Читать книгу A Weaver Holiday Homecoming - Allison Leigh - Страница 11

He was twenty minutes late.

So far.

Twenty minutes during which Chloe paced between the windows at the front of the house, pressing her nose against the glass, as she watched and waited. “Are you sure he’s coming?”

Mallory’s gaze snagged in Kathleen’s, who was sitting opposite her, before she looked back down at the medical journal lying open in her lap. Reading it was just a pretense, because Mallory could have easily emulated Chloe’s anxious pacing, waiting for Ryan’s arrival.

“If he doesn’t,” she assured smoothly, “we’ll just get a Christmas tree ourselves.” Maybe there was a tree lot in Braden. The neighboring town was about thirty miles away. Certainly there’d be one in Gillette—though she really didn’t relish the idea of driving quite that far.

The solution, of course, would be an artificial tree, purchased from the discount store on the outskirts of town.

Only Mallory knew that both Chloe and Kathleen would be disappointed. They’d been talking about having a real tree ever since they’d arrived in Weaver. Even when they’d left New York in October, the Christmas decorations had begun appearing in stores. There was barely a fraction of the stores in Weaver, but they, too, had already been getting ready for the holidays.

“Can we get a puppy, too?” Chloe asked, without looking away from the window.

Mallory met Kathleen’s eyes. “No,” she answered. “We’re not getting a puppy.”

Chloe heaved a sigh. “Do you think we’ll find a really, really big tree?”

If he gets here, Mallory thought.

“He’ll be here,” Kathleen said comfortably over the soft clack of her knitting needles. “And I’m sure you’ll find a very fine tree.”

Mallory had the sense that her grandmother was assuring her just as much as Chloe.

She realized she was chewing the inside of her lip and made herself stop. Folding the journal with a snap, she tossed it aside and pushed off the couch, taking her half-empty coffee mug with her. Another ten minutes, and she’d bundle Chloe in the car and they’d drive to Braden. Kathleen had already expressed her intention to enjoy the tree once it was in the living room. Hunting one down whether in the snow or from a tree lot was not something she particularly wanted to do.

“He’s here!” Chloe suddenly darted past Mallory, her boots skidding on the floor as she raced out of the living room to the front door.

Mallory ignored both the jolt that leaped inside her belly and the sideways glance that Kathleen gave her—as if her grandmother knew exactly what Mallory was feeling—and followed her daughter much more sedately to the door.

When she got there, Chloe had already thrown it wide and Ryan stood there on the porch, looking almost unrecognizable with his clean-shaven square jaw. Even his hair looked different. Not cut, necessarily, but brushed away from his face, showing that there was a liberal amount of silver strands among the dark brown.

The severe style made his eyes seem an even deeper, more penetrating blue, and when their focus shifted upward from Chloe to Mallory, every single coherent thought she possessed disappeared in a puff of smoke.

She felt as though he had the ability to look straight down inside her. And was using the ability very well.

It felt…invasive.

Intimate.

She realized belatedly that Chloe was tugging at the hem of her sweater, and she finally yanked her captured gaze away from him. She looked at Chloe, but her brain cells were sluggish. “What is it, sweetheart?”

Chloe’s eyebrows were crinkled. “You’re spilling,” she whispered.

Mallory jerked a little, flushing hard. Along with coherent thought, her hands had gone as lax as her knees had felt, the coffee mug sliding sideways in her fingers. “Silly me,” she murmured, excessively bright.

She grabbed the closest cloth—her red knitted scarf that was hanging over the coat tree—and dashed it over the small spill on the floor. “I’ll be right back.” She couldn’t prevent herself from flicking a glance toward Ryan, then wished she hadn’t, because he was still watching her.

The day before, he’d been a handsome—albeit very scruffy-looking—man.

With his strong features no longer hidden behind too-long, unkempt hair, and a bristled jaw that had been somewhere between a beard and a thirteen-o’clock shadow, he seemed positively devastating.

She felt so rattled that instead of putting the mug in the kitchen where it belonged—and where she’d intended to take it in the first place—she carried it and the red scarf with her upstairs and closed herself in her bedroom.

