Maid Under the Mistletoe

by Maureen Child

  “Are you,” he asked, voice tight, “on birth control?”

  “No.”

  One word. One simple word that hit the pit of his stomach like a ball of ice. “Okay. Look. This is my fault, Joy. I shouldn’t have...”

  “Fault? If you’re looking to place blame here, you’re on your own,” she said, sliding her fingers through his hair. “This isn’t on you alone, so don’t look like you’re about to be blindfolded and stood up against a wall in front of a firing squad.”

  He frowned and wondered when he’d become so easy to read.

  “You weren’t alone in this room, Sam,” she said. “This is on me as much as you. We got...carried away—”

  He snorted. “Yeah, you could say that.”

  “—and we didn’t think. We weren’t prepared,” she finished as if he hadn’t interrupted her.

  He laughed shortly but there was no humor behind it. This had to be the damnedest after-sex conversation he’d ever had. He should have known that Joy wouldn’t react as he would have expected her to. No recriminations, no gnashing of teeth, just simple acceptance for what couldn’t be changed.

  Still. “That’s the thing,” he said with a shake of his head. “I thought I was. Prepared, I mean. When I went into town to get those damn fairy lights, I also bought condoms.”

  She drew her head back and grinned down at him. “You’re kidding. Really?”

  “Yes, really. They’re upstairs. In my room.”

  She laughed and shook her head. “That’s perfect. Well, in your defense, you did try to get me upstairs...”

  “True.” But they probably wouldn’t have made it, as hot as they’d both been. Most likely, they’d have stopped and had at each other right there on the stairs anyway.

  “And I love that you bought condoms,” she said, planting a soft kiss on his mouth. “I love that you wanted me as much as I wanted you.”

  “No question about that,” he admitted, though the rest of this situation was settling in like rain clouds over an outdoor party.

  “But you realize that now everyone in Franklin knows you bought them.”

  “What?”

  “Oh, yes,” she said, nodding sagely. “By now, word has spread all over town and everyone is speculating about just what’s going on up here.”

  “Perfect.” Small-town life, he told himself, knowing she was right. He hadn’t thought about it. Hadn’t considered that by buying condoms at the local pharmacy he was also feeding fuel to the gossip. It had been so long since he’d been part of a community that he hadn’t given it a thought, but now he remembered the speculative gleam in the cashier’s eye. The smile on the face of the customer behind him in line. “Damn.”

  “We’re the talk of the town,” Joy assured him, still smiling. “I’ve always wanted to be gossiped about.”

  All of that aside for the moment, Sam couldn’t understand how she could be so damned amused by any of this. All he could feel was the bright flash of panic hovering on the edges of his mind. By being careless, he might have created a child. He’d lost a child already. Lost his son. How could he make another and not have his heart ripped out of his chest?

  “Forget what people are saying, Joy,” he said, and his tone, if nothing else, erased her smile. “Look, whatever happens—”

  “You can get that unnerved look off your face,” she said softly. “I’m a big girl, Sam. I can take care of myself. You don’t owe me anything, and I don’t need you to worry about me or what might happen.”

  “I’ll decide what I owe, Joy,” he told her. It didn’t matter what she said, Sam told himself. He would worry anyway. He laid one hand on her belly and let it lay there, imagining what might already be happening deep within her.

  “Sam.” She cupped his face in her hands and waited until he looked into her eyes. “Stop thinking. Can we just enjoy what we shared? Leave it at that?”

  His heartbeat thundered in his chest. Just her touch was enough to push him into forgetting everything but her. Everything but this moment. He wanted her even more than he had before and didn’t know how that was possible. She was staring up at him with those wide blue eyes of hers, and Sam thought he could lose himself in those depths. Maybe she was right. At least for now, for this moment, maybe it was better if they stopped thinking, worrying, wondering. Because these moments were all they had. All they would ever have.

