Merry Humbug Christmas (16 page)

Patrick had to admit, if only to himself, that it did look strangely like those sharks were keeping right up with them.

“It’s okay, Joss. By the time we come down, they’ll be far

behind—”

“Faith!” she shouted suddenly, interrupting him.

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“What?”

“Faith!” she repeated. “One of us has it. So make use of it, Patrick.”

He knew better, but he couldn’t help himself, . . . and he laughed.

“Funny? You’re laughing? You better thank your lucky stars I can’t reach you right now because I would choke the life right out—”

“I get the picture,” he shouted. “I’m sorry.”

“Good! Now why don’t you make yourself USEFUL?! You like

to pray, Patrick. Right? So pray we don’t get eaten. Okay? Will you please?” She waited no longer than two split seconds before pleading,

“Please, Patrick. Pray your fanny off,
right now
!”

He wanted to laugh out loud, but he thought better of it this

time. His chest ached from working so hard to hold it back.

“Are you doing it? Are you praying?”

“Yes,” he called out.

Father, I ask in Jesus’ holy name that You would bring some peace to this
woman—

“Are you doing it?”

“Yes, Joss, I’m praying.”

“Pray harder.”

And forgive me for such a lousy idea as parasailing.

“REMEMBER AT COUSIN BRIAN’S wedding when Aunt Agnes was

attacked by that bee? That’s what Joss looked like, hopping around up there in the air, waving her arms and screaming her head off.”

Embarrassment cascaded over Joss in a heated wave, and the

backs of her eyes stung as Patrick gleefully told everyone at the dinner table, especially Kathleen, about their parasailing adventure that morning.

“That’s a perfect example,” Kathleen said, patting Joss’s hand,

“why weddings should be held indoors and humans should remain on

the ground whenever possible.”

“That is my thinking as well,” Joss concurred. “But your son has

an inexplicable desire to hurtle through the air at every opportunity.

Really, I’m surprised he’s not an astronaut . . . or a paratrooper.”

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“The best part,” Patrick continued, and Joss elbowed him, “was

when she wailed at me to begin praying.”

Joss looked around at the others, and their amusement fueled

her irritation at Patrick. “She screeches at me, ‘If you don’t pray right now, I’m going to choke you to death!’ and, ‘There are sharks in the water underneath us! We’re lunch!’”

Connie’s laughter sputtered away with one serious gasp. “Oh,

now sharks are no laughing matter, y’all,” she told them. “Rayburn loved to watch that
Shark Week
on the Discovery Channel, and it’s just terrifyin’ how many people are killed or maimed every year by those things.”

Patrick launched into singing the menacing theme to Jaws as he

leaned closer and closer to Joss.

“Doot-doot. Doot-doot-doot-doot.”

“Honestly, Patrick,” Kathleen reprimanded him.

“Thank you,” Joss said to her before glaring at Patrick.

She happened to look up at just that moment when Rodney and

Marla Jenkins stood up at their table. While Marla rounded up the children, her husband’s glance crossed Joss’s, and a surge of hope swelled. But he lingered for just one moment before purposefully

diverting his eyes and joining the attempt to wrangle his family. Joss felt the disappointed thud of her heart as it dropped.

“Go on over and talk to him,” Patrick softly prodded, but Joss

shook her head.

“No. I messed up, and now I need to call it a day. There’s no coming back from it.”

“Joss—”

“Patrick,” she cut him off. “I know you don’t like to let anything go, but you need to do it on this subject. Let it go.”

He raised his hands in surrender. “Okay.”

The attraction to Patrick Brenneman had crested to levels Joss

had never known before, and finding out he lived so close had fueled fantasies of an actual future between the two of them. But frankly the man was a bit of a bully. Just because it suited him, he pushed the people around him into whatever struck his fancy, from zip-lining Merry Humbug Christmas.indd 122

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to parasailing, karaoke to Christmas movies, even sacrificing solid, appealing plans for pajamas and TV. Joss wasn’t entirely sure she could endure him on a daily basis. He exhausted her.

But then she turned toward him and became momentarily

entangled in those dark hazel eyes; she stumbled over that ridiculous dimple set beneath his perfect lips; and she found herself frozen still as he lifted his hand and sweetly brushed back a lock of her hair.

“Would you like to walk off our dinner on deck?” he asked her,

and Joss felt as if the world around them had come to a standstill. No one was left in the huge dining room—just the two of them, connected there in the deep green waters of Patrick’s eyes.

“I don’t think so,” she said as she waded free. “I’m tired. I think I’d like to go back to my cabin and turn in early.”

He stroked her forearm. “You’re sure?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll walk you.”

“No. Thank you, but I’m fine on my own.” Joss stood up and

leaned over toward Kathleen. “Good night.”

“Oh, are you leaving us, dear?”

“I’m exhausted.”

“All right then. Sweet dreams.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow?” Patrick asked her, but Joss gave him a

gentle, noncommittal nod before she rounded the table.

“Good night, everyone.”

HE TRIED NOT TO, but Patrick craned his neck to get a look at

every person who passed through the door or moved through the line for the breakfast buffet. He’d felt quite disoriented by Joss’s speedy departure from dinner the night before, but when he’d stopped by

her cabin on his way to breakfast that morning, she’d either been hiding out behind the closed door or had already left the room. Now that she didn’t appear anywhere in sight, a surge of anxiety churned in his chest.

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“Settle back and enjoy your breakfast, boy,” his mother told him.

“She’ll be along eventually. She said she was tuckered out last night.

Perhaps she decided to sleep in.”

“You’re probably right.”

But Patrick didn’t believe it for an instant.

