Wyoming Christmas Surprise

by Melissa Senate

  Because he lost his wife, Theo’s mother, because of his work. Theo didn’t like to think about it and he never talked about it. He’d been young when his mother was killed, only four. He barely remembered the tall brunette with the kind green eyes and big smile. But he remembered his dad sitting him down and telling him his mother had been taken from them, that a bad man killed her and that Clinton Stark was going to make sure all the bad men in town were rounded up and sent to jail.

  He’d thought his father was a hero. He still thought that. But his father had never been home, and Theo had been largely raised by his aunt. And as Theo grew up and listened to his dad’s rants about everything from people to politics, he’d realized he disagreed with just about everything the man believed—except for ridding the streets of bad guys. It was their only common ground, and now that he thought about it, Theo had clung to it.

  His father had done the best he could, Theo had told himself over the years, not really sure if that was true or not. It had been his aunt’s refrain and Theo hadn’t liked it. But his best isn’t good enough, Theo had always thought. Then felt small for feeling that way. Clinton Stark had missed many birthdays altogether, not even trying to get home before midnight, when Theo would be waiting up at nine, ten, eleven, for his father to burst into his room with a “Happy Birthday and I got the thug.” His dad was just never around.

  And the price? A relationship with his son. The rift between them had widened with every year, it seemed.

  Almost like he wanted to protect me from him, he thought vaguely, then froze.

  Wait a minute. Could that be the reason his father distanced himself even when Theo was as an adult? To protect Theo—to protect himself—from being close? Theo had never thought about it that way before, but maybe that was the case.

  Hell, it probably was.

  And that’s what you’re doing, he thought. Protecting yourself from getting too close to Allie and the quads. The new task force would make sure of that.

  Go see Dad, he told himself. Make your peace before it’s too late. Because not everyone is lucky enough to get second chances. And with his father he wouldn’t.

  He drove over to the nursing home and checked in at the desk. The receptionist called up to his dad’s wing and let Theo know his father was having dinner in the floor café, which consisted of medically monitored meals.

  He found Clinton Stark sitting at a table for two with his aide, a nice young woman named Delia, who had an easy smile. His heart constricted in his chest at the sight of his father, a napkin tucked inside his shirt, his gray hair still thick and brushed back like always.

  “I’ll let you join him,” Delia said. “See you a little later, Mr. Stark,” she added to his dad.

  His dad glanced up at Theo. “Mr. Stark? Nice to meet you.” He held out his hand and Theo shook it, but didn’t let go. These types of lapses used to kill Theo, but he supposed he’d gotten used to it. His father not recalling the name Stark at all, or sometimes confusing Theo for his own father, and oftentimes assuming he worked at the home.

  “Hi, Dad,” he said. “I see you’re having chicken soup with carrots. I remember you always liked that.” His aunt had often made huge batches that were from his mom’s recipe, and Theo had always felt close to her and happier when he was eating her chicken soup. His dad had a bowl every night. Theo hadn’t really thought about what that really meant before now.

  Clinton Stark hadn’t been the easiest person to deal with, but Theo had always appreciated that his father had never tried to erase his mom’s memory. Photographs of her remained up, no matter who he dated or how long the relationships lasted. And long after his aunt had stopped coming around as often, his father had made the soup every Sunday for as long as Theo had lived at home. His heart constricted at the thought of these little things—big things—that he’d missed because he’d been too focused on what he felt he’d been denied.

  Make amends, he told himself. Now is your chance.

  “I’ve missed you,” Theo said, holding on to his dad’s left hand so he could eat with his right. “I’ve been a real idiot. About a lot of things.”

  His father glanced up at him, slowly bringing a spoonful of soup to his mouth. “Ah, this soup is darn good.”

  Theo smiled. “Like Mom used to make, right?”

  “Mom? Mom’s here?” Clinton looked around, his green eyes brightening, but the light dimmed and he shrugged, turning his attention back to his soup.

  “You want to know what I think?” Theo whispered, his hand on his dad’s shoulder. “I think we all do the best we can at the time. Whatever that might be in the moment. Might not be good enough for others and maybe it really isn’t, but it’s the best we can do at the time.”

  He thought back to all those times he’d felt wronged by his dad, the arguments about their viewpoints and politics and how Theo should live his life. His dad was his dad and he had to love him as he was if he wanted a father. Especially now when there wasn’t much time left.

  “I love you, Dad,” he whispered. “I never thanked you for making Mom’s chicken soup every Sunday. I never thanked you for keeping her photographs all over the house. You never talked about her, but you thought about her and now I know that. I always thought you were forcing your viewpoints on me, but it turns out you let me have my mom my way, my memories, young as I was. You let me remember her as I did.”

  He smiled, thinking about how he used to think Eliza Stark lived on a cloud high up in the sky. He’d told his dad that once when he was around six, and he’d never forget how Dad had said, Yes, that’s right. Anything Theo had said about his mother, his dad’s response had been Yes, that’s right. No matter what. Theo had only had wonderful memories, so his dad’s agreement had always been exactly what Theo had needed.

  “You were a good father,” Theo said, giving him a gentle hug.

