Just for Christmas Night

by Lisa Marie Perry

  Before going to bed, she went to the winter tree, found a branch with the word laughter in Avery’s handwriting, and smiled. She grabbed paper, pen and ribbon and waited for a moment with a hand pressed to her belly.

  Then she wrote.

  Surprises.

  *

  Foregoing her lunch break for a sandwich in the head coach’s office and a visit to the owners’ suite, Martha took a seat across from her father’s desk. “Pop, I just reviewed some films with Coach Claussen, and I have a suggestion for the NFC championship game—”

  Marshall raised a hand, fidgeting with his necktie. “Tem’s not here to humor you and I don’t have the energy today, Martha. We’d appreciate it if you’d apply your attention completely to the publicity and marketing floor. Claussen’s office, the managers’ wing and the owners’ suite aren’t where you belong.”

  “Didn’t my suggestion to hold a meeting with the roster about the Franco claims prove valuable? Haven’t our men’s numbers been excellent compared to previous weeks?”

  “Tem and I consulted our GM and coach and made a group decision to do that.”

  “Sir, it appears you’re making deliberate efforts to ignore my potential and commitment to the team.” Martha crossed her legs, folded her hands. “Is it not obvious by now that my interests are in business operations?”

  Marshall sat forward, resting his thick arms on the desk. “An NFL team’s business operations are a little off the beaten path for a new graduate who majored in communications.”

  “But not if that graduate immediately pursued an MBA program.”

  “What?”

  “I’m enrolled at Lee Business School. Have been since the fall.”

  “But you’re taking care of Avery—”

  “And a bunny and a house and volunteer work.” And a baby, in her womb, already relying on her. “I’m handling it, Pop.”

  “Where does your drinking and dancing fit in?”

  Well, that stung, but she’d in the recent past given him cause to be concerned. “Part of adjusting is knowing when and how to shift priorities. My suggestions—the ones you’ve reluctantly listened to, the ones you’ve ignored—for this team have all been effectual.”

  “A few months of business school isn’t enough to grant you decision-making power in this aspect of our franchise, Martha. It just isn’t.”

  “What about twenty-three years of being your daughter? I grew up watching you and Ma surpass success. You bought this team to reach new levels of wealth and power. You want employees who take risks, who are…” Confident.

  You sound unsure of yourself. Confidence is vital in publicity, Martha.

  Vital in publicity, vital in business altogether. Had her mother been offering a clue in that smooth, impassive way that was uniquely Tem?

  “Damn it, Pop, I’m not afraid to put in hard work, make tough decisions.” She abandoned her chair and he stood, as well. Sure, give her courtesy when she was on her way out the door. “You will need me.”

  Martha grabbed the door lever as a sickening thud sounded. Whirling, she saw sunlight streaming over marble and leather and glass. Marshall no longer stood with his hand extended toward the door.

  He was crumpled on the floor.

  Screeching for security, Martha sprinted to the desk, yanked the phone off its base and dropped down beside him. He couldn’t be—not Marshall Blue. Not her father.

  *

  It didn’t take long for the swarm to find them. Team physicians, accompanied by Charlotte in her trainer uniform, had reached the owners’ suite shortly after security. A thready pulse was what Martha had felt, pressing two fingers to her father’s neck.

  Barely a sign of hope, but enough to cling to for Marshall’s sake—for the sake of those depending on her to be resilient.

  With Charlotte joining paramedics in the ambulance, Martha had let her friend Chelle drive her to the medical center, where Marshall was admitted. Instead of his high-profile status deterring media and prodding people to respect the Blue family’s privacy, it had drawn a crowd.

  The crowd was outside, in the lobby, trying to breach security blockades stationed at the elevators.

  “You’d feel better if you sat down, at least for a second,” Chelle said from the emergency room waiting lounge.

  Martha lingered in the entryway, glimpsing faces and not seeing any of the people who’d wheeled her father away on a gurney. “Knowing Pop is going to survive this is the only thing that’ll make me feel better.”

  “Tem is on her way, isn’t she?”

