Mistletoe Bay (26 page)

Eli walked into the kitchen and smiled at the way his two daughters were hugging either side of Dorothy while they went over the list. “How about those orange ones with white chips in them?”

“Orange ones?” Dorothy smiled over at the man standing in the doorway wielding a tool covered in wet plaster. She refused to acknowledge the sudden heat that clutched her gut. Lord, he was magnificent, and he was in her kitchen asking for cookies. How could she refuse? “Orange as in color, or taste? What are they called?” She racked her brain for an orange cookie recipe.

“I don't know.” Eli frowned, causing her heart to flutter. “One of the other mechanics' wife brought some in last year. They were the best cookies I ever tasted.”

She raised a brow at that.

“I mean besides yours, Dorothy, my sweet.” Eli flashed a boyish grin. “Do you want me to call her and ask what they're called?”

Both of his daughters giggled.

“No, just tell me what they tasted like.” She glanced at the one open shelf in the kitchen. About thirty of her cookbooks were jammed onto it. The rest of her cookbook collection was upstairs in a bookcase in her bedroom. She pored over cookbooks like Felicity poured over fashion magazines.

“Those ice cream bars.” Eli looked like he was concentrating. “You know the ones, they're orange on the outside and have white creamy stuff on the inside.”

“Orangecicles?”

“Those are the ones.” Eli flashed her a heated look that melted her knees.

“If you have our dining room done in time for our Christmas Eve meal, I'll serve Orangecicle cookies for dessert.” She'd never heard of them, but there wasn't a recipe she couldn't find.

“I take it we're invited for Christmas Eve dinner?” Eli looked hopeful.

“Smooth, Dad,” groused Hope with a roll of her eyes. “Why don't you just kiss her and get it over with?”

Dorothy flushed a brilliant scarlet as she stared at the girl. Was what she felt for Eli that apparent?

“Hope, apologize to Ms. Wright. You just embarrassed her.” Eli frowned at his eldest daughter.

“I'm sorry, Ms. Wright.” Hope looked to be the embarrassed one now.

“It's okay, and call me Dorothy, please.” She refused to turn around and face Eli. “Your father isn't interested in me that way, Hope. He's only after my cooking.” She gave the girl a big smile and winked. “Besides, I'm much too old for your father.”

Hope looked unsure about that and Eli muttered something under his breath as he left the room and went back to the plaster.

“Now, which batch of cookies do we do first?” She didn't want to think about Eli or kissing. “Faith, you get to pick the first batch.” She reached into the pantry and started to pull out the flour and the sugar while the girls made up their minds.

 

 

Felicity walked into the house and couldn't believe it. She smelled cookies baking. Her mother had started baking the Christmas cookies without her. Impossible. It was their tradition. She had baked the holiday treats with her mother ever since she could remember. Hell, she probably had been rolling dough in her high chair.

She hurried to the kitchen and stared in shock. There was her mother, singing Christmas carols, off-key as usual, with Hope and Faith right beside her. Peanut butter cookies were cooling on racks and they were loading up the trays with chocolate-chocolate chip—her favorite. Her mother knew they were her favorite.

“Felicity,” cried Faith, “look what your mom is teaching us to do.” Faith looked so pleased and thrilled with herself. There was a swipe of flour across the young girl's cheek, and half a pound of it on her clothes. Faith looked like she had been rolling around in the stuff.

Felicity didn't blame Faith or Hope for baking the cookies and ruining the one holiday tradition she had thought wouldn't change. Her nephews were still too little to be baking cookies. She blamed her mother.

Her own mother was replacing her.

“Felicity, do you want to help?” Hope carefully and precisely placed the next mound of cookie dough onto the baking sheet in front of her. “Your mom said we have time for one more batch.”

She felt her throat work, but no words were coming out.

“Felicity?” Dorothy glanced at her daughter with concern. “What's wrong?” She dropped the spatula she had been using to scrape the bowl and walked toward her. “Are you all right?”