The mug bobbled sideways when she dumped it on her dresser and she steadied it with a very unsteady hand. The wide mirror hanging on the wall above the dresser reflected most of the bedroom behind her. But she didn’t see the stack of packing cartons in the corner next to the sleigh bed that she’d found years ago in a junk store and refinished with Kathleen’s help.

What she did see were her own eyes staring back at her. Pupils wide, irises a thin brown. So very different from those deeply penetrating blue ones that consumed her mind’s eye.

What had he seen when he’d looked at her?

Who had he seen? Mallory, or Cassie?

Mallory closed her eyes, turning away from the mirror and the thought. She wasn’t in competition with her beloved sister. She was only trying to make sure that Chloe’s life had what hers and Cassie’s had lacked.

A father.

She yanked off the ivory sweater that she’d taken far too long to choose that morning in the first place and replaced it with a gray one, yanking it down over the waist of her blue jeans. In the connecting bathroom, she filled the sink and submerged the coffee-stained scarf in it. Mentally collecting herself seemed fine in theory, but sad to say, she still felt shaky when she went back downstairs.

Kathleen was standing alone in the foyer.

“Where’s Chloe?”

“Outside with Ryan.” Her grandmother’s expression was frank. “Are you certain you know what you’re getting into, Mallory?”

She crossed her arms. Fighting her own uncertainty was hard enough without adding her grandmother’s into the mix. “In life, can anyone ever really know what they’re getting into?”

Kathleen’s lips thinned. “Pretending to wax philosophical won’t wash with me, child.” She pointed at the closed front door. “You’re messing in a lot of lives because of this fixation you’ve got about Chloe and her father.”

“It’s not a fixation.”

Kathleen’s white eyebrows climbed. Ire filled her eyes. “Really, now. It’s been your obsession since Chloe was born. When you should have been finding a man of your own, you were focused only on him.”

“I’m a working single mother,” Mallory returned. “I’ve never had time for a man.” Ergo, the exit of Brent. The fact that she hadn’t been left brokenhearted at the time had seemed to prove that it had been for the best. She’d never been tempted to put a man before her career. “And we’ve talked about this many times.” She’d never made a secret with her grandmother about the reason behind their temporary transplant to Weaver.

“Aye. We have. Yet you’re still determined to do it your way.”

“If I had my way, Cassie would still be here,” Mallory pointed out, struck with pain that was only slightly dulled by the passage of time. “Raising the child she loved enough to die having.” But, of course, Cassie—adventurous, go-with-the-moment Cassie—hadn’t believed she’d ever face that most final result despite Mallory’s warnings. “And choosing what to do about Chloe’s father would have been her decision.”

“She made the decision,” Kathleen reminded. Her face had softened, but her voice was still firm. “She had nearly the entire duration of her pregnancy to contact him. She chose not to.”

“I believe she would have changed her mind.” And arguing the point with her grandmother was as fruitless as the internal debate that had gone on for years inside Mallory about that very point.

She grabbed her coat off the coat tree and shoved her arms into the sleeves. “You seemed to like Ryan just fine, yesterday when he was here. So what’s bothering you about him now, anyway?”

“It’s not me that he’s bothering,” Kathleen said pointedly.

Mallory focused on working her hands into the gloves she pulled out of her coat pockets and tried not to blush. “All I care about is Chloe. Once I’m certain she’s ready for it, I’ll tell her about him and we’ll take it from there.”

“Right. And then it’ll be time for us to go back to New York. And how do you think Chloe’s going to handle being taken away from the father she’s just met, then?”

It wasn’t a new concern, nor was it one that Mallory hadn’t already given plenty of thought to. “She’ll still be able to talk to him. To see him during school breaks.” She pushed her pager and her cell phone into the breast pocket of the wool coat. “I knew before we got here that if…everything worked out…it would ultimately mean coming up with some sort of visitation agreement.” She reached for the door.

“What if you’re the one who ends up on the visiting side?”

“That’s not going to happen,” she said surely, and pulled open the door.

