Chapter Six
Glory was astonished by Trigg’s gall, asking her to watch his dog. She still wanted to wring his neck for landing her here at Blue Spruce Lodge at all. She almost said, “Ask Dad,” but her father was on the end of a shovel, helping the crew digging into the still half-frozen ground to expose the septic tank for inspection. Plus, she had already acted like she was excited to have a dog here.
Truth was, she didn’t mind. She was overdue for some unconditional love.
“No problem,” she said, but made sure to aim her smile at Murphy.
“Thanks. Rolf’s being a giant, uncircumcised dick about having him here.”
She choked on a laugh, biting back, I thought that was his natural personality. Damn him, she didn’t want to like Trigg, but he was literally the first person to ask her: “How’s it going anyway?”
“In what way? Sit.” She pushed Murphy’s butt down and held his chin up until he sat, then gave him lots of praise for it.
Trigg shrugged. “Every way. Do you like it here? Any problems?”
“Ha. A project like this is nothing but problems that demand a solution. I’ve been too busy putting out fires to figure out whether I like it.” She scratched down the dog’s back, thinking of how happy her father was, how she was writing again—mostly because they needed the money. “It’s a huge expense. Definitely not my first choice of things to do, but—”
“What was?”
Her heart gave a little skip of alarm. She kept her attention on the dog and her cards close to her chest. “I was still figuring that out. But Dad needs the help here and after…” She swallowed back the rest, surprised she’d almost gone there.
“Your mom?” Trigg asked with surprising gentleness. “Yeah, death sucks. I still miss Dad and it’s been twelve years. He was so excited when he bought this place. Being here brings it all back.”
Why did she find that so endearing?
“He bought it to build me a snow park. Now Rolf’s taking over like…” He glowered in the direction of the manager’s office. “He’s such a fucker.”
The open animosity startled her. “Is that because he’s so much older? What is he? Forty?” She knew he wasn’t, but earned a cocky grin from Trigg.
“I’m telling him you said that.”
“Fill your boots.” She had a dog to protect her now.
“He’s thirty-six. Eight years between us. Different moms.” He scratched under his unshaven chin. “Dad made me on the side while he was still married to Rolf’s mom. Then she died and he married my mom. Rolf wasn’t impressed.”
“Whoa,” she said before she could catch it back, but that was a lot of information in a few short statements.
“Yeah. You’d think he’d be over it, but nope. I’m still just that little shit he has to tolerate because Dad said so.”
And he was telling her this because…?
“He was looking at your ass, by the way.”
“What?” She straightened and the dog immediately leapt to his feet and began dancing around them, seeking fresh attention.
Her butt felt tingly and a hot sensation began rising from behind her navel along with a fresh blush up her throat.
Trigg smirked and shrugged off his abrupt announcement. “Thought you’d like to know. Thanks.” He nodded at the dog and walked away.
He wasn’t a little shit. He was an enormous shit disturber. She belatedly understood why he’d said it. The rivalry between the brothers went deep and she was a convenient pawn. The brothers definitely had one thing in common. They were both jerks.
Closing both pocket doors on her pantry office, she tried to type one-handed while scratching the furry head resting on her thigh, mind drifting to Rolf’s reaction to taking custody of a dog that wasn’t his.
BLESSED WINTER – Chapter One
Page 8, word count = 2006
Brock hated shaving, but his upbringing demanded he scrape the stubble from his face on certain occasions, like Christmas. He wasn’t even celebrating this year. Not on the day, anyway. His parents and brother had taken off for Hawaii. He was supposed to be in Mexico with his girlfriend. Ex-girlfriend.
They had accidentally slept together after a staff barbecue in July. Everyone seemed to think they would make a great couple, so they’d given it a go. They had failed spectacularly right out of the gate. Not fighting. The total opposite. It was kind of ridiculous, in retrospect, how polite and considerate they had been toward each other, both trying so hard to make their relationship work simply because they were friends and co-workers and didn’t want to ruin anything.
Chemistry had been lacking, though. Brock had known by the twist in his gut that agreeing to Christmas in Mexico with her family was taking things too far.
She’d expressed relief when he’d given her the it’s-not-you, it’s-me speech. It’s both of us, she’d said. There’s nothing here.
Ouch.
But he was glad it was settled. The shitty part was that it left him alone for Christmas. He hadn’t been able to find a flight on Christmas Eve to join his family and didn’t want to stick around L.A. by himself. He had come to Tahoe, sans beard, forgetting until he saw the strange car in the driveway that his parents had rented out the cottage since they wouldn’t be here to use it.
Terrific.