  Clinton looked at him, the light back, and Theo wondered if in that moment he knew who Theo was, heard what he said, felt the love radiating from his son. The light was gone seconds later, but Theo decided that in that brief, shining moment, his father had known.

  Feeling better than he had in a long time, Theo accepted half of the dinner roll his dad offered him from the plate on the table, and sat there, just watching his father eat his soup and nod and smile at people getting up from other tables or sitting down.

  When his father starting nodding off, Delia appeared and said she’d bring him into his room and get him settled for his nap. It was only five o’clock, but apparently he napped for a half hour after dinner, then played cards or watched television until eight, talking-head shows or sports, and then went to sleep at eight thirty. His father was safe and well cared for and knew Theo loved him. He believed that.

  The moment he hit the cold air outside, Theo felt different, as if his cells were rearranging themselves. He put his truck keys back in his pocket and took a walk down the path by the river, an idea slowly forming.

  Could it be the answer?

  The longer he walked, the cold December air rejuvenating him, the more he knew it was.

  Theo knew—finally—what he had to do. And he was fully prepared to do it.

  Chapter Fifteen

  “Oh, that’ll work,” Lila said, custard cruller midway to her mouth. The MacDougal triplets sat around the kitchen table in Lila and Merry’s condo, gobbling up the treats they’d gotten from Coffee Tawk. “Platonic spouses? Merry, please tell her. I can’t even with this.”

  Merry gave Allie a more sympathetic look than was on Lila’s face at the moment. “I know you’re trying to find a solution, Allie. But living like roommates with a man you’re in love with? I don’t think you’d survive three days. You’ll go out of your mind.”

  “Right?” Lila said, sipping her mocha latte. “Poor Henry will have his diaper on backward. Ethan will have two diapers on. Olivia three! And Tyler will never
get changed at all. Those poor quads. Their mother went off the deep end.”

  Allie put her cupcake down with a hard sigh. Seriously, she could see all that happening. And she’d probably ruin every meal she attempted to make for her clients. She’d add sugar when it called for salt. Baking soda instead of baking powder. She’d forget to turn the oven on. Actually, she’d done that a few times without having lost her mind.

  “But what can I do?” Allie asked. “I can’t go through what I did two years ago. I can’t be worried sick every night that he might not come home. I have to emotionally distance myself from him.”

  “First of all,” Merry said, pointing her cruller at Allie, “that’s never going to happen.”

  “I’ll give the second of all,” Lila added. “Even if you did manage that and you lived as housemates, do you really think you wouldn’t worry yourself sick about whether he came home or not? So, really, Al, you might as well have the real marriage with sex.”

  She supposed she hadn’t exactly thought out the plan in depth. When he’d told her that he’d been asked to join a task force to go after some dangerous mobster, everything inside her had gone blank. Well, scared and then blank. All she could think was that she couldn’t do this, not again. And so pulling away on an emotional level seemed the only way to have him in her life, in the babies’ lives, and yet not spontaneously combust.

  She wanted Theo to be happy, to be the cop he’d always dreamed of being. A cop like his father had been. He’d never talked to her all that much about his father, not in detail anyway, and she knew that his father had become consumed with hunting down criminals after the loss of his wife, Theo’s mother, when he was very young. Theo didn’t talk much about that, either; he’d brought it up on an early date when the subject of their families had come up, but she hadn’t related his own drive to follow in his father’s footsteps to his mom.

  Her heart squeezed and tears poked at her eyes. Her husband would not be satisfied as a law enforcement officer if he wasn’t out there, chasing leads and suspects.

  “Allie?” You okay?” Merry asked.

  “Theo said we’d figure it out. But I don’t see how.”

  “Well, maybe look at it another way,” Merry said, taking a sip of her coffee. “What happened two years ago was an anomaly, Allie. Unusual, once-in-a-lifetime, terrible circumstances that he found himself in. It’s not like that could possibly happen to the same cop twice in one lifetime.”

  Lila nodded. “I guess if you want the marriage to really work, you have to trust him to find the balance. Do you?”

  Allie bit her lip as a very dim light bulb flashed on inside her mind. She had to trust him. It really was that simple.

  And she did trust him. She had every reason to. She reached for the locket around her neck and just touched it. Sometimes, when she needed a little faith or strength, it was all she had to do.

  “What would I do without you guys?” Allie asked.

  “Without us, poor Ethan would be wearing four diapers right now,” Lila said, taking a big bite of her donut.

  The MacDougal sisters laughed and finished gobbling up their treats, the conversation turning to their most recent dates. Merry was “very reluctantly” going on a second date with the divorced dad of the triplets, who’d come to their first date with a two-page list of questions about both triplets and girls. Lila had had the “worst date of her life” two nights ago and was giving up on men.

  As they sat and talked and laughed and kept their ears peeled for the quads, still fast asleep for their afternoon naps, Allie was relived to realize that figuring out matters of the heart just didn’t come easy. Of course, now she was exactly where she was before Theo had sprung the news on her about the task force—and starting right before Christmas.

  When he came home, she had no idea what she was going to say about the future of Mr. and Mrs. Stark.

