Calendar Girl: November: Book 11 (7 page)

Amanda held her only daughter, a toddler, on one hip while her husband wrangled the two older twin boys into a lockdown at his sides. “We’re here from Ottawa Canada,” she said proudly.

“And have you enjoyed your trip so far?”

“We have. Only keeping twin six-year-old boys in check alongside our precious girl in a city of this size is not easy.” Jacob laughed.

“I’ll bet it isn’t. Well, I know you have a lot to see, and these little guys are ready to check out our super cool statue aren’t you, guys?” My voice rose higher as they focused on me.

Two little fists popped up into the air as synchronized yeahs were screamed into the air.

“All righty, then. So tell me, Amanda Lee, what are you thankful for?”

Her pretty caramel-colored eyes got misty with unshed tears. “My family. They are all I need in this world.”

I smiled and moved the mic to her husband Jason. “And you, Jason?”

“Same.” He shrugged. “There’s nothing else I’m more thankful for than my wife, our two boys, and our daughter.”

Knowing the audience would love to hear it, I crouched down and the camera followed. I pointed to the first twin boy. "What are you thankful for?”

He pursed his lips, and his eyes grew big. “Candy!” His decibel was much higher than I expected.

I laughed. “That’s a good answer. And you?” I held the mic to his brother.

“My bike. I love my bike. It’s awesome and has a cool lightning strike down the front,” he said, matter-of-fact. All the adults chuckled.

Standing back up, I moved the mic near the chubby-cheeked toddler who couldn’t be more than two and a half, maybe closer to three. “And you, little one. Would you like to tell America what you are thankful for?”

Instead of responding, she shoved a ratty pink elephant in front of my face and right into the camera. “You’re thankful for your elephant?” She nodded and then buried her face against her mother’s neck.

“Thank you, Martin clan, for sharing what you’re thankful for.”

The Martins were beyond grateful for the five hundred dollars’ worth of Visa cards. They shared that this trip was a lifelong dream of theirs and was a huge hit to their savings. This five hundred would help them get right back on the road to saving for their next dream adventure.

The last interview I decided would be in the Great Hall at Ellis Island. I found an elderly man standing next to two other men, one holding the hand of a boy who couldn’t be more than eight or nine. The men could have been my great-grandfather, grandfather, and my dad.

“Excuse me, would you mind if I interviewed you for a television segment focused on being thankful?”

One of the men spoke in German to the eldest. He nodded.

“Sure, you may ask us questions, and I shall translate to my
opa
.” I knew the word
Opa
to mean grandfather in German.

I spent a few minutes getting to know the three men and one child. They were four generations of Kappmeiers. Robert Kappmeier was in his nineties and looked damn good for his age, as did his son, Richard, who was in his late sixties, and his son, Eric, closing in on forty, and Eric's son, Nolan, who was eight.

Once I found out why they were there I couldn’t stop the tears from falling down my face. Wes soothed me while I got hold of myself and repaired my makeup the best I could without a team of makeup artists to make me look camera ready. Once I’d gotten myself in check, the cameras rolled.

“I am standing here in front of Ellis Island with four generations of Kappmeier men. Thank you all for stopping to chat with me.”

I spoke first with Robert, the eldest Kappmeier. “Now, Mr. Kappmeier, thank you for agreeing to speak with me and translate.” He nodded. Apparently sometime after he retired, he decided to mostly speak in his native tongue but knew English very well. “From what your son and grandson tell me, you passed through Ellis Island back in 1949 a few years before it closed in 1954.”

“I did. Best day of my life.”

“Why’s that?” I asked, genuinely interested.

“Because I was free. Germany had just survived the defeat of the Nazis, and the country split into two. Many of my family were prisoners of war during that time. I promised my mother, who’d lost my father in the war, that I’d find a way to be free. So I left my country, my home, and found a new home. One where I could feel safe to live, work, love, and have a family of my own.”

“And would you say that you were thankful for America, for the opportunity it afforded you?” I asked automatically.

He nodded curtly but got close, walked me over to his youngest grandson, Nolan, who clutched his dad’s hand nervously. His great-grandfather lifted his chin.

“I am thankful for my freedom and the freedom of my son, Richard, my grandson, Eric, and great-grandson, Nolan Kappmeier. You see, as Americans, they will always be free.”

I thanked the men for sharing their story and gave them the cards, which they planned on donating to charity.

Looking at the camera, tears in my eyes, Wes by my side, I decided that was the end of my segment. There was no need for more.

