“Sure.”
“I’ve never told anyone this, not even my sons, but Alice despised me when we met,” the judge said with an amused chuckle.
Soren’s jaw dropped. That was not the story he’d been told countless times at Abbott family gatherings. He’d known the judge as an unbiased, reflective, ethical, and steady-tempered man.
Who would hate that?
“I thought you guys were madly in love?” he pressed.
“We got there eventually. But I’ll have you know that I was quite a Casanova in my day.”
Soren bit back a grin. “Is that so?”
“I know what you’re thinking, and I may not look it now. But when I was your age, I was also a bit of a scoundrel,” the judge added, that hint of a smile blooming into an ear to ear grin.
“Oh, really?” he asked, fascinated by the admission.
“That was before I was appointed to the bench. I was a hot-headed prosecutor and a real man about town…until Alice. I thought I knew it all back then. Luckily, Alice showed me that I didn’t. I didn’t know a damn thing about love. I asked her out thirty-seven times before she agreed to have dinner with me. And then when she relented, she still had a condition.”
“What was it?” he asked as a light snow began to fall.
“She told me I had to be myself on our date—not the cocky litigator or the dirty dog of a womanizer—those were her words, mind you, but she wasn’t off the mark. She said she wasn’t interested in that husk of a man. And you know, I wasn’t that interested in being him either,” the judge finished.
Soren nodded, unable to speak. He knew a thing or two about putting on a facade.
“You see, Scooter, Alice made me work, and she helped me see that the best kind of love is the kind you have to fight for, the kind that shows you who you really are. Real love makes you want to do better—be better—and not for yourself. You do it because life isn’t about taking. It’s about giving. And, good heavens, did Alice make me work.”
The judge gestured for them to start walking as Soren felt a tightness clench his heart.
What kind of man was Soren Christopher Traeger Rudolph?
Not the kind the judge would be proud of—not if he saw the empty life he lived when he was away from the Abbotts.
“Why are you telling me this, Judge?” he asked, his voice barely a rasp.
“I’ve known you a long time, Scooter, and I think you could use an Alice.”
Soren released a bark of a laugh. “I’m not really the Alice type.”
“No?” the judge replied with the ghost of a smirk.
“No, there’s no Alice out there for me,” he replied, the words tasting of regret.
The judge nodded. “Perhaps not, or maybe you haven’t met your Alice. But I hope you know, no matter what happens, my family has always treasured our time with you.”
What was this past tense “treasured” talk?
“Judge, what are you saying?” he asked as a bell rang out in the distance.
“I found a spot!” Cole cried from beyond a smattering of Aspens. “Let’s put the flag here.”
“Dad, Scooter! It’s go time!” Scott called, jogging toward them with Cole and the others close behind.
“Scooter, take the south side,” Tom said, pointing off in the distance. “I’ll go north with Uncle Russ. Everyone else, guard the flag.”
“Let the games begin!” the judge said, taking Cole’s hand and heading off with the rest of the team.
And then he was alone.
“What the fuck was that?” he whispered.
He’d had countless conversations with the judge over the years, and none of them had gone anything like that.
He trudged through the snow, his head spinning.
He could barely tell up from down at this point as the far-off squeals and shrieks peppered the air in the distance. His thoughts were all over the place. The Angels, Bridget, Tom’s damned wedding, and this godforsaken town were starting to take a toll on him. He kept walking, grateful for the quiet, when something small and white whizzed past his head. He looked around, but he couldn’t see anyone. The light was fading fast, and in the shade of a grove of towering blue spruce, he looked for the person who’d thrown the snowball that had passed only inches from his head but didn’t see a soul.
“Hello?” he called, shielding his eyes from the falling snow.
No reply…until…smack!
Smack, smack, smack, crack!
Five snowballs hit him in rapid succession—two to the head and three to the shoulder.
He raised his hand defensively.
