The Surprise Holiday Dad

by Jacqueline Diamond

  “You’d never notice,” she teased.

  Usually, Adrienne enjoyed her friends’ exchanges. Tonight she was glad when they left. The reminder that Wade would want more children kept her keenly aware of the knife’s-edge balance in their relationship.

  The sweater she’d bought him was thick and soft, a shade of blue-gray that would complement his eyes. Before wrapping it, she’d stroked the texture and imagined it fitting over his broad shoulders. Absorbing his scent. Becoming part of him.

  Then she’d folded it into a box and said goodbye to it. Well, not entirely. Since she had Christmas Eve and the next night off work, she’d be there to open presents no matter what time they chose. But after that... Well, she had to stop thinking of Wade as belonging to her.

  She’d hardly seen him the past week since he’d been busy at work. While he’d managed to buy replacement holiday lights, he hadn’t yet strung them on the porch. He’d promised to do that by tomorrow night—Saturday—and suggested the three of them handle the task together.

  “I’ll need someone to steady the ladder,” he’d told her with a teasing smile.

  “Of course,” she’d said. “Reggie’s too small to do that.”

  “Right.” He’d seemed almost disappointed, as if he’d expected her to flirt a little. “That reminds me, I’d better go wrap my presents before he decides to explore my closet. Have a nice evening.”

  “You, too.”

  Now Adrienne shook off the memory. She had more patients to see before her overnight shift.

  Presents to wrap... Had he bought her anything? And if so...

  If so, it must be something practical. Just like what she’d bought for him.

  * * *

  DESCENDING THE LADDER, Wade checked to be sure Reg was standing at a safe distance. In his concern not to accidentally bump his son, he missed a step and hit the ground hard.

  Instead of ducking aside to protect herself, Adrienne grabbed him. “Are you all right?”

  “Hurt my ankle a little.” Embarrassed by his mistake, Wade hesitated to let her support him. But when he leaned on her, it felt good.

  “We should go ice that joint,” she said.

  He’d rather stand there, relishing her softness and the freshly shampooed fragrance of her hair. “I’ll be fine.”

  “I can put the ice on it,” offered Reggie.

  “You know how to do that?”

  The little boy’s face scrunched in concentration. “Kind of,” he said. “Can we use ice cream?”

  “Afraid not, sport. Besides, why waste it?”

  “I’ll apply the ice,” Adrienne said. “And then I have a selection of Ace bandages.”

  Wade refused to act like an invalid. “Here’s a better idea. Now that we’ve contributed to the major energy drain on the western United States, let’s drive around and look at other people’s lights.”

  “We used to do that when I was a kid,” Adrienne said wistfully. “It isn’t dark enough yet, though. And if you’re in pain, don’t try to be a hero.”

  “I’m fine.” Wade preferred to move on to the fun stuff. “Where did you stop to eat when you were a kid?”

  “The Cake Castle!” cried Reggie.

  Both adults stared at him. “That’s a bakery, not a restaurant,” his aunt remarked.

  “Mommy used to take me there for lunch.”

  Wade winced. Only when she was out of control, I’ll bet.

  “There’s Krazy Kids Pizza.” Adrienne’s tone lacked enthusiasm.

  “Can we, Daddy?” Reg asked.

  Wade had a better idea—and a good excuse. “They’re carryout and delivery only,” he said. “But while we’re on the subject of Italian food, let’s hit Papa Giovanni’s.”

  No one argued. The restaurant was famous for its hearty and delicious Italian cuisine, ranging from pizza to gourmet specialties.

  Although it was scarcely half past four, they were hungry, and with no other tables occupied, they got fast service. Wade supposed that from keeping such odd schedules, he and Adrienne were both accustomed to snatching meals when they could.

  After downing pasta and salad, they piled back into the sports car. Wade drove toward the harbor, which had seemed magical to him as a child. From Harbor View Road, they caught a breathtaking glimpse of lights sparkling around the curve of water, from houses on both sides as well as from yachts and smaller boats at anchor. On the inland bluffs, lights flashed and twinkled on the mansions.

