Harlequin Special Edition November 2014 - Box Set 1 of 2: A Weaver Christmas Gift\The Soldier's Holiday Homecoming\Santa's Playbook (54 page)

“Virgil!”

“Yes, I get that you want to avoid the pain you saw your mother go through. I also remember your telling me about your childhood, how insecure you were. Especially around boys. Trust me, sweet thing, you want to talk terrified?” He raised his hand, then dropped it again, sighing. “Try growing up gay in the South in the fifties. However, we're not talking about me, we're talking about you. And
you're
one of the most generous people I've ever known. And that's a lot of people, sweetie.”

“But—”

“And something else occurs to me. This Ethan... Do you think he'd give up those years he had with his wife—the children they had together—in exchange for not hurting now?”

After a moment, Claire shook her head. “No.”

Virgil sneaked another tidbit to Wally. “Then doesn't he have the right to know how you feel? So he at least has the option to act on that or not?”

Claire met the old man's gaze for a moment before looking away. Outside, sparkling snowflakes lazily drifted to the yard below, like thousands of tiny angels. Like magic.

“Yes,” Virgil said, his voice as soft as the falling snow, “there's always a risk, when you love, that your heart will get broken. But the rewards? More than worth the pain.”

She looked back to see tears in her landlord's eyes. Behind the tears, though, happiness glinted. As well as a deep-seated peace that comes from knowing you've done your best.

That you've given all of yourself. Not only what you think you can spare.

A fitting revelation, she realized, for a season that was all about giving.

Nearly knocking her plate to the floor, Claire lunged across the table to hug him. “Merry Christmas, Virgil,” she said, and he grinned. Then he reared back, frowning slightly.

“Are you aware you're wearing only one earring?”

“What?” Her hand flew to one ear, then the other. And sure enough, one of the tiny diamond studs her father had given her when she'd graduated from middle school was missing.

And since she knew she'd had them both when she'd arrived at Ethan's, obviously that was where it had fallen out.

Damn.

* * *

“Dad?” Staring at the glowing Christmas tree in the otherwise dark living room, Ethan looked up at Juliette's voice. The other kids had been in bed for an hour already. Apparently Jules had not followed their example.

“Yeah, honey?”

She sank onto the sofa beside him, Claire's earring glittering in her open palm. “I was putting your sheets in the dryer and found this on the floor. And I know it's Claire's because she wears this pair all the time.”

And if there was a bigger “oh, crap” moment on the face of the planet, Ethan didn't know what that could be. She must've lost it in his bed, and it'd gotten tangled up in the sheets when he'd yanked them off. Bad enough he'd barely been able to focus on the kids all evening for feeling like his head would explode. Because he couldn't deny he ached for Claire in a way he only had for one other woman...a woman whose memory, despite that momentary lapse, had returned to haunt him immediately afterward. But even if he had been able to disentangle himself from the past, there was the small issue of Claire's insistence that their getting cozy had been a one-off. So the last thing he needed right now was his way-too-smart daughter's scrutiny.

Yet he somehow smiled and said, “Must've come out when Claire was here earlier. To deliver the presents for you guys?”

“Then how'd it get into the laundry room?”

“I have no idea,” Ethan said mildly. “She was playing with Barney a lot—” Hearing his name, the dog lifted then cocked his head. “Maybe it got caught in his fur and he carried it in there?” He opened his hand, and Jules dropped the twinkly little stud into his palm. “I bet she'll be looking for it, though.”

“Yeah, probably.”

Jules pushed herself off the sofa to kneel in front of the tree, shoving her wild, blessedly streakless hair behind her ear. “Part of me can't believe she got us stuff. Except then I think—she's like the most giving person ever, you know?”

The ache intensified. “She really is.”

His daughter plopped cross-legged on the floor, pulling the present to her into her lap. “She tell you what it is?”

“Nope. Good thing, right?”

