The Promise of Christmas

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  “I’ll bet you thought you were the luckiest kid on earth.”

  “No, actually, I hated it,” she said, surprised that Juliet was so far off. “Would’ve liked her protection.”

  “From what?”

  Juliet knew from what—at least in part. It made her question disturbing. Leslie wasn’t talking about that today.

  “Life, the world, anything I didn’t understand. I always had the feeling she expected me to figure things out for myself….”

  Kind of like Juliet.

  “Why did you need protection from life?”

  “It’s scary when you’re a teenager,” Leslie said, glancing at the clock on the wall one more time. “Listen, Juliet, there was a reason why I wanted to see you. Something I want to talk to you about…”

  Leaning forward, Juliet clasped her hands over her knees. “What’s that?”

  “We’ve got this situation with Jonathan….”

  Leslie described, as quickly as she could, what Kip had told her late the previous Friday.

  “And has he changed or bathed Kayla since?” Juliet asked.

  “Not yet. He hasn’t needed to. I take her to day care with me and I’ve been off early enough all week to pick her up.”

  Juliet cocked her head, watching her. Leslie withstood the perusal with discomfort. She hated being analyzed.

  “Do you have a problem with him doing those chores?”

  “No! Of course not.”

  “But you understand Jonathan’s point of view.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “So you’re saying you don’t?”

  “No.” Leslie frowned. “I do.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m good at that.” The words gave her a curious kind of strength. “I have a talent for putting myself in others’ shoes, seeing other perspectives.” A statement that was okay within the sacred walls of Juliet’s office, but not something she’d ever utter during any normal human interaction.

  “So why get defensive when I first said that you understood?”

  Leslie’s mind went blank. And then replayed the last five minutes.

  “It’s okay, Leslie, you don’t have to answer.” Juliet’s soft voice penetrated the haze.

  Leslie nodded.

  And when she appeared to be satisfied that she had Leslie’s attention again, the counselor said, “Do you mind if I ask one more question?”

  “Of course not.”

  “What do you think about the boy using your brother as a scapegoat for his own feelings?”

  “Because Cal’s not here to defend himself, you mean?”

  “No,” Juliet said, hands still in her lap. “I was referring to Jonathan’s pawning his feelings off on his father rather than owning them himself.”

  Oh. “I…that’s kind of normal, isn’t it? For a kid to use his parent for support? I sure did when I was growing up and someone wanted me to go somewhere I knew I shouldn’t. I’d say my mother said no even if I hadn’t asked her.”

  Forearms now resting on her knees, Juliet met and held Leslie’s gaze. “Do you believe your brother told his son that little boys—and apparently dads—don’t look at naked little girls?”

  Yes. “I have no idea.”

  Juliet stood. “You might want to think about it,” she said, crossing over to her desk. “I’m assuming you’re keeping your regularly scheduled appointment next week?”

  “Yes.” Leslie stood, too, not feeling a lot better. “If that’s okay.”

  “Of course it’s okay.” Juliet grinned at her. “You’re welcome here anytime, you know that.”

  It was still reassuring to hear.

  “So what’s going on with you and Kip?” Juliet asked as she walked Leslie to the door.

  “Nothing, why?”

  Juliet smiled at her again, the knowing smile that made her uncomfortable—usually defensive—and always made her think about whatever she’d said.

  “No reason,” her counselor said before wishing her a good day.

  She might’ve had one if Juliet hadn’t just ruined it for her.

  The worst part was, she didn’t even know how.

  “DID YOU ASK your counselor about Jonathan?”

  It was late Friday night. The kids were asleep after an evening of running and screaming and laughing to their hearts’ content at a local pizza establishment that specialized in a multitude of circus and video games and a colorful climbing apparatus for children under twelve.

  After which, back at the house, he and Leslie had retreated, as had become their established practice, to their own sides of the house. They each had their own kid in tow, ready to supervise bathtime, story reading and, best of all, as far as Kip was concerned, lights out. His reaction was mostly one of relief—because bedtime meant he’d made it through another day without screwing up.