Three calls later, he realized the entire town was booked to the rafters.
He debated trying some of his parents’ neighbors. He had known many of them since he was a kid, but it was Christmas. They would have family in town. He didn’t want to intrude.
He went to Tate’s Tavern, expecting he’d either run into some friends or have a bite and drive back through the night to L.A.
It started to snow as he walked inside. Awesome. And the place was jumping. A live band had it packed with après-skiers and locals who finally had a night off. He scratched his bare cheek as he looked for a table and saw nothing.
Better and better.
Then, by some Christmas miracle, a couple rose as he was winding his way toward the bar. He sat down at the unwiped table, wished them a Merry Christmas, asked the people at the next table for their menu, and looked for a waitress.
The waitress.
Pandora.
Idiot. Was that really why he’d driven seven hours on Christmas Eve?
He debated getting on the road and eating chicken fingers from a truck stop.
Then he spotted her through the crowd.
Her short bobbed-off haircut with the blue streaks had grown out to a tail that she had twisted into a clip. The ends still held a faded blue tinge where they hung in a wilted bouquet of fine strands at her crown. Her white T-shirt with the pub logo stretched as she lifted a tray over her head, moving in an awkward pivot through the crowd.
He was so weirdly happy and relieved to see her, he almost laughed aloud.
She met his gaze at that second. Recognition struck. Astonishment and the biggest smile started to break across her face, so bright it was like sunlight pouring warmth all the way through him.
Then she faltered. Her jaw slackened and something wary quickly followed.
His own grin was pulling at the corners of his mouth, inviting her to come to him, but a tingle of premonition crackled through his elation even as his brain was taking in that her face seemed a little rounder.
Someone moved and he could see the rest of her. Her breasts were decidedly plumper than the delicious handful he had cupped last Easter. Her hips might have been a little wider, too, but it was hard to tell with the apron tied around what used to be her waist. Her beach ball of a belly was so perfectly round, with the rest of her beautiful figure just a little bit softer, but still quite slender, it looked fake. Cute enough to make him want to laugh.
Then he realized that pregnant meant she wasn’t single.
She wasn’t available. There was another man.
Wait. She was very pregnant. Like, nine months from Easter pregnant?
“Holy f—”
~ * ~
Pandora’s heart nearly leapt out her throat. Brock. She had tried not to think about him since ghosting him after their one-night stand.
Actually, it had been more of a one-weekend sex-fest of something that had felt like more than lovemaking. Affinity. They’d talked about everything, some of it superficial, some of it deep. They liked the same movies and music. He cooked. She figured out a setting on his phone. He’d recently been downsized and was sorting out his life, returning to L.A. after several years in Texas. She told him how sticking with that idiot ex of hers had seemed like the only option because she had such a lousy relationship with her mother.
She’d stopped short of telling him everything about her mother, but not because she had been afraid to. The timing just hadn’t been right.
He had asked for her phone number when he left Sunday morning. She hadn’t expected him to call and he hadn’t, but he had texted. Several times. The flirty banter had gone on for two days, keeping her smiling nonstop.
Until she got the call from her doctor’s office.
With such a lot to think about, it had seemed kinder to let things fizzle. She hadn’t stopped thinking about him, though.
Now, as a rush of excitement rose like a flock of birds inside her, she also felt a stab of guilt. Guilt for ignoring him. For not offering any explanations.
Most of all, she felt guilty for getting preg—
*
The power went out, plunging her into darkness.
Glory jumped in surprise, crying, “What—?!”
Murphy leapt to attention, barking wildly, then worried a paw at the crack of light in the door of the pantry.
Glory opened it so the light from the dining hall illuminated her ‘office,’ then glanced back at her desktop. She’d been working off her cloud account, but didn’t trust that old desktop. It was one of four redundant computers her father had brought home from the college last year. They’d been selling them off at a fire-sale price, but using it saved her filling up her laptop with lodge business.
If she had lost that scene, however, she was going to freak.
“Devon?” she called, following voices to the kitchen.
“That wasn’t me,” Devon said, systematically unplugging her tools and coiling the cords.
Nate came into the kitchen from the hall where the manager’s office was located. He touched the radio on his shoulder, informing someone the lodge had just lost power.
“Anything happen down there on the road?”
“Yeah, the boom on the long reach took out the line,” a crackling voice responded. “Pretty sure the transformer kicked out, but we’re evacuating just in case. Electric company will have to come out, inspect and reset it. The detour is blocked by the machine, so the snowcat is grounded.”
