A Family for Christmas

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  He thought of her fingers on his face. In the bathroom.

  “Here, in the kitchen, pills and drops, at breakfast and dinner.” A schedule. One he could chart—mentally at least.

  “I don’t want any more painkillers. I don’t like what it does to my head.”

  “You’re going to be a lot less comfortable without it.”

  “Truthfully, Doc, I feel better today than I’ve felt in...a while.”

  Her pain had to be at a six. The face fracture alone...

  Which made him think this wasn’t her first zygoma fracture. Or even her worst. He wondered about her sense of smell. About pain in her jaw when she chewed. He wondered if her features would be uneven when the swelling finally departed.

  “Why didn’t he ever hit your stomach or your mouth?”

  Probably not a doctor-patient question—he regretted asking before he’d even completed the words.

  “Stomach because organs are precious. And my mouth because he likes kissing.”

  The bowl he’d been scrubbing cracked in two.

  “But he didn’t mind doing that to your face?” he asked, discreetly picking the two pieces of earthenware out of the sink and throwing them away.

  “He only did it when he got jealous. It kept other guys from looking at me.”

  She said the words so matter-of-factly he thought, at first, that he’d misunderstood. But when he replayed them in his mind, he knew he hadn’t. He glanced over. Her back was still to him. She hadn’t moved.

  “You said this bastard owned a surfing school?” He justified the question by telling himself that if he was going to keep her safe from the man’s future clutches, he had to know facts.

  “On Ventura Beach.”

  An hour north of his own home on the California coast.

  Wait. She’d seemed familiar with Los Angeles Children’s...

  “Do you have kids?”

  She’d said it was the two of them in the van, but she hadn’t expressly said there weren’t others present. If the bastard had her children...if...

  “Not anymore,” she said. And with that, she stood, excused herself and disappeared down the hall toward the bathroom.

  Leaving Simon white-faced, his entire world spinning. Her mistrust of doctors...familiarity with the medical field...not anymore. She’d had a child. One a doctor hadn’t been able to save? Because her husband’s fist had caused too much damage to littler bones than hers?

  The pieces all fell into place.

  Did she not trust the hospital to keep her safe because she’d taken her child to them and they hadn’t been able to save that small life? Or prevent his or her father from doing further damage? Damage that had eventually been fatal?

  It made sense. Something had happened to make Cara, a woman who’d clearly been beaten over a long period of time, suddenly pretend symptoms that would allow her to escape her husband’s clutches. Something so horrible that she’d been willing to die just to get away from the man.

  Or maybe she no longer had a reason to remain with him.

  Whatever had happened, two pertinent facts resonated with Simon.

  He had a life to help save.

  And he was going to have a woman in his cabin full-time.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Santa Raquel, California

  LILA MCDANIELS WAS not comfortable Thursday morning. She’d very deliberately chosen one of her less fashionable suits—all of which, new or old, were gray or brown—with a plain dark beige blouse. She’d pulled her hair into its usual bun. Her makeup, just a light foundation to protect her skin, was no more and no less than usual. Her shoes were the same serviceable thick-soled walkers she’d been wearing for years. No jewelry. She sat in her usual chair in the office she’d had at the Stand since the shelter’s inception. There was nothing about that morning to make her feel in any way different from any other day in her life.

  And yet...as she sat at her desk in midafternoon, she was...not at peace. Edward had been in a few hours before. She’d seen him each of the six days since he’d had wine and cheese in her suite, even if just for a few minutes. They’d talked at length the previous night, too—when, for the third time, he’d had to bring Joy back to The Lemonade Stand. A third night they’d tried and failed to have a grandfather-granddaughter sleepover.

  Lila felt the failure acutely.

  Even though nothing that was going on with him was her fault. He’d be the first to say so. He couldn’t tell her enough how much he valued her friendship.

  Actually, he’d only mentioned it twice, but she recognized that, for a man as reserved as Edward, twice was a big deal.

  She valued his friendship, too. More every day, it seemed.

  And that was the crux of the problem. Things were getting out of hand. Beyond, apparently, her ability to step aside and be neutral. What did she do about that?

  She’d been asking herself the question for the past week. Before that, really. And had no answers. She had no boss to go to. No superior to whom she could defer this case.

  And she wouldn’t defer it even if she could. Joy and Edward needed her help. And she was damn well going to give it.

  Closing her eyes, she pictured her own little girl at seven. It was the year she’d gotten sick. And there’d been nothing Lila could do to help her.

  Was that why Joy’s situation was personal to her?

  Was it possible it had nothing to do with Edward at all?

  The knock on her door shook her out of the reverie she was falling into far too often these days. After her meeting with Edward that morning, she’d called Julie Fairbanks to ask her to stop in for tea. She’d had to wait for the busy philanthropist to return from a children’s charity board luncheon in LA. And then to have an art therapy session alone with Joy immediately afterward.

