Father Christmas (21 page)

Michael emerged from his room carrying a
“Curious George” book. “He has a man in a big yellow hat,” he
informed her, trotting in his pajamas back down the hall. “Daddy
reads it to me.”

“
Daddy is resting,” Molly
said. She hadn’t seen John since he’d taken his half-consumed glass
of scotch and, at her insistence, retired to the den. She hoped
he’d fallen asleep—sleep was essential for healing. “I’ll read the
book to you, Michael.”

But the boy was way ahead of her, prancing
toward the den and shouting, “No, no, no! Daddy read the book.”

She chased him into the den, hoping to catch
him before he woke his father. She was too late, though. If John
had been asleep before, he wasn’t now.

He lay sprawled out on the sofa, his tall
body barely fitting across the cushions. As Molly entered the room,
he was laboriously pushing himself up into a seated position. His
movements were wooden and cautious, and his left hand shook
slightly under his weight. His hair was mussed, his eyes gradually
coming into focus.

“
I’m sorry,” she said,
entering the room hesitantly. “I tried to stop him from waking
you.”

“
That’s all right.” His
voice was low and hoarse, and his gaze lingered on her for a brief
moment before shifting to his son. “Did Molly give you a
bath?”

Michael nodded, then commanded, “You read me
this book.”

John took the book and patted the cushion
beside him. Michael scrambled onto the couch and snuggled up next
to John. He cast a superior look toward Molly, then turned back to
his father and pulled John’s uninjured left arm around his
shoulders. John started to read.

Molly tiptoed to a chair and sat. Perhaps
this was a moment the Russo men might have preferred to share
without her, but they hadn’t asked her to leave, so she stayed. She
listened as John read about the man in the yellow hat finding
Curious George in the jungle and bringing him home to live in the
city. He read about how George got in trouble while the man was out
of the house. Michael laughed, pointed to the pictures and offered
a running critique: “That’s bad, to smoke a pipe. It makes you
cough,” and “The firemens have silly hats.”

By the time John reached the last page,
Michael seemed to have melted into his side. The child was warm and
malleable, half asleep. “Okay, Mike. Bedtime,” said John, closing
the book.

Michael shut his eyes, mumbled something and
sank into slumber. One of the great talents of two-year-olds was
their ability to fall asleep any time, anywhere, without any
warning.

“
I can carry him,” Molly
said, springing to her feet.

“
That’s all right.” John
tossed the book onto the coffee table, nudged Michael onto his lap,
then tightened his left arm around the child’s limp body and
balanced it up against his shoulder. He stood, swaying on weak legs
and embracing Michael even more tightly.

Molly clamped her mouth shut so she wouldn’t
argue with him about whether he had the strength to carry his son.
Obviously, carrying Michael was something he needed to do. If the
risk of swooning and dropping the kid couldn’t stop him, Molly’s
nagging certainly wouldn’t.

She followed him out of the den and down the
hall, just in case John stumbled. At the doorway to Michael’s room
she halted while John tucked his son into bed. She heard the rustle
of sheets, the flap of a blanket and John’s voice murmuring,
“Here’s your bear. Go to sleep now. Daddy loves you.”

She moved down the hall to the living room,
allowing John a bit of privacy. Pacing to the window, she eased
back the drapes and peered out at the snow-dusted front yard. She
didn’t turn until she heard John’s footsteps, soft against the
maroon carpet. Her eyes met John’s for less than a second before
she steered them toward the fireplace mantel, which held a set of
brass candlesticks and an empty crystal vase.

“
If everything’s okay, I
guess I’ll head for home,” she said, wondering why the prospect of
leaving made her so melancholy.

John’s silence lured her gaze back to him.
He raked his left hand through his mussed hair. His bandaged right
hand hung awkwardly at his side.

“
You’ll be all right,
won’t you?” she asked, then wondered what sort of response she
hoped for. Even if he wouldn’t be all right, she couldn’t stay.
This was his home. She ran his son’s preschool. She didn’t belong
here.

