A Merry Little Christmas (9 page)

Lara let out a breath. “You’re doing great. Daniel, I appreciate your concern for Mrs. Muraya and Tobias. It’s wonderful that you—”

“Just a sec.” He whipped his phone out of his pocket and listened for a moment. “Yeah? Really? Did you tell Dad?” he rushed through the questions. “No, she’s standing right here. Okay, okay.”

He dropped the phone into his pocket and turned to Lara with an imploring look. “Dr. Crane, you have to come. Ben says the baby’s crying, and Tabitha is feeling really bad.”

Lara knew the circumstances must be frightening to the young men. If for a moment she believed Tabitha were dangerously ill, she would certainly step in, but Daniel seemed to be describing an illness that was at worst a case of the flu. Though she feared the Maddox family might interpret her resistance to help as indifference, Lara understood the importance of allowing them to work together at resolving this situation. Experience had taught her that when local families reached out to assist international students during difficult times, everyone benefited.

“Daniel,” she said, “I want you to tell your father what’s going on. He can help you and Ben handle this. I’m guessing that Tabitha has a touch of the flu. I know she freezes her extra milk, so Tobias won’t go hungry. Thaw it in the microwave and make sure it’s not too hot before you put it into his bottle.”

“Aw, come on, Dr. Crane. We don’t know how to do that kind of stuff. Please…you can’t say no. They’re your family.”

“The Murayas are
your
family, Daniel. Go home and talk to your dad. I have every confidence that the three of you can handle it.”

“Oh, great. This is just great.” Daniel’s face was pale. “He’s gonna freak.”

Lara rolled her eyes. “He’ll adjust.”

She picked up her purse and edged Daniel out into the hallway. He was still bemoaning his fate as she locked her office and led him down the steps and out the front door.

“You’ll do fine, Daniel,” she said. “I trust you.”

As she walked toward her car, the snow that had been threatening all day suddenly came sifting down onto Lara’s shoulders and nose. Puffy white flakes danced across the sidewalk, and she waved to Daniel, who had pulled up his jacket hood and was trudging toward home. It troubled her to entrust Tabitha Muraya and her baby to the Maddox clan. But if she did have the flu, no doubt she’d be feeling better by the next day.

Snow was falling fast as she negotiated the short drive to her house and pulled into the garage. Snowed in on a cold winter evening. Never mind about the Chinese food. An evening curled up on the couch in her pajamas, sipping hot apple cider and munching on popcorn might actually be enjoyable.

Lara lay basking in bubbles, adrift in the fragrance of jasmine and vanilla. She imagined her students scurrying away from school to begin the holiday season. Some would be a little sad. Others would rejoice. A few might sit alone, watching television and waiting for classes to start up again. But most would gather with friends and family, eat favorite foods, sing, laugh and return refreshed for the new semester.

No doubt the first day of school they would all want to drop by her office to regale her with their adventures, Lara realized. How many years had she been through this same routine? She began counting back, remembering faces and stories, getting sleepy and slightly chilled in the bubbly water…and then she became aware that someone was pounding on her door.

Instantly, she knew who it was. She gasped and sat up in the tub. What on earth could have happened? Was it Tabitha? Or Tobias?

The hammering intensified as she rose dripping from the water, grabbed a towel, patted her face dry and threw on a bathrobe. She was tying the belt as she stepped into her slippers and ran into the living room.

Peering through the small window in the door, she saw him standing on her porch. He wore a knitted cap and a navy down jacket, and his blue eyes stared back at her.

“What’s going on, Jeremiah?” she asked as she pulled open the door. “Has something happened?”

Jeremiah stormed into the room and studied her for a moment. His stony face suddenly softened, registering a dawning surprise as he took in her chenille robe, her damp, pinned-up hair and her floppy pink slippers. “Were you in the bathtub?” he asked.

“Would you please tell me what you’re doing here?”

