Lakeshore Christmas (25 page)

“But you’ve never invited them.”

“I know what they’d say.”

“They might surprise you.”

“Moe, I hear what you’re saying,” he said, pulling her into his arms. “And I appreciate your concern. But believe me, I don’t need to be with my folks at Christmas, and they sure as hell don’t need to be with me. We tried that when I was a kid, and it didn’t work out so hot.”

He gave her a delicious kiss, sweet as candy. “In case you haven’t noticed, I got something better to do at Christmas.”

E
ddie was dreaming of the angel…yet again. This time was different, though. Unlike all the other dreams, made up of half-formed memories and wishful thinking, the images in his head, teasing him awake, were as clear as a cloudless winter night. The first part of the dream was the same as ever—he lay nearly buried in a snowbank after the crash, mute with pain and shock, about to freeze to death, unnoticed by the people who had poured out of the church…until the angel showed up. The thing that was different about this dream was that he saw the angel’s face.

He sat up, fully awake, walked straight to his guitar and wrote his song for the Christmas program. Just like that—no hesitation, no groping around for meaning or melody. In his life, he’d composed hundreds of songs for all kinds of reasons, but never had he written with such clarity and conviction. He couldn’t wait to sing it for Maureen, offering it to her like a gift. A promise.

Unfortunately, he’d have to wait. She’d gone away overnight for some library meeting on Long Island. The twenty-four hours without her dragged. When she
returned, he promised himself he’d devote every free minute to her. He’d embark on a campaign to get her to fall in love with him. Maybe he’d take her to the Apple Tree Inn and…no. The place still had some bad associations for him. Okay, maybe he’d bring her home, then, to his place by the lake. Hell, maybe he’d even make dinner. He’d definitely make love to her again. From the very start, she had surprised him, but never more than when he took her to bed. She was sweet and not afraid to be vulnerable, and she drew from him a tenderness he didn’t know he had.

In other areas of his life, she challenged him, too, never making things easy. She wasn’t after his surface charm like an autograph seeker, but what lay beneath. And for the first time in a long time, that didn’t scare him.

He burst into action, straightening up. The place wasn’t a disaster, but he wanted her to like it here. He wanted to play her a song on his Gibson guitar, the one his grandfather had given him, signed by Les Paul. He wanted to tell her stuff that was sappy but true, stuff that would make her smile. He wanted to give her a gift, but the only thing she wished for was something he couldn’t give her—a way for the library to survive. Damn. If he could make that happen, if he could give her that….

He turned the problem over and over in his mind. Made a call to his entertainment lawyer. If the silver anniversary DVD was selling as well as the trades said, maybe Eddie could at least buy the library some time. Or hell, according to the lawyer, the clips on the Internet were getting a zillion views per hour; surely he could parlay the renewed popularity into something. Eddie didn’t want to be famous again, but maybe he could use
his popularity to help out the library. Maureen would love that.

He listened to the new Drive-By Truckers album and sang along while putting clean sheets on the bed. No harm in being optimistic.

In the pause between songs, he heard the insistent sound of a doorbell.

“Sorry,” he yelled. “Coming.” He wasn’t expecting anyone. Maybe it was Maureen. Maybe she was thinking the same thing he was.

He halfway believed it would be her as he swung the door open with a big smile on his face.

“Surprise!” his parents said in unison.

Oh, boy. “Barb. Larry. What are you doing here?” he asked.

“We wanted to see you. And it’s been so long since we’ve visited Avalon. I’d forgotten how
Christmasy
this place is.” She was beautiful as ever, his mother, with her hair in a stylish cut, wearing an expensive-looking dress coat and leather boots that matched her narrow belt. Yet when she looked up at him, he was tempted to believe the tears pooling in her eyes and the slight trembling of her mouth. His father, looking younger than a guy in his fifties, offered a hearty hug and then a handshake.

“Your mother’s right, son,” he declared. “Too damn long.”

“Impulse decision,” Barb added. “We’ve come to spend Christmas with you.”

Nonononono.
“Uh…yeah. About that—”

“Don’t worry, we won’t be any trouble at all.” His parents blustered inside, bringing a gust of cold air with them. “We’re staying at the Inn at Willow Lake—adorable place, do you know it? Maureen set it all up for us.”

“Maureen? How do you know Maureen? What’s she got to do with this?”

“She came by and introduced herself. She had a library meeting in Seaview, and took the time to call and introduce herself. We think she’s wonderful, Eddie, so sincere and full of ideas.”