  * * *

  As Theo drove over to the police station, he went over his plan in his head, hoping the captain would be amenable to it. He brought two large cappuccinos, one for himself, one for his boss, to help.

  Coffees in his hands, he rapped on Captain White’s door with his knuckes. “Cap, it’s Theo. Got a minute?”

  “Come on in,” Morgan White said.

  Theo managed the doorknob without spilling the cappuccinos and stepped in, giving the door a nudge shut with his foot. “Stopped at Coffee Tawk. Want a cappuccino?”

  “I always want a cappuccino,” the captain said. “So you’ve got an answer for me about joining the task force early?”

  Theo handed over the cup. “I have a proposal.” He sat down and took a swig of the hot caffeine boost.

  Morgan White sat back in his chair, arms behind his head. “I’m listening.”

  “I feel like I was born for the work I was doing,” Theo said. “Hunting down serial killers and mobsters and repeat offenders. But now, with a wife and four babies who need me home at six every night? I can’t join the task force. Not after what I put Allie through two years ago. But I do have a plan for how I can be part of the team without being in the field, so to speak.”

  “What’s that?” the captain said, taking a swig of his coffee.

  “I’d like to become a strategist for the team,” Theo explained. “Work the psychological angles of the criminal mind more than chasing after the bad guy. Study the perp or suspect’s profile and come up with solid ways to catch him. To be honest, I think it’s what I really do best. I can serve the community, the task forces, the PD, and be what my family needs, too.”

  “A strategist,” Captain White repeated. “I like it, Stark. And you can help train one of the rookies in undercover work and surveillance, too. I think you’ve come up with a great solution.”

  Relief settled Theo’s shoulders from their scrunched position, his muscles loosening, his heart rate slowing down. And as he and the captain spent the next half hour on a written description of the new role and his responsibilities, he felt as though he’d been given one hell of a Christmas gift.

  Now he just had to make sure he hadn’t already lost Allie—his true gift.

  * * *

  Allie was up in the attic, looking for the box of Christmas tree decorations that she’d avoided last Christmas, unable to bear looking at the ornaments Theo had surprised her with on their first holiday as a married couple. He’d had a few of their wedding photos put on hanging hearts and he’d conspired with her sisters to make photo ornaments of her parents on red and white stars. She’d hugged him for a good five minutes when he’d given her those.

  Ah, there the box was. She’d forgotten she’d shoved it under an old desktop to avoid seeing it on the rare occasions she’d come up here. Last Christmas, between mourning her late parents and grieving at Theo’s loss, she just couldn’t handle looking at the box the ornaments were in, let alone putting them on the tree.

  She sat down on the dusty floorboards and opened up the box, pulling out an ornament photo of her and Theo kissing right outside the Wedlock Creek Chapel. She smiled at how incredibly happy she and Theo looked. Seven years ago. They’d been so young, just twenty-four, and she’d been so madly in love. She still was.

  And mission unexpectedly accomplished. Because there was no way she could have some ridiculous platonic marriage with this man. She loved Theo with all her heart, in every way. She would just have to accept, somehow, that he was a cop and that he’d do his best to keep himself safe for his family.

  Except the second she thought it, she knew it would be rough going. Maybe they would just “figure it out,” as he’d said. Find a new normal kind of thing.

  She glanced at her watch. It was now noon, and Theo should be home any minute. He’d texted her that the morning had gone well and that he had a few stops to make. A few minutes later, she heard the door open, and she took the box and went back down the attic steps.

 
“Allie?” he called.

  “Up here,” she said, heading down the main stairs.

  The sight of him, in his black leather jacket, his green eyes on her, never failed to send a spark up her spine.

  “Babies napping?” he asked, a big shopping bag in his hand.

  She nodded. “For about fifteen more minutes or so.”

  “Just enough time,” he said.

  She tilted her head. “For what?”

  “For me to tell you we don’t have to have a platonic marriage.”

  She smiled. “I already came to my senses about that—with a little help from my sisters and these ornaments.”

  He put down the bag and came over to her, looking in the box. He pulled out an ornament of them on the chapel steps, Allie in his arms, bouquet that her sister Lila would catch at the reception in her hand. “The happiest day of my life is a tie—this day,” he said, pointing at the photo on the ornament. “And the day I returned to Wedlock Creek and saw you again and met my children. You and the quads have to come first.”

  She reached up a hand to his face. “I know you mean that. And I accept that you’re who you are, Theo Stark. Your job is part of you. We’ll figure it out as we go along. You know what I realized just now? We’re not the same people we were two years ago. We’ll both handle things differently.”

  He took the box from her and set it down on the bottom step, then pulled her into his arms. “I don’t know what I did to deserve you, Allie. But there’s something you should know.”

  She looked up at him. “What’s that?”

  “I already turned down the task force.”

  She gasped. “Really?”

  “Really. When I said just now that you and the babies come first, I meant it. I came up with a proposal to let me serve the team as a strategist instead of being out on the missions, and the captain approved.”

  “Theo, that’s brilliant. And right up your alley. You love strategizing and the psychology of the criminal mind.”