That got a smile, sweet in the lights' glow. “You invite her to PopPop's for Christmas Eve?”

“What? No. I mean, it never occurred to me, since it's only family—”

“She gave us gifts, Dad. I think that qualifies. And no, I'm not still trying to fix you two up, I've accepted that's not in the cards. But...she
feels
like family. Doesn't she?”

“She does,” Ethan said over the knot in his chest. “You want me to ask her if she'd like to come?”

“Please—”

Ethan's phone buzzed.
Did u find my earring?

He angled the phone toward his daughter. “Guess who?”

“Good.
Ask her,
” she said, then got up to give Ethan a good-night buss on his cheek before calling the dog to follow her upstairs, leaving Ethan to frown at the screen.

He could simply text back yes, as well as the invitation, and be done with it. But one, between his big fingers and the tiny keyboard, he hated texting. And two, after what they'd shared, texting seemed so...wrong. Although she had texted
him....

Oh, for pity's sake—

“Yeah, I've got it,” he said quietly when she answered. “Actually, Jules found it. On the laundry room floor.”

Silence. Then, Claire said, “Is that bad?”

“I blamed it on the dog, said it must've gotten hung up in his fur when you were petting him.”

Her laugh arrowed right through him, stirring memories he knew weren't going anywhere, anytime too soon. “Oh, you're good.”

“I've had a lot of practice,” he said, and she laughed again.

“I take it you're alone?”

“In a manner of speaking. Kids are all in bed, I'm downstairs.”

“Recovering from tales of their big adventure in the city?”

Ethan smiled. “Something like that, yeah.”

“How's your father-in-law?”

“He'll live, it's only a cold. Carmela has it a lot worse than he does, having to deal with him. Anyway—speaking of the kids—Pop always does this big thing on Christmas Eve. Juliette thought maybe you'd like to come?”

A pause preceded, “
Juliette
thought.”

“You brought the kids presents, so she's seeing you as part of the family.” He paused. “I promised her I'd ask you.”

“And...are you okay with this?”

Ethan dragged a hand down his face, then sighed. “The truth? I'm worried about building up expectations—”

“No, no...you're right, absolutely. So tell her...I already have plans.”

“Do you?”

“Like you said, kids don't always need to know—”

“Not asking for them.”

Another beat passed before she said, “Not to go all cheesy on you or anything, but tonight... It was pretty damn special. For me, anyway. And this coming from a chick who'd pretty much given up on sex ever feeling special again. So why don't we simply leave it at that and call it good?”

It made perfect sense, what she was saying. Not to mention she was giving him the out that every man dreamed of. No commitment, no expectations, just a single, mind-blowing encounter that had made Ethan remember what it was like to have a life outside of his kids and work.

He should feel relieved. Free. Off the hook.

Instead, he said, “Sure. But FYI? It was pretty damn special for me, too,” before he pushed End on his phone, fighting the urge to send the thing flying across the room.

* * *

“You chickened out,” Virgil said behind Claire, startling the bejeebers out of her. She'd forgotten he was still there, cleaning up while she sent what was supposed to have been a straightforward text.

Clutching the phone to her stuttering heart, she turned to her landlord. “You didn't hear the other side of the conversation, sweetie—”

“Didn't need to.” A bag of leftovers clutched in one hand, he shook his head, his already thin mouth pulled so tight his lips were all but gone. “Honestly, honey—”

“Please don't give me some mishegoss about fighting for my man, Virgil—”

“Wasn't going to. Because until you realize
you're
the one worth winning, what the hell good would it do?”

Then he was gone, leaving Claire alone with a fridge full of Chinese takeout, a snoring cat and a hole in her ear where her earring should have been.

Not to mention one in her heart the size of Bayonne.

“But at least I've got my pride. Right, Wally?”

Cat didn't even bother to open an eye.

