Her Holiday Family

by Ruth Logan Herne

  Laura glanced toward the kitchen, then back to Tina. “I think it’s a great idea, Tina.”

  Tina released a breath she didn’t know she was holding. “Me, too. I’ll have to come over here early.”

  “Can I help?”

  “Sure, I’ll—”

  “I missed the bus again.”

  A young voice interrupted the moment. Tina turned and spotted Ryan, her fourteen-year-old cousin. He didn’t notice her at first. His gaze was trained on his mother, his expression sullen and defensive. A bad combo.

  “I got you up.” Laura stared hard at the boy, then the clock. “You were in the shower when I left.”

  “I fell back asleep. So sue me.”

  Hairs rose along the back of Tina’s neck. The boy’s profile, the gruff tone, all reminded her of Rocco, and that tweaked a host of bad memories.

  But then he turned more fully.

  Ryan didn’t look anything like Rocco from the front. Seeing him up close for the first time in a few years, he was the spitting image of her father, Gino Martinelli, in his younger days. Realizing that, she pushed aside her assumptions and said, “Ryan, you need a ride? I’ll run you over to school.”

  He turned, surprised, then paled when he recognized her.

  “Tina, could you?” Laura turned, her voice appreciative.

  “No.” Ryan’s quick refusal drew the interest of one of the guys sitting at the counter.

  “Well, you have to get to school and I can’t take you,” Laura reminded him. “In case you haven’t noticed, I have a business to run.”

  Ryan glanced around, as if searching for a third option.

  “I’ll run him over, Laura.” The older man at the counter stood, stretched and yawned. “I’ve got to go home and catch some shut-eye before the next shift, and it’s on my way. Come on, Ryan, let’s get you an education so you don’t end up working two jobs to make ends meet like I do.”

  “Thanks, Bert.”

  The older guy shrugged and waved. Ryan followed him out the door, but he turned and looked at Tina again before he left, like he couldn’t believe she was standing in his mother’s restaurant, talking.

  He’d been a preschooler when she got tossed, and Rocco made sure that lines were drawn in the sand, with Tina on one side and the D’Allesandros on the other. She’d just blurred that line by coming over, asking for help, and maybe with a little more time they could erase the line altogether.

  She’d like that.

  * * *

  Max strode into the hardware store just before nine. He’d left the house early to fulfill his end of the bargain. He’d driven to Clearwater, the small city tucked at the southern tip of Kirkwood Lake, stopped by the Walmart there and grabbed four boxes of varied one-cup coffee pods. Turning the corner into the back room, he saw that Tina had remembered to cart her brewer down to the store.

  His coffee-loving heart leaped in approval.

  And when he noted the steaming hot coffee and cake from her aunt’s restaurant, he wanted to hug her. Draw her close and tell her he was proud of her. But if he did that with two customers and Earl in the store, he’d create a groundswell of small-town conversation neither one wanted or needed.

  He grabbed the third coffee, took a sip, moved out front and smiled his thanks to her over the brim. “Perfect, Tina.”

  Her expression said she understood he was praising her for more than the coffee, and the slight flush of her cheeks said he’d scored points in the good guy column.

  Good.

  He’d decided last night that he enjoyed gaining points with Tina Martinelli, and if he stopped to examine it, he might wonder why. But when she handed him a wrapped piece of tender apple cake, it became obviously clear.

  Fresh.

  Funny.

  Beautiful.

  Cryptic but kind, and she loved little kids, small animals and his family.

  His heart opened wider, and he’d have loved time to explore these feelings, but the day flew by with little time to chat or flirt, and he was on watch duty again that night, so by the time they closed up shop, he needed to have his car disappear as if he’d gone home—

  And then slip back into town like he’d done the night before.

  “Are you guys working the same game plan tonight?” Tina asked softly as he turned the key in the back door lock.

  “We are.”

  “Do you want supper first?”

