Holiday in Your Heart (12 page)

“And you did?”

He nodded. “One night at a bar. The lieutenant and me, we'd both been drinking. A lot. He pushed me around. I pushed back. He called me a . . . well, it was a racist slur. That's when I snapped. I was holding a beer bottle and I whacked it against a table and threatened him with the broken bottle. It was stupid. Totally stupid. A couple guys grabbed me, pulled me away. I don't know whether I'd have cut the LT or not.”

“My God, Mo.” It was horrible, and thank heavens those two men had stopped him before it got even worse. “You were arrested?”

“I got loose from the two guys, and I ran. That sobered me up quick and I figured I'd be arrested, kicked out of the army, sent to jail.”

“So what did you do?”

“Went to L.A. and got Brooke and Evan, which in hindsight was the worst thing I could've done for them. We ran some more. I found this group of anti-war activists. Talked to a woman there and spun her a story about how I'd enlisted and then seen the error of my ways and deserted. She got fake IDs and other documentation for us so we could come to Canada. She changed my name from Mohinder McKeen to Mo Kincaid. Through her contacts, she even found me a job in Red Deer, Alberta, in an auto repair shop.”

“Wow.” Maribeth knew her eyes must be round as saucers. “That's quite the story.”

“The activist woman recommended that Brooke and I be careful about getting in touch with our families because Uncle Sam and the police would be looking for me. That didn't prove to be very hard because once our parents found out what I'd done, they didn't want anything to do with us.”

“You were what, twenty-one then?”

He nodded.

“And Brooke was even younger. The two of you had a baby and you were living in a strange place, a whole different country, with no family support. That must have been incredibly hard.”

“Yeah, it was hard. Brooke was royally pissed off, and rightfully so.”

“But she didn't leave you. And you didn't leave her.”

“Guess we had some misguided sense of duty, of being a family.”

Maribeth felt so blessed to have had such wonderful parents, even if they'd been taken from her far too early.

“Anyhow,” Mo said, “to finish the story. Seven or eight years ago, I found a lawyer on the Internet and said I wanted to turn myself in. She represented me, contacted the military authorities, and negotiated a kind of plea bargain. I had to pay a fine and I got an administrative discharge.”

Past mistakes could never be undone, but Mo had done the right thing in the end, as he was trying to do with Brooke and Evan.

They'd reached the foot of Eagle Bluff, and Maribeth turned Campion onto the zigzag trail that led up the increasingly rocky incline. The dirt-and-rock path through scrubby trees was narrow and they had to ride single file. Mo brought Daybreak in behind her and Caruso ran ahead. They didn't talk for the five minutes it took to ride to the top of the bluff. Maribeth thought about the young couple: the pretty, immature blond girl who had within her the seeds of alcoholism and bipolar disorder; the unhappy, rebellious boy who hadn't found a place in the world where he fit. If they'd been more careful about contraception, who knew what their lives might have been? But then there wouldn't have been Evan.

When they reached the summit, Maribeth dismounted, tied the bay's reins to one of the scraggly trees, and patted the horse's neck.

Mo, still quiet, did the same with Daybreak, and Caruso ran off to wherever his nose led him.

Maribeth walked to the edge of the bluff and gazed out at the view. It always reminded her of a crazy quilt. Each time she saw it, the patterns and shades were different. Today, under a snow-cloud sky, the colors were saturated and intense. The wooded areas were a particularly dark green, the lakes and streams held the charcoal gleam of graphite, and the dried-out grasslands had the burnished glow of old gold.

Mo had come up beside her and she was aware of him standing there, silent, staring out at that same view. She wondered how he saw it. This was probably the first time he'd viewed the region from this perspective.

Perspective. So much in life depended on the perspective from which you viewed it. And depended also on the crazy quilt of circumstances that brought you to a particular moment in time.

When Mo turned to face her, she turned, too.

Grim-faced, he said, “Now you know the worst about me. I wasn't just an abusive husband and father, but an army deserter and fugitive.” One corner of his mouth curled downward in a self-disparaging expression. “What do you think of me so far?”

“I was thinking that life's such a combination of circumstances.”

“Huh?”

“I started dating when I was thirteen. I first had sex when I was sixteen. We used condoms, but they're not one hundred percent reliable, right? What would my life have been like if I'd gotten pregnant?” Now it was what she wanted most in the world, but in her teens she'd been nowhere near ready.

“What would the baby's father and I have done?” she went on. “Get married or break up? If we'd married, what chance would we have had of being happy? Of growing to love each other and building a good marriage, good careers, a happy family?” She waved a hand. “Yes, it can happen. But it seems to me, you and Brooke had the odds stacked against you. One stupid mistake, and the consequences were huge.”

“Really huge,” he said grimly. “But that didn't mean I had to be such a shit.”

“No, it didn't. You didn't react well. But you were a kid, and it sounds to me like you didn't have a whole lot of helpful adult guidance.”

He snorted. “Sounds like you've met my parents.” Then he quickly added, “And that's blaming, which is wrong. I guess they tried their best, they were just such different people and had conflicting ideas of who they wanted me to be. None of which had anything to do with who I was and what I wanted. So I acted out. They tried to crack down harder and I rebelled even more.”

She'd suspected something like that. “My parents were wonderful. That was a lucky circumstance for me.” Reflecting, she said, “And sometimes even the unlucky ones result in amazing things.”

“In my case, not so much.”

She gazed into his eyes, which looked more jade than blue today, under that sullen sky. “Evan. He's an amazing man.”

He swallowed. “Despite me.”

“Perhaps. Still, he wouldn't exist but for you. And maybe he wouldn't have had the same drive and worked so hard if you and Brooke had been better parents.”

“I hope I get to meet him. I hope he'll let me apologize.”

“I hope so, too.”