Tears filled her eyes. No, she wasn't all right. Suddenly she felt sick to her stomach. If her mother wanted to bake cookies with Sam's sisters, well, fine. Let her. “I'm coming down with something.” It was the truth. “I think I'll go to bed now. Tell Sam I said goodnight.” She ran from the room and up the steps as fast as she could.

She could hear her mother calling her name, but she didn't slow down until she was in the bathroom and slamming the door. If they thought she was sick, her mother would give her the privacy.

The whole family was going insane. She purposely had come in from outside to see if her mother wanted to bake a batch of cookies for the guys. Coop and Sam were freezing their butts off putting up the reindeer and sled her mother had bought this morning. She personally thought they were stupid-looking, but the boys thought they were cool, so who was she to spoil Christmas for her nephews?

Someone had to enjoy this festive holiday season, because it sure wasn't going to be her.

Tears poured down her cheeks as she sat on the side of the tub. The one thing she had been looking forward to was baking cookies and listening to her mother try to sing. It was the one happy memory she had of the holiday season. And now it was gone.

She reached for a tissue and glared at Buster, who was in the tub munching on a piece of lettuce. Buster ducked his wrinkled old head back into his shell as soon as he saw her watching him.

Great, freaking great. Not even the stupid turtle wanted her there.

 

 

“Dorothy, please sit down. Relax for a moment. The kitchen can wait. It's been a long day. I'll help clean up in a minute, just let me sit for moment.” Jenni was tired, sore, and worried. “I think we need to talk.”

The house was in shambles. Between the dining room furniture, boxes of decorations, and tins of cookies, she could barely walk from room to room. Her legs ached from being up on them all day making soap. She had a headache from the smell of polyurethane and Tucker's endless list of stuff he wanted from Santa. But more important, her body longed for Coop. She wanted nothing more than to spend a week in his bed. A few quick kisses under the mistletoe were only frustrating her more.

“About?” Dorothy grabbed the last cup of decaf in the coffeemaker and sat. The kitchen and the rest of the house smelled like polyurethane. Eli had finished with the dining room floors tonight. All they had to do was wait until they were dried, and then they could wallpaper and move the furniture back in. Christmas Eve dinner was definitely going to be in the formal dining room.

“Felicity. I'm worried about her.” Jenni frowned when she thought about her niece. “She's not acting like herself. Haven't you noticed?”

“She said she was coming down with something. I checked on her earlier, and she wasn't running a temperature. Maybe she and Sam are having a fight.”

“I think Sam's concerned too, but he's not saying anything.” Felicity had been awfully quiet today in the shop. Usually she and the two new girls she had hired part time were nonstop chatter and laughter. Three nights ago Felicity had said she was coming down with something. Whatever it was, her sister-in-law should have had it by now.

She had bid Coop a quick goodnight so she could go to Felicity, but the girl had already been in bed—not at all like her late-night self. Maybe they should make a doctor's appointment.

“Sam's just worried that football season is now over, and he's not the star of the basketball team like he had been on the football team.” Dorothy drank her coffee.

“You don't like Sam, do you?” She knew her mother-in-law wasn't thrilled with how close Sam and Felicity seemed to have become, but she had thought Dorothy had finally accepted the fact that her baby was growing up.

“Of course I like Sam.” Dorothy seemed shocked that Jenni would think such a thing. “Why would you think that?”

“Maybe because every time I turn around you're telling Felicity she shouldn't be that involved with him. Sam seems like a nice kid, Dorothy. No tattoos, no piercings, and he does pretty good gradewise in school. Felicity's seventeen, beautiful, and totally normal. She's going to have a boyfriend. Why not Sam?”

“I know she's going to date. I told her she can start dating at last year.” Dorothy looked defensive.

She reached out and covered one of her mother-in-law's trembling hands. Jenni loved the woman like her own mother. “I'm not criticizing you, Dorothy. Nor am I telling you how to raise your own daughter.”

“Thank you for that.” Dorothy squeezed her hand.

“So what has you so scared?” She could see the fear in her mother-in-law's eyes. “That Felicity will become pregnant? Decide not to go to college after all? Get her first broken heart?” Something was making Dorothy act this way, because she knew for a fact the woman loved her daughter more than life.