  “Yes.” Leslie sipped the glass of fresh-squeezed lemonade he’d poured. She’d declined the wine he’d offered.

  “And?” He’d been waiting all day to hear about this. It was why he’d asked for this late-night meeting in the living room.

  Well…partly. He’d started concocting reasons to spend time with his new housemate.

  Not that he wanted her to know that. Not yet, in any case…

  Leslie, still dressed in the suit she’d worn to work, slid down until her head was resting on the back of the sofa. She didn’t seem to notice, as Kip did, that the more she moved one way, the more her skirt slid the other.

  He wasn’t complaining about having more thigh to enjoy. But he’d rather she was aware that he was enjoying it.

  “And…” The answer had been too long in coming. “She really didn’t have much to say.”

  “Did she recommend that we take him to see someone?”

  “No.”

  “So she wasn’t worried, then?” he asked, more relieved than he’d expected.

  He was getting in deep with this father stuff.

  “She just asked me a couple of questions about my feelings about it all,” Leslie said, clearly exhausted—but relaxed, too? “It’s what Juliet does when she wants me to come up with answers on my own.”

  “What kind of answer would you have about something like this?”

  She looked at him, her eyes serious, although she gave him a small grin. “That’s what I’ve been asking myself. And before you ask…” She held up her glass as though it were a stop sign. “No I haven’t come up with anything.”

  Leslie sipped her drink, seemingly content to sit there, with him, in the softly lit night.

  He liked watching her this way. Hell, he seemed to like watching her whether she was lounging on the couch with a sexy amount of thigh showing or wearing mashed potatoes on her eyebrows while yelling at tantrum-and food-throwing children.

  Maybe he should pour himself a whiskey. Stiff enough to help him sleep alone.

  “Didn’t you say last night that you have a dinner meeting next Tuesday?”

  “Yeah.” She studied him from beneath her lids.

  “I’ll need to put her to bed then.”

  “I know.”

  “What do I do about Jonathan?”

  “The only idea I can come up with is to distract him, don’t let him know what you’re doing, but that seems wrong to me.”

  “And fraught with damaging complications if he finds out.”

  “So what do you think?” she asked.

  Uneasily Kip glanced at her. Then decided to get himself a lemonade. “I think you should talk to him,” he said, dropping down on the opposite end of the couch when he returned with his glass of the beverage that was both sweet and tart.

  Reminded Kip of the woman sitting so close to him.

  She turned her head. “Why me?”

  She sounded more curious than defensive and he took heart. Okay, Leslie was more sweet than tart.

  “Because you’re a girl. You can explain it from a woman’s perspective, tell him it’s okay for fathers to take care of their little gir
ls. He’d be more apt to believe it’s true coming from one of ‘them,’ so to speak.”

  She nodded slowly.

  “I’m sure his own mother would’ve handled this quite naturally from the time Kayla was born had she lived.”

  “Probably.”

  Kip took a small sip. “And you can tell him it’s okay for brothers to help, too,” he continued, on a roll now that he was actually getting something right in the parenting department. “That way he won’t feel—”

  Leslie turned away, lifted her head. “No.”

  “Okay…” And then, when she appeared to have nothing further to add, he asked, “Why?”

  “I don’t think it’s proper, that’s why.”

  “But…” He frowned. Something was very wrong here. And that didn’t make any sense. “Cal helped you all the time…”

  “He helped me with my homework, Kip. He stayed home with me when our mother was showing property. He might have helped me pull off my boots on snowy days. I was nine years old when our father died and Cal took over. I was potty-trained by then.”

  Her tone was light, filled with enough caustic humor to make him smile. He didn’t feel like smiling and had no idea why. The way she was avoiding his eye? The stiffness with which she held herself?

  Or was he imagining the whole thing? God knew, he was totally out of his element here.

  He was tired. She was tired. And Cal had been a model brother. Of those three things he was sure.