“Who is that?” he called, bending down and scrambling to make a snowball with the damn ice scoop salad tongs.
He stilled as movement flashed in his peripheral vision.
Then a crack.
A crunch.
And…pow, pow, pow, pow!
Another round of blistering snowballs hit him square in the head.
Again!
This must be what it’s like to live inside a Slurpee machine!
Cold snow slid down his face, and he dropped the snowball maker. Stumbling back a few feet, he lost his footing and toppled over.
Fucking fantastic! With his luck, Carly was his assailant, and he could add having an eight-year-old little girl knock him flat on his ass. If this day wasn’t already a giant shit show, this would be the icing on the cake.
He ran his hand down his shivering, wet face, but before he could reach for his snowball maker to retaliate, Bridget, not Carly, appeared. She jumped out from behind a tree and pinned him back onto the ground.
“What the hell are you doing? I’m already down! You got me with four hundred snowballs! Are you crazy?”
That storm he’d seen in her eyes now raged. “Am I crazy? No, Scooter, I’m furious.”
“With me?”
“Of course, with you!”
“What did I do now?”
She’d been stewing since the Angels came by the shop, and that exercise and fresh air he’d hoped would have helped her move on, clearly hadn’t. Unfortunately for him, she looked more pissed off.
She held a snowball in her hand, poised to nail him in the chest like a baker phenomenon turned snowball ninja. “How can you do it? How can you go out of your way to hurt so many people? I let a lot go, Scooter. I didn’t even yell at my boyfriend when I caught him in bed with a woman who was wearing my lingerie. I let Gaston take advantage of me. He paid me nothing to do the job of three bakers and a store manager. But you, you take the cake. Literally. You don’t want to help Cupid Bakery or for Tom and Lori to get married. You are a matrimonial meddler and the killer of cake all wrapped into one!”
Matrimonial meddler? Killer of cake?
He’d been called a lot of things in his day, and perhaps she had him on the meddling, but killer of cake wasn’t something he’d ever imagined anyone would call him in a million years.
He needed to get her talking like a normal human.
He glanced at the perfectly formed snowball clutched in her gloved hand. “I’m not saying this to piss you off, but I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about with the whole lingerie and Gaston rant?”
She shook her head and released a frustrated sigh. “I should apologize for that part. That stuff doesn’t have anything to do with you. There’s just a lot making me mad right about now—and I’m not the kind of person who gets mad. Somehow, you’ve turned me into a lunatic!”
“I’ve turned you into a lunatic?” he threw back, exasperation woven into each syllable.
“Absolutely,” she replied, eyes blazing. “What you’re doing to the Angels and Cupid Bakery is pure scroogery. You get the chance to save the day with your work, to help people who dedicated their lives to creating a bakery that brought joy to its customers and community, and you do nothing. You’re no Rudolph.”
“It’s who I am,” he answered, a little, no, a lot more truthfully than he’d expected.
“
It doesn’t have to be, Soren,” she whispered as her words hung in the chilly air.
Chests heaving and the breath hot between them, they stared at each other.
“You mentioned lingerie,” he said, needing more than anything to change the trajectory of a conversation that was hitting too damn close to home.
She glanced away and released a wry bark of a laugh. “It wasn’t officially my lingerie. I saw it in a bag at my ex-boyfriend’s house. I assumed it was a gift for me. But we’re not talking about me. We’re talking about you.”
“You’re the one who said it,” he replied with a cocky twist to his lips.
“Soren!” she chided.
He dropped the arrogant facade. “I’m sorry you caught your boyfriend cheating on you.”
She set the snowball on the ground. “I should have known it wasn’t a relationship that was going anywhere. He’d never kissed me like…”
“Like what?” He stared into her truthful eyes, allowing him to see her very soul.
“Like, how you kiss me. Like, I’m all you’re thinking about.”
Christ! How true that was.
“I shouldn’t have said that,” she replied with a slight shudder.
