Christmas in Cambria

by Linda Seed

With a groan of regret, he tore himself away from her and went back inside to help clean up—as promised—and to say goodbye to Jesse and Gavin.

  When Quinn was gone, the living room was tidied up, and the movie was over, Delilah told the boys it was time for bed.

  They did the usual complaining combined with the customary pleas for water, books, and more time.

  She finally got Gavin tucked in with Waffles beside him, then she went into Jesse’s room to kiss him and wish him goodnight.

  “Oh.” Jesse perked up as he remembered something. “Dad called on your cell phone while you and Quinn were outside. I answered it, even though it’s your phone, because I saw his name. I hope that’s okay.”

  “Of course it is.” She sat down on the edge of the bed and smoothed his hair back from his forehead. “Did you and he have a good talk?”

  Jesse nodded vigorously, his eyes wide. “Yeah. I told him all about the stuff we did today. I told him about the tree and the ornaments and stuff, and the movie and the hot cocoa. And I told him all about Quinn.”

  Delilah tried not to wince at that. “That’s great, sweetie.”

  “He said you should call him back because he has stuff he wants to talk about.”

  “Did he?”

  I’ll just bet he’s got stuff he wants to talk about.

  He was going to give her hell about Quinn. Well, that was fine. She didn’t owe him anything—not anymore. Still, she didn’t look forward to the conversation.

  She kissed Jesse, then turned out the light on her way out of the room.

  In the living room, she picked up her cell phone from a side table and found a text message from Mitch.

  Call me ASAP.

  She closed her eyes and said a silent curse.

  No sense putting it off. She stepped onto the front porch so the boys wouldn’t hear the conversation from their rooms and called her ex.

  “Delilah.” He already sounded pissed.

  “Hi, Mitch. You called?”

  “Yeah, I did. I talked to Jesse more than an hour ago—I’ve been waiting for you to call.”

  She shifted her weight from one foot to the other and leaned against the porch railing. “Why are you even up? It’s, what, six a.m. in Paris?”

  “Don’t change the subject.”

  “What is the subject, Mitch?”

  “The subject, Delilah, is the man you brought around my children. That’s the subject. Who the hell is he, and what’s going on?”

  Delilah felt her body tense, and she reflected, just for a moment, on how much of her marriage she’d spent in that state of coiled discomfort. It was a feeling specifically linked to her ex-husband.

  “None of that is your business,” she told him.

  “The hell it isn’t. Those are my sons you’ve got hanging out with some random asshole.”

  “Well,” Delilah said dryly, “they spent the first several years of their lives hanging out with you. I don’t see how this could be any worse.”

  “Delilah, goddamn it …”

  “You left me for someone else, Mitch. You don’t have the high ground, so don’t you dare pretend you do.”

  “Who is he?” Mitch said again. “Are you fucking him?”

  “I’m finished with this conversation.”

  “We’ll see about that,” Mitch growled at her. “We’ll just see.”

  Chapter 22

  Quinn could feel himself getting more and more deeply entangled in his relationship with Delilah, but he didn’t feel much motivation to do anything about it.

  Once you started doing things like decorating Christmas trees with someone, you were headed for serious relationship territory—there was no question about it. With most of the women he’d dated over the years, that would have been cause for panic and immediate evasive action.

  With Delilah, though, he felt the strong urge to just let it happen. His only regret about his day of Christmas fun with the Ballard family was that he’d had to go home at the end of it.

  The part where he’d offered to climb out the window in the morning hadn’t been his proudest moment as a man, but, hell, it would have been worth it if she’d said yes.

  Even if the neighbors spotted him falling into the azaleas.

  This thing was more work than most of his previous girlfriends had been—any time you got together with someone who had kids, it was more work—but he had the feeling Delilah was worth the effort.

  When he got home that night, he went into his empty house, turned on the lights, then turned on some music—quietly enough that it wouldn’t disturb Mrs. Foster—but the place still felt sad and lonely without the noise and raucous activity of the Ballard family.

  He went to the kitchen, got a beer out of the refrigerator, opened it, then sat on his sofa and drank a swallow.

  He had to win her over, and he didn’t have a lot of time to do it. She was planning to go all the way across the country in less than a month unless he could give her a reason not to.

  Or unless he could give her a reason to invite him to go with her.

  Had it really come to that? Was he really thinking of picking up his life and traveling from one coast to another for a woman he’d just met?

  Yes. Yes, he was.

  It wasn’t like there was anything left for him here on the West Coast.

  It wasn’t like his own family wanted anything to do with him. Well, they did, but only if he made it profitable for them. He wasn’t going to buy his family’s love, so where did that leave him?

  It left him longing to be a part of something greater than himself. It left him wanting to have people who cared for him and for whom he could care in turn.

  Ah, shit.

  He knew it wasn’t healthy to be jumping into something so fast. Especially when there were kids involved—kids who’d already been hurt by their father and who didn’t need to be disappointed by a man in their lives again.

  Except, he was pretty sure he wouldn’t disappoint them if they gave him a chance to show them the truth of who he was.

  He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and texted Delilah.

