Miracle Under The Mistletoe (The Foster Brothers #1)

by Tracy Madison

  That didn’t mean he was looking forward to it. If Olivia retreated into herself again, he wasn’t sure he had the strength to continue his efforts. A man could only fight for so long. But if they got through tonight, then maybe they’d get through tomorrow, and the next day, and so on.

  Olly, as if she knew his thoughts were on her, took the bucket of popcorn and set it on the ground. Then, she slipped her hand in his and rested her cheek on his shoulder. The tropical scent of her hair reached his nose. He almost asked her why she was using a different shampoo, but stopped himself. Sammy was right…what did it matter?

  Enough brooding, he thought. He hadn’t lied. He was with the most beautiful woman in the theater—and no, he didn’t have to see all the other women to know that.

  He only had eyes for Olivia.

  Wrapping his arm around Olivia’s shoulders, he pulled her closer to him. She sighed and snuggled in. With great effort, he forced himself to watch the movie. Stage two of their date would come soon enough. And then he’d see what he—they—had left.

  “I don’t want to be here,” Olivia said in a tense whisper that matched the set of her shoulders. “Please take me home, Grady.”

  “I can’t do that,” he answered stiffly. “Not yet.”

  “Something like this isn’t up to you, Grady. You don’t get to make these decisions for me,” Olivia snapped, annoyed beyond belief that he would try this again. “And I am not prepared to join a parents’ bereavement group. Not when you dragged me here before and not now.”

  “You don’t have to join. You never have to come back again.” Grady tightened his grip on the steering wheel and stared at the building they were parked in front of. “All we have to do is go in and sit down and listen. That’s it. I’ll be with you the entire time.”

  “How could you plan this as our date?” It was on the tip of her tongue to confess she’d made an appointment with a counselor, but she didn’t. Mostly because he wouldn’t understand why she was willing to do that and not this. “Take me home, or I’ll get out and call for a cab.”

  “You won’t even try?” he asked in a deadly calm manner.

  “You cannot continue to push me into situations I don’t want to be in.” She smacked her palm against the dashboard to punctuate her statement, her anger. “So no, Grady. For this…I won’t even try.”

  He sighed, put the truck in Reverse, and backed out of the parking space. “After last weekend, I thought you might be ready for this.”

  “You thought wrong.” Yes, she treasured what had taken place last weekend. Had even grown from it. But, “Decorating the house was my decision. My choice. This isn’t.”

  “This group has helped me a lot.”

  “Good for you.”

  “They could help you, too,” he said stubbornly.

  Right. As if sitting in a circle of people sharing their horror stories would help her feel better about her own. She was too private for that. One-on-one with a therapist would be difficult enough, but she was ready to take that step. Talking about her feelings, about Cody, in a group?

  No. That wasn’t for her.

  “They helped you, and that’s great. I really mean that, Grady. But when are you going to understand that we are two different people? You had no right to bring me here.” Another smack against the dashboard. Crap, that one stung. “You didn’t even ask!”

  “Because you would’ve said no. I thought, maybe, when presented with the opportunity, you would take a chance in trusting me.”

  Damn it! Why couldn’t he understand? “This isn’t about trust.”

  “I didn’t make you go in, did I?” He slowed to a stop at a streetlight. “I hoped you would, yes. But I wouldn’t force you into this, Olly. Hell, I would never force you into anything.”

  “Wow. What a short memory you have. Why are we even on this date, Grady?”

  “Okay, I take that back. In all of the years that we’ve known each other, I’ve forced you into something once.” The light turned green. He eased on the gas. “And yeah, I’ll admit it was wrong. And probably a stupid idea. But I’m trying to save our marriage and I was desperate.”

  Her throat closed, and she knew if she tried to speak again, her voice would break. She didn’t want to feel vulnerable. She wanted to feel mad, so she kept her mouth shut.

  Twenty-five minutes later, they arrived at her house. Her temper had faded into a frantic desire to be alone. She opened the door and nearly leapt from the truck the second it stopped. Grady’s long legs caught up with her before she’d even pulled her key from her purse.

