#Mothertrucker

After they docked and helped Pru lock things up for the night, Spence took Colbie on a long walk along the Embarcadero. The pylons, the benches, the streetlights . . . everything had been decorated for the holiday and she loved the look of it. It’d rained earlier for long enough that everything felt clean and shimmered with condensation. For the first time in years she was excited for the season, even though she knew she’d be gone by Christmas Day.

She hoped to bring the holiday cheer home with her. “It’s so beautiful here with all the decorations,” she said, her breath crystalizing in front of her face. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“New York doesn’t do it up for the holidays?”

“Yes, but I mean . . .” She broke off, not sure what she meant at all. “It just seems . . . nice. Really nice. And like it could all be true. Santa Claus and all that.”

He smiled. “You don’t believe in Santa?”

“Well . . . let’s just say I have mixed feelings about the holiday.”

“A cynic in a sweet package.”

She rolled her eyes, but he reached for her hand and pulled her into him. “Talk to me,” he said.

“For as long as I can remember, I’ve been Santa.”

He looked at her in surprise.

“I told you my dad left us when I was little,” she said and then paused. “It was on Christmas Eve.”

“Seriously?” Spence tightened his arm around her. “What the hell’s wrong with him?”

She shrugged. She didn’t know. “He wasn’t made for being a family man. And actually, he was right. My mom said we were better off and I have to believe that.”

“I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “That’s a shitty memory to carry around.”

Colbie didn’t like to talk about this. Correction: she never talked about this. So why she was suddenly opening up, and to a man who lived three thousand miles away from her, was a big unsolved mystery.

Or maybe it wasn’t. There was still something about this place and Spence that made her want to be something she’d never been.

Open and carefree.

But maybe . . . maybe to be those things, she had to let go of her past. “Not everyone’s cut out to be a parent.”

“I agree.” He paused. “I got lucky with my parents. My dad didn’t have it easy. My grandpa was a hard-ass but a brilliant inventor, a tough act to follow.” He smiled a little wryly. “So to the everlasting frustration of Grandpa, my dad didn’t even try. He was a family man to the end.”

The tone of his voice had her heart squeezing. “You lost him,” she said softly.

He nodded. “A few years ago. Cancer.”

“It must’ve been hard on your mom.”

“Very,” Spence said. “But she’s taken up something she couldn’t do when my dad was alive. Traveling.”

“Why couldn’t she travel with your dad?”

“They didn’t have the means, but even if they had, he hated flying.” Spence shook his head. “Always said that if people were meant to fly, we’d have been born with wings.”

She laughed and he smiled at her, bringing their joined hands up to his mouth, where he brushed a kiss to her fingers before taking a look around them. “You’re right. It is pretty amazing out here. I guess I forgot to see it anymore.”

“How long have you been here?” she asked.

“All my life.” He was still looking around as if trying to see the city from her eyes. “I grew up not too far from here, actually.”

“In Fisherman’s Wharf?” she asked, having studied online maps of San Francisco’s famed neighborhoods. She was dying of curiosity about this man who was so private.

“The Tenderloin.”

An area, she now knew, that had once been one of the toughest and most degenerate places in all of San Francisco. “Does your mom still live there?”

“No, these days she lives on the coast about an hour south of here.”

He didn’t mention his grandpa again. Maybe he’d passed away too. Or maybe they weren’t close. She didn’t want to pry. Okay, she totally did want to pry but she didn’t want to open it up in a way that would require her to do the same back. She’d told him all she’d planned to. In fact, she’d told him more than she’d planned to. And in any case, she was here to not think.

He was watching her. “So if there was a Santa Claus, what would you ask him for?” he asked.

You, she nearly said. She’d want him for Christmas and no take-backs. “I’d like my book to write itself,” she said instead.

He smiled.

“And you’d want what?” she asked. “Maybe your project to invent itself?”

“That would be high on the list.”

When she yawned, they headed back, stopping for dessert at a cupcake shop.

“Did you know that once you lick the frosting off a cupcake, it becomes a muffin?” she asked. “And muffins are healthy.” She leaned in and took a lick of his frosting. “You are welcome.”

He laughed and so did she because she loved the sound of his laugh.

When a sprinkle got stuck in the stubble of his jaw, she had some fun with him, playfully misdirecting him as he tried to get it.

“Maybe you should shave,” she teased.

“You have no idea how lucky girls are that they don’t have to shave every day,” he said. “You’ve all got it easy.”

She choked on a laugh. “Says the guy who’s never had to navigate a razor around his kneecaps or . . .” she paused “. . . any other specific areas.”

He laughed.

“Not funny,” she said. “It’s a suicide mission.”

He guided her into the cobblestoned courtyard of the Pacific Pier Building. It was midnight and the place looked like a holiday dream with the strings of white lights and each of the potted trees lining the walkway decorated with colorful ornaments.

“Elle went overboard this year,” he muttered.

“So she works for you?”

“More like she allows me to pay her to be bossy.”

She laughed. “They say friends and business don’t mix.”

“She’s family,” he said simply.

