Family for the Holidays Read online

  “Sure,” Shandie agreed.

  “Le’s go!” Kayla said, apparently equally as excited by the idea of riding in Dax’s truck as she had been by the thought of riding one of his motorcycles.

  “You’re the boss,” Dax decreed, leading the way through his showroom, locking his own shop after them and pointing out his truck parked in front.

  It was a black behemoth big enough to cart two motorcycles in the bed and to haul a trailer with four more if need be, he explained as they got in and went the short distance to Shandie’s car.

  Once they arrived there, Shandie left Kayla with Dax and got the safety seat, but when she returned with it to the truck, Dax was waiting on the passenger side to put it in for her.

  Shandie appreciated the courtesy, but he didn’t know what he was doing and after a few failed attempts to figure it out she took over. As she did he went around to stand by while Kayla stood behind the truck’s steering wheel, bouncing wildly in her mimicry of driving.

  Shandie had to smile to herself when he began to teach her daughter to make engine noises, but she didn’t comment on how funny it sounded.

  Then the car seat was strapped in tightly to the center of the truck’s bench seat.

  “Okay, climb in,” Shandie told the little girl.

  After some reluctance to leave the wheel, Kayla did get into the carrier, wiggling until her heavy quilted coat wasn’t bunched up around her, then settling and promptly taking off her knitted hat and mittens.

  It was something she inevitably did the minute Shandie got her in the car seat, and Shandie had given up fighting to stop it because she never won anyway—as soon as she wasn’t looking, off went hat and gloves every time.

  As Shandie buckled her daughter in, Dax got behind the wheel once more. “Where to?” he asked.

  Shandie recited her address in the course of situating herself again in the passenger seat and closing the side door so they could get going once more.

  “Huh?”

  “It isn’t far,” she said as if his huh had indicated that he thought it was.

  “No, I know.”

  “Is it a bad neighborhood or something?”

  “I live on the same street—so maybe,” he joked.

  “Which house?” Shandie asked, surprised to learn they lived near each other.

  “The big gray one on the corner closest to New Town.”

  “That is a big house. But I thought a family lived there with a teenager.”

  “I rent out the main floor and live in the apartment on the second level. The income from the renters helps tide things over during the slow winter months. What house are you in?”

  “The small yellow one, second from the other end.”

  “So we’ve been within walking distance of each other there, too? I really must have been in a fog lately.”

  “Well, at least you won’t have to go far out of your way,” Shandie said.

  “Wouldn’t have mattered if I had needed to,” he assured her with a sideways glance that seemed along the same lines as his comment about not fixing the lock on the utility room door and blocking big girls from coming into his garage.

  Shandie didn’t know what to say except, “Well, I appreciate the lift,” and only after she’d said it did she realize he was giving a bit of a lift to her ego, too, since she was feeling flattered to be flirted with for the first time in a very long while.

  Kayla caught her attention then. Sitting in her carrier between them, out of the blue the toddler began to rub the sleeve of Dax Traub’s leather jacket.

  It did look as soft as butter, and Shandie was aware of a curiosity of her own about whether or not it felt the way it looked. But being three and having few inhibitions, Kayla merely reached over and rubbed Dax’s arm.

  It took him by surprise and he glanced from the road to the chubby hand caressing his coat.

  “Kayla…” Shandie reprimanded.

  “Feels like blankie,” the little girl countered.

  “It isn’t blankie, though, so keep your hands to yourself,” Shandie said, embarrassed.

  Or was it not only embarrassment she was feeling? Was there also some envy over the fact that her daughter was getting to touch Dax Traub?

  It had better just be embarrassment, she told herself.

  “It’s okay,” he assured Shandie as Kayla went right on fingering the leather the way she did the satin edge of her favorite blanket when she was falling asleep.

  “Ever’body was talkin’ ’bout you today,” the little girl said then.

