A Gift for All Seasons (21 page)

And with each day she found herself more and more tempted to believe she wasn’t up to the job.

In the corner, a small, fragrant fir patiently waited to be dressed, while Christmas carols played softly from April’s docked iPod. The perfect family holiday scenario, right? Except for the trying-too-hard tension throbbing beneath the surface that, while it occasionally eased enough to be almost imperceptible, also had a nasty habit of suddenly and without warning yanking taut, throwing them all off balance.

It’s only been a week. Patience, girl. Patience.

Lili’s sparkling laugh cut through her thoughts. “Look, April,” she said, holding up a cross-eyed Santa all tangled up in a pair of skis. “He’s funny.”

“He certainly is,” she said, thinking it was moments like this—sometimes as brief as a heartbeat—that gave her hope that she and Lili might hit it off, after all. That the child’s father might someday actually be able to stop holding his breath.

April, too.

It didn’t help that today, as they’d lined up on Main Street for the parade that kicked off St. Mary’s ten-day Christmas festival, Lili’s mother had called on Patrick’s phone. The call had barely lasted five minutes, just long enough to put the child in a bad mood that no amount of hot chocolate with whipped cream or gingerbread men could assuage, a bad mood that had followed them all day like a stinky cloud. Until now.

Who knew all it would take to break through the fog was a silly Santa with sketchy alpine skills? Emboldened, April gave Lili a quick, one-armed hug, which at least earned her a smile...before the child deliberately scooted away.
Don’t take it personally,
Mel had said, words April had probably repeated to herself a hundred times over the past week. And would keep repeating as long as it took.

“Hey.” Determined to reinforce what she’d been trying to show him all week, that Lili’s mood swings weren’t about to derail how she felt about either of them, April grinned over at Patrick. “You with the lights. Planning on having them strung before New Year’s?”

“Yeah, Daddy,” Lili added, her little forehead all scrunched up. “April says we can’t put on any of the ordamints until the lights are on. So snap to it, huh?”

And with that, the pall dispersed. Or at least April wanted to believe it had as she swallowed down her laugh. Even Patrick’s mouth twitched, his gaze meeting hers. A gaze unfortunately as ambivalent as ever. But again, it’d only been a week.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said to Lili as he stood, plugged in the lights and started to wind them around the tree, and April released a tiny bit more of that breath, thinking,
Pearls
. Not the ones she’d cast, she thought with a smile, but the ones she and Patrick were gathering together, these cherished moments of peace. Of rightness. Now she could only pray the string holding them didn’t break....

* * *

The colored lights reminded Patrick of when he was a kid, since that’s what they always had. Still did, on the “big” tree taking up half his parents’ living room—

He was trying. Trying to make a home for his child, to make her childhood as secure as his had been. Trying to give April and him a chance at that “more,” even though he felt like he was stumbling around as blindly with that as he was with the father thing. And heaven knew he was trying to be patient, to be open, with her, with Lili...with himself.

Behind him, he heard Lili’s chatter as she pawed through the ornaments, April’s gentle responses as she let the kid steer the conversation. The three of them had spent as much time together as possible this past week, and not once had he seen her lose her cool, or react to one of Lili’s fits. It wasn’t like he’d never seen her get irked—with him, with her cousins, or when something went awry at the inn. She was human. But never with his little girl. If anything, he’d seen nothing but compassion on her face...for both of them. A compassion that wasn’t faked, but simply part of who she was. An example that made Patrick remember who
he
was, what he believed in. What, despite the fear still lodged in his chest, he still wanted.

Which was, he’d finally admitted to himself, to believe in forever like she did. And that, somehow, he might absorb April’s confidence and optimism. So he could, you know, be what she needed. Be her hero, like he wanted to be Lili’s. Because otherwise she’d be shouldering the entire load, and no way in hell would he do that to her.

So, yeah. He was trying, he thought as April left to go make hot chocolate in the closed-off kitchen. Trying to push through this last barrier keeping him from normal, to accept the good right in front of him, even if he couldn’t see further into the future than the end of his nose...or hadn’t yet entirely shaken off the past, still gripping his ankles, if not his throat—

“Can I help?”