Eddie tried to be as false as they were. He tried to say, “Thanks for coming” or “I’m glad you’re here.” But when he opened his mouth, the words that came out were, “Calling you—the invitation—that was all Maureen Davenport’s idea? I had no idea what she was planning.”

His mother gave his arm a squeeze. “I’ll remember to thank her again after the performance Christmas Eve,” she said. “She seems like a wonderful girl.”

“Everybody thinks so,” Eddie said, wondering what the hell she could have been thinking.

“Did you know she was one of the original Christmas Belles?” asked Barb.

“What?”

She handed him a cellophane-wrapped CD. “We brought this for you. Her name’s right there on the list of singers—Maureen Davenport. Isn’t it wonderful that she was in the group that did such a beautiful rendition of your signature song?”

“That’s not my—good God. That is not my signature song. I don’t have a signature song, but if I did, that wouldn’t be it.”

“Well. No need to get huffy,” his mother said. “Anyway, back to Maureen. As I was saying, we think she’s wonderful. The three of us put our heads together right then and there, and arranged the whole thing. As a surprise for you. Are you surprised?”

He forced his mouth into a smile. “You bet. Totally surprised.”

“It’s wonderful to be back in Avalon after all these years,” his mother said. She aimed a fond look at his father. “Do you remember the first time we came here, Larry? We were just kids, and our families came to spend time at Camp Kioga.”

Larry’s eyes glowed as he looked at her. “How could I forget? Back in the day, it was a camp for whole families to get away from the city heat in summer. Your grandma and grandpa Haven performed at camps all over the area, but Camp Kioga was their favorite.” His expression warmed as he gazed at his wife. “Ours, too.”

His parents were each other’s best friend. Married at eighteen, they’d practically raised each other. It was kind of incredible that they were still together, but in spite of their lives, which seemed to change completely every decade with out fail, there was a steadfastness about them. Sure, they’d been clueless about the real world, both of them having come of age in the murky chaos of show business. They hadn’t always made the best choices, particularly when it came to their son. But there was never any question that they loved each other.

“We’re so pleased you changed your mind about Christmas,” his mother said. “And that Maureen. I can’t praise her enough. What a lovely young lady.”

“Yeah,” Eddie said, “she’s lovely, all right.”

He was seething as he drove to the church for rehearsal, but in the press of activities, he had no chance to confront her. Two days before the performance, a zillion things went wrong—sick kids, a snowstorm, and the pièce de résistance, the discovery that all the costumes had been destroyed in storage—sprayed with a toxic chemical or insecticide—and were now unwearable. Maureen looked like she was on the verge of a meltdown.
After a completely lame run-through, most everyone had cleared out for the night.

Eddie spotted her in the sanctuary, sitting and staring at the half-completed stage set. She looked up at him, and for a moment he wanted to forget what she’d done. Or better yet, he wanted to pretend it didn’t hurt. She was so damned… nice. Sincere. But she’d shown a new side of herself, a side he couldn’t trust. His anger must have been apparent, because she immediately shifted away from him, a question in her eyes.

“You brought my parents here.” He leaned his hip on a seat back and glared down at her.

“I invited them,” she clarified. “They came on their own.”

“They came because of you,” he snapped.

“No,” she told him quietly. “Because of you.”

“Jesus, Maureen, I told you the way it was for me. There’s a reason I don’t spend Christmas with my folks. I thought you’d figured that out.”

“Families should be together at Christmas,” she said, her expression turning mutinous, reminding him of the uptight, judgmental woman he’d locked horns with at the beginning of the season.

“Every family can’t be as perfect as yours for the holidays,” he said.

“Perfect?” She looked incredulous. “Is that what you think of my family?”

Pretty much, he thought, picturing Hannah and Maureen’s dad, the siblings, nieces and nephews. “You had no right to interfere.”

“I just thought—”

“No, Maureen, you didn’t think. You had this idealized vision in your head about the way you want Christmas to be, and the rest of the world is supposed to conform
to that vision. Well, guess what? It doesn’t work that way.”

“It will never work if you don’t try.”

“Don’t you have enough on your plate, with this program tomorrow night and the library?” he demanded. “Tell you what. Let’s just get through the show, and after that, you won’t have to deal with me anymore, or try to fix my family. Will that make you happy?”

“You don’t care about making me happy,” she stated simply. “I don’t expect you to. That’s not your job. Just like it’s not my job to fix whatever’s going on with you and your family. I simply invited them. Everyone is welcome on Christmas Eve.” She slid out of her seat, taking care not to brush against him as she passed by, and walked away with a curious dignity.

