Chasing Christmas Eve

by Jill Shalvis

  She really had fallen in love with him. The truth was, she’d never really thought about love before—the heart-pounding, can’t-live-without-you kind of love that grows in the pit of the stomach and spreads outward until you’re warm all over. The kind of love you know is real because you’ve got not one single teeny, tiny doubt that he’d be there for you, no matter what.

  Maybe she’d never given thought to love for herself because she’d never seen her mom in that kind of relationship. Or maybe it was because she wasn’t really sure she believed in that kind of relationship.

  But something had changed, shifted inside her, because suddenly she did believe in love. And more than that, she wanted it for herself. She wanted what she’d had with Spence. Only she didn’t want it just for a vacation from her life.

  She wanted it for her life.

  “I shouldn’t have run,” she said.

  “You can’t help it,” her mom said, coming into the room. “It’s in your blood.”

  Colbie looked up. “Hey, Mom.”

  Her mom smiled and hugged Colbie. “I thought I was dreaming when I heard your voice!” She tightened her grip and Colbie patted her on the back, trying to drag air into her lungs. “Can’t. Breathe.”

  “I know.” Her mom loosened her grip only very slightly. “But you came! It’s a Christmas miracle!” Stepping back from Colbie, her eyes filled with huge tears.

  “Oh, Mom. It’s okay, don’t cry.”

  Her mom cupped Colbie’s face. “Thank you. Really. Thank you for coming when we called. You didn’t have to, and we shouldn’t have asked, but it’s really great to see you—no matter why you’re really here.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I had my cards read and was told that you’ve fallen deeply in love but that you ran from it.”

  “Mom.” Colbie shook her head. “I told you to stop spending your money on that stuff. You don’t need to have your cards read to live your life.”

  “Maybe not, but how else will I hear about your life? You don’t talk to me. So is it true, then? Did you run away from love? I mean, it would make sense, given that you’re here so quickly without any fuss.”

  Colbie sighed.

  “Oh no, Colbie. Really? I didn’t want to be right on this one, although I admit, it does make me feel better that you’re running away from your man rather than racing home to deal with us, who don’t deserve you.”

  “Mom, I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Huh. Shock. But maybe you’ll listen instead. Follow me.” They went to the living room, where her mom pointed to what she’d been doing before Colbie had come home.

  Looking at old photo albums, like she did every Christmas. They were from the years before Colbie’s birth and right after. The old leather one on top was opened to a page that held an eight-by-ten picture taken on her parents’ wedding day.

  They were smiling and looked happy.

  And young.

  “Mom,” Colbie said gently. “Why are you doing this to yourself? He left us. He doesn’t deserve your regrets and sadness.”

  “Yeah, about that . . .” Her mom paused. “He didn’t leave us, Colbie.”

  Colbie met her gaze. “I don’t understand.”

  Her mom sighed. “Sit. Sit,” she said again, patting the seat of the chair next to her. “We met at a frat party.”

  “I thought you didn’t go to college.”

  “I didn’t,” her mom said. “But my friends and I were looking for our MRS degree. Do you know what that means?”

  “That you were looking for husbands,” Colbie said, not liking where this was going.

  “I met your dad at the first frat party I ever went to. He was trouble, of course, I could see it in his eyes, but I didn’t care.”

  “And by trouble,” Colbie said, “you mean . . .”

  “He had no interest in marriage or a family. Absolutely zero. But when I got pregnant that night, he actually stood by me. Married me to give you a name.” Her mom’s eyes overfilled and a few tears escaped. “We did our best, but you know how I am. I self-destruct my happiness, always have. I did the same with us. By the time I got pregnant again, we weren’t doing well. I knew it was over, that I had to leave. I told myself I was doing all of us a favor. I was leaving him before he could leave us, that’s all. Still, it was wrong. I know that now, and if he’d ever tried to see you kids, even once, I’d have swallowed my pride and let him be a part of your lives. But he never did.”

  Colbie just stared at her in shock. “You left him.”

  “Yes. And I know. Believe me, I know what a shitty mom I was to ever let you think otherwise. I was a shitty mom in other ways too. I didn’t teach you to enjoy life. Instead I had you always looking ahead for problems, letting you fix everything. But that’s not life. Life is in the little things, you see?”

  “No,” Colbie said flatly and stood up.

