Try - The Complete Romance Series (18 page)

“Me too,” Mack said. “Of course, I’m not
alone—my parents always have last-minute things to wrap for their grandkids.”

“So a big late-night wrapping party?” I
tried to picture Mackenzie in her pajamas, wrapping presents, maybe drinking
some mulled cider or some wine.
She could
be doing that with you.
It was too easy to imagine her with me at my
parents’ house, sitting in the living room, drinking wine while we worked on
Landon’s presents or some of the others. I’d give her a smaller present—nothing
big, just a little something—right at midnight, and then we’d finish up the
wrapping and go to bed together.

“What else is there to do on Christmas
Eve?” Mackenzie shrugged, the smile tugging at the corners of her lips driving
me almost crazy with the desire to kiss her. “I can never sleep on Christmas
Eve anyway—ever since I was a kid. I might as well be doing something.”

“I hear you there,” I agreed.
You could be having sex. That’d be a great
way to spend Christmas Eve: making love all night until Landon wakes us up.
I pushed the thought aside, remembering what Mack had said about not thinking
she was destined to have kids, or even get married.

We wandered from one store to another, and
while I tried to think of a way to bring the conversation around to our
relationship, I couldn’t think of anything. I bought a few odds and ends for
Landon’s stocking, a few little things for my nieces and nephews; all of the
kids in my family were still at an age where they were more excited by the fact
that they had presents to unwrap than by the actual presents themselves. Even
Landon, in spite of his list of things he wanted, had been thrilled the year
before just to tear paper off of packages, to see what surprises were in store
for him. “How do you do Landon’s presents?” I looked up from a big wall of
puzzles at Mackenzie’s question.

“What do you mean?” I picked one of the
easier puzzles and tucked it under my arm; it would be a good family present
for my sister’s family—something they could all do together on a rainy day.

“I mean do you stick with his list, or do
you split it up with the rest of the family, or some of what he wants and some
of what he needs?”

“He gets a few things from his list, a few
things that I know he needs, and a few things that I think he’d like, but that
he didn’t ask for.” I shrugged. “The whole family exchanges lists, so we keep
track of who’s getting what for the kids. Landon gets most of what’s on his
list, but he doesn’t get everything and then some.”

“That’s a smart way to do it,” Mackenzie
said. “When I was a kid, the rule was: something you want, something you need,
something to wear and something to read.”

“Big book people?” Mackenzie chuckled.

“My grandfather only had a seventh-grade
education,” she explained. “But he managed to educate himself well enough to
become an accountant, back when you didn’t need a degree for it. So he was
always super passionate about reading and books.”

“Sounds like a good guy,” I said. “Maybe I
should start getting Landon into reading more.”

“It’s a great thing,” Mackenzie said. “I
like the way you’re doing it though—it’s good to have some surprises, some
things you never would have expected to get.”

“Landon’s at that age, you know?” I picked
up another puzzle and then put it down, deciding against it; I couldn’t think
of anyone in the family who would actually want it. “As long as he’s tearing
wrapping paper off of presents, he almost doesn’t really care what it is
inside.”

Mackenzie laughed. “One of my nephews is
at that age too,” she said.

“You must be the favorite aunt,” I pointed
out. “With—with no kids of your own, you’re not as stressed out. And you’re
great with kids.”

“I’m great with kids in part because of my
nieces and nephews,” Mackenzie said. “Lots of practice, and lots of seeing them
at different ages.”

“So Aunt Mackie,” I said, trying the
nickname out for size. “Do you get them all the coolest toys?”

“I get them some cool toys,” Mackenzie
said. “But mostly I’m good at picking out things that their parents don’t think
of. I’ll see something in a store, and it’ll remind me of one of the tykes.”

“It’s a shame that you don’t think you’re
going to ever be in the position to spoil some kids of your own,” I said,
taking the plunge. “I think you’d be great at it.” Mackenzie shrugged.

