by Lisa Jackson
“I hate the pageant,” Kurt muttered under his breath.
“Don’t they go to church to learn how not to hate?” Ronni asked her sister.
“That’s the way it’s supposed to work.”
“I hate church, too.”
“Stop it, Kurt, you do not.”
“Do, too.”
Shelly rolled her eyes to the ceiling as if searching for God and hoping that He would intervene. “The pageant will be fun. Now, come on, boys, settle down, we’re just about done.”
Amy fluttered through in the garb of an angel. “I like being an angel,” she said, her tinsel halo bobbing as she talked, her wings stiff.
“You would,” Kurt observed.
“I was an angel last year,” Kent said.
“Yeah, who ever heard of a boy angel?”
“How about Gabriel?” Shelly asked. “He’s a man, right?” Again she looked at her sister. “Maybe I’d better brush up on my Bible study.”
“Who cares?” Kurt complained.
Ronni stood and dusted her hands. “Okay, that does it. Take off your costume—carefully, now,” she added when Kurt began to rip off the offensive robe. “You three can play outside for a while, if you want, run off some of that restless energy.”
Towel-robes, sheets, wings and halo went flying as the kids grabbed their jackets and headed out the front door. Ronni had to help Amy with her zipper, hat and boots, but the little girl was out the door in a flash, chasing after her older cousins. From the window, Ronni watched Kurt hurl a snowball that smashed against the back of Kent’s jacket. With a squeal, Kent scooped up a handful of snow and the fight was on.
“Victor told me about helping set up a tree for you over at the old lodge,” Shelly observed as she draped the shepherd’s outfit over the end of the ironing board.
“It wasn’t really for me. I’m just helping decorate it.”
“For Keegan?”
“Mmm.” Ronni nodded and adjusted the pins on the sleeves of Kurt’s costume.
“How does the old place look?”
“Good,” Ronni admitted, despising the wistful tone that stole into her voice. “The lodge is still pretty drafty and there’s lots more work to be done, but what he’s done so far is nice and he’s trying to refurbish it rather than remodel it.” She snapped the pin box closed and stretched her arms over her head. “He didn’t say too much about it, but it seems as if he’s not going to do anything as stupid as modernize it—except for the needed repairs and necessary updates to bring it up to code.”
“Did you ever talk to Taffy—ask her why she didn’t tell you someone was interested in buying the place?”
“Nah.” Ronni wound measuring tape between her fingers and frowned at the mention of her old school friend turned real estate agent. “What would have been the point? I couldn’t have afforded the place anyway.”
“I know the feeling,” Shelly said. “I’m afraid it’s going to have to be a spiritual Christmas this year.”
“That’s the best kind.”
“I think so, too, but tell it to a couple of six-year-olds who want everything they see on television. Kent’s list is two pages and he keeps coming up with more ideas.”
“How about a puppy?” Ronni suggested. “I know where there’s a great litter.”
“We rent, remember? No dogs allowed. And if we have to move—”
“You’re not moving. Don’t even talk like that,” Ronni said, but saw the worry in her sister’s eye before Shelly changed the subject back to Travis.
“So tell me about your new neighbor.”
“Not much to say.”
“Oh, come on. Vic wouldn’t say a word, just that he seemed like an okay, regular kind of Joe. I told him that was crazy. Regular guys don’t buy old lodges and lakes and hundreds of acres of woods. The guy’s got to be loaded.”
“Or in debt.”
“Nah. The banks only loan money to you if you don’t need it. Believe me, I know.” She placed her hand near the bottom plate of the iron, decided it was hot enough and started pressing the wrinkles out of Kent’s shepherd costume. “So what does Keegan do?”
“He’s never really said.” Ronni, glancing through the window over the sink to make sure the kids were okay, reached for the coffeepot and turned on the water while watching Kurt climb onto the fence and try to lure the horses to the side of the paddock with a handful of oats. The animals, standing in the shelter of a fir tree, pricked their ears forward and flicked their tails, but weren’t enticed. Loose Change, nicknamed Lucy, snorted in disdain and her tail flicked over her rounded belly.
