Dirty: The Complete Series (Secret Baby Romance Love Story) (51 page)

The plan was the same as it had been every
year of Landon’s life: we would go to my parents’ house for Christmas Eve, open
presents early on Christmas morning, eat breakfast with the family, and then I
would take Landon to Joanne’s parents’ house about an hour outside of the city
to spend some time with them. I wanted to keep Landon in touch with my in-laws,
his grandparents on his mother’s side, even more than anyone else in Joanne’s
family. They had lost their daughter at the same time that I had lost my wife
and Landon had lost his mom; I didn’t want them to ever think that I was
ignoring them or trying to forget Joanne.

“I’m all finished, Dad!” Landon came into
my bedroom with his suitcase in his hands, looking as proud as he had when the
Principal at his school had announced that he’d won the award for Most Improved
Reader for his grade level.

“I’ll be the judge of that,” I said,
grinning at my son. Landon threw his suitcase onto my bed and I put aside the
clothes I was trying to fold long enough to unzip it and look inside. Of
course, being five, Landon had no real concern for making sure any of his
packing was neat; so to make sure that he had everything that he was going to
need for the long weekend, I had to pull almost all of it out piece by piece. I
found his toothbrush, his pajamas, a few extra pairs of socks beyond what I’d
told him to pack, plenty of warm clothes. He’d snuck in a toy as well—but that
was fine with me. “Looks good, kiddo,” I said, turning to give him an approving
grin. “But this is a mess. Fold your clothes and put them back in.”

“Why does it have to look nice?” Landon
picked up one of his socks and pouted.

“Because then you’ll know where everything
is, and you’ll be able to fit as much as possible,” I explained. I pointed to
my own suitcase. “See?”

“Yeah, but you’ve got a lot more than I
do,” Landon pointed out. “I don’t have to worry about fitting things.”

“It’s a good habit anyway.”

I looked at Landon sharply for a moment,
wondering if he’d gotten overtired and was going to start throwing a tantrum
out of sheer boredom and worry. “Come on, bud. You know Santa can still make changes
to his big list.”

“Okay,” Landon said, shrugging. He began
to fold his clothes, and I went back to trying to make sure I had everything I
wanted to bring with me. I’d dropped Landon’s “Santa” presents at my parents’
house a few days before, and the ones that were coming from me were wrapped and
in a big bag with all the rest.

“Are you excited to see your cousins?” I
asked as I shoved a charging cable into one of the compartments on my suitcase
as a backup to the one I kept in my car.

“Yeah,” Landon said. “More excited for
desserts.” My parents always had a huge table of sweets set up starting
Christmas Eve, through until Christmas night; it was the universal favorite of
all of the kids—as it had been when I was Landon’s age. He continued folding and
putting his clothes into the suitcase for a moment and then spoke again. “I
wish Mack was coming.”

“Well, she’s got her own family she needs
to see,” I said.
He’s getting really
attached to her. Maybe I shouldn’t have told him that she and I were dating.
“She’s going to have a really good time with her parents and brothers and
sisters and nieces and nephews.”

“Couldn’t they come over to Granny’s house
too?” Landon looked at me. I tried to laugh it off, but I worried that I’d
given Landon too much to hope for in the bet he’d made with me.

“Why would they do that? They’ve got a
perfectly good house of their own.” I looked into my suitcase and checked the
contents against the mental checklist I kept running through my head. “You’ll
see Mack again soon.”

“Okay,” Landon said. “Can I have as much
of the desserts as I want?”

“After you’ve had dinner, absolutely,” I
said. Landon pouted again, but he kept packing his things away, struggling with
a sweater with a weird shape. I started to suggest that I could help him and
then remembered what his teacher had told me about letting Landon do things
himself and only intervening if he actually asked for help.

“It’s going to be so much fun, buddy,” I
said, checking my suitcase once more. “We’ll have dinner, and there will be all
those sweets—the candy, and the cookies, Granny’s pies.”