His chest ached as he grinned down at Lili. “Tell you what—why don’t you hold out the string for me so it doesn’t get all tangled again. Just make sure to hang on to it between the lights, they might be hot.”

“’Kay.” The little girl grabbed the string, dangling it way over her head so that insanely kissable pot belly pooched out from underneath her red sweater. “I really, really like Christmas,” she said on a languid sigh, making Patrick send up a little prayer of gratitude. Maybe they’d get through this holiday, after all, even if Natalie still wouldn’t commit to seeing her own kid at Christmas.

“I bet you do.”

“Do
you?
”

“Sure,” he said, because this wasn’t about him. Not that he had anything against holidays, but he sure wouldn’t be scratching the hell out of himself stringing lights on this blasted tree if it weren’t for his kid. And God knows he wouldn’t have nearly frozen his butt nailing evergreen swags across way too many feet of porch overhang at the inn if it hadn’t been for April. Who was apparently every bit as wide-eyed about Christmas as his preschooler.

He tugged at the string, making Lili drop it. With another sigh, she bent over and picked up the next length, her forehead puckered again as one blue light apparently sucked her in.

“Will Santa bring me presents?”

“I’m sure he will.”

She was quiet for a long time, then asked, “Would he bring me Mama if I asked?”

Patrick’s stomach fell. It was like hearing those first, faint thunder rumbles that signaled a storm was about to hit.

“I think that’s between Santa and Mama, baby,” he said carefully.

“Could
you
ask her to come?”

“I could,” he said, even more carefully. “But I can’t
make
her come.”

“Why not?”

“Because people can’t make other people do things. Just the way it works.”

“You make me brush my teeth. An’ go to bed when I don’t wanna.”

Hell. That string done, Patrick grabbed the second one off the floor to plug it into the first. “That’s different, baby,” he said, handing Lili the end. “That’s taking care of you, not ordering you around.”

Her nose wrinkled. “You sure?”

“Yeah. I’m sure.”

She started swinging the string like a jump rope, making the little lights bang against Patrick’s leg. “The colors are all swirly,” she said, giggling, and Patrick whooshed out a breath, that maybe they’d gotten over that hurdle. Until she said, “How come I never go to Mama’s house?” and he realized,
Nope
.

“You’d have to ask Mama that.”

“I did. On the phone. She wouldn’t t-tell me.” At the catch in Lili’s voice, he looked over to see a tear dribble down her soft cheek. She crouched, stretching the string across her knees. “Why did she go away, anyway?” she said softly. “Did I do something bad?”

The lights clattered when Patrick dropped them to squat in front of his little girl, hardly even reacting when she reached up to run her fingers over the ruched skin on his cheek, something he’d finally realized some months ago she did to soothe herself.

“No, baby, of course you didn’t do anything bad.”

“Then why does she hardly
ever
come? Or let me go to her house?”

Holy hell—where was all this coming from? She’d never asked questions like this before. Was it because she didn’t have the words before now? Or because April being around was stirring them up?

And once again, was it right letting Lili get close to somebody else before she had any of this about her mother sorted out in her head?

He released a breath. “Honey, I don’t know why your mama does half the things she does. Maybe she doesn’t want you to see her house because, I don’t know, it’s messy or something. Because she’s been too busy to clean it.”

Lili looked around the cluttered living room, then back at him, frowning. “But I like messy houses.”

And wouldn’t his mother croak if she heard that? “I’m sorry, baby, I wish I could answer for Mama, tell you what she’s thinking. But I can’t. I know she loves you, though.”

His chest cramped when tears flooded Lili’s dark brown eyes. “Then why doesn’t she want to see me? Why d-does she only stay for a m-minute an’ then go away again?”

He pulled Lili into his arms, his own eyes stinging as he whispered, “I don’t know, baby, I don’t know.”