  JONATHAN LAY IN BED on Saturday morning, waiting for Kip to get up so he could, too. He was kinda hungry. He wanted some of that cereal with colored things in it that Kip had told Aunt Leslie he wouldn’t die from if she bought it.

  ’Course, pretty much any time Kip made Aunt Leslie laugh, she did what he said. Jonathan hoped that meant Aunt Leslie liked Uncle Kip. Nana said people had to like each other to live in the same house.

  He looked around the room he had in this house.

  It wasn’t blue like his mom had made his. And Aunt Leslie didn’t put cool things on the walls. But still, it was better than a running-away place. Way better.

  Turning over on to his back, he stared at the ceiling. It had funny swirls on it. He could pretend they were race cars or tornadoes. And he could pretend that, if he was really, really good, better than he’d been the other night when he’d cried about eating squash, they’d keep him here with Kayla for a long time. Really, he’d been crying because he missed his daddy but didn’t want Kip to think he didn’t like him. Maybe he could stay till he growed up enough to drive. Then, if he had to, he could drive away ’stead of run away.

  He had to be good. And Kip had to make sure Aunt Leslie kept liking him and he had to keep liking Aunt Leslie, too, so they could stay here for a long enough time.

  Seemed like a lot of big ifs to Jonathan. He just didn’t know anything better.

  ’Cept running away. If he figured they wanted to get rid of him, he’d run away before they kicked Kayla out, too.

  THERE WAS NO ROUTINE for Saturday. But then they’d only had one Saturday together—the day after Jonathan and Kip arrived.

  Leslie liked routine.

  “Jonathan, did you guys have a Christmas tree at your nana’s last year?” she asked as they were all sitting at the table just after nine. She’d made scrambled eggs for Kayla and herself. The boys were having a slightly less healthy breakfast of sugared cereal.

  But they’d shared her and Kayla’s toast.

  Chewing, the boy nodded. He’d appeared in shorts, a sweatshirt, socks and tennis shoes that morning. One day that week, he’d come down wearing jeans and a tank top. Every day he reminded her of a mini Kip.

  “Did you help her decorate it?” she asked. Jonathan hadn’t warmed up to her as Kayla had, but she sensed that he liked her.

  He shook his head. “Nana didn’t do it,” he said when he’d swallowed what was in his mouth. “Daddy did.”

  Cal again. Leslie’s stomach tightened and she put down her fork.

  “Would you like to help me decorate mine?”

  Dark eyes wide, he grinned. “Kip, too?”

  Only then did she dare look across the table at the man she was growing too used to having around—despite the fact that she kept forgetting to check with him before rushing ahead with her plans. She’d been making decisions on her own for a long time now.

  “Fine with me,” he said, sending her a smile that settled her stomach but made other parts of her jump.

  Sitting there in khaki shorts and a navy pullover with the long sleeves rolled up past his elbows, the man was too gorgeous for any woman’s good.

  Especially for a woman who’d been hooked on him since the age of twelve.

  “Do you have one here?” Kip said, staring at her as though he could read her mind.

  She cleared it immediately.

  “No,” she said, wiping her mouth with her napkin. Taking a sip of juice. “No, we’ll have to go get one.”

  “A real tree?” Jonathan asked Leslie glanced at Kip, congratulating herself on remembering to do so.

  And then, when his smile made her tingle in some very private places, she decided that being inconsiderate was the more prudent choice for the future.

  “I think a real tree’s the only way to go,” he said.

  “Twee?” Kayla chirped. And burped.

  Jonathan laughed.

  And Leslie, meeting Kip’s gaze, wondered how she’d ever thought coffee in bed with a good book was a great way to start her weekend.

  She had no idea what she’d just gotten herself in to, but at least the day was planned.

  She’d tackle the next hurdle when she had to.

  Which she estimated, looking at Kayla’s hair glued straight up with egg, would probably be in the next five seconds.