  Her mom caught her hand. “You gotta catch the moments, the precious, good, amazing moments of life. You gotta go after them and hold on for all you’re worth. And when someone comes along who loves you for you—and not because of what you do or because you’re lonely, but because they love you—you hold on, Colbie. You hold on like you’ve never held on before. Not because you need it for your life, but because it complements your life.” She stood up. She was a good head shorter than Colbie but she put her hands on her hips and managed to glare up at her daughter. “Now, I can see why you’d ignore any advice I might have to offer because your stubbornness is second only to mine, but if you trust me on only one thing, trust this. I’ve been there, done that, and stole the T-shirt, and it wasn’t all that much fun.”

  “Mom —”

  “So don’t walk away from what’s right for you,” her mom said, her voice more serious than Colbie had ever heard. “Although you ran more than walked.”

  Colbie sighed.

  “Baby, if you only listen to me once in your entire life, please, God, let it be this one time.” She swallowed hard. “Don’t make my mistakes. Okay? Don’t let happiness take a backseat. Happiness makes the world go around.” She held Colbie’s gaze, her own fierce and suspiciously shiny. “Don’t be a runner.” And then she gave one jerky nod and walked away.

  “I’m not a runner,” Colbie said to the room.

  But she was. And she didn’t like what that said about her. Maybe she’d known Spence for only a short amount of time but some things happened in an instant.

  Things like . . . standing in a fountain, water dripping off your face as you fell in love with the man standing there with you . . .

  Her phone vibrated with a text. Spence.

  My life doesn’t work without you in it.

  She stared at the words until they blurred. “I have to go back to San Francisco,” she whispered.

  Her mom stuck her head back in, tears in her eyes as she nodded. “Yes! You have to go back.”

  Chapter 29

  #FishAndChips

  Spence tried to bury himself in work but there was a heaviness to his daily grind that he knew from experience was grief.

  Only on a whole new level.

  He’d finally learned how to balance his life and then half of that life had walked away, leaving him out of whack all over again.

  The gang tried to cheer him up, inviting him places, bringing him his favorite junk food . . . The guys even took him fishing, and though it’d been fucking freezing and Joe had gone accidentally swimming and nearly lost his nuts, it hadn’t distracted Spence.

  When they got back, Spence holed up and gave work what he could, and a few days later, he texted Caleb:

  Spence:

  I’ve got some shit figured out.

  Caleb:

  Awesome. So you went to New York after all.

  Spence:

  What the hell are you talking about? I meant the battery and weight distribution for the drone project. I think I’m close. Meet me at Marin Headlands.

  Caleb:

  Du
de, you’re thinking about work on Christmas Eve?

  Spence:

  Shit. I forgot.

  Caleb:

  Forgot what? Your brain or that it’s Christmas Eve?

  Spence:

  Marin Headlands. One hour.

  An hour later, Spence stood at the top of Marin Headlands, Caleb a few feet away, the two of them braced against the heavy gusts as they watched the drone fight its way through the wind like it wasn’t even there.

  Another heavy gust sent them both back a step and Caleb’s baseball cap off toward Kansas as he looked down at his phone. “That one was seventy-five miles per hour.”

  They both went back to concentrating on the drone until it was out of sight over the water. They switched their gazes to the tablet on the controls, watching as the drone, several miles out now, kept going without draining the battery. Twenty miles out and it still sent back both clear visuals and clear sound as it executed a hold-your-breath maneuver beneath the bridge, landing on a buoy being battered from all sides by the white-capped, frothy, unforgiving bay.

  “Go farther,” Caleb said.

  Spence did.

  “Forty miles,” Caleb said some time later. “Battery?” The drone, still relaying back a picture-perfect visual and sound, came to the bridge again, hovered, dropped down onto a buoy, and . . . stayed there, perfectly balanced.

  “Hold it there,” Caleb said, the two of them glued to the screen. “Wait for that incoming surge of waves—do you see them?”

  Yeah. Spence saw them. They waited. Watched while the buoy was hit by wave after wave. Twice the drone did as it’d been programmed to do when things got too rough. It ascended, hovered in place, and then lowered back down, once again maintaining its position.

  “Not even a wobble,” Spence said in marvel. They both looked at the tablet. “And the satellite reception held through the wind and water interference.”

  Meaning if there’d been a doctor on this end trying to see and speak to a patient on the other end, they would’ve been able to maintain their connection.