Eddie clenched his jaw to keep from calling out to her. It was better this way, he thought. Better not to take this any further than it had already gone, because it wasn’t going to end up anywhere good. He was an idiot for thinking he could have something with a woman like Maureen, a woman who was so grounded, so enmeshed in the life of her community and family. They’d never make it, the two of them. Why the hell would he want to be with someone who held up a mirror to his flaws?

He stalked to his van and jumped in, and drove home too fast, the rear tires fishtailing on the snowy road. On his door step, a parcel was waiting for him, marked Special Delivery. He took it inside and opened the box. A small envelope with a card in it indicated the gift was from Your friends at Silver Creek Productions, the company that had produced the original
Christmas Caper
movie and the new DVD. Apparently, it was the top-selling DVD in the country, earning him a hefty bonus. Fishing through a sea of packing foam, he pulled out a
magnum of champagne, already pre-chilled from having sat on the stoop.

All of his senses leaped. He remembered champagne. Did he ever. Like drinking the stars, as Dom Perignon had termed it.

O
n the day before Christmas, Daisy was ready for the train trip downstate, to spend the night at the O’Donnells’. For little Charlie’s sake, she needed to cultivate a good relationship with his paternal grandparents, and what better way to do that than to share the holidays with them? She’d told her own family farewell, getting a strange lump in her throat even though the trip with Logan and Charlie was only going to be an overnight affair. “It’s just that this particular night is special,” she said to Charlie as she double-checked the inventory of his massive diaper bag. “I’ve never been away from my family on Christmas before. It feels like kind of a big deal, if you want to know the truth.”

“Yep,” said the toddler, eliciting a smile from her.

“It’s a rite of passage, I suppose you could say. This marks a transition for me, from being a kid with a kid to being an adult on my own. Spending the holidays
away
from my family means I’m truly on my own, right?”

“Yep,” Charlie said again.

“And that’s not such a bad thing,” she added, folding the stroller and leaning it by the front door. Sometimes
she had the strangest sensation that she was living a make-believe life, a life that was in a holding pattern until…until what?

She reminded herself of her blessings—that always helped. She was blessed by the support of her family, both material and emotional, and blessed, especially by Charlie himself. Although she had nothing to compare him to, she considered him to be an easy baby. What that meant, as far as she could tell, was a baby who ate well and slept a lot and rarely got sick.

Charlie had always been a pretty good eater, and he didn’t usually put up a fuss about sleeping. Actually, he did at night, except when it was with Daisy, snuggled up against her like a warm puppy. And that, of course, was controversial. One school of thought declared that a baby should never be allowed in his mother’s bed or he’d never learn to be independent. Another school insisted just the opposite—that a baby was designed for sleeping with his mother. The security he derived from the closeness would make him a well-adjusted person later in life. Daisy found herself subscribing to both schools, depending on her mood.

At the moment, he was using foam blocks to build some kind of structure. There was a knock at the door, and his face bloomed with a smile.

“Daddeee!” Charlie abandoned his blocks and lunged for the door.

Daisy swept the room with a glance, which was the only sweeping she would do today. As usual the house was littered with toys, schoolbooks, unopened mail, clutter. How did people with little kids keep their houses picked up? she wondered. How did they have time to do anything else?

She went and unlocked the door, having learned the
hard way to keep it bolted at all times. When Charlie had first started walking a year ago, he’d let himself out in subzero temperatures. She’d turned her back for like two seconds, and off he went. Her only indication that something was amiss had been an icy gust of winter air. That was the thing about a baby. When things went wrong, they went wrong fast. There was very little room for error.

For a supposedly smart person, she’d done plenty of crazy things. And the craziest of all was walking through the door right now.

“Hey, Logan,” she said.

He entered the house on a blast of fresh, cold air. “Hey, yourself.”

“Dad. Dad. Dad.” Exhibiting pure elation, Charlie clung to Logan’s leg, looking pleadingly upward, his head lolling back like an angel gazing up at heaven.

“Charlie, Charlie, Charlie.” Logan peeled off his gloves, then picked him up. “How are you, little guy?”

“’Kay, big guy.”

Logan beamed at him, then got busy zipping him into his snowsuit.

Daisy stood back, warmed by their mutual admiration. It was hard to believe just three years before, she and Logan had been a couple of rebel teens, parking caution at the door and having careless sex one crazy weekend.

Now here they were, a family.

And that, thought Daisy, was enough. She had no reason to complain and no business wishing for something else.

Every once in a while, she felt a twinge of
what-if.