Chapter Twelve

J
uliette understood how much her grandfather's Christmas Eve party meant to him, she really did. But while the grown-ups stuffed their faces and yakked with each other, and the little kids were all hyped up about Santa coming, she was seriously bored to tears. She also missed Scott, who was out of town with
his
grandparents and wouldn't be back until two days before New Year's. No, they still couldn't officially “date,” but they were allowed to hang out at each other's houses—with close parental supervision, sigh—and you know what? For now, she was good with that. It was nice, actually, getting to know him as a person—a friend—without feeling pressured to do stuff she honestly wasn't ready to do, anyway.

But she really, really missed him.

Since she didn't feel part of the festivities anyway, she decided to go sit in the sunroom, in the dark, and enjoy a good mope. Only she nearly jumped out of her skin to find PopPop already there, sitting in the biggest rocker.

“Oh! Sorry! Didn't know you were in here—”

“No, no... Come on in, keep an old man company.” Afraid to disobey—her grandfather could be a little scary, truth be told—she did, sitting on one of the wicker chairs close by. She sensed him watching her for a second before asking, “How come you're not with the others?”

Juliette shrugged. “Dunno. It felt weird, I guess.”

“Weird, how?”

“Like...I didn't fit, or something. I guess because I'm the only teenager. What about you? After all, it's your party.”

Pop chuckled. “Oh, it hasn't been my party for years. Not since... Well. Jeannie. But I still hold it every year. Because God forbid people think I've become a bitter old man.”

“Are you?” Juliette asked, and her grandfather chuckled.

“At times? You bet. Mostly, though, I'm good. Even on those days when I miss your grandmother so much I can barely think straight. Like on the holidays. Gets really bad then.”

“That's what it must be like for Dad,” Juliette said, more to herself than her grandfather. “Not being able to think straight because he still misses Mom so much.”

She heard her grandfather's chair creak as he shifted position. “In what way?”

“I...shouldn't... Never mind, I shouldn't've said anything.”

“Which means you have to. And that's an order, young lady.”

She smiled. PopPop could be gruff, but other than her dad there was no one she trusted more. “Okay,” she said on a sigh. “Months ago I had this idea about getting Dad and Miss Jacobs together, which you probably already figured out.”

“I did. Go on.”

“Anyway...they basically both told me to mind my own business. Which was totally their right to do, don't get me wrong. And I really did back off, I swear. But all this stuff kept happening that sort of threw them together, and... Okay, I'm hardly like some old wise woman or anything, but now I think maybe they totally have a thing for each other, only neither of them wants to admit it.”

“You don't say.”

“Yeah. So now everything feels...wrong. Worse than before, even. And I know this isn't my problem to solve. That maybe it's not even solvable. But it still makes me sad. And being sad on Christmas Eve—”

“There you are,” Dad said from the sunroom doorway, holding baby Jonny, and Juliette blushed—oh, God, had he overheard them? But all he said was “The others want to go caroling in the neighborhood. You in?”

“Are you joking? We never did that before.”

“Yeah, well, your two new aunts can apparently get up to all kinds of mischief when they're together. And the consensus is, since you're the only one who can actually sing, they can't do this without you. So whaddya say?”

Juliette's first reaction was “no way.” But then she thought maybe it'd be good, going singing in the crisp, cold night, oohing and aahing over everyone else's decorations. To at least try to get back a little of the magic she so desperately missed.

“Sure,” she said, getting to her feet. “Sounds fun. You coming, too, Dad?”

“Nope, I'm gonna hang with Jonny. So you go on.” He touched her hair. “Have a good time,” he said, his smile not even beginning to mask the sadness in his voice.

And, as everyone got on their coats and hats and mittens, laughing and chattering, she silently prayed that her dad might feel a little of that magic, too. In whatever way God—or whoever/whatever was steering this ship—thought was best, since Juliette had no clue how to make that happen.

* * *

“No, sit,” Pop said before Ethan could make his escape. “And give me the little squirt.”

“He's nearly asleep.”

