Harlequin Special Edition November 2014 - Box Set 1 of 2: A Weaver Christmas Gift\The Soldier's Holiday Homecoming\Santa's Playbook (16 page)

“You'd think, wouldn't you?”

Something in his tone gave her pause, but he was continuing forward and she either needed to keep up with him or get left behind.

She quickened her step.

They squeezed in between Angeline on one side and J.D. on the other. And before Jane could lift her plastic fork to her mouth, Casey warned his two sisters to behave.

“We always behave,” J.D. said defensively, but her expression was positively unholy.

“I don't know what you mean,” Angeline added, equally innocent.

“God save me from older sisters,” Casey muttered.

Jane couldn't stop the laughter from escaping. “I
am
an older sister, too,” she reminded.

Casey grinned and his gaze dropped to her lips. “Thankfully, not mine,” he drawled.

Her mouth went dry and she barely managed not to squirm on the picnic bench.

J.D. waved her hand in the air comically. “Good grief. Anyone else feel that heat wave?”

“I did,” Angeline said from the other side. “If that keeps up, the snow Uncle Matt predicted is going to melt into rain.”

“Don't you both have rug rats you should be keeping an eye on? Would seem more important than reminding me what pains in the butt you were growing up.”

J.D. laughed merrily and bumped her shoulder companionably against Jane's. “He must
really
like you,” she said, not entirely under her breath. “I think we're actually getting under his skin. And that hasn't happened since he was fourteen and had a crush on Jenny Lee Sanders. Remember the way he mooned around over her, Angel?”

Casey sighed loudly and looked across the table to his sisters' husbands. “Guys, where's the help?”

“You're on your own, man,” Brody said. He nodded toward Angeline. “She's the one I've gotta live with.”

Angeline stood and rounded the end of the table. Her thick dark hair streamed down the back of her coat and her dark eyes sparkled with lively humor. “
Gotta
live with?”

Brody hooked his arm around her waist and pulled her off her feet onto his lap. “Gotta live with,” he repeated, and gave her a smacking kiss.

“Get a room,” J.D. suggested on a laugh.

Jane bit the inside of her lip, catching Casey's gaze on her face. Beneath the table, she set her hand on his thigh. “Thanks.”

He shrugged as if he didn't know what she meant, when it was plain to her that he did. “They're a crazy bunch,” he said. “But I guess that's nothing you didn't already know.”

Maybe. But this was the first time she'd been part of the “bunch” from the inside.

Then a noise from the pavilion drew their attention to Pam Rasmussen, who'd commandeered one of the band's microphones to thank everyone for coming and announce that the official tree lighting was about to commence. The drummer did a long drumroll and the entire crowd seemed to hold its breath in anticipation as they waited for the trees to light.

And waited.

And waited.

“Oh, for pity's sake,” Pam finally said, sounding exasperated. “Somebody plug in the extension cord, will you?”

Laughter scattered around the park. Then suddenly the trees jumped to life, each one illuminated with hundreds of tiny white lights. The band started playing “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town” amid the applause and cheers that broke out. It didn't matter that the teenage boy singing lead had a voice that tended to crack every now and then, or that some of the trees hadn't lit at all.

It was still magical.

Looking around her, Jane saw the awestruck expression on young Early's face, echoed by a half-dozen others, and had to swallow the sudden knot in her throat.

“You're not looking at the trees,” Casey said close to her ear, and she shivered a little.

“Look at Early,” she whispered in return. “Have you ever seen a sweeter look on a child's face?”

Casey was silent for a moment. Then he exhaled, long and low. “There's something you need to know.”

Still caught in the same web as Early and everyone else, she turned her head. Casey's face was only inches from hers and she lost the ability to breathe. “Hmm?”

He slowly nudged a lock of her hair behind her ear. Touched her chin with his fingertips, then shook his head a little. “Why are you here with me, Janie?” His low voice was barely audible.

He was straddling the picnic bench beside her; where her shoulder touched his chest, it felt wide and solid beneath his leather jacket. Her feet were cold inside her boots and her butt was almost numb from the wooden bench. But she felt surrounded by his warmth as the rest of the crowd seemed to disappear.

Her heart beat so loudly it was nearly all she could hear. And she couldn't keep the truth to herself anymore. “Because I'm in love with you,” she whispered faintly.