Tears filled the older woman's eyes. “I'm an old, foolish woman, Jenni.”

She snorted. “Yeah, and the moon is made of cheese. Give me another one.”

Dorothy cracked a quick smile, and then it was gone. “Okay, I'm a stupid old woman.”

She raised a brow. “Out with it.”

“Okay, I'm scared.” Dorothy pulled her hand out from under hers and crossed her arms.

“Of what?” She had known Dorothy for ten years, and while she had seen her bent over with grief, she had never seen her scared.

“That my daughter is growing up much too fast and soon she'll be out on her own.” Dorothy wiped at her tears with a snowman-printed napkin. “She won't need me any longer. She won't be my baby. I'll be alone.”

“What about me and the boys? We need you.” Jenni smiled. She now had a better understanding of what was bothering her mother-in-law. Hormones and a case of the self-pities. She could handle this.

“You?” Dorothy snorted. “You don't need me, Jenni. You never have.”

Okay, maybe she couldn't handle this. “Of course I need you. When haven't I?” She didn't know what she would do without Dorothy. She waved her hand to indicate the entire house. “What would I have done without you?”

“You would have managed just fine, Jenni. I'm more of a hindrance than a help.” Dorothy looked around the room and shook her head. “Look at this place.”

“It's well lived-in.” She didn't mind the clutter too much. The dining room would be put back in order in a couple days, and then they could finish decorating. “When have you been a hindrance? If it wasn't for your cooking, Eli wouldn't be smitten and redoing the dining room for you.” She grinned at the flush of embarrassment creeping up Dorothy's face.

“Let's not forget Pete.”

“What about Pete?” Dorothy frowned.

“Everyone in town is talking about it.”

“About what?”

“How Pete has been working here for almost two weeks now. He isn't known to be sober, if not conscious, for that amount of time.” Cathy Bailey had questioned her about Pete Van de Camp just that morning when she had dropped the boys off at day care. Cathy wanted some work done at Kiddie Kare and she was curious as to how Pete was working out.

“What's that got to do with me?”

“You feed him.” She laughed at the look on her mother-in-law's face. “You think I don't know you warm him up leftovers every day for lunch, or how you ply the guy with goodies on his way out the door in the evening? Last night it was a loaf of cranberry bread that had mysteriously disappeared from the kitchen.”

“He has only stayed for dinner once.” Dorothy looked unconvinced.

“That's because Eli kept glaring at him all through the meal. I'm sure Pete didn't want to cause any problems between the two of you.”

“There is no ‘two of us.'” Dorothy rolled her eyes. “I think the reason Pete is still on the job is the boys. You should see how his eyes light up when they get home from school.”

“He lost his three children along with his wife in a house fire almost twenty years ago.” She had never told Dorothy why Pete tended to fall off the wagon. Dorothy had had enough heartache in her life; she didn't want to remind her of how Kenneth had died.

“I know, he told me.” Dorothy eyes grew misty. “He asked me one day if it was true that the boys had lost their father in a fire. I told him yes, and I even showed him the picture of Kenny I keep on my nightstand.” Dorothy rapidly blinked away the tears. “He said that Chase and Corey looked just like Kenny.”

“They do.” She saw Ken in his two sons all the time. Corey had his father's smile, and Chase's ears stuck out a little more than they should have. “Tucker has my coloring, but Lord knows where he gets daredevil the gene from.”

Dorothy chuckled. “Pete noticed that too.”

“He would have to be blind not to.” Jenni hoped that whatever Tucker was going through, he would outgrow it. She kept telling herself it was only a phase, but she was afraid Tucker's phase was going to land him in military school.

“So, Jenni, how serious are you and Coop?” Dorothy nervously toyed with the handle of her empty cup.

Touchy question. How was she supposed to answer Ken's mother on that one. “We're just dating, that's all.” It wasn't a lie, yet it wasn't the whole truth. There was no way she could tell Ken's mom that she and Coop were lovers.