A Mommy for Christmas

by Cathy Gillen Thacker

  She rocked against him, leaving him absolutely no doubt about what she wanted, and the best thing about it was that he wanted it, too. She took the lead. Travis surrendered until he could bear it no more. He rolled her over, captured her wrists in his hands and drew them above her head. She lay beneath him, captive to whatever he wanted—and what he wanted, he quickly proved, was her heart and soul. Again and again and again…

  Chapter Ten

  Neither Holly nor Travis made it into work that morning. But by noon they couldn’t deny real life any longer. Mrs. Ruley and the four kids were due home from preschool any moment. The messages on Travis’s cell phone were piling up. Holly had received a call from Alexis wanting to know if everything was okay, since she hadn’t shown up to work on the mural, and another from a reporter wanting to know if Holly would care to comment on Travis’s involvement in the silent auction at the Kimball Museum, since he wouldn’t.

  There was another message for both of them about the annual cookie swap at the preschool on Friday, before the students disbanded for the two-week holiday vacation. Both Travis and Holly were supposed to bring six dozen of their favorite Christmas cookies, and store-bought treats were discouraged. The faculty wanted this to be an experience for moms and dads and kids, all baking together.

  And last but not least was a message on Holly’s voice mail from Cliff.

  It was the first time she had heard his voice since their divorce was final, three years ago. She wasn’t prepared for the cool familiarity of it.

  “Holly—it’s Cliff. Just wanted you to know that my flight arrives at DFW at 1:52 p.m. Saturday. I should be at your home by three, if all goes well. I’m not planning to stay that long—I’m spending the rest of the weekend with my old college roommate, Simon Armstrong. I imagine you remember him.”

  Holly did. Simon was an insurance executive now, unmarried the last time she had heard. He had always wanted kids. And had been furious with Cliff when he had abandoned her and the twins, asserting that one day Cliff would sorely regret what he had done.

  It was interesting that Cliff would be staying with Simon. Had the friendship been rekindled now that Cliff was showing an interest in his sons? Had it been Simon Armstrong who encouraged or perhaps even prodded Cliff into making this visit?

  Holly didn’t know.

  Cliff continued. “I wanted you to know that I am bringing two identical gifts the clerk at FAO Schwartz assured me were all the rage with three-year-old boys. I’ll see you all Saturday.”

  “Everything okay?” Travis asked, coming to join her in the foyer.

  She set her phone to replay the message. “You listen and tell me.”

  He did. When the recording had finished, he handed the phone back to her. “He’s not planning to stay long.”

  “No kidding.”

  Travis wrapped a comforting arm around her shoulders and reeled her in close to his side. “That makes you angry.”

  “As well as hurt and disillusioned and heaven only knows what else.” She paused, shook her head in silent remonstration. She ran her hand along the staircase banister, aware that Travis was ready to leave. But she needed him here, too, at least for a few minutes, and he was perfectly willing to stay and listen.

  Holly swallowed and forced her gaze to his face. The understanding she saw in his dark eyes gave her the courage to put aside her self-imposed independence, and vent. “Cliff hasn’t seen his kids in over three years now, because he hasn’t cared to, and now suddenly he gets it in his head that he wants to take a gander at them, after all. So he’s flying halfway across the country for a look-see. And then going right to another social engagement for the rest of the weekend! It’s like the kids are some company Cliff is doing a prospective on to decide whether or not the bank should invest any time or money in it!” Tears stung her eyes as she continued bitterly, “Only Tucker and Tristan aren’t some nonfeeling entity.”

  “You’re damn right they’re not,” Travis said, looking as if he wanted to throttle Cliff for his selfishness, too.

  Holly took a deep, enervating breath, glad Travis was there for her, because she needed his friendship, support, and yes, comfort, more than ever before. “And last but not least,” she said, sliding her hand into his, “it really ticks me off that Cliff is willing to spend a lot more time reconnecting with his old college roommate than he is with his kids.”

  Travis inclined his head and squeezed her hand. When he spoke his voice was grim. “It certainly says something about Cliff’s priorities.”

  “Doesn’t it?” Holly felt her shoulders slump in defeat. How could she have thought the question of custody and visitation was all in the past? Even more telling, how could she protect her kids when Cliff had every right to see them? There were no laws that could force to him love his sons. Or make the twins feel as if they mattered to him, anywhere near as much as they mattered to Travis.

  Travis pulled her in close again, shielding her with his warmth and his strength, even as he studied her compassionately. “Have the kids said anything more about their dad coming to see them, since you told them?”

  Holly rested her head on Travis’s shoulder. “Unfortunately, yes.” Her hands worried the buttons on his shirt. “They were talking about it again last night before bed.” She paused and slid her arms all the way around him, resting her face in the curve between his shoulder and neck. “I guess seeing the other dads in the audience at the school program made them aware that one day their daddy could be sitting in the audience, too.”

  Travis held her close. “Only you don’t have any faith that Cliff ever will be.” He kissed the top of her head and buried his face in her hair.