He heard April return from the kitchen, his old beat-up serving tray softly thunking onto the battle-scarred coffee table when she set it down. Wordlessly, she picked up the abandoned light string and started tucking it into the tree, and the weird thing was Patrick couldn’t decide if he was glad she was there or wished she wasn’t. And between that and not having a clue what to say to his daughter, he could see the panic attack lurking right outside his vision, snarling and snapping and pacing, trying to find a way in. His eyes shut, he held on to his little girl, breathing deeply and steadily like the therapist had taught him, until the damn thing slunk away.

For now. But for those couple moments when it felt like he was going to lose control...

Not an option. Especially not now. And whatever he had to do to relieve the pressure, he would.

“Lights are done,” April said softly, and Patrick felt sick inside. “Lili, you want to pick the first ornament to hang on the tree?”

She nodded against his chest, then pulled away, wiping her nose on her sleeve. Chuckling, April handed her a tissue, holding it to her nose to help her blow. Acting like everything was fine when it was perfectly obvious it wasn’t. She wasn’t stupid, she had to know.

The crazy Santa hung, Lili announced she had to pee and ran down the short hall to the bathroom.

And Patrick collapsed into the armchair next to the tree, leaning forward with his head in his hands.

Some hero,
he thought.

Some
freaking
hero.

* * *

“Here,” April said, holding a cup of hot chocolate in front of Patrick, even as hope shriveled inside her. Because in the ten minutes it had taken to make the cocoa, the tension had not only pulled taut, it had completely snapped. “Cocoa cures everything. I promise.”

After a moment he lifted his head, one side of his mouth slightly pulled up. “Thanks.” He took the mug, licking the whipped cream off his upper lip after his first sip. “How much did you hear?”

“Enough.”

Enough for it to finally penetrate that parades and trimming trees and hot chocolate weren’t going to magically fix things. That
April
wasn’t going to magically fix things. And that as much as Lili had already wrapped her curly headed self around her heart, April couldn’t be the one thing the little girl most wanted: her own mother. At least at the moment. True, maybe with enough love and patience, things could work out in the future. But if Lili and Patrick—especially Patrick—were clearly too firmly rooted in the present to trust that, to trust
her
...well.

None of Patrick’s other objections, she now realized, meant squat. Not his questioning her motives about why she’d picked him, not her sexual inexperience, not his leftover hurt about his ex-wife’s abandonment. Or even what she suspected were lingering self-confidence issues stemming from his appearance, although she would have thought those, especially, had been shoved
way
behind them. What was going on with his daughter, though, was bigger than all the rest combined. Far bigger.

And completely outside her control.

April sat on the sturdy old coffee table, her hands gripping the edge on either side of her hips, feeling her pulse throb in her temples. She’d—they’d—had such lovely plans for tonight, including her staying over, testing the waters of what life might be like in the future. Patrick’s suggestion, she thought as her throat clogged.

His eyes fixed straight ahead, he took another swallow of his drink, then sagged back into the chair, the mug propped on one worn arm as he scrubbed the heel of his hand into his eye, his obvious exhaustion breaking her heart.

“Part of me thinks,” he said as his hand banged down on the other chair arm, “if I could get through to Nat what she was doing to Lili, maybe we could fix this. Only then I think, what good would it do? Because Lili doesn’t want explanations, she wants her mother. And that’s the one thing I can’t give her. God—I
hate
feeling so damn
useless
.”

A frustration only the strong experienced, April suspected. She frowned anyway. “You really think that? At least you’re
here
for her. I imagine a lot of men in your...in your situation would have handed the kid off to a relative and said,
Forget this
. But you didn’t.”

“No,” he said after a moment, then lifted harrowed eyes to hers. “Doesn’t mean I haven’t thought about it from time to time. If it wouldn’t be better for her if I gave custody to one of my brothers or sisters. You know, somebody who knew what they were doing?”

Unable to bear his pained expression, April twisted around to get her own mug of cocoa, lifting it to her lips with a smile. “I take it that leaves Luke out of the running, then?”

That actually got a little laugh. “True.”

After a moment’s thought, she set down her mug and crossed to the chair, questions flickering across his features a second before she leaned over, took his face in her hands and kissed him. None too gently, either. “And do you have any idea,” she said when she was done, a breath away from his mouth, “how much courage it takes to admit that?”