Try - The Complete Romance Series (21 page)

Chapter Eight - Patrick

I watched Landon scurry into his bedroom
with a big armful of toys and chuckled, moving to throw myself onto the couch.
Christmas Day had been busy for both of us—but Landon had reserves of energy
that I’d lost when I got out of college. “You got a good haul this year, bud!”

“Yeah!” Landon’s voice came to me muffled
from the distance between the couch and his bedroom.

“Which presents did you like the best?” I
heard a thump—and for a fraction of a second, I was concerned that Landon might
have fallen in his headlong rush. The next instant though, I heard the sound of
his feet on the floor and he ran out of his bedroom with about three of the new
toys he’d gotten.

One of them had come from Joanne’s
parents: an eBook reader pre-loaded with about a dozen books on it, with
software that would help Landon learn new words and quiz him about the concepts
in the stories. “That’s one of your favorites?” I asked, pointing it out.

“Yeah! It has games, too,” Landon
explained.
 
He put it down on the coffee
table and showed me the next toy; it was a new action figure for his Skylander
collection, one that Landon had been wanting for weeks—it had come from Santa. I
smiled as he exclaimed over how cool it was and how much more he was going to
be able to play.

“Did you put your new toys away nicely?” I
asked him. I noticed that the third toy he’d brought out was the make-your-own
kite that Mack had gotten him.

“Yes,” Landon said; he looked away.

“If I go in there and look, is that what
I’m going to see?” Landon looked down at his feet. I sighed, fighting the urge
to laugh at the fact that my son was incapable of lying believably. “Come on,
kiddo. Let’s get your toys straightened up and start putting together what
you’re going to donate, and then we’ll have some time to play before we eat
dinner. How’s that sound?”

“Okay!” Landon grabbed up the toys he had
brought into the living room with him and hurried back towards his bedroom. I
followed, hating to get off the couch but telling myself that time with my son
was time with my son—I got little enough of it as it was.

His room wasn’t a total wreck, but I
helped him as he went about straightening it; putting his dirty clothes from
the holidays in the hamper, putting his new toys in the trunk and on the
shelves where he could play with them, plugging in his eBook reader so it would
be ready for him later. I helped him gather up the toys that he wanted to
donate to the shelters, too; it was something that I’d done with Landon every
Christmas since he was one year old. The idea had been Joanne’s, and it was a
small way of keeping her memory alive.

She had said, while she was pregnant with
Landon, that she never wanted our son to become spoiled. “I see so many kids
who have more toys than they ever play with, and then other kids go
without—it’s a travesty.” Joanne’s idea had been that every year at Christmas,
we’d go through our child’s things with him, and pick out some toys that were
still in perfectly good shape, but that he didn’t play with regularly, and
donate those to children living in shelters or orphanages. I’d tried to set a
good example by letting Landon help me pick out clothes and other items of my
own to donate—including donating old but still working electronics whenever I
bought a new one.

By the time we finished, about thirty
minutes later, there was a nice-sized box of toys to go to the shelter, and I
hunkered down with my son to play with him. One of the gifts he’d gotten—not
one of his favorites, but one that was a useful thing nonetheless—was a board
game, and I suggested that there was no better way for Landon to learn how to
play it than to go through a round of it right away.

We opened up the box and laid everything
out, and in minutes Landon was wrapped up in the game; all I had to do was make
sure I was paying attention to him and not dawdling when it was my turn to roll
the dice or do one of the challenges that came up. “I wonder what Mack is doing
right now,” Landon said, letting the dice fall onto the cardboard.

“What makes you think about that?”

Landon shrugged. “I really liked the kite
she got me,” he explained, “and I want to thank her.”

“That would be a nice thing to do,” I told
him. “Maybe you could make her a card to show her how grateful you are.”

“I will!” Landon picked up a challenge
card. “Spin in a circle five times,” he read.

“Well, get to it or miss your move,” I
said, grinning. Landon scrambled up and stepped back from the board game on the
floor, and spun in a circle while I counted out how many revolutions he made.
He tumbled effortlessly back onto the floor giggling.

We talked about how much fun the game
would be with some of his friends, but Landon’s comment had brought Mack up in
my mind again. I wished I knew how her holidays had gone—she had mentioned
something about meddling relatives, her parents and siblings wanting to know
everything about her love life. I’d hoped that she’d managed to get through it
without feeling weird about our relationship, but I didn’t quite have the
courage to call and ask her about how it had been. I’d already decided I was
going to wait another day to give her a call, to try and make another effort at
mending our relationship.

“Hey Dad,” Landon said, when I started
warming up leftovers that we’d brought home from the family get-together for
dinner, “we should wait for after the new year to give my toys to the shelter.”

“Why’s that, buddy?”

I looked up from the microwave to look at
Landon at the breakfast bar, coloring. “You’re going to be buying me a lot more
presents in a couple of weeks,” he pointed out. “When you lose the bet.”

“When I lose the bet, eh?” I grinned. “I
wasn’t sure you were keeping track of that.”

“Yep!” Landon paused in the midst of his
coloring and hopped down from the bar stool, hurrying into his bedroom. I
shrugged off his behavior and checked on the heating food, trying to make sure
I didn’t start a fire in the microwave or melt anything. “See?” I turned around
again and saw that my son was holding up a calendar. I frowned for a second,
confused—and then realized that every day since he’d made the bet with me to
the current day was marked with a big X.