  “It’s so elegant,” Adrienne breathed.

  “Beautiful,” Wade agreed.

  “Like stars fell to the ground,” Reggie piped in from the backseat.

  Poetic, Wade mused. And true. “Now for a change of pace.”

  “What do you mean?” Adrienne asked.

  “You’ll see.”

  In Renée’s cozy neighborhood, people didn’t try to impress anyone with their subtlety. Many crammed their lawns, roofs and porches with gaudy animated figures and riotous blinking messages of goodwill.

  Wade knew the best spots because he’d put in many hours around there. So far, he’d found no sign of a secret lover and no explanation for Renée’s continuing to keep her distance from Bruce except when on a date...or, in one instance, spending the night. He hoped he’d discover the explanation soon, because Bruce was running out of his limited stock of patience.

  Within a few minutes, they were cruising between bright lights. Wade glided to a stop in front of one house with a blinding display and a sign instructing them to tune the radio to a special channel.

  “Here goes.” Wade followed the instructions.

  Another car stopped nearby. Then a van slotted into place in front of them.

  “What’s going on?” Adrienne studied the sign. “These people put on a light-and-sound show?”

  “Cool!” Reggie cried happily. “Like the videos.”

  “Which videos have you been watching?” Since the little boy wasn’t allowed to surf the web, Adrienne sounded understandably wary.

  “We watched them together,” Wade explained. “They’re strictly G-rated.”

  “Oh. That’s fine, then.”

  “Here we go,” he said, and turned up the volume.

  Over the radio boomed a rock version of a Christmas carol. The lights began flashing in time, transitioning between minilights on the bushes, a tree covered in white, a panel of lights on the roof and lit plastic sculptures of reindeer and Santa on the lawn. The pulsing beat was so irresistible that soon the three of them were bouncing hard enough to rock the car.

  Adrienne laughed, her joy contagious. Reggie squealed with glee. As for Wade, he wished he could capture this moment to savor forever.

  When it ended, Reggie shouted, “More!”

  “Too much of a good thing quickly wears thin.” Wade suspected the experience would lose its magic if repeated too soon.

  “Let’s go home,” Adrienne concurred. “This was fun, though.”

  Home? The evening didn’t feel over. Suddenly Wade realized why. “Let’s buy a Christmas tree.”

  “We have one,” Adrienne pointed out.

  “Let’s buy a real one,” he said. “The kind that smells wonderful, sheds needles and has to be carted out to the curb afterward.” To address another potential argument, he added, “We can leave the old one in the den and put the new one in the hall.”

  “Two Christmas trees?” she murmured.

  “There’s no law against it.”

  “Please, Aunt Addie?” Reggie pleaded. “That would be so cool.”

  Wade held his breath, waiting. This meant more to him than he’d expected.

  A smile broke through Adrienne’s reserve. “Let’s do it.”

  While a cheer went up from the backseat, Wade put
the car into gear. He’d seen a tree lot in the northern part of town, near the freeway, and there they went.

  This close to the holiday, the selection proved thin but adequate. They chose a small well-shaped tree, along with a stand and a box of multicolored glass balls.

  The pine scent infusing the lot carried Wade back to childhood Christmases, until an old pain hit him like a blow. He recoiled and strained to put it out of his mind. He’d rather replace old memories with new.

  After all, this was his first holiday with his son, who skipped happily between the trees, scooping up handfuls of pine needles and tossing them. Then Adrienne slipped her hand into his as they walked to the counter to pay for their purchases.

  It was like having a family again.

  At home they stabilized the tree in the hall and hung the ornaments. Reggie began yawning, and despite his grumbling, they ushered him off to bed. Wade had barely begun reading a favorite book when Reg fell asleep.

  “He’s exhausted,” his aunt observed as they went out.