She’d look at her best friend and stepsister, Sonnet, a brainiac preparing for a career in international relations, and think,
What if I’d done better in school?
Or she’d look at her cousins, Olivia and Jenny, now both blissfully
married, and she’d think,
What if I’d let myself fall in love before having a baby?
She knew regrets were a slow poison, but sometimes they sneaked in, particularly with regard to her love life. Or lack thereof.

Her heart had been captured but that didn’t mean she was free to follow it. She’d given up that option in one wild weekend with Logan O’Donnell. Still, she couldn’t quite manage to shield herself from all the
what-ifs
that bombarded her at vulnerable moments. And at the center of every what-if question was Julian Gastineaux.

Daisy forced herself to shake off the thought which struck her, as such thoughts always seemed to do, when she was with Logan. What was up with that? She had to figure out a way to quit yearning for something out of her reach.

“All set?” asked Logan, scooping up the baby. “Let’s roll.”

“Yeah,” said Charlie.

Daisy shouldered the diaper bag, which had expanded to the size of a Winnebago. She went around making sure all the windows were locked tight. Even though she’d only be gone overnight, it felt as though she was leaving forever. Silly, she thought, swallowing another twinge of regret. Then she grabbed the folded stroller and followed Logan outside, double-locking the door behind her.

Charlie would be in heaven, she reminded herself on the way to the train station. And when he was happy, so was she. That was really what governed her choices as a mother. They drove to the station and reversed the packing-up process. Traveling with a toddler was labor intensive, to say the least. “This is how the pioneers must’ve felt, loading up to head west,” she said, brushing crumbs out of the stroller seat.

“He’s just a guy with a lot of gear,” Logan said good-
naturedly. He strapped the baby in the stroller, hooked their other bags onto the back of the apparatus and pushed it toward the terminal. Daisy ducked into the ladies’ room. She stood in front of a mirror for several minutes, trying not to panic. Tonight was going to be fine, she told herself. Absolutely fine. Thanks to Charlie, the O’Donnells had warmed up to her. They’d gone from refusing to see or acknowledge the baby to sincere, gooey grandparent-hood. Logan’s sisters doted on Charlie, too. Daisy was simply going to have a different kind of Christmas this year, surrounded by a different family—one she didn’t belong to except through the most haphazard of ties. Still, this evening was going to be all right. She’d be so busy with the festivities, she wouldn’t let herself wish she could be at the Christmas pageant at Heart of the Mountains Church. She’d be going to midnight mass with the O’Donnells, a first for her. She’d feel like an anthropologist studying an exotic culture.

All right, she thought. Deep breath.

She dabbed at her face with a damp paper towel and headed up to the platform. It was harder than she had anticipated to climb the stairs to the southbound platform, away from Avalon and her family on Christmas Eve. At the head of the steps, she spotted a girl in raspberry-colored tights, trendy boots and a short plaid skirt, flirting with Logan and ogling Charlie. Yes, she was totally flirting. Although Daisy herself was out of practice, she still remembered the body language. You leaned in, tilted your head adorably, maybe even touched a finger to your lips. If there was a baby present, as there was in this case, you appealed to its cuteness, knowing it would only enhance your own charm. The flirting girl was gorgeous and made the most of it. She looked the way most girls
only dreamed about—as if she’d stepped from the pages of a magazine.

Daisy felt a twinge of—okay, here it was—pure, green-hot jealousy. Although she tried telling herself not to be jealous of some girl flirting with Logan, she couldn’t deny the feeling. Maybe—rationalizing here—her discomfiture grew out of concern for Charlie. Suppose Logan took up with someone who didn’t like kids? That would be totally unacceptable.

Oh, Daisy, she thought. Quit being a control freak.

She sauntered over to Logan. “Hey, guys,” she said. Okay, maybe she leaned a little closer to Logan than she normally would. Maybe the smile she aimed at the girl on the platform was vaguely territorial, but she couldn’t help herself.

“Have a good Christmas,” the girl said, taking a step back.

“Sure, same to you,” Logan replied, affable as ever. After the girl left, he explained, “Somebody from my poli-sci class.” Then he studied Daisy’s face. “Something wrong?”

She felt her cheeks flush. “No. Why do you ask?”

“You were giving that girl the stinkeye.”

“Is that what it looked like?”

“That’s what it was.”

“She was totally hitting on you,” Daisy said.

He seemed genuinely surprised. “Nah. It was Charlie she liked. The kid’s a babe magnet.” Apparently done with the subject, he unbuckled Charlie and freed him from the stroller. Daisy allowed it because, number one, she was trying to be less of a control freak and number two, it was a long trip to the city and the kid needed to work off his excess energy.