He sighed again and slid his hand behind her hair, holding her head close to his. But his lips didn't touch hers. They grazed her cheek. “I'm sterile, Jane,” he said so softly next to her ear that she wasn't sure she heard him right.

But when she went to pull back to look at his face, his hand turned to iron, not letting her move a centimeter. “I can't make a baby with you.”

Her nose prickled and her eyes stung. “Casey—”

“Ever,” he added. “It's not something that can be fixed or changed or treated. You want a baby and I'm not man enough for the job.”

Then he let her go, pushed off the picnic bench and walked away.

It felt like an eternity that she sat there, frozen with shock.

But on the podium, the band was still claiming Santa Claus was on his way, the white lights on the dozens of trees were still twinkling and nobody around them—not even Casey's sisters—were paying them the least bit of attention.

He'd dropped a bomb on her world before walking away, and nobody had noticed.

She climbed off the picnic bench and hurried after him, not catching up to him until he was already out of the park and halfway down the block. And then she managed to overtake him only because she was running outright and he'd slowed, looking back at the sound of her boot heels.

“That's it,” she called out breathlessly. They were alone on the street. The band was still audible but muted by distance. “You make your...your announcement and walk away?”

He turned, propping his hands on his lean hips. “Sorry if I didn't feel like hanging around to celebrate.” His voice was tight.

She stopped a few feet away from him and sucked in a breath that was painful because the air was so darned cold. Obviously she needed to start running with Hayley and Sam, because she had a stitch in her side. “Why didn't you tell me?”

“I just did.”

She exhaled. Took another step closer. “Casey—”

“It's not something I talk about,” he said flatly. “With anyone.”

“How do you know? That you're—”

“Shooting blanks?” His lips twisted. “I did a semester of college in Sweden and came down with the mumps while I was there. Turned out the vaccination I'd had as a kid wasn't real effective.”

“You were engaged in college.”

“Caitlyn. When I got back to the U.S. and told her, she dumped me flat.” He shoved his hands in the side pockets of his jacket. “She wanted kids.”

“If she'd really loved you, it wouldn't have mattered.”

His hooded gaze drilled into her. “She was a self-centered twit who got into MIT on her daddy's money and her mama's family name. Marrying her would have been a disaster.”

“But you loved her.”

“I was twenty-one,” he said. “And she was pretty as hell.”

“And all these years later, you're still letting her rejection make you believe you're not
man enough
?” Her voice rose and she lifted her arms. “And you obviously must think I'm like her!”

He made an impatient sound. “I never said you were like her. You're not self-centered. You're not a twit. You're an intelligent, grown woman who knows what she wants. And what you
want
is what I can't provide!”

“
What I want is you
!” Her voice rang out, seeming to echo against the brick buildings on both sides of the street. He just stared at her with a grim, stoic look that made her want to launch herself at him. She hauled in another cold breath. “If I were the one with fertility issues, would you walk away because of it?”

“That's different.”

She snorted. “How?”

“You're not a man.”

“Thank God for that,” she snapped. “Because one of us has to be able to think above her belt. Five minutes ago, I told you I was in love with you. Did that not register at all? Or does it just not matter? Am I really only your sex buddy after all?”

He yanked his hands from his pockets and took a step toward her. “Dammit, Jane, I'm trying to do what's right. You told me you wanted a baby. You wanted to get pregnant.”

“Yes, I did. And I do. But not at your expense!” Her heart was in her throat but she stepped up to him until the toes of her boots nearly bumped his. “Tell me you don't have feelings for me,” she demanded. “Tell me right now, to my face, that sex
is
all there is, and I'll do exactly what you seem to want.” Her chest was so tight she felt dizzy. “I'll walk away. I'll sell Colbys. I'll go to Montana and bounce my sister's baby on my knee and start all over again where there's no chance of you and me bumping into each other every time we walk down Main.”

“You're not gonna sell Colbys,” he said.

“Try. Me,” she said through her teeth, and knew down to her bones that the words weren't an empty threat. Weaver had become her home. But it would mean nothing in the end without him.

“And you're not leaving Weaver.”

She stared him down.

He finally moved, pinching the bridge of his nose. The shaky strains of “O Holy Night” were coming from the park now. The sound of a car engine starting up in the distance was followed by a few more. It was dark. Cold. Now that the trees had been lit, it was no surprise the exodus had begun.