He said nothing. His eyes, so sleepy just a
few minutes ago, were lucid now, burning. Above his unshaven jaw
his cheeks regained a touch of color, the sickly pallor waning. Of
course he would be all right. He didn’t need her to stay.

So why didn’t he tell her to leave? Why
didn’t he thank her and walk her to the door? Why did he keep
staring at her, as if waiting for her to say something more?

“
Did someone bring your
car back from the police station?” She cringed inwardly, wondering
why she was stalling, putting off her departure by asking such an
inane question.

He nodded. “While you were giving Mike a
bath.”

Hearing his voice was
something of a relief. She just wished he’d say what had to be
said:
Good-night. Good-bye. Thanks for your
help.

But his mention of the bath reminded her of
something. “Michael needs a bath toy,” she told him. “If he had
something to play with in the tub, he wouldn’t be so busy splashing
water out of it.”

“
A bath toy.”

She must have been insane to bring it up.
She was supposed to be easing herself out the door, saying the
good-byes John seemed reluctant to utter. She was supposed to be
detaching herself from the Russos, not including herself in their
lives any more than absolutely necessary.

“
A plastic boat, maybe,”
she went on, unable to stop herself. “Or a duck, or a frog.
Something that would keep him occupied while he’s soaking in the
tub.”

John’s gaze seemed to pin her in place. He
looked earnest and bemused, more desperate for help than he’d been
when he’d walked out of the hospital a couple of hours ago.

“
They’re sold in toy
stores,” she went on, wishing he wouldn’t look at her like that,
wishing she had the willpower to say farewell and leave. “A bath
toy would make a good, inexpensive Christmas present, and I’m sure
he’d love it.”

“
Okay.”

That brought the bath toy discussion to a
conclusion. Molly could go now. She could march into the kitchen
for her jacket, then march out the front door. She could say
good-bye...if only he didn’t keep staring at her that way, his eyes
so dark, his face so gaunt, his mere presence reminding her of the
way he’d looked without a shirt on.

“
I’ll get my jacket,” she
said bluntly, an anxious attempt to save herself from her own
overheated thoughts.

“
I’ll get it.” He pivoted
and walked out of the living room. His steps were slow but certain.
He wasn’t going to stagger and wind up in a dizzy heap on the
floor, but he was lacking the purposeful grace he usually
displayed, the sense that he couldn’t be deterred or distracted,
that he was in charge of his own world.

It seemed important to him that he get her
jacket, one small gesture of courtesy for his guest. Molly wouldn’t
deprive him of that. She waited where she was until he returned
with the parka. He held it up as if to help her into it, but with
only one hand functioning he couldn’t present it for her to slide
her arms through the sleeves. She smiled gently, took it from him
and put it on.

“
Thank you,” he
said.

She knew he wasn’t referring to her having
donned her jacket. “No problem. Are you sure you’re going to be all
right?”

He smiled wistfully, lifted his heavily
bandaged right hand and brushed his thumb across her lower lip. The
bandages smelled sterile, bitter with antiseptic, but he was close
enough that she could also smell the heady aroma of scotch on his
breath, and the faint tang of his after-shave. It took all her
self-control not to flick her tongue over her lips where he’d
touched them, not to reach up and pull his face down to hers.

She couldn’t. She wouldn’t.

“
I’d better go,” she
said.

He sighed, let his hand fall, and took a
step back. “The roads might be messy,” he warned. “Take it
slow.”

She knew how to drive on slippery winter
roads; she didn’t need his admonition, at least not when it came to
her journey home. But there were other hazards tonight, hazards
much more dangerous than the rare icy patch on the road. Gazing
into his eyes, remembering the feel of his lips on hers, picturing
his lean, virile chest...

There were plenty of hazards, all right. She
ought to be grateful that John was cautioning her—and himself—to
take it slow.

She ought to be, but she wasn’t.

***

HE WOKE UP feeling like crud. His arm was on
fire and the drum solo playing inside his skull was loud enough to
drown out an arena rock concert. None of that bothered him as much
as Molly’s absence.

She’d fit in too well last night. Having her
around had seemed too natural. When he’d tucked Mike into bed, he’d
had to stop himself from waving Molly into the room and asking her
if she wanted to give the kid a kiss good-night.