“Meaning we’re all stuck here? Without power?” Glory looked around, starting a mental head count. The building had gas, but the oven had been decommissioned, not that she had much to cook. The few of them living on site were eating whatever she could throw together on a handful of hot plates, usually pasta or something out of a can. “We have this morning’s delivery of sandwiches, but not much else. We don’t have enough beds.” Or bedding. Or heat.
“Lemme talk to Rolf.” Nate disappeared back toward the office.
“We have our sled. We’re fine,” Devon said. “We’ll do what we can until the light fades.” She nodded at her crew and they got back to reframing for the new walk-in refrigerator.
Nice to be you, Glory thought, and went to find her father.
*
This sort of incompetence would put them behind a week at least. Much as they needed the road, they needed electricity even more.
Incensed, Rolf went with Nate and Trigg to inspect the damage. The old, washed-out section of road was closer to the lodge than to the main road, about a third of the way down. The equipment to start excavating for the rebuild of the road had only arrived this morning and sure enough, the elbow on the arm was still caught in the electrical line it had taken out. The pole stood at an angle.
Hoofing it back to the lodge, Rolf saw everyone had stopped working to act like it was a Sunday social. There was nothing he hated more than paying people to stand around.
He called Devon into a meeting and cut a deal with her to bring up enough fuel to use the existing snowmobiles as a shuttle service. They only had to get people to the detour where they could walk around the washout and catch the cat below it.
The rest of the afternoon was spent evacuating the lodge until only he and Trigg, the Cormers, and the geophysicist, Gerald, remained on site.
And the dog.
Rolf also had a few essentials sent up and collected them when the last of the stragglers went down.
Given a choice, Rolf would have brooded in his room the rest of the night. He was not fit company after this cock-up, but Gerald was his guest. He changed into a clean pair of jeans, checked his phone, realized the internet was down because his router was without power, and nearly pitched the piece of shit across the room.
A knock at his door had him snapping out a terse: “What.”
“Do you know how to make the gas fireplace work?”
He opened his door. She wore an extra layer and a purple knitted cap jammed over her frizzy hair. The top of her head looked like the middle of a rust-colored daisy.
“The switch on the wall doesn’t work. I guess it’s electric. I heard Trigg say there’s a manual way, but I don’t see it. Do you know? Or should I go find him?”
He desperately wanted to tell her to find his brother, but he’d already started his own fire. It would take five seconds. He walked across the hall, opened the folding glass across her fireplace, lifted the rack that held the fake log, and pointed.
“You flick that to ‘on.’” He did it. “These are really old. You should have them replaced.”
“The gas inspector said they’re still approved for use. Replacing them would be cosmetic so it’s something we’ll save for later.”
Rolf was more of a Do It Right The First Time, but he was also the guy with a downed power line causing this shit. He kept his opinion to himself and glanced around, peeved all over again that he’d let her have the best room.
His was a mirror of this one, but one of his windows looked onto the parking lot where hers overlooked the pond. She had also done what women seemed to do with any living space and dolled it up. There was an area rug with autumn leaves all over it, bedding with similar earth tones, and a photo on her night table of her with Marvin and a woman he supposed was her mother.
He spied gutted candles on the edge of the bathtub, visible through the archway. Scented ones, maybe, because a vanilla fragrance lingered on the air. Clean and light, not unpleasant. There was a book on the floor by the tub, one with a half-naked man on the cover. Huh. Looks like she did the same thing in the tub that he did in the shower.
Not that he cared. Everyone did it, but now he was thinking about her ass again and imagined stroking himself while he prepared to take her bent over that tub. Or the end of the bed. Or how about that hassock right there?
The fantasies rushed into the flesh behind his fly, threatening a seriously powerful boner. He dragged his gaze from the furniture to the houseplant struggling to bloom on her desk. Her laptop was open to a login screen, as if she’d just started it.
The minute he turned his head that way, she moved to close it.
“Thanks.” Her smile was flat and forced, so defensive it made him lift a brow.
She held his gaze, which was hot, even though there was something nervous and culpable in the way she swallowed. What was going on in that squirrelly brain of hers? Anything like what was going on in his?
He wished he could see her nipples, which was hypocritical. He really didn’t need her entertaining fantasies about him, thinking anything could happen, but he was growing wood for real now. For her. And his inner caveman wanted evidence it wasn’t one-sided.
She dropped her gaze, hiding the reflection the firelight had put in her eyes. She licked her lips, making him aware of their shine, of the way the warm glow of the fire cast yellowy-gold across her creamy cheeks and put shots of flame in her hair.
The sexual tension was as distinct and undeniable as the hiss of the fire.
Look at me, he thought. Then, No. Don’t.
Seriously, he reminded himself. Don’t.
