The Promise of Christmas

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  “Yes.” Jonathan’s voice was barely audible.

  “Twee!” Kayla screamed from Leslie’s arms.

  Kip hoped the little girl’s joy was contagious and that her brother would become infected.

  THE SWEATER WASN’T NEW. But it was black and red. The best he could come up with for festive. And he’d thrown the black jeans in with last night’s load of his and Jonathan’s clothes. More importantly, he’d remembered to get them out of the dryer before he’d gone to sleep so he could wear them unwrinkled tonight.

  Kip brushed his teeth. Ran a comb over his hair and thought about cologne, but decided against it. Too much. Whatever was left from this morning’s splash of aftershave would have to do. He didn’t want Leslie to get skittish and start borrowing trouble again.

  He scowled at himself in the mirror. “You have no idea what you want, bud,” he muttered under his breath.

  Still, she’d agreed to a late dinner with him—well, to ordering pizza instead of sharing the kids’ macaroni and cheese—and waiting until after the kids were in bed so they could eat in peace and quiet for once. They were going to eat in the living room in front of the newly decorated tree. Another suggestion from him. But the wine had been her idea.

  Flipping off the bathroom light, Kip wandered around his spacious bedroom. His things had finally arrived a couple of days before. Most of them were in storage, but it was good to have his own sheets and towels, his full assortment of clothes—and books—around him. He checked his watch.

  Jonathan was brushing his teeth and putting on his pajamas. Usually took three minutes tops. He liked to give the little guy some privacy before story time, but he’d been in there at least fifteen minutes.

  “Jonathan?” He crossed the hall outside his suite and rapped on Jonathan’s closed bathroom door.

  He heard something drop, but the boy didn’t answer. Why was the door shut? Jonathan never shut the door. Unless he was going to the bathroom.

  “Jonathan?”

  Still no answer.

  Kip had been killing time, waiting to read the next couple of pages of Huckleberry Finn to Jonathan while Leslie bathed and read to Kayla on the other side of the house.

  “Jonathan.” He hated to be stern, wanted Jonathan to like him, to trust him, but what if he was having trouble in there? He rattled the door handle, surprised when it opened immediately.

  “Jonathan?” He sounded like a broken record. And then he saw the boy—standing on the toilet, leaning over to see himself in the bathroom mirror.

  “Jonathan! What are you doing?”

  Little snippets of red hair lay all over the counter, in the sink, on the floor, and on the boy’s light cotton blue-and-white pajama top. Most disturbing was seeing the disposable razor Kip had thrown in the trash that morning in the five-year-old’s hand.

  “Give that to me right now.”

  Jonathan’s hand lifted slowly, his dark eyes wide and frozen on Kip’s face. Leaning forward, Kip grabbed the razor—probably more forcibly than he should have. And that was when he noticed his can of shaving cream on the back of the toilet tank.

  “You have about two seconds to explain yourself, young man,” he said, his face inches from Jonathan’s as he stood before him at the edge of the toilet, ensuring that the boy didn’t fall and hit his head on the marble counter.

  “I was just cutting my hair….” The words were mumbled so softly Kip hardly heard them.

  “Why?” He wasn’t angry, though his voice sounded harsh, even to him. He didn’t know what he was at the moment.

  Jonathan’s thin shoulders moved up and down in a pathetic shrug.

  “If you wanted a haircut, all you had to do was ask. You realize that, don’t you?”

  The boy nodded.

  “So why didn’t you ask?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Well, Kip didn’t know either. And he had no idea what to do next. If Kip had ever pulled anything like this, his father wouldn’t have been around to notice.

  He looked down at his hand—and felt a fresh flood of emotion at the sight of that razor. He had no idea where the scissors on the counter had come from.

  Mental note: tell Leslie they had to put everything even remotely dangerous up too high for kids to reach.

  “What’s with the razor?” he asked.

  “The scissors wouldn’t get it all off.” Jonathan was still mumbling, his chin lowered to his chest.