  “He’ll be bouncing off the walls tomorrow all over again.” Wade had learned that much about his little guy.

  In the hallway, Adrienne said in a low voice, “Thank you. This was a special evening.”

  “For me, too.”

  She indicated his leg. “How’s the ankle?”

  “Better.” Except for a few twinges while tromping around the tree lot, it hadn’t troubled him.

  “It might stiffen overnight,” she warned. “Let’s put an Ace bandage on it just in case.”

  “Sure thing, Doc.” Wade hoped she’d do the honors.

  Adrienne disappeared into the hall bathroom but reappeared empty-handed. “I guess they’re in the master bath.”

  “I’m not used to having someone take care of me,” Wade admitted as he followed her.

  Reaching the entrance to her bedroom, she regarded him teasingly. “I can’t understand why not. You’re kind of cute.”

  “Cute?” He arched an eyebrow.

  “Well, you must have been a cute kid once,” she amended, and ducked inside. Since she left the door open, Wade took that as an invitation.

  Her personality colored the generous-size room, from the orange-red poppies on the curtains to the matching quilt on the queen bed. Adrienne’s light fragrance filled Wade with a sense of belonging and intimacy. He yearned for more.

  In her bathroom, Adrienne rummaged through a drawer before producing an assortment of compression bandages, each tucked into its original box. “Here’s one for the wrist...elbow...aha! Ankle.”

  “Why so many?” Wade asked.

  “My mother and sister had a tendency to trip and fall,” she said ruefully. “Of course, Reggie takes the occasional tumble, too. And I get my share of strains. Delivering babies is a physical business.”

  “Police work is, too,” Wade noted. “But I tend to push through the pain.”

  “Macho.”

  “And proud of it.”

  “Well, unless you plan to balance on one foot while I do this, Mr. Machismo, you’d better take a load off.”

  On her vanity table, an array of bottles sparkled like jewels. In front of them, Wade perched on a chair covered with delicate golden fabric and, half-afraid the fragile thing might break beneath his weight, leaned down to unlace his shoe. “This is great.”

  Kneeling with the wrap, Adrienne regarded him curiously. “What is?”

  “The way the light... This whole...” His heart squeezing, Wade stopped. The memories he’d tried to banish flooded in, sharp and dangerous. “Damn.”

  “Your ankle’s throbbing?”

  “Not that.” He’d guarded his darkness for so long he could barely imagine revealing it. But if he didn’t, he’d have to maintain a wall around himself and keep her at a distance. He wanted to move beyond that point. “Being here reminds me of before my mother left. Before all the brightness went out of my life.”

  Adrienne rocked back onto the carpeted floor. “Will you tell me about it?”

  “I don’t want to burden you.”

  “Believe me, you won’t.” She rested her hand on his knee.

  It chafed at Wade to show anyone his scars or, in this case, the wounds that had never completely healed. Yet he had to share them with Adrienne so she’d understand him. “When I was thirteen, she left Dad and me for another man. Her note said...” His voice broke. Fiercely, Wade forged on. “She said she’d only stayed because her son needed her, and now...” His eyes burned. “Now, instead, she was getting in my way.”

  Adrienne’s touch on his leg anchored him. “In your way? How?”

  Wade swallowed. “I’d been going through a stupid adolescent rebellion. Treating her like the enemy. Staying out late with my friends, complaining about her cooking, acting like a jerk.”

  “You blame yourself?” she asked gently.

  Yes. “It was like she rejected us both, and the worst part is I deserved it.” The story didn’t end there. “I was angry about being abandoned. She married again and traveled a lot with her new husband, visiting his son and grandkids and seeing the world. I only met them a couple times.”

  “But you stayed in contact?”

  “Aside from a few brief visits, we only occasionally talked on the phone, but it made Dad furious. He considered her a traitor, and since he was the only parent I had left, I sided with him,” Wade admitted. “By the time I figured out that I shouldn’t be expected to choose, it was too late.”