He walked out.
*
Glory had an active imagination. She knew she did. It might have deserted her in a fit of depression over the last year, but it was back and she couldn’t discount that.
But what the heck had happened in her room with Rolf earlier? She was no hookup artist when it came to dating, but she was no idiot either. He’d stood there in her room for no reason. The whole time, she had been hearing Trigg say, He looked at your ass.
Her ass, along with the rest of her, was decent. Not porn star spank-bank material. Her boobs were too small for that, but she did yoga and loved the elliptical at the aquatic center because she could read while she was on it. Her ass was fine. Not throaty-voiced fiiine, but it would do. Her skin was good, her legs quite nice, and her hair an acquired taste.
But who cared? This self-consciousness as a result of Trigg’s stupid comment would not do. She was irritated with herself and taking it out on her dad.
“No one told me there was other food. I thought we were having sandwiches.” She started relaying the wrapped sandwiches back into the bar fridge. “Why wasn’t I invited to the meeting where all of this was decided?”
What had started as a peeve was growing into a serious problem. Rolf kept having meetings with her father where her father agreed to things that affected her. She was informed well after the fact, if at all. Half the time, like right now, she was doing things that were redundant because she was being kept in the dark.
That’s a pun about the power outage, Dad. Get it?
“You’ve been saved a lot of work, Glory. Why are you complaining?” Her father started the burner on the camp stove that would warm the stew from Lazy Suzanne’s.
She stared at him. “Remember that time I suggested you audit some gender studies courses?”
“We have been saved a lot of work,” he corrected with an eye roll. “Set the table.”
She rolled her own eyes, but lit some tea lights from her personal stash and set them floating in a bowl of water, then placed it on a tablecloth draped over a round table.
“Romantic,” Trigg said, coming in with a wriggling-with-happiness Murphy.
“I thought I heard Nate say something about a generator,” she said.
“He’ll bring it tomorrow. Devon has one, too, but they need it to run their trailers tonight. She’ll bring it up tomorrow so they can keep working.”
All nice information Glory wished someone had thought to tell her sooner.
“No jumping,” she told the dog, and made him sit.
“Nate has a son. Did you know that, Glory?” her father asked. “He was quite anxious to get back to Haven on time.”
“Nate’s so quiet, I barely know his name.” He epitomized the strong, silent type. He was always polite, greeting her when they crossed paths and thanking her on the few occasions he’d had to ask her for something, but he kept to himself and spent a lot of time down at the base. She hadn’t spoken to him much at all. “How old?”
“Three. Showed me a picture. Cute as toes on a toad.” Marvin’s grin brightened further as Rolf and the scientist guy, Gerald, came in. “Evening, gents.”
All her senses heightened, tracking Rolf to the bar as her father invited them to enjoy a pre-dinner cocktail.
“We’re not licensed so I’ve been keeping this in my room. Whiskey, beer, and…” He consulted the label. “Bordeaux.”
A protest rose in Glory’s throat. That was from her mom’s stash. She hadn’t drunk often, especially toward the end, but when she did, she drank really good wine. Really good. The kind from the back room of Seattle’s best wine broker. The best of it was still cellared there. She’d loved to buy vintages to commemorate particular events, like making the New York Times Bestseller list.
The cases her father had put in the back seat of the SUV were all high-end enough he’d put them in special boxes to cause as little shock to the bottles as possible. Glory had thought they would save them for special occasions, like her mother’s birthday, but he was going to waste a bottle on this crowd?
No use arguing. Her father had already popped the cork to let it breathe.
Rolf had a schnapps that he had brought down from his own stash and the rest of the men had beer.
“Food smells good,” Gerald said, turning to look at her.
Wasn’t that cute. The kind stranger was hitting on the little lady by complimenting her cooking.
“Rolf gets the credit along with a woman in town who caters for us. It’s bound to be good if Suzanne made it, though.” Fuck this Bordeaux was fantastic. Took the edge off a sucky night right quick.
“I’ve been meaning to ask you to get one of those proper coffeemakers,” Rolf said to her father. “Like Suzanne’s. The kind that makes espresso.”
“Of course,” her father said magnanimously. “Glory knows all about those. She worked in a coffee shop once.”
“Oh?” Gerald was thirty-something and reasonably fit and attractive. He did nothing for her.
Glory set her back teeth and said, “Summer job during high school. All the fry-cook vacancies were filled.”
“What did you do before this?” he asked.
Oh, no thank you. She was not encouraging that line of questioning. “Worked for my mom. I’ll set the food on the bar. We’ll eat buffet style?”