  Dax aimed another look at Shandie, and she could tell he was taking her daughter’s remark to mean that Shandie had been talking about him today.

  “Not me,” she was quick to say. Too quick. “But you were the talk of the beauty shop.” Although she hadn’t thought that Kayla had been eavesdropping as much as she had been.

  One of Dax’s eyebrows arched suspiciously. “Why?”

  “A few of the customers knew each other and were wondering if you’ll go to some dinner they’re having tomorrow night?” She finished that in the form of a question because it wasn’t as if she was clear about what she was referring to.

  Dax turned his eyes to the road ahead, and as Shandie looked over at his perfect profile she saw his chin raise slightly in what might have been defensiveness or defiance or maybe both—she couldn’t tell. But it had a stiffness to it that let her know she’d hit a sore spot.

  “It’s none of my business,” she said in a hurry to provide an excuse for him not to talk about it.

  “It’s okay,” he said. Then, when Shandie expected him to drop it, he added, “Some old friends are having a get-together is all.”

  “A pre-Thanksgiving dinner,” Shandie repeated what she’d overheard.

  “Right.”

  “And you may not go?” she asked cautiously.

  “It’s pretty unlikely, yeah,” he said in a gruff voice that was almost more to himself than to her.

  “It sounded nice,” she offered. “Good food. Everyone’s looking forward to it…”

  “Probably more if they can count on my not being there.”

  “I didn’t get that impression.”

  “No? What impression did you get?”

  Shandie shrugged within the navy-blue peacoat she had buttoned to her throat. “I got the impression that they wanted you to go.”

  He gave her a look that said he doubted that.

  “Why would they invite you and not want you to be there? Especially if they’re old friends?”

  “Because now one of the old friends is coupled with my ex-fiancée, and my ex-wife has connected with my brother, who’s not so thrilled with me himself and…It’s complicated.”

  “Oh,” Shandie said, not telling him that she’d heard he’d had a fight with his brother. After all, she didn’t actually know anything about it, anyway. Or any details about any of the rest of what he’d just briefly outlined.

  “Still,” she felt inclined to persist, “I didn’t get the idea that anyone wanted you to miss the dinner.”

  “Yeah, well, I can’t say I’m too thrilled about going myself.”

  “Oh. Is this a group you want out of?” she asked, treading carefully.

  He shot her a quizzical look, as if he didn’t know why she’d ask that.

  “It happens,” she said in defense of her question. “People reach points in friendships and even in families where they just don’t want to be a part of it anymore.”

  “I thought we were only talking about some dumb dinner?”

  And clearly he didn’t welcome her sticking her nose into any more than that.

  Shandie took the hint and shrugged. “All I know is that if I were you, I’d go.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s Thanksgiving, the start of the holiday season, your friends are getting together, it sounds fun, and I say bury whatever hatchets there are. Go, have a good time, forget about anything else that’s gone on.”

  They�
�d reached their common street and her house. Dax pulled into her driveway. He put the engine into Park and applied the emergency brake but left the engine and the heater on as he slung one wrist over the top of the steering wheel and pivoted enough to look her eye-to-intense-espresso-brown-eye.

  Shandie might have thought he was angry except that around his lips was just the teaser of a mischief-filled smile.

  “I’ll go if you will,” he said offhandedly.

  “Me?” Shandie exclaimed. “Where did that come from? I wasn’t invited.”

  “Maybe I’m inviting you. I can bring someone, why not you? At least then I’d know that one of us would benefit from it.”

  “Why not me? Because whoever is going to be there doesn’t know me and I don’t know them—even the women who were talking about you today weren’t my clients and—”

  “That’s how you get to know people—you go somewhere, get introduced, spend some time with them.”

  “And I have Kayla and—”

  “That teenager whose family I rent to? She’s fifteen and she babysits for people in the neighborhood all the time. She’d probably be happy to stay with Kayla, and Kayla would love her. Wouldn’t you, Kayla?”