“What are we going to do after that?”
Landon finished the last of his clothes and closed the lid on his suitcase,
turning to look up at me.

“Well, we’ll play games—you can play
anything you want. I think your Granny’s going to have Apples to Apples, and Monopoly,
and Uno. And I’m sure that your cousins are bringing their own games too. Maybe
before we leave you can go into the closet and find something you want to bring
with you.”

“But I might forget it.”

“I’ll let you put your name on the box so
that everyone knows it’s yours,” I promised.

“What are we going to do after the games?”

“Movies,” I said. “We’re going to watch
movies and have fun together until everyone goes to sleep.”

“And we’re going to make sure that Santa
has cookies and milk?”

I nodded. “Of course. We can’t let him go
without—he might give us all coal.”

“What about tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow you’re going to open all your
presents, and then we’re going to have a nice big breakfast with the family.” I
thought I had everything—I hoped, at least, that I did. “Then we’re going to
visit your Gramma and Granddaddy, and they’ll give you their presents to you.”

“I’m getting a lot of presents this year,”
Landon observed.

“You are! In fact, Mack got a present for
you, even. You’re going to be the most spoiled little boy on the planet.”

“No I won’t!” Landon frowned up at me. “I
am going to be nice even if I get all the presents in the world.”

I laughed. “I believe it shrimp.” I took a
deep breath and looked over the contents of my suitcase once more. “I think
we’re ready to go, don’t you?”

“Remember the presents,” Landon said. “You
told me remind you.”

“I did tell you to do that,” I agreed,
reaching out and tousling my son’s hair. “Okay. Let’s go look at the present
bag and make sure everything is in there, and then we can go.”

I made one last pass through the house to
check on everything; the last thing I needed was to leave something plugged in
where it could light on fire while I was gone. I checked again to make sure I
wasn’t forgetting anything in my luggage or in the present bag. I’d stashed
some stocking stuffers at my parents’ house as well; once the kids had all gone
to sleep, sometime after midnight, we’d all be going through and putting the
presents from Santa out, making Christmas happen for all of the young ones.

As I loaded everything into the car, I
thought about Landon’s insistence that he wished Mackenzie could be with us.
I’d brushed it off, trying to make sure he didn’t feel too let down about her
absence, but the questions had hit me harder than I’d let myself realize at
first. I wished that she was spending the holiday with us too; in spite of the
comments I’d made to Landon about how she’d be happier with her own family,
doing what she did every year—just like us—I wished I could show her to my
parents, and kiss her under the mistletoe, cheesy as that was. I wished that I
could have her with me while I put the Santa Claus presents under the tree and
stuffed stockings with goodies and worked with the other adults in my family
late into the night to make a magical Christmas happen. I wished that I could
have given her a present and watched her open it, and had her at my side for
Christmas breakfast—all the stupid little details that came along with a family
holiday.

But I still hadn’t lost the impression I’d
gotten of her during our last date, two days before; I still didn’t know what
she was thinking, how she felt for me. I played the things she’d said through
my mind as I pulled out onto the road, heading for my parents’ home. Everything
had been so awkward between us. I thought resignedly that I’d probably just
have to give up on Mackenzie altogether; and I dreaded the expense I was almost
surely going to face when Landon won his bet and I had to duplicate his
Christmas presents in honor of his win.

Chapter Seven - Mackenzie

I was still sleepy—I hadn’t gone to bed
until almost four in the morning—but as everyone piled around the Christmas
tree to start opening presents, I was at least happy. “Coffee for the
grownups,” my brother-in-law announced, wheeling a big cart my mom had gotten a
few years before just for that purpose into the room. “Juice for the kiddos,”
he added.

“What? Adults can’t have juice?” my
brother smirked at my sister’s husband.

“Which do you need more: caffeine or
vitamins?”

I laughed and settled into my usual seat
off to the side of the tree, where I could watch the kids opening all of their
presents but still be part of everything.