They all shrugged, not caring.
Gerald didn’t let up. “What did your mom do?”
“Author. But she died.” That usually shut people up.
“Oh. I’m sorry.” He looked to Marvin.
“It was a nice secondary income,” her father said, making Glory tense up. She hated when her father talked about her mother’s career, especially when he was so fucking dismissive of it. “Glory took an interest in the promotional side. Something to keep her busy and help my wife while she was sick. Now Kathleen’s gone and we’re both ready for a change. This was a good fit. She can design our website and do all that online fandangle that seems so important for a business these days. Blogging. Chatting on the Twitterbook.”
Don’t speak for me, Glory wanted to snarl. Her father didn’t know the half of what she had done for her mom. Or what she continued to do.
At the same time, she didn’t want to speak for herself. Her father had never understood and neither would these cretins.
“What kind of books did she write?” Gerald asked “Mystery? Or…?”
No one ever guessed ‘romance.’
“Romance. Who needs a refill?” Marvin had his own sensitivities about his wife’s career and here came one of the big ones. Three, two, one…
“Romance?” Gerald’s grin grew lascivious. “I guess you had fun helping her with her research, huh? He-he.”
Cretin.
“My family are academics,” her father said with a pained smile. “I always wished Kathleen would turn her hand to literary fiction. She certainly had the talent for it. She preferred commercial fiction.” He shrugged it off with a disdainful pinch of his mouth. What can you do. Women. Amiright?
“And where would you be right now, Dad, if she had?” Oh, he infuriated her. Every. Single. Time. Her mother’s lowly career in commercial fiction had paid for this place! Why couldn’t he be proud of what her mother had achieved? What she and Glory had achieved together? All he had to do was go online, or look at the fucking bank balance, but no. It was their girly little hobby that took up his wife’s time and ate up his little girl’s attention besides.
He gave her a scolding look that asked her not to air their dirty laundry in front of company. There was a familiar, flat weariness behind it, as well.
Her mother had always said her career was a bone of contention between the two of them, not something Glory should worry about or try to change, but her father’s attitude was one of the biggest reasons Glory felt this rift between them now, the one he was trying to bridge by dragging her into his big dream.
It was why she couldn’t tell him she had edited—contributed—huge chunks of her mother’s books. Her mother had always wanted to credit Glory and aside from a footnote here or there, she had always refused, terrified of another public shaming. Terrified her father would express fake pride and offer backhanded compliments the way he did with his wife.
That’s why she couldn’t tell him or anyone else that she was writing a fresh story she intended to publish under her mother’s name.
Even though the secret was burning a hole in her chest.
Her father steered the conversation toward other topics. Manly stuff like sports and tools and camping equipment, all subjects that didn’t interest her. She set out the food and hung back sipping her wine until they’d filled their plates and found a seat—which left her sitting by Rolf, damn it.
She let them talk around her, eating like it was a first date. She’d had loads more of those than second ones. Take small bites, smile politely on cue. It was a familiar dynamic, feeling left out no matter how many people she was with. Her parents had always been the only real friends she had, but now her mother was gone and her father was making new friends.
As everyone finished eating, she considered whether clearing the table and washing the dishes reinforced stereotypes if she genuinely wanted to do it. She needed a reason to get away from the heat coming off of Rolf. Maybe it was just her internal furnace fueled by red wine. She couldn’t tell. Either way it was distracting.
Before she could decide, Trigg absently started to lower his plate of scraps to the floor, keeping up with his story as he did.
“Oh, no,” she said firmly, shooting to her feet and around the table, grabbing the plate before the dog’s nose had touched it. “No,” she said again, looking Trigg in the eye while using the same tone she would use on the dog. “You are not teaching him to eat food in here, off of guest plates. Nope, nope, nope.”
Trigg sat back, tongue touching his bottom lip, expression lazily amused, but she could see he didn’t love being taken to task in front of everyone. She’d done the math earlier when he’d told her the age difference between him and Rolf. Trigg was two years older than her, twenty-eight. Mentally, he was an adolescent, though.
“Hear that, Murph? Mom said, ‘no.’” He shifted in his seat and sent a sidelong look at Rolf.
“I am saying, ‘no,’” she muttered, shooting Trigg a look of significant warning. It was embarrassing as hell and left silence at the table as she walked away, but she would be damned if she would let him get away with acting as though they were sleeping together. Nope, nope, nope.
After a moment, her father cleared his throat and said, “I think there was some kind of dessert. Do you see anything, Glory?”
She took the cheesecake to the table, collected the rest of the dirty dishes, and washed them alone behind the bar.