  CHAPTER TEN

  GUYS LIKE HIM didn’t often buy Christmas trees—at least not in Kip’s experience. But if they did, he figured they’d probably expect to go someplace where trees grew so they could cut one down. It seemed like a guy thing to do.

  Leslie took them to a fenced tree lot decorated with colored lights and run by an older couple sitting at a table outside a mobile trailer, fifteen minutes from her house. Other than the temporary fencing and rows and stacks of trees, the place was nothing more than a parking lot on a corner.

  “We’re getting our tree here?” he asked, pulling his brand-new Ford Expedition up to the fence as she’d instructed.

  “You see any pine tree forests in Phoenix, Webster?” she asked, grabbing the car door as she sent him a sassy grin. “In case you missed it, you’ve moved to the desert.”

  “Twee!” Kayla screamed from behind him. In his peripheral vision he could see her little lighted pink tennis shoes kicking back and forth with excitement. She was belted into a car seat similar to the one Leslie had in the back of her black BMW.

  “Can we get out?” Jonathan called from the third seat in the vehicle—the place he’d insisted on because he was the oldest.

  “Yeah,” Kip called back, watching the boy from the rearview mirror as he unhooked his safety belt and dove over the seat in front of him, barely missing his sister’s head with his tennis shoe.

  They were in for another active day….

  “THAT’LL BE NINETY-SIX DOLLARS, sir,” the sixtyish woman seated in a lawn chair behind the table told him, tallying up his bill on an ancient calculator and writing the receipt by hand.

  He handed over a hundred-dollar bill. They’d had to have a Fraser so the needles wouldn’t fall off too soon. And it had to be seven feet tall so it would fill the window alcove in the living room.

  Kip smiled at the silver-haired woman as he pocketed his four dollars in change.

  “Can I watch them cut the end, Kip?” Jonathan asked, out of breath as he dashed up beside him.

  “Sure, sport. Then we’re going to have to figure out how to get that monster in the SUV.”

  “We’ll have to put the seat down, huh?” the little guy asked
, half skipping to keep up as Kip strode over to the two brawny college students who’d helped them. They had the tree lying sideways on a couple of mounts, preparing to saw a fresh cut on the bottom.

  “It’ll preserve the tree a bit longer,” Leslie had told him before walking Kayla over to look at the giant inflated Santa Claus at the far corner of the lot.

  “Nope. Where will you sit then?” Kip asked, grinning down at the boy. He’d never seen Jonathan so unreservedly happy. Dared he hope the little guy was adjusting to him—that he’d be able to give Jonathan a relatively happy childhood in spite of all the tragedy that had befallen his young life? “We’ll strap it to the luggage rack.”

  The larger of the two men, a tattooed blonde with an earring in his eyebrow, glanced up as they approached.

  “You cut it yet?” Jonathan asked.

  Blondie stared at Jonathan. And then up at Kip. “He belong to a friend of yours?”

  “No,” Kip said, still feeling good about how the day was progressing. Behind him he heard Kayla jabbering something that Leslie seemed able to decipher, but that he couldn’t understand.

  While the smaller guy, a dark-haired pimply-faced kid, continued to saw, the blonde looked at Jonathan again. In just the second it took for the curious stare to land, Jonathan shrank, lost whatever joy had consumed him. Gazing down at the ground, the child backed up a step.

  “He’s mine.” Kip had made no conscious decision to say the words. They just came. But he was damn glad they did. Putting his arm around the little boy, he pulled Jonathan forward.

  “What do you think, son? Did he cut it straight enough to fit the stand?”

  Jonathan looked at the tree—more, Kip sensed, because he’d told him to than because he felt any interest—and nodded.

  “Then let’s get this tree home,” he said, hoisting all seven feet onto his shoulder and across his back.

  “I’ll grab this end,” the tattooed blonde said quickly.

  “No, thanks.” Kip turned, caught Leslie’s eye and headed toward the car. “My boy and I can get this just fine, can’t we, Jonathan?”