He pulled off his glove and cupped her cheek in his hand, his heart hammering in his chest. “You’re cold.”
She gave him an adorable cringe of a grin as she brushed a bit of snow from his hair. “You’ve got to be colder. I got you pretty good.”
That was the understatement of the century.
He sat up but didn’t release her from his lap. “I’m not cold when I’m with you, Bridget.”
He didn’t mean temperature-wise. He wasn’t the cold-hearted man he despised when he was with her. She was light and warmth and gooey-delicious goodness, and he wanted to bask in her beauty and indulge in her honey-sweet radiance. He wanted her spirit to overtake his lonely soul and replace it with nights tangled together on the cusp of ecstasy and days when all he had to do was look up to find her smiling at him.
“You’re not?” she asked, twisting one of his dark curls between her fingers.
He ran his thumb across her bottom lip, then leaned in, powerless to fight the forces that drew them together.
“What is this, Soren? What’s going on with us?” she whispered, her breath warm against his cheek as the words went straight to the darkest part of his heart, threatening to let in the light.
But he couldn’t let her in there—not where the damaged little boy dwelled.
He pulled back a fraction. “It’s nothing.”
“Nothing?” she repeated with such sorrow in her eyes, he had to look away.
He shook his head. “No, it’s—”
“Over. The game is over,” Tom said, walking over with the judge, then glanced at them on the ground. “What are you two doing?”
“Nothing,” Bridget answered, borrowing his word, her voice void of warmth as she scrambled to her feet. “I hit Scooter a few times with the snowballs. I was making sure he was okay.”
Tom reached out his hand and helped her up, then his friend turned to him.
“What would you think of you and I breaking off from the group and grabbing dinner in the Village? We can call Dan when we’re ready to head back to the mountain house. I feel like I’ve barely gotten to see you, Scooter. It’s a pretty low-key night. Right, Birdie?” Tom asked, meeting Bridget’s gaze with his trademark good guy grin.
Bridget glanced between the men, and he knew exactly what she was thinking. There was no way in hell the wedding Hun wanted him out of her sight. But what was she to say? Tom was the one initiating this guys’ night.
Perhaps not all was lost.
“Walk with me, Birdie. The ladies won, and Carly is demanding ice cream up at the mountain house to celebrate,” Judge said, offering her his arm.
Bridget glanced over her shoulder at them as the judge led her toward the course’s exit.
And then, it was the two of them—Scooter and Tommy—just like it had been all through high school, college, and grad school. And life felt…off, as if something had whittled its way into their usual rhythm.
He shook off the strange feeling. It was nothing. He was still recovering from a Bridget Dasher encounter. That could make any man question his sanity. After a couple burgers and many beers, he’d be right as rain, or snow in this place.
“Lori didn’t have any objections?” he asked as they entered the town square which only looked more North Pole-ish to see it freshly kissed with a dusting of snow.
“Not at all. I told you, Scooter, she’s amazing.”
“Right, sure,” he answered in a tone that screamed, I call bullshit.
Tom pointed toward a Swiss chalet two-story structure with Kringle Tavern illuminated in white lights. Like everything else in this town, the place looked like it was straight out of Santaville.
“Russ says the Kringle Tavern is the happening place in town,” Tom said as they crossed the square and entered the dark, yet mindbogglingly wholesome-feeling tavern.
They grabbed a booth looking out onto the square. He stared out the window at the goddamn photo booth as Tom asked the waitress to bring them a couple of burgers and two pints of beer. He’d been in this town no more than two days, and Bridget Dasher was already everywhere.
“I need to ask you something, man,” Tom said, leaning onto his elbows.
“Shoot.”
“Is everything okay with Birdie?”
Oh, for fuck’s sake! He couldn’t escape her.
“What do you mean?”
Tom shrugged. “I don’t know. It seems like there’s something weird between you two.”