  Holly reveled in the affection and tenderness that were so much a part of Travis. Finally, she lifted her head and confessed, “I can’t explain—I just know Cliff. Once he decides something or someone is not worth his time or energy, he never goes back on that decision.”

  Travis’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “But he is coming to see the kids. So even though he abandoned them once, and has stuck by that decision for the last three plus years…”

  She sighed, seeing where this was going. “Maybe he does have some regret. Heaven knows he should, considering what he’s given up, in cutting off all contact with his sons.”

  Travis shrugged and took the opposing view. “It might benefit the twins to have some relationship with him.”

  “Only if it’s a loving, caring, nurturing one.” Holly stipulated with a frown.

  He realized that the situation was extremely complicated. “At some point the boys are going to want to know who their father is as a person,” he warned Holly. “It might not happen until they hit adolescence, but from everything I’ve read on the subject, eventually they will want to know whatever they can about their father.”

  “And what if the only thing we have to tell them is that he abandoned them?” Holly cried. “Not once but twice! Or worse, that he’s only seeing them at all because he wants to mend the rift with his old college roommate—who was furious with Cliff for ever deserting them in the first place.” Briefly, Holly explained.

  Travis shook his head as if to clear it. “First of all, why would Cliff go to all that trouble just to please Simon?”

  That troubled Holly, too. “I don’t know.” She threw up her hands in frustration. “In terms of business, it wouldn’t seem that Cliff would have anything to gain. Simon is an insurance executive and is based in Texas. Cliff works for an investment bank with an international presence.” She gnawed on her lip. “Their friendship used to mean a lot to Cliff, when he and I were first married. But the two of them pretty much stopped speaking over Cliff’s uncaring attitude toward the kids, after they were born.”

  Travis shrugged. “Maybe Cliff has realized that Simon was right all along, and wants to make amends.”

  Holly considered that. On the one hand, she couldn’t see Cliff doing anything that didn’t benefit him immensely. On the other, she knew that Cliff and
Simon had once been extremely close, more like brothers than friends. So it was possible, she supposed, that Cliff had really missed the friendship. Although again, there was something about all this that just didn’t ring true to her.

  Travis caught her shoulders with his hands. “Are you going to be all right?”

  She nodded and met his eyes with a searching gaze of her own. “I weathered the abandonment of my children by their father once. If after all this he deserts them again, I’ll handle that, too. The difference is, on some level, this time my boys will know it’s happening, too.” And that was enough to break her heart all over again.

  WEDNESDAY EVENING, JUST BEFORE suppertime, Holly got a message from Travis that he was running behind and would have to meet her later than expected, at the Carson Construction warehouse. After the backlog of work that had piled up for him the last thirty-six hours, Holly decided she would be surprised if he was able to get there at all to help her with the painting.

  But that was okay, she told herself gamely, after the departing workers let her in and she settled down to sketch in first the control panel on the spaceship, and then the playhouse mural. She might not be able to finish in one six-hour stretch, as she had planned, without an equal amount of effort from Travis, but she was used to working alone.

  Twenty minutes later, a door opened and closed, and purposeful footsteps sounded on the concrete floor. Holly turned to see Travis stride in. Her heart did a little happy dance in her chest. He was still dressed as he had been when he’d left her earlier in the day, in shirt, tie, dress pants and boots—attire suitable for his afternoon meeting with city officials. He carried paint-splattered jeans and a colorful work shirt, sweat socks and athletic shoes.

  Without breaking stride, he came straight for her, took her in his arms and kissed her passionately. When they finally came up for air, her pulse was pounding and she tingled all over. He looked equally aroused and ready for action.

  He stroked a hand through her hair and lamented in a low, humorous tone, “If only we didn’t have so much work to do on these presents…”

  “And so little time left to do it in,” Holly murmured.

  Travis kissed her again, with a mixture of obvious regret and tenderness. “We’ll make up for it, I promise.”

  She didn’t doubt that they would. If their lovemaking that morning had shown her anything, it was that she would always want him. And he her…

  She no longer knew if just being friends with benefits was going to be enough. She still didn’t want a marriage of convenience, but didn’t want to invest this much of herself, emotionally, in their relationship and have no real ties to him.

  It was going to be hard enough for her to watch him go out with another woman on New Year’s Eve, for charity. She couldn’t imagine what it would feel like if he ever did meet someone and feel for her what he’d once felt for his late wife.

  Holly kept telling herself she would wish him well and let him go, because most of all, she wanted him to be happy. But she no longer knew if that was true, if she was that generous of a person, after all.

  Oblivious to the complicated nature of her thoughts, Travis reached for the first couple of buttons on his shirt. “So where do you want me to start?” he asked her casually.

  Knowing it would only entice her further to watch him change, she ducked back into the playhouse, just as a dress shirt sailed past the window and landed on the floor. The thud of his boots and the swish of his pants followed. “Concentrate,” she told herself fiercely, as she penciled in the last of the chair rail that rimmed the interior.

  She heard the rasp of clothing being drawn on as she drew a kitchen on one wall. A bedroom set on another. By the time she had worked back around to the already finished living room, Travis had stepped inside the six-foot-high domicile. He was too tall for the interior, so stooped over. “The girls are going to love this.”

