12 Gifts for Christmas

by Various

  She thought he might have smiled. Even if it did seem a bit pained. “Maybe … this is simply about two old friends catching up?”

  “I see. And just how, exactly, are we defining catching up?”

  “Any way you like,” he said.

  What would she like? Oh, hell, she thought and snuggled close again. Who knew when she’d have another opportunity? “I’m leaving on New Year’s.”

  “So are we.”

  Her head tilted up again, searching his face. “Would that be enough for you?”

  A moment’s silence, then he answered, “It’ll have to be, won’t it?”

  Glowering, Nolan watched Evie and Casey, a four-legged, two-headed ball of energy in matching red hoodies and blue jeans, huddled together in front of one of the windows overlooking the zoo’s gorilla exhibition.

  “Hey, Case!” Every bit as jazzed as the six-year-old leaning against her, Evie pointed at a particularly huge gorilla. “Look at that big dude over there on the rock! Scary, huh?”

  “I’m not afraid of him!” Casey said, with all the bravado of a first-grader who wouldn’t recognize caution if it were wearing a name tag.

  “Wow, you’re sure braver than I am,” Evie said, hugging him, and Nolan wanted to say, for God’s sake, don’t encourage him.

  Don’t let him fall in love with you.

  It had been Evie’s idea to ease into whatever this was, to keep things light. Casual. So for the past couple of days that’s what they’d done: pizza-and-movie, football-in-the-park, take-the-kid-with-us casual. Naturally, Nolan had carefully explained to Casey that Evie was only a friend and that they were just hanging out for the week. And Casey had nodded like a bobblehead and said, “Yeah, I get it.”

  Except whenever he saw Evie, he was all over her, clearly the only kid of a single parent in the country who wasn’t the least bit concerned about adding a third party to the mix. As long as the third party was Evie.

  Now, watching them fuse like two drops of water, Nolan wondered why on earth he hadn’t let her go in the airport. Or when she’d tried to pull away after the kiss. Why he’d kissed her at all, resurrecting feelings he had no business resurrecting. What was this about? Some lame attempt to revisit his youth, reclaim the past? Stroke his ego by proving to himself that Evie still wanted him?

  “What’s next, Dad?” Casey said, a blur of unbridled joy in front of him, and Nolan’s gaze slipped from his son’s eager brown eyes to Evie’s cautious blue ones. Good question.

  “Let’s just keep walking and see, okay?”

  “‘Kay,” Casey said, taking Evie’s hand. He grinned adoringly up at her as she grinned every bit as adoringly at him.

  Nolan sighed. What this was about was seeing her in that ridiculous getup in the airport and not being able to catch his breath. What this was about was feeling her molded to him again, her mouth warm and eager under his and realizing he’d missed her far more than he’d ever admitted. It was about not wanting to say goodbye every time they’d seen each other.

  That—just shoot him now—he wanted her back.

  “I see you guys haven’t gotten very far,” his mother said. She and Nolan’s tall, grinning father materialized in front of them. Dad not being a dawdler, he and Mom had drifted ahead. And now, apparently, they’d drifted back with definite purpose alight in their eyes. Mom sidled up to Nolan and whispered, “Why don’t Jerry and I take Case to see the penguins—give you and Evie a chance to be alone?”

  There was a concept. Alone, as in, maybe having a chance to actually talk. To figure out what was really going on between them. Which was not going to happen with Mini Motor Mouth around.

  Still … “Good luck with prying those two apart,” he said.

  Mom squeezed his arm, then called, “Casey! Let’s go see the penguins!”

  “Evie! Come on—”

  “We’ll catch up with Evie and your father later,” Mom said, taking his hand. “I promise,” she added when the little boy cast torn eyes in his new best buddy’s direction. Nolan watched Evie as she followed Casey’s benign abduction, her hair warm honey in the sunlight. Her longing was palpable, as though something vital was leaking out of her.

  Nolan had the sneaking suspicion his expression probably looked a lot like hers.

  “Were we just set up?” she asked.

  “Yep,” he said, entwining their fingers, setting off in the opposite direction. This close to Christmas, the zoo wasn’t hugely crowded. But there were just enough other visitors to keep things … casual.

