A Family for Christmas (18 page)

And Joy had officially become a Child in Need of Services.

An unrelenting fist seized Allison's heart, squeezing. She'd failed Joy. No amount of investigating had put them any closer to finding the baby's mother and avoiding Joy's big welcome into the system.

This wasn't the first time she'd ever felt as if she'd failed one of the children in her case files; it was an unfortunate drawback of the job. The pain this time felt more acute, though, physical proof that she'd be
come too attached. She needed to distance herself, from the baby and probably from the deputy who had as much invested in the case as she did.

A warm hand came to rest on her shoulder then, and she knew she didn't want him to leave.

“You did all you could for her.”

“I know, but—”

“But nothing. She's lucky to have you on her side.”

“I just wish—”

He interrupted her by squeezing her shoulder as if to say that he understood, and like her, he wished. “I know.”

Heat and comfort seemed to flow from his fingertips through her sweater and into her skin. It was the first time she'd been warm all day. The connection was all too brief as he pulled his hand away. A void remained where his touch had lingered.

Brock cleared his throat. “I don't know about you, but I'm starved. Did we eat anything today?”

“Only things from the vending machine that should have had labels saying, ‘Danger! Artery Clogging.”'

“Didn't you say you had several Christmas dinner invitations? You should have gone instead of hanging out at the sheriff's department. You could have been eating plum pudding instead of mini doughnuts.”

She smiled. “Nah, plum pudding's overrated.”

“But I'd still eat some if we could find any right now.” He indicated her kitchen with a jerk of his head. “You…um…got anything to eat?”

She laughed out loud at that. It felt good to laugh,
almost as good as it felt to be near Brock, even if he was probably only sticking around to cheer her up. He probably was disappointed in himself for failing to save the day.

“That's a unique way to finagle a dinner invitation. I'll have to try it someday.”

“You might want to reserve judgment until I find out how successful my ploy is.”

She shook her head and grinned. “Brock, would you like to stay for Christmas dinner?”

A
t Allison's invitation, Brock relaxed for the first time since they'd left the courthouse. She'd been so quiet, so obviously distressed, that he'd worried she would insist on being alone when he'd wanted to be there for her. Just as much, he wanted to be there for himself.

“Okay, you can use my method for getting invited to dinner. It works pretty well, if I don't say so myself.” He wiggled his eyebrow.

“Next time you'll probably want to make sure your potential host has a fully stocked pantry before you get yourself invited. I don't even know what I've got.”

Before she became self-conscious about her empty cupboards and reneged on her invitation, he motioned for her to follow and led her into the kitchen. “We'll just have to get creative then.”

He was pleased with himself a half hour later when they were seated cross-legged on the floor beside the
coffee table, a potluck spread of canned ravioli, carrot sticks and peanut butter toast on the table before them. Several ceramic figurines had to be moved to the floor to make room for the food.

“Everything tastes wonderful,” she said, before taking another big bite of the gooey, melted peanut butter.

“If you like this, you should really let me cook for you sometime.”

Her startled expression showed that what he'd said had surprised her, too. The words had escaped before he could stop them, but he couldn't deny the truth in them. No matter how bad an idea it was, he wanted to see her again.

Maybe the need to reach out to Allison only struck him now because the hearing was over, and they no longer had the excuse of Joy's case to keep them in contact. He could also blame his frustration over failing in his first worthwhile Cox County investigation—failing Joy. The reason didn't matter. The fact remained.

For several seconds, Allison studied her food, swirling the ravioli in its artificially red sauce. “You don't strike me as the cooking type.”

He wanted to kiss her for giving him a break by glossing over the fact that he'd just asked her out. The thought made him smile as he studied the lips she patted nervously with her napkin. He wanted to kiss her, all right, but for many reasons. Her innate charity was just one of them.

“What would I have to do to look like the cooking
type—wear a chef's hat and wave around a wooden spoon?”

“No, but I'd like to see that.”

Allison's laugh was as close to a girlish giggle as he'd heard from her, and he was pleased with himself at having inspired it. Her face appeared so soft. Relaxed. Young. Had she ever been the carefree girl he glimpsed now, or had life always gotten in the way of her happiness?

The injustice of it struck him suddenly, deeply, in a place he'd thought reserved only for his own pain. She deserved happiness—complete, delirious happiness—where she didn't have to carry the weight of everyone else's problems on her shoulders. Strange how he wished he could be the man to help her to find it, but how could he help her discover something he'd never known himself?

