Chapter 11
IVY
“Miss Ivy? Miss Ivy?”
My eyes are so heavy it takes the girls repeating my name several more times before I can force them open to see Scarlett and Zoey lying on their stomachs, their faces within inches of mine.
“Merry Christmas, Miss Ivy!” Zoey cries, a grin splitting her face.
I stifle a huge yawn. I laid in bed, staring into the darkness and replaying over and over the moment Chad almost kissed me last night. I don’t know how late it was before I finally fell asleep. Late enough that whatever time it is right now feels too early.
“Good morning,” I murmur, but I can’t help the smile that starts. I don’t regret letting Chad talk me into spending the night in their room last night so that I could have this moment. Despite my sleepiness, it’s one of the sweetest Christmas morning wake-ups I can remember in a long time.
“Come on, Miss Ivy,” Scarlett says, finding my hand and slipping off the bed to tug me gently. “We have a surprise for you.”
“WE MADE YOU PANCAKES!” Zoey shouts.
Scarlett turns and scowls at her sister, and I bite back a snort of laughter. “It was supposed to be a surprise, Zoey,” she hisses.
Zoey’s eyes go wide, and she looks at me and then at Scarlett. “Oh no.”
Scarlett immediately softens. “It’s okay, Zo. Everyone makes mistakes.”
I want to pull her into my arms and snuggle her at the big-sister sweetness.
I want them both in my arms. They struggled after Shelby left, and Carlie has told me about the difficult times in the beginning when Scarlett parroted some of Shelby’s more critical habits.
They’re both so much happier, so much more confident.
I’m falling in love with them.
I ignore what that might mean about how I feel about their dad.
But it’s normal to be smitten by adorable children. It can happen to anyone.
“Let’s go find out what the surprise is,” I say, swinging my legs off the bed and reaching for my crutches. I wink at Zoey, and both girls laugh.
When I come into the main room of the suite, Chad looks up from where he sits at the small, round table in the kitchenette.
He was reading something on his phone, and the fact that he slides reading glasses off to look up at me should be off-putting, but instead it’s …
sexy. His reading glasses are trendy, a thick black frame that’s classic and modern.
The way he hooks them over his shirt collar is so nerdy that it’s adorable.
It draws my attention to his eyes, and I remember how close he was last night, how heady it was when he stared at me. How much I wanted to kiss him.
I shouldn’t have agreed to spend the night here. I didn’t need to. I would have been fine bingeing Christmas rom-coms while Carlie and Law spent time together and Chad did Christmas Eve with his girls. Being a part of their family traditions, even away from home, has muddied everything up.
I wouldn’t change any of it.
“Merry Christmas,” Chad says, standing up to come toward me. I wave him off and lean on the crutches. I can make it to the table without his help. And if he holds me around the waist again … I might lose all ability to keep my hands off him.
And not just to keep myself steady.
Still, he hovers, like he expects me to fall over at any second.
The girls dart back and forth between the kitchen and me multiple times as I make my way to the table.
Maybe it’s fair that he’s keeping close.
He probably expects one of them to trip me and we’ll have a repeat of me losing my balance the night before.
Hmmm. Maybe I could fake that.
He holds out a chair for me when I get to the little table, and I slip into it, leaning my crutches against a nearby wall.
Zoey brings over a stack of plates and some forks, placing it in front of me and then beaming before passing them out around the table.
Scarlett follows with a plate piled with …
interesting-looking pancakes. I press my lips together, holding back my smile at their appearance—a little thin and browner than most people like. Maybe bordering on black in some parts.
A sudden bolt of longing shoots through me, and something sticks in my throat at the memories of my mother that those less-than-perfect pancakes bring up.
I share a look with Chad, hoping he doesn’t notice my reaction since he’d likely assume I’m disappointed in them.
He smiles at me, a mix of pride and amusement, and thankfully doesn’t seem concerned about anything that might be showing in my expression.
My stomach flips over. His love for his girls is overpowering. If he ever looked at me like that? I’d be done for. Last night was intoxicating, but having someone stare at me in that tender way would be my undoing.
The girls chatter about what Santa brought them in their stockings as we all settle in to eat. Pretty soon we’re all sitting around the tiny table, and I have to pull my legs back to make sure they don’t brush Chad’s.
“You get to go first, Miss Ivy.” Scarlett leans on her elbows and watches me with bright, excited eyes.