  “That’s one terrific kid you got there.”

  “Thanks. I think I’ll keep ‘im.”

  Evie laughed softly, tucking a hunk of hair behind her ear. “He says he doesn’t remember his mother.”

  “He was only a year old when Carole died. So, no. He wouldn’t.”

  “Right, I forgot.” She squeezed his hand. He’d already told her about the accident, how Casey’s car seat had saved his life, how Carole had hung on for nearly a week before the doctors had said there really wasn’t any point in keeping her on life support.

  “It can’t be easy, being a single father.”

  “Is anything?”

  “No,” she said on a breath. “I guess not. But you’ve done an incredible job, you really have.”

  “Thanks,” Nolan said quietly, his chest tight. They passed a gaggle of foreign tourists and a family with four kids. From his stroller, a toddler waved at them. Evie waved back, chuckling when he clapped his hands. Then she sighed.

  “Life rarely works out the way we expect, does it?”

  And there it was, the crack in her Happy-Happy veneer. “Want to talk about it?”

  “It?”

  “Whatever’s making you unhappy.” When she stiffened, he said, “Evie. This is me you’re talking to.”

  “I’m a big girl now,” she said quietly, looking straight ahead again. “Big girls figure out stuff on their own.”

  “Who says?” When she snorted, Nolan tugged her around to face him. “I know we always thought we were such good friends, but looking back … In a lot of ways, I let you down. We talked, yes, but I wasn’t really listening. Well, I’m listening now. If I can’t give you anything else, I can give you that. So …” His brows dipped. “Define stuff.”

  For a long time, Evie searched those steady brown eyes, self-preservation warring with a sudden, overwhelming need to open up to somebody about her feelings. But to Nolan? That was a path beset with all manner of snarling beasties. Still, she couldn’t talk to her so-called friends about any of this, or her family, nor could she afford to pay somebody for the privilege—

  Oh, what the hell …

  “Pretty much everything, actually,” she said, figuring she’d deal with the beasties later.

  “Well, good, that narrows it down.”

  She smiled at his joke before she resumed walking—and her train of thought. “Do you ever wonder what your life would be like if you’d done things differently?”

  “Sure. Who doesn’t?”

  Not what she’d expected. Not from Nolan. “But you always seemed so single-minded about what you wanted.”

  “I didn’t say I regretted my choices, Evie. Which wasn’t what you asked.”

  “So … you’re content?”

  “I didn’t say that, either,” Nolan said carefully. Softly. “I love my work, sure. And Casey’s incredible. When he’s not driving me nuts,” he added, grinning. “I have a lot to be grateful for. But I’d ditch the ‘single’ part of my life in a heartbeat. Under the right circumstances.” Then he added, with even more care, “You were pretty single-minded about what you wanted, too.”

  “Yeah. I know.” Evie let go of his hand to slip hers into her hoodie pocket as the beasties closed in, baring their nasty, yellow, razor-sharp teeth. “There’s a large part of me that doesn’t want to talk about this. Actually, there’s a large part of me that wishes we’d never seen each other in the airport.”

  “Tell me about i
t.”

  A sigh swallowed her laugh. “I was confused enough before I saw you again. Now I feel like my head’s going to explode.”

  “So why are you here?”

  “Because …” She stopped, looking up at him, forcing the words to the surface. “Because I hate the way things ended between us. So maybe … I don’t know, maybe this is fate’s way of giving me a chance to make up for that. At least a little. Don’t get me wrong—what I wanted then, I still want. But it was never supposed to be an either/or thing. I desperately wanted you to come with me.”

  “I know you did, Evie, but—”

  “But as much as I still love L.A., I know you would have been miserable there.” Reaching for his hand again, Evie leaned against his arm. “And I would have been just as wretched if I hadn’t gone. Hadn’t tried.”

  Nolan dropped her hand to swing an arm around her shoulders and she got all shivery, like a thirteen-year-old with her first boyfriend. Especially when his thumb started lightly, tenderly stroking her jaw. “And I’m assuming if you keep talking this will eventually make sense?”