Weird was an understatement, but he’d barely had a moment to talk with Tom away from a Dasher sister and wasn’t about to waste it.
“Maybe the weirdness you’re feeling is your own?” he tossed back, playing devil’s advocate like they used to do in law school.
“This again?” Tom said with a sigh as the waitress set two giant steins of beer on the table.
Soren took a sip. “Think about it. You’ve never been one to rush into anything—and now you’re going balls to the wall toward something as huge as marriage?”
“I’m not rushing.”
“You’re making a decision without all the facts.”
“What facts are more important than love and…”
“And nothing,” he interrupted. “I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with love. Fall in love ten times over. I don’t give a damn. It’s marriage. It’s a big deal, and as your best friend, I’m telling you, I think you should wait. You don’t want to make a mistake that would hurt Lori, would you?”
“Two Dasher burgers, boys,” the waitress said, setting the platters teeming with fries and burgers on the table.
“You’re kidding?” he said, staring at Tom, but the waitress answered instead.
“Nope, I’m not kidding. It’s Dasher night here at the tavern. All our burgers are named after Santa’s reindeer. Dasher’s a little spicy. Watch out for those jalapeños!”
“But there are eight reindeer: Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, and Vixen. Comet, and Cupid, Donner, and Blitzen. Well, nine with Rudolph,” Tom replied.
“We had to nix Blitzen. Too many folks came in to get blitzed on Blitzen night. You’ve never seen unruly until you’ve seen a herd of drunk Santas.”
Soren bit back a grin and shared an amused look with Tom. “I can imagine.”
There! They were back—sharing inside jokes and shooting the shit!
“And the Rudolph burger is only available on Christmas Eve, of course,” the woman answered before heading off to check on another table.
“Your namesake’s got a burger,” Tom joked, but his smile didn’t reach his eyes.
Something was on the guy’s mind. Soren nodded, giving his friend space to talk.
Tom tapped the table pensively. “Listen, Scooter, I want to tell you something that I haven’t told anyone.”
This
was it. He could see it in Tom’s expression. Despite all the Lori’s the one talk, he wasn’t completely sure.
“You can trust me with anything,” he replied.
Tom nodded, then drained his beer stein in one long gulp.
This had to be big. Soren leaned forward.
Tom set the empty glass on the table and stared at it as if he were rehearsing something in his mind.
“I’m just going to say it. Not even Birdie knows this.”
“Just say it, Tommy. You know I’m behind you no matter what.”
Tom released a slow breath. “I hoped you’d say that.”
“Well, what’s weighing so heavy?” he pressed.
“Lori’s pregnant. I’m going to be a dad. I had to share it with you, Soren. And I could use a night of getting hammered with my best friend,” he revealed with a glazed, dumbfounded grin.
“Pregnant?” Soren repeated as the blood in his veins went ice cold.
No fucking wonder he was marrying her, and no wonder Tom wanted to knock back a few.
“Life will never be the same,” Tom added, shaking his head.
Soren stared at the man. No shit!
Now, it was his turn to chug the beer. What the hell was he supposed to do now?
The waitress stopped at their tables and assessed the empty steins. “You boys must be thirsty. Can I get you two another round?”
Was this their last round? Had the judge figured out what was going on with Tom and Lori? Was that why he’d gotten the treasured moments speech?
Soren pulled his credit card from his wallet and set it on the table. “Open up a tab and keep the rounds coming. We’re drinking until we can’t see straight,” he said, doing his best to keep his tone even.
“I’m in!” Tom replied, slapping the table.
The sound reverberated like a door slamming shut.
And that door was the one that led to the only place he’d ever felt whole. He looked at Tom and wondered if that’s what his father had looked like when his mother had dropped the news of her surprise pregnancy.
A pregnancy neither wanted, producing a bundled burden they were wholly unprepared to meet.
He let the ice coursing through his body temper his reaction.
Not Your Average Vixen: A Christmas Romance Page 19
