Try - The Complete Romance Series (20 page)

“I’m getting a lot of presents this year,”
Landon observed.

“You are! In fact, Mack got a present for
you, even. You’re going to be the most spoiled little boy on the planet.”

“No I won’t!” Landon frowned up at me. “I
am going to be nice even if I get all the presents in the world.”

I laughed. “I believe it shrimp.” I took a
deep breath and looked over the contents of my suitcase once more. “I think
we’re ready to go, don’t you?”

“Remember the presents,” Landon said. “You
told me remind you.”

“I did tell you to do that,” I agreed,
reaching out and tousling my son’s hair. “Okay. Let’s go look at the present
bag and make sure everything is in there, and then we can go.”

I made one last pass through the house to
check on everything; the last thing I needed was to leave something plugged in
where it could light on fire while I was gone. I checked again to make sure I
wasn’t forgetting anything in my luggage or in the present bag. I’d stashed
some stocking stuffers at my parents’ house as well; once the kids had all gone
to sleep, sometime after midnight, we’d all be going through and putting the
presents from Santa out, making Christmas happen for all of the young ones.

As I loaded everything into the car, I
thought about Landon’s insistence that he wished Mackenzie could be with us.
I’d brushed it off, trying to make sure he didn’t feel too let down about her
absence, but the questions had hit me harder than I’d let myself realize at
first. I wished that she was spending the holiday with us too; in spite of the
comments I’d made to Landon about how she’d be happier with her own family,
doing what she did every year—just like us—I wished I could show her to my
parents, and kiss her under the mistletoe, cheesy as that was. I wished that I
could have her with me while I put the Santa Claus presents under the tree and
stuffed stockings with goodies and worked with the other adults in my family
late into the night to make a magical Christmas happen. I wished that I could
have given her a present and watched her open it, and had her at my side for
Christmas breakfast—all the stupid little details that came along with a family
holiday.

But I still hadn’t lost the impression I’d
gotten of her during our last date, two days before; I still didn’t know what
she was thinking, how she felt for me. I played the things she’d said through
my mind as I pulled out onto the road, heading for my parents’ home. Everything
had been so awkward between us. I thought resignedly that I’d probably just
have to give up on Mackenzie altogether; and I dreaded the expense I was almost
surely going to face when Landon won his bet and I had to duplicate his
Christmas presents in honor of his win.

Chapter Seven - Mackenzie

I was still sleepy—I hadn’t gone to bed
until almost four in the morning—but as everyone piled around the Christmas
tree to start opening presents, I was at least happy. “Coffee for the
grownups,” my brother-in-law announced, wheeling a big cart my mom had gotten a
few years before just for that purpose into the room. “Juice for the kiddos,”
he added.

“What? Adults can’t have juice?” my
brother smirked at my sister’s husband.

“Which do you need more: caffeine or
vitamins?”

I laughed and settled into my usual seat
off to the side of the tree, where I could watch the kids opening all of their
presents but still be part of everything.

“Mack should get the first cup,” my sister
said. “She stayed up like a champ.”

“Did you see Santa Claus, Aunt Mack?”

I shook my head in response to my niece’s
question. “Just missed him, I think,” I said, twisting my face into a grimace.
“Which is actually good, since he would have skipped the house if we’d been
awake.” My sister, Evie—who was struggling to keep her kids all believing in
Santa Claus until the youngest was at least four—grinned at me.

Dad came into the living room, wearing a
big, fluffy Santa hat with his pajamas, and I accepted a cup of coffee with
milk and sugar from Evie as Dad started towards the tree. “It looks to me like
we’ve got some good kids here this year,” he said, surveying the enormous pile
of presents. “Who wants to start with Santa presents, and who wants to start
with family presents?”