  “Invite me in, Olly,” he said brusquely, although not unkindly. “We need to talk.”

  She jerked her shoulders back and tried to find her anger from earlier. “And if I say no? Will you demand to come in anyway?”

  Resigned weariness dropped over his features. “No. I’ll leave if you want.” He pulled his keys out of his pocket and tugged the house key off of the ring. Offering it to her, he said, “Here. You deserve to know that when you lock your doors, no one else will come in. I should’ve returned this to you a long time ago.”

  She stared at the key but didn’t move to take it. “Why now?”

  He looked at her for so long, she thought he wasn’t going to answer. When he did, his voice sounded hollow and far, far away. “Because I’m tired of this, Olly.”

  She swallowed heavily, feeling as if a stone was lodged in her windpipe. “Tired of what?”

  “Trying to figure out how to help you.” He pressed the key into her hand. “I don’t know what you need. I keep thinking I do, but I’m wrong at every turn. And hell, every last thing I’ve tried has backfired.”

  Olivia recognized that she stood on a precipice. She wasn’t prepared to make a decision this second about Grady, about their marriage. But if she entered her house and closed the door between them, then he would leave. And perhaps he wouldn’t return. Her fist wrapped around Grady’s key, the feel of it cold and heavy and hard.

  Casting her eyes to the ground, she said, “What do we need to talk about?”

  “What don’t we need to talk about?” was his gruff response.

  Well, that was about as clear as mud. But also entirely accurate. Using Grady’s key, she unlocked the door. “Then I suppose we should get started.”

  He followed her in. She paused for a millisecond at the threshold to the living room before going to the kitchen. Shrugging off her coat, she draped it over the back of a chair. “Do you want anything to drink? I have a few beers. A bottle of wine. Coffee.”

  “Whatever you’re having.” After removing his coat, Grady sat at the table.

  She poured each of them a glass of wine and slipped into the chair across from him. Angling her arms across her chest, she said, “Go for it.”

  He tapped his fingers against the table. What seemed an endlessly long minute passed. Finally, he said, “I don’t know where to begin.” Now, he gripped his hand into a fist. “That’s not true. I know where to begin. I know exactly what to say. I’m just not sure how much you’ll let me get out.”

  A strong, sharp jab of intuition sped her pulse. Ice trickled down her spine. Her tongue felt as if it were slicked with something sticky…like honey or peanut butter or maple syrup. Instead of leaving or asking Grady to leave, as her instincts begged her to do, she downed a large mouthful of wine. “Go for it,” she repeated thickly. “Say what you need to say and I’ll do my best to listen.”

  Closing his eyes, Grady leaned backward in his chair and expelled a breath. “The mall was crazy that day. The Christmas music was loud, but not loud enough to drown out all the folks trying to get their shopping done. Every time Cody spoke, I had to bend down to his level in order to hear him.” A rough laugh emerged. “And the line for Santa was beyond nuts. We waited for over an hour before it was Cody’s turn.”

  Olivia drained the rest of her wine and poured herself another glass. It was as if her heart had split into two. One half desperately needed to h
ear what Grady was saying. The other half craved to return to the protective cocoon she’d spent so long building.

  “But the wait was worth it,” Grady continued, “and Cody was all lit up from the inside after seeing Santa. When we left the mall, the parking lot was a slushy mess and the snow was still falling pretty hard. I was afraid Cody would slip, so I picked him up to carry him to the car.” Here, Grady’s voice deepened and cracked. “I thought about taking him back inside to wait out the snow. I almost did.”

  Whoa. Olivia hadn’t known that. Wasn’t sure she wanted to know it now. “Oh, God,” she whispered. “You mean—”

  Opening his eyes, Grady nodded. Misery clouded his gaze. “Yeah. That’s what I mean, Olly. If I’d only paused long enough to let that idea take hold…?.”

  “The accident might never have happened,” she filled in, her throat now dry instead of sticky. Yes. The what-ifs were surely going to kill her. “You’ve carried this around with you for all this time?”