  “Make the drop,” Caleb said.

  Spence executed the command and the drone rolled out a weatherproof, impact-protected box that was perfectly set on the tip of the buoy. The landing zone that was maybe six inches by six inches.

  And the box landed right in the center, precisely weighted so that even with the swells hitting the buoy, making it rise and fall, the box didn’t shift.

  Spence worked the controls and had the drone reverse the process, setting down and scooping the box back up.

  “Still won’t stop someone from stealing the meds,” Caleb said. “Or snatching the drone.”

  “We only make the drop after confirming by satellite that there’s an authorized receiver on site.” Spence shook his head. “That’s the best we’ve got. Patented long-use battery and unfailing connection through our app.”

  Caleb nodded and turned to Spence, triumph gleaming through his smile. “You did it, man. Amazing.”

  Yeah, and satisfaction burned through him at the triumph. Satisfaction, but not elation.

  The last time he’d felt a surge of a positive emotion had been when he’d been buried deep inside Colbie, feeling like he’d found himself in her fathomless gaze, in her warm arms, buried in her body.

  “Storm moving in,” Caleb said, tilting his face to the sky. “It’s a good night to cozy up to a woman with some good brandy and catch a sappy movie on TV.”

  Spence arched a brow.

  “Hey, women like sappy,” Caleb said.

  Colbie liked sappy. The thought of cozying up to her in front of a blazing fire, wrapping her up close as a movie made her tear up, comforting her, making those tears vanish . . . “You ever been dumped?” he asked.

  Caleb laughed ruefully. “Oh yeah.”

  “Did you chase after them?”

  “The hot ones,” Caleb said.

  Spence sighed.

  “Listen,” Caleb said on a laugh. “Honestly? I can make a woman happy. Keeping her that way is another thing entirely and definitely not one of my superpowers. So I’m the wrong one to give advice.”

  Spence got that. He knew he’d made Colbie happy. Hanging out with her had been effortless. So was making her laugh. And when he got her in bed, she’d absolutely communicated how he’d made her feel there . . . In fact, he could still feel the indentions of her nails in his ass.

  “You could talk to Archer,” Caleb suggested. “He’s managed to snag the most difficult woman who ever walked this earth. I mean, Elle actually smiles now. Get him to tell you the secret to that and bottle it.”

  Spence wasn’t any good at asking for help but when they got back to his building, he found himself at Archer’s office.

  Molly, Archer’s receptionist, shook her head. “He’s in, but he’s . . . busy.”

  “Client meeting?”

  “An Elle ‘meeting.’ ” She put meeting in air quotes.

  “She went in there half an hour ago and no one’s seen hide nor hair of them since.”

  There was a muted sound, a sort of thunk, like something—or a bunch of somethings—falling off a desk.

  Joe stuck his head out his office door and glared at his younger sister Molly. “I thought he ordered corkboard for the walls to add insulation so I don’t have to hear what’s going on in there.”

  Molly, who could hold her own with the kind of guys she worked for—which was to say completely badass—narrowed her eyes at his tone. “Hasn’t come in yet,” she said, her own tone cool, with an added watch it implied.

  “Shit.” Joe vanished back into his office and then they heard him crank up some music to window-rattling levels.

  Spence left and hit the elevator. When the doors opened to Willa and Keane locked in an embrace, apparently checking each other’s tonsils, he pivoted on a heel and took the stairs.

  This sucked. He’d just made an incredible work breakthrough and he had no one to share it with. It felt . . . empty. He’d been alone before, plenty of times. In fact, he’d been alone for most of his life, but he’d never felt this hollow.

  He strode through the courtyard, hell-bent on key lime pie, which surely would ease the gnawing pain in his gut.

  Except it wasn’t hunger and he knew it—it was something he hadn’t seen coming. Heartache.

  Halfway to the coffee shop he caught sight of his grandpa sitting on a bench staring into the fountain like it held the answers to the mysteries of the universe.

  Spence had a short argument with himself, which he lost. Changing directions, he headed to the old man’s side.

  Eddie didn’t look over at him, just kept staring into the water. “Hear you screwed things up pretty good, boy genius.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “I hear all. I know all,” Eddie said sagely. The guy’s white hair was standing straight up in his best Christopher Lloyd imitation and in spite of the cold, he wore only a Deadhead T-shirt and tie-dyed Bermuda shorts.