My brother and sisters voted for Santa
presents first, my mom for family presents—along with me—and the kids, of
course, didn’t care. Dad called it a tie and started distributing presents as
they appeared in the pile, handing them off to whoever’s name was on the tag.
All of us went to work on ripping paper and untying ribbons, and I looked up
every so often to catch the reactions of my nieces and nephews as they unveiled
one new present after another.

“I was surprised at how late you stayed up
last night,” Evie said to me, putting aside a mug set that John got for her
after thanking him. “You been staying up late often these days?”

“Mack doesn’t have a
reason
to stay up late, if you know what I mean,” my brother Alex
called out.

“I have plenty of reasons,” I called back,
rolling my eyes at him. I finished unwrapping a present from my mom to find
that it was a cashmere scarf—absolutely beautiful. “Thanks, Mom!”

“No problem sweetie,” Mom called out
absently, tearing the paper on a big, lumpy box from one of the kids. “It
looked like it would be perfect for you.”

“So, are you going to be kissing anyone on
New Year’s Eve at Mom and Dad’s party?” I rolled my eyes at John’s question.

“I don’t know—are you? Because Angela’s
present doesn’t seem all that impressive. Maybe she’ll kiss me instead.”

“Guys, back off of her,” my
brother
Alex’s wife, Liz said. “You do realize that if Mack
settles down and has kids, none of us are going to get as many presents from
her, right?” Liz gave me a quick smile that told me she was concerned about
more than just a lack of presents from me. I grinned back.

“It’s practically tradition for everyone
in the family over the age of eighteen to meddle in my love life,” I said,
shrugging off the questions. I took a sip of my coffee and went back to opening
the pile of gifts in front of me. I’d gotten a new pair of smartphone gloves, a
couple of new books, a bracelet my niece had made by hand, and other odds and
ends.

For a little while, at least, everyone was
too interested in the presents in front of them to even worry about giving me
grief about my love life, and I started to relax. My nieces and nephews took
turns coming up to me to give me a hug and kiss of thanks for their presents,
and I beamed at their excited reactions: Charlotte almost couldn’t wait to have
me help her figure out the art kit I’d gotten her, Evie had to keep Lacy from
shaking her new butterfly kit to pieces and killing the caterpillars inside.
Derrick put on the pieces of his superhero kit and opened the rest of his
presents with a cape and a mask on.

As the frenzy began to slow down, I sat
back, my new scarf draped around my neck, examining some of the more intricate
presents I’d gotten. “Didn’t you say you had a date with someone about a week
ago or so?” I rolled my eyes at Dad.

“It starts again,” I said, sighing. “I did
have a date, yes.”

“Was it a first date?” John leered at me.

“No, it was more like the fourth or so,” I
admitted. At least, I thought, if I gave them some kind of details about my
relationship with Patrick, they might let off of me for a while.

“Why didn’t you invite him over? You’re
old enough that we wouldn’t make you stay in separate rooms,” My mom said. I
laughed.

“He’s actually got his own family
Christmas to go to,” I told them. “He’s got a son, a five-year-old boy named
Landon.”

“How’d you meet?”

I blushed; at least, I thought, my parents
and siblings wouldn’t have much of a clue about the fact that my relationship
with Patrick was not exactly appropriate. “He’s the father of one of my
patients,” I said. Charlotte climbed into my lap and leaned against me.

“So his little boy got hurt?” …her understanding
of my job wasn’t very deep.

“He did,” I told her. “He was playing
soccer and moved wrong on the field, and broke his leg.”

“Ouch!” Charlotte’s face twisted into a
sympathetic grimace. “You’re helping him get better?”

“I am!” I gave Charlotte a little squeeze.
“He has to get strong so he won’t keep limping.”

“What does he look like?”

“Yeah, and tell us about the dad—if you’re
dating him, he must be interesting.” I blushed and focused on answering Charlotte’s
question.

“Landon’s about a year or so younger than
you are,” I told my little niece. “He’s like your brother Cary—always moving
around, even though he was still on crutches when he started coming to see me.”