  Martha nodded. Tem had taken the jet to California for a magazine photo shoot and interview, but had cut everything short to get back to Nevada.

  “And your sister Danica?”

  “She’s picking Avery up from school and bringing her here.”

  The sports program on the giant flat-screen television was once again interrupted with the breaking news that had been reported twice in the past half hour: Las Vegas Slayers owner Marshall Blue collapses at stadium. Condition not yet released.

  Reporters rattled off “possible” details, commentators promised viewers up-to-the-moment news. They posed a question for social media debate: How do you think Marshall Blue’s health will affect the Slayers’ performance in the NFC championship game this weekend?

  Martha had her own questions.

  Where was humanity, the compassion for a man whose life dangled in the balance?

  How could the media think they were entitled to information Martha didn’t have?

  How could she be relegated to an ER waiting area when she wanted to be as near to Marshall’s treatment room as her sister Charlotte was?

  “The team must release a press statement,” Chelle said hesitantly. “I can handle this at the stadium if you don’t—”

  “I need to be involved. I want nothing official going out that my parents wouldn’t green-light.”

  “Okay.” Chelle stood, joined her in the entryway. “The best cardiologist in the area quit a golf game to come here and treat your father. That’s a big deal.”

  Martha sighed, and tension eased. “Thanks, Chelle.”

  A soft buzz sounded and Chelle plucked her cell phone from her pocket. Quickly, she swiped the screen, tapped a response and pocketed the device. “Odette says she’s sending you and your family good thoughts.”

  “I appreciate that…” Martha turned to her friend as realization slowly settled. “Are you and Odette friends now, or…”

  “Or.” Chelle’s mouth trembled as it formed a hesitant smile. “The night of the party, at Club Indiscretion, I quit lying. I’ve been so scared, but at the end of all that fear was Odette. This thing between us, it’s still new, though.”

  “But are you happy?”

  Chelle’s nod was slight, but certainty shimmered in her eyes. “Yeah.”

  “Maybe you should go and be with the person who makes you happy. Seems we should take every happy minute we can get, because…” Tears threatened and she stopped talking.

  “Sit down, Martha. It might take off some of the stress. I don’t want to see you getting all damsel-in-distress fainty the way you’ve been the past couple of weeks.”

  Would Marshall never meet his first grandchild? Why had she kept her pregnancy a secret? Why had she wasted time being afraid of a miracle?

  “I’m pregnant.”

  “Who’s— Oh. The guy you talked about at Soixante Neuf? The one you said is zero good for you?”

  A nod.

  “Does he know?”

  A head shake. “He can’t give me what I need, and here I am giving him what he said he doesn’t want.”

  “How can you hold him to that, now that there’s actually a baby—his baby—inside you?”

  Martha had to. The other option? Muddy things further with talk of love and a baby and the fact that she wanted Joaquin the man, not Joaquin the boxer.

  She couldn’t force him to relinquish his entire life to be who she needed him to be.
Sometimes love meant letting go.

  “He should have a say, Martha.”

  “It’s not that simple! I had a plan—a down-the-road plan. An uncomplicated husband, a baby and a dog, in that order. A month ago I was single and lonely. Now I have a bunny rabbit, a foster kid and a baby on the way.” Tears licked down her cheeks, and she brushed them off. “I’m not lonely anymore, but I’m permanently and utterly in love with a man who, even if he does love me, doesn’t want to. My father had a heart attack today. I’m simultaneously the happiest and most miserable I’ve been in my life.”

  “If you love this man, shouldn’t he be here with you now?”

  “I haven’t told him, because love can be trouble. For anyone. Young, old, straight, gay, rich, poor.”

  Chelle hugged her. “Let’s get you to your dad. Right now.”

  Navigating the emergency floor, they saw Charlotte slip into a treatment room as a nurse exited. Pulling the nurse aside, Martha gleaned her father had experienced a coronary artery spasm—and was expected to recover without complications.