“Do you ever think that sometimes we're put in situations for a purpose, even when we don't understand what it is?”

Brock swallowed and tried not to wonder if she'd been reading his mind. “You mean does God put us there?” He waited for her nod before he added, “I don't know.”

“Don't you think He intended our lives to cross with Joy's?” She didn't mention two other lives that had crossed, but it was understood.

“Does that also mean God planned for the baby's mother to leave her in the stable?” He watched as her relaxed posture tightened, and he shook his head. “Even I don't believe that. Not really.”

Her smile returned like buds on a white oak after
a freezing Indiana winter. He held his breath not to sigh with relief.

“I knew you didn't.”

“You think you know a lot about me, don't you?”

“Only what you tell me.”

He smiled at that, not believing it for a minute. “But you have theories, right?”

She traced her finger through the peanut butter on her last piece of toast, her gaze focused on the swirls, before she looked up at him again. “I think it's hard for you to trust. People. Anything.”

He would have wondered just when he had lost the upper hand in the conversation, but for a reason he couldn't explain, he'd handed it over to her like a gift.

“Anything else?”

“Isn't that enough?”

“I guess. But I trusted my parents—Roy and Clara. Implicitly. So how does that fit in with your theory?” And he trusted Allison. He didn't know how to process that realization, but he did trust her.

“I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong about you.”

He shook his head. “Not wrong.”

“What about God? Do you trust Him?”

With a carrot stick, he stirred the remaining tomato sauce on his plate. How could he answer that? Would she turn her back on him when he did?

“I have faith,” he said finally. “That has to be enough. I don't think God wants us to lie around and wait for Him to take care of us, anyway.”

Her smile was warm, as though she remembered something precious. “God has always been my life-line. When Mom was sick, I don't know what I would
have done without Him. Like that poem about the footprints in the sand, He carried me through the darkest days.”

“The way you carried your mother.” He didn't ask it as a question because he already knew the answer. She'd carried too much for far too long.

“I guess so. But what was I to do? She needed me.”

“What about your sister?”

“She was married. She had a life.”

“You had a life, too, didn't you?”

She shrugged. “It was easier for me. I was able to get a job at the Division of Family and Children, take night classes to finish my master's in social work and still be here for Mom. It was the best solution.”

“For everyone else or for you?” He glanced around the living room that he'd come to resent because it represented all that had been taken from her. “Even now, you're still living in her house and not getting on with your life.”

Coming up off the floor, Allison planted her hands on her hips. “I am getting on with—”

“You don't travel. You're not married. You don't date, not even that guy, David, who played Joseph.”

She stopped and stared at him, her cheeks flushed. “How do you know all that?”

“Are you kidding? You've lived your whole life in a small town, and you don't know how news gets around?”

“Oh. Right.” Quiet for several seconds, she crouched and started stacking the dishes. “Well, according to the ladies at the county assessor's office,
you didn't arrive in town with a wife and a passel of kids. If their sources are accurate, there's no fiancée or girlfriend, either.”

“Good sources. There's never been a fiancée, and the girlfriend's been out of the picture since a corporate attorney gave her a better offer.” That Robin had started dating said attorney behind his back had a lot to do with why he didn't trust women. At least it was part of it. He didn't tell Allison that. He was much more interested in finding out about her, anyway. “What about you? Is your dating record any better?”

Instead of laughing, the way he'd hoped, she stared at the ground. “Not everyone gets what she wants in life.”

“What do
you
want, Allison? Do you want to spend the rest of your life surrounded by stuff that isn't yours, living a life that isn't yours, one that's more inherited than chosen?”

At first she wouldn't meet his gaze, but when she did, the hurt in her eyes sliced him like a freshly sharpened knife, its cut clean but going clear to the bone. He had no excuse for being so harsh. How could her promise for a future matter more to him than it did to her? But it did. It was as if his life depended on it, too.

“Didn't you ever have dreams?” Even he could hear the emotion in his voice.

When she lifted her gaze to meet his again, her eyes shone. “I had dreams like any other girl. But that's just it. Dreams are for children. You know, it's like that passage in I Corinthians Chapter 13 that says,
‘When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child: but when I became a man…”' She paused. “A woman.”

Instead of waiting, Brock finished for her. “‘I put away childish things.' Are you serious? Do you really believe that God would ask you to put away your dreams?”

“If His plans for me were different…then maybe.”

“What did you dream about?”

Allison looked away from him, fussing again with the remaining dishes and placing the figurines back in their places. “Just the usual things—a home, kids, a husband.” She shrugged. “One out of three isn't bad.”

She probably hoped he would laugh at her feeble attempt at humor, but he wasn't biting. Instead, he stayed quiet and waited.

Finally, she turned back to him the way he'd hoped she would. Her gaze met his. Held.

And he knew. Well, he wondered, anyway, because he wasn't certain of anything lately, least of all his former commitment to keeping his distance from people. Did she see him as someone she could love? And if she did, would he ever have the guts to risk loving her back?

Instead of carrying the dishes to the kitchen, Allison set them on the floor and crossed to the picture window. For several minutes, she stared out into the darkness of the waning hours of Christmas Day, twinkling holiday lights outlining the other homes of Destiny and the day's first snowflakes dancing to the ground. Brock rose from the floor and approached her
from behind, holding his hands at his sides to keep from touching her.

Without looking back at him, she spoke again. “With me, it really isn't about giving up childish things and the dream of finding someone. It's about losing hope.”

Hope? How could she believe that she'd never find someone to love, someone who would love her? He wondered what she imagined when she looked in the mirror, because she obviously didn't see a beautiful, vibrant woman in the glass. The woman he saw.

Before him she stood, her shoulders hung forward as if the weight of her life had become too heavy. Someone needed to help her carry her load this time. Was he strong enough to be that someone?

His hands curled over her shoulders before he had the chance to think the situation through and to convince himself to be sensible. Beneath his fingertips, he could feel her tremble. At least he thought it was her, though his insides shook with the fear of doing the wrong thing, the anxiety of missing the chance to do the right one.

“Never give up hope, Allison,” he whispered, not certain she even heard him.

Strange, he'd expected her to shy away from his touch, but she straightened her shoulders beneath his hands, as if his presence made her feel stronger. He could relate. A missing puzzle piece in his heart snapped into place as he continued to hold her, both of them staring out at the last lights of Christmas. He could have stood there forever as the moment became his measuring stick for perfection.

But Allison moved her right arm across to her left shoulder and covered his hand with hers. Slowly, he turned her to face him and drew her into the circle of his arms. There, before the picture window and thousands of twinkling lights, he tasted the wonder of her kiss. The moment was precious and startling because he could imagine himself repeating it hundreds of times, each time feeling new like the first.

But as he opened his eyes and pulled away, the shock on her face sent him sprinting back to reality. He let his hands fall to his sides. Kissing her had been a mistake. And yet, how could a mistake have felt so right—a pristine, unbroken vow shining in contrast to the sea of forsaken promises all around it?

Allison was still staring at him, wide-eyed, and chewing on her lower lip. “I'd better…” Instead, of finishing, she stepped past him and collected the stack of dishes on the floor.

“Let me help.” He grabbed the second stack and followed her into the kitchen.

Neither spoke as they stood in the narrow area by the sink, loading the dishwasher. A third entity—the kiss—cramped the space even more by squeezing between them. By the time Allison started the wash cycle, it was clear their fairy-tale Christmas night was over.

He dried his hands on a kitchen towel. “Thanks for having me, but I'd better get home. Everyone else might be returning pea-green sweaters and solar-powered bun warmers tomorrow, but for the sheriff's department, it will be back to business as usual.” He
grinned. “Oh, I guess it will be different. Just one shift instead of holiday overtime.”

“I have to work, too.” Allison smiled back, but she still wrung her hands together.

Awkwardness had seeped into their budding friendship and refused to leave. He tried to hide his disappointment as he made his less-than-debonair escape, berating himself about the kiss all the way to his apartment.

It had to have been hormones rather than any actual brain activity that had driven his thinking for him to do something so stupid, so rash. He couldn't explain why he'd had to go and ruin the best night he could remember in a long time—maybe ever—by crossing the line between friendship and a deeper relationship.

He should have known she wasn't ready. Ready? Whatever had happened to
him
not being ready for female companionship and to his certainty if he made himself vulnerable to any woman, he'd only be risking heartbreak? At least his mother and Robin had taught him one life skill. Too bad when he was around Allison, he didn't have the sense to come in out of the rain—or at least to stay away from her house.

Rather than kissing her, he should have just taken out a billboard advertisement to announce that in the few days since Allison had shown up in his life dressed in her biblical finest, he'd lost all his good sense. Why couldn't he just have kept his distance from her, where he could have protected his heart?