  “You were going to shave your head.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Speak up, Jon.”

  His second “Uh-huh,” wasn’t noticeably louder.

  “Jonathan, look at me.”

  Slowly the boy raised his head.

  “Why?”

  “It’s red.”

  “Yeah.” Kip had thought the boy was proud of having hair like his father’s.

  “I’m black.”

  “Yeah.” And then, with horror spreading through him, Kip understood—and wanted to flatten tattooed Blondie. “And you’re white, too, son.”

  Jonathan shook his head. “Only my hair.”

  Whatever had held Kip upright suddenly slackened, leaving him weak. He pulled the boy down from the toilet and sat with him there on his lap.

  “Not just your hair,” he said softly. “Half of you is white, son. It’s only the color of your skin that’s more black than white. And no matter what you do, how you change your looks, you aren’t ever going to change that, do you understand?”

  Staring down at the floor, the boy nodded.

  “Far more important, though, is for you to understand that you don’t need to change that,” Kip continued, desperately searching for words. “You are part of two very intelligent, kind, giving people, young man. You have the best of both of them in you, and you have nothing to be ashamed of, you got that?”

  The boy nodded again, but Kip knew his words hadn’t done a thing for Jonathan’s self-esteem. It could take years of solid love and positive example to do that—to combat the negatives, the curiosity and the rudeness—he would probably always face from some people.

  Kip had no idea if he could be that solid, that positive. He just knew he had to try.

  “Okay,” he said, lifting the boy’s head with a finger beneath his chin. “Now.” He picked up the blue plastic razor from the counter where he’d dropped it. “You see these blades?”

  Jonathan’s head moved up and down against Jonathan’s sweater, leaving stray little strands of red.

  “Those are dangerous, and little boys aren’t allowed to touch them. Ever.”

  Jonathan didn’t respond—leaving Kip at a loss.

  “They could hurt you badly.”

  Still nothing.

  “We’ll go and get your hair properly cut.”

  “’Kay,” Jonathan whispered.

  “And I have to punish you for taking that razor, Jonathan.”

  The boy stiffened, but stayed on his knee.

  “What would be a good punishment?”

  Jonathan pulled his head back, frowning at Kip.

  “What?”

  “Kids don’t say the punishments,” he said slowly. “’Dults do.”

  Dammit, Kip thought, he couldn’t do everything. Where was Leslie when he needed her? “Who says?”

  “I dunno.” The words were accompanied by one of Jonathan’s frequent shrugs.

  “Fine. If it’s up to me, I say that we decide together what the punishment should be.”

  Ha! He’d sounded pretty damn good.

  “Oh.”

  “So what do you say?”

  “Going to bed without dinner?”

  “You need your nutrition.”

  “No storytime.”

  “Reading’s good for kids.”

  “A…spanking?” The little boy’s voice wavered.

  “I don’t believe in corporal punishment.”

  “What’s corporal punishment?”

  “Hitting.”

  “Oh.”

&n
bsp; When they’d sat there so long Kip was afraid Leslie would eat by herself, it finally came to him.

  “You have to sit and watch me shave every morning for a week,” he said in the sternest voice he could find. “That way, you’ll see how careful even I have to be when I touch razors. Got it?”

  “But, Kip, I’m still sleep then.”

  “You’ll have to get up half an hour earlier.”

  Jonathan glanced at him, his eyes serious. “Don’t kids need sleep, too, just like n’trition?”

  “Yep,” Kip said, standing. “Which is why you’re going to bed half an hour earlier every night for the next week.”

  At the slump of Jonathan’s shoulders, Kip felt a little skip of victory. He’d meted out his first punishment and apparently it had hit its mark.

  Think of it. Kip Webster a father.

  The thought gave him shivers.

