The Homespun Holiday (2 page)

Why couldn’t people understand that
he was happy to be a hermit?  He wasn’t looking for company.   He didn’t
need
companionship.  And even if he
did
… he wouldn’t seek it out with
these people that he barely knew.  Hell, no.

If he was in the market to develop
a relationship, it would be with the woman and her child that, so far, hadn’t
spared him a glance since they’d walked through the door.  What the hell was
with that, anyway? 

Shaking his head as he tossed his crumpled
and used napkin down on his half-eaten food, he sighed.  This shit would never
happen in a big city.  Nobody there ever gave a crap if the local OB-GYN was
happy and well fed, holidays or not!  And he’d liked it that way, damn it!

Distracted from his internal monologue
when his cell phone rang, Mack searched the pockets of his nearby coat for the
device, determined to silence the irritating ringtone.  Really, when he’d asked
Millie to program his cell phone a month ago with a ringtone that would suit a
doctor, he’d never expected her to choose the Bee Gees’ hit, ‘Stayin’ Alive’.  When
he’d complained, however, she’d threatened to change it to ‘Another One Bites
the Dust’ if he continued to rant about her poor song selection.   

He’d quickly learned to pick his
battles with his pretty, headstrong nurse and chosen to shut the hell up about
it.

Finally locating his phone, he scowled
at the display when he saw who was calling, but swept his thumb across the
screen and pressed the device to his ear all the same.  “Dr. Daniels,” he
greeted the caller tersely.

“Well, hello Dr. Daniels.  This is
your sister – you know, the other Dr. Daniels in your life.  How’s it hangin’,
bro?  Is Little Mack seeing any action yet?” he heard his sister’s clear voice
reply sweetly.

“Bree, what have I told you about
asking me that?  You’re my sister, for crying out loud.  I’m not gonna share
details about my sex life with you!” he hissed into the phone while his eyes
darted  around the café to make sure his sister’s comments hadn’t been
overheard by some passerby.  Even on the phone, the woman had a voice that
carried.

“So, that’s a ‘no’, huh?  A very
repressed ‘no’, too.  I’m sad for you, Mackenzie.  A man of your advanced years
should really be able to open himself up to new experiences.  Sexually speaking,
that is,” Bree clucked.

Mack could almost see his sister’s
head shaking sadly at him.  “I’m fine, Bree, and so is my sex life,” he snarled
through clenched teeth, completely unashamed of the lie he was telling.  If his
sister knew that it had been close to three years since he’d gotten laid, she’d
read all kinds of problems into it.  The truth was that he simply hadn’t met a
woman that made him wanna stick his dick in her.  Well, none that were
available to him at any rate. 

Sure, if he was truthful with
himself, he could admit that he’d wanted to nail Millicent to the nearest mattress
since the day she’d walked into his office to interview for her nursing job. 
The stunning brunette was hot in ways he’d never imagined, and he knew that under
different circumstances he would have been all over her.  But a couple of
monumentally important facts remained, the most important of which was that Millie
was now not only an employee under his protection, but also a struggling single
mom who was trying to raise her small child.  Those facts alone were enough to
keep him from acting on his baser impulses.  If he fucked her and things went
to hell, they’d still have to work together.  That would make for one hell of
an awkward work environment.  He definitely wasn’t looking to screw up his
well-oiled medical practice he led with sexual harassment claims and frigid
working conditions. 

He knew he had a good thing going where
his professional life was concerned…. hell, his job might have been the only
good thing he had going for himself, period.  Why fuck with a relationship that
was actually working?

“Well, you
would
be fine if
you’d just pull the pin on the grenade and ask out that sweet little nurse
you’ve got working for you,” Bree went on, countering his statement, her
melodious voice holding just the right amount of teasing to pull a smile from
her brother’s lips.

“You don’t even
know
her,
sis.  How do you know she’s sweet?  She could be a vapid bitch.  You don’t
know.  Unless you’re telepathic or some shit this week.  Is that it?  You’ve
turned into a psychic?” Mack asked gruffly, settling his elbow against the
table as he picked up a fry from the side of his plate and popped it into his
mouth.