“There are lots of ways to make a family, Casey. You ought to know that better than anyone.” Among his own extended family there had been foster children and adoptions and who knew what else. “If you don't want me, just admit it.” Her eyes were tight with tears she wouldn't let fall. “But don't use your sperm count, or lack thereof, as an excuse. It's not sterility that'll make you less of a man to me. It's not being honest with me that'll do that.”

“It's not just sex,” he said flatly. “You know it's not just sex.”

She exhaled slowly. Shakily. She knew him too well, though, to let relief fool her. “There's still a but in there, isn't there, Casey.” It wasn't a question and the expression on his face gave her the answer.

She blinked hard and looked across the street at Colbys. The windows were dark, but the parking lot lights were shining down on the tent still set up there, and in the yellow gleam she could see a few snowflakes finally starting to fall. “You're more hung up on getting someone pregnant than I ever was on wanting to get pregnant,” she said quietly. “Maybe that's your reason for throwing all of your devotion into Cee-Vid. I don't know. I just know that I love you, Casey. I have for a long while now. If you loved me, too—” she moistened her lips and sniffed hard “—if you trusted me, we could have figured out a solution together.”

But he remained stoically silent. And it was obvious that no matter how hard she wished or how fervently she prayed for him to tell her that he did love her, trust her, it was not going to happen. And she took her cue from him.

She turned.

And walked away.

Chapter Fifteen

H
ayley stared at Jane with shock. “
Sell
Colbys?”

It was Sunday afternoon and they were sitting inside her friend's living room. “I can't stay in Weaver, Hayley. Everything has to change or I'm going to be in exactly this same situation ten years from now. Loving a man who doesn't love me back.”

“Casey didn't say he didn't love you.”

“He didn't say anything.” She'd told Hayley most everything that had happened the night before, but even with her closest friend, she wouldn't betray Casey's confidence about his sterility. She exhaled and picked up the box she'd carried in with her when she'd arrived. It contained his violin. “Do you think your grandmother would have some idea how to get this fixed?” She made a face. “Without anyone but us knowing about it?”

“You don't play the violin.”

“It's Casey's.”

Hayley absorbed that without comment. “I don't know,” she finally said, and rose from the armchair where she'd been sitting. “Let me get her and we'll find out.” She headed down the hall. “Grandmother? Can you come here for a minute?”

Vivian appeared, looking chicly turned out as usual in an expensive twinset and slacks. She was carrying two photograph albums. “Look, darling. I've finished the albums for your father and David.” She patted the top of them with her slightly gnarled hand. “They hardly seem like good Christmas gifts,” she said. “I could afford to give them—”

“The albums are perfect, Grandmother,” Hayley interrupted. Jane could see they'd had the conversation more than once. “The fact that you kept all those old photographs will help show Daddy and Uncle David that you cared even when they thought you didn't.” She took the albums and set them on a side table and gestured toward Jane. “We need your advice about a violin.”

“Oh?” Looking pleased, the woman settled on the couch beside Jane and the box. Seeing the state of the violin, though, she frowned and set her reading glasses on her nose before carefully taking the instrument out of the box, tsking under her breath. “Who did such a thing?”

“It was an accident,” Jane said quickly. “It belongs to a, uh, a—”

“Friend,” Hayley supplied.

The word left a bitter taste in Jane's mouth. But she nodded.

Vivian turned it around to see the tiny markings on the back of it. “Do you know how valuable this is?”

“Probably not as much as it would be if it weren't broken,” Jane murmured. “I know it's old, though. It belonged to my...to Casey's grandmother.”

“Good Lord,” Vivian said, sitting abruptly straighter as she studied the violin more closely. “Casey Clay,” she said. “His grandmother was Sarah?”

“Mmm-hmm.” It didn't seem odd that Vivian knew the detail. She'd been staying with Hayley for well over a month. “He hopes to repair it without upsetting anyone over the fact it was damaged.”

“I imagine so,” Vivian said. She sighed a little. “A person's sins coming to light is never easy.”

Jane met Hayley's gaze at that. Her friend just subtly lifted her fingers as if to say
Who knows
? before focusing on her grandmother again. “So do you think it can be? Repaired, that is?”

“Oh, heavens, yes.” Vivian's tone turned confident. “My father's shop is still in business.” Her lips quirked. “Run, of course, by someone else since he's long gone. George is a distant cousin but he's kept the art in the business alive. We'll send it to him and he'll have it in perfect order again in a matter of days.”