“Well, he must earn a living some way, or else—God forbid,” she mocked, “he’s independently wealthy.”
Ronni chuckled as she rinsed the glass pot and scooped coffee into the maker. “I think he owns some sporting goods company in Seattle and it runs itself or he has a manager who does all the legwork. I don’t know.” She looked up at her sister and noticed a gleam in Shelly’s eye as she leaned across the counter. “Why?”
“You seem to be spending a lot of time with him.”
“Not a lot.”
“So come on, tell me, what’s he like, what’s he look like…? Vic wouldn’t fill me in on the details.”
Coffee started to drizzle through the filter and the scent filled the room. “What’s he like?” Ronni said, pulling down cups and saucers from an open cupboard. “Well, he’s in his mid-thirties, I’d guess, and he’s tall, about the same size as Vic, but he’s got dark hair and gray eyes and…a great smile, very sexy, but he hardly ever shows it off.” She set the sugar bowl on the table along with a small creamer filled with half-and-half. “Oh, and he’s got a son. Fourteen going on twenty-five.”
“You don’t like his boy?”
“No, that’s not the problem,” Ronni said, watching Loose Change finally deign to amble through the snow and nuzzle Kurt’s mittened hand in search of grain. “He doesn’t like me.”
“Oops.”
“Yeah. He’s a little mixed up and needs to settle in with his dad before he should have to deal with a woman….” She let the words trail away. What was she thinking? Bryan would never have to deal with her, not permanently. She was just Travis’s neighbor, potentially a friend. Who are you trying to fool? a tiny voice in her mind nagged. Do you tell your neighbors your darkest secrets? Fantasize about them? Stay awake all night remembering what it felt like to kiss them?
“So you’re interested,” Shelly said with a matchmaking glimmer in her eye.
“Not really.”
“Sure you are. Look, he’s new in town, doesn’t know anyone and lives up in that rambling old place with just his son. Why don’t you invite him to have Christmas dinner with us?”
The coffeemaker sputtered. “Christmas?” Ronni repeated.
“Why not?”
“Look, Shelly, don’t start with this, okay? It’s not like we’re dating or anything. I’m just having dinner with him—”
“Twice.” Shelly held up two fingers and wiggled them before she turned off the iron and hung up Kent’s costume. “When’s the last time you went to dinner with a man, hmm?”
“I’m not inviting him to Christmas dinner,” Ronni said firmly as she poured them each a cup of coffee and they settled into their usual chairs at the table.
“We’ll see,” Shelly murmured, undeterred.
“Don’t do anything stupid, Shell.”
“Moi? Of course not.”
“Don’t you go around my back and invite him.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.” But a sly smile curved her lips, and before Ronni could say another word, the door burst open. Kent, holding his mouth, ran into the room. He was crying and sobbing and slipped on the floor.
Shelly was on her feet in a
n instant and scooping him up. “What is it, honey?” she asked.
“K-Kurt, he tagged me—”
Shelly pulled his hand away from his mouth. Blood was smeared on the lower half of his face and his glove. He let out a terrified howl of pain. Shelly’s face drained of color.
“I’ll handle this,” Ronni said. “Let’s see.” Kent clung to his mother as Amy and Kurt, looking sheepish, slid into the room. “Close the door,” Ronni ordered while taking a clean cloth from a drawer, soaking it in warm water and washing Kent’s tear-streaked and blood-soaked face. “I think you’ll live,” she said as she studied the scratches around his mouth and looked inside where one of his front teeth wobbled precariously and blood still ran. “You’ll probably beat your brother in the tooth-loss department, though. My guess is the tooth fairy might come before Santa Claus this year.”
“Really?” Kent blinked against the tears standing in his eyes.
“No way!” Kurt complained. He’d been born ten minutes before his younger brother and seemed to think, as eldest son, he had all sorts of privileges.