“Yay!” I use my fork to stab two on the top and pull them onto my plate.
“I think we’re pretty good friends now, right?
” I say when I reach for the light, golden-colored syrup in a jar with a handmade watercolor label.
“I think it would be okay if you just call me Ivy.” I look over at Chad, asking with my eyes if this is okay. He nods.
“Okay!” Scarlett moves to her knees on her chair and bounces. “We can be best friends, Ivy, can’t we?”
“Absolutely.” I pour a generous amount of syrup over my pancake.
Chad starts helping the girls, and I ask them which syrup they want.
Chad has provided three different options—maple pecan, lavender lemon, and vanilla butter, which is what I chose.
I give Chad a little smirk as I douse the girls’ pancakes as well.
“It’s Christmas,” I say with a little shrug.
He shakes his head. “Sure, they probably won’t get very much sugar the rest of the day either,” he says in a dry voice.
“Was that a challenge?” I quirk an eyebrow at him.
A flash of awareness crosses his face, and it’s all I can do not to lean across the table and take the kiss that we almost started last night.
“The girls will have a sleepover with you tonight if you feed them sugar all day.” Then he leans closer to me and every inch of my skin reacts to his nearness, despite the fact that he’s not even touching me.
Goose bumps rise on my arms, and a shiver runs down my spine.
“You don’t have to eat the pancakes,” he says in a low voice.
“The girls wanted to be the ones to make you breakfast. They insisted on doing it themselves. And I did supervise, but …” He tilts his head towards the stack.
“I’m eating the pancakes,” I say. An itch crawls up my throat, warning that I won’t be able to keep hiding my emotions. “They’re just like my mom’s.”
He laughs. “Sure.” Then he pauses, probably because he notices the wetness in my eyes, since I can feel some of it spilling over. “Ivy?”
“She was a terrible cook.” My voice is wobbly with both the tears and laughter.
“She just used a mix, but she made pancakes every Christmas, and they were always terrible. My dad and I never told her. We just ate them.” I saw off a bite and put it in my mouth, hoping the time to chew will give me a moment to settle the wave of missing her that’s rising higher and higher—but not in a bad way.
I feel closer to her than any Christmas before, when me and my dad would pretend like nothing was wrong.
Chad reaches over to take my hand, and for the first time in the last couple days, I don’t even try to resist how I feel. I tangle my fingers in his. “I’m sorry,” he says in a low voice.
I shake my head. “Don’t be. Please. This is the best Christmas I’ve had in so long. I didn’t know I needed these pancakes until I saw them, but … this is amazing, Chad. Really.”
A bittersweet ache does start finding its way through me, but not just for my mom. For this. For moments with someone that are filled with love and caring and thoughtfulness.
Not just someone.
Chad.
“Why doesn’t your dad make you Christmas pancakes?” Chad asks, pulling his hand away. I drop mine into my lap, embarrassed. I don’t know what happened last night. What was just us reacting to the physical attraction between us, and what’s real?
“My mom was the one that made Christmas a big deal. She wanted to do the big breakfast and made the—” I cut myself off, remembering the two little girls at the table. “Santa stuff,” I mouth, “really important. She did the tree and the decorations. All of it.”
He squints at me, confusion in his eyes. “And it’s too hard for your dad?”
“I don’t know. He just never did it. Christmas became another day, except we got each other gifts.
I spent a lot of Christmases with Law’s family during and after college.
” I grimace. “Which is not that much better, to be honest.” Law’s mom is …
intense. She’s a United States senator and focuses a lot on the family’s image. It’s exhausting for Law.
Chad snorts. “I can imagine.”
I swirl my fork through a pool of syrup on my plate and then lick it off.
“I feel kind of guilty that it’s harder feeling like I’m losing Law than it is to spend Christmases away from my dad.
” I think we texted last week, and he’ll probably call sometime to wish me a Merry Christmas, but Mom was the glue between us.
Our relationship is shallow, and that’s why my friendship with Law has always meant so much to me.
It’s why the distance between us, even though I’m over the moon for him to have found Carlie, is hard.
Chad reaches for my hand again, but this time I content myself with letting him wrap his hand around mine. “I don’t think there’s anything I can say to make the shift in your friendship with Law easier.” He shrugs at me, and I have to smile. He likes solutions.