by Lori Wilde
Her mother had been psychologically abusing Kelsey her entire life. And she had allowed it to happen. In the wake of Chelsea’s death, she’d clung to the shore, both literally and figuratively.
Afraid to step outside the bubble. Afraid to take a risk. Afraid of her mother.
Desperate to keep Filomena happy. Desperate to make up for Chelsea being gone. Desperate to deny what she knew deep down in her heart of hearts.
Filomena loved herself far more than she loved her daughter. She always had. She always would. Kelsey was just a pawn to move around the chessboard of her political ambitions.
Tasha had been trying to tell her this for several years, but she hadn’t wanted to hear the truth.
Enough was enough. It was way past time she drew a line in the sand. She’d let love and guilt blind her to the fact that her mother did not have her best interest at heart.
“I’m hanging up now, Mother.”
“Don’t you dare hang up on me!” Filomena’s voice grew shrill.
Typically, when her mother sounded like that, Kelsey would immediately back down, backtrack, apologize to stave off her growing wrath. But no more. Time to set boundaries for this relationship.
Severe boundaries.
“Mother, I am hanging up now. I do not want you to contact me for the next two weeks. If you contact me, I will not respond. And every time that you do contact me, I will add another day onto the clock before I get back in touch with you.”
“You can’t cut me off. We have things to discuss. You’re going to be my office manager. I need you.” Filomena quickly pivoted from rage to victimhood trying to elicit Kelsey’s guilt. “You are essential.”
“Mother, this is it. I’m not kidding. These are my terms. If you violate them, there will be consequences.” Kelsey was shaking all over, terrified but proud of herself.
“Consequences?” Filomena snarled.
Kelsey could practically see her mother’s lip curling back over her teeth. She’d spent her whole life skating around that snarl.
“You’re giving me consequences, little girl.” Her mother crackled. “You have no idea what consequences are. You don’t get to cut me off. I’m cutting you off. You’re a horrible child. What kind of monstrous woman does this to her own mother? You—”
Then, for the first time in her life, Kelsey hung up on her mother.
Every cell in her body quivered with raw emotion. Her throat seized up, and she couldn’t swallow. Could barely breathe.
She felt Noah’s big calming body standing behind her. Tears pushed against her eyes, but she could not let them flow. If she did, she didn’t know if she’d be able to stop crying.
His gentle hand touched her shoulder.
She was so glad he was here when this thing with her mother blew up. Ten years might have passed, but Noah had always been in her corner.
She had finally taken a stand, and it felt magnificent. But her knees were also weak, and she was sick at her stomach, and she knew she had to do something to chase away the fear before she gave in to old patterns, caved, called her mother back and apologized.
Although she knew what an ordeal of groveling that would entail. It was the pattern ingrained in her from early childhood. A pattern that required something monumental to break it. Her mother had stolen so much from her. Her childhood. Her choice of careers.
Even her twin.
Yes, she finally dared to place the origin of Chelsea’s death where it belonged. At her mother’s feet.
It was the ugly truth she’d never allowed herself to admit. Her twin had gotten in that canoe because her mother had screamed at her for tracking mud in on the pristine white lake house rug. As punishment, she’d not only taken away Chelsea’s flute—music had been everything to her sister—Filomena had thrown it into Possum Kingdom Lake.
Kelsey drew in as much air as she could to settle herself. Her blood pumped through her veins as hard and fast as if she’d just sprinted a four-minute mile. The fog was everywhere. She could barely see, and she needed something to latch onto.
Something to ground her.
Her gaze searched the area.
There on the deck, she found it. Just a few steps away sat a large plastic locker. The kind people stored lawn furniture cushions in for the winter. The container was labeled in the same black script as the tattoo on Noah’s wrist.
Dare.
A strong message for her. Instructions to follow. A code of conduct to embrace. If she was going to do this thing, face her mother, set boundaries, stop the lifelong emotional and verbal abuse, she might as well start with Tasha’s Christmas of Yes and those five dares.
