Maybe This Christmas (27 page)

That was one Christmas present knocked off his list.

Unfortunately, there were plenty still to buy, including the most important one of all.

“I need to ask you a favor.” Jackson strolled into the barn and watched as Tyler finished with the ski. “Could you take a small group into the woods later today? People are willing to pay a premium to lay tracks in untouched snow.”

His mind still on Brenna, Tyler nodded. “What time?”

Jackson stared at him. “That’s it? That’s all you’re going to say to me?”

“What else am I supposed to say?” He knew she didn’t like possessions. She wasn’t the type to fill her life with objects, so she wasn’t going to appreciate a gift that gathered dust.

“Usually you say no. Then when I push you a bit harder, you scowl and ask how well they ski.”

“I assume you’ve checked that.” Maybe he could buy her ski gear. But she already had everything she needed.

“Are you sick?” Jackson strolled around him, eyeing him from every angle. “Drugged? Did you fall and bang your head? What the hell is wrong with you?”

“I said I’d take your skiers. Why does that mean there is something wrong?”

“Because you’re not normally so amenable.”

He tried to stop thinking about Brenna. “I’ve given up the fight.”

“I saw Jess on the mountain with Brenna this morning. She has real talent.”

“She’s a natural.” Tyler wiped his hands. “I’m going to train her.”

Jackson leaned against the bench. “That’s good to hear.”

“She’s good, and there is never any whining or moaning. If she falls, she’s back on her feet again. I get a real kick out of seeing her improve.” He lifted the ski, feeling the weight of it in his hand, realizing how much lighter he felt.

Jackson reached out and ran his finger down the edge. “She’s going to need better skis.”

“I’ve got that covered. Christmas.” Tyler reached for his jacket. “Beats buying dolls and pink fluffy stuff. Brenna is harder to buy for.”

“You’re buying a gift for Brenna?”

“She’s spending Christmas with us. Jess doesn’t want her waking up on Christmas morning with nothing under the tree.”

“Right.” Jackson’s gaze was steady. “So it’s going well?”

“What?”

Jackson raised an eyebrow. “Your relationship with Brenna. You’re more relaxed. Mellow. You’re not snapping heads off bodies. You’re saying yes to things you’d normally say no to, or at least argue about for an hour.”

“Am I that bad?”

“Sometimes, especially during the World Cup, but it’s hard for you. We all know that.” Jackson looked at him expectantly. “So?”

“So nothing.” Tyler put the ski down and decided it wouldn’t hurt to be honest. “I’m taking this a day at a time. Trying not to screw it up.”

“A day? Wow. That’s a long-term relationship for you.”

Tyler didn’t rise to the bait. “Instead of enjoying my pain, you could give me advice.”

“You’re asking for my advice?” Jackson grinned. “This is a first. Give me a moment to savor the experience.”

“You could offer up pearls of wisdom instead of gloating.”

“I could, but where would be the fun in that?”

“I need help not to screw it up.”

“Why would you screw it up?”

“Because I have every other time.”

His brother eased upright. “You won’t screw it up. If you do, Sean and I will kill you, slowly and painfully.”

Tyler watched him walk away, envying Jackson’s calm stability and the fact that he knew what he wanted.

He knew Brenna loved him, and the weight of responsibility was terrifying. It scared him more than any vertical drop he’d faced on the downhill circuit.

If this relationship went wrong he would hurt her badly, but what experience did he have in getting things right?

None.

He finished the skis, took a group of wealthy college kids for their first experience of powder and then went back to the house. Brenna had texted that she was planning to come back for an hour in the middle of her day.

He planned on surprising her.

With time to kill, he opened Jess’s laptop that lay abandoned on the kitchen table and started searching for gifts.

What did Brenna like?

He scrolled restlessly through pictures of sweaters, boots, books, DVDs but nothing caught his attention.

Then he switched to a jeweler but he couldn’t imagine Brenna having much use for dangling diamond earrings while she was skiing powder.

He could buy her skis, but she already had more than enough pairs along with several snowboards.

