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5 Days Before Christmas

 

Morning sunlight filtered through the curtains, waking Logan from a restless sleep. For a minute, he wasn’t sure where he was. Birds were singing outside the window. The bed was warm and reasonably soft and the smell of bacon filled the air. He sure as hell wasn’t in Afghanistan.

He opened his eyes and reality came crashing in. A heavy weight settled on his chest and for a second, he felt like he couldn’t breathe. He was in Allie’s house. Allie was pregnant. He’d made a child with his best friend’s sister. He was going to be a father.

He thought back to the conversation he’d had with Allie a few hours earlier and wished he could believe it was just a bad dream. He’d acted like an ass, and then asked her to marry him. Insulted her, then proposed to her.

“God, what was I thinking?”

Allie surprised him though. She did the opposite of what he’d expected and offered him an easy out; a chance to pretend that none of this was happening.

That was exactly what he’d wanted. At least it was, until she’d handed it to him. Then he’d panicked, and proposed in a knee-jerk reaction. Marriage was a terrible idea.

He should probably be relieved she’d said no.

Said no, my ass. She practically ran from the room.

In his mind he saw her again, struggling to get up off that low-slung futon, belly first. She’d smacked his hand when he’d tried to help. She had to rock to one side to get momentum. His lips tried to smile.

He pressed them tight, and realized her rejection stung. Why, he wondered? Her reaction shouldn’t come as a surprise. He’d known his whole life that he would never have a family. His parents gave him up when he was a kid, and he’d bounced around the system. A couple of good foster homes, a couple of really bad ones. He’d made a conscious decision not to get too attached to anyone.

He hadn’t had what you’d call a girlfriend in his entire adult life. He didn’t even really have friends. Not until he’d joined the Army. It had never bothered him, it was more like a condition he knew he had, a part of his DNA. He accepted it as who he was.

But now Allie seemed to think his own kid—their kid—would be better off without him. Pain seemed to radiate from the center of his chest, an area he’d kept cool and dark and quiet all these years. It was swollen and pulsing now.

It hurt knowing she believed that. It hurt even more that part of him agreed with her.

He pushed through the wave of unfamiliar emotions and sank his feet into the sands of logic. Feelings wouldn’t do him any good. He had bigger issues right now than what Allie thought of him.

He had to tell Adam.

The thought made his stomach drop. He wasn’t afraid of Adam, even though the guy had four inches and fifty pounds on him. Logan could handle himself in a fight, but he had no desire to fight his best friend. The captain was the closest thing to family Logan had, the only person he’d allowed to get close.

Dammit, he should’ve known better.

He’d spent most of the car ride yesterday trying to remember every detail of his night with Allie, searching for any way he could have realized she was Adam’s sister. The name had thrown him. Adam always called his sisters Angie and Lexie.

 Big Falls, though. That might’ve tipped him off. She’d mentioned Big Falls. But he wasn’t sure if Adam ever had before then.

Still, sleeping with your buddy’s sister was a huge violation of the bro-code. Getting your buddy’s sister pregnant was even worse. Add in the fact that Adam was his C.O.  and this was the biggest shit storm Logan could imagine. And he had to clean it up.

That was where his focus ought to be. Not on letting little Allie Wakeland hurt his feelings.

He yawned, still tired. He’d barely last night.

The guest room was also the future nursery. His visit was a surprise to everyone, so he didn’t imagine there had been time to put all the stuff away somewhere else. Allie had apologized when she’d led him into a bedroom full of baby stuff, most of it still in its original packaging. Logan had been hoping he could shut himself in a room, forget his problems and sleep until he came up with a solution, but that was hard to do while he was staring at a boxed-up crib. A crib that his own little boy, or little girl, would sleep in. The front of the box was a full color photo blown up huge, the crib all assembled with the softest looking little baby sleeping inside.

Something swelled in his chest again.

He sighed, threw his legs over the edge of the futon, and thought about Allie. After their fight, she’d gone back to her room, but she hadn’t slept, either. Logan had heard her moving around, through the thin bedroom wall.