“Today you heard from the people of New York. Families, single dads, visitors from other countries, and generations of Americans. We learned that people were thankful for their wives, husbands, children, parents, the world, and most of all, the freedom that our country affords us. I’d like to take a moment to thank all the veterans of our great nation for ensuring that we have yet a new day to be thankful for, because they are fighting for our freedom. I’d like to challenge all of you watching this show to thank someone you’ve been meaning to thank. Spread the joy and love we take for granted each and every day, and give back. But most of all…be thankful for what you have and rejoice in it. Thank you all for watching. Until next time, live beautiful.”

The second the cameraman raised his thumb.

Wes grabbed me around the waist and hugged me. “I’m so proud of you, sweetheart. That segment is going to touch so many people.”

I snuggled into his warmth, imprinting this moment on my mind so I could revisit the feeling of unity, love, and compassion for years to come. Today, I was proud of myself. I’d taken a concept, brought it to fruition, and knew that it would resonate with millions of people watching when it aired.

“Let’s celebrate!” Wes said, planting a line of kisses from the bottom of my neck up to my ear where he wrapped his lips around the tip of my ear and bit down. A zing of heat shot through my body and landed between my thighs.

“What did you have in mind?” I raised one eyebrow and smirked.

“You, me, a bottle of champagne, a basket of strawberries, whipped cream, and a fluffy hotel bed.”

I grinned. “You had me at you and me.”

T
he moment
our rental car stopped in front of the large ranch-style home, a wild-haired little blonde ran down the steps, arms flailing, and her father in tow.

“Isabel, give your auntie some room to get out of the car, darlin’!” my brother Max hollered from the edge of the porch as he made his way down.

Too excited myself, I hopped out of the car and caught the firecracker as she jumped. “Auntie Mia!” she squealed. Hearing her call me auntie officially, knowing that she shared the blood running through my veins, was one of the most powerful moments I’d had in years. I held my niece close, letting her wrap her arms and legs around me. She pressed her hands to both of my cheeks. “I get to be the queen!” she practically screamed in my face. I laughed hard and hugged her tight.

“You got it, love. I’ll be the princess. Hey, are you ready to meet Uncle Wes?”

Her eyes widened. “I have an Uncle Wes?” Her words were tinged with shocked excitement, befitting her four, almost five, years of age.

I shifted her weight onto one hip. “You do.”

Wes walked up and tugged on her hand. “Hello, Isabel. I’m Weston.”

“What a silly name.” It came out of her mouth with crooked smile.

“Bell!” Max scolded instantly, but I shook my head and gave him a dirty look. She was a child, and they were innocent.

Wes chuckled approvingly. “You know what’s even sillier?” He got close to her face.

She pinched her lips and looked up at the sky. “Hot dogs?”

That had both Wes and me laughing. Max just stood there with his hand over his mouth, trying not to encourage her with his laugher.

“What?” Her little face scrunched up into one of indignation. “It’s food, not a dog that’s hot. Silly.” I had to give it to her. The logic was sound.

“That is true. But what I was referring to that was silly is that my name has a number in it!”

Isabel’s mouth made the shape of a surprised O and her eyes widened. “No way!”

“Way. My official name is Weston Charles Channing the Third.” He held up three fingers, and she looked at them as if they were about to shoot off of his hand like little rockets into the sky right in front of her eyes.

“Wow. That is…so cool! Daddy, can I have a number in my name? I’d like to be five.”

That time, Max did laugh. “Darlin’, you have already been named, and no, you cannot have a number in your name. But you will be five in April. Can you wait until then?”

“No, Daddy, I really can’t. It’s forever long.” She pouted and I kissed her sweet little cheek. She smelled like maple syrup and crayons.

“Go on in, Bell, and tell your momma your auntie and uncle are here. Okay?”

She wiggled her feet so I set her down, and she was off like a shot. Man, kids moved fast. Everywhere they went had to be at a dead run, even if it was only twenty feet away.

I walked over to my brother and face-planted against his chest. Wrapping my arms around his large frame, I hugged him as tight as I could. He smelled of leather and laundry detergent. Familiar and comforting.

“So good to see you, sugar. Having you here for Thanksgiving means uh, you know…” He let the words just fall off, his voice sounding rougher than normal.

And I did know what it meant to him. Maxwell Cunningham was a family man above all. Rich as the sky is vast, but he’d say it was the love of his family that made him a rich man, not the millions in his bank account.

“Maxwell Cunningham, I want you to meet my fiancé, Weston Channing.”

Max grinned wide, held out a hand, and the second Wes clasped his, Max brought their bodies into one of those man-hug-smack-the-back holds. “Real good to meet ya, partner. Mia was damn near sick about you being missing. I’ll bet you’re glad to be back in the States and with our girl.”