  I had a really great time today.

  He watched his screen as he saw the notification that she’d read his message.

  A moment later, the phone pinged with her response.

  I did, too. Thank you for showing the boys a good time.

  He thought about what to say and carefully composed the text.

  It was my pleasure. Speaking of pleasure, when do you think we could have some time for just the two of us? I’m not done showing people a good time.

  There was still a chance she’d pull back—still a chance she would distance herself from him. She’d been hurt badly and recently, and though none of that had been his fault, she had to be skittish. She had to be tempted to protect herself from anything resembling love.

  Love.

  Now that he’d thought the word, there was no escaping it.

  When her text came in, he half expected it to be a brush-off. Instead, she wrote, I’ll see if I can get Dolly across the street to watch the boys one night this week.

  I can’t wait, he wrote.

  He really couldn’t—not if he wanted to win her over before January first. He didn’t have any time to waste.

  Delilah kept telling herself to slow down. She couldn’t let this thing with Quinn get out of hand.

  Still, the idea of having an evening alone with him was undeniably appealing. She called Dolly the next day, reassuring her that she could find another sitter if Dolly wasn’t up to watching the boys.

  Dolly said she wouldn’t hear of it and immediately began planning what she was going to cook and what activities she and the kids might do when they were together.

  With that taken care of, Delilah texted Quinn to decide which evening they’d go out.

  As soon as possible, he wrote. It was hard to stay on my best behavior with the boys around.

  It had been hard for Delilah, too, though she
’d tried to pretend it wasn’t.

  They set the time and day, and Delilah told Dolly and the boys about her plans. Well, she didn’t tell them all of her plans.

  Some parts were better kept private.

  “This Quinn thing is getting out of control,” Delilah told Roxanne on the phone the day before her date. “I mean, it was just supposed to be fun. But now he’s buying Christmas trees and taking us for s’mores, and … and taking me out on dates.”

  “Horrors,” Roxanne said.

  “Be serious. This is serious!”

  “If you’re that worried about it, why did you agree to go out with him again?” Roxanne’s point was a good one, and Delilah didn’t have a good answer.

  “It’s just … I don’t know. I’m having a good time, and I haven’t had a good time in so long I’ve forgotten what it’s like.”

  “Well, there you go.”

  Delilah was irritated that her sister didn’t seem to realize how dire the situation was. Maybe if she brought Mitch into it, that would give things the sense of impending doom that they deserved.

  “Jesse told Mitch about Quinn,” she said.

  “Oops.”

  “Yeah.”

  “So, what happened? How did he react?”

  “He said he doesn’t want his sons hanging out with, and I quote, ‘some random asshole.’”

  “So much better that they should hang out with him, the asshole we know,” Roxanne said.

  “That’s pretty much what I said.”

  Then Roxanne asked the question that had been on Delilah’s mind since Mitch had called.

  “I mean, do you think he’s going to do anything?”

  “He said, ‘We’ll just see about that.’ About Quinn being in the boys’ lives. So, it really sounded like he plans to do something.”

  “Or he could just be trying to intimidate you,” Roxanne said.

  If he’d still been living near Delilah—hell, if he’d still been living on the same continent—she might have worried more about what Mitch might do regarding Quinn. But he couldn’t make trouble for her all the way from Paris.

  Could he?

  “He’s a lawyer,” Delilah pointed out. “A really good one. The kind big corporations hire to help them screw the IRS. If he can screw the IRS, Roxanne, he can probably make trouble for me if he wants to.”

  “He doesn’t really want to,” Roxanne reassured her. “He just wants to bluster around and make noise so you’ll do whatever he wants. He’s a bully, that’s all.”

  Delilah hoped she was right and that his veiled threat wouldn’t come to anything. He didn’t want Delilah anymore—he’d made that clear. And he didn’t want his sons in his life, either, because if he did, he wouldn’t have moved thousands of miles away from them.

  What could he possibly hope to gain from fighting her on this?

  “You see what I mean?” Delilah asked her sister. “This whole thing is a can of worms.”

  “Delilah. If you don’t want to date this guy, then don’t do it. But don’t you dare let him go because a weasel like Mitch is trying to intimidate you. And, while I’m at it, don’t you dare let him go because you’re scared to take a chance. I raised you better than that.”

  “You’re two years younger than me,” Delilah pointed out.

  “Whatever. I’m still right.”

  Chapter 23

  Delilah already knew this would be a sex date. If she hadn’t known it, the fact that Quinn cooked dinner for her at his place would have been an unmistakable signal.

  At least, she thought he cooked—until she spotted some takeout containers from Indigo Moon in his kitchen trash can.

  He’d made everything beautiful. His house was spotless and inviting, the table was set with cloth napkins and candles, he’d chilled a bottle of Chardonnay, and a vase of flowers—yellow calla lilies—was displayed on the countertop that separated the kitchen from the dining area.

  She’d almost wanted to let his deception go, but once he’d plated the food with the care of a chef and placed it in front of her, she couldn’t help herself.

  “This looks wonderful,” she said, admiring the seafood fettuccine on her plate.