Pushing the laptop away, he sat back in the chair. He was useless at this. It wasn’t that he didn’t know what she liked, because he did, but nothing she liked could be wrapped up and stuffed under a Christmas tree.

Another hat?

No, because she loved her blue one. And he loved the way she looked in her blue one.

He was about to call his mother and ask if she had any ideas when he heard the doorbell.

Assuming Brenna had forgotten her key, he strode to the door and tugged it open, the smile ready on his face. “I thought I’d surprise you—” The words died in his mouth along with the smile when he saw who was standing there.

“That’s funny,” Janet said calmly, “because I thought I’d be the one doing the surprising.”

Tyler gripped the door frame, knuckles white, emotions slamming into him from all sides. “What the hell are you doing here?” He hadn’t seen her since the summer, on one of the rare occasions she’d come to see Jess.

“Nice welcome for the mother of your child.” Janet glanced past him into the house. “Is she there?”

“No. She’s skiing.”

“Of course she is. Silly question given that she has your genes and was brainwashed as a toddler.” Janet shrugged. “So I’ll come in and wait.”

“Wait for what? What are you doing here?”

“I’ve come to see my daughter.”

“The one you kicked out last winter?” Tyler snarled the words. “The one you conveniently forget about for most of the year?”

“I didn’t kick her out. She was going through a difficult phase.” Her gaze shifted from his. “She was hard to handle.”

“All the more reason to keep her close.”

“Don’t judge me, Tyler, when you had nothing at all to do with raising her.”

“Your choice, not mine. And we’ve already said everything there is to say on that topic.”

“She’s been living with you a year, and suddenly you’re an expert on parenting? Since when do you have any idea what a kid needs?”

“I’m not an expert—” his mouth felt as if he’d swallowed sand “—but I know kids should have stability. Someone they can depend on to always be there.”

“When have you always been there for anyone? I doubt you can even spell commitment let alone practice it.”

“I’m there for her. I would have had her from the beginning. I wanted that.”

“Stop kidding yourself, Tyler.” The smile vanished. “You were traveling the world with the ski team. It was like playing in a sweet shop. Do you think I didn’t see the news coverage? You couldn’t keep your pants zipped for five minutes. If you’d had Jess, would you seriously have been prepared to give all that up? Maybe I should have done that. Maybe I should have given her to you. That would have been a better punishment than keeping her from you.”

“Punishment?” Five minutes with Janet, and he felt as if he wanted to scrub her off his skin. It was always the same.

“You got me pregnant, Tyler! Do you know what that did to my life? I had plans, too! Things I wanted to do.”

“You kept Jess to punish me? What sort of a sick, twisted plan was that?”

“I should have let you take her and watched you try to juggle a toddler and a sex life. Think about it. A yelling baby, no sleep and no one to help out. That was my life.”

“What about
her
life? Did you think of that?”

“I took her. I gave her a home. And all the time I was reading this stuff about you partying. Four women in a hot tub?”

He didn’t bother telling her that particular story hadn’t been true. He was too busy remembering how insecure Jess had been when she’d arrived. “She thinks she ruined your life. She thinks you blame her.”

“She’s right that having her ruined my life, but she’s wrong to think I blame her. I don’t. I blame you.” Janet’s eyes met his. “You should have used a condom.”

“You shouldn’t have walked into the barn naked.”

Janet smiled. “You never did want to take responsibility for anything, did you?”

“I took responsibility for Jess,” he growled, “and as for the other—you could have handed me a condom.”

“So we’re equally to blame. There is no difference between us.”

“The difference is that I see Jess as the best thing that has happened in my life. You see her as a lifetime of payment for a childhood mistake.”

“Yes, I do. I wanted a termination but my parents stopped me. Did you know that?”

“No.” Tyler felt the blood drain out of his brain. He felt shaky. “I didn’t.”

“I don’t know who they were more furious with, you or me. We were never that close, not the way you were with your parents, but what we put them through ruined any chance I had of a good relationship with them. They didn’t want to know me.”

Tyler didn’t point out that he’d put his own parents through the same thing. Nor did he tell her that there hadn’t been a single day when he’d had reason to doubt their love or support.