She nodded, thinking that sounded . . . lovely. Really lovely. “So what are your holiday plans?” she asked. “Will you spend Christmas with your mom?”

“Probably not.”

She glanced up at him, startled. “No?”

“She went back east to see friends. I’ll probably spend it at the pub with Finn, Elle and Archer, and the others. We’re a sort of misfit ride-or-die self-made family.”

Coming from a family that was close only because she’d kept them together by sheer force of will, she envied the whole family-by-choice thing in a big way.

“How about you?” he asked.

She shrugged. “I’ll spend it at home with my brothers and mom, like always. We’ll fight, also like always, but old habits die hard.”

He cocked his head and studied her. “You do know you’re allowed to do whatever you want, right? It’s the only perk to this whole adulting thing.”

She let out a small laugh. “Never mind me. Christmas sometimes makes me a little . . .”

“Hollow?”

She met his gaze. “Yes. How did you know?”

“Let’s just say I’ve been there.”

A little off her axis, Colbie looked at the pretty fountain. “Do you really not believe in the legend?”

He lifted a shoulder.

She turned to him. “How about love? Do you believe in love?” And for some reason, she held her breath for his answer.

He paused. “I believe it’s out there for most.”

“Gee, that’s only a little cryptic.”

He gave a rough laugh. “Here’s the thing. My family . . . when it comes to work and love, we tend to only do one of them well. Not both. So we choose.”

She raised her brows. “And you chose . . . work?”

He shrugged again. “It’s what I do best.”

“So you’ve tried love before, then,” she said. “And . . . failed?”

“Big-time.”

“Do you think you could possibly explain that with more than two words?” she asked.

A smile touched his lips. “I told you about my grandpa. He was a workaholic. His entire life was the job—to the detriment of his family, which he completely ignored. My dad learned a lesson from that. He chose love. I was raised by two loving, if not a little baffled-by-me, parents who did the best they could. They had each other, if not always the rent money. But I always knew that what they shared wasn’t going to be for me.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m shitty at love.” He paused. “And I hated being poor.”

“You really believe you can only have one or the other?” she asked in disbelief.

“I know it. In college, women would give me their phone numbers and I’d forget to call.”

“Forget?”

“Well, I was sixteen,” he said.

She raised her brows. “At that age, you’d have been both physically and emotionally behind everyone else.”

“Yeah. I definitely preferred labs over women, which didn’t help me out any.”

She grinned. “That seems to have changed.”

His smile was wry. “Yes, but not by that much. My last girlfriend, Clarissa . . . she was positive she was going to be the one.”

“And she . . . wasn’t?”

“We met when I was working for the government,” he said. “She was in medical school at the time, and just as busy as I was. At first, everything was fine between us because we didn’t ask much of each other. Though in hindsight, I think I asked nothing of her because my head was always in my work and she didn’t ask anything of me because she knew that and didn’t try to compete. Which really meant that I shortchanged her at every turn, even though I really cared about her. I tried to put her on my radar, I really did. We moved into an apartment, the theory being that at least we’d sleep together every night.”

Colbie was working at not feeling the teensiest little bit of jealousy. No one had ever tried that hard to keep her. She got that the point to this story was that Spence had shortchanged Clarissa, but all she saw was that he’d at least given it everything he’d had at the time to give. “What happened?” she asked.

“We stayed together for several years. She began a charity organization that brought meds and doctors to remote corners of the world, desperate remote corners, which meant she was gone a lot. Which worked for me. It became easy to forget her needs, to forget to put her first. I got out of the habit way too easily. And then came a huge fund-raiser she’d cochaired, and it was incredibly important to her. As it was the only thing she’d asked of me all year, I promised to go.” He shook his head. “She reminded me every day for two weeks and I brushed off her concerns that I’d forget.”

“And . . . you forgot,” she guessed.

“I did.” He looked pained. “I didn’t show up and she went without me, and I didn’t realize I’d forgotten the most important night of her life until she got home late that night dressed to the hilt, steam coming out her ears.”

“She dumped you,” she said, surprised. Up until that moment, she’d assumed he’d been the one to break it off.

“Oh yeah, she dumped me,” he said ruefully. “She said I was going to end up a lonely old man someday. Actually, she yelled that part, right after chucking a shoe at my head. Then she packed her things and moved out, leaving my sorry ass in her dust.”

“Ouch.”

“Yeah, well. I deserved it. I was a self-absorbed, selfish dick.”

“You don’t seem self-absorbed or selfish to me,” she said.

“Like I said, give me some time.”

She didn’t believe this. Or more accurately, she didn’t want to believe it. The thing was, he said only what he meant, and she knew he meant this, to his core. He’d warned her from the beginning that he would disappoint her.

She just didn’t want it to be true.

“The truth is,” he said, “I’m busy all the time and no woman’s going to be okay with that for the long term. So undoubtedly, I’m going to end up a lonely old man, just like Clarissa so aptly predicted.”

“I don’t believe that,” she said. “I’ve seen you engrossed in work. You’ve still always made time for your friends. And me.”