  Waiting outside the door, Martha knew she oughtn’t listen to her sister’s one-sided conversation with Marshall, but couldn’t resist her eavesdropper’s instincts.

  “Pop, it’s serious,” Charlotte was saying, kneeling beside the bed. “I’m going to marry him…”

  Was that Charlotte’s secret?

  Were all three Blue girls hiding something they should be celebrating?

  Over the next hour, Marshall was transferred to a private suite, which then quickly became congested with family and business associates.

  Together, Martha and Chelle worked from their smartphones to draft an official team statement to send to the head of their department for approval and release. While her father’s suite was still bombarded with visitors, Martha found a quieter place to help Avery with her algebra homework.

  Eventually, Tem arrived and stationed herself at her husband’s bedside. Chelle offered to buy Avery dinner in the cafeteria, and Martha let them go, wandering into her father’s hospital room and fully expecting to be ordered right back out.

  Tem was disheveled, wrecked and completely beautiful. Sparing her daughter a brief glance, she returned her attention to a sleeping and heavily medicated Marshall. “You’re the other half of me. You’re my partner in everything. Who am I without you?”

  “Without Pop and without any of your children, you’re still you,” Martha said, bending to wrap her arms around her mother. “Strong, complex Temperance.”

  Tem untangled herself from Martha’s embrace. “When an already sensitive person becomes overemotional, this is the end result?”

  “So what if it is? Ma, you have an identity that’s independent of your marriage and motherhood.”

  “Oh, Martha. From the lips of a young woman who doesn’t have the commitments of marriage and motherhood.”

  “But I will—at least one of them.”

  Tem’s spine pulled straight, and she settled a pair of narrowed eyes on Martha.

  “There’s something you should know.” Coward’s way out, maybe, but Martha held her mother tight. Tem’s strength made her buoyant, and if she lent her support instead of banishing Martha out of the family, then they stood a chance of getting through this.

  “I don’t think you should say more right now.”

  But she had to. “Ma, I’m enrolled at UNLV’s business school.”

  Tem sighed, and her entire body relaxed as though someone had deflated her. “Oh! Oh, God, for a moment I—” she laughed, sniffled “—I worried, well, I thought you were going to say you’re pregnant.”

  “And I’m pregnant.”

  Tighter, she clutched, but there was only resistance. “Today you baited your father into a debate about your suitability for the front office, all while hiding a pregnancy?”

  “Pop didn’t collapse from having a conversation with his daughter.”

  “I’m sure your persistent nagging didn’t assuage his stress. Do you not agree?”

  Martha bit the inside of her cheek to keep her expression steady, to keep herself from crumpling. Marshall had urged her to drop the issue, but like both of her parents, she wouldn’t back down. “If I’d known his heart was— Ma, I wouldn’t purposely endanger Pop.”

  “So you say. You also say you care about what’s best for business, but you do something so damaging to our company?”

  Martha let her go, keeping her voice lowered and patient out of consideration for her father and because she didn’t have the energy for anger when she wanted to rejoice. “I don’t see it that way, and I didn’t tell you because of this reaction precisely.”

  “An unplanned pregnancy, single motherhood? Do you know who the father is?”

  “Yes, I do, because the spreadsheet you recommended has kept me very organized,” she said sarcastically. “Ma, there’s been only one man since this summer. One.”

  “Then you’re in an actual relationship and it’s not emotionless sex?”

  What could she call what Joaquin and she shared? There was sex—plenty of it, and it was so mind-melting and boundary-crossing that they kept coming back for more. There were emotions—too many that ran too deep. “I’m in love with this baby’s father, but he doesn’t know there is a baby.”

  “Does he love you?”

  “I can’t say.”

  “You can’t say? Who the hell is this man?” Tem’s face scrunched in a genuine scowl, which Martha would venture to guess hadn’t happened since before her pageant days. “Marshall and I were worried you couldn’t last through play-offs without bringing on trouble. We were certain you’d ignore our warnings and satisfy whatever whim hit you.”

  “Yes, and you were planning to fire me from the Slayers after play-offs.”