He had been angry at first, at the situation he thought he didn’t want, and then at her for wanting to do it without him. The anger had been good. It made him feel like he could get through this. He was used to existing in a continuous state of Logan-against-the-world. He was used to fighting. He tried to hold onto his anger, tried to be glad she couldn’t sleep. But he couldn’t quite manage it.

Then after a while, he’d heard something else. No more pacing. She was crying, and he knew it was his fault. No matter how shocked and how angry he’d been, that didn’t give him the right to make things harder on her. Geeze, she was carrying his kid. What was the matter with him?

He should go to her, he thought.

No, he shouldn’t. She was angry, and every time he opened his mouth, he made her angrier. He needed to give her some space.

He grabbed his bag from where it lay on the floor, next to a box with a space-aged container and the words Diaper Genie across the front. What the hell was a Diaper Genie? He pictured Barbara Eden nodding her head and making a dirty diaper disappear in a poof of pink smoke.

He looked around at all the contraptions and equipment. How could he be a father? He didn’t even know what most of this stuff was.

He picked up a tiny shirt that resembled a straightjacket. The shirt wrapped around and snapped on the sides and the sleeves folded over on the ends to form mittens. He had no idea why a baby would need mittens.

 Her due date was tomorrow.

She said there were no signs yet, but still, he didn’t have very long to get used to the idea. Much less bone up on baby-care.

He should get going on that.

But first he had to tell Adam. God, it made him sick to his stomach to think about that. Maybe he could wait until after the paternity test.

“You’re an idiot, Logan,” he whispered. He didn’t need a paternity test. In his heart, he knew that. Allie didn’t want his help. She had no reason to lie to him, nothing to gain. Besides, her eyes didn’t lie. He never should’ve said the things he had to her.  

None of this was easy or fair. Not to either of them.

He sighed and laid the baby straightjacket back in the box of clothes, wishing he had trusted his better judgment and stayed in Afghanistan. But there was no point feeling sorry for himself. This was a new day. He was who he was. He had to do the right thing. He had to tell Adam.

Logan got dressed. When he opened the bedroom door, the sounds of voices floated up from downstairs, along with the smells of bacon and fresh coffee. He walked down the stairs into the brightly-lit living room. A little girl with curly blond hair and chubby legs was running unsteadily, chased by a little boy who looked about six or seven. Toys were strewn around the floor at their feet. The little girl tripped over a teddy bear and landed on her face. Before Logan could react, the little boy was picking her up and setting her back on her feet, and without missing a beat, she giggled and took off running again.

He felt out of place. Allie’s house was full of noise and people and laughter.

The living room opened into a small dining room. The kitchen was on the other side of a wide island. Adam was sitting at the dining room table with two people who must be his parents. The man looked like an older version of Adam, except that his build was smaller and his face was narrower. He had the same wide brown eyes, though.

Allie had those eyes.  All dark brown like melting chocolate.

The woman at the table didn’t resemble either of her children. She had a tiny frame, dyed-red hair in a big curly mop, and bright blue eyes that beamed with love as she gazed at Adam, who sat in the chair beside hers. She had one tiny hand over his bigger one on the table and she was telling him what sounded like local gossip he’d missed. Two of the McIntyre boys had apparently got married. One had a little girl, and the other a newborn, and someone named Vidalia was over the moon with joy about her newest grandbabies.

Logan moved through the place like a ghost who didn’t belong. Allie stood at the kitchen range talking to another woman. She glanced his way when he walked into the room. Her gaze was so cold it almost froze him in his tracks. He shouldn’t have been so harsh last night. He didn't want her to be his enemy.

Sighing, he went back to the table and sat down in an open seat across from Adam, who greeted him with a warm smile he didn’t deserve.

“Mom, Dad, I want you to meet Logan Edwards. Edwards, Beth and David Wakeland.”

Adam’s mother stood up, hurried around the table and wrapped his shoulders in a big hug. “Welcome home,” she said. Adam’s dad held out a hand and gripped his firmly.

The woman in the kitchen came to the table with a stack of coffee mugs and set them around. “And I’m Angie, Adam's big sister. The two little monsters running around here are Jack and Cassie.”