  “You asking me out, Tina?” He turned, grinning, and her rise of color said she wasn’t—and yet, she was. “What have you got in mind?”

  “I did a stew thing in the slow-cooker, and there’s plenty. But you probably want to get home and see your dad.”

  “Mom just texted that he’s sleeping and she’s going over to Luke’s to help Rainey make some new kind of tres leches cake thing. So I’m free.”

  “Rainey’s tres leches cakes are the best things on the planet,” Tina said.

  “I don’t know,” Max mused. “I heard something from my brother Seth about a sweet potato pecan pie that’s won the hearts of the entire lakeshore. And that’s saying something because that’s a fair piece of geography, Tina.”

  “I’ll have to remember to thank Seth for the kind words.”

  “Don’t be too nice to him. It’ll go to his head. Now.” He stopped and braced one hand on either side of the door, effectively trapping her between him and the hardware store entry. “You’re really inviting me to dinner?”

  “Crock-Pot stew isn’t fancy enough to be called dinner.”

  “Supper, then.”

  “Supper works.”

  “Then let’s do this.” He motioned to her car. “I’ll bring my car up and after we eat I’ll noticeably leave your place. Then I’ll circle around back again.”

  Tina nodded, moved toward the steps, then paused. “Thank you for doing this, Max. The whole stakeout thing. I know it’s not your fight—”

  “My parents love you to pieces, so it is my fight,” he corrected her. “You might be family by attrition and I’m Campbell by adoption, but if there’s one thing about us Campbells, we take care of our own. I’ll meet you at your place.”

  He parked on the street in front of Tina’s apartment, leaving the car in plain sight. When he followed her up the stairs to her apartment, he was pleasantly surprised. “Retro chic. I’m kind of surprised and intrigued. Where’s June Cleaver hiding?”

  Tina laughed and brought two plates over to the small enamel-clad table. “Necessity. I had no money, and the antique and cooperative shops had lots of this fun retro stuff really cheap, so I decided I’d go with it.”

  “These old bowls.” Max lifted one of the pale blue Pyrex bowls into the air. “Grandma Campbell had these. And these cabinets look like the ones in Aunt Maude’s old place over in Jamison.”

  “Cute, right?” His appreciation deepened Tina’s smile. “I figured if I had to live in an apartment, I wanted it as fun and homey as I could get it.”

  “You’ve achieved your goal. Can I help with anything?”

  “You’re doing enough standing guard into the dark of night. Sit and eat.”

  Max didn’t have to be asked twice. “You made bread?”

  “Nope, bought it when I ran out at lunchtime. Rainey’s got a nice baked-goods section over at the McKinney Farms Dairy store, and it’s only five minutes away. I figured it would go well with stew.”

  “Beyond wonderful.”

  She turned.

  Her chin tilted up. She met his gaze, and he knew the second the compliment registered, that the words were meant for her, not the bread, because her eyes brightened and she looked embarrassed.

  “But—” he sat down, reached over and sliced a couple of thick hunks off the loaf of freshly warmed bread “—you warned me o
ff, so I’m trying to keep my compliments to myself, to stay calm, cool and slightly detached. How’d I do today?” He asked the question as if wondering how his job performance was going, quick and casual.

  “You got an A on detachment and a B- on cool.” She sat in the chair opposite him and offered the grades as if the assessment was the least personal thing ever.

  “A B-?” Max shook his head. “On my worst day I couldn’t get a B-. No way, no how.”

  “Are you protesting your grade?” She set the ladle down, then looked surprised and pleased when he reached across the small table and took her hand in his for grace.

  He gave her fingers a gentle squeeze. “Naw, no protest. The bad grade just gives me incentive to try harder. Be cooler. Although I’m not sure that’s even attainable.”

  She laughed.

  It felt good to see it, good to watch her relax. Smile. Joke around. From what he’d gleaned in his short time home, Tina hadn’t had a lot to laugh about these past few years, and that was wrong by any standard. He held her hand lightly and offered a simple prayer, a soldier’s grace, and when he was done, he held her hand just long enough to make her work to extract it.