  “I wouldn’t count on it,” she said with another dry laugh. “I knew it wouldn’t be easy, trying to break into films. I just didn’t fully realize how hard it would be. Or how little I’d have to show for it after ten years. So, yeah. Life’s not exactly a bed of roses right now. And yet—”

  “You’re not ready to give up.”

  “It’s insane, I know. But it’s more than that. It’s—” On a groan, she pulled away to drop onto a nearby bench. Her elbows gouging her knees, she scrubbed her face, her shoulders heaving with her short, hard breaths. Nolan sat beside her.

  “If this is about what your folks will think—”

  “No,” she said, letting her hands fall, “it’s about what I think. How I’d feel about myself if I threw in the towel too soon. Of course, the irony is that I’ve barely had a chance to do my thing the whole time I’ve been in L.A. Unless you count the occasional trade show or commercial. The pilots that never air, the bit parts that get cut … Oh, I was a singing waitress for a while. Until the owner decided my boobs weren’t big enough.”

  “Shows how much he knows,” Nolan said and she choked out a little laugh.

  “But hope springs eternal, you know? I’ve got a trade show lined up for February that will pay enough to keep me afloat for another few months. And there’s actually a decent audition coming up, for a ‘small but important role’ in a major studio film. My agent swears I’m perfect for the part.”

  “That’s great,” Nolan said, almost as though he meant it.

  “Yeah,” Evie said, almost as if she did. “But here’s the thing.” She looked up at him, tortured. “Whenever I see somebody with a baby, I get these … pangs. That I’m missing out on that front, too. I come home to all my nieces and nephews and I see you and Casey and I think … I gave that up. I gave you up,” she said softly, the back of her throat scratchy, “for something that may not even happen, no matter how much I want it.” She swiped at her cheek. “I know I’d hate being just a soccer mom. And yet there are nights when I lie awake thinking I’d kill for exactly that.”

  “Well,” Nolan said, carefully taking her hand. Kissing her knuckles. “I could … I could give you that. If you ever change your mind, I mean.”

  Her throat clogged. “After everything … you still feel the same? After all this time?”

  “Yes. After all this time,” he said, with a calmness that bordered on scary.

  “You were married,” she said, clutching at straws.

  “And I never once thought of Carole as a substitute for you, I swear. And if we’d met again while I was still married, this—” he pointed back and forth between them “—would not be happening. But it is. And I’m not going to pretend it isn’t.”

  When she opened her mouth to say … something, he slipped his palm to the back of her neck and kissed her, right out in public, a gentle kiss that hinted of a hell of a lot more and everything started sizzling all over again. Which only further confused her. “What I wanted then,” Nolan whispered, their foreheads touching, “I still want, too.”

  “So why can’t I just accept that?” she said, bereft, burrowing against his chest. “Why can’t I simply say, ‘Okay, I’ve tried the film career thing, it didn’t work … Next?’ Why am I so hell-bent on wanting what I can’t have?”

  Nolan held her close, his cheek in her hair. “I have no idea, honey. But I know exactly how you feel.”

  Evie arrived back at her mother’s house to the smell of fresh-baked sugar cookies, distant giggling and Bing Crosby crooning from an ancient album of Christmas favorites. Next up was Alvin and the Chipmunks, she thought. Or maybe the Boston Pops.

  In full-out, boss-elf mode, Mama was in the kitchen, surrounded by umpteen trays of cookies in various stages of production and nearly as many grandchildren in various stages of sugar overload.

  “Aunt Evie!” they all screamed, rushing her. Her eyes burned as a half-dozen eager beavers pelted her with come-see-what-I-mades, dragging her willingly into the fray to ooh and ahh and help.

  But suddenly the whole afternoon boiled over inside her—all those confessions and admissions and a realization or two tossed in for good measure—and no matter how hard she tried she couldn’t keep her lower lip from trembling. Mama took one look at her, shoved a plate of warm, overdecorated cookies into somebody’s hands and said, “Go find Grampa. Yes, all of you, scoot …” and they scooted.