“No, smartass, I’m not.  I don’t
need to be a psychic to know that the woman working for you is a near saint. 
She puts up with your cranky ass five out of seven days a week without trying
to kill you on a daily basis.  That makes her all kinds of sweet if you ask
me.”

“Nobody did, Breebee,” Mack
grunted, using the nickname he’d given his sister as a kid.  “Certainly not me,
anyway,” he added, even though he silently acknowledged that Bree had a point. 
Millie was one of the few people that could regularly overlook his surly side. 
She accepted him for the grump he was.

Bree snorted.  “Message received. 
Your lack of a sex life wasn’t the reason I was calling anyway.  I got the post
card you sent me, Big Brother.  And that place really does look like paradise. 
No wonder that’s what they called the town.  Snow-capped mountains and all
those holiday lights twinkling on the main street?  The place looks like the
perfect setup for Santa’s playground.  Of course I’ll come spend Christmas with
you.  New Years, too.  I’ve got oodles of vacation time that I haven’t used,
and if I don’t take some time now, I’ll lose it at the beginning of the year.  And
I called your old med school friend, Cain Turner.  He said the opening was
legit.  They need someone by the second week in January.   I’m going to meet
with the hospital’s board about that job in their psych department.  Paradise
may be just what I need, Mack.  I’m not getting any younger and I need to
settle.  I talked about it with Mom, and she’s down to spend the holidays in
Tennessee, too.  We’ll be there in a couple of days once I tie up some loose
ends.”

Dumbstruck, all Mack could say was,
“Huh?” He couldn’t believe that Cain had pulled the same crap on his sister
that he’d pulled on him.  Was the town really so hard up for doctors that they
had to keep recruiting his family?  He’d already let Cain Turner suck him into
this wacky world; he wasn’t too keen on his sister falling to the same fate.

“The post card, Mack.  I got it,”
Bree reiterated as if that explained everything.   “The one you sent inviting
me, your baby sister, to Tennessee to spend the holiday with you.  The one
where you mentioned that open slot at Paradise General Hospital that would be
perfect for me.  Have you had a stroke or something?  You don’t smell bacon, do
you?”

“Bree, I didn’t….”

“Mom is super-excited about this,
too.  It might be just what she needs to pull her out of that funk she’s been
in since Aunt Jo died.”

Mack tried to swallow a groan. 
Aunt Jo wasn’t really their Aunt Jo.  She was their mom’s lesbian lover.  At
the tender age of sixty-seven, their mom had up and decided that she was gay. 
Which was fine, except for the fact that she’d spent forty years married to a
man
. 
Thankfully she didn’t realize her preference for women until after her husband
was dead.  Because as sure as his name was Mackenzie Daniels, he knew that
information would have killed his dad a lot quicker than the massive heart
attack did.

At any rate, his mom had met Jo during
bingo at the Senior Center and somewhere between N-42 and B-17 they’d fallen in
love; the rest, as the poets say, was history.  According to his only remaining
parental unit, it had been love at first sight and all that jazz.  Right up until
last year when Jo died.  They had spent nearly a decade together, and the loss
was still fresh to his mother.  If she was actually excited to travel to see
him, what was he going to say?  Denying his only family seemed heartless even
to him … but when he found whoever had mailed off that stupid post card to Bree,
they were going to be in a world of hurt.

And as his eyes drifted toward the striking
redhead sitting at one of the front tables of the dining room talking
animatedly with a woman that could only be her mother, Mack knew exactly where
he’d begin his investigation.

Scrubbing a hand across his tired
eyes, Mack sighed heavily as he turned his attention back to his excited sister. 
“Bree, honey, I’m not exactly sure our
tie-dyed-shirt-and-bell-bottom-pants-wearing, free-love-offering mother is
gonna fit in real well down here.  Paradise is a pretty conservative town, and
Mom…well, she isn’t any of that, is she?  I think ‘liberal’ might even be too
tame a word when it’s used to describe her.”