“Tabitha’s sick.” He began to pace back and forth across the living room floor. “Very sick. We know it could be the flu—the boys both had that, and we rode it out. But the fever seems too high, and she’s sweating and vomiting. Daniel looked up tropical diseases on his computer. There are dozens—Ebola, malaria, smallpox, dengue, yellow fever. The list goes on and on. She’s too weak to tell us much of anything. I called the emergency room, and they said I should bring her in. So Daniel and I drove her through the snow. But Ben can’t get Tobias to take his bottle, and neither can I. He’s going crazy. Lara, I need you.”

For a moment she could only stand and stare at him. Had he really said those words? This self-sufficient man who always got what he wanted…did he actually
need
her? She pushed her hands down into the pockets of her robe.

“What about taking the baby to the hospital?” she asked. “If a nursing mother isn’t too sick, they—”

“No way.” His eyes flashed with alarm. “Tabitha’s practically delirious. The E.R. doctors wheeled her off right away. They said she might have something contagious. It might be some tropical disease. Can I bring Tobias over here?”

“To my house? But his crib and diapers are over there. The milk is in the Murayas’ freezer.” Lara’s instinct to protect the baby battled with her certainty that Jeremiah could handle this.

“Look, you’ve raised two kids,” she told him, her annoyance growing. “Surely you can manage a fussy baby for one night.”

“No.” His shoulders sagged and he rubbed the back of his neck. “I, uh…I didn’t help much when Daniel and Benjamin were little. I was a lousy husband. A terrible dad. I didn’t do my part with the boys, and I have no idea how to take care of Tobias.”

“And you think I do?”

“Well…you’re a woman.”

“Unbelievable!” She threw up her hands and walked away from him. “I’m a woman so I’m automatically supposed to know how to take care of a baby, is that it? Well, I don’t have children, and I don’t have brothers and sisters, so I don’t know a thing about it. I’ve been alone my whole life, and I intend to stay that way.”

“Too bad!” he shot back at her. “You put the Murayas in my life, and now I’m in yours. You’re not alone, Lara. You can’t just go around doing good deeds and then sneak back to your little shell. You live in this world, and I’m a part of it, so you’re stuck with me.”

“Is this about you…or Tobias?”

“It’s about
you.
Stop backing out and pushing away and running off. You are involved, and tonight we need you. All of us. Now, go put on some clothes and then get into my car, come over to my house and help me take care of the baby.”

“Is that an order?”

“Yes, ma’am, it is.”

“Fine. I can take orders. I can give them, too. Sit down in that chair, and don’t you dare move a muscle until I get back out here.”

Helpless with frustration—and even worse, the knowledge that he was right about her—Lara stomped into the bedroom and slammed the door. As she tore off her robe and began to dress, she mentally admonished herself for giving in. And then she berated Jeremiah.

He was correct that she enjoyed retreating to her little house. Was that wrong? Jesus had taken breaks from healing, teaching and doing miracles to drift out to sea on a boat or slip up into the mountains to pray. Lara had the right to privacy.

She stepped into a pair of jeans and pulled them to her waist. None of the other families hammered on her door or barged into her house. Well…there was that time one of the international students had been caught shoplifting. And the day the INS threw three young men into jail for working more hours than their student visas allowed. Okay, and that evening a religious discussion in the student union building nearly erupted into all-out warfare. She had been called out of her home to deal with those crises. And a few others.

But she didn’t want to go to Jeremiah’s house. She didn’t want to ride in his car or look into his blue eyes or listen to his voice. She didn’t want to want what she wanted.

Simple as that.

Lara threw on a T-shirt and sweater, grabbed her coat and stepped back out into the living room. Jeremiah was talking on his phone.

“We’re coming, we’re coming,” he said as he strode back and forth across the wood floor. “Calm down. Feed it a banana.
Him.
Feed him a banana. Well, mash it up, Benjamin! You can do that much, for Pete’s sake. And call Daniel to check on Tabitha. Yes, okay, we’re on our way.”

Lara pulled a cap down over her curls. “You got out of the chair,” she said. “You failed to obey my orders.”

He appeared confused for a moment, then he gave a sheepish grin. “Your tree. It’s real. I had to get up and smell it.”