Ryan and Chloe were bent over an enormous snowball, pushing it together across the yard. The expressions of concentration on their faces were nearly identical.

Mallory swallowed the unease that whispered through her and stepped outside. Chloe had on her coat, her mittens, a scarf and a cap that Kathleen had knitted for her. Usually, she managed to forget the scarf or the hat. “Gram’s going to be popping the corn soon for garland,” she called out to them, “so we’d better come back with a worthy tree.”

Ryan looked over his shoulder. His head was bare. He wore no scarf tucked around his neck. His only concessions to the cold were the gloves on his hands and the scarred-up leather jacket zipped halfway up his chest. “Popcorn garland?”

Chloe straightened away from the snowball that was easily as tall as her knees and held her hands wide as she bounced around, full of energy. “We use Grammy’s needles on long string. It’s fun.”

Ryan continued pushing the snowball toward the house. “If you say so. Where do you want your snowman, Chloe?”

“Right here.” Chloe dashed over to a spot near the steps. “I asked him if he’d ever made one and he said he did, and so we’re getting one now,” she provided needlessly. “I never had a snowman before.” She beamed at Ryan when he nudged the ball to a stop. “Can I have a carrot for his nose?”

The delight in Chloe’s expression would have been impossible to resist, even had Mallory wanted to. “I imagine we have a carrot to spare,” she assured. “But your snowman still needs a little more body before he needs a nose, doesn’t he?”

“Yeah.” Ryan scooped up a large handful of snow before straightening, and packed it between his gloved palms until it was the size of a healthy grapefruit. “Might as well finish it now, kiddo.” He cast an eye toward the sky. “It’s going to be snowing by the end of today—tomorrow at the latest—judging by the sky and then it might be a while before the snow is wet enough again to pack well.”

“What about the tree?”

His gaze skated over Mallory, leaving heat in its wake. “We’ll get to it. Here.” He tossed the snowball toward her and she didn’t react quickly enough to catch it.

It landed harmlessly against her chest and burst into a spray of clumps.

“Mo-om,” Chloe groaned. “You were s’posed to catch it.”

“Sorry.” Mallory went down the steps and scooped up her own snowball. She eyed Ryan, speculatively. He was a perfect target, leaning over, gathering up another handful of snow.

“Wouldn’t try it, Doc,” he warned, without looking at her.

She tossed the snowball from one hand to the other. “Try what?”

He straightened and gave her a glance that succeeded in making her mouth feel parched. It also made a mockery of her innocent claim. “Here.” He handed his latest snowball off to Chloe. “You can do this one on your own. It’s going to be the head, so it doesn’t have to be as large as the base.”

Chloe knelt down and began scooping snow around her assignment. The tip of her tongue peeked out from between the corner of her lips.

Before Mallory even knew he’d moved, Ryan plucked the snowball from her hands. “I’ll take that,” he said, and began adding to it.

Within minutes, both he and Chloe were rolling their snowballs across the yard and right into the neighbor’s property, picking up snow as they went. Mallory smoothed her coat beneath her and sat down on the porch steps, watching.

But Chloe wasn’t having any of that. “Mom, you gotta help!”

So Mallory dutifully rose again and walked over to her daughter.

“Not me,” Chloe said. “Him.” She waved toward Ryan, who, in Mallory’s estimation, needed no assistance whatsoever with maneuvering his snowman-middle even if it were already twice the size of Chloe’s somewhat sausage-shaped head.

It was only the flash of amusement she caught on Ryan’s face—as if he fully expected her to refuse—that made Mallory move over beside him and plant her hands next to his on the snowball. “For someone who didn’t seem very enthusiastic about today,” she said under her breath, “you seem to be ending up quite entertained.”

“And we haven’t even left your neighborhood, yet.” His hands steered the snowball toward the left, circling back in the direction of her house and the snowman’s base.

“Are we really going to find a Christmas tree today?”

“I said we would.” His shoulder brushed against hers. “When I say I’ll do something, I’ll do it.”

“Even if you didn’t want to,” she concluded, her voice just as low.

His jaw tightened. He stopped pushing the snowball, which was easily the size of three watermelons. “What do you want from me?”