For the first time in his life he saw how lonely it must have been for Janet and he felt a flicker of pity. “Are you staying with them now?”

“I’m staying in the village. And that’s enough talking about old times. It’s the future I’m interested in. We’re both Jess’s parents, and I want to talk about her, so can I come in?”

Tyler hesitated. Like it or not, she was Jess’s mother. “If you upset her, I’ll make sure you don’t come near her again.”

“I didn’t see any of this macho, protective streak when I told you I was pregnant.” Janet walked past him into the house, glancing around her. “Nice. I remember when this place was a dump. You’ve developed style over the years.”

“I offered to marry you.”

“That would have turned one mistake into two. You’re not marriage material, Tyler.”

Tyler held his temper. “You said you wanted to talk about Jess.”

Janet wandered through to the living room and stared at the large Christmas tree. “I’ve never understood why anyone around here would want a tree in the house. This whole damn place is surrounded by trees, there’s no getting away from them. There were days growing up when I wouldn’t have cared if I’d never seen another tree in my life. How is Brenna? Jess says she’s living here now.” Her question caught him off guard.

He didn’t trust her. Janet didn’t make small talk, and she didn’t speak without a purpose.

“It’s a temporary arrangement.”

“Of course, because nothing in your life is permanent, is it? Still, she must think she’s died and gone to heaven. She has been in love with you since she was a little girl. Everyone knows that.” Janet strolled into the center of the room and stared out the window while Tyler tried to work out her real reason for being here.

“The place is busy. She needed a place to stay.”

“And there aren’t a hundred other options?” She turned. “Brenna Daniels wants O’Neil after her name. It’s what she’s always wanted. She spent all her time with the three of you—virtually lived around here. Your family all but adopted her.”

Tyler remembered what Jess had said about Janet being jealous of the O’Neils and wondered why he’d been so slow to see it himself.

“Her relationships are no concern of yours.”

“They might be, if they affect Jess. If Brenna is involved with you again then it proves she has no self-respect or backbone.” Her voice was venom, coated with a thin layer of sugar. “You already broke her heart once, and she’s standing there and letting you do it all over again.”

For safety’s sake, Tyler kept the sofa between him and Janet. “She has more backbone than you will ever have.”

Janet didn’t move. “If she’d had backbone, she would have seduced you herself when she was eighteen.
She
would have been the one walking into that barn naked, but she didn’t. Brenna Daniels doesn’t have the first clue about seducing a man.”

Tyler thought about the wisps of black and those long legs wrapped around his body. “I wouldn’t be so sure about that.”

“So you
are
sleeping with her.”

“Who I am sleeping with is none of your damn business.” He wondered why this conversation was all about Brenna when she’d said she wanted to talk about Jess.

“She is never going to keep a man like you satisfied.”

Anger burned through him. “Get the hell out of my house. If Jess wants to see you, I’ll let you know.”

“She’ll never hang on to you because she’s not prepared to fight. She should have slapped my face for taking what she wanted so badly, but she didn’t do that, either. She never said anything to me. Not one thing.”

“Because she’s gentle and kind.” He gripped the back of the sofa, sickness rising inside him because suddenly he saw the truth, and the truth was so ugly he could hardly bring himself to look at it. “That day in the barn—it was never about me, or you—it was about Brenna. You weren’t taking something you wanted. You were taking something she wanted.”

If he’d hoped for a denial, he was disappointed.

“You thought it was because you were irresistible? Sure, you’re hot in bed and nice to look at but like all the O’Neils, all you thought about was skiing, which is why Brenna fitted right in.”

“You were jealous.” How could he not have seen what was going on under his nose? “You did it to hurt her, because she was part of my family. She had something you didn’t. So you broke her heart.”

“No.” Janet looked directly at him. “You did that, not me. You broke her heart, Tyler. And it looks as if she’s going to stand by and let you do it all over again.”

He didn’t trust himself to move so he stood there, hands clenched into fists by his side, his temper roaring in his ears as he watched her leave. She did it in her own sweet time, hips swinging and a smile on her lips.

Wherever the guilt lay, it was obvious she wasn’t laying claim to any of it.