Chapter Eleven
WHAT WAS IT ABOUT THIS WOMAN THAT MADE HIM WANT TO confide all his painful secrets to her?
Lydia bounced along between them, eyes glowing as she looked around, clearly not paying any attention to their conversation. He looked between her and her lovely mother, whose quiet calm called to him like a safe port in a blizzard.
As they neared the holiday castle at the end of the park, Lydia stopped in her tracks, her mouth forming a perfect O.
“A princess castle!” she exclaimed, pressing her hands to her cheeks in awe.
The LED castle shimmered in white and gold, its turrets reaching high into the dark sky, while the “moat” of animated lights rippled and glowed beneath it.
Other children were running around inside the illuminated structure and Lydia looked at her mother, as if afraid to hope.
“Can I go in there?”
“You can. We’ll watch from out here,” she answered, much to his relief since the interior couldn’t have been taller than five feet.
Lydia raced in to join the other children. They found a bench that had a clear view of Lydia. Only then did he finally return to her question of earlier.
“My mom died when I was thirteen. Kim was two years older.”
“Yes, she told me. That’s a tough age to lose your mother.”
“Any age is tough. But yeah. It was hard. She had been sick for about six months before she died. An inoperable brain tumor. She fought hard for six long, difficult months.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Yeah. It was horrible. Mom tried so hard to put on a cheerful face for us but the chemo and radiation beat her up hard.” He paused. “I should say, it was horrible for Mom, Kim and me. Dad took it all in stride.”
“Or at least that’s what you saw,” she said gently.
He frowned. “Maybe. But did my dad take emergency leave to care for her—or for us—even in her last weeks of life, when we knew the end was near? Of course not. Why would he let the inconvenience of a dying wife and two frightened, grief-stricken children interfere with his brilliant military career.”
The sympathy in her expression seemed to seep through him.
“That must have been tough. But, again, that might have been what you saw from your perspective. I’m sure your father grieved in his own way.”
He wasn’t sure he could agree with her.
“Four months after Mom died, I was sent to military school. Kim was sent to boarding school. I gather her experience there wasn’t much better than mine at military school. That’s where she started drinking and dabbling in drugs, anyway.”
“Poor Kim,” she murmured. “And poor Ryan.”
“We needed our dad—and each other—but he couldn’t be bothered with either one of us. It was easier for him to send us both away.”
“Were you able to still see each other during summers and school breaks?”
He studied Lydia, now twirling in a circle with her arms outstretched. Before he could answer, Audrey came by with a couple of other girls her age.
“Hi, Holly! I didn’t know you were here. Is Lydia here, too?”
She nodded out to the castle. “She’s over there.”
Audrey looked delighted. “Can I go show her a couple of other things we found on the other side of the park?”
“We weren’t planning to stay long.”
“We’ll be quick, I promise,” Audrey said.
“Why don’t you meet us in ten minutes back at the parking lot?” Ryan said.
By now, Lydia had caught sight of her friend and she hurried over to them and threw her arms around Audrey.
Chattering to each other, Audrey and her friends led Lydia down the illuminated path.
As if in tacit agreement, he and Holly rose together and walked down the path back toward the big Christmas tree in the middle of the park.
“I’m sorry for the interruption. You were telling me about your school breaks,” she said.
He didn’t want to talk about the past. He wanted to focus on this moment, with this lovely woman. But she had asked and he still wanted her to know the truth.
“We saw each other during the summer and over the holidays. I wouldn’t call it pleasant, though. Whenever we were home, Dad would treat us like we were new recruits who needed a firm hand. I’m not sure he knew what else to do with us.”
“Probably true.”
“When Kim was seventeen, she refused to go back to boarding school. She ended up basically running away and moving in with her boyfriend, Audrey’s father.”
“From what she’s told me, he didn’t treat her well.”
He felt again that deep resentment toward the man, all wrapped up together with his anger toward his father. “No, though she never talked about it to me. I wish she had. We were always close. We needed each other, you know?”
She nodded. “Hard times always feel easier when you have someone to share the burden with.”
“If our father hadn’t sent us away, we could have made it work.
It’s not like we were infants who needed supervision from him twenty-four-seven.
We were teenagers who could have mostly fended for ourselves at home.
Together. We could have leaned on each other.
Grieved together. He could have still fulfilled his military obligations and Kim and I could have muddled through. ”
He sighed. “Instead, he took the path of least resistance, without caring whether it was the best thing for his children.”
She rested her fingers on his arm. Despite the layers of cloth between them, he almost thought he could feel the warmth and sympathy of her touch. “I can see why you’re angry with him,” she murmured. “That must have been rough for all of you.”
He wanted to kiss her. That interrupted moment earlier on Kim’s porch had teased him all day with the possibility of what might have been.
The urge to pull her into his arms was as tough to ignore as the ache in his leg.
“For the record, I don’t usually whine about my childhood. I know I should be over something that happened two decades ago. It happened, it’s done. I’ve moved on.”
“You still have the scars, though.”
“We all have scars, don’t we?” Ryan’s voice softened, his gaze fixed on the lights that seemed reflected in her eyes.
“Some you can see, some you can’t. The ones on the outside.
.. they’re easy. People notice them, maybe even ask about them.
But the ones inside? Sometimes they’re the ones that shape you, whether you like it or not. ”
He looked down at her, regretting that he had said so much. “Anyway, that’s the whole ugly story. I don’t have much to do with the colonel now, which is better all the way around.”
“Kim doesn’t seem bitter about your father. She moved here to be closer to him and Diane.”
He still found that baffling, as he had when Kim told him she was moving to Idaho where their father had retired.
“Maybe she’s better at hiding it than I am,” he said.