“That's it?”

Vivian stood and smiled at Jane. “That's it,” she said. “Leave it here and I'll get it sent off tomorrow.”

“That's very nice of you, Mrs. Templeton. Thank you.”

“It's the least I can do after all these years,” she said as she headed out of the room.

Jane looked at Hayley and raised her eyebrows. “What's that supposed to mean?” she asked under her breath.

“I have no idea,” Hayley murmured. She moved the violin and box out of the way and sat next to Jane. “I'm not entirely sure she's not having some cognitive issues. She talks a lot about people and places of which, obviously, I have no knowledge. But then she'll say something like that and I don't know what to make of it.”

“Have you just asked her?”

“Oh, yeah.” Hayley nodded. “And she usually tells me how little she appreciates it. She told me the other day that just because she's old doesn't mean she's lost her marbles. She may be living with me and we're starting to get to know each other, but she's often
very
cryptic.”

“Has she seen your dad and uncle yet?”

She shook her head. “They're still standing firm, refusing to see her. I've invited everyone over for Christmas Eve, though, and my mother promises me that she'll get Daddy here one way or the other.” Her lips twitched with a hint of humor. “Nothing like family drama. Just wish it weren't my family.”

“Guess that's one reason not to have a family at all,” Jane said blackly.

Hayley made a sympathetic sound. “You really don't feel like you want to stay in Weaver after what's happened with Casey? I don't want to lose one of my two best friends.”

“Would
you
want to stay?”

Hayley sighed. “As a therapist, I should say that every situation can be dealt with. But as your friend? I've never been in love before. Not really. So who am I to talk?”

Jane brushed her hands down the front of her jeans and stood. “Love is overrated anyway.”

“You don't mean that.”

She sighed and reached for her coat, which was draped over the arm of the couch. “No. I don't.” No more than she'd meant it when she'd told Casey that passion was overrated. “But it would sure hurt a lot less if I did.”

“You heading over to Colbys?”

“Gotta keep it in business if I'm going to put a for-sale sign on it.”

Hayley made a face and hugged her. “Just promise not to do anything rash.”

“I blew that opportunity three months ago when I told Casey I wanted to have a baby.”

“And despite everything, you still want to get the violin fixed for him.”

“Evidently, I can't do anything else for him,” she said, and headed out the door.

The snow that had begun falling the night before had continued nonstop.

Hayley's front yard was covered in several inches of fluffy white, as were the streets and every other surface. Even the tracks left by Jane's truck tires in Hayley's driveway had nearly filled again during the time she'd been there.

She backed out and headed toward downtown, slowing to a crawl when she reached the corner of Casey's street. It would be so easy to turn. But why?

She wouldn't accomplish anything in driving by his house except cause herself more pain.

She passed the corner and kept going, telling herself it was good practice for the future.

Maybe one day she'd even manage it without tears running down her face.

* * *

“I walked away from your mother once,” Casey's father said. He was standing in the front hallway of Casey's house, eyeing the duffel bag lying on the floor. “Hardest thing I ever did.”

“She was also married to someone else at the time.” Casey knew the story of his mother and her first husband, who'd been the Double-C ranch's foreman at one time before he'd embezzled a small fortune and run out on all of them, including Maggie and a newborn J.D. “Not the same thing.”

“Not the same reason,” his dad corrected him, “but walking away is walking away. And it took us too many years in between to get back where we both belonged. Here. Together.”

“If I don't leave Weaver, Jane will.”

“Yeah. That sounds familiar, too.” Daniel scrubbed his hand down his face. “Look, son. I don't know the situation between you and Tris that's got you both wound so tight. Once I got out of Hollins-Winword, I was out for good and had no desire to look back. But I do know that the agency, for all the good it sometimes accomplishes, isn't a replacement for the things that matter. I've seen you and Jane together. Now that you've finally stopped this bull crap about hiding your relationship, I know how you feel about her. Stay and fight to make things work!”

Casey jammed a coat on top of the rest of the things he'd tossed inside the duffel. “And in a year or two years or even three, when she can't hide her disappointment anymore about having babies, what do I do then?”

“You face it together. That's what marriage is, Case. It's sticking together. Good days. Bad days. Hell, even the occasional indifferent one. You stick. You remember what the commitment was and you remember what drew you together in the first place. Because it doesn't go away. It just grows and gets deeper if you let it, until you can't imagine a life without that person being by your side.”