“Then I won't wake him.”

Slowly, Ethan put Jonny in his father's arms, where the infant grinned, cooed and promptly passed out. “I only got to hold one of my own like this,” the Colonel said, adjusting the baby so they were both comfortable. “Abby. Rest of you were all older when you came to us. So I can't get enough of the grandbabies.” He paused, then said, still looking at the infant, “The holidays are hell, aren't they?”

After a moment, Ethan nodded. “Yeah. Pretty much.”

“You ever think about getting married again?”

Ethan's laugh was dry. “No lead-in, just
bam,
hit a guy between the eyes?”

“I'm too damn old to waste time on lead-ins. So?”

Despite his druthers, images of Claire flitted through, of her laughing, decorating the tree with his kids...falling apart in his arms... “No.”

“Why not?”

Ethan blew out a breath. “Where would you like me to start? Because, for one thing, it's taken this long for life to finally feel normal again, especially for the kids. But besides that...” He pressed his lips together. “I can't simply replace Merri. She was too much a part of my life—a part of
me—
for too long. I mean, you get what I'm saying, right? After all, you never remarried, either.”

That got a piercing look the likes of which Ethan hadn't seen since he was a teenager. “You know, I'm not gonna deny that, twenty years ago, when you announced you'd decided to go into the marines instead of taking that football scholarship, I was so proud of you I could pop. Wasn't until later that I realized you'd done it for the wrong reasons. To please me instead of being true to yourself.”

Wondering where his father was going with this, Ethan frowned. “That's not true—”

“The hell it isn't. Because I saw on your face, when you came home hurt and it was obvious you couldn't play anymore, that your dreams were as shattered as your knee, what you'd sacrificed. For what?
My
approval? My blessing? Your mother had said as much to me after you'd enlisted, but I didn't believe her. Didn't want to. Then Merri got pregnant, and you married her, and I know you loved her and all, but for God's sake, you were twenty-two. But you did what you thought you had to do. What you've always done, which is to put everybody else's needs ahead of your own.”

“And how is that a bad thing? You and Mom always taught us to be unselfish, to do what was right—”

“That never meant leaving yourselves completely out of the equation. Because the longer you do that, the more you run the risk of not only becoming one miserable SOB, but of being not a whole helluva lot of good to all those people you're sacrificing yourself
for.
And yes, I know exactly what I'm talking about.”

Jonny squirmed in his sleep, his face screwing up as if he was about to cry. But he settled back down, his breathing deep and even. The Colonel watched the baby for a moment, then said, “I felt exactly like you, after your mother died. I was convinced I'd had my shot, that the best I could do was adjust to my new life. And Abby was only fifteen—same age as Julie is now. No way was I going to shake things up any worse than they already were. Except...”

He looked at Ethan. “About a year later, this gal contacts me. Totally out of the blue. Wife of an old buddy. Except she was a widow by then. Wonderful woman,” he said, shaking his head. “We struck up a correspondence, which was fun for a while...until I realized something was developing I wasn't sure I could handle. Or wanted to. So I used Abby as an excuse, and we stopped the thing dead in its tracks.”

Stunned, Ethan stared at his father. “I had no idea.”

“No one did. And now you're the only one who does. But by the time I got over myself enough to consider giving it another go, Marie was involved with someone else. Got married less than a year later, in fact. Can't tell you how many times since then I beat myself over the head for letting that opportunity slip through my fingers. For being a damn fool, for being afraid of a
blessing.
”

“But...Abby—”

“Marie would've been a blessing for her, too. Except I was too boneheaded—and, okay, scared—to see it. All I could think was, I couldn't go through that again. Couldn't risk the pain.” His mouth flattened. “Sound familiar?”

Ethan's gaze tangled with his father's for a long moment before he grimaced. “Maybe.”