“That’s because you’re a welcome distraction.” He tugged her hair. “Beautiful, funny, smart . . . but a definite distraction nevertheless.”

She stared at him, torn between melting at what he thought of her and wanting to cry at the knowledge that this would never be anything more than an amazing interlude. “Good thing, then, that I’m just a temporary one,” she said with more cheer than she felt. Because what she felt was a hollow pit in the depths of her gut that she didn’t want to name. She pulled a quarter from her purse and turned to the fountain.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“Making a wish.” She tossed the quarter into the water and closed her eyes.

“For . . .?” he asked, sounding worried.

Silly man. Although he should be worried. “For true love. For you.” She opened her eyes and grinned at his horror. “See, you do believe.”

“You’re a scary woman,” he said.

“Now you’re catching on,” she said as from inside her pocket, her phone went off again.

She sighed.

“You should probably make sure the house is still standing,” he said. “Here, let me.” He took the phone and looked at the screen. “Do you have a third brother named Jackson?”

“No.” She took the phone back and stared at it before hitting ignore.

“Problem?” Spence asked.

She took a deep breath, realizing with a shock that she’d so thoroughly distanced herself from her life for the past week she’d actually forgotten about Jackson. “He’s my agent.”

Spence looked surprised. “You must be close to being published to have an agent. That’s great, Colbie.”

His encouragement was sweet, but it also made her feel guilty for not telling him about this part of her life. You’ve only known him five days, she reminded herself. And this escape was private. And extremely important to both her mental health and her career. And whether they knew it or not, it was also important to her family, staff, and editorial team, all of whom counted on her. And in fact, just thinking about it, she felt the familiar smothering pressure to sustain the franchise her life had become sink into her chest.

She looked into his eyes and knew she couldn’t do it—she couldn’t, shouldn’t, keep secrets from him. He was private, incredibly so, but honest. She needed to be the same. At least as much as she could be. “You know how you’re bad at love?” she asked. “Well, so am I. I picked Jackson as my first love and it wasn’t reciprocated.”

His eyes were sympathetic but not pitying, which was a good thing. A nice thing.

“Since the past sucks,” he murmured, slowly pulling her into him, kissing her jaw, “maybe we should stick to the present.”

Good idea. Great idea. But she wasn’t done coming clean. “Spence?”

“Yeah?” His mouth was on her throat now, so erotic and sensual that she felt her eyes roll back in her head.

“There’re things about me that I still haven’t told you,” she whispered. “Things I’m not ready to talk about, at least not yet. Are you okay with that?”

He met her gaze and held it. “I want only what you’re willing to give me, Colbie. No more.”

For a moment, that stopped her. He wanted only what she was willing to give, meaning he didn’t need anything more than that. Which meant he really was fine with this being whatever it was until she left. And after that, the end.

And as she’d said that was what she wanted too, she had no business even thinking about it. None at all.

But she was thinking about it, a lot.

She was thinking how nice it would be if they decided to take this wherever it took them, even past their Christmas Eve expiration date.

Unfortunately, he wasn’t, and she swallowed hard past the disappointment before she spoke. “Given what I just told you, and how I’d feel in reverse, meaning if you were telling me that you were holding something back, I wouldn’t blame you if you want to walk away,” she said softly, and it was with mixed feelings that she watched him crane his neck to look around them, certain he was about to do just that.

“We’re alone out here,” he said instead and pulled her in closer. “Pretty rare.”

“Spence —”

“We all have secrets, Colbie,” he said and kissed her gently, his passion clearly in check. “And we laid out our line in the sand from the beginning.”

“That being . . . that this thing between us is temporary, right?” she said. “Because I’m neither relationship material nor geographically desirable, and you’re . . .”

“Bad at this,” he helpfully filled in for her.

She nodded and then she shook her head. “Except you’re not bad at this, Spence.”

“I am,” he insisted. “And that’s a promise.”

“So you’re saying that it’s a good thing we don’t have time?”

He gave her a small smile.

Yeah. That’s exactly what he was saying. That it was a good thing they didn’t have time. Again, she worked to shove the disappointment deep but wasn’t entirely successful. Time to pull back and regroup, she thought. “I had fun tonight,” she said. “Thanks for the date. It was pretty incredible.”

“You’re more than welcome. I had a great time too.” The warmth in his gaze, the heat from his body . . . Even with what they’d just discussed, it was all heady stuff. More so when he wrapped his hand around her ponytail and used it to bring her face closer to his. And then he gave her what she was pretty sure he’d intended to be another quick kiss—but wasn’t. Not by a long shot, and when it ended, she had to lock her knees to keep from slipping into a puddle of longing on the ground.

With a gravelly groan low in his throat, Spence drew himself away from her. “That’s getting harder to do,” he said.

“Kiss me?”

“Stop kissing you,” he corrected. “The fountain must be taking your wish seriously.”

She saw the teasing light in his eyes, swirled in with a good amount of heat, and managed a smile in return even though she thought maybe the fountain was taking her wish very seriously indeed.