  “Yes.” Grady’s jaw hardened. “I wish to God I’d taken Cody back inside and bought him a cookie or…”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “It was two days before Christmas. I wanted all of us to be together. I…I thought I’d be able to get us home safely.” Grief thinned his face, paled his normally tawny complexion to an ashen gray. “I was wrong. And that…that decision haunts me.”

  She understood being haunted by a split-second decision. All too well, even. “The accident wasn’t your fault.”

  “I thought it was for a long time.” He paused, as if deliberating what to say next. Or, more likely, how. “Even now, there are moments where I have to remind myself of that. And I would understand,” he said slowly, “if you blamed me. I wouldn’t be angry about it, Olly. Our son was in my care and I didn’t bring him home. I should have brought him home.”

  “I don’t blame you,” she said, matching his slow, methodical beat. This was important. He needed to believe her. “I never have. I’ve told you this before, Grady. There are a lot of things I’ve done wrong since Cody died, but I have never lied to you about this.” Reaching over, she grasped his wrist. “I do not blame you.”

  Their eyes met. She held his gaze with hers steadily, wanting him to see she spoke only the truth. A shudder rippled through his body. He shook his head back and forth in a physical denial of her assurances. “If that’s true,” he said, “then I don’t understand.”

  “Understand what?”

  “Why you’ve looked at me with such…coldness for so long.” He stood and paced the kitchen like a pent-up wild animal locked inside of a cage. “Why you pushed me away along with everyone else. We were partners. In this life together, come good or bad. But I…we…lost Cody, and then I lost you, too. I want to know why.”

  “I don’t know! I’m still trying to figure a lot of this out. But—” A desperate swirl of emotions engulfed her. She wasn’t ready for this conversation. Yet ready or not, the time had come. He needed to hear the truth. Hell, maybe she needed to speak it.

  “How can I blame you when I blame myself?” And then, before her nerves evaporated in a puff of smoke, she pushed out the rest, “It is my fault that you and Cody were even in the car that day. My fault, Grady. Not yours.”

  The shock of her words hit him first. She saw that by the way his entire body stilled and tensed. Disbelief came next, as evidenced by the ragged shaking of his head, by the slouch of his shoulders, by the way his eyebrows bunched together. “You were here, Olly. How could you, in any way whatsoever, believe that you are to blame?”

  Millions of nervous trembles skittered over her skin. “I was so tired. We’d been putting in a lot of hours at the shop, and with all the Christmas shopping and wrapping and… God, it sounds so stupid now! But there was so much going on, and I’d totally forgotten to take Cody to see Santa earlier in the week.” She wiped a stray tear from her cheek. Hell, she hadn’t even realized she’d started to cry. “He was relentless in wanting to go, and we were running out of time. So…I told him to ask you. And when you came to me, I—”

  “Suggested that Cody and I go alone, as a father-and-son outing.”

  “Yep. Because the idea of a few hours to myself seemed…heavenly.” She lifted her gaze to meet her husband’s. “When the police came here that night, I was in my bathrobe drinking a glass of wine and reading a book. I was annoyed when the doorbell rang, Grady. I wasn’t in the mood for company. I—” She angrily wiped at the tears that refused to stop falling. “I remember thinking ‘Great, I finally get some time to myself and someone has to show up and interrupt it.’”

  She waited for Grady to say something—anything—but he didn’t. He just stood there and looked at her with those dark, dark eyes of his. Her confession should have elicited some type of a response—a burst of anger, or a sigh of distress, or…

  “Olivia,” he said calmly, as if he were addressing a child, “you did not cause the accident. You are not at fault for the death of our son.”

  “Rationally, I know that. But I…am to blame for you and Cody going out that afternoon.” She was surprised to hear how calm she sounded. “If I had remembered to take him when I was supposed to, you would have been home. If I had gone with you, as you wanted me to, then maybe…maybe—” Her breaths were coming too fast, too harsh. The walls were pushing in around her, suffocating her. “Maybe it would have been me instead of him. I was his mother. It was my job to protect him. But I chose to be alone.”

