Thankfully, none of the Culhanes regularly frequented the hotel eateries, as neither family liked the other very much. It wasn’t exactly a feud, but since the O’Sullivan and Culhane brothers had gone to the same high school, there was enough testosterone between them to cause a rift that was mainly borne out of a leftover football rivalry.
Abby headed for the staff parking area and within minutes was in her sedan driving from the hotel. She thought about dismissing her grandmother’s text message and then changed her mind. T.J. wanted pizza for dinner, and since it was Friday night, she relented and drove directly to JoJo’s Pizza Parlor. She scored a parking space outside and switched off the ignition. As always, the restaurant was busy, and she wished she’d called beforehand and placed her order.
Once she was inside, Abby walked toward the counter and waited behind a young couple placing a large order. She looked around, noticing how crowded the restaurant was. All the booth seats were occupied and most of the tables. A couple of women were sitting at the bar, and a few people were seated in the takeout area, clearly waiting for their orders. She fiddled with her car keys as she waited and scanned the restaurant again, catching a glimpse of a group in one of the booths. Four men. All tall and broad shouldered. She recognized the chief of police, Hank Culhane, immediately. And his twin, Joss. The two other men were darker haired. And then dread crawled over her skin when she recognized Jake Culhane’s all-too-familiar profile.
His military crew cut was unmissable. His shoulders were exactly as she remembered. His eyes, she knew, were brilliantly green and his jaw strong and uncompromising. He’d always been ridiculously attractive. Since high school. They’d dated for all of senior year, and Abby had been undeniably in love with him. Until he’d broken her heart. Of course, she knew his betrayal wasn’t deliberate. But Jake wanted a military career, and Abby had no intention of being the girlfriend—or the wife—of a soldier. She’d watched her own mother go down that path, and it wasn’t a life she wanted for herself. So, they broke up, Jake left town and Abby started dating Tom Perkins.
And then, as if on cue, his shoulders tightened, and he turned his head a fraction.
Goose bumps broke out over her skin, and she moved closer to the counter when the couple in front moved to the side, ready to give her order. She quickly selected what she wanted from the menu, paid for the pizza, stuffed the receipt in her purse and was about to head toward the waiting area when she heard an all-too-familiar voice behind her.
“Hello, Abby.”
She took a breath, pulled on every ounce of bravado she possessed and turned.
Up close, Jake Culhane was just as gorgeous as she remembered. Six feet two, broad shoulders, the most dazzling green eyes, clean-shaven jaw—he was the perfect picture of masculinity. He was still the most handsome man she’d ever known. The only man who could churn her up inside. The only man who ever made her lose her good sense and reason.
Her ex-boyfriend.
Tom’s best friend.
And the father of her son.
“Oh, hey, Jake,” she said as casually as she could. “I heard you were back. How’s Mitch?”
The whole town knew about the accident that had almost killed his older brother. Thankfully, Mitch had survived, but the event had been serious enough to drag Jake back to the town he hated. She had no idea why he was still hanging around. Jake’s visits had always been a few days here or there at the most. In between his tours in Iraq, he’d rarely returned. Now, as he was retired from the military, she had heard he owned some kind of high-tech security business. Not that she cared. She’d stopped caring about Jake a long time ago. But they had history.
And a son.
A child he didn’t know was his.
To everyone who knew her, T.J. was Tom’s child. Only her grandmother, her mom and her best friend, Renee, knew the truth. Renee lived in Denver, which was where Abby had gone once she’d discovered she was pregnant. She’d needed to clear her head, to grieve for the husband she had lost and work out the next phase in her life. She spent six months with her friend, including the two months after T.J.’s birth. Born nearly seven weeks premature, her son had fought a fierce battle to survive. He’d spent three weeks in the NICU before she could take him home. She returned to Cedar River with a healthy two-month-old baby, and no one questioned his paternity.
Except Tom’s parents.
They knew Tom wasn’t able to get her pregnant. After two years of trying to have a baby, tests had proven that she would need to pursue a sperm donor if they wanted to have a child. They were considering their options when Tom unexpectedly suffered a severe stroke. He pulled through and for three weeks Abby believed everything would be okay—until another stroke claimed his life.