“I’ve mostly made peace with it,” she
said. “I mean after all, if I can’t find someone to have those kids with…” she
stopped short, looking at something in a display. “Can you do me a favor,
Patrick?”

“What’s that?”

Mackenzie picked up a little make-your-own
kite set and showed it to me. “If I buy this, will you give it to Landon, from
me?” she blushed. “I can’t really give it to him at the clinic—it’d be mean to
the other kids. But he was telling me the other day that you and he talk about
flying kites when it gets warmer.”

“I can do that,” I said, smiling.
She wants to buy a present for Landon. She’s
thinking about him. That has to mean something.
“Are you going to get me
something for Christmas too?” Mackenzie’s blush deepened and she turned away,
taking her wallet out of her purse to pay for the presents she’d selected.

“I have actually been agonizing over
whether I should,” she admitted. I caught the sight of her licking her lips in
profile. “Especially these last couple of days I didn’t know if I was going to
see you in time to be able to give you a gift…”

“And now we’re shopping together,” I said.
“It wouldn’t really be a surprise then, would it?”

“Nope,” she agreed. “So you kind of shot
yourself in the foot, suggesting we do our shopping together. No Christmas
present for you.”

We went up to the fifth level, and grabbed
dinner from Potbelly’s: Italian for me, and roast beef for Mack, and we settled
into the first seats we could find to eat.
Stop
hedging and just ask her,
I thought, watching Mackenzie closely as she took
bites of her sandwich and sipped her milkshake.

“I was hoping that I might be able to see
you again, now that things aren’t so crazy,” I told her. I was still hedging,
still avoiding asking her outright—I’d become a complete coward. “I’m going to
have the week from Christmas Eve until New Year’s Day off.”

“I’m not sure what my schedule’s going to
look like,” Mackenzie said quickly. “They’re putting off the roster for holiday
overtime until the last minute, same as last year.” She looked at me for a
moment and then reached down to tug one of the slipping shopping bags closer to
her. “Plus, you know—family. They want to spend as much time with me as
possible, and the holidays are really the only time everyone’s free.”

“I hear that,” I said. “I was just
thinking—you know. I feel really bad about canceling on you, and then sort of
dropping off the radar for a while.”

“It happens,” Mackenzie said. “I get it.
I’m a pretty busy person most of the time too.” She gave me a brief smile. “And
I don’t even have a kid. So don’t worry about it too much.” I wished—god how I
wished—that I could suggest that she could come home with me. I thought that if
I could get her alone, if I could just spend a little bit of time with
Mackenzie, that I’d know for sure how she felt.
Every time you’ve had sex with her it’s been great. She’s been great.
I’d gone so long without it that now that I’d gotten a little taste, I was
thinking about it at least five times a day. “I think I’m done,” Mackenzie
said, surveying her bags. “I mean—unless you had something else to do.”

“I’ve got to make sure Landon isn’t
driving his aunt crazy,” I said. “I could walk you to your car though.”

When we got to her car, I managed to
scrounge up enough courage to kiss her; Mackenzie melted against me, and the
urge to call and tell my sister that I’d be late to pick Landon up was almost
unbearable. But a little voice inside my head told me that I was just delaying
the inevitable. I kissed her one last, quick time. “I’ll get in touch after the
holiday,” I said. “I’d love to see you again, and soon.”

“That would be really nice,” Mackenzie
said. I turned away to find my car, and tried not to wonder how I could spend
almost two hours with a woman and not know for sure whether she loved me or
not.

Chapter Five - Mackenzie

I had expected that the date with Patrick
would finally make everything clear to me; I’d know for sure whether or not he
was interested in me, or if he’d moved on. Instead when I went home I had been
more confused than ever. To make matters worse, the day after the date was my
day off from work; I was going to be spending the whole day by myself, dwelling
on the strangeness of the date and trying to figure out what to think.