  HE’D CHANGED HIS CLOTHES. She hadn’t. Pulling the slightly damp white turtleneck with little colored Christmas lights splattered across it away from her body, Leslie savored the bite of meat-lovers pizza in her mouth. She rarely ordered pizza. And when she did, it was veggie.

  At least they were both wearing jeans. Although she didn’t know why any of it mattered. They were housemates eating pizza on Saturday night. It didn’t matter that her heart jumped every time he moved. Or that she was feeling a bit like the schoolgirl with a crush she’d once been. Those days were long ago and far away. She’d had lots of moments in his company since then without those feelings.

  Another bite of pizza helped seal the thought.

  The present was what mattered, what was real.

  She took a sip of wine.

  They were just two people who happened to be raising a pair of orphaned siblings. Nothing more.

  With that in mind, she filled him in on Kayla’s latest—chomping on the bar of soap she’d insisted on holding, and then screaming at the top of her lungs when the taste of it hit her tongue.

  “You want to hear the good part?” she asked, grinning at him over her wineglass.

  “Of course.”

  “When her tongue started to burn, she reached out for me.” She could still feel the thrill of it all the way to her toes. “She wrapped those independent little arms around my neck and held on the entire time I rinsed her mouth and then stood as quietly as an angel while I dried her.”

  Kip held up his wineglass, tipping it toward hers. “Congratulations.”

  Other than the dim table lamp she’d left on over by the hall, the colored lights from the Christmas tree were the room’s only illumination. This had been a good idea of his—a quiet, peaceful dinner.

  “Thank you,” she said, touching her glass to his before taking a sip. She’d carried in paper plates, napkins and the wine. He’d set their places on the coffee table in front of the couch.

  The only thing Leslie wished she’d changed was her wardrobe. She felt like leftover mashed potatoes sitting next to filet mignon.

  “You seem quiet tonight.” She regretted the words as soon as they came out. They were too intimate. Too personal.

  That was what she got for relaxing, even for a second.

  “I’m worried about Jonathan,” Kip said.

  “I noticed he wasn’t as enthusiastic about the tree after we got it home. I thought maybe he was missing his dad.”

  “Maybe,” Kip agreed, but then told her about the rest of what had happened that day.

  “Was the guy rude?” she asked, angrier than she’d been in a very long time.

  “Not really,” Kip said. “I almost wish he had been. I’d have had a reason to take him down a notch or two.”

  She frowned, a piece of pizza halfway to her mouth. “Is that what you want to teach Jonathan?” she asked. “To fight his way through people’s ignorance and prejudice?”

  Kip was sitting forward, his plate on the table. He wiped his hands on his napkin, swallowing. “I suppose not.”

  “We aren’t going to be able to change the world, Kip,” she said when he just sat there, neither eating nor drinking. “We can only give them enough love and security to face the world with their heads high. They’re wonderful kids, smart, funny, independent, kind. That’s what we have to show them. Then they can show the world. I know it’s a cliché, but this is a case where I really think it’s true that actions speak louder than words.”

  He glanced sideways at her, sending a silent message as he held her gaze. Saying thank you? Asking for help? She wasn’t sure.

  “This isn’t going to be easy, is it?” he asked.

  She reached for the red-and-gold-and-black crystals at her neck. “Not one minute of it, I’m afraid.”

  “I’m afraid, too.”

  If she’d lived to be a thousand, she would never have expected to hear those words from Kip Webster. People like Leslie lived life in fear. People like Kip lived it completely.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  LEFTOVER PIZZA SAT in plastic storage bags in the refrigerator. The box was out in the trash. But there was still wine in the bottle.

  Kip carried it in to the living room where Leslie was sitting, empty glass in hand, staring at the Christmas tree. He filled her glass, and his own, before joining her on the couch.

  “This is my favorite part of Christmas,” she said, as unusually relaxed and mellow as she’d been all evening.

  “Putting up the tree?”

  She shook her head, red curls tumbling around her face and shoulders. He’d begun to spend a lot of time wondering what that hair felt like trailing through a man’s fingers.