  As if recalling that she had a task to do, Adrienne began wrapping the stretchy bandage around his ankle. “What do you mean, too late?”

  “When I was sixteen, she and her husband were flying in his private plane to spend the holidays with his son in Lake Tahoe,” Wade said. “A storm came up and the plane went down in the mountains. There were no survivors.”

  Her hands stopped moving. “How sad. You never had a chance to say goodbye.”

  “Later, when I was training for police work, I talked about it to a counselor,” Wade said. “That eased some of my feelings, and I buried the rest. But they still resurface, especially this time of year. If only I’d tried harder to reach out or hadn’t been such a jerk to her in the first place.”

  “You believe she’d have stayed?” Adrienne secured the bandage around his ankle. “That she’d have ditched her lover for your dad?”

  “I suppose not. But maybe she’d never have taken up with him in the first place.” As he spoke, Wade saw how childish his thinking was, assuming that he could have saved his parents’ marriage if he’d only been good enough.

  “Last year when Vicki went out drinking on New Year’s Eve and smashed her car into a tree, I blamed myself.” Adrienne returned the empty bandage box to the drawer. “Although she was sober when she left here, I knew she’d soon start drinking. I tried to take the keys, but she grabbed them away. I wish I’d done more. Tied her up, called the police....”

  “There’s nothing they could have done while she was sober,” Wade said. “And you had no legal right to restrain her.”

  “That’s what I try to tell myself.”

  “How about Reggie? This was obviously hard on him, and still is.” He’d seen that in his son’s behavior the day they’d visited the cemetery.

  “I took him to a therapist afterward,” she said. “I went, too. But while grief counseling can help, it doesn’t entirely banish the pain.”

  “How about the guilt?” Wade asked. “Because for me, that’s almost as bad.”

  “Reggie doesn’t seem to suffer from that. But I do. I guess that growing up in families like ours, we feel like we should be able to fix everything.” The glitter in Adrienne’s eyes matched his own tear-blurred vision.

  “How do you deal with that?”

  “I try to remember tha
t we can’t make choices for other people. And we’ll never be perfect. We can only do our best, take each day as it comes and forgive ourselves for honest mistakes.”

  Inside, a hard knot dissolved. Hearing the words in Adrienne’s soft voice gave them power.

  The power to heal. And the power to bring the two of them together.

  Impulsively, Wade reached for her hands and rose, drawing her up. “I need you,” he said, gathering her against him. With her hair flowing around him and her mouth inches from his, they were lost in a private, precious world.

  “I need you, too,” she whispered.

  After that, there was no more room for words.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Wade’s hard body fit against Adrienne’s as if he’d been designed for her. She loved the roughness of his skin, the restrained strength in his muscles and the tender way he gazed into her eyes before kissing her.

  Although both had experienced other lovers, she sensed they’d been alone so long that every touch had become new. Peeling off each other’s clothing, adjourning to the bedroom, exploring each other as they rolled and teased and cuddled, was almost like the first time.

  When his intensity grew, she met him with a passion of her own, taking what she wanted. He clearly liked it when she played the aggressor, then turned the tables and flipped her on the bed. They were partners, sharing their reactions, their excitement rising even as they strove to delay the moment of union as long as possible.

  Never let this end.

  Adrienne’s only hesitation came when Wade murmured something about protection. While she was trying to frame a response, he scooted out of bed and retrieved a condom from his wallet.

  “It’s kind of old.” He regarded her apologetically.

  “That’s okay.” Putting every other consideration out of her head, Adrienne unrolled it over him with the exquisite skill of a surgeon.

  Eyelids half-closed, Wade moaned. She caressed him, thrilled to be arousing him. Then it was his turn to trace fire across her body with his mouth.

  They merged like two people coming home. It was right and natural, and inevitable. Then rioting sensations blotted her awareness of anything but Wade—his eagerness, his caring and his explosive climax.