Lara glanced across the room at the small Christmas fir. Boxes of decorations sat around it, ready for the evening of tree trimming, popcorn and hot cider she had planned. But she noted that the glistening angel she always put at the top was already perched in place, gazing down at her and Jeremiah with a beatific smile.

J
eremiah opened the front door of his house and stepped into the foyer as Daniel and Benjamin crowded in behind him to get out of the cold. After dropping Lara off at his house earlier that night, Jeremiah and Benjamin had driven back to the hospital to check on Tabitha. During their journey, the snow had turned into rain, and the rain into ice. With temperatures rising and falling, the roads treacherous and people already overdoing the Christmas holiday, the hospital had maximum traffic. Tabitha had been transferred to an isolation ward, but getting information about her condition had proved to be a nightmare.

“You guys hit the hay,” Jeremiah told his sons. “Daniel, you’re going over to work on Miss Ethel’s house in the morning, right? Benjamin, you’ve still got school. I’ll check on Tobias.”

“And Dr. Crane.” Benjamin gave his father a sly smile. “It’s okay, Dad. We know how you feel about her. It’s fine with me and Daniel.”

“Daniel and me,” Jeremiah corrected as he shrugged out of his coat. “And you don’t know a thing about it. Dr. Crane is here because she runs the international student program. She’s helping us out until Peter gets home. I wonder if he’s made it to Dallas yet. Did Tabitha give you that phone number?”

Both boys shook their heads. Well, they would visit Tabitha at the hospital again in the morning and get the information from her then. The main thing now was to make sure Lara had been able to cope with the baby while the men were away. Jeremiah would take a quick look at his answering machine, grab a granola bar from the pantry and head over to the cottage to check on them.

As Daniel and Benjamin started up the stairs to their rooms, Jeremiah pulled off his cap. A shower of water droplets scattered across the marble floor. He hung the cap on a hook in the foyer’s closet and stepped into the living room.

The sight that met his eyes nearly took his breath away. In a rocking chair beside the fire, Lara cradled the sleeping baby. Red-gold curls tumbled around her face while her green eyes gazed at him, and for a moment he imagined himself transported into a Renaissance portrait of the Madonna and her Holy Child. A soft, maternal glow radiated from the woman’s face. Her blue sweater and jeans blurred into a formless shape around the baby wrapped in his white blanket. The only thing missing was the lowing of cattle and the choir of angels.

“How is Tabitha?” Lara asked him in a low voice.

“Not well.” He walked silently across the carpet toward her, the spell not quite broken. “The doctors don’t know what’s wrong yet. They’re trying to get in touch with a tropical disease specialist. Infectious disease.”

“Don’t worry. Tabitha’s been in the States nearly a year and has given birth to a son. If she had brought something contagious from Africa, we would have known before now.”

He bent over and looked down into the folds of the velvety blanket. Tobias drifted in sleep, his eyes closed and his lips plump and pink. Lara rocked back and forth, holding him tightly.

“I found Tabitha’s milk in the freezer,” she whispered. “She had stockpiled quite a bit. It should get us through tomorrow. The cottage was cold, so I gathered some supplies and brought Tobias back over here.”

“Sure, that’s great. What about the crib?”

“I’ll hold him.”

“All night?” He pulled up a chair and sat down across from Lara. “You need your sleep.”

“I can sleep here. I had dozed off before you came home.” Her eyes deepened. “How sick is she, Jeremiah? Tell me the truth.”

“It’s worse than any flu I’ve ever seen. She was shivering and sweating. She kept calling out for Peter. No matter how many times I told her he was in Dallas, she couldn’t get it through her head. She cried a lot about Tobias, and she kept saying things in Swahili.”

“Poor Tabitha. We’ve got to get her family back here. I’ll talk to the president of Reynolds tomorrow. Somehow we’ll figure out a way. The college has benefactors and special funds. We can fly the Murayas home if we have to.”

They sat in silence, comfortable together for the first time. Jeremiah leaned back in the chair and watched the glowing blaze cast a flicker of shadows on Lara’s face. She stared at the flames.