Angie looked nothing like Adam and Allie. She had straight blond hair and her blue eyes matched her mother’s. She was taller than Allie and so thin she looked like she might break. Despite the smile on her face, her eyes were unspeakably sad. It was no surprise. Logan knew her husband Jeff had been taken out by a roadside bomb while driving in a convoy. It had been a year or a little more, if he remembered right. Adam had talked about his brother-in-law a lot. He’d loved the guy. Grieved him hard.

Angie held out a thin hand and Logan took it and gave a gentle squeeze. He could feel her bones under a cool layer of skin. Then when he let go, he said, “Thank you all for letting me spend the holidays with you. You’re a beautiful family.”

“We’re happy to have you,” Beth said. “But won’t your family be upset that you’re not home? If Adam tried to get out of Christmas with me, I’d never let him hear the end of it.”

“I don’t have anyone to upset, Mrs. Wakeland.” Logan said it with a carefree smile and braced himself for the reaction that always followed that statement, the awkward pity.

“You call me Beth,” she replied, and instead of avoiding the topic the way most people did, she asked, “Have you been on your own for long?”

“As long as I can remember.”  

“Well, that means you’re free to spend holidays with us from now on. We’ve got enough family to go around.”

Allie stepped out of the kitchen with the coffee pot and started filling the cups on the table. Her expression told Logan she might not be thrilled about her mother’s invitation.

“Thank you for opening your home to me.”

“Don’t thank us. This is Allie’s home,” Beth said. “Dave and I downsized a few years ago. With just the two of us, we couldn’t see maintaining a big old house any longer.”

He remembered Allie telling him that night that her family thought she was a screw-up. She’d changed, but they couldn’t see it, she’d told him.

He bet her pregnancy hadn’t helped her cause.

She filled his coffee cup and set it roughly on the table in front of him. Coffee sloshed over the sides.

Logan knew he shouldn’t, but he couldn’t hide his grin. That display of temper was unexpected, and he found it entirely amusing. Allie glared at him and stalked back into the kitchen.

“How did you manage to get on Allie’s bad side already?” Adam asked. “I thought I was the only one who could piss her off that fast.”

Logan shrugged and said the first thing that popped into his head. “I asked her if she was having twins.”

Adam let out a bark of laughter.

“In that case, you’re lucky that coffee didn’t wind up in your lap,” Angie said, stifling a grin. She followed Allie into the kitchen and returned with heaping plates of food.

Once the kids were seated at the table, the only spot for Allie to sit was next to Logan, and he worried that she was going to stab him with her butter knife. But instead, she doted on her niece and nephew and ignored him completely. He tried to pay attention to the conversation going on around him.

Adam’s father, Dave, talked about the upcoming Christmas Eve celebration at The Long Branch saloon, and how they’d added something special this year. Then with a loaded look at the kids, he said, “More on that later.”

Angie and her mom talked about Angie’s new house just west of Big Falls. Logan overheard enough to understand that they’d had to move out of base housing after Angie lost her husband. Six months was the maximum time a family could stay in base housing after a soldier died. He glanced at Angie’s kids and sighed, thinking of they’d been through.

He saw Angie spot the sympathy in his eyes, and she quickly said, “It ended up being a blessing in disguise, though, getting kicked out of base housing. I bought one of the only places I could afford, out in the middle of nowhere. Then the town purchased the huge tract of land beside it to build a reservoir. It’s just a hole in the ground now, but in a couple of years, my house will be lakefront property.”

“Somebody’s looking out for you,” he said. And she kind of beamed at him, so it must’ve been the right thing to say.

The family breakfast was the most noisy, chaotic meal Logan had ever seen. There was so much talking he kept forgetting to eat. A lot of the time, several of them were talking at once and yet they all seemed to get every word of it. The topics changed so fast he could barely keep up, even when he was focusing. Often, though, his attention wandered to Allie.

She was discussing dinosaurs with her nephew, Jack. The boy spewed information like he was livestreaming a paleontology website. How did a seven-year-old retain so many details?