“Mack should get the first cup,” my sister
said. “She stayed up like a champ.”

“Did you see Santa Claus, Aunt Mack?”

I shook my head in response to my niece’s
question. “Just missed him, I think,” I said, twisting my face into a grimace.
“Which is actually good, since he would have skipped the house if we’d been
awake.” My sister, Evie—who was struggling to keep her kids all believing in
Santa Claus until the youngest was at least four—grinned at me.

Dad came into the living room, wearing a
big, fluffy Santa hat with his pajamas, and I accepted a cup of coffee with
milk and sugar from Evie as Dad started towards the tree. “It looks to me like
we’ve got some good kids here this year,” he said, surveying the enormous pile
of presents. “Who wants to start with Santa presents, and who wants to start
with family presents?”

My brother and sisters voted for Santa
presents first, my mom for family presents—along with me—and the kids, of
course, didn’t care. Dad called it a tie and started distributing presents as
they appeared in the pile, handing them off to whoever’s name was on the tag. All
of us went to work on ripping paper and untying ribbons, and I looked up every
so often to catch the reactions of my nieces and nephews as they unveiled one
new present after another.

“I was surprised at how late you stayed up
last night,” Evie said to me, putting aside a mug set that John got for her
after thanking him. “You been staying up late often these days?”

“Mack doesn’t have a
reason
to stay up late, if you know what I mean,” my brother Alex
called out.

“I have plenty of reasons,” I called back,
rolling my eyes at him. I finished unwrapping a present from my mom to find
that it was a cashmere scarf—absolutely beautiful. “Thanks, Mom!”

“No problem sweetie,” Mom called out
absently, tearing the paper on a big, lumpy box from one of the kids. “It looked
like it would be perfect for you.”

“So, are you going to be kissing anyone on
New Year’s Eve at Mom and Dad’s party?” I rolled my eyes at John’s question.

“I don’t know—are you? Because Angela’s
present doesn’t seem all that impressive. Maybe she’ll kiss me instead.”

“Guys, back off of her,” my brother Alex’s
wife, Liz said. “You do realize that if Mack settles down and has kids, none of
us are going to get as many presents from her, right?” Liz gave me a quick
smile that told me she was concerned about more than just a lack of presents
from me. I grinned back.

“It’s practically tradition for everyone
in the family over the age of eighteen to meddle in my love life,” I said,
shrugging off the questions. I took a sip of my coffee and went back to opening
the pile of gifts in front of me. I’d gotten a new pair of smartphone gloves, a
couple of new books, a bracelet my niece had made by hand, and other odds and
ends.

For a little while, at least, everyone was
too interested in the presents in front of them to even worry about giving me
grief about my love life, and I started to relax. My nieces and nephews took
turns coming up to me to give me a hug and kiss of thanks for their presents,
and I beamed at their excited reactions: Charlotte almost couldn’t wait to have
me help her figure out the art kit I’d gotten her, Evie had to keep Lacy from
shaking her new butterfly kit to pieces and killing the caterpillars inside.
Derrick put on the pieces of his superhero kit and opened the rest of his
presents with a cape and a mask on.

As the frenzy began to slow down, I sat
back, my new scarf draped around my neck, examining some of the more intricate
presents I’d gotten. “Didn’t you say you had a date with someone about a week
ago or so?” I rolled my eyes at Dad.

“It starts again,” I said, sighing. “I did
have a date, yes.”

“Was it a first date?” John leered at me.

“No, it was more like the fourth or so,” I
admitted. At least, I thought, if I gave them some kind of details about my
relationship with Patrick, they might let off of me for a while.

“Why didn’t you invite him over? You’re
old enough that we wouldn’t make you stay in separate rooms,” My mom said. I
laughed.

“He’s actually got his own family
Christmas to go to,” I told them. “He’s got a son, a five-year-old boy named
Landon.”