  Julie’s drawings of Amy helped Joy communicate. They seemed to give the little girl security. Julie, more than most of them, was bearing the brunt of responsibility for the sweet, dark-haired girl. A victim of abuse herself, of violent date rape and years of forced cover-up, Julie had only just begun to venture out of the suite in her family mansion for more than just board meetings. She’d been volunteering at the Stand less than a year when Joy had been brought to them. She wasn’t as used to setting heart boundaries as the rest of them were.

  And she was being asked to give the most heart.

  Because, through her children’s books, a mute Joy had bonded with her. They’d thought that as soon as Joy opened up, began sharing her fears, Julie would be able to take a step back, to slowly fade from Joy’s life.

  Knowing that no matter how much she grew to love the little girl, she would still have to let her go, Julie had still been willing to help. Lila admired her.

  And hated what she was about to do.

  Hated that she had to ask even more of a woman who’d lost so much—both of her parents, who’d died shortly before the rape, her youth and ability to trust, her ability to enjoy sex...

  Not an infrequent visitor to Lila’s private sitting room, Julie, still dressed in the black dress pants and black-and-white tweed jacket she’d worn to her luncheon, helped prepare their tea. It was a good thing she knew where the little lemon cookies were and the plate they went on, because Lila was suddenly dealing with a flashback to the last time she’d had someone in her suite. Edward.

  She hadn’t sat at the little table since.

  Julie, who’d never sat at the table, didn’t even seem to notice it there as she carried the tray into the sitting room and placed it on the small claw-footed coffee table set before the two rose-upholstered antique chairs.

  She waited for Lila to pour. The familiar motion, the beautiful setting, brought Lila back to her calm. Her purpose.

  “How are you?” Lila asked, not shy a
bout getting right into Julie’s skin as she met the younger woman’s gaze. With Julie, that was what it took. Though unpaid, Julie was still Lila’s responsibility while she was at the Stand.

  “I’m good.” The blue-eyed, dark-haired woman smiled. A real smile. It gave Lila’s heart a boost to see it.

  “More specifically, tell me how things are progressing with Hunter.”

  While the woman’s new romance shouldn’t be any of Lila’s business, in the moment it had to be.

  “He wants to get married...” Julie blurted, but not happily. Lila paid attention to the expressions on Julie’s face. The new glow of happiness that, just a couple of months ago, she’d despaired of ever seeing there. The fear.

  And the resolve, as well. Lila wasn’t there to judge Julie. Or even to counsel her. She was there to find out if Julie could help them.

  But first she had to be convinced, beyond a reasonable doubt, that helping them wouldn’t be unduly detrimental to Julie. Because that was Lila’s own code.

  Lila had sacrificed one human being’s best interests for another once before in her life. Her son for her daughter.

  Never again.

  “Tell me about it,” she said now, needing to know how Julie was handling her struggles. If she was progressing...

  “I want to marry him so badly,” Julie said. “But I can’t. Not until I know I can be a real wife to him.” Tears filled her eyes, but she didn’t look away. Sometimes Lila didn’t know where Julie found her strength, how she managed to face her fear, take hold and forge forward. It was a remarkable ability. One she wished she could give to every single woman who walked through their doors.

  Lila nodded, understanding. In a way, she even related personally to Julie’s feelings. Aware of her own limitations, she knew she would never have another close personal relationship.

  For her, it was a definite never. For Julie, though, there was every possibility that...

  “He’s so good to me,” Julie was saying, smiling now through her tears. “So patient and sweet and funny.”

  The woman was in love—with a man Lila greatly admired. Hunter’s almost uncanny ability to sense when people were feeling stressed, his way of lightening moments without really even realizing what he was doing had, in Lila’s opinion, saved Joy’s life.

  The fact that the man was also Edward’s nephew didn’t really have anything to do with how fond she was of him, Lila assured herself silently. They were related by marriage only—Hunter’s father had married Edward’s sister, neither of whom Lila had ever even met...

  “Edward says that you’ve stayed at Hunter’s place.” He’d told her that morning as they discussed plans for Joy.

  “He stays at mine more often. I think, eventually, he’ll move into the mansion with me. It’s my home. It’s far too big for just Colin and Chantel, even with a baby on the way. Three families could live there without ever seeing each other if they didn’t want to. My grandfather built it for just that purpose, to house his entire family and yet let everyone be independent...” The speed with which Julie’s words flew had Lila reaching out to hold the other woman’s hand. She gave it a squeeze. And then let go, returning her hands to her lap.

  “It’s okay for you to find security and happiness in your home, Julie. You and your brother are blessed to have been given the opportunity to have that home.”

  “It’s just that...I hid out there for so long. I...don’t want...people to think that I still need it that way. Or that I’m unable to be healthy somewhere else.”

  “What does Hunter say?”

  Julie grinned. “Are you kidding? He loves it there.” She paused and then added, “He slid down the banister last night.”

  Feeling so genuinely happy for the couple, Lila took a moment to let it be. And then said, “With your studio in your home, it makes perfect sense that you two would live there.”

  She was pretty sure she was going to ask for Julie’s help.

  Julie nodded. “I want to ask him to move in with me,” she said.

  “What’s holding you back?”