“What’s the weather like?” she murmured.

“Frightful,” he said. “The fire, however, is definitely delightful.”

She smiled. “Well, I guess we have no choice but to let it snow.”

“Actually, it’s been raining. And freezing.”

“Uh-oh. I was planning to go Christmas shopping.”

“I’m afraid you’re stuck,” Jeremiah chuckled. “My house is yours.”

She glanced at him a moment, then turned away quickly. Again they lapsed into a quiet peace. Jeremiah tried to recall the last time he had felt so warm, so relaxed, so perfectly at home in his own house. There were no teenagers running up and down the stairs. No pizza delivery men ringing the doorbell. No cell phones warbling or televisions blaring. It was just Lara and the baby. And him.

“I’m sorry,” he told her. “About tonight—banging on your door and ordering you around. And before—not wanting to take in the Murayas. After making so many mistakes in my early adulthood, I’ve tried to be a good father. A good man. But I’m probably pretty much the same guy I always was.”

“Actually, you’ve changed a lot. You’re very different from the man I met a few weeks ago.”

He looked at her in surprise. “How?”

“You have an African family living on your property. You roasted a goat in your backyard. You ate Thanksgiving dinner at the I-House and brought your parents. You’re repairing Miss Ethel’s home. And now you’re sitting beside a fire with Tobias and me.”

“That last part is my favorite.”

She shifted in the chair. “The important thing is that you’re open. You’ve reached out to people. And you’ve let people in.”

“What about you?”

“I’ve always reached out.”

“Not to me. You won’t touch me, and you won’t let me near. Your walls are so high I don’t stand a chance of getting over.”

“You don’t have to. I’m already inside. See? Here I am in your living room.”

He shook his head. “You did everything in your power to keep from coming over here to help the boys and me.”

“I have to maintain a professional distance. I can’t get too involved personally with my students.”

“I’m not your student, Lara. Why won’t you get involved with me?”

She swallowed. “Why would you want me to? Jeremiah, you can have anyone. Melissa or whoever you choose. I’m not available.”

Once again, he knew a sickening thud in the pit of his stomach. “It’s because I’m divorced, isn’t it? I have too much baggage. The boys, the years alone, the failed marriage.”

“We both have baggage. I just don’t think yours matches mine. I spent six years wearing the engagement ring of a man who didn’t have time for me. It was long ago, but it’s still very real. He worked for the famine relief agency that had hired me, and we met in France. He was with the home office. He trotted around the globe, stopping now and then to remind me that I was in love with him. Then away he went again. Alone, I earned my doctorate and started working at Reynolds, and then suddenly one day I woke up. I realized he wasn’t ever going to make a life with me, and that was okay. I didn’t want to be married. I hated having my emotions jerked around and played with. I despised wondering about him and fretting about the future and always feeling like something was missing. It just wasn’t worth it, you know?”

Jeremiah sighed. “Sure I know—I
was
that guy. Overcommitted to my work and undercommitted to my family. Gone all the time. Selfish to the core.”

He reached out and took her free hand. For a moment, he held it, stroking down the length of her fingers one by one. “Lara, I’m trying very hard not to be him anymore. And I think you really don’t want to be the un-attached, unemotional, uninvolved woman he turned you into. When I look in your eyes…when I watch you with Miss Ethel…or my boys…I see the tender woman inside. You hold Tobias, and…and I believe you wish you could turn back time as much as I do.”

The baby whimpered and she drew her hand away to tuck in his blankets. “We can’t turn back time, Jeremiah. I’m who I am.”

“I like who you are. You’re beautiful. Smart. Gifted. Kind. Generous.”

“Stop.” She blew out a breath. Tobias squirmed, and she lifted him to her shoulder and began to pat his bottom. “Is this what you say to women? Don’t say it to me. Don’t play with me. Words like that are scary, Jeremiah. They’re disturbing. They make me feel…”

“Feel what?”

“Oh, I don’t know!” She stood, and with the sudden movement, the baby began to cry. “I’ve put that part of me away. That swooning, romantic, idealistic girl. The hope and the desire. Imagining how it could be and wanting it. No—I’m not doing that anymore.”