“Given the fact that she’s been
stuck in the seventies since Carter was in office, I agree.  She’ll probably
draw a few stares from the locals, but then, when doesn’t she attract attention,
Mack?” Bree returned evenly.  “Mom is unique, but most people love her.”

“At least the ones that aren’t
scared to death of her,” Mack muttered aloud.

“Not nice, big brother.  Do we need
to have the negativity/positivity discussion again?  Do I need to help you
search for life’s silver lining again?  See, with Mom comes me on this trip,
and you
adore
me!  There!  Your silver lining has been officially
located,” she said helpfully.

“You say it’s a silver lining.  I
see it as a thundercloud determined to drown me,” Mack growled sourly.  “I can
tell that trying to stop either of you at this point would be a waste of time
and energy.  So, come if you want, sis.  Mom, too.  But I haven’t decorated or
anything like that.”

“Yeah, we know you, Mack.  Neither
of us expected that you had.  We’ll take care of that for you,” Aubrey returned
breezily.

“That statement wasn’t an
invitation to holidaze my house, woman,” he griped huffily, shuddering as
visions of multiple Santas and reindeers plastered all over every available
surface of his home danced through his mind.  “I’m forty-two years old, Bree. 
I don’t need a Christmas tree and all that other crap.  It’s a waste of time to
put all that crap up at my place.”  He knew he was wasting his breath.  His mom
and sister would march into Paradise and do what they’d always done…. take over
his life completely. 

“There’s always room for a little
Christmas spirit, Mack,” Bree chided.  “And because I’m a great little sister,
I’m gonna help you find yours.  Together, Mom and I will have you singing
carols and stringing popcorn for the tree in no time at all.”

“Fine,” Mack said tiredly, realizing
the futility of further argument as he reluctantly accepted his fate.  “Come
and spend Christmas here with me in the back of beyond if you feel like you
must, but as far as this position at the local hospital goes, it’s a bad plan,
Bree.  Trust me, I know.  People here….they’re crazy.  Completely certifiable.
You don’t wanna work here.  Stay in the city where you’ve got a fighting chance
at maintaining your own sanity.  They’ll only take you down with ‘em here.  I
should know.  The natives have got their hooks in me.  Deep!”

“You know what I do for a living,
right?” Bree scoffed easily, her tone obviously unconcerned by his brutal
warning.  “My bread and butter is dealing with the twisted mind.  I am
trained
for countering the crazy.  The crazier the patient, the better I always say.”

“Breebee, you
love
the city,
remember?  The culture.  The nightlife.  The shopping,” he reminded her,
hitting her last with what would hurt to lose the most.  Aubrey lived for a
good sale.  “Paradise, Tennessee is a far cry from living in Seattle,
Washington, babe.  The nearest mall is 45 minutes away, and the good citizens
of Paradise consider their idea of culture to be airing classic movies at the
town park while they stretch out on blankets on the ground.  For God’s sake, it
seems like they roll up the sidewalks ‘round here at sundown.  There’s exactly
one bar and decent restaurant in this one-horse town, and absolutely everybody
knows everybody else’s business.  There are no secrets here.  At least not ones
that get kept for very long.  Does that sound like someplace any
self-respecting doctor at the top of their field would sign on to work?”

“You did, big brother.  And actually,
it sounds kind of nice,” Bree mused, her voice a little dreamy.  “It’d be a
welcome change to actually know my neighbors.  I’ve lived across the hall from
the same couple for the last two years and still couldn’t tell you their name. 
We barely even make eye contact in the hallway.”

“You say that like it’s a
bad
thing.”

She made an irritated sound of pure
frustration.  “Oh, Mackie Poo, not everybody wishes they could be the sole
inhabitant of their own planet.  Those of us with healthy minds and spirits actually
enjoy authentic and open social interactions.  Those are pretty hard to come by
in the city.  Everything is just so…so….superficial here.  I want to surround
myself with real, genuine people instead of these gelled and spackled stick
figures that book time with me at my practice.  If I have to treat one more
model for body image issues, I’m going to poke out my eyeballs with one of their
stilettos.”