  “The boys are going to love the spaceship.” Determined to get this done, tonight if possible, she sized him up. “How are you at staying within the lines?”

  His wicked smile said he inferred all kinds of things from that question. But when he answered he was definitely focusing on the task at hand. “I can do that,” he told her cheerfully.

  She showed him what color to paint where. While he filled in the background, she did the detail work. He was surprisingly adept with a paintbrush.

  “No surprise there,” Travis said when she complimented him. “I was going out on construction jobs with my dad by the time I was in school. At first, I was little more than an amusing sidekick, but over the years he taught me the basics of carpentry, painting, plumbing and electrical.”

  It felt good, working side by side with him. Especially on something that would mean so much to their kids, come Christmas morning. Trying hard not to notice how handsome Travis looked, even at the end of a long day, she asked, “How did your mom feel about that?”

  He shrugged and hunkered down to get to a spot along the floor. As he moved, the soft, worn fabric of his jeans nicely gloved the taut muscles of his legs. “Mom wanted me to go into business with Dad when I grew up,” he related. “She thought he worked too hard, being a solo operator, and she was right. He died of a stress-induced heart attack when he was fifty. My mom followed a couple years later, with an aneurysm.”

  Holly gave Travis a sympathetic glance and squeezed his hand. She knew what it was to lose a parent. She had lost both her parents in an automobile accident when she was twenty-two.

  “Anyway, I took over his company and started expanding it almost right away, doing all the things Dad never felt comfortable doing—hiring employees, taking on multiple jobs, going after ever bigger, more lucrative projects. That’s how I met Grady and the guys.” Travis smiled, reflecting. “They were all busy building their businesses, too.”

  She couldn’t help but admire them for it. “You have all succeeded handsomely.”

  Travis beamed. “In business—absolutely.” He regarded her steadily. “In my personal life, there are still goals I want to achieve.”

  Before Holly had a chance to ask what he meant by that, the cell phone on his belt went off. He looked at the screen, put down his paintbrush and stepped outside the playhouse. “Sorry. I have to take this,” he said over his shoulder.

  “Hey, Nate. It’s definitely going to be competitive,” she heard him say. “We just have to make sure our numbers beat theirs…. shear off every penny without sacrificing one iota of quality, which is where you and your guys come in…Tomorrow morning, first thing. Thanks, buddy.”

  Holly shifted over to the spaceship and began painting in dials and gages on the control panel. “Things heating up with the opera project?” she asked when he rejoined her.

  “A little.” He picked up a brush and began painting some of the trim there. “Although they are a long way from deciding what will be built and who will get the job, the steering committee for the project wants to see some unofficial proposals from all the firms in contention, along with cost projections, so they can set realistic fund-raising goals. That’s what the meeting at the Cattleman’s Club was about yesterday.”

  “Sounds high-pressure,” Holly remarked.

  “You’ve got that right.” Travis sighed anxiously. “None of it is due until February, but the guys and I all want to get a jump on it. Whoever has the best ideas out of the gate will have a big advantage over everyone else when the actual bidding process happens next summer. Assuming, of course, the organizers are able to get the funds they need.”

  Holly appreciated Travis’s gung ho attitude and spirited work ethic. “You really like competing, don’t you?”

  “Gets my blood pumping every time. Especially in situations like this, when one of the contenders is behaving unethically.”

  “By trashing you to the client.”

  Travis nodded. “Then it becomes as much of a moral battle as a business one. And you know me, I always want the good guys to win, justice to be had, etc.”r />
  “Your strong sense of right and wrong is one of the things I’ve always liked about you,” Holly said, playfully winding her arms about his neck. “I also admire your ability to quickly and easily adjust to parameters of every situation in order to stay competitive.” He was tough and fiercely determined to get what he wanted, in business, and in his personal life. That made him a hard person to go up against. Fortunately, the two of them had always been on the same page.

  “It’s good to know I’m appreciated.” Travis kissed her tenderly, until both knew if they continued down this path, the work would never get done. He drew back. “So back to the task at hand?”

  Holly withdrew reluctantly, too. With Christmas only days away now, they had no choice but to stay focused on what mattered, and right now that was giving the kids their happiest Christmas ever. “You bet.”

  “DADDY,” MIA EXCLAIMED, as Travis tucked her into bed at Holly’s house Thursday evening, “this was the mostest fun ever!”

  Travis thought so, too. He and Holly and their kids had all been close before, but this holiday season had intensified that intimacy to the point he knew he didn’t ever want to go back to being just friends and neighbors. He wanted them to be this close to each other all the time.

  He knew that probably wouldn’t be a problem as long as there was no other man in Holly’s life. But with her ex showing up in less than forty-eight hours, Travis wasn’t as certain about her allegiance to him as he had been. It wasn’t that he thought Holly had feelings for Cliff. He was fairly certain that was not the case. It was her devotion to her kids, and her wanting to do what was best for Tucker and Tristan, that might lead her back to her ex. Certainly, he’d seen it happen before….

  “I can’t wait to show our teachers all the cookies we baked tonight!” Sophie agreed.