Bring them on! She couldn’t wait to take control of her future.
Chapter 9
“Filomena?” Noah nodded at the phone Kelsey shoved back into her pocket. His heart ached for her.
She was trembling hard and her face had lost all its color. The red blinking lights from the Christmas decorations on the Rockabye twinkled behind her, creating a misty crimson halo above her head.
She closed her eyes, swayed.
“Kels?” Noah caught her just as her knees gave way and she almost tumbled over the deck railing and into the water.
“I seem to keep falling into your arms today,” she whispered and gave him a ghostly smile.
“I’m not complaining.” He held her in the crook of his arms, surprised by the tender feelings sweeping through him. Careful. A blast from the past was not always a good thing. “But you’re shaking like a leaf. Let’s get you inside and warmed up.”
He wrapped an arm around her waist and walked her up the dock to the gangplank leading to the Rockabye. Held on to her as she stepped up onto the paddle wheel boat, guided her up the steps, through the front door, and into the reception area.
The front desk was empty, but Noah could hear voices from the dining area. Raylene was serving afternoon tea to the guests.
“Here.” He parked Kelsey on a chesterfield in front of the gas fireplace. To one side of the fireplace stood a Christmas tree so tall that the tip of the star topper grazed the ceiling.
“Still big into Christmas, huh?” she said.
“Yep. You still a grinch?”
“Yep,” she echoed. “Christmas is just more trouble than it’s worth.”
“You’ve never spent Christmas in Twilight,” he said. “I aim to change your mind.”
“Good luck with that.” She was shivering harder. Her clothes were damp from the mist. Strands of her beautiful blond hair, breaking free from her braid, had started to frizz around her face in a totally adorable way.
He picked up the lap blanket draped across the back of the couch and wrapped it around her.
She groaned.
“What is it?”
“Even the throw blanket is Christmas themed.” Kelsey traced Santa’s cherubic face in the fabric.
“It is December, and this is Twilight. I’m not apologizing for that.” Noah tucked the blanket around her. “Sit tight. I’ll be back with something to warm you.”
Noah left Kelsey huddled in front of the fire and scooted into the kitchen where Raylene had come back from the cookie club brunch to put out eggnog, hot chocolate, coffee, cookies, and pastries for the guests.
Raylene was regaling the six people seated around the farm-style table with stories of her glory days as a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader, and they were eating it up.
Quickly, he greeted his guests, grabbed a mug of hot chocolate and a stack of frosted sugar cookies, and took them back to the reception area.
“Here.” He thrust the mug of hot chocolate into Kelsey’s hands and settled the plate of cookies on the end table beside her. “Drink this.”
Kelsey accepted the warm mug, curled her hands around it. Her face dissolved into a smile. “Aww, little marshmallows.”
“I remember how you loved marshmallows when we were at camp. Figured a few in your hot chocolate might cheer you up.”
“That was nice of you.”<
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He crouched in front of her and slipped off her sandals.
Looking alarmed, she pulled her feet away. “What are you doing?”
“Your toes are turning blue.” He took one icy foot into his hand and rubbed it.
She tensed at his touch, and her reaction triggered his own brand of tension. A decade ago, he had put her in a box, marked it “unpleasant memories,” and jammed it as far back in his brain as he could get her. It had worked well. He’d forgotten how much he’d once yearned for her.
Until today.
“Why are you wearing high-heeled sandals in December?” he asked.
“I was packed for a honeymoon in Spain. And Tasha did not give me a heads-up where she was taking me when she kidnapped me.”
Honeymoon.
Yeah, she’d been about to marry someone else.
A surprising knife of jealousy sliced through him. Why? What did he have to be jealous of? Kelsey’s ex was gay. Besides, Noah had no claim to Kelsey whatsoever.
“Why do you think your friend ambushed you? Sounds kind of disrespectful.”
“No, it’s not. We had an agreement.”