Mo reached a gloved hand toward her shoulder, and then let it fall again. “How about you, Maribeth? Now that you know all my dirty secrets, do you still want to spend time with me?”

“No one's perfect.”

“Yeah, but I'm less so than most.”

She considered. “Actually, I've dated worse.”

“Jesus!” The exclamation burst out of him. “Like what, a sociopath?”

She gave a surprised laugh, and then sobered again. “No, but I've dated people who weren't honest. Who shaded their stories to always put themselves in the best light.” She certainly couldn't accuse Mo of doing that.

“That's human nature, isn't it?”

“It's a natural instinct, I guess. We all want people to like and respect us. But I'm not a fan of ‘little white lie' dishonesty.”

“You never tell little white lies? Never tell a customer that she looks good in a dress when in fact it makes her look fat?”

“No, that would be wrong. Unfair to her, and bad business as well because she'd eventually figure it out herself. Oh, I'm polite. Like if a woman asks, and the dress actually does make her look fat, I'll say it's not the most flattering style or color for her, and I'll find something that suits her better.” She considered. “Okay, I'm not totally opposed to the tiny deceptions that we use to make someone else feel better about themselves. What I don't like is when someone uses deception to make himself look better than he really is. Besides, it's a sign of low self-esteem. It means he thinks that the real him isn't good enough.”

“In my case, that'd be the truth.”

“Don't confuse the old you and the new you,” she said, a touch of impatience in her voice. “You said you've changed.” Her instincts told her it was true, and every hour she spent with him confirmed it. “If you'd gone to jail, you'd have been out years and years ago. Free to make a new start, to be a better person. Well, you didn't go to jail, but all the same you learned your lesson and have become a better person. Right?”

“Yeah,” he agreed quietly.

She tilted her head up to him, seeing him against a backdrop of winter sky and thinking how ruggedly handsome he looked in that denim jacket, his hair stirring in the slight breeze. She'd ridden out here a number of times, sometimes with girlfriends, sometimes with friends' children, sometimes with boyfriends. With some of the adults, even the kids, she'd had some reasonably heavy conversations. There was something about horses and the outdoors that seemed to free constraints so people opened up.

But today felt different. Being with Mo made the familiar sights even more special, the same way the November lighting made the colors more intense. As for Mo opening up, he'd pretty much done that from the beginning, and this afternoon's revelation was the backstory to give context to the rest. Why had he told her?

“When you've been interested in other women,” she said, “did you give them your whole history right up front?”

“Uh, no. But this is different.”

“You mean because I know Brooke and Evan, and already knew a bit about their history?”

“Well, yeah, but . . .” He frowned.

“But what?”

His brow was still furrowed. “There's something different about you. About you and me.”

Yes, there was. She was so relieved that he felt it, too. She cocked her head, the gesture asking him to go on.

“Before, it's been, like, I'll meet a woman in a bar. Maybe she's alone. Lonely, horny, just looking for a night's company. Or she's with a pack of girlfriends and they're all hustling guys, chalking up notches on their belts.”

She knew what he was talking about, but she'd never done either of those things herself. For her it was never just about one night; it was always about getting to know a guy and see where things went. With some men, she ended up having sex. With others, the relationship never went there.

“It's like that two ships passing in the night thing,” Mo said. “A little company, a little fun, then go our separate ways. No harm, no foul. I make it clear up front that that's how it's gonna be, and if somewhere along the line the woman starts trying to change the rules, I break it off.”

“You don't date those women, you just hook up.”

He nodded.

“When you first met me at the garage and flirted, you told me you didn't want to date. Then you brought flowers and when I said that it seemed like a date kind of thing, you said you might be reconsidering. And we both called this afternoon a date.”

“I like spending time with you.” He studied her, making her feel self-conscious. When she was cold, her cheeks always went pink, which was fine, but so did her nose, and she looked a little like Rudolph.

That didn't seem to put Mo off, though, because he said, “Yeah, I'm pretty sure we'd be hot in bed, but I like this, too. Going riding with you. I like drinking hot chocolate by the fire.”

Trying to get a better understanding of how he felt about her, she said, “Maybe you'd have liked doing those things with other women, too, if you'd given it a chance.”

“Maybe. But nothing made me want to.”

“And now?”

“You make me want to.”

Ah, yes. The answer she'd been hoping for. His admission was a definite step in the right direction. She smiled up at him. “Good.”

Earlier, he'd started to touch her, but then dropped his hand. Now he reached out to capture her shoulders in his gloved hands.

She stepped closer, putting a flirtatious gleam in her eye and a sexy tease in her voice when she asked, “What else do you want to do that I might like?”

Mo's face, so solemn and almost tortured when he'd been talking about his past, had lightened and now he grinned at her. “How about I show you?”

He kissed her, cold lips against cold lips, but warming so quickly. She sensed a new confidence in him. Maybe it came from having cleared his conscience by telling her his worst stories and finding that she accepted him. That she wanted him.

Which she most definitely did. She wrapped her arms around him and kissed him back without hesitation. When he probed the crease between her lips with his tongue, she opened and let him in. She met his tongue with her own, and the sexy dance made her moan.

She darted her tongue into his mouth, where the moist heat was such a sweet contrast to the crisp chill of the afternoon. Passion blazed through her, making her wish they were somewhere sheltered where they could rip off their coats and keep stripping off layers until they were naked.

Something brushed her face, tickling, but she didn't lift a hand from his back to wipe it away. More tickles, and then Caruso's warbling howl cut the air.

Startled, she pulled away, feeling dazed.

Mo, running a hand through his hair, looked just as stunned.

She saw white splotches in his hair and she realized what had tickled her. “It's snowing!” A few small flakes drifted down, and even as she gazed up the flakes got bigger and more numerous.