I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t have seen it with my own eyes, but Wes’s cheeks pinked up. He shook his head, shuffled his feet, and nodded. I also noted that he did not ream Max for saying “our girl” like he did when Anton had said it. Interesting.

“So good to be back. All I thought about was this beautiful woman and making her mine.” He looped an arm around my waist and crushed me to his side.

Max’s eyes went soft, crinkling at the edges. “Sometimes a man has to fight his way through hell to know how good he has it. I reckon you learned that the hard way, and I’m damn sorry ’bout that, but happy you're back in the land of the free and home of the brave. Welcome to my ranch.” Such a cowboy thing to say, and I loved my brother even more for it.

Wes tipped his head and tightened his hold. He eyed the land around him, his eyes a startling green. “Amazing land. You own all these acres?” Wes asked, pointing to the trees and beyond.

Maxwell pointed to the areas where he wanted us to look. “Not as many as Cunningham Oil does, but I own a good lot here. You see that barn over there with the J on it? That’s the Jensens’ place. You know Aspen.”

Wes lifted a hand to look at the barn. “Holy shit, I totally forgot. I was here for Aspen and Hank’s wedding a couple years back.” Then Wes eyed Max. “Dude, we’ve met before.”

Maxwell laughed and nodded. “Yep, at the wedding, briefly. Come on in. Let me reintroduce you to my wife, Cyndi.” He started up the steps, but Wes stopped him.

“What about the land over there?” He pointed to a long wide expanse of tall grass and trees galore.

“Own that, too. The land on the side of the Jensen farm I sold to Aspen and Hank when they got married. They swore not sell to land munchers. I also own the acres surrounding my property. There’s a couple vacant farm houses that I’m not sure whether to break down or keep in the family.”

Wes pursed his lips and gripped Max on the shoulder. “I reckon you should keep it in the family.” Wes’s voice dipped into a lousy imitation of a southern drawl, mimicking Max’s.

“I reckon you got that right,” Max said, something crossing over his face as he silently communicated with Wes. “Houses will need some work, some serious elbow grease,” he said randomly.

I was totally starting to lose the conversation and moved ahead of the guys talking houses and land. Boring.

“No stranger to hard work,” was the last thing I heard Wes say. It probably should have worried me, but frankly, I was too interested in meeting my nephew to care about ranches and land.

“Come on, guys. I want to meet baby Jack!”

I
t was official
. There was nothing sweeter than holding a baby only weeks old. The really cool part was that his eyes seemed like they were green, just like mine, Maddy’s, and Max’s. His hair even had brown tufts at the crown of his powdery-smelling head.

“I think he could end up a brunette,” I said out loud to no one in particular.

Cyndi plopped down next to me. “Really?” She smoothed her hand over his head. The second Jack felt or smelled his mamma, his lips puckered and his mouth started working in a sucking motion. Next came the head rooting around. “Oh, someone’s hungry,” she cooed at Jack.

Instead of going out of the room, Cyndi grabbed the blanket hanging over the couch, covered her shoulder and arm, wiggled something under the blanket, and I could hear Jack nursing. Life of a super mom.

“Does it hurt?” I asked, glancing down to where she was feeding her child.

“Not gonna lie, Mia. It hurts like hell the first few days, and your nipples can end up cracking and bleeding, but the connection you feel to your child, the nourishment he gets from your milk gets you past those first few days of torture.

“Torture?” I gulped.

She smiled. “Promise it’s worth it. Speaking of, congratulations are in order, I see,” she said, looking down toward my left hand.

I frowned. “Max didn’t tell you?”

Cyndi shook her head. “Sure he did. Are you kidding? That man waited all of two seconds to tell me. Basically the time it took for him to hang up the phone before he was screaming my name through the house to tell me that both his sisters were getting married. He woke up Jack and Isabel from their naps."

Glancing around the room, I made sure nobody was around. “If my Pops doesn’t wake up, I’m going to ask Max if he’ll walk me down the aisle.”

Cyndi’s eyes filled with tears, and she started to sniff. “You don’t know how much that will mean to him.” A tear fell down her cheek, and she swiped it away.

“Don’t cry.” I cringed, worried I shouldn’t have said anything.

“Honey, its hormones. I cry over everything. Hell, yesterday I was watching TV, and a commercial for Tums came on. The pregnant woman was pressing her hand to her heart. Yeah, that made me cry. Remembering the heartburn I had with Jack and I was a bundle of tears. Really, I’m fine.” She laughed.

Wow. Pregnancy jacks up a woman. Big time.