  “Ah, well.” He waved her off. “It’s just something I put together.”

  “This must have been a lot of work. And yet you managed to get the kitchen spotless before I came,” she said.

  “I just … planned. I planned it out, is all.” He was starting to blush a little.

  She took a bite of her pasta and moaned with pleasure. “God, this is delicious. You know what it reminds me of? A dish I ate recently at … what was it called? Indigo Moon?”

  He scowled at her. “You saw the takeout boxes.”

  “Yes. Yes, I did.”

  He sighed. “Is this going to affect my chances of getting lucky? Because I put a lot of thought into this even if I didn’t—”

  She leaned over and interrupted him, pressing her lips to his. As she pulled away, his eyes were still closed, his lips still gently pursed.

  “Okay then.” He opened his eyes as though he were waking up after a long nap. “Okay.”

  “It’s not that I didn’t want to put in the effort,” he said later as they lay in his bed in the glow of the candles they’d brought in from the dining room. “It’s just that I can’t cook. And I wanted this to be nice, so…”

  “It’s all right.” She rolled onto her side to face him and gave him a long, lingering kiss. “It really was nice, so you achieved your goal.”

  “Well, good.” He ran his hand up her arm to her shoulder and back down again. “But the dinner wasn’t the nicest part.”

  He hadn’t wanted to get Delilah into bed to satisfy his physical desires. Well, okay—yes, he had. But it wasn’t only that. He’d just wanted to be close to her.

  Something about Delilah made him feel comforted and warm and well-tended.

  So, yes, he’d wanted to sleep with her, but more than that, he’d wanted to be one with her.

  And, yeah, that sounded wussy as hell, but there it was.

  He’d thought he wanted to keep his freedom and avoid complications. He’d thought he wanted to keep things simple and low-risk.

  He hadn’t known what he wanted, because it turned out he didn’t want freedom or simplicity or to keep himself unburdened by someone else’s baggage.

  He just wanted her.

  He didn’t think she was in the same place as he was—not yet—but he’d get her there. The whole thing felt too right for him to believe otherwise.

  Then again, maybe this wasn’t about Delilah at all. Maybe he was just so damned lonely since his family had cut him loose that he was looking for a substitute family he could belong to.

  If that were the case, it would mean he was using her—even if he didn’t realize it or intend it.

  Well, that was why you were supposed to date someone for a while before deciding on whether to commit to them. The problem was, he didn’t have time. He only had until January first.

  “So. How do you like Cambria?” he asked, feeling her out. If there was any chance she might stay …

  “It’s lovely. Really. The beaches and the forests … the boys and I saw a flock of turkeys yesterday.”

  He could hear the hesitation in her voice. “But?”

  She shrugged. “But after this, we have nowhere to go. I have to decide what happens next. We can live at my parents’ place until we figure it out, but after that …”

  “What do you want to do?” He propped himself on one elbow to look at her.

  “I want … I need … to find out who I am when Mitch isn’t forcing me to be whatever it was he wanted. I just don’t know who that will turn out to be.”

  Quinn wanted to be there with her when she became that person. He knew that, if he knew nothing else. He wanted to watch her as she transformed into someone new, someone who was more than what she’d been.

  Later that night, when Delilah came home, Dolly was sitting on
the sofa at Otter Bluff watching a TV show on low volume.

  “Are the boys asleep?” Delilah asked.

  “Sleeping like angels. We had dinner at my house, then when it was time for bed, I brought them over here.”

  “I can’t thank you enough.” Delilah reached for her purse and took out her wallet.

  “Oh, you can just put that away.” Dolly reached for the remote and switched off the TV. “I had so much fun, it would hardly be fair for me to expect payment too.”

  “Are you sure? I’d like to give you something.”

  “Honey, I was just being neighborly.” She patted the seat next to her. “Now, sit down and tell me how your date with Mr. Handsome went.”

  Delilah’s first instinct was to say some vague thing or change the subject.

  But somehow, she found herself talking to Dolly about it.

  She sat down and let out a contented sigh. “It was wonderful. Really wonderful.”

  “Oh, Delilah, that’s great. Tell me all about it, and don’t leave anything out.”

  She did leave some things out, mainly because she wanted to keep the conversation G-rated. But she told Dolly about the dinner, and how Quinn had bought flowers and lit candles, and how it had made her feel special and wanted.

  “It’s been so long since a man has treated me this way, I almost didn’t recognize it.” Then, upon further thought: “Actually, no man has ever treated me this way. I met Mitch when we were both young, and I’d barely dated before that. And it seemed like he was always too busy to pay attention to me.”

  Dolly scowled. “I want to ask you why you put up with that, but you were young, and we all tend to undervalue ourselves when we’re young.”

  “I guess we do. And it was always supposed to be temporary.” Delilah sank back into the sofa cushions. “You know? All of the busyness, and the way he prioritized everything but me. First, it was just until he graduated college. Then, it was just until he got through law school. Then he had his first job with a big firm, and he worked sixteen-hour days, and it was just until he could make partner. And then? He left me for someone else before we could get to the end of the just until.”