  She scolded him with a look that made him grin, and then they shared a hot, delicious meal in a walk-up apartment decked out in second-hand 1950s motif, and he loved every minute of it.

  He wanted to linger but the clock forced him to leave.

  She walked him to the door, then stayed back a few feet, creating distance. But Max hadn’t served in the army for over a decade without achieving some off-the-battlefield skills.

  He noted the distance with his gaze, then drew his eyes up. Met hers. “Nice ploy, but if I wanted to kiss you, I’d cross that three feet of space and just do it, Tina.”

  “Which either means you don’t want to, or you’re being a gentleman and respecting my request to keep our lives uncomplicated.” She sent him a pert smile. “Excellent.”

  “Except—” he opened the door to the stairway, then turned, smiling “—Uncle Sam trained me well. I like things complicated. Creates a challenge. But tonight?” He pulled a dark knit hat onto his head, and matching leather gloves from the pockets of his black leather jacket. “Duty calls.”

  He started down the stairs, mentally counting them as he went. If she called his name before step number ten, he’d won a major battle.

  If she stayed silent?

  Well, that meant there was more work to be done than he’d thought. He stepped down quickly, leaving it up to God and Tina. One, two, three, four...

  Total silence followed him from above.

  Five, six, seven, eight...

  “Max?”

  He stopped, turned and had to keep from power-fisting the air. “Yes?”

  “Thank you.” Her gaze scanned his cold-weather gear and the village beyond the first-floor entry window. “Like I mentioned before, this means a lot to me.”

  “You’re welcome.” He didn’t wink, tease or do anything else. There was no need to. By calling his name, interrupting his departure, she’d shown her mix of feelings. She liked him and wished she didn’t.

  Would she hate him when she found out the truth about Pete and Amy? Their deaths affected her best friend, their family, the entire neighborhood, the town. And he had known Pete and Amy had been drinking and hadn’t stopped them from going out.

  Maybe the better question was this: Why wouldn’t she hate him?

  He glanced up as he swung open the driver’s-side door. She waved from the window, and the sight of her, backlit and centered in the white-framed pane, made his heart yearn for that kind of send-off on a regular basis.

  Blessed be the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God. That’s what he wanted now. To be a different kind of peacemaker here at home. Twinkle lights blinked on throughout the town. By next week, everything would be fully decorated. They’d open the Festival of Lights with a prayerful ceremony on the church green, and then they’d “throw” the switch, lighting up the lake, the town, the park.

  Right now, with the sweetness of the newly erected church manger and the decorated, lighted businesses flanking Main Street, a sweet surge of the blessed holiday engulfed him. Yes, they were lit up a little early with Thanksgiving still days off, but as he tucked his car away and slipped through the cemetery paths to take up his watch station, the sweet lights celebrating Christ’s birth welcomed him home.

  Chapter Six

  Whoever had been combing the ashes of the café had either found what they were looking for or smelled a trap. Either way, nothing came of the men’s combined maneuvers.

  Jason and Cory Radcliffe stopped into the hardware store at closing time. “Tina, can we talk to you out back before you head out?”

  “Sure.” She led the firemen into the back room, then turned. “Bad news?”

  Jason shrugged. “Well, not good news. We’ve done what we can, the arson squad has gathered their evidence, they know an accelerant was used, but there’s no real indication of who did this and the site’s dangerous. We’ve ordered the excavation equipment. They’re going to clean the site tomorrow.”

  Clean the site.

  It sounded so simple. Matter-of-fact. A decade of work, hopes and dreams purposely destroyed, then scooped away.

  Her heart ached, but it was the right thing to do. She knew that. Still.

  She didn’t want to be on hand to see it happen, but that couldn’t be helped. “I appreciate you letting me know, guys. Thank you.”

