Unwrap Me. Susan Lyons
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Not just Christmas?”
Her body froze. Warily she said, “It’s Christmas.”
Nick took her free hand and squeezed it. “There’s more to it than commercialism and hypocrisy. Did something happen at Christmas?”
Her full lips turned into a compressed line.
“It was that bad?”
She huffed out a sigh. “Don’t try to psychoanalyze me.”
Hurt, his first reaction was to snap back. But he counted to ten. “I’m not. But I thought we were friends. Seems like you’re keeping a pretty big secret.”
“It doesn’t affect you.”
“It does.” He fought to keep his voice level. “This is my favorite time of year. I’d love to be trimming a tree, caroling, helping Kris and Karen with that gingerbread house. But I can’t, because I’m with you, and you’re playing Grinch.”
“Then don’t be with me.” Her eyes narrowed. “It’s your choice. Go play Christmas, if that’s what you want.”
She sounded childish. And he was damn tempted to do as she’d suggested. Maybe this crazy girl wasn’t worth the trouble.
But something inside him whispered she was. Yes, she sounded childish. Like a hurt little kid who dealt with her pain by striking out. “What I want is to know why,” he said gently. “Is that too much to ask?”
She scowled, and something flickered in her eyes as if they were reflecting the tumble of thoughts in her head. Then, grudgingly, she said, “It’s no big deal. Two strikes, and that’s enough. I’ve learned my lesson. Betray me once, shame on you. Betray me twice, shame on me.”
He laced his fingers through hers, trying to offer comfort. “Who betrayed you, Jude?”
She took a big swallow of ice wine and stared into the glass. “When I was eight, Mama and I f—found…” Her voice wobbled, and she took a breath then started again. “Found out my father had another family. We thought he was—get this—a traveling salesman on the road a lot. Even at Christmas because he had clients who didn’t observe the Christian holiday.”
Voice firm—grim—now, she said, “In fact, he already had a wife and three-year-old daughter when he ‘married’ Mama. Their marriage was a sham. I’m illegitimate.”
Nick’s grip on her fingers tightened, adrenaline surging with the desire to punch out her father. “Shit. That must’ve been awful.”
“Oh, yeah.” She squeezed her eyes shut as though remembering, sighed, and then opened her eyes again. “He got sloppy. He gave the wrong business card to someone—he had two with different phone numbers—and this man phoned our home looking for him. A week before Christmas. Mama was out buying presents. I took the call….” The grimness was gone, and her voice sounded young, tentative. Hurt.
Nick suddenly realized what he’d asked of her. This wasn’t a story she’d told often. He’d made her relive what must’ve been the most horrible time in her life. He wanted to wrap his arms around her and protect her. But if he did, she might stop talking. And he sensed she needed to get this out, as much as he needed to hear it.
She drew a shuddery breath. “What the man on the phone said didn’t make sense. But I had this sense of…doom, I guess. Like everything was breaking apart.” Her brows drew together. “I got his phone number, and Mama phoned him back. She put the pieces together.”
“What a shock.”
“The man dug up another of my father’s cards with the other phone number. Mama called and talked to his wife. His real wife. Then she told that jerk never to come back again.”
“Wow.” He could understand her mom doing that. But on the other hand, the guy was Jude’s dad. Surely he wouldn’t have disappeared from her life. “What happened?”
She snorted, and now, finally, she looked at him. Her eyes gleamed with unshed tears yet were fierce and angry. “He wrote a letter. We got it on Christmas Eve day. Mama tore it up, but I collected the shreds and put it back together. Turns out, getting caught was what he needed to, quote, ‘come to his senses.’” She gave the last phrase a bitter twist, face contorted. “He was in some hard-line religion ‘back home’ and talked to a ‘spiritual adviser’ who told him his whole relationship with Mama was a dreadful sin. He had to repent and renounce her and me.”
Nick winced. “Crap. That’s awful.” He couldn’t even imagine how a little girl would have felt.
“Yeah, but it’s what Mama and I wanted, too.” She tossed her head. “We were better off without a loser like him.”
Oh, sure, like an eight-year-old was mature enough to decide something like that. “Are you saying the letter was it? He didn’t apologize? You never saw him again?” How could a father walk away from his child? From Jude?
She nodded. “A clean break. Like with bones, it heals faster that way.”
Her mother might have told her that, but Nick could see Jude had never healed. “And this all happened at Christmas. Bad memories, for sure.”
“Yeah. Being betrayed—abandoned—at what’s supposed to be some big emotional family time can sour you on the whole holiday.”
She freed her hand from his and poured more ice wine into her glass. “We spent Christmas day ripping up the pictures with that jerk in them. We took his clothes and other stuff to the Salvation Army. Our Christmas things, too. We had roast beef for dinner. We banished Christmas from the house and were better off without it. Mama changed our names back to Benedetto. It’s not like we were legally entitled to his name anyhow, and we sure didn’t want it.”
The words “better off without” rang in his head. The same ones she’d used to describe the loss of her father. Not an eight-year-old’s words. Her mother’s.
What had the woman been thinking? Okay, he could understand the first year. The hurt, bitterness. But after? “Your mom sounds pretty immature. Depriving you of Christmas because some guy turned out to be a jerk.”
She glared at him. “Don’t you dare criticize my mama.”
“Sorry.” Okay, he shouldn’t judge. He didn’t know Jude’s mother. Besides, all he cared about was understanding the vulnerable woman beside him. Finding a way to help.
Silence grew between them. He broke it. “You said there were two strikes? You mean, finding out about your dad, and then him renouncing you and your mom?”
She’d been staring into her glass, apparently lost in thought. Now she glanced up. “No. The second was being dumped by my fiancé last year on December twenty-second.”
“Shit.” She did have bad luck with men at Christmastime. Should he ask what had happened?
Jude’s eyebrows lifted. “Aren’t you going to ask?”
“Trying to decide.”
“Don said I had commitment issues, but he’s the one who did.” She wrinkled her nose. “We met at a New Year’s Eve party, hit it off. Dated, got serious; he proposed in August, and I accepted. We planned a March wedding. Things started to go wrong in the fall.” She slanted him a glance. “Partly about Christmas. His folks live in Kelowna. I’d met them in the summer and liked them. Don wanted us to spend the holidays with them. I said no, I didn’t do Christmas. He said if I loved him and we were going to build a future together, I had to celebrate Christmas.” Now her gaze challenged him.
He held up his hands, palms toward her. “Hey, I’m not pressuring you.”
“Okay.” A hint of a smile brushed her lips. “Wise decision.”
Yeah, but this wasn’t done. Now he understood where she was coming from, but, damn, she had to get past this stuff. Problem was he didn’t have