  He wasn’t going to risk loss again. He wouldn’t put his soul up as a hostage to fate, by falling in love, having another family that the gods could snatch from him. A future for them was out of the question. But they had tonight, didn’t they?

  “Come with me,” he said, rolling off the bed and taking her hand to pull her up with him.

  “What? Why? Where?”

  “My room. Where the condoms live.” He kept pulling her after him and she half ran to keep up. “We can stop and get water—or wine—on the way up.”

  “Wine. Condoms.” She tugged him to a stop, then plastered herself against him until he felt every single inch of her body pressed along his. Then she stepped back. “Now, that kind of thinking is a good thing. I like your plan. Just let me get my robe.”

  Amazing woman. She could be wild and uninhibited in bed but quailed about walking naked through an empty house.

  “You don’t need a robe. We’re the only ones here. There are no neighbors for five miles in any direction, so no one can look in the windows.”

  “It’s cold so I still want it,” she said, lifting one hand to cup his cheek.

  For a second, everything stopped for Sam. He just stared at her. In the soft light, her skin looked like fine porcelain. Her hair was a tumbled mass of gold and her eyes were as clear and blue as the lake. Her seductively sly smile curved a mouth that was made to be kissed. If he were still an artist, Sam thought, he’d want to paint her like this. Just as she was now.

  That knowing half smile on her face, one arm lifted toward him, with the soft glow of Christmas lights behind her. She looked, he thought, like a pagan goddess, a woman born to be touched, adored, and that’s how he would paint her. If he still painted, which he didn’t. And why didn’t he?

  Because he’d lost the woman he’d once loved. A woman who had looked at him as Joy did now. A woman who had given him a son and then taken him with her when she left.

  Pain grabbed his heart and squeezed.

  Instantly, she reacted. “Sam? What is it?”

  “I want you,” he said, moving in on her, backing her into the wall, looking down into her eyes.

  “I know, I feel the same way.”

  He nodded, swallowed hard, then forced the words out because they had to be said. Even if she pulled away from him right now, they had to be said. “But if you’re thinking there’s a future here for us, don’t. I’m not that guy. Not anymore.”

  “Sam—” Her hands slid up and down his arms, and he was grateful for the heat she kindled inside him. “I didn’t ask you for anything.”

  “I don’t want to hurt you, Joy.” Yet he knew he would. She was the kind of woman who would spin dreams for herself, her daughter. She would think about futures. As a mother, she had to. As a former father, he couldn’t. Not again. Just the thought of it sharpened the pain in his heart. If he was smart, he’d end this with Joy right now.

  But apparently, he had no sense at all.

  She gave him another smile and went up on her toes to kiss him gently. “I told you. You don’t have to worry about me, Sam. I know what I’m doing.”

  He wished that were true. But there would be time enough later for regrets, for second-guessing decisions made in the night. For now, there was Joy.

  * * *

  A few days later, Joy was upstairs, looking out Sam’s bedroom window at the workshop below. Holly was out there with Sam right now, probably working on
more fairy houses. Since the first two were now filled with fairy families, Holly was determined to put up a housing development at the foot of the woods.

  Her smile was wistful as she turned away and looked at the big bed with the forest green comforter and mountain of pillows. She hadn’t been with Sam up here since that first night. He came to her now, in Kaye’s room, where they made love with quiet sighs and soft whispers so they wouldn’t wake Holly in the next room. And after hours wrapped together, Sam left her bed early in the morning so the little girl wouldn’t guess what was happening.

  It felt secret and sad and wonderful all at the same time. Joy was in love and couldn’t tell him because she knew he didn’t want to hear it. She might be pregnant and knew he wouldn’t want to hear that, either. Every morning when he left her, she felt him go just a bit further away. And one day soon, she knew, he wouldn’t come back. He was distancing himself from her, holding back emotionally so that when she left at the end of the month he wouldn’t miss her.

  Why couldn’t he see that he didn’t have to miss her? It was almost impossible to believe she’d known Sam for less than three weeks. He was so embedded in her heart, in her life, she felt as if she’d known him forever. As if they’d been meant to meet, to find each other. To be together. If only Sam could see that as clearly as Joy did.