How would I handle it? Did I even want to? I thought of Weston holding our own son or daughter and decided, yeah, I’d go through just about anything to have a child with Wes's eyes staring up at me one day.

“Are you guys done? Having kids?” I asked as she pulled a sleepy Jackson out from under the blanket, readjusted her shirt, and put the blanket back over the couch as if nothing had happened. Yep, super mom.

“Nope. I think we’ll have another two children.”

My eyes widened to the size of Olympic pools. “Four kids!”

She grinned. “Max wants six! I compromised at four. He wants a
big
family around him at all times. Says it makes working hard worth it, and he loves coming home after a full day’s work to the sound of children. Plans to name one of them after you and Maddy, too. And I agreed.”

I narrowed my eyes. “Cyndi, you already did that with adding Saunders as Jackson’s middle name. You don’t have to do that. At all. Really.”

She shook her head. “We want our kids to know their aunties and grow up with them in their lives. Know that the names we chose were given because good people loved them. Who better than their aunties?”

Um, I could think of a hundred more deserving people, but it would just fall on deaf ears. I’d found out the hard way that when Max and Cyndi made decisions, they were a hardcore team and did not break for anyone. They were the type of people anyone would want in their family. People always willing to have your back, love you no matter what, and put you first. Another reason to be thankful.

The sound of tires crunching on the drive and Isabel’s little feet plunking down the stairs in a mad dash announced that Maddy and Matt had just arrived.

H
and in hand
, Wes and I walked through the trees on my brother’s property.

“Max is a great guy,” Wes said, maneuvering around a giant log.

I smiled and squeezed his hand. “He is. The best.”

“And your sister, wow. It’s like meeting the exact opposite of you, yet somehow not.” The little lines on his brow became more visible when he pinched his lips together.

I chuckled. “Maddy is love. Everything about her exudes it. She’s a free spirit that way. Only instead of having the hippie nature a typical free spirit has, she’s the intelligent, nose-stuck-in-a-book type who doesn’t let anything bring her down. I think that’s what draws Matt to her. He’s more reserved, conservative, but his family is really kind and completely committed to him and Maddy sharing their life together.”

Wes nodded. “That’s good. It’s probably nice to know that you don’t have to take care of everything for her anymore.”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. You’d think that, but I’ve spent my life taking care of her. Making sure everything was as perfect as I could make it. It was kind of my purpose. Now, she’s killing it in school, close to getting her bachelor's. Max has already paid off the next few years of schooling so that she can get her master's and doctorate. The Rains pay for her and Matt’s apartment so they don’t have to work and can focus on school. And now that she has money, again because Max made sure of it, she doesn’t need me for anything.”

Wes stopped in the middle of a clearing. We’d walked a good quarter mile or more from Maxwell’s ranch house. I could barely see it off in the distance through the copse of trees.

“Does it make you feel useless?” Wes tipped his head and waited for me to respond.

I thought about the word useless and how it pertained to the situation. “Not exactly. More un-needed. I’m not used to being unnecessary to my sister.”

He scoffed. “I wouldn’t go so far as to say you’re unnecessary to your sister. I could tell from the second she arrived that you're her touchstone. Even though she knew everyone in that room aside from me, it was
you
she immediately went to,
you
she sat next to at dinner,
you
she hovered around. Mia, I think you’re far more than just her sister. You’re the center of her world. Just like you’re the center of mine.”

Man I loved him. He knew exactly the right thing to say to make me feel better. “I know she’s growing up and things are changing. It’s just hard. I’ve been responsible for her since she was five years old.”

Wes’s jaw hardened, and a muscle ticked in his cheek. “You had no business being responsible for your sister. You were only ten years old. Your mother and father made some bad choices, and although things worked out for you and Madison in the end, you still shouldn’t have had to give up your own childhood to make it so. That’s not how we’re going to raise our children,” he said with a hard edge.

Perfect timing to bring up the topic we’d hadn’t really ever discussed. “So you want children then?” I asked, trying to sound nonchalant. As much as I’d have liked to have a child or two, I wasn’t dead set on the idea like some of the people I knew, breeder Cyndi for one.

Wes’s head snapped up. “Of course I do. Don’t you?”

A breath I didn’t know I was holding while waiting for his answer left my lungs in a plume of mist into the Texas sky. “With you, I do.”

He came over to me and loosely grasped my hips. I was glad he did. A conversation like this needed to be had while touching the other.

“I’d never really thought about it before you, which I think says a lot about our relationship.”

He grinned one of those heart-stopping grins that left me wanting to crawl up his body and take him right here, out in the open field.