Page 109 of The Holiday Gift

Tempting. Definitely tempting...

“I was only trying to help. I thought it would be a convenient solution to your problem with the side benefit of helping me keep Destry entertained in the big crazy lead-up to Christmas Eve, but it won’t hurt my feelings if you prefer to make other arrangements. You can think about it and let me know.”

“I don’t need to think about it. You’re right. It is the perfect solution.” He was quiet, his hands petting Luke’s fur. Lucky dog.

“It’s tough for me to accept help,” he finally said, surprising her with his raw honesty. “Tougher, probably, to accept help fromyou,with things so...complicated between us.”

“Complicated. Is that what you call it?” Apparently she wasn’t the only one in tumult over this attraction that simmered between them.

“What word would you use?”

Tense. Sparkly. Exhilarating.She couldn’t use any of those words, despite the truth of them.

“Complicated works, I guess. But this, at least, is relatively easy when you think about it. I like your kids, Ben. I don’t mind having them around. Jack has a hilarious sense of humor and I’m sure he’ll talk my ear off with knock-knock jokes. Ava is a little tougher nut to crack, I’ll admit, but I’m looking forward to the challenge.”

“She’s struggling right now. I guess that’s obvious.”

“The move?”

“She’s angry about that. About everything. My former in-laws did a number on her. They blame me for Brooke’s death and have spent the past two years trying to shove a wedge between Ava and me. Both kids, really, but Jack is still too young to pay them much attention.”

“Do they have any real reason to blame you?” she asked.

“They think they do. Brooke had type 1 diabetes and nearly died having Jack. The doctors told us not to try again. She was determined to have a third child despite the danger. She could be like that. If she wanted something, she couldn’t see any reason why she couldn’t have it. I wasn’t about to risk a pregnancy. We took double precautions—or at least I thought I did. I intended to make things permanent, but the day I was scheduled for the big snip, she told me she was pregnant.”

“Oh, no.”

He raked a hand through his hair with a grimace. “Why am I compelled to spill all this to you?”

She chose her words with Ben as carefully as she had with Destry earlier, sensing if she said the wrong thing to him this fragile connection between them would fray. “I would like to think we can be friends, even if things between us are...complicated.”

He gave a rough laugh. “Friends. All right. I guess I don’t have enough of those around.”

She sensed that wasn’t an admission he was comfortable with either. “You will. Give it time. You just moved in. It takes time to build that kind of trust.”

“Even with my friends back in California, I never felt right about talking about this. It sounds terrible of me. Disloyal or something. I loved my wife but...some part of me is so damn angry at her. She got pregnant on purpose. I guess that’s obvious. She stopped taking birth control pills and sabotaged the condoms. She thought she knew better than the doctors and me.”

What kind of mother risked her life, her future with a husband who loved her and children who needed her, simply because she wanted something she didn’t have? Caidy couldn’t conceive of it.

“I loved her but she could be stubborn and spoiled when she wanted her way. She wouldn’t consider terminating the pregnancy despite the dangers,” Ben went on. Now that he had started with the story, she sensed he wanted to tell her all of it. “For several months, things were going well. We thought anyway. Then when she was six months along, her glucose levels started jumping all over the place. As best we can figure out, it must have spiked that afternoon and she passed out.”

His hands curled in Luke’s fur. “She was behind the wheel at the time and drove off an overpass. She and the baby both died instantly.”

“Oh, Ben. I’m so sorry.” She wanted to touch him, offer some sort of comfort, but she was afraid to move. What would he do if she wrapped her fingers around his? Friends did that sort of thing, right? Even complicated friends?

“Her parents never forgave me.” He spoke before she could move. “They thought it was all my fault she got pregnant in the first place. If only I’d stayed away from her, et cetera, et cetera. I can’t really blame them.”

She stared. “I can. That’s completely ridiculous. Are they nuts? You were married, for heaven’s sake. What were you supposed to do? It’s not like you were two teenagers having a quickie in the backseat of your car.”

He gave a rough, surprised-sounding laugh, and she was aware of a tiny bubble of happiness inside her that she could make him laugh despite the grim story.

“You’re right. They are a little nuts.” He laughed again and some of the tension in his shoulders started to ease. “No, alotnuts. That’s the real reason I moved here. Ava was becoming just like my mother-in-law. A little carbon copy, right down to the tight-mouthed expressions and the censorious comments. I won’t let that happen. I’m her father and I’m not about to let them feed her lies and distortions until she hates me.”

“Is the move working the way you hoped?”

“I think it’s too soon to tell. She’s still pretty upset at moving away from them. They can give her things I can’t. That’s a tough thing for a father to stomach.”

This time she acted on the impulse to touch him and rested a hand on his bare forearm, just below the short sleeve of the scrub shirt. His skin was warm, the muscle hard beneath her fingers.

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