  “Okay, so Joaquin talked. That’s fine. A man has his reasons for the choices he makes. What would’ve been helpful, though, was if he’d actually protected you from this scandal. He gave his word that he’d keep you close.” Tem stared up at Martha. “You and Joaquin were close, these past several weeks. But you managed a tryst.”

  “I let myself love somebody, Ma. That’s all.”

  Tem’s nostrils flared, and her attention momentarily shifted to something beyond Martha’s shoulder. “Name, Martha.”

  “Trust me to tell him about the baby in my own way, in my own time.”

  “Hiding this man’s child is the same as lying. But I can’t persuade you otherwise. You wouldn’t be in this hell if you valued my opinion. Just give me his name.”

  “Joaquin Ryder.”

  Disappointment and a snap of resentment flooded Tem’s expression, then made way for cold satisfaction as she reached to turn Martha toward the man filling the doorway. “Well, Joaquin Ryder, I imagine you and Martha have something to discuss.”

  *

  Joaquin’s soul all but fragmented when he heard Martha name him—him!—as the father of her baby. Martha was pregnant.

  He’d been in this place before, with his ex-fiancée, India. India had rushed to him with the news, and had started planning a baby shower right away. Martha had hidden her pregnancy until she found herself manipulated into revealing the secret with her back turned to him.

  India had lied. Trusting her had been a pitfall.

  He walked ahead of Martha to the patient suite’s waiting area. “Charlotte, Danica, I need this room. Please.”

  Danica glanced up from a tablet. “What the hell for?”

  “Martha’s pregnant,” he said, turning to look her square in the face as he stripped her secret bare. “It’s mine.”

  “What?” Charlotte and Danica shrieked in unison.

  Martha stared at him through those misty eyes that had nearly unraveled him before. This time, the tears spilled over, and he felt like the exact same bastard he’d been four years ago when he’d ordered her out of his uncle’s gym.

  “I asked if you and Joaquin were hooking up,” Charlotte persisted. “You said no.”

>   “We weren’t then.” Martha pointed at the door. “Besides, don’t ask me to spill my secrets when you’re not willing to spill yours.”

  “We were careful,” he said when her sisters left the room.

  “We weren’t. Not at The Grey Crusade.”

  Damn it. He hadn’t protected her. They had wanted each other, taken what they’d wanted and hadn’t apologized.

  “When were you going to tell me?”

  “After the fight.”

  “After I’d left Las Vegas?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How long after, Martha?”

  Her jaw tightened. “I wasn’t going to trap you the way India and Ciera tried to.”

  “No, you were going to keep my kid away from me. You say you trust me and feel so safe with me? Then why hide your pregnancy?”

  “I can’t be okay with the violence. I’m not scared of you. I’m scared for you. No one is invincible.”

  “I’m going to beat Brazda.”

  “After Brazda, there’ll be another opponent, then another. And you’ll keep setting these matches until someone stops you the only way you can be stopped. He’ll destroy you. And I’m terrified that fighting means more to you than anything else. A baby deserves better than that. You should want me to have more than that.”

  “I do! I love you, damn it, Martha. I keep telling myself that you deserve a better man…more than I can give you. The freakin’ fairy tale you talked about.”

  “The fairy tale is exactly that. It’s not real. If you want me, you should be fighting to show me that life with you surpasses a stupid fantasy. It’s not going to be a pleasant husband, then baby, then dog. It’s all out of order—and I’m glad.” Martha stopped batting at her tears. “This baby doesn’t have to be a problem for you. He or she can be mine alone—”

  “Hell, no. It’s mine—”

  “Hey,” she snapped. “You won’t stand here and start paring down my choices.”

  “And you won’t steal mine.” Joaquin stopped, rolled his shoulders. “Why can’t we be an option? You. Me. Together.”

  “You can’t walk away from the fight.”

  “Is that what you want? Me to throw the fight? Throw my integrity? Give Brazda my championship?” He was silent, but silence didn’t pierce the tension. “Damn, what does it mean that I’d actually consider it…for you?”