“An agreement?”
“She dared me to a Christmas of Yes. I have to say yes to a series of dares.”
“Why?”
“She’s says I’ll never change as long as I stay inside my comfort zone.”
“And you want to change?”
“I need to change.”
Yeah, he could see that. “Hey, did one of those dares happen to include kissing me under the mistletoe?”
Kelsey nodded, looking embarrassed.
Ahh. So she had not been overwhelmed by a desire to reconnect with him. Chump. Noah rocked back on his heels.
“You know,” he said. “Kissing me should invalidate the dare.”
“Why?”
“I’m familiar. Safe. Still in your comfort zone.”
She shook her head. “I’m not the least bit comfortable.”
“Good,” he said, surprised by how spiteful that sounded. Maybe he was still carrying a small grudge.
Once her foot pinked, he moved to the other one.
She sipped her hot chocolate and peered at him from behind the rim of her mug. The muscle at her eye had stopped twitching, and she looked so damned cute.
Noah sucked in air.
Stared into those blue eyes he’d once known so well. Once upon a time, he could stare into them for hours. First when they were kids sharing their grief, then later as horny teens with their hands all over each other.
She wriggled her toes in his palm. “It’s warm now. You can stop rubbing.”
Her skin was still cold, but he was happy to let go because touching her petite feet was undoing him in a dozen different ways.
A bit of chocolate foam formed a mustache on her upper lip. He wanted to lick away that bit of foam and kiss her again.
She flicked out her tongue, dispensed with the chocolate mustache. Depriving him of the thrill of doing it for her.
Damn.
Unreal. Even after a decade, Kelsey still possessed the power to turn him upside down.
She set the mug of hot chocolate on a coaster next to the cookies, pulled her knees up to her chest, and wrapped the ends of the blanket around her feet. She didn’t meet his gaze.
Her innocent vulnerability stirred him. To see her so out of her element and thrown off-balance pinched him.
“That locker on your dock,” she murmured, “and the tattoo on your wrist. Dare? Does that stand for something?”
“Yes,” he said, rocking back on his heels but staying crouched in front of her, reluctant to move. “Joel and I became scuba diving instructors to help put ourselves through college. Now we offer diving lessons with our summer vacation packages. ‘Dare’ is the name of that part of the business and we also have a retail section in Jesse’s motorcycle shop. I got the tattoo to remind me that when the going gets rough, dare to do something to shake things up.”
“A lesson you hadn’t yet learned when we were together.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“When things got rough between us, you didn’t dare to come after me.”
“Yes, I did.”
“What?” She looked startled.
“You didn’t know?” Did she really not know about what her mother had done to keep them apart? He’d assumed she had known but had knuckled under to her mother’s wishes.
“Know what?”
Noah narrowed his eyes against the softening in his chest. Yep, he was still clinging to some resentment. Surprise!
“Noah?”
“Ask your mother,” he said curtly.
Eyes hollowed, she rested her chin on her knees and whispered, “Oh God, what did she do?”
Noah fidgeted, plowed a hand through his hair. He’d been able to compartmentalize his feelings because he told himself she’d been too afraid to fight for him. To learn that wasn’t true—well, it changed things.
“I thought you’d written me off,” she whispered.
“How could you think that? I texted and called dozens of times. Tried contacting you through social media.”
“Mom,” she whispered. “She must have blocked you. I should have known.”
“You didn’t try to contact me,” he said, trying hard not to let the hurt creep into his tone.
“I was trying to protect you from her.” The pain in Kelsey’s eyes was genuine.
“The next morning after she dragged you off, I drove to your house in Highland Park. She met me at the door and told me that if I didn’t leave you be, she would have my basketball scholarship to UT revoked. And when I didn’t immediately go, she threatened Joel’s scholarship as well.”
“Noah!” She gasped and pressed a palm to her chest. “No!”
