Page 15 of Merry Little Midlife Matchmaker

I’d never thought that I’d been missing out. Never considered that I might be depriving my son of something. Now, I wasn’t so sure.

Lizzie dropped her dishtowel on the oven rail and pulled me out of my rumination by offering me a drink.

“Water’d be nice,” I said, watching the way her jeans hugged the curve of her hips. She was short and curvy, and I found I liked watching the way she moved. There was something sensual about the way she shifted her weight, how she leaned over. Her dark hair caught the light, that big bow setting off the chestnuttones streaking through the darker brown, a few strands curling against her neck.

There was something innately feminine about her, in the curves of her body, the fullness of her cheeks, the plumpness of her lips. I wanted to feel all that softness pressed against me. I wanted to?—

I blinked and looked away. She was completely off-limits. Aaron would kill me if I got involved with his baby sister, and then where would that leave the support system I was hoping to build? The whole reason I’d moved back to Heart’s Cove with Mikey was to be around people who knew and cared about us. I neededhelp. I needed to build a better life for myself and my son. Lusting after Lizzie would ruin all of that.

I watched her open up the container of stuffing and, with her face in profile, was able to glimpse the edge of a secret smile. My chest warmed as she glanced over at me, brows raised.

“Do you mind?”

“Brought it here for you to have,” I told her.

She bit her bottom lip, scooped out a portion and placed it in a bowl, then warmed it in the microwave. Her first bite made her hips wiggle from side to side as her shoulders dropped and a soft groan escaped her throat. “That’s good,” she said.

“Yeah,” I replied, caught up in the sight of her. In the small, pleasure-filled movement of her hips. The flush warming her cheeks. The sparkle in her deep brown eyes.

“Mom!” Zach called out. “I can’t get the hook on the rocking horse ornament.”

“Bring it over,” she answered, and handed me my glass of water. Her smile was a little wry when she said, “I’ve been collecting Christmas ornaments since I moved out of my parents’ house. Some of them require constant repairs.”

When Zach deposited a small brown rocking horse into her hands, I watched her tease the metal hook into the tiny loop onthe horse’s back. She’d painted her fingernails a deep shade of red at some point, and they reflected the light as she worked. A few seconds later, a tiny toy rocking horse dangled from an ornament hook, and Lizzie beamed at her son.

His own face was alight with joy, and it felt like another punch in the chest. Maybe I shouldn’t have given up Christmases with Mikey.

“Feel free to join in,” Lizzie said, gesturing to the tree as the kids buzzed around it.

I shook my head. “They seem to be doing a good job on their own.”

“I want to put my one on now!” Hazel called out, digging through a big brown box with the word “Christmas” written in Sharpie on the side. She pulled out a smaller box. With careful hands, she opened it up and pulled out a pearlescent ornament with pink embellishments all around it. Hazel walked toward us, holding the bauble like it was a baby bird. “Mom, look. Can I put it on the tree?”

“Of course, honey,” Lizzie said.

Hazel looked at me and smiled proudly. “Mom bought this when I was born, and I’m the only one who gets to hang it on the tree every year. Zach has one too.”

“That’s pretty special,” I told her through a tight throat.

Mikey watched avidly as Hazel showed off her glass globe, the three kids going quiet as Hazel hung it. She turned to her brother and gave him that same megawatt smile her mother had. “Your turn!”

“You must think this is all very silly,” Lizzie said, eyes on her kids. Tearing her gaze away, she met my eyes. “I know I go overboard with the traditions this time of year.”

“I don’t think it’s silly at all,” I replied, and it surprised me to realize I was telling the truth. In fact, watching the reverencewith which Zach and Hazel handled their birth-year ornaments made me feel like I’d failed as a father.

I had my excuses, of course. I had all those years of memories pressing down on me. All the drunken fights my dad picked with my mom. The anxiety of the weeks leading up to the holiday, wondering what mood he’d be in on the day. And then there was what happened after, when Dad was gone and Mom was sick. Every year, the anniversary of her death came around, and it never seemed to get much easier.

Then there was Melody. The years where things had seemed to heal me, only to have the rug ripped out from under my feet.

When Mikey was born, I’d vowed to be a better parent to him than my father had been to me. And I’d thought I’d succeeded. I couldn’t give him Christmas traditions, but I could give him stability and a shoulder to lean on.

But now…

“Here,” Lizzie said, placing a few star-shaped sugar cookies on a plate for me. Half of them had been sprinkled with red sugar crystals, the other half with green. “They’re still warm.”

They were delicious. I was on my second cookie when I turned to Lizzie and said, “I’m impressed you manage to do all this on your own. I haven’t been able to think of holiday traditions, let alone put anything like this together for Mikey.”

Lizzie waved a hand. “This stuff comes easily to me.” She plucked a green sprinkle-covered cookie from the plate and bit off one of the star’s points. I watched as her tongue darted out to pick up a sprinkle from the corner of her lip, tightness beginning to pull at my lower stomach. Had she always been this pretty? How had I never noticed?

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