Patrick had said that he wanted to see me
again—sometime during the holiday week. But he hadn’t made any specific
timeframe, and he hadn’t texted me after we’d parted for the night. He hadn’t
even mentioned wanting to come home with me; though that might be as much
because he had to think about Landon as anything else. We’d made out—and it had
been as hot as ever—but before that the whole date had been awkward. And then,
of course, there was the fact that he’d been avoiding me, and he hadn’t given
me any kind of reason for it. Something about his excuse about being busy just
didn’t add up to me, though I couldn’t say what.

Instead of torturing myself all day, after
I got up and had some breakfast, I called Amie. Even if I wasn’t sure whether
or not I could fully trust her with information about my relationship with
Patrick, I wanted her company, and she was one of the only other people in the
office who had the day off so close to Christmas. “Hey, Amie,” I said when she
picked up the phone.

“What’s up? I would’ve thought you’d be hanging
out with Patrick.” I rolled my eyes, even though I knew she couldn’t see.

“He’s at work,” I pointed out. “I was
wondering if you’d want to come over and help me wrap presents.”

“Sure! As long as you’ve got some wine for
me to drink when I get there.”

“Are you even supposed to be drinking with
the medications you’re on?”

“I’ll skip a dose; I’ll need to do that
anyway, with having to take the bus to get there.”

“I can pick you up,” I pointed out.

“Nope. I’m going to hop the bus in ten
minutes—it’s going right by my place to your place. Don’t even think about
getting in your car. The roads are icy.” Before I could argue the point—to try
and tell Amie that if the roads were bad enough that she didn’t want me to
drive, they were bad enough that walking to the bus stop, especially with her
injuries, would be miserable—she hung up on me. I shook my head and chuckled to
myself, and got up to get ready for her to arrive.

I grabbed a cheap bottle of red wine that
one of my patients’ parents had given me as a Christmas gift and poured it into
a pot with some spices, sliced an orange and a lemon and added them too. I set
it on the stove to heat up a little bit—Amie would definitely be even happier
to have not only wine, but hot wine to enjoy when she got to my place. I pulled
out all of the things I needed to wrap, including the presents I’d gotten for
the clinic’s holiday party the next day. We had two big gift-giving things for
the party: one was a Secret Santa with a limit of $15, and the other was a $5
“stuff the stockings” gift.

In twenty minutes, there was a knock at my
door, and I hurried to let Amie into my apartment. “I can smell wine,” she
said, giving me a quick, awkward hug with her injured arm dangling, a big bag
full of gifts to be wrapped hung on her other shoulder.

“Not just wine,” I said, leading her into
my kitchen. “Mulled wine.” I turned off the heat and added a little bit of
sugar and big splash of brandy from a bottle I kept around mostly for cooking,
and in a minute we were sitting at my kitchen table together, drinking our
wine, talking about the office gossip.

“Who’d you get for secret Santa?” I rolled
my eyes; no one was supposed to know, but since Amie was going to be helping me
wrap presents, there was no point in even trying to keep it a secret.

“I got Mary-Ann,” I said. “I got one of
those gift sets from Bath and Body Works for her, since she wears all that
lotion and stuff.”

“I got Jim,” Amie said, making a face. “I
got him a couple of mini-bottles of bourbon on special and a gift card to the
hardware store.” I laughed; Jim was another one of the physical therapists, and
one of the manliest men I’d ever met in my life—he’d be delighted with the
present Amie had gotten him. “If it wasn’t for the fact that he’s got a wife
already, and a kid on the way—only you didn’t hear it from me—I’d ask him out.”
Amie sighed.

“Please! As if you need another man in
your life. You’re juggling what—three guys right now?”

“Two,” Amie said, shaking her head. “
Me
getting injured freaked Dave out and he split on me.”

“Men are shameful creatures,” I told her,
doing my best Southern Belle impression.

“You say that when you got one of the good
ones?”