  “Olivia…”

  “No, Grady, don’t you see? I chose to be alone, and now he’s gone, and guess what? I am alone!” Red-hot tears blinded her vision. “I deserve to be alone. It’s what I wished for, after all.”

  “You didn’t wish for our son’s death!”

  “No! But—” All at once, every pain she’d held on to exploded through her body in a rush of raw awareness. Her sobs spilled from a place deep within, a place she had never allowed herself to poke at…to see what resided there. Now she knew. “It feels as if I did,” she whispered brokenly. “I feel as if I brought this upon myself…upon us.”

  “Sweetheart, no.” Grady came to her then. He pulled a chair up to hers and sat down, gripped her hands in his. “Listen to me, baby. You think I never had moments where I wanted an hour or two alone? Of course I did. Parenting is hard work. Life is busy. But you were there for Cody every single day. And you were an amazing mother.”

  “Then why is he gone?” she asked, staring steadfastly at the floor. “Why, Grady?”

  “I don’t know. But it isn’t because of you or me. That is the one thing I know for sure.”

  She pulled one hand out of his grasp and fisted it against her chest. “It hurts. Right here. All of the time. And I don’t know how to feel better.”

  “My therapist has this thing she says, ‘Every person’s path to healing is different. Some need to get there quicker, so they hop on the express lane.’” Grady’s eyes softened. “‘Others need to take the long, windy road and examine every stone along the way.’”

  “I guess I’m examining stones, huh?”

  “I guess so.” Grady whisked his knuckles lightly across her cheek. “But the point is, you’re heading in the right direction. So you go ahead and pick up every stone you want, sweetheart. Just promise me you’ll keep moving forward.”

  “I am, Grady. I know that now. But you have to stop making decisions for me.”

  He acknowledged her statement with a short nod. “My intentions have always been good. I’ve only wanted to help.”

  “I know, and you have in lots of ways.” Tiredly, she shook her head. Everything that needed to be said jumbled together in her brain, leaving her numb. “I’m exhausted. I can’t dig at this any more tonight.”

  “Right,” he said, coughing to clear his throat. “I…I’ll take off, then.”

  He returned his chair to its proper spot on the other side of the table before putting on his coat. She stood to walk him to the door. His leaving felt wr
ong, but she knew if she asked him to stay—even if only to sleep on the couch—he’d get the wrong impression. Well, hell, maybe it would be the right impression. She was too confused, too drained, at the moment to make any type of a serious decision. Heck, choosing which pajamas to wear to bed that night would likely prove to be a conundrum.

  At the door, Grady said, “Tonight sucked. I’m sorry about that.”

  “It did suck,” she agreed, still reeling from the emotional onslaught. “But you were right. We needed to have that conversation. I…I think in the long run, I’ll feel better because of it.”

  “I feel the same.” He brought his hand up, as if he were going to touch her cheek or stroke her hair, but must have thought better of it. “Give me a call or something, Olly. Whenever you’re ready to talk about…well, whatever. Anything. I’ll be around.”

  “Don’t forget our fourth date,” she said lightly, suddenly worried. “When is that, anyway? Next weekend?”

  “No more dates. No more deal.” He bent down and kissed the top of her head. “You know what I want. The rest is up to you.”

  “You can’t do that. We had an agreement, Grady!”

  A relieved grin surfaced. “So you want to keep going?”

  “A deal is a deal, buddy.” She squinted up at him. “As long as we’re done with the bereavement group. If that’s your plan, then I’m out.”

  A pained expression crossed his features. “Point taken. But no…I actually think you’ll quite like what I have in mind for date number four.” He shrugged. “Though, I’ve been known to be wrong before.”

  Standing up on her tiptoes, it was her turn to drop a light kiss on him. She chose his cheek. It felt scratchy and warm and oh-so-inviting. “So…next weekend?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Next weekend.”

  “Okay. I’ll see you then.”

  She locked the door behind him, but went to the living room to stand by the tree and look out the window. She watched as his headlights backed down her driveway and then sped away. Wishes and dreams and questions and worries tangled together in her mind, in her heart. She had a lot to figure out—about herself, about Grady and about their marriage.