“I’m going up,” she said when there was a break in conversation and she was drying her hands.
“It’s early.” Her father looked at his watch. “What are you going to do?”
“Read,” she lied. Her tablet had a full charge, but so did her laptop. “Goodnight.”
BLESSED WINTER – Chapter One (Cont’d)
Page 19, word count = 4912
If it had been possible, Pandora would have asked a co-worker to take his order, but it was far too busy. Now they’d made eye contact, she had no choice. She approached his table and set down a blank coaster.
“Hi Brock. What can I get you?”
He parted his lips, but nothing came out for two of her strained heartbeats.
He waved at her belly. “Holy f—”
“No. But you’re not the first to suggest that.” She smirked as if she was fine with her pregnancy being treated as a joke. She wasn’t. She was terrified. So scared of becoming a mother, let alone a single one. What if she got desperate and turned out like her own? What if her baby loved her in a beleaguered, responsible sort of way, but didn’t particularly like her, the way she felt toward her own mother?
Every single day, she acted like she was this glowing epitome of motherhood, serene in her pregnancy. She desperately wished she could say she was happy about the baby. She knew she wanted it. She was quite convinced that, in the long term, she would never regret having it. She already loved her baby, but there was far too much uncertainty for her to call herself ‘happy.’ And there was far was too much judgment from co-workers and regulars to be honest about her fears and insecurities.
Heck, most people believed her boyfriend was just out of town, not kicked out of her life even before he said, “You’re not going to have it, are you?”
She had lied to him, saying, “No, I’m not. Don’t worry about it.” He had moved to Nashville and she had put him behind her. More or less.
So much subterfuge as she patted where her navel had become an outie and smiled brightly, saying, “I just swallowed one too many watermelon seeds. Beer? Or…?”
Brock rubbed the clean-shaven edge of his jaw. A wary tension twitched at the edges of his eyes. His gaze caught hers and locked her into a stare that made her stomach feel like it was doing somersaults.
“Did you get a new phone? Because you had my number.” His voice was a deep, dangerous growl.
Someone tried to squeeze past her, but with this rotunda for a waistline, she couldn’t go anywhere. She wound up pressing her belly into Brock’s side and felt him stiffen at the contact.
She straightened away as quickly as she could, casting a grimace over her shoulder before saying, “There was no need to contact you.”
Brock’s expression hardened. “I’m a computer engineer, Pandora. That means I’m a math whiz.” He held up his hand and counted off his fingers. “December, November, October…” When he got to nine fingers, he said, “April.” The month of their tryst.
“I was pregnant when I slept with you. I just didn’t know it yet.”
He narrowed his eyes.
“It’s true.” She could see his skepticism so she leaned in, tearing the rest of that bandage clean off, even though it took the protective shell from her heart with it, leaving her throbbing and raw. “When I found out he cheated, I wanted to be checked for, you know. Things. The pregnancy test was a routine part of that. It was the only thing that came back positive,” she added, figuring he’d like to know she was clean. At least she’d had that silver lining.
“You’re talking about your ex? The musician? The one—Are you two back together?”
“No,” she said flatly. “So, beer?”
“And the chicken burger.”
She nodded and felt his gaze on her back as she walked away.
~ * ~
Brock couldn’t believe it. He wasn’t sure if he should believe it.
He checked the time while he ate. He should get on the road if he wanted to make it back to L.A. without falling asleep at the wheel, but he couldn’t leave. Not until he’d talked this out more thoroughly with Pandora.
He nursed another beer while the band played another set. He wanted something stronger—wanted desperately to get hammered—but he might yet have to drive. He combed through some online apps, but found no vacancies, even when he looked for crap accommodation like airbeds and vans. Then he went through his contacts, looking for someone with a sofa he could surf. Nothing felt right.
He was too keyed up to talk to old friends anyway. His brain was popping like fireworks over Pandora’s pregnancy. There was no way he could act like he was excited to see anyone. Act happy that it was Christmas. He wasn’t happy. He was feeling boxed in the nuggets. If he talked to anyone, it would be his brother and even that didn’t feel right unless it was face to face, over a beer.
It struck him that he’d never been alone on Christmas. He had always spent it with his family. This year would have been his first with Karen and he’d only said yes to going away with her because…
He picked at the label on his beer bottle, aware that he was in danger of brooding.
He had wanted things to work with Karen because he was already feeling left behind. His big brother had married last year and they’d had a son three months ago.
What if he had a son? One Pandora didn’t even want him to know about?
That thought jabbed a burning streak of lightning through his chest, taking his breath before he pulled back from the ledge and made himself breathe again.