“Is his dad handsome?”

I glanced at Evie and my other siblings
and smiled in spite of myself. “He is very handsome,” I admitted. “I like him a
lot.”

“One of the girls in my class is going to
get a new mom,” Charlotte told me. “Her dad asked his girlfriend to marry him.
Lisa said that she was going to be the flower girl in the wedding, and that she
was going to get a new sister or brother, too. Are you going to be Landon’s new
mom?” My cheeks burned, the blood rushed into them so fast. All the rest of the
adults in the room laughed, and Charlotte had no idea why; I didn’t want her to
feel bad.

“I don’t know if I’m going to be Landon’s
new mom,” I told her. “I’ve only known his dad for a little while. It takes a
long time to know if you want to spend the rest of your life with someone.”

“Lisa said her daddy’s been dating her new
mom for a whole year!” Charlotte looked shocked by that timeframe and I heard
more laughter from the other adults in the room. “That’s a really long time,
isn’t it?”

“It is,” I said, though it didn’t seem all
that long to me; for Charlotte, at age six, it was a chunk of her lifetime.

“Do you want to become Landon’s new mom?
If you’re still with his dad?”

“A lot of things can happen from now till
then,” I pointed out. “But Landon is a nice boy. He deserves a good mom.”

“You would be a good mom,” Charlotte said,
nodding seriously. “I hope that you can be Landon’s mom someday.” She scurried
off of my lap then, tired of her own questions, her curiosity satisfied;
fortunately the rest of my family seemed to have gotten what they wanted out of
the exchange too, and everyone settled in to play with their new toys or admire
their other presents.

Mom slipped into the kitchen unannounced
to start working on Christmas breakfast, and I chatted with my siblings and
in-laws, telling them about some of the funnier moments, and talking about the
holiday party at the clinic, where Amie had—in spite of her injuries—managed to
get just drunk enough to kiss every member of the staff under the mistletoe and
photocopy her bare ass five times.

The conversation turned back onto Patrick,
but I managed to bear up and keep a straight face. I didn’t want to tell anyone
that I was pretty sure things wouldn’t work out between us because they were
already starting to become a little strained; I didn’t want to have to deal
with their commiseration or their questions about what I’d done to “drive
another man away.”

I told them about the first date, and
about going ice-skating, and how Landon was one of the most cheerful, upbeat
kids I worked with. I told them about the mental struggle of deciding whether
or not I should even get Patrick a present, and my sisters nodded at the wisdom
of me buying a present for Landon and Patrick to essentially share. “Are you
sure you want to get involved with a guy who already has a kid? That seems like
a lot of baggage,” Evie pointed out as everyone started to wander into the
kitchen to start filling their plates with breakfast.

“Well, he’s not divorced; his wife passed
away shortly after Landon’s birth.”

“Still, though,” Evie leaned in a little
closer. “That can almost be worse; what if he’s comparing you to her?”

“I don’t think he is,” I said quickly. “I
mean, it’s been years since she passed away, and after all…she barely had an
opportunity to be Landon’s mom.” But Evie had hit on a question that had been
running around in the back of my mind for days: what if the reason that Patrick
was starting to cool off was because he didn’t think I’d be a good co-parent to
Landon?

I could understand why that would be a
worry for him; after all, if he got serious about someone he was dating, he
would have to make sure that whoever it was would be a good influence on his
son. But he’d pointed out so many times that I was good with the kids I worked
with, so I couldn’t think of a way that he might think that I would be bad for
Landon. I went into breakfast with my family and tried to push aside any
thought of Patrick at all; I could only hope that with their curiosity mostly
satisfied, my parents and siblings would leave me alone about the man I was
dating, at least for the rest of the day. There were way more exciting things
to think about, including the presents everyone had gotten; I just hoped that
I’d have some kind of answer from Patrick himself, whether it was that he
didn’t want to see me anymore or that he did, within a few days.