  The house phone rang and she answered without looking at the caller ID. “Henry residence.”

  “Joy? Oh, it’s so nice to finally talk to you!” A female voice, happy.

  “Thanks,” she said, carrying the phone back to the window so she could look outside. “Who is this?”

  “God, how stupid of me,” the woman said with a delighted laugh. “I’m Catherine Henry, Sam’s mother.”

  Whoa. A wave of embarrassment swept over her. Joy was standing in Sam’s bedroom, beside the bed where they’d had sex, and talking to his mother. Could this be any more awkward? “Hello. Um, Sam’s out in the workshop.”

  “Oh, I know,” she said and Joy could almost see her waving one hand to dismiss that information. “I just talked to him and your adorable daughter, Holly.”

  “You did?” Confused, she stared down at the workshop and watched as Sam and Holly walked out through the snow covering the ground. Sam was carrying the latest fairy house and Holly, no surprise, was chattering a mile a minute. Joy’s heart ached with pleasure and sorrow.

  “Holly tells me that she and Sam are making houses for fairies and that my son isn’t as crabby as he used to be.”

  “Oh, for—” Joy closed her eyes briefly. “I’m so sorry—”

  “Don’t be silly. He is crabby,” Catherine told her. “But he certainly seemed less so around your little girl.”

  “He’s wonderful with her.”

  There was a pause and then a sniffle as if the woman was fighting tears. “I’m so glad. I’ve hoped for a long time to see my son wake up again. Find happiness again. It sounds to me like he is.”

  “Oh,” Joy spoke up quickly, shaking her head as if Sam’s mother could see her denial, “Mrs. Henry—”

  “Catherine.”

  “Fine. Catherine, please don’t make more of this than there is. Sam doesn’t want—”

  “Maybe not,” she interrupted. “But he needs. So much. He’s a good man, Joy. He’s just been lost.”

  “I know,” Joy answered on a sigh, resting her hand on the ice-cold windowpane as she watched the man she loved and her daughter kneeling together in the snow. “But what if he doesn’t want to be found?”

  Another long pause and Catherine said, “Kaye’s told me so much about you, Joy. She thinks very highly of you, and just speaking to your daughter tells me that you’re a wonderful mother.”

  “I hope so,” she said, her gaze fixed on Sam.

  “Look, I don’t know how you feel, but if you don’t mind my saying, I can hear a lot in your voice when you speak of Sam.”

  “Catherine—” If she couldn’t tell Sam how she felt she certainly couldn’t tell his mother.

  “You don’t have to say anything, dear. Just please. Do me a favor and don’t give up on him.”

  “I don’t want to.” Joy could admit that much. “I...care about him.”

  “I’m so glad.” The next pause was a short one. “After the holidays I’m going to come and visit Sam. I hope we can meet then.”

  “I’d like that,” Joy said and meant it. She just hoped that she would still be seeing Sam by then.

  When the phone call ended a moment later, she hung up the phone and walked back to the window to watch the two people in the world she loved most.

  * * *

  “Will more fairies move in and put up some more lights like the other ones did?” Holly asked, kneeling in the snow to peek through the windows of the tiny houses.

  “We’ll have to wait and see, I guess,” Sam told her, setting the new house down on a flat rock slightly above the others.

  “I bet they do because now they have friends here and—”

  Sam smiled to himself as the little girl took off on another long, rambling monologue. He was going to miss spending time with Holly. As much as he’d fought against it in the beginning, the little girl had wormed her way into his heart—just like her mother had. In his own defense, Sam figured there weren’t many people who could have ignored a five-year-old with as much charm as this one. Even the cold didn’t diminish her energy level. If anything, he thought, it pumped her up. Her little cheeks were rosy, her eyes, so much like her mother’s, sparkled.

  “Do fairies have Christmas trees?”