“The ankylosaurus is my favorite,” Jack said, “It has a giant club for a tail, and armor all over its body.”

Allie said, “My favorite is a triceratops. It looks like it’s wearing a crown. Now that’s a dinosaur with some great fashion sense.”

Jack laughed. “It’s not a crown, Aunt Allie. It’s a bony frill, and it was probably used for defense against predators.” The little boy suddenly turned to Logan. “What’s your favorite?”

“I…um…a pterodactyl?”

Jack rolled his eyes. “That’s not a dinosaur.”

“Of course it is. Pterodactyls are the flying ones that turned into birds.”

The little boy slapped his forehead in an overly dramatic show of disbelief. “First, they’re not dinosaurs. They’re flying reptiles. Second, they’re actually called pterosaurs, not pterodactyls. And third, even big dinosaurs evolved into birds. Like the t-rex.”

Logan looked at the kid in surprise. “Seriously? What kind of bird did the t-rex turn into? An ostrich? Or an eagle? Something big and scary, right?”

Jack shook his head. “My book says the closest bird to a t-rex is actually a chicken.”

“No way. There’s no way a t-rex evolved into a little tiny critter that we serve up fried with a side of biscuits. That can’t be true.”

“It’s definitely true. Right, Aunt Allie?”

Allie nodded. “I’m pretty sure that’s right. I read him the book.”

“A chicken? That’s amazing. How’d you get to know so much about dinosaurs, Jack?” Logan asked.

“I read a lot. Mom says it makes you smart. You should try it. You can borrow some of my books if you want.”

Allie made a choking sound and covered her mouth with a napkin. But he could see the smile in her eyes, and for just a second, was dazzled by it.

She cleared her throat, took a sip of water, and said, “It would take an awful lot of books, Jack,” she said softly.

The little boy laughed. “Yeah. You might have to read all the books at the library.”

Logan smiled. “T. rex didn’t read any books, and it worked out for him, right?”

“Not really. He turned into a chicken!” Jack giggled.

“And now we’re eating his eggs for breakfast. Guess that’s not such a good thing.”

 “He couldn’t lay any eggs,” Jack said. “Only girl chickens can lay eggs. You really gotta read some books.”

Allie laughed along with her nephew and her eyes met Logan’s for the first time since she’d sat down. The force of her smile made him feel warm all over, like he’d just sipped a hot coffee after a freezing desert night, and he couldn’t pull his gaze away.

“Don’t let this guy fool you,” Adam said from across the table. “He’s actually one of the smarter people I know.”

“You must know a lot of dummies, Uncle Adam.”

That brought a round of laughter from everyone, including Logan, but Jack’s grandfather didn’t look amused.

“Where are your manners, young man? Sergeant Edwards is soldier, just like your daddy was. Show him some respect.”

 At the mention of his father, the little boy’s smile disappeared. He could see the regret on Angie’s face instantly.

“Sorry, Sergeant Edwards,” Jack said.

“Don’t worry about it, kid. Truth is, I got punched by a real big guy a few months ago, and I think he knocked some of my brain cells lose. But who needs brains when you have a face like this.” He winked and Jack managed a weak smile.

Allie gave him an appreciative look and that damn warmth flooded his body again. He didn't know what that was all about, but he intended to get to the bottom of it. It was probably some kind of chemical reaction that made cavemen willing to fight off saber tooth cats to protect their pregnant cave women, ensuring their children would be born. It probably happened to all human males when a woman who was carrying his baby smiled at him.

 His baby. The thought made his heart pick up its pace again.

“May I be excused?” Jack was already out of his chair.

“Me, too!” the toddler said. Angie nodded, letting her little girl slide off her lap. Jack followed his little sister into the living room and after a minute the noise of rambunctious play filled the silence.

 “Okay, Allie, I think I’ve waited long enough.” Adam turned his attention to his sister. “You said you’d give me all the details in the car last night and then you barely said two words about this whole…situation. So, it’s time. Who’s your new guy? And what exactly does he intend to do now that you’re–– ” Adam paused as if he was searching for the right word.