“He’s fine,” she heard Jake say, barely able to hear his voice above the screeching going off in her head. “Getting better every day. How are you?”
It was polite conversation. Too polite. The last time they had spoken, it had been heated and unpleasant. A morning-after conversation. A postmortem of the worst kind. Words she never wanted to hear again.
“Great. Never better. You?”
His eyes narrowed fractionally. “Fine. How’s your grandmother?”
Gran had always called Jake Abby’s quicksand. And she couldn’t disagree. When she was seventeen, she had been achingly in love with him. He had been her first real kiss, her first lover.
My last kiss. My last lover.
Her son’s face flashed in front of her eyes, and she willed the image away. She didn’t want to think about T.J. She didn’t want to make comparisons with the man standing in front of her. She didn’t want to acknowledge that her son’s eyes were exactly the same shade of green, or that they shared an identical birthmark, or that the tiny cleft in his chin was a shadow of the man whose DNA he shared.
Panic clawed at her skin, and she fought every impulse she possessed to run and not look back. And to pretend that nothing was going to change. That Jake would soon leave town and she could feel normal again.
Because it felt different.
Ever since she learned he was back, she’d been on edge. Because she knew what was coming—the truth she needed to tell. To Jake and to her son.
“Gran is her usual wonderful self,” she replied casually, and willed her food order to hurry up so she could make her getaway. “Still volunteering at the local veterans’ home. I hear you left the military?”
“My tour was up,” he replied. “It felt like the right time to hang up the combat boots.”
Abby didn’t want to think about what he’d seen and endured over the course of his tours in Iraq. Her own father had been killed in Desert Storm, and after watching her mother grieve for decades, Abby had been determined she would never get involved with a soldier. Instead, she’d married Tom—safe and dependable—exactly what her young heart had yearned for.
“Well, I’m happy you came back in one piece,” she said flippantly.
“I told you I would.”
His words had pinpoint accuracy. At eighteen, she’d made her feelings very clear. Terrified he would be injured, or worse, Abby had used his joining the army as an excuse to bail from their teenage romance. Jake had also been clear: he needed to enlist—it was all that mattered.
Not her.
Not them.
And Abby wasn’t naive enough to imagine that he’d changed. Jake didn’t have the reputation of a man who hung around. He’d left Cedar River without looking back. He’d left their relationship. And Abby had had every right to forge a new life for herself after he was gone. A life with Tom, because her husband had been a kind and considerate man who had loved her dearly. And he’d stayed by her side, fully supporting her decision to work in Cedar River when she could have had her pick of several of the finest restaurants on the West Coast after returning from Paris.
But Tom knew how importa
nt Cedar River was to Abby. Her grandmother had always called it home. Her father and grandfather were buried in the large cemetery at the edge of town. It was a town filled with memory and comfort and the hope for the future. The place where she wanted to raise her son.
But it was also Jake’s hometown.
And now that Jake was back, Abby had choices to make.
Tell him...
Don’t tell him...
Let him work it out for himself.
It wasn’t as though she’d announced to the world that T.J. was Tom’s son. She’d simply never been asked to explain why her child looked nothing like her auburn-haired husband. People made assumptions. And Abby was essentially a private person. Too private to be bandying around the details of her personal life.
But she also liked to think she was a truthful person. She was honest in every other aspect of her life. But not when it came to Jake. And now, since everything was different, the truth hovered on the edge of her tongue.
“Jake—” She said his name almost as though it pained her. “I think we should—”
“He’d want us to be friends, you know,” he said, cutting her off.
He. Tom. Abby knew how much her husband had liked the man in front of her. Tom had never failed to remind her what a great guy Jake was. About how Jake had stood up for him in high school, protected him from schoolyard bullies, because Tom was a small and sickly and quiet. While Jake was the motorcycle-riding bad boy. They were polar opposites...and yet, they had formed a solid friendship, grounded in trust and mutual respect.
But she knew her time was up. Jake would work it out.
Abby just needed to summon the courage to tell him first.
Copyright © 2019 by Helen Lacey
ISBN-13: 9781488042416
A Tale of Two Christmas Letters
Copyright © 2019 by Cathy Gillen Thacker
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