draped a smile over the sour taste she left in my mouth. “You guys look great. Should we start by introducing Max to the snow family out back?”

  “Yes! And we can make a new one for him, too.” Marnie started to run for the back door.

  “Gloves, hat, and jacket first, please.”

  “Ugh!”

  An eternity later, we made it into the backyard, where Marnie immediately began to explain how the five misshapen snowmen were “Daddy, Mommy, Uncle Nicky, Steph, and me.” There was enough fresh powder for her to scrape together a starter ball. “Help us make a you, Max!”

  “You got it,” Max said. He let Marnie work on rolling her ball around and started a new one then handed it to Steph, who was following him around like a duckling. “Do you want to help me get it going?” he asked her gently. She nodded, and they started to roll it around together. I watched them until Marnie loudly reminded me that we needed three balls for a snowman, so I had to do one, too.

  The powder was fresh, but it was too cold for it to stick well. In the end, Max’s snowman ended up being about the same height as Steph’s, but he didn’t seem to mind. We found sticks for the arms, carved a face into it, and then drew on a suit jacket and tie. “Very fancy,” I said with a chuckle.

  “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

  “We’re all very beautiful, but we could be more beautiful,” Marnie said critically. “Can we use some food coloring on them?”