“Really. Here, let me get a mirror and you can see for yourself. Amy—” But her daughter was already dashing through the dining and living area, her boots squishing as she left a trail of water on her way to the bathroom.
“Got it,” she cried. Back in an instant with a hand mirror, she nearly stumbled in her attempt to hand it to a sniffing Kent. “Lookie,” she said as the boy tried his best to eye his injuries.
Shelly’s color returned. “Now, since no one has to be placed permanently on the injured reserve list, what happened?”
They all started talking at once, but near as Ronni could tell, Kurt, bored with petting Lucy’s soft nose, had packed a snowball with pieces of ice he’d picked up from the frozen mud puddles. He’d hurled the icy snowball at Kent, whose back was turned, but a second before the moment of impact, Kent had turned and the hard-packed missile had caught him in the face.
“I think I’d better take my warriors home before anyone else gets hurt in battle,” Shelly said. She glanced longingly at her cooling cup of coffee. “I’ll see you tomorrow. Come on, boys.” Kent refused to walk—Shelly had to pack him into the car—and Kurt hung his head, probably because he knew that during the drive home, he was sure to receive a long lecture on playing safely.
“Kurt wanted to hurt Kent,” Amy announced as she watched the boys struggle with their seat belts.
“No—”
“Yes, he did, Mommy. Kurt’s mean.”
“Just rambunctious.”
“’Bunctious and mean.” Amy flounced back into the house and Ronni hesitated on the front porch. Dusk was just beginning to settle and the forest seemed dark and gloomy, but through the trees she caught a glimpse of colored lights at the old Johnson place and her heart warmed. What was wrong with her these days? she wondered as she closed the door and looked forward to an evening with a man she barely knew and a boy who seemed to hate her.
* * *
Bryan, obviously coached by his father, was on his best behavior. Beneath the surface was the same sullen boy, but he was outwardly friendly. After a meal of grilled steaks, salad and baked potatoes, they finished decorating the tree. Travis had already strung lights through the branches, so most of the hard work was done. The ladder was necessary again and when the last ornament was hung and the final length of tinsel draped, they lit candles, turned out the lights and plugged in the tree.
Amy gasped as hundreds of tiny, winking lights blazed, lending the huge room a cozy glow. “It’s beautiful,” she breathed, her eyes shining in wonder. “But it needs a star.”
Ronni shrugged. “We’ve got the same problem and thought we might find a homemade star or angel at the church bazaar.”
“Church bazaar?” Bryan snorted. “Don’t tell me, there’s a Christmas pageant, too.”
“Are you coming?” Amy asked eagerly and Bryan rolled his eyes.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“A dumb pageant?”
“It’s not dumb,” Amy said, her lower lip trembling. “I’m an angel.”
“Then it will be great!” Travis said, bending on a knee so he could look her squarely in the eye. “We’ll be in the front row.”
“No way!” All of Bryan’s pretenses shattered and fell away. “I’m not going to some stupid show about Jesus getting born. I’ve seen it a hundred times.”
“We’ll be there,” Travis said, rumpling Amy’s hair and shooting his son a look that brooked no argument.
Bryan grabbed his crutches and hitched himself out of the room. A second later, the door to his bedroom slammed shut.
“Why did he say it was dumb?” Amy asked, wounded.
“Because he’s fourteen,” Travis said, “and sometimes he has a hard time remembering to be polite.”
Amy started off in the direction of Travis’s room, but Ronni caught her by the shoulder. “Why don’t you give him a few minutes to cool off, honey? He’ll probably change his mind.”
“No doubt about it,” Travis said, his jaw set.
* * *
Amy fell asleep on the couch watching a Christmas special and Ronni covered her with a hand-pieced quilt Travis found. “This looks like an antique,” she said, tucking the faded blue squares beneath Amy’s chin.
“My grandmother’s. I think her great-grandmother made it—or maybe it was her great-great-grandmother, I can’t remember. Anyway, the story is that it came over on the wagon train—Oregon Trail—and then when the family moved north a generation or so later, it traveled along with them.