  “I know he’ll push for marriage again. You know Hunter. Once he knows what he wants, there’s no stopping him. But I just keep looking down the road, you know? He’s all het up with love right now, with the newness of it all—but what happens later? When we’re used to each other and have a routine and maybe even start to take the relationship a little bit for granted? What happens then if I still can’t make love with him? At some point he’s going to want to make real love to a woman. And...he wants children.”

  “Don’t you?” Lila couldn’t imagine a woman more suited to motherhood than Julie.

  “Of course I do.”

  “There are ways to make that happen without traditional sex,” Lila pointed out.

  Julie nodded. “We’ve talked about that. There’s always artificial insemination.”

  Julie didn’t sound all that happy with the solution, but at least she and Hunter were talking. There were no elephants in the room between them, apparently. Lila was feeling better and better about Julie’s recovery, her happiness, and about the Joy plan, too.

  “He’s... Every night Hunter has some new idea—some new way to get me to relax and feel physical pleasure,” Julie said. Because intimate talk among residents was not only common, but crucial to healing, Lila didn’t even blink.

  “Are any of them working?” Lila’s sudden prayer was based solely on a surge of hope for Julie’s sake alone. The young woman, who dedicated her life to helping others, deserved her own happiness.

  “Somewhat,” Julie said, her cheeks coloring a little bit. “I’ve been able to feel desire...it just shuts down before we actually get anyplace with it.”

  “Give it time,” Lila told her. “I’m sure Dr. Larson is telling you the same. The fact that the feelings are there means you aren’t incapable...”

  Julie nodded. Then gestured to the untouched tea and cookies. “Should we have some of this?” she asked.

  “I have a question to ask you first.” Lila had made up her mind. “But I need your word that if you have any hesitation, any at all, you tell me immediately.”

  “Of course.”

  “Edward had to bring Joy back again last night.” The man was taking the failure hard. Edward had made a comment about there being something elementally wrong with him. First his daughter and now his granddaughter wanting nothing to do with him.

  He was a man who loved generously. Unselfishly. Lila one hundred percent believed that Joy needed him. They just had to find a way for the two hearts to meet.

  “I heard,” Julie said. “Hunter told me when I talked to him on my way back from LA. Edward’s taking it pretty hard.”

  Lila nodded, feeling...guilty...for already having firsthand knowledge, and for the fact that she wasn’t telling anyone about Edward’s middle-of-the-night calls to her personal cell phone.

  “With Shawn in jail and no sign of Cara, we need to get Joy out of The Lemonade Stand and settled into a family environment as soon as possible. The longer she stays here, the more we delay her ability to resume her life.”

  Julie nodded. “Hunter wondered if Edward was going to take her back to Florida with him. His dad and Betty are there. I know Betty would love to help raise her.” Julie would no longer be the little girl’s surrogate.

  But it wasn’t the younger woman’s potential grief that stopped Lila’s heart. Or had her mood taking a sudden nose dive.

  Edward was going back to Florida eventually. She knew that. Needed that.

  “I’m sure he will, at some point,” Lila said, forging ahead. “But not until she’s comfortable enough to go with him happily. To that end, we came up with an idea...”

  Julie waited, her expression open. Lila knew a moment of real envy. And then fear. What in the hell was wro
ng with her? Why, after all these years, was she suddenly faltering?

  “We believe, if you and Hunter were close by, Joy would be able to make it through the night away from the Stand.” Lila dove right in. “With Hunter being Edward’s family, it would be easy to explain to Joy that she’s spending the night with Edward, but that they’re staying with family instead of at the hotel. We feel that taking her to a real home, and also with you and Hunter present, that we would give her the best chance at success.”

  Julie nodded. “Fine. I’m in. I’m assuming you’ll want to do this at Hunter’s house? I was actually thinking, you know, when I ask Hunter to move in with me and all, if Edward was still here, that maybe he’d move out of the hotel and into Hunter’s house. It’s really a lovely place. There’s a heated pool... Joy could swim...”

  “I need to make certain that I’m being clear, here. We aren’t asking you to spend time with her, or be a part of the evening. We just need Joy to know that the house belongs to Hunter and that the two of you are close by. Her care will be left solely up to Edward.”

  “I understand.” Julie nodded. “Hunter and I have already talked about the fact that I’m giving so much of my heart to Joy when, in the end, someone else will be her mother. I’m going to miss her horribly when she goes, of course. It’ll be hard. But I have Hunter, my family, my Amy books. And...I love that little girl. If I can help her be happy...whatever it takes...”

  Lila smiled. There. Things had fallen nicely into place, as they’d obviously been meant to. That was it, then. Edward’s family would be there for him and they were all going to be just fine. She was quite close to being able to let go.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Prospector, Nevada

  THERE WAS SOMETHING off about the man. Odd. Every morning Cara stood over him as he sat in a chair at the table before breakfast, peered down into his eye and administered drops. He never blinked. His gaze never connected with hers, either.

  She found his ability to focus so completely kind of impressive. Figured that it might come from being a pediatric thoracic surgeon.