Finally, the tavern began to empty out. Pandora came by with weariness in her eyes. “Last call.”
He handed over his empty and said, “I’m good. But I need a place to stay.”
“You’re not at your parents’?”
“They rented out the house and went to Hawaii.”
“Oh. Um, I don’t know.” She blew out a breath that wafted the fine hairs framing her cheekbones, looking around as though scanning for someone she could ask. “I’m pretty sure the whole town is at capacity, especially with it snowing. Did you try—Oh, no,” she said as she glanced back and read his expression. “Don’t look at me like that. Brock.” She waved at her front. “I’m not taking you home with me.”
“We need to talk, Pandora.”
“Do you honestly think I’m going to want to talk after a night like this? No, I’m going straight to bed. If you want to call me on Monday afternoon, I might have enough energy to repeat what I’ve already said, but not tonight. I’ll ask at the bar, see if anyone has a sofa you can crash on.”
Half an hour later, she hadn’t come back with any offers. The lights were up and the last of the empties were being collected. Pandora sat to cash out at the bar and the bartender called over, “Sorry, buddy. We gotta close up.”
Brock reluctantly stood, eyes stuck to Pandora’s falling hair and narrow back.
She looked over her shoulder at him.
“You hear of anything?” he asked her. “If not, I’m sleeping in my car.” He wasn’t playing for sympathy. It was the truth.
Her spine softened. “He’s with me,” she said heavily, then said to Brock, “I’ll be fifteen minutes.”
She split her tips, declined a nightcap with the staff, wished everyone a Merry Christmas and asked Brock, “Do you want to come in my car? Parking is the pits at my place right now with all the snow.”
Since he had been planning to stay at his parents’ cottage, he had luggage. He transferred it into her rattle-trap hatchback, but she didn’t want him moving her seat, so she drove.
It was snowing hard, making the short drive take a lot longer than it should have. She rolled into a spot thick with a foot of fresh snow next to the mechanic’s garage she lived above. By the time he got his duffel out of the back and onto his shoulder, she was knocking snow off the treads of the stairs with a broom. Flakes were collecting in a fine layer on the knitted hat she wore.
“I’ll do it,” he said, coming up behind her.
“It’s fine. I do this all the—”
The idea of her doing this at all struck terror into his heart. He took the broom and carefully moved around her so he could clear the steps for her slow climb behind him. At least she had one hand on the rail now. He cleared the landing so she could open the screen door and get her key in the lock.
They brushed the snow off each other and stomped their boots beneath the overhang, then stepped inside to set them on the tray beside the door.
As he turned from hanging his jacket, he saw she had decorated for Christmas. A tree stood where the guitars had been last spring. It was a fake tree, tiny, with a handful of ornaments and two unwrapped gifts on the red skirt beneath.
The light over the sink was on, but Pandora didn’t turn on any other lights. She crossed to plug in the tree so it glowed with pink and purple and blue bulbs. Then she plugged in the string of white pin lights that framed the window.
“Do you mind? I like these better,” she said with a sheepish shrug.
“Of course.” It was pretty. Soothing. “How else will Santa find you?”
She made a noise in her throat and said, “Must be on his naughty list. He never shows, no matter how many cookies I leave for him.”
“Do you have plans for tomorrow?” How had that not occurred to him? He hadn’t wanted to intrude on the family time of neighbors and old friends, but had blithely inserted himself into her home on Christmas Eve.
Because he wanted to know whether that was his child, even though she maintained it wasn’t.
“My plans are to sleep in.” She smiled and rubbed her back, then the side of her belly, profile glowing in the muted light. “Then watch Christmas movies and knit.”
“You’re a knitter?” That didn’t fit at all with who she had become in his mind. “What about dinner? Friends? Family?”
“One of the girls at work invited me to her orphan’s lunch, but they’ll all be drinking and I’m peopled out. It’s been crazy at work and I’ve been taking extra shifts to pad my time off. Do you want tea? I like an herbal one before bed.”
“Sure. Whatever you’re having. But what about your mom?” He moved out of the way so she could move into the kitchen. “You’re not going to see her?” She had said something in the spring about not seeing much of her mother, but it was Christmas.
“Not an option,” she said cryptically, filling the kettle and pressing the button. “Why didn’t you go away with your family?”
“My—She’s my ex-girlfriend now. I was supposed to go to Mexico with her family.” He scratched his hair. “My parents are coming back for New Year’s Eve. I thought I’d come up and ski until they get here. Forgot the house was rented, though.”
“You’re fresh off a breakup?” She moved to a linen closet next to her bedroom door.
“More like we finally ended things officially after a slow start and a long wind-down. We weren’t really…”
The spark had been absent. If he hadn’t known what that spark was, he probably wouldn’t have noticed, but he knew. He was feeling it right now. Something in him was bright and alive, but relaxed at the same time. At ease after a nameless tension had gripped him for months.
“The fact I’m not nursing a broken heart is the reason it’s better we ended it.” He’d been more worked up over the way Pandora had stopped answering his texts. “You could have said something, you know. I called your work to make sure nothing had happened to you.”
“I didn’t mean to worry you, but this is literally about me, not you,” she said dryly, pulling blankets from a shelf and hugging them. “What was I going to say? Ask if you wanted to give things a go anyway? We barely know each other. I didn’t want to put such a heavy decision on you and I didn’t want to hear that you weren’t interested in my problems when it’s a huge life-changer for me. This is a lot to process.” She circled her belly with her finger. “Even without bringing a man’s feelings into it, a man who didn’t even make this happen. I didn’t know what to say. By the time I could even think, it was too late to ask you if you wanted to be part of it.” She left the blankets on the arm of the sofa. “I’m going to have a quick shower. I always feel sticky after work.”
He poured the tea while she was in the bathroom and glanced at the gifts beneath the tree. One was a pre-packaged collection of baby product samples, the kind of gift acquaintances bought when they wanted to make a gesture, but didn’t know the person well. The other was European cookies in a fancy tin. It was another gesture, since the business card taped to the lid had the same logo as the garage below this apartment.
A swerving sensation hit his chest as he stared at those two measly, impersonal gifts. What had she said about Santa? The old fart still managed to track him down. His mother had gone to the trouble of mailing gifts, even though he had planned to leave them in his apartment until he got back from Mexico. He had shoved them in his duffel on his way out the door to come here along with a few things he’d picked up for his own family, thinking they could have a belated exchange on New Year’s Eve.
Now he was wondering if he would still be here in Tahoe. Pandora was right. This was a lot to process. At no time in his life had he consciously imagined taking up with a woman who had a kid by another man. That was something his divorced friends did, not that there was anything wrong with it, but he came from a nuclear family. He gravitated to thinking that’s how his own life should look.
Which meant it wasn’t fair to lead Pandora on for even a minute if he couldn’t countenance that baby not being his.
He rubbed his face, not one to spend a lot of time soul-searching, exploring his feelings, but he had liked her. He’d been more than peeved at her rejection. He’d been hurt. He had thought they had something. The way she had cut him off had contributed to him starting a poorly thought through affair with his co-worker.
He combed his fingers through his hair, impatient with himself as he realized how juvenile that had been. He’d been young and stupid once, but liked to think he’d grown up in the last few years. Now, he wasn’t so sure.
Maybe that’s why Pandora hadn’t seen him as father material. She hadn’t been sparing him so much as herself.
She was clean-faced and dewy when she came out of the bathroom, hair in a towel, a thick robe knotted over her bulging middle. The yellow neckline of a nightgown showed between the lapels.
He brought her tea over to her as she curled into the corner of the sofa with a sigh. “Thank you.” She cupped the warm mug and stared at the tree.
They sat in companionable silence while snow fell beyond the window.
“I love Christmas lights. I had them in my room when I was little, all year.”
“Before your dad died?”
“Mmm.” She sipped, then smiled. “Nostalgia trigger, I guess. Happier times.” She gave a surprised little wince and touched her belly.
“Are you going into labor?” He went from zero to panic in a heartbeat.
“No.” She chuckled. “Just a kick. Do you want to feel?” she asked tentatively. “You don’t have to. Some people like it. Some think it’s gross.”
“It’s not gross. It’s cool.” He reached across and she moved his hand over the terry of her robe until he felt the nudge against his palm. It made the hairs stand up on his forearm. “My sister-in-law was pregnant last year. My brother has always been super possessive of her, but all of a sudden he was like, ‘Dude. Come touch my wife.’ Made me laugh. She was a sport about it.”
Amber’s delivery had turned into an emergency caesarian, Brock recalled. He sobered. “Are you worried about the labor?”
“Terrified,” Pandora said with self-deprecation, but an underlying honesty that made protectiveness well within him. Helpless protectiveness. What the hell could he do about it?
“I’m sure it will be fine,” he lied.
“Other women do it every day,” she agreed. “Then go back to working in the rice paddies, right? As if.” She interrupted herself with a big yawn. “I’m sorry. I have to go to bed or I’ll pass out right here.” She rose and took his empty mug to the sink with her own. “Good night, Brock. Merry Christmas.”
“Merry Christmas.”