From the moment a couple of ETM’s had
strapped him onto a gurney for the ambulance ride to the hospital
until now, the only useful thing he’d done with his right hand was
to touch Molly’s mouth. And touching it hadn’t been what he’d truly
wanted to do. He’d wanted to kiss her, wanted it in a crazy way.
But his hand needed healing, so he’d touched it to her.

Just thinking about the velvet texture of
her lips made him hard. Which was an embarrassing state to be in
when his son was standing at the foot of his bed, gaping at him. “I
go to school,” Mike said.

John twisted to look at his alarm clock. The
digits 9-4-3 glowed bright red at him.

He swore under his breath, then forced
himself to sit. Another curse filled his mouth as pain burned like
a laser through every nerve between his elbow and his fingertips.
Even his upper arm and shoulder were sore. And his ribs. They
flared with a feverish ache every time he inhaled. Maybe the
doctors had read his x-rays wrong. Ribs that were only bruised
couldn’t possibly hurt this bad, could they?

“
I go to school now,” Mike
said.

John forced himself to tune out the pain—and
that other ache, the one in his groin, caused not by a
knife-wielding skell but by a kind, tough, wise woman loaded with
more sex appeal than he could handle in his weakened state. He
shoved back the covers, eased his legs over the side of the bed and
reached for the faded terry-cloth robe that he’d tossed on the
nearest chair last night. Before Mike was born, he used to sleep
naked, but he’d learned, from incidents like this morning, that
Mike didn’t always respect a closed bedroom door. For discretion’s
sake, he’d gotten into the habit of sleeping in a T-shirt and
boxers, and keeping his robe close at hand.

“
You take me to school?”
Mike asked.

John tied the robe’s sash around his waist,
blinked to clear his foggy vision, and studied the small boy gazing
up at him. Mike wasn’t going anywhere dressed the way he was, in
his football pj’s with the built-in slippers attached to the legs.
And he wasn’t going anywhere that would require driving. John’s
hand was on fire. The mere thought of sliding the key into the
ignition was enough to nauseate him.

“
No school today,” he
said.

“
No school?”

“
We’re both taking a day
off.”

Mike mulled that over, then grinned and
skipped around the room. “Molly comes here! Molly’s gonna
come!”

If that were true, John might well have
joined Mike in a little skipping. “No Molly,” he said grimly. “Just
you and me.”

It took him forever to fix a pot of coffee
left-handed, but he didn’t trust himself to call Coffey before he’d
gotten some caffeine into his system. While the coffee brewed, he
trudged into his bathroom, took one look at himself in the mirror
above the sink, and discovered a few curses he hadn’t realized he
knew. His jaw was dark with stubble, his eyes pocketed in shadow,
his brow pinched. If he’d looked even half as bad last night, Molly
ought to be grateful he hadn’t tried to kiss her.

Hell. Even if he’d looked his absolute best
she’d have been grateful. With a failed marriage behind him, a
scrappy kid underfoot, and a career that required the occasional
ambulance ride to a hospital emergency room to get various parts of
his body sewn back together, he was no one’s idea of Mr. Right.

He brushed his teeth left-handed, which felt
weird, and took a leak left-handed, which felt even weirder.
Returning to the kitchen, he down a pain pill, filled a mug with
coffee, heaped a bowl with Cheerios for Mike and lifted him into
his booster seat. Then he dialed headquarters to report that he was
taking a sick day.

Coffey was appropriately sympathetic. He
assured John that Bud Schaefer would bring the assault victim in
for a line-up, but that the collar would belong to John. He asked
if John felt strong enough to be able to dictate his statement to
one of the clerks if she went to his house. John said yes. He
wasn’t in the mood to give a statement, but he also wasn’t in the
mood to refuse his boss’s request.

He wasn’t in the mood to keep track of a
giddy young boy, either. Driving Mike to the Children’s Garden
himself wasn’t possible, given the way he felt, but he couldn’t ask
someone else to drive Mike for him. He hated having to beg for
favors.