  Evie swiped what might have been either an angel or a Santa off another plate and tried to scoot, too. Except Mama said, “You get yourself right back here, young lady,” so Evie morosely trudged back to the counter and hauled herself up onto a bar stool. “Here,” Mama said, plopping an open, filled tin under her nose, this one redolent with the pungent aroma of ginger and molasses.

  “Gingersnaps!” Evie cried, reaching out, only to have Mama snatch back the tin, looking fierce.

  “Not until you tell me what the Sam Hill is going on with you.”

  Evie folded her arms, glaring at the cookies held hostage under her mother’s bosom. “You wouldn’t understand.”

  “Not if you don’t explain it to me. Although I’m guessing your bad mood has something to do with Nolan?”

  “Yes. And no. Can I have a cookie now?”

  “You’ll have to do a lot better than that, missy,” Mama said, waving the open tin close enough for the fumes to make Evie crumble like one of those cookies in milk.

  Ten minutes, a half-dozen tissues and untold devoured gingersnaps later, Mama heaved out a sigh. “I knew no good would come of you taking up with Nolan again.”

  Snuffling, Evie reached for another cookie. “I’ve hardly ‘taken up’ with him. And anyway, I thought you and Daddy liked him?”

  “Shoot, there were times we liked him better than some of our own kids. Including you, Miss Fame’s-More-Important-Than-Love.”

  Evie’s mouth fell open. “Fame? What fame? I just told you—”

  “That things haven’t exactly worked out the way you’d hoped they would. I know. But isn’t that why you went out to L.A.? Why you’re still there? Why you walked away from one of the best young men who ever lived?”

  “No!” Evie said, startled. “It wasn’t about … about becoming famous! It was just about doing what I loved! About being me, Mama.”

  Her mother’s nostrils flared. “There’s nothing wrong with being a wife and mother, you know.”

  “I never said there was! And I do want a home and kids, the whole nine yards. I just don’t want only that. Why is that so hard for you to accept?”

  “Honey,” her mother said, and sighed, clearly exasperated, “all your father and I have ever wanted for any of you kids was for you to be happy. But being happy isn’t only about what you want.”

  “You think I don’t know that?” Trapped in her mother’s unwavering gray gaze, Evie said around a cookie, “Why do you think I’m so conflicted? I still love No
lan,” she said, tears burning her eyes at the admission. “And Casey … oh, God, Casey’s just wrapped himself around my heart. But he deserves someone who’s completely committed to being his mother. So you tell me how I’m supposed to reconcile these two parts of myself without hurting somebody in the process.”

  “You don’t,” Mama said, in a tone that somehow managed to be sympathetic and hard as ice. “What you do is end it. Before that happens.” The oven timer dinged. “Tell the kids to come on back,” she said gently, manning her pot holders. “We’ll talk more later if you want.”

  Yeah, like that last conversation had gone so well.

  Evie walked out of the kitchen, munching on one last gingersnap while she delivered her mother’s message to her nieces and nephews. Just as she was wiping the last crumbs from her fingers, Nolan called her cell.

  “Are you free tonight?” he said, his voice low … dangerous. Evie’s skin prickled.

  “Uh … yeah, I suppose—”

  “Good. I’ll pick you up at seven. Bring an overnight bag.”

  The prickles turned to needles. “Excuse me?”

  “It’s nearing the end of our week …” His breath hitched. “One night together, honey. All by ourselves.” He paused. “To say goodbye.”

  Her eyes burning, Evie held the cell to her chest. Somehow, Evie didn’t think this was what her mother had meant by ending it—she doubted Nolan was thinking of “goodbye” in terms of polite conversation over a game of Scrabble. But then, she’d always thought Scrabble was overrated.

  Nolan glanced at the frowning woman beside him in his father’s classic T-Bird as they left the city limits, heading north toward his parents’ lake house. “You could have said ‘no,’ you know.”

  Evie’s gaze flicked to his, then away. “But you knew I wouldn’t.”

  “Hoped. Not knew.”

  She nodded, then settled into a silence that was in all likelihood more about finding her center, of recharging, than shutting him out. She’d always said he was one of the few people who didn’t take it personally when she simply didn’t feel like talking. So he was surprised when, not long after, she suddenly said, “Why didn’t you just break it off over the phone?”