  “Can she make peanut butter and marsh’ allow sam’iches?” the three-year-old asked.

  “Probably,” Dax said.

  “Okay.”

  “Besides,” he said to Shandie again, “you said yesterday that you haven’t met anyone you’d consider a friend yet. This would give you the chance to get out and do that. To socialize.”

  “I just think you should go,” she contended. “That you might be sorry if you don’t. Besides, I wasn’t looking to get myself in on it.” Although it did appeal to her.

  “I didn’t think you were,” Dax assured. “Even though it does seem to have lit a spark in you.”

  “I wouldn’t say that,” Shandie lied.

  She wasn’t positive, but she thought he was teasing her. Toying with her to amuse himself—again like a true bad boy showing his ornery streak. But the more she thought about being included in the next night’s get-together, the more inclined she was to call what she thought might be his bluff and agree to go.

  Even if she did, though, she wasn’t going to let him turn this into something he did for her sake. “I think if you don’t go it could give a negative message that might end up with people reading more into it than you want them to. That is, if you genuinely aren’t looking to get out of this group. So, unless you want to cause problems and questions about why you wouldn’t have dinner with your old friends and your brother, you should go.”

  “Is that right?”

  “That’s what I think,” she said.

  “With nothing to base it on but some beauty shop gossip?”

  “With nothing to base it on but my own intuition and the sense I got from what little I overheard today. Your friends are wondering what’s going on with you, and if you don’t show up tomorrow night, they’ll be wondering even more.”

  “How about you?” he asked with a sly twinkle in his eyes. “Are you wondering what’s going on with me?”

  “It’s none of my business,” she repeated as if her curiosity about him wasn’t growing by the minute.

  Still he wasn’t forthcoming. He merely smiled more broadly. “Maybe you’ll find out if you come to that dinner with me.”

  “Would you feel better about it if you didn’t have to go alone?”

  He grinned. “Would you feel better about going if I say I’d feel better about going if I didn’t have to go alone?”

  Shandie was beginning to think this was a game she wasn’t any more likely to win than the struggle to keep Kayla’s hat and mittens on in the car seat. So she conceded.

  “Yes,” she said. “It does sound like fun, and it would give me a chance to meet some people. I think it would be good for you to go, and so if it would make you more comfortable, I’d be happy to go with you. As long as it was just as friends and as your moral support, to pay you back for taking us home tonight and fixing my car tomorrow.”

  His grin got even wider as he volleyed once more in the game she’d been trying to put an end to. “If that makes you feel better—just as friends, payback for the ride and for the jump tomorrow, no strings attached.”

  Shandie took a deep breath and sighed. “Okay.”

  He laughed as if he’d thoroughly enjoyed whatever it was they’d just played. “Gee, thanks,” he said facetiously.

  Shandie rolled her eyes at him and released the portion of Kayla’s car seat that kept the little girl contained. Then she got out of the truck and turned back to help Kayla climb from the carrier. The three-year-old jumped across that section of seat into Shandie’s arms so Shandie could lift her down to the ground.

  While she did, Dax unclicked the belt that held the safety seat and took it with him to cart up to the front door behind Shandie and Kayla.

  “Can Dax-like-Max-the-dog have sam’iches with us?” Kayla asked as they made the trek.

  “You aren’t having peanut butter and marshmallow sandwiches for dinner, Kayla, no matter what,” Shandie said, recognizing her daughter’s tactics and uncomfortable with the spot the child’s question put her in. But after already considering asking Dax to stay, she’d thought better of it.

  “But I wan’ peanut butter and marsh’ allow sam’iches!” Kayla insisted.

  Shandie unlocked the door. “Go in and take off your coat,” she said, rather than getting sucked into what she knew was likely to be a battle.

  “Then can I have ’em?” Kayla bargained.

  “Maybe you can have marshmallows in hot chocolate before bed if you eat a good—not sweet—dinner,” Shandie countered to avoid the fight.