She looked at him. The answer should have been so easy. A father for Chloe. Better yet, an…interested and caring father for Chloe.

So why wasn’t it easy?

“Mom. Mr. Ryan. Look at my head!” Chloe stood over her lopsided snowball with pride. “Is it big enough?”

“Looks great,” Ryan answered. He rolled the snowball he and Mallory had formed the last few yards, then picked it up and settled it on the base before adding Chloe’s to the top. “There you go, kiddo. Your first snowman,” he told Chloe.

“I wanna get his face now,” Chloe said, dashing up the stairs and disappearing through the front door that she threw open.

“If I hadn’t wanted to take you out to find a tree, I wouldn’t have offered in the first place,” he told Mallory the second Chloe was out of earshot.

She shoved her hands inside the side pockets of her coat, hiding the fists they had curled into. “Then why did you tear out of here yesterday the way that you did after offering?” Her voice had risen, and she swallowed, looking around.

But Chloe hadn’t come back outside, and the houses flanking hers were as still and silent as they’d been since Mallory had come outside.

The only one around listening to them was the faceless, limbless snowman.

She sighed and pulled her hands out of her pockets again. “Look. I know I dropped a bombshell on you yesterday. Of course it’s going to take some time for you—for all of us—to adjust to that. But—”

“It’s not Chloe that bothers me.” He grimaced. “Well, yeah, but not in the way that you probably mean,” he amended.

“I don’t understand.”

“I know.” He looked at her, only this time his focus was turned inward. “And it’s not something I’m going to explain.”

His choice of words caught her. He wouldn’t explain. Not couldn’t. Not shouldn’t.

“I got his face stuff.” Chloe reappeared and the door slammed behind her, sounding as loud as a gunshot. She was clutching a handful of items against her coat. “Grammy said we could use these cookies for his eyes.” She dropped the rest of her collection onto the snow next to the snowman, and held up two round, chocolate-flavored cookies. “I guess I want him to have eyes more ’n I want to eat them,” she admitted with a giggle. “Here. Put ’em on.”

Ryan nearly winced. Chloe was holding the cookies toward him with such trusting faith in her face that it was painful.

Mallory didn’t say anything. Just continued watching him with an expression that seemed to ride the rails between caution and expectation, hope and compassion.

He wanted to tell her not to expect anything. Not from him. It would be safer all the way around.

But he couldn’t make himself do it.

And he was damned if he knew whether that was because he didn’t want to see the disappointment in her eyes the same way he saw disappointment in the eyes of his family, or if it was because he, himself, didn’t want to feel the loss when that disappointment inevitably occurred.

Instead of taking the cookies from Chloe, he simply went over behind her and lifted her up by the waist so she could reach the snowman’s head. “Give the poor guy some eyes,” he told her.

She giggled again and worked the cookies into the snow. “What’s his name?”

“He’s your snowman,” Ryan reminded. “Think that gives you naming rights.”

“I don’t know no snowman names, though, except Frosty.” She craned her head around to look up at Ryan. “Everyone names their snowman Frosty.”

Mallory picked up the carrot and handed it to Chloe. “You don’t know any snowman names,” she corrected. “And yes, you do. Use your imagination.” She shrugged. “Besides. Maybe your snowman is actually a woman. Have you thought about that?”

Chloe screwed the root end of the carrot into the snow. “Nope,” she said surely. “He’s a snowman.”

Ryan wondered how she made the determination, but figured he was better off not knowing the finer points of how a six-year-old came to such a conclusion. He tipped her almost upside down so she could reach her pile on the ground and she squealed with laughter that didn’t stop even when he turned her upright, again.

“Didja see that, Mom?” Chloe’s feet swung freely, nearly knocking him in the knees and he swung her to his side, holding her against his hip.

“I saw,” Mallory assured. “Are those candy canes for his mouth?”

“Yup.” Chloe reached forward and methodically placed the two red-and-white candies. In Ryan’s opinion, the resulting smile was maniacally cheerful, but Chloe was satisfied. And Mallory was watching her daughter with an indulgent smile.