Maybe he’d gone too far in teasing her about her behavior on

their parasailing excursion. She’d changed when she’d seen Rodney Jenkins at his dinner table the previous night. Maybe Marla had told her that Patrick had intervened on Joss’s behalf with her husband. He should have told her himself.

Half a dozen other scenarios wound their way around the curves

of his mind, but Patrick couldn’t land comfortably on a single one.

And he despised the way it made him feel to think Joss might be irritated with him or that she might not want to see him again once they sailed into port in a couple of days. He hadn’t known Joss Snow long enough—or well enough—for her to matter so much.

But she did.

And worse yet, Patrick couldn’t do a thing about it.

He’d begun to imagine a future relationship with her even before

they’d discovered they lived so close to one another. But knowing she occupied one of those little Spanish houses he’d often admired in the hills of Los Feliz solidified the reverie and morphed into Saturday morning coffee at The Village Café, afternoons strolling around

Griffith Park, and even Sunday services together at the little chapel where he’d attended church each and every week for the last three years. In that one instant Joss had taken her place as a promising—

albeit apparitional—fixture in his real daily life, whether she liked it or not. And from all indications, she had possibly decided she did not.

After breakfast, on his way up to Joss’s cabin, Patrick made a vow to himself. He’d never been the type of man to chase a woman who

clearly didn’t want to be caught, and he wasn’t going to change now.

He would knock on her door and give her one last opportunity to

fess up and explain what had changed between them and how they

might work it through. If she rejected the chance, then he would

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move on, no turning back. There would be no chasing, no convinc-

ing, no hopeful nudges. She could either accept a heartfelt invitation to invest a little something in their relationship, or she could reject it.

What was the worst that could happen? He’d leave the ship alone

just as he’d boarded. Not such a tragedy, really. Patrick had a full life, after all, and he hadn’t come on a Christmas cruise in search of anything besides a holiday trip with his mother.

So why are my palms sweating?

He wiped both hands on the back pockets of his jeans and rapped

on the door to Joss’s cabin. His pulse pounded out the seconds that passed.

He knocked again. Still nothing.

One last time. And then I walk away.

He gave the door two final whacks and leaned toward it. “Joss?

It’s me, Patrick.”

After waiting several beats beyond a perfectly respectable

amount of time, he let out a deep and laborious sigh.

“Okay, Joss. Ball’s in your court then.”

And with that he meandered away without looking back. Except

for that one brief moment, of course, when the couple across the

corridor from Joss’s cabin opened their door.

Patrick stamped out the ember of hope they’d ignited and headed

along his way. He rode the elevator to his floor and went straight to his mother’s cabin and knocked.

Caroline Denture opened the door and greeted him with a smile.

“Hi, Patrick. Come on in.”

Lilibeth sat on the corner of the bed next to his mother.

“Your mother was just telling us you ordered breakfast for the

two of you out on the balcony the other morning,” Caroline told

him. “She said the food was heavenly.”

He smiled and sat down next to his mother and pecked her

cheek. “But it was far too much for me to have eaten before flying hundreds of feet in the air.”

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Kathleen chuckled. “I don’t know why we didn’t think of that.

Did you find Joss, dear?”

“No. I didn’t quite catch up to her.”

“A choral group is giving a concert on the mezzanine level,”

Lilibeth told him. “Why don’t you join us? They’re doing one of your mother’s favorites.”

“Handel’s
Messiah
,” he replied knowingly.

“Oh, do join us, Patrick,” his mother implored.

He smiled. “Why not?”

“Excellent. This will be a lovely afternoon. Do you want to call

and invite Joss?”

“I don’t think so. Not this time. What time does it start?”

“We were just preparing to head up now.”

“Then I arrived just in time,” he said, offering his hand to his

mother.

“OH, COME ON, JOSS. I can tell you like him. Is he cute?”

“He’s delicious.”

“Then what’s the problem? He’s yummy, and you like him.”

Joss twisted a lock of hair around her index finger and gazed out at the blue-green water as she held her cell phone in her other hand.

Adjusting one of the wired earbuds, she replied, “I like him just fine, Reese. That doesn’t mean I see us starting a whole . . . thing.”

“A whole thing. You mean a
relationship
? You can say it. Come on.

Say it with me.”

“Oh, hush. You don’t know this guy. He’s one of those macho

types, thinks he knows what’s best for everybody, including me. You wouldn’t believe what he made me do on Christmas night.”

“Do tell.”

Reese’s giggle infuriated Joss, and she groaned before revealing,

“Karaoke.” The giggle turned into full-on laughter, and Joss growled at her. “And then there was zip-lining.”

“You . . . zip-lined? Was it amazing?”

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“Well, it
was
kind of fun. Eventually. But then there was forced parasailing.”

“This is me you’re talking to. No one forces you to do anything.

But . . . you parasailed? Joss, I’m so proud of you! How was it?”

“Before or after the sharks gathered beneath us?”

“You’re such a head case.”

“You know what? I just realized why he irritates me so much.

He’s a male version of you! He’s
you
on steroids.”

“Then I love him, . . . and I have a feeling you do too. What did you sing at the karaoke party?”

“Partridge Family.”

“Oh, you’re joking. And he wants to keep seeing you?”

“I guess.”

“Joss. Who knows you better than me?” Reese asked her.

“Why? . . . Nobody. . . . Why?”

“Because I’m in the unique position of seeing that you’re finding fault with this guy because you’re scared.”

“I am not.”

“You are. You don’t like change, and he represents change. He

makes you uncomfortable. He pushed you into doing things you

might not have done otherwise, and I’m guessing a little piece of you enjoyed it against all of your best efforts not to. He’s making you feel things you haven’t felt since who knows when, and so you’re scared.

He’s upset your orderly little apple cart of a life. So here’s what I think you should do—”

“Hush! Tell me what you’ve been doing, traitor. Have you and