  That appeased her daughter, who paused to say “Bye” to Dax before going inside.

  Alone on the porch with Dax, Shandie turned and took the car seat from him. “Thanks,” she said, echoing the word but not the facetious tone he’d used moments earlier.

  “Sure,” he answered. “Want me to send Misty down to meet you?”

  “Misty?”

  “The babysitter,” he said with a nod in the direction of his house up the street.

  “It’s cold and a school night. I’d hate to make her come out. Maybe you could just give me her number and I’ll call her?” Shandie suggested, taking a pen and one of her business cards out of her purse.

  She handed them both to him, and Dax wrote on the back of the card in the space allotted for appointment dates and times. Then he returned it to her.

  “I put my numbers on there, too. In case you want to back out of tomorrow night for some reason,” he said, letting her know he wouldn’t hold her to something he’d essentially taunted her into in the first place.

  Shandie couldn’t think of any reason she’d want to back out, but she didn’t tell him that.

  Instead she said, “I’ll see you in the morning, then? With your battery charger?”

  “First thing,” he promised before he said good-night and retraced his steps to his still-running truck.

  Only in his wake did it strike Shandie that she’d just made what could be considered a date with him.

  With Dax Traub.

  And that was when a reason to back out of dinner with him the following night did occur to her.

  It was a date.

  With Dax Traub….

  Chapter Three

  What was going on with him?

  It was the question that Shandie had said people were throwing around the beauty shop, and as Dax got ready for Wednesday night’s dinner, it was something he was wondering himself. Again—because the truth was, it was something he’d been wondering for a while now.

  He’d turned thirty this year, and it had hit him hard. It was an age, he thought as he got into the shower, when there was no more denying he was an adult, that his life had gotten to where it was going. And he’d had to take stock.

  His friends, the guys he’d grown up with a
nd known all his life—Grant Clifton, Marshall and Mitchell Cates, Russ Chilton and even his own brother, D.J.—were all around the same age. And yet if they looked back, they could all list success in their lives, their careers and in their relationships—since most of them had found women they wanted to spend their futures with. And where was he?

  Nowhere.

  Business was lousy. His marriage had lasted only a few years. That flash-in-the-pan engagement to Lizbeth Stanton…

  What was going on with him? he asked himself.

  He wished he knew.

  Maybe a better question was what the hell had happened to him.

  He’d been on top of the world all through high school. He’d thought he was cool, and so had everyone else. Girls had fallen all over him, there had never been a party he wasn’t invited to, a person who hadn’t wanted to hang out with him. He’d snatched Thunder Canyon’s golden girl from under every other guy’s nose—apparently including his brother’s, even though he hadn’t known how D.J. had felt about Allaire at the time. And fresh from graduation and his honeymoon, he’d begun what had proved to be one of the most stupendous winning streaks motorcycle racing had ever seen.

  He’d had it all, and he’d been sure that his entire future would be the stuff of dreams….

  Shampoo suds were running down his face. He clamped his eyes shut, stepped under the spray of the shower and let the water beat down on him.

  The stuff of dreams…

  Then his fresh-out-of-high-school marriage to Allaire had tanked.

  And fast on the heels of that, his biggest dream had ended in a nightmare against a retaining wall.

  And when all the dust had settled and the stitches had come out and the casts and bandages had been removed, he’d found himself with no choice but to try picking up what pieces he could salvage from what was left.

  That was where the shop had begun.

  But it wasn’t booming, and he knew why. Sure, he was good with an engine, with the mechanics, working with his hands, but his heart just wasn’t in the business that seemed like nothing more than a consolation prize.

  So here he was, a washout at thirty. A loser. Or at least that was what he felt like. A royally messed-up, couldn’t-make-anything-work-out, didn’t-know-what-he-wanted loser. Who probably deserved the strained way all his friends were acting around him and the fight he’d had with his brother.