“Now, I'm not telling you to go out and get married tomorrow. But I am saying you need to stop letting a bunch of lies and excuses cut you off from the possibility of something good happening. For you
and
the kids. Sure, you've done everything in your power to get things back on track for them, like any good parent would. That's all well and good as far as it goes...except the only one not back on track is
you.
Everybody can see it, especially your kids. And if you love them, which I know you do, your only duty to them is to figure out how to fix that. You hear me?”

“Yeah,” Ethan breathed out after a long moment, his brain still reverberating from his father's words. “I hear.”

The baby protectively cradled against the Colonel's chest, he leaned forward and whispered, “Then go
do
something about it. Because gals like Claire—that one's special, son. And she's not gonna wait around forever for you to get your head on straight.”

“What makes you think—?” His father actually laughed, and Ethan pushed out another sigh. “Fine. But...” He pushed to his feet, his hand clamped around the back of his neck. “Who's to say she'd stick around even if...” His heart punched against his ribs. “Even if I asked her to? What if she wants more than the kids and I can provide?”

“I take it you mean her career.”

“Yes.”

“Gal could've gone back to New York after her mother died. But she didn't. So what does that tell you?”

Ethan felt his forehead knot. “I have no idea.”

“Then find out, dammit. Don't leave the question dangling, for God's sake.
Settle
it.”

He glared at his father for a long moment before leaving the sunroom, grabbing his jacket off the front hall rack and escaping to the porch, where the cold air soothed his hot face. In the distance, he heard singing—his crazy family, he supposed, inflicting their holiday cheer on the unsuspecting neighborhood whether it was wanted it or not.

On a sigh, he lowered himself onto the porch steps, roughly scratching his head before knotting his hands between his knees. Overhead, clouds bunched, blotting what few stars could still be seen in the glare of everybody's Christmas lights. The chill made him stuff his hands into his pockets, where he found Claire's earring, safe in a little plastic bag. Why he'd put it there he had no idea. Except...he did, didn't he? To have something of hers—something of her—to hold on to, to touch whenever he wanted to. Until she reclaimed it, of course.

Now he pulled it out, watching it twinkle in the light from the twin coach lamps behind him, like one of those stars. Like that angel—Clarence, wasn't it?—in the opening of
It's a Wonderful Life,
a tiny star in the vast galaxy of forever...but with a crucially important role to play—to show a man that there was far more to life than only what appeared on the surface.

That you don't have to settle. Or ever give up.

On a shuddering sigh, Ethan lifted the plastic bag to his mouth, his eyes burning as he pressed the small diamond into his lip. Because Claire was his angel, wasn't she? His, and the children's, restoring to all of them so, so much that Ethan had believed they'd never have again. Hell, he'd never been afraid of risk before—not as a football player, or a marine, or when he took on a family when most guys his age would have run so fast in the other direction they would've burned up the pavement. So this loony tunes idea about wanting to keep everybody and everything in his orbit safe—including his sorry self, let's be totally honest, here—as though there really was some playbook for life, was not only unrealistic, it was flat-out stupid.

And, most important, it wasn't
him.

Hauling in a huge breath, he pulled his phone from his pocket and scrolled through to Claire's number in his contacts, only to see the gang round the corner at the end of the block. A dozen voices, laughing and talking, drifted toward him on the cold night air, occasionally interrupted by happy, goofy woofing from Matt's and Tyler's dogs. Ethan pushed himself to his feet, slipping both phone and the earring back into his pocket, feeling the gentle assault of a light snow on his cheeks, his hair. As the group got closer, it began to split apart, Jules breaking away first to run to him. Even in the dark he could see her flushed cheeks and bright eyes, crumbs of snow dotting her curls as she grinned.

“Look who we found!”

Frowning, Ethan looked past her to see Claire in the midst of the pack, holding a bouncing Bella's hand, her other hand nestled in the crook of an older, shorter man's elbow. In front of them, the twins walked/skipped/stumbled backward, both yakking at the same time. She laughed at something Harry said.