“I wasn’t lying when I said what I think of you, Lara,” he said, standing and walking beside her as she paced the floor and jiggled Tobias up and down. “I meant every word. I feel different about you than I’ve felt about any other woman. It’s because
you’re
different.”

“No, no, no. It’s just the weather and the baby and all the changes. You’re off-kilter. Give it time, and you’ll be back to normal.”

“I don’t want to go back—ever.” He tried to get her to look at him, but she had turned her face away as the baby’s sobs increased in intensity. “I like listening to Miss Ethel talk about the Depression and the war and the telephone company. I loved roasting that goat with the Murayas. You brought me those things, Lara. Why won’t you let me near you?”

“Here. Here, take this baby.” She held Tobias out, and now Jeremiah saw that her cheeks were streaked with tears. “Take him and give him some milk. I’m going home.”

“Don’t go, Lara. Please. Just talk to me.”

He tried to maneuver the wailing little boy as he followed Lara into the foyer. Fists clenched and head bobbing, Tobias cut loose with a screech that could wake the dead. Jeremiah struggled to control him and try to prevent Lara from putting on her coat. It was impossible. As the baby wailed, she tugged her hat over her curls.

“The milk is in the freezer,” she said, sniffling. “And don’t do this to me ever again, Jeremiah Maddox.”

With that, she pulled open the door and stepped outside. Jeremiah had no choice but to hurry toward the kitchen, baby in arms, praying he could remember how to work the defroster on the microwave.

Where were the bottles? How hot should the milk be? Did people sterilize things these days? He pulled open the freezer door and spotted the small white bags Lara had brought over from the guest cottage. Grabbing one, he tried to make soothing noises while he opened the microwave door.

“It’s okay, Tobias,” he murmured. “Don’t cry. I’ve got you, buddy. I’ll have this milk ready in just a second, and you’re gonna be feeling a lot better before you know it. If I could just…set you down for…”

“Give him to me.”

Jeremiah turned to find Lara standing in the kitchen with her arms out. “You brought me over here. I don’t have my car. And besides, the roads are covered with ice.”

He straightened, digested the information and grinned. Well, well, well.

Lara slept in a recliner with Tobias in her arms until she woke to find him a soggy bundle, still blissfully lost in dreamland. Jeremiah had been right—he didn’t know a
thing
about babies. At least she’d had some experience with children through her work with the famine relief agency and the families in the international program. Somehow she and Jeremiah had managed to warm the milk, pour it into a bottle and get Tobias to drink from something that was most definitely not his mother. They had changed his diaper and found him a clean dry blanket.

It had been well after midnight when the baby fell asleep again and Lara sank exhausted into the recliner. Though she had told Jeremiah to go upstairs and get a good night’s sleep, he refused. So they drifted off together in separate chairs, in stocking feet, with the fire warming their toes.

The sound of a footfall on the staircase brought Lara awake, but Jeremiah slept on. She studied the man beside her, his dark hair and lashes, the planes of his face softened and relaxed. Recalling what he had said the night before, Lara wondered if he really meant those words.
Beautiful. Smart. Gifted. Kind. Generous.
Did he see her that way, when she had come to think of herself as plain, stoic, evenhanded and professional?

She could hear someone in the kitchen, and she suspected it was Benjamin, preparing his breakfast before heading off to school. What would he think if he knew what his father had said the night before to the director of Reynolds University’s International Student Program? Had Jeremiah considered his sons at all when he spoke so openly to her?
You won’t touch me, and you won’t let me near. Your walls are so high I don’t stand a chance of getting over,
he had said. Did he even think about how his two boys might feel if their father breached Lara’s walls?

Studying Jeremiah again, she listened to his deep, slow breathing. Her heart swelled as she permitted herself to imagine that picture she had dreamed of once, long ago. A man and a woman, united, married, in love. A home. A fire. A family. Arms to hold her in the night, hands to wipe away her tears, ears to listen to her hopes and fears and sorrows.