Logan and Charlie played their signature game on the
platform, which Daisy had termed their running-around game. Basically it consisted of Charlie running in circles, giggling hysterically, with Logan in hot pursuit, making the occasional threatening growl. It had absolutely no point other than to amuse Charlie. Daisy took it as yet another sign she was doing the right thing this Christmas. Charlie, playing so joyously with his father, was having the time of his life, and that was what mattered. Since he’d had no nap so far today, he tired quickly. Within a few minutes, Logan had buckled him back into the stroller and tucked a blanket around him, and Charlie had nodded off.

“Score,” said Daisy. “Good job, Logan.”

He squinted into the distance. “The train’s coming.”

“It probably won’t even wake him up. Noise doesn’t seem to bother him,” she said. Her mobile phone emitted a beep, signaling a text message. Glancing at the screen, she saw that it was from Julian. Her heart stumbled in her chest, and she quickly put the phone away.

“Everything okay?” asked Logan.

“Fine.” She figured she’d read it and respond to Julian later when she had a moment to herself.

Logan bent and tucked a blanket more snugly around Charlie, who was completely zoned out by now. In the distance, the train slowed and then stopped. “Switching tracks, it looks like,” Logan said. “The northbound train’s just arriving, too.”

“Is all your shopping done?” she asked Logan, talking to fill the silence rather than out of any true curiosity.

To her surprise, he slipped his arm around her waist. “Yeah,” he said. “I got everything I need.”

He said something else, but it was drowned out by the gnashing of brakes from the train arriving on the opposite track.

“That’s good,” she said, somewhat bemused by his arm around her. Ever since he’d kissed her that one time, she kept catching herself wondering, playing a slightly different version of
What if…?
As in,
What if Logan and I…?

Unperturbed by the noise in the station, Charlie slept on.

Across the way, the train from the city closed its doors and pulled away. At the same time, the southbound train rode a surge of steam into the station. One going, one coming, Charlie drowsing in his stroller.

At that moment, the departing train and blowing steam left her a clear view of the just-arrived passengers on the opposite track, twelve feet across the way. She saw people carrying luggage and shopping bags stuffed with brightly-wrapped packages, filled with surprises.

Then her gaze was caught by a tall young man standing alone on the platform, an olive-drab duffel bag at his feet and a glossy blue shopping bag in hand. Broad shoulders and a proud bearing. A service cap barely covering impossibly short hair. His beautiful mahogany-colored face matching the one she dreamed about far too frequently.

She didn’t—couldn’t—speak. Surprise took her voice away. Her lips formed his name:

Julian.

It was impossible, but there he was, a look of puzzlement, then confusion, on his face. Suddenly Logan’s arm around Daisy felt like a dead weight. And then, just as quickly, Julian was gone, obliterated by the arriving southbound train.

“Here we go,” Logan said cheerfully, having completely missed the unexpected arrival. He took his arm
from around her. “All aboard. Can you give me a hand here?”

Daisy’s limbs felt sluggish, her mind on fire. There was a line at the nearest train car, so they had to wait. She kept craning her neck, wondering if she was seeing things. No way. That was Julian. What was he doing here after he’d sworn he wasn’t coming, apologizing all over the place? And more, what was he thinking?

She stood next to Logan on the platform, waiting their turn to board the train with their overnight bags and Charlie and the stroller. When a delay was announced over the PA system, Daisy stepped to the area between cars and looked across at the now empty platform. Where had he gone?

Grabbing the mobile phone from her pocket, she opened it to read his message—Surprise, coming for Xmas after all. Noon train. See you soon. Love, J.

She sent a wild look at the clock. Oh, no. Oh, God. Oh, no.

Then, as though conjured up by her yearning and confusion, Julian emerged onto the platform, his cap gone, his chest heaving with exertion. “Daisy,” he said.

“I thought you weren’t coming for Christmas.”

“I’m using up every minute of a forty-eight-hour leave,” he said. “But…where are you going?”

“None of your business,” Logan snapped, striding across the platform. “Later, pal. She’s with me.”

“Hey,” Daisy said sharply. “You can’t just leave Charlie parked in the stroller like that!” Exasperated with both of them, she hurried over and grabbed the stroller, maneuvering it around. She returned in time to see them facing off, drawing the curiosity of onlookers. Great, she thought. Just great. They each looked menacing in their own way, Julian in his ROTC uniform, handsome
as a recruiting poster, and Logan assuming a protective stance, the weak afternoon light glinting off his fiery red hair. They seemed oblivious to everything around them, even Daisy.