“My grandmother thought I should have it and so now it’s back in Oregon. Come on.” He took her arm and guided her back to the kitchen where he made hot coffee, infusing it with a shot of brandy. They put on their jackets, walked to the back porch and watched as lacy snowflakes fell, powdering the boughs of trees and collecting on the ground.
“So you have a lot of family in the Seattle area?”
“Some. A sister, a few cousins and my folks, but my parents live in Arizona in the winter.”
Funny, she’d never imagined him as part of an extended family. He seemed like such a loner, a man who was used to doing things for and by himself. “Is your sister coming down for Christmas?”
Frowning, he gave a curt shake of his head. “Nah. I don’t see much of her.”
“Oh.” She didn’t want to pry and yet there was so much she wanted to learn about him.
“She resents me.” A simple statement of fact. No emotions tangling it down.
“Why?”
“I don’t really blame her,” he admitted with a crooked, humorless smile. “She was firstborn and smart as a whip. Excelled in school, studied abroad, a real academic.”
She watched the steam rise from her coffee cup and blew across the cup, waiting for him to continue.
Leaning a hip against the top railing, he said, “I, on the other hand, was a screwup. Always in trouble. Never studied, barely passed, hated school. Despite all the grief I gave them, my parents, both of them, treated me as if I were the golden child. I was the boy, my father’s only son, the last Keegan of his line. My sister, no matter how hard she tried, was always second best. It wasn’t that they didn’t love her in their own way, it was the fact that I was supposed to excel, be the best.” He took a long swallow. “My sister never forgave me.”
“But that wasn’t your fault,” she protested, trying to reconcile the image of the rebel teenager with that of the successful man staring into the winter-dark night.
“Maybe not, but when you’re hurting, you try and hurt back. When she couldn’t gain my folks’ attention through achievement, she found other means, married someone they disapproved of and moved to L.A. She’s divorced now, no kids and barely speaks to me.” He shrugged
, then drained his cup. “The ironic part was, about the time she started rebelling, I’d finally grown up, finished college and started working for a computer software company. A couple of years later, I was married, a father and had moved into sporting goods and equipment. All of a sudden, I had to live up to my parents’ expectations, and by the time I stopped to take a breath, my marriage was falling apart and my son was a stranger who was starting to get into some of the same kind of trouble I got into as a teenager. I decided to change things.”
“So you moved here.”
His smile flashed in the darkness. “Sounds like I was running away, doesn’t it?”
“No, just making a change.”
He made a sound of disgust in the back of his throat. “Let’s just hope it was for the best.”
She set her cup on the windowsill and he linked his fingers through hers. Snow crunched beneath their shoes as he, tugging on her hand, led her through a copse of trees to the lake. Inky water lapped at the shore where ice had formed between the rocks.
At the edge of the lake, he turned to face her, his features in shadows, his eyes as dark as the night. Ronni felt that new feeling, the sizzle in her blood, the anticipation in the beat of her heart. With snow drifting around them, he pulled her against him and his mouth found hers in the darkness. He tasted of coffee and his lips were firm and hot, demanding. The feminine part of herself she’d buried so long ago responded and she linked her hands behind his neck. A cool winter breeze caught in her hair and lifted it from her nape. Snowflakes drifted from the sky.
Ronni felt her insides quiver as the kiss deepened. Her heart pounded so loudly she was certain he could hear it. Slowly he lifted his head and touched his forehead to hers. “Who are you, Veronica Walsh, and what are you doing to me?” he whispered.
“I—I was going to ask you the same thing.” She swallowed hard, trying to get a grip on her equilibrium, but his lips claimed hers again, slashing across her mouth with enough force to shatter all thoughts of resistance.
Inside she shuddered. It was she who knew nothing about him—just a few comments about a sister and parents and a grandmother’s quilt, about a troubled son and complicated ex-wife. But still he was a stranger, a man she’d only recently met, a man she didn’t know well enough to trust.