“You’ve been keeping track!”

I turned away from the stove and microwave
to examine the calendar in a little more detail. Sure enough, I had a little
less than a week until New Year’s Day, which was when Landon had wanted me to
find him a new mother by.

“Yep. And I don’t think you are going to
win,” Landon told me. “You have six and a half days to find me a new mom, Dad.”

“I know, I know.”

I smiled but I felt a little crushed at
the reminder. The one real shot I’d made at winning the bet had been with
Mack—and I had no idea where we stood. It was stupid of me to have given into
Landon’s wager; it would have been impossible to know that I would want someone
in my life—and Landon’s—for the rest of it after only knowing her for less than
a month.

“You kept my list, right Dad?” Landon’s
eyes looked eager for the toys that he knew he would be getting in a few weeks’
time. I laughed again and the microwave beeped to let me know that the food was
heated up.

“I did. So if and when you win our bet, I
will be able to get you your list all over again.”

“I’m gonna win,” Landon said with
confidence in his voice. “Are you going to ask Mack out again?”

I turned away so that Landon wouldn’t see
me cringe. “I don’t know, buddy. She’s pretty busy, and I don’t know what her
plans are for New Years. We’ll see how things go in a week or so.” Just saying
it made me feel down; I wasn’t sure whether I was more upset at the fact that I
had been dumb enough to put a couple hundred dollars on the line in a wager
with my five-year-old son, or if I was more disappointed that I hadn’t been
able to prove him wrong and give him the mom I knew he was craving—or at least
a woman in his life who might eventually fulfill that role.

We sat down to eat up some of the
Christmas dinner leftovers we’d had from both Joanne’s parents and my own,
talking about what we wanted to do during the week that I would be off for the
holidays. I always took off from Christmas Day until the day after New Year’s
Day, every year—I wanted to make the most of Landon’s holiday break from
school, so I wouldn’t put a strain on my siblings, parents, and in-laws, and so
I could reconnect with my son.

As I was cleaning up, while Landon colored
another page in his new coloring book, my phone rang. For a second, I thought
that it might be Mack—that she might have more courage than I had. Instead it
was my sister Jessica.

“Hey, Jess!” I balanced the phone on my
shoulder and closed the door on the dishwasher, giving it a nudge to start.
“What’s going on?”

“I know I just saw you yesterday, but I
swear these children of mine are going to drive me out of my mind and I have
got
to get out of this house.”

I laughed, glancing at Landon, who was
humming to himself. I only had the one kid—Jessica had four. “What did you have
in mind?” I asked. It was almost seven at night, and while Landon needed to be
in bed by nine, I thought that would give Jess plenty of time to decompress.

“Come by my place, drop Landon off so that
he can help my husband drain the energy out of my kids, and you and I will have
some sibling bonding time over a nice cup of coffee far, far away from
screaming children.”

I thought about it; I would trust Jessica
with my own life—and with Landon’s. I’d been friends with her husband for
years, and if Landon somehow managed to fall asleep before I could get Jessica
back to the house, he could stay the night with no problem. I’d just pick him
up in the morning, maybe have breakfast over there before we went out and did
anything, or invite their family to come with us.

“I need to get out of my own head for a
bit anyway,” I told her. “I’ll get some warm clothes on the kid and we’ll be over
in fifteen.”

“You have always been my favorite brother,
Patrick,” Jessica told me, relief in her voice. “I’ll see you in fifteen.”

Chapter Nine - Mackenzie

The day after Christmas I made excuses to
my family and went into the city; as much as I loved them, I needed a little
bit of time away from their questions and comments and concerns about me. So I
pretended that I’d gotten a phone call from the office that someone had called
out sick, and I would have to go back into the city for a few hours to cover a
few of the sessions. Mom and Dad had been upset, but they’d pretended at least
like they understood.

Instead of going into the office—which was
already closed by the time I’d had enough—I went back to my apartment and did a
load of laundry, and then I decided to do a little wandering around the city. I
would take the opportunity to return a few of the presents I’d gotten that
hadn’t fit, or exchange them for other things. As I was leaving the apartment
to head into the downtown area, I started thinking that it’d be nice to check
out the after-Christmas sales, too; Lush was having a buy one get one sale, and
assuming that it wasn’t incredibly packed with people, and that I could make it
there, I might be able to find some relaxing bath things.

I spent some time wandering around, going
from one shop to another; I probably should have done more of my trips in the
car instead of on foot, but after two days of hanging out with my parents,
eating myself almost sick, it felt good to walk steadily for a few hours. I decided
that I was going to spend as much time as possible before New Year’s Eve away
from my family; as much as I loved them, and as glad as I had been to see them,
I didn’t like the questions.

I’d been so sure that telling them that I
was dating someone would help matters—that my parents and my siblings would
back off a bit, since I had the prospect of a boyfriend. But more and more
questions had come up over Christmas.

“What kind of guy is this Patrick dude?”

“Do you have any other guys on the hook—in
case the one with the kid doesn’t work out?”

“Is it weird to date someone who you see a
bunch of times per week?”

I obviously couldn’t tell them that I
wasn’t even sure that the relationship with Patrick was going to go any further
than it already had; if I admitted that things had gotten strained and weird
between me and Patrick, I’d have to hear a million more questions about what
I’d done wrong, and why I was pushing yet another guy away. I truly believed
that I hadn’t actually done anything obviously wrong in my previous
relationships; I hadn’t picked fights, