Chapter Eight

Alex

To my horror, my mom was still awake when I slipped through the door of my parent’s house a little after midnight. She was in the kitchen, casually sipping tea from her Crazy Cat Lady mug—complete with tail shaped handle—and perusing a magazine. The picture of serene innocence.

She wasn’t fooling anyone.

“Mom,” I sighed. “You’re really waiting up for me? You do remember that I’m thirty-two now, right?”

She grinned like one of the smug cats painted on the side of her kitschy mug. “I wasn’t waiting up for you, Alex. But now that you’re here, pull up a seat and tell me where you’ve been.”

I rolled my eyes but couldn’t help chuckling. She knew I couldn’t say no to her. I pulled up one of the stools on the opposite side of the island and she poured me a cup of tea. This one served in an I Love My Goldendoodle mug with a picture of my parent’s dog, Ricco, etched on the side.

“Were you out with friends?” she asked, taking her seat again.

I chuckled. “This feels like high school all over again. I think I’m having flash backs.”

She tilted her head. “Indulge me. You’re all the way across the country and I don’t know anything about your life.”

“Mom,” I objected softly, a pang of guilt hitting me in the gut. “I call every Sunday.”

She gave me a pointed look over the rim of her mug.

“Okay, I call most Sundays.”

“You do,” she conceded. “But I still feel like I have no idea what’s really going on with you. All you ever tell us is work stuff.”

“To tell you the truth, that’s kind of all there is to my life these days.” I hadn’t meant the comment to come out sounding bitter, but the tang was there anyway. Meeting Maci was a breath of fresh air in a lot of ways. Not only was she the polar opposite of most of the women I’d met since moving to LA, but she was also the first woman I’d really let myself slow down long enough to enjoy.

“Should I be worried, Alex?”

I shook my head. “Nah. I’m all right. Work is good. It’s what I wanted. What I worked my ass off to get. My employees are happy and business is thriving. I wake up every morning with a sense of purpose and direction. I can’t get to the office fast enough most days. It’s better than I ever imagined.”

“But?”

A smile tugged at the corner of my mouth. There was no escaping mother’s intuition. “I met someone.”

“In LA?”

“No. Here. At the mall.”

My mom’s eyebrows arched into rounded peaks on her smooth forehead. “Who is she?”

“She works at the mall part time to make some Christmas cash. Her name is Maci. She has a daughter.”

“Oh, Alex!” She set down her mug. “Is that where you were tonight? With her?”

“She invited me over to have dinner at her place.”

“So you’ve met her daughter?” she asked, a hint of shock in her tone.

I inclined my head and then took a deep sip of the cooled tea, buying myself a minute. “She’s a sweetheart. I think she and Marvin would get along great. She’d probably love baby Ella.” I chuckled softly.

“Alex.”

I looked at my mother and saw a new emotion there, one I didn’t recognize at first.

“I’ve never seen you like this,” she said at my puzzled look. “You’re smitten with this woman!”

I smiled and shrugged my shoulders. “Not quite how I’d put it, but she’s got my attention, that’s for damn sure.”

“You should invite her over for Christmas Eve dinner, here at the house, that way we call all meet her.”

“Mom…” I started to shake my head, searching for a plausible excuse to wrangle out of the idea, but then stopped. Why not? Sure, it had only been a few dates, but it felt like a helluva lot longer—in the best way possible.

“It will be casual,” my mom pressed. “We’ve invited over some of the neighbors too. It’s more of an open house or holiday party than a family-only dinner. She’ll fit right in and we won’t do anything to embarrass you.”

I laughed but found myself nodding along, agreeing to her plan. “All right. I’ll ask her. For all I know she has family plans of her own, but I’ll let her know she’s welcome if she’s free.”

The sparkle in my mom’s eye told me it might not be as innocent and casual as she was describing it, but after I said goodnight, rinsed my mug, and headed to the guest room, I decided I wouldn’t mind if the night was a seemingly big step forward.

I was ready.

***

The opportunity to extend the invitation came a lot sooner than I expected. Around ten o’clock the following morning, before I was supposed to be at Santa’s shack, I went to the food court to get a latte and spotted Maci across the expansive dining area. She was hunched over, collapsed on one of the tables, and looked like she was in desperate need of her own cup of coffee. A big one. I purchased two lattes and made my way to her table. As I neared, I realized she was punching frantically at the screen of her phone and had flashing screens blaring on a small, eReader size tablet at her left.

I sat down and placed one of the lattes in front of her before she realized someone had even approached. She jerked her chin up, her eyes wide. “Alex! Oh! God, you startled me.”

“Sorry.” I tried to resist peeking at her phone. It wasn’t right to spy on her, but I couldn’t help but wonder what had so fully captured her attention. “You okay?”

“Is this for me?” she asked, her eyes landing on the coffee.

I nodded and took a sip of my own. “Figured we both could use one after last night.”

She tried to grin but it faded quickly.

“Is everything all right, Maci?” We’d had a late night, but from looking at her, I’d have been surprised if she’d gotten any sleep. Something was off.

She gave a distracted nod and chugged the scalding coffee like it was water. “Thanks. I’ve already had two this morning. I was up all night.”

“Thinking about me?” I teased, desperate to see her smile.

She fixed me with a pointed stare. “Actually, yes. But not in a good way.”

“Oh?” My heartbeat sped up.

“Rather, your extra-jolly alter ego. You promised Lyss a Livia Tablet. Not only that, but in hot pink, which, as that little brute in line pointed out, doesn’t exist. You might as well have told her a baby unicorn would be stuffed in her Christmas stocking. The Livia tablet is just about as rare.”

Guilt seared through me.

She sighed. “That was all she wanted to talk about on the way to daycare today. “I’ve been searching for months for one of these damn things but everywhere is sold out and now, even if I could find one, I can’t afford it because the car repairs are eating into all of my savings.” She waved a hand at the phone and tablet. “So I’ve been entering every online contest and calling radio stations and scouring social media for people who might be selling them.”

“I’m really sorry, Maci. I wasn’t thinking.”

She flapped a dismissive hand and went back to searching through the listings on her phone.

I stared at the crown of her head as she bent over her devises, one hand in a death grip around the coffee I’d bought for her. My chest squeezed tight. Should I tell her the truth? Reveal my identity and gamble with her reaction to the truth? Up until now she didn’t even know that I wasn’t a local. I hadn’t mentioned anything about LA. After my mom’s prompting to invite her to the family Christmas event I knew I’d have to start telling her the truth. January second I’d be on a plane back to LA and my normal life where there was barely room for regular meals and my daily workout session with my personal trainer. I had no idea where I was going to find room for a relationship. Especially not with a woman like Maci who had her own responsibilities and full life in Minnesota. I couldn’t expect her to up and go on a whim. In the past, it had been easy enough to find a woman who would be able to take off for an impromptu vacation or come to stay in LA until I’d had enough or they got bored and went off to the next thing. That wasn’t Maci. It also wasn’t what I wanted with her. She was different. She was real.

“Thanks for the coffee,” she said, glancing up as she slid her phone back into her pocket. “I need to get to work. The dentist office is closed till the New Year, so I’ll be here, in retail hell twenty-four seven until Christmas Eve.”

“Maci, I can get you a Livia Table.”

Her eyebrows lifted at my blurted statement. “How?”

“Don’t worry about it. I’ll make it happen. This is my mess, I’ll fix it.”

Her gaze turned from hopeful to skeptical in a flicker. “Don’t worry about it, Alex. You don’t have kids. You couldn’t have known you were promising her the impossible.” She pushed up from the table, slid the tablet into her purse, and took the coffee. “I’ll see you around. I have to get to work.”