“The scholarship was my one big chance to make something of myself. I took your mother at her word. I couldn’t risk losing that scholarship or putting Joel’s in jeopardy. I didn’t push it.”
In his seventeen-year-old mind, he’d formed a plan. Go to college, make it in the NBA, and then come back to claim Kelsey. But four years was a long time. Especially for a wet-behind-the-ears kid. Life got in the way, and eventually, he forgot about her. But he couldn’t tell her this. For one thing, from all evidence, she was still Filomena’s puppet, so he couldn’t completely trust her. He had too much to lose to get involved with Kelsey again. Way too much.
“I can’t believe her.” A furious expression crossed her face. “No, I can. That’s the problem. I’ve seen her do things like that to people dozens of times. I believe you.”
“I should have fought harder,” he said. “I gave up too easily.”
“I don’t blame you.” She dropped her feet to the floor and threw off the lap blanket, her eyes taking on a feverish sheen. “My mother doesn’t make idle threats. She would have found a way to take your scholarship. Count on it.”
“How have you survived with her?”
“As long as I toed the line and did what my mother wanted, life was good. But the minute I dared step out of line, to have my own wants and needs and desires . . .” Kelsey stopped, gulped.
“It can’t be easy having Filomena for a mother. No one is blaming you either.”
“I’m blaming me. I’ve wasted so much time. I want . . . I need . . .” Anguish twisted her features.
He reached for her hand, squeezed it. “It’s not too late for you to find yourself. Step outside that cocoon she’s got wrapped around you.”
“That’s what I’m doing here. I want to be different. I want to change.” She leaned forward and cupped her palms around his face. “Noah, can you help me do that?”
Had she honestly just asked him that question? “Never mind. That was stupid.”
“Not stupid.” He growled. “In fact, it’s brilliant, and my answer is yes. Whatever you need to get free, I’m on board.”
Kelsey stared at the handsome man on his knees in front of her. H
e was still wearing that goofball I’m the Reason Santa Has a Naughty List apron and he looked utterly captivating.
Noah was about to say something when Tasha bopped into the room alongside a good-looking man. Trust Tasha to find herself a guy right off the bat. Who could blame her, the guy was hot. Not as hot as Noah in her estimation, but right up Tasha’s alley.
The man’s cheekbones were high and prominent, his features perfectly symmetrical. His skin was light brown. His black curly hair clipped short. He wore faded Levi’s, hiking boots, and a green plaid flannel shirt that brought out the color of his green eyes.
“This is Sean,” Tasha introduced him. “He is Noah’s handyman, but he used to be a navy SEAL.”
“How do you do, ma’am?” Sean nodded at Kelsey.
“We met in the parlor,” Tasha explained. “Did you know Sean baked and iced those cookies?”
“Tasha is quite charming,” Sean said.
“She’s a live wire.” Kelsey smiled, happy that her friend had found someone to entertain her. Maybe now Tasha wouldn’t pester Kelsey if she wanted to stay in the room and read.
Noah looked straight at Sean. “Should we invite them?”
Sean splayed a palm to his nape. “I dunno, man, it might not be their jam.”
“Invite us to what?” Tasha asked, bouncing on the balls of her feet. “This vacay is for Kels, but I wouldn’t mind having some fun along the way.”
“We’ve got this thing tonight . . .” Slyly, Noah grinned, as if sitting on a secret.
“What kind of thing?” Tasha looked from Noah to Sean. “Is it a sporting event? Basketball? I’m on board for that. I love seeing hot men run around and get sweaty. Or is it a musical gig? I love music.” Turning to Kelsey, Tasha said, “Sean plays the guitar.”
“Not basketball,” Noah said. “Or guitar playing.”
Intrigued, Kelsey studied his face. “What is it?”
“We belong to this little club. . . .” Sean’s smile grew. He and Noah kept trading looks like high school boys up to some kind of prank.
“What kind of club?” Kelsey asked.
“Just a little program we put on for charity at Christmas,” Noah said.