“Knocked-up?” Allie supplied.

“I was gonna say with child, but that, too. Who’s responsible for this?”

Allie rolled her eyes. “I’m responsible, Adam. Just as much as anyone else.” Her eyes darted to Logan’s, and he knew she was nervous he was going to tell Adam right then.

“You know what I mean, Allie. When did you start dating? How long have you been together? Do I know him? Do I hate him? Is that why you didn’t tell me?”

Allie took a deep breath. “I’m not dating anyone.”

“Did he break it off? Was it because you’re pregnant?” His eyebrows came down hard. “I’ll kick his freaking—”

“No, Adam. There was nothing to break off.”

“But if you weren’t dating…?”

Logan could see the exact moment that the words sank in. Adam’s face turned red and his forehead creased.

“Who did this to you?”

“It’s no use, Adam,” his father cut in. “We’ve all asked her. She won’t say a word about it.”

Logan cleared his throat. He was dreading this, but now was as good a time as any.

Allie grabbed his leg under the table and squeezed. The strength of her grip was enough to shut him up momentarily.

“I don’t have to say a word,” she said. “This is my life. I can make my own decisions, and I’ve decided I can do this. I don’t need anyone’s help.” She was on the defensive, but Adam didn’t back down.

“Allie, come on. You shouldn’t have to do this by yourself,” Adam said.

“There’s no reason I can’t. Angie does, and she’s doing an amazing job.”

Angie looked down at the table. “It’s true. You’re perfectly capable.”

“Come on, Ang. You don’t believe that,” Adam said. “You have no choice but to raise the kids on your own. Allie does. She’s just a kid. She’s going to need help.”

“I’m not a kid. I'm twenty-four years old. By the time you were my age, Adam, you’d already been married and were cruising towards divorce. No one gave you a hard time about your choices.”

“There’s a big difference between me at twenty-four and you at twenty-four.”

Allie glared at her brother, but he didn’t stop.

“I didn’t say anything when you changed your major six times. I kept my mouth shut when you dropped out of college and opened up your studio. But I can’t keep quiet and watch you make another mistake.”

“My studio is doing so well I’m turning clients away,” she said. “And nothing I’ve done in last three years has been a mistake.”

“Dammit, Lexie—”

 Logan cleared his throat, drawing Adam’s irritated gaze. Allie gave him a pleading look and her hand squeezed his leg a little tighter. He placed his hand over hers, hoping that the action would be reassuring. He might not agree with Allie on much right now, but he wasn’t about to sit there and let her be attacked for something he was responsible for. “I’m sorry, Adam.” He paused choosing his words carefully. “I know it’s not my place, but I don’t think you’re giving your sister the credit she deserves.”

Adam shot a glare his way. “This isn’t your concern, Logan.”

“I get that. This is your family, but it seems to me like you’re letting your past with your sister cloud your judgment. I’m an outsider, so I can give you an unbiased view of things. It looks to me like Allie’s doing okay for herself. She’s living in a nice house. She’s driving a decent car. She’s feeding all of us this morning. She’s giving us both a place to stay while we’re home on leave. Seems to me that whatever she’s doing is working out pretty well. Maybe you should give her the benefit of the doubt.”

Allie met his gaze and he could see the gratitude in her eyes.

“You’re right. It’s none of your business,” Adam snapped.

 “Look, Adam,” Allie said. “Whether the father is involved in his child’s life is between me and the father, and telling you isn’t going to help either one of us make those decisions. If he’s going to be around, I promise, you’ll know who he is. If not, it really doesn’t matter. But mainly, Adam, it’s just none of your business.” She looked around the table. “And that goes for all of you.” Her tone brooked no argument and without another word, she pushed back from the table and started clearing dishes.

Logan stood up and followed suit. Adam didn’t look happy, but he also didn’t look like he was going to press his sister any further. At least not at the moment.

“Whoever this guy is, he better have a damn good excuse for not being here,” Adam whispered.

His father nodded, and Logan looked from older face to younger face, and wondered what they would think of him when they learned the truth.