“You never had to deal with being infertile,” Casey said flatly.

“Seems to me you haven't been dealing with it either,” his father fired back. “You learned about all this more than ten years ago and the first
we
hear about it is this afternoon during Sunday dinner at J.D.'s place when you finally saw fit to mention it!”

“I should have just left and kept it to myself,” Casey muttered. But he hadn't, and his dad had been hot on his trail, trying to stop him.

“And leave your mother's heart broken.” Daniel slapped the brim of his cowboy hat against his thigh, looking furious. “Of all of our children, you were always the one who felt someone else's pain the most. Even more than the girls. And this is what you're going to become? A man who runs away from the one he wants most?” He shoved his boot against the duffel. “You're a better man than that, Casey.”

His father's censure was almost welcome. At least the abrasiveness of it wore down the edges of everything else that felt jagged and sharp inside him. He yanked the zipper closed on the bag, grabbed the straps and stood. “Obviously not.” He started for the door but his cell phone rang before he got there.

He almost didn't look. But old habits died too hard and he was glancing at the display before he knew it. It was Seth Banyon, who was sitting in for Casey at Hollins-Winword during his suspension. Only the fact that it was Seth and not another member of the Clay family had him answering it. “Yeah.”

“We found him.” Seth's voice was terse. “McGregor. Sitting in a jail cell in some Podunk down in rural Mississippi. Using one of his known aliases. That's what popped for us. Tristan's on his way down there.”

“He give you the okay to call me?”

“No. I figure asking forgiveness afterward is easier than getting permission beforehand.” Seth rattled off a series of numbers and letters that Casey knew was the first-level access code to Control, which had been changed the second he'd been suspended. “Got that? I'm not repeating it.”

“I got it.” He ended the call and slid the phone into his pocket. He just wasn't sure what he wanted to do about it. Confirmation that McGregor was alive was only the tip of the iceberg where the agent was concerned. They still didn't know if, how or why he'd been involved in his partners' deaths.

He looked at his dad. “She also doesn't know what I really do at Cee-Vid. She doesn't know about Hollins-Winword. She'll think it's one more thing I've kept from her.”

“And she'll be right,” Daniel agreed, pulling open the door and walking out onto the porch. “You've got a hell of a mess on your hands, son. Stick around and clean it up. It'll be worth the effort if you do.” He jammed his hat back on his head. “And if you don't, I'm afraid it's going to haunt you for the rest of your days. But whatever you do, you keep in touch with your mama. I'm not too old I won't come and find you and skin you myself if you don't. She's all torn up thinking how you'd been sick off in college all those years ago and never knowing about it. You're not going to make it worse. You got me?”

Feeling about as low as a snake and knowing his dad was more than capable of following up on his threat, Casey nodded. “I got you.”

His dad's gray gaze pierced him. Then his tight expression finally eased. A little. He nodded once, turned on his boot heel and stomped down the steps, leaving footprints in the snow as he crossed to his truck.

Casey waited until his dad had driven away before finally moving. He locked and closed his front door and tossed the duffel in the passenger seat of his truck and started up the engine. He was glad McGregor was alive. But he couldn't think past Jane.

He didn't know where he was heading when he pulled out onto the street. He just drove.

And when he finally ended up in the circular gravel drive fronting the massive “big house” where Squire had raised Casey's dad and uncles, he exhaled, got out of the truck, walked around to the back of the house and went in through the mudroom.

Squire and Gloria now shared the big house with Matthew, who ran the cattle operation, and his wife, Jaimie. But Casey's grandparents were alone at the round oak table in the kitchen when he entered. Squire was drinking coffee, eschewing as he almost always did, the use of the cup itself, instead drinking from the edge of a nearly flat saucer balanced on his fingertips. Gloria was working the Sunday crossword from the newspaper. And neither one of them looked overly surprised to see him, despite the fact that they'd both been at J.D.'s place when he'd told 'em all he was leaving town.

Squire just shoved out a chair with his boot in silent invitation.

Casey didn't feel like sitting.

“I broke the violin,” he said without preamble.

Cleanup had to start somewhere.

Gloria slowly raised her head, her graying auburn hair catching the light. He felt her gaze shift from him to Squire, then back again. Then she rose. “I think I'll leave you two to talk,” she said. When she passed him, she patted Casey's cheek as if he were two instead of thirty-two.