  “What?”

  “Like Mommy and me got a tiny little tree because you don’t like Christmas, but maybe if you had a great big tree you’d like Christmas more, Sam.”

  He slid a glance at her. He’d caught on to Holly’s maneuvers. She was giving him that sly smile that he guessed females were born knowing how to deliver.

  “You want a big Christmas tree,” he said.

  “I like our little one, but I like big ones, too, and we could make it really pretty with candy canes and we could make popcorn and put it on, too, and I think you’d like it.”

  “I probably would,” he admitted. Hell, just because he was against Christmas didn’t mean a five-year-old had to put up with a sad little tree tucked away in her room. “Why don’t you go get your mom and we’ll cut down a tree.”

  Her eyes went wide. “Cut it down ourselves? In the woods?”

  “You bet. You can help.” As long as he had his hands over hers on the hatchet, showing her how to do it without risking her safety. Around them, the pines rustled in the wind and sounded like sighs. The sky was heavy and gray and looked ready to spill another foot or two of snow any minute. “You can pick out the tree—as long as it’s not a giant,” he added with a smile.

  She studied him thoughtfully for so long, he had to wonder what she was thinking. Nothing could have prepared him, though, for what she finally said. “You’re a good daddy.”

  He sat back on his heels to look at her, stunned into silence. Snow was seeping into the legs of his jeans, but he paid no attention. “What?”

  “You’re a good daddy,” she said again and moved up to lay one hand on his cheek. “You help me with stuff and you show me things and I know you used to have a little boy but he had to go to heaven with his mommy and that’s what makes you crabby.”

  Air caught in his chest. Couldn’t exhale or inhale. All he could do was watch the child watching him.

  How did she know about Eli? Had her mother told her? Or had she simply overheard other adults talking about him? Kids, he knew, picked up on more than the grown-ups around them ever noticed. As Holly watched him, she looked so serious. So solemn, his heart broke a little.

  “But if you want,” she went on, her perpetually high-pitched, fast-paced vo
ice softening, “I could be your little girl and you could be my daddy and then you wouldn’t be crabby or lonely anymore.”

  His heart stopped. He felt it take one hard beat and then clutch. Her eyes were filled with a mixture of sadness and hope, and that steady gaze scorched him. This little girl was offering all the love a five-year-old held and hoping he’d take it. But how could he? How could he love a child again and risk losing that child? But wasn’t he going to lose her anyway? Because of his own fears and the nightmares that had never really left him?

  Sam had been so careful, for years, to stay isolated, to protect his heart, to keep his distance from the world at large. And now there was a tiny girl who had pierced through his defenses, showing him just how vulnerable he really was.

  She was still looking at him, still waiting, trusting that he would want her. Love her.

  He did. He already loved her, and that wasn’t something he could admit. Not to himself. Not to the child who needed him. Sam had never thought of himself as a coward, but damned if he didn’t feel like one now. How could he give her what she needed when the very thought of loving and losing could bring him to his knees?

  He stood up, grabbed her and pulled her in for a tight hug, and her little arms went around his neck and clung as if her life depended on it. There at the edge of the woods with fairy magic shining in the gray, he was humbled by a little girl, shattered by the love freely offered.

  “Do you want to be my daddy, Sam?” she whispered.

  How to get out of this without hurting her? Without ripping his own heart out of his chest? Setting her down again, he crouched in front of her and met those serious blue eyes. “I’m proud you would ask me, Holly,” he said, knowing just how special that request had been. “But this is pretty important, so I think you should talk to your mom about this first, okay?”

  Not a no, not a yes. He didn’t want to hurt her, but he couldn’t give her what she wanted, either. Joy knew her daughter best. She would know how to let her down without crushing that very tender heart. And Joy knew—because he’d told her—that there was no future for them. What surprised him, though, was how much he wished things were different—that he could have told that little girl he would be her daddy and take care of her and love her. But he couldn’t do it. Wouldn’t do it.