CA 35 Christmas Past (10 page)

           
She looked at the
wasted bottle of champagne one last time and left the room.

           
The door closed behind
her, the thud echoing in the empty corridor.

           
Alone
again.

           
Funny, being alone
hadn’t bothered her at all until she’d met Jason
Fewell
.

           
Now she was pretty much
obsessed with the idea.

           
She wouldn’t be alone
for long. Her brothers would all congregate at the family home. The next to the
oldest lived in the house they’d grown up in. There would be a massive Christmas
tree.
Lots of amazing food, since his wife was an awesome
cook.

           
They would reminisce
about their childhoods. Have a few glasses of wine in front of the roaring
fire.

           
Christmas would come
and go and she would be off to Chicago.

           
To
her little apartment.

           
The place where she’d
thought she was happy.

           
11:50 a.m.

           
JASON OPENED THE DOOR
and stared into the eyes of the man he considered a father.

           
Alonzo Harris swaggered
into the room without a word.

           
Jason closed the door
behind him. He didn’t know why the man insisted on flying up here the day
before Christmas.

           
It wasn’t as though
anything he was going to say would make a difference.

           
Jason would still be
furious with him.

           
The concierge at the
Snow Valley Lodge had found him a cabin last night in another village, after
calling in a number of markers. Then he’d had Jason’s bags sent over.

           
“You have some kind of
nerve, young man,” Harris announced, launching his counterattack before Jason
so much as said a word.

           
Jason turned to him.
“Look who’s talking. You set me up.
Hired a
babysitter.
What were you thinking?” That’s what that damned reporter had called Molly, and
he’d been right.

           
“I was thinking about
keeping you safe,” Harris growled. “Or don’t you care about that anymore?”

           
Jason didn’t want to
hear this. He held up his hands. “I’ve said all I have to say. I understand
your motive and as much as I appreciate your concern, this better not happen
again.”

           
Harris looked properly
chastised. The big bear of a man loved the members of his team as if they were
his own kids. “It worked, didn’t it? You said as much yourself.”

           
Jason turned away.
Stared at the fire.
“Yeah.
It
worked.”

           
Molly had lied to him
at every turn. She had grown up just a few miles from here. She’d been climbing
these mountains since she was a kid.

           
She had coaxed him up
that mountain.
Made him forget all about the fear.

           
But he couldn’t get
past the lies. Even after they’d kissed, she still hadn’t told him the truth.

           
“That doesn’t make it
right,” he argued, not about to let Harris have the final say on the matter.
“This was wrong on so many
levels,
I don’t know where
to begin.”

           
Harris lowered into a
chair. “I’m going to tell you the truth, Jason.”

           
Jason didn’t look at
him. He was still too ticked off.

           
“You sit down here and
listen to me,” Harris ordered. “I know you’re madder than blazes. But you’re
going to hear me out.”

           
Jason turned to face
him, but he wasn’t sitting down.

           
“We’ve all been worried
about you for the past three years. We watched you go through the pain of
losing Cynthia and the agony of coming to terms with your responsibility. It’s
been hard as hell on every member of this team. You know that.”

           
Jason couldn’t deny his
words. His team was his family. They cared about him.
As much
as any family.
The NASCAR ties might not be blood, but they were every
bit as strong.

           
“When you announced you
were coming here to climb that mountain, we were all scared to death.” Harris
shook his head. “We couldn’t let you take that kind of risk alone. But you
refused our help. I had to find a way around that hard head of yours. And by
Job I found it.”

           
Jason shook his head.
“You didn’t have to do it this way.”

           
“Son, it’s like when
you take that final lap around the track. You sort of feel bad at the idea that
you’re out in front because your closest competition hit the wall, but when you
win, it’s a win all the same. However you got past that checkered flag. It’s a
win.”

           
“But…” Jason braced his
hands on the mantel.
Stared into those dancing flames.
“I thought I had met someone who understood me for me.”

           
“I see.”

           
Did he? “This was about
more than climbing that mountain, Harris. It was about bonding. Something I
haven’t been able to do in three years.”

           
“You liked that feisty
gal, did you?”

           
A smile haunted Jason’s
lips. “I did…I do.”

           
“She’s a pretty thing,
rightly enough,” Harris noted. “A real go-getter, I hear.”

           
She definitely got
Jason.