Even as he spoke the words, he thought of his sister escaping into a bad marriage, about her past brushes with the law and her current stint in rehab. Maybe suppressed pain and grief contributed to her struggles with substance use disorder.
Their father wasn’t wholly to blame for everything, he knew. Much of their pain had probably resulted from losing the mother who had been the anchor of their family. But Doug’s careful reserve and his virtual abandonment of them hadn’t helped.
“For what it’s worth, I like Diane,” he said. “I know Kim does, too. Since the colonel married her, she’s been a good influence on him. Kim was right when she told you the person you have met is not the same man my father was after my mother died.”
“Time has a way of changing all of us, doesn’t it? Some for the better, some not. I’m not the person I was a few years ago. And I wouldn’t want to be.”
She was a remarkable person.
By all rights, Holly should be the bitter one, filled with anger at her ex-husband, who had left her and her child with special needs. Instead, she was doing her best to keep her daughter in his life, to cement ties with his family.
He admired her more than any woman he had met in a long time. Maybe ever.
“I suspect you haven’t changed all that much,” he said, his voice low. “You were probably still a lovely person two years ago.”
She met his gaze, her blue eyes startled, then she gave a husky laugh. “That shows how little you know me, Lieutenant Commander Caldwell. I’m impatient, short-tempered, cranky in the morning without my coffee. And I can be petty, too.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“My sister could tell you stories, believe me. Sometimes when a customer is rude to me or to one of my employees, I deliberately don’t give them the best flowers.”
He laughed, completely charmed by her. “Okay. You’ve convinced me. You’re a horrible, evil person who should have nothing to do with my sister or my niece.”
She smiled back at him and he thought he could happily stand here all night in the lightly falling snow while the sound of children’s laughter rang through the December air.
“Seriously, I appreciate the listening ear and I’m sorry if I sounded whiny.”
“You didn’t at all. Anyway, I asked.”
“Yes, but I didn’t have to answer.”
She tilted her head and studied him. “Why did you?”
As he considered her question, he realized he had wanted to tell her. Something about Holly’s kindness and compassion had assured him she would listen with understanding.
“I’ve never really had anybody else to talk to about what happened after my mom died,” he admitted. “Kim only gets upset if I ever mention it.”
“So you stopped saying anything and held it all inside.”
“Basically. I’m a guy. A lot of us tend to do that.”
“And those guys usually end up paying a steep price for burying everything.”
“My relationship with my father doesn’t really take up much space in my life. Most of the time our interactions are polite and cordial, if distant. I don’t have much to do with him, which is fine with me.”
“Until your sister asked you to come out to Shelter Springs to help her.”
“Yeah. It’s much harder to avoid him this year. I haven’t spent this much time in the same state with him in a long time, especially not during the holiday season, which seems to heighten and exacerbate every childhood emotion.”
“Understood. I live in the same town as my parents and I still revert back to a thirteen-year-old girl when I’m at their place.”
He would have liked to have known her as that young girl, a reaction that unnerved him.
“Maybe you should give your dad a chance,” Holly said after a moment.
“From an outsider’s perspective, it seemed clear this afternoon that he wants to mend the distance between you.
He’s making an effort, anyway. Would it hurt to meet him halfway, even if only for the sake of your stepmother and for Kim and Audrey? ”
“I’ll think about it,” he said after a moment.
She nodded, giving him such a radiant smile that he finally gave up fighting the urge. While lights twinkled around them and snow gently brushed their skin, he leaned down and brushed his mouth against hers.
HOLLY CAUGHT HER breath as his mouth, cool and delicious, covered hers.
It wasn’t a truly passionate kiss or even a long one. They were in a public park, after all, surrounded by others, though there was no one else in this particular corner of the park right now.
While their contact only lasted a few seconds, it was intense enough to stir up a vast ache of yearning.
She wanted to truly kiss him. To throw herself against that long, powerful body and let his muscled arms keep her warm all night long.
She blinked back to awareness.
“What was that all about?” she said, embarrassed at the slight wobble in her voice.
Ryan sent her a look she couldn’t interpret.
“Why don’t we call it practice for our big date?”
If that was practice, she wasn’t sure she could withstand the real thing.
“I am really sorry to drag you into this whole fake-dating nightmare.”
“I’m not. You’ve given me something to look forward to while I’m in town.”
“You can’t really be looking forward to going to a wedding.”
“You know, a week ago I might have agreed with you but now I think it might be fun. I meant to try on one of my dad’s suit jackets while I was over there tonight and I totally forgot.”
They both continued walking and when they reached the parking lot they found Audrey taking selfies with her friends and Lydia under the archway.
Lydia skipped over to them as soon as she spotted Holly. “Guess what, Mommy? We saw a light-up snowman and a light-up Santa.”
“That’s fun.”
“Audrey said we should go on sleds. I want to.”
“That would be super fun, too.”
“Tonight?”
“It’s almost your bedtime, honey. We need to go home.”
“I didn’t mean we would go sledding tonight,” Audrey told her. “But we’ll take you, I promise.”
“Okay,” Lydia said, then gave a huge yawn.
“Let’s get you to your car,” Ryan said, scooping her up in his arms and earning a tired-sounding giggle.
When Holly opened the back door, he set Lydia in her booster and helped her with the seat belt.
“Good night,” he told her.
“Bye, Ry. Bye, Auddy.”
He smiled at her and closed the door, then turned to Holly.
“Thanks again for the listening ear,” Ryan said.
“Anytime,” she answered.
As she slid into her car and eased her car into reverse, her grip tightened on the wheel. How was she supposed to guard her heart against a man like Ryan, especially when a big part of her didn’t want to?