  “No, sitting at the end of the day with a glass of wine, the quiet and the Christmas lights.” She chuckled a bit self-consciously. “You’re going to think I’m wacky, but I get more of a sense of hope from moments like that than any other.”

  He tried to find her wacky. It would be one hell of a lot easier. Instead, he was enchanted.

  “Why?”

  She looked back at the tree. “I don’t know. The lights seem to suggest…possibility. And because it’s a Christmas tree, the possibilities can only be good.”

  All he saw were branches with little lights casting a colored glow.

  “Go ahead, you can laugh.”

  “No.” He wanted to watch her, but kept his eyes on the tree. “It’s nice. Your ornaments are all so different, you never run out of things to look at.”

  “I’ve collected them over the years,” she said. “On my travels, or just when I’m out shopping. Anything that appeals to me I pick up.”

  “And the handmade ones?”

  “I’ve done one or two, but mostly they came from charity bazaars.”

  The words brought to mind an instant picture of Leslie, with her cool façade, professional clothes and jewels walking around some charity bazaar. Probably in a church kitchen. Or maybe someone’s home.

  She’d be the type who wouldn’t think about leaving without buying.

  “What about you?” she asked. He could feel her looking at him. Tried to resist the urge to look back. And glanced over, anyway. Her eyes were in shadow, but the small smile tilting her lips was enough to send desire shooting through him. “Where are your ornaments?”

  And then the smile faded as she set down her glass. “I’m so sorry, Kip, I never even thought…” With one leg up on the couch between them, she leaned toward him. “I just brought down the boxes of my stuff without even asking if you wanted to use yours….”

  “I don’t have any.”

  “You didn’t bring them, you mean?”

  “I mean I don’t have any.”

  “What happened to them?”

  “Nothing.”

  She was staring at him, mouth open. Kip shrugged. “To tell you the truth, this is the first Christmas tree I’ve ever had.”

  “Since you were on your own, you mean.”

  “No.” He shook his head. “I mean ever. You might remember that my father wasn’t all that attentive.”

  “But you neve
r came to our house at Christmas…what did you do all those years?”

  “Lay around, watched TV.”

  “That’s terrible!”

  Kip grinned at the horror in her voice, and was also oddly touched. “It wasn’t that bad, Les,” he said. “Your mother always invited me over. I could’ve done the whole family Christmas thing if I’d wanted to.”

  “You would’ve felt like an outsider. That would’ve been worse than being alone.”

  So she was astute as well as intelligent and beautiful.

  “It was just a day.” He told her what he’d told himself during all those years of watching Christmas shows on television while he ate whatever meal the housekeeper of the hour had left for him. He used to pretend, at least in the early years, that he was on the show, not just watching it.

  “You never had presents?”

  “Yeah, I did,” he said, not wanting to remember anymore. He liked what he had before him a lot more. “Usually something grand and extravagant—like the Camaro convertible—and there’d be a wad of money, too.”

  Not wrapped, though. And generally not on Christmas day.

  “Your father should be shot.” She was still leaning toward him, her warm blue eyes consuming him.

  “He’s dead.” Kip reminded her, sipping wine. His throat was dry.

  “The man didn’t deserve to have a child.”

  He couldn’t argue with her there.

  “I’m not so sure I do, either.” Jonathan could have killed himself with the razor that he’d thrown so casually in the trash. The little boy could have sliced a vein in his temple while Kip stood preening across the hall, giving a five-year-old “personal space” to get ready for bed.

  “Just from being with you the past week, I can tell you that’s utter nonsense,” Leslie said. “You’ve made some mistakes, and so have I, but so does every single parent who ever lived.”

  If there were too many parents who left razors lying around, the world would no longer have to worry about a population explosion, he thought sardonically.

  “I can tell you this,” Leslie continued, her compassionate gaze warming him in ways it shouldn’t. “But I know I’m not going to convince you of anything.”