  They didn’t look the least bit comfortable accepting her thanks, and when they were gone, Max cornered her at the register. “Cleanup time?”

  “You were listening?” Her tone scolded. Her look followed suit.

  He pointed a finger at himself and made a face that said of course he was. “Covert operator. That’s what I do, Tina.”

  A tiny smile escaped as she accepted his pronouncement. “That doesn’t exactly rank you higher on the trustworthy scale. Snooping is unattractive.”

  “Snooping’s for amateurs. I was on an information-gathering mission. Highly professional. And I needed to be close by in case they made you cry.”

  “They didn’t.”

  He smiled. “I know. Because I was right outside the door.”

  A tiny part of her heart stretched, thinking of Max watching out for her again. “Then you know they’re excavating tomorrow.”

  “An empty lot can be considered a fresh palette.”

  It could.

  And yet the thought of big equipment sweeping up the remnants of her life in Kirkwood bit deep. “It’s got to be done,” she admitted. “I just hate the thought of being around to watch it happen.”

  “Then we’ll find something else to do,” Max said as he locked the door “The weather’s supposed to be fairly nice tomorrow, according to my mother. But for now, come with me.”

  Max crooked a thumb toward his Mustang. Tina grabbed her purse and warm jacket, then followed him to the door. “Come with you where?”

  He pointed to the passenger seat. “You did supper last night. My turn.”

  “Max, I—”

  “Don’t disappoint my mother. She’s been simmering red sauce and meatballs and made me promise to bring you. You can’t insult a woman who spent half the afternoon cooking, can you?”

  “You don’t play fair.”

  His smile agreed as he backed the car around. “All’s fair in love and war.”

  “Well, as long as we’re at war. Okay, then.”

  He laughed, but as they pulled out of the hardware store parking lot, two big rigs rounded the corner of Main Street. A huge loader with a bucket and a large dump truck chugged down the road, then parked along the edge of her burned-out café.

  The sight of them reignited Tina’s
internal reasons for leaving. Enough was enough.

  But then Max hit the car radio. Christmas lyrics filled the air, the perfect accent to the growing number of decorated houses leading out of the village. The bright sight of her old, familiar town filled her with nostalgia.

  She thought she wanted new, fresh and bright. But how much would she miss the familiarity of her hometown once she made the move?

  Her phone vibrated an incoming text from Sherrie. I know U R busy but could use help with nursery. Ideas?

  She had tons of ideas. Ones she’d imagined for herself as she watched her biological clock tick for years. The thought of happily-ever-afters and cute kids had filled her with anticipation. In her quest for the American dream of marriage and two-point-four kids, had she hurried things? Charging ahead and regretting at leisure had always been part of her profile. Had she done that in matters of the heart?

  Maybe. But she needed to think more on that tomorrow. With Christmas music playing, and Max easing the smooth ride around lakeshore curves, she focused on answering Sherrie.

  Tons, she texted back. Call me later, we’ll make a plan.

  Thank you! Sherrie’s return text was immediate, which meant she was waiting, hoping Tina would help. Was Sherrie feeling pushed to hurry because Tina was leaving? They’d been best friends, always together, for over two decades. The idea of being too busy or too far away to be a true help to Sherrie seemed wrong.

  “Max! Tina! Perfect timing!” Jenny’s voice caroled a welcome as Max tugged open the side door a few minutes later. “Dad was just saying he could use some company.”

  Beeze padded their way, tail wagging, as if wondering how they got through the day at work without him. He pushed his big, golden head beneath Tina’s arm, knowing she’d give him a thorough welcome.

  “I’m going to wash up and get rid of the remnants of changing oil and replacing hoses,” Max announced. He reached down to pet Beeze. Tina looked up. Met his gaze. And when he smiled as if seeing her with the dog, in his mother’s kitchen, made him happy, her heart tipped into overdrive again. “Back in a few minutes.”

  “Okay.”