           
“Until I found out how
easily she could lie.” The anger lit inside him. He’d been struggling with it
since
that damned reporter
outted
Molly.

           
“She wasn’t meaning to
lie to you, Jason. She was just doing her job. The job I hired her to do.”

           
“That makes it so much
better.” He turned to his team manager and friend. “She was paid to keep me
company.”

           
Harris folded his arms
over his chest and eyed Jason a moment. “Did she lie to you about anything
other than why she was here and where she worked?”

           
Jason shook his head.
“According to what you told me, the rest of her story was fact. Who knows?”

           
“Then she only
stretched the truth where she had to, not where it counted. Not where it was
real.”

           
What kind of answer was
that? “And just how am I supposed to know what parts are real?”

           
Harris smiled. “Oh, I
think you know exactly what part’s real.” He pushed to his feet. “You study on
it awhile. Take your time. It’ll come to you. I’m heading back to Texas.
Too damned cold here.”

           
The big guy gave Jason
a hug before leaving. He never failed to squeeze the air out of Jason’s lungs.

           
Jason sat down before
the fire and did as his mentor had instructed. He studied his memories of the
time he and Molly had shared. The way she smiled.
The sound
of her laughter.
Sweet, genuine.

           
The
way her nose turned up just slightly.
The sprinkling
of freckles that cascaded over the bridge of her nose.
The taste of her lips.

           
His chest tightened,
but not with the tension of a coming panic attack.
With the
desire to taste her lips.
To hold her hand.

           
To
know all of her.

           
Maybe Harris was right.
Maybe Molly had been completely truthful with him on all the things that
mattered. Like trusting his instincts on the mountain when he’d long ago
thought his instincts were unreliable.

           
Right now his instincts
were urging him to find her.

           
To
tell her the truth.

           
CHAPTER NINE

           
7:00 p.m.

           
MOLLY COULDN’T EAT
another bite. She sat on the sofa with her niece and groaned. “Your mama is too
good in the kitchen.”

           
“That’s what Daddy
says.”

           
Molly hugged her niece.
She didn’t know why she’d hesitated about coming here. With family was the
place to be at Christmas.

           
The
snow, the fire, the food…and family.
Family was what really mattered in
life.

           
Jason
Fewell
had a life.
A busy one with a
demanding career.
He likely didn’t have time for anything else.

           
He was probably on his
way back to Texas. The idea made her breath catch.

           
Unless she got a
glimpse of him on the news, she doubted she would be seeing him again.

           
She wished she could
feel that he would at least have pleasant thoughts about her as he looked back
on their time together.

           
The idea that he might
have bitter feelings toward her was nearly more than she could bear.

           
But there was nothing
she could do.

           
He’d made up his mind
and walked out.

           
In a couple of days she
would go back to Chicago, and this whole trip would be filed away along with
her expense report.

           
Robert, the next to the
oldest, stuck his head in the door. “Mol, you have company.”

           
“What?” She couldn’t
have company. No one knew she was here.

           
“Get the door, Mol,”
someone else shouted.

           
“Fine.”
She scooted up from the couch, much as she abhorred the idea of doing so, and
slogged to the front of the house.

           
She frowned when she
realized the visitor had been left on the stoop. “Great manners,” she called
back to her brother.

           
Molly opened the door
and Jason was standing there, like a mirage in the falling snow. But he was
real. She reached out and touched him. Couldn’t help
herself
.

           
“What’re you doing
here?”

           
“I came to apologize.”

           
It was freezing
outside. Where was her brain? “Come in.”

           
He stepped across the
threshold, and she closed the door.

           
Her heart had already
taken off. He looked good. She was so glad to see him.

           
But she couldn’t get
her hopes up.

           
He was here because he
had something to say.
An apology.
He was too much of a
gentleman to leave the hard feelings to fester.

           
He shouldered out of
his parka and gloves. She took the parka, shoved the gloves into the pockets.
When she’d hung his coat in the closet, she faced him.

           
“Why did you really
come here?” He could have apologized on the phone.

           
“Because
I didn’t want to make another mistake.”

           
Now she was even more
confused. “What mistake?”

           
“Three years ago, I let
Cynthia talk me into going along with things I shouldn’t have agreed to. She’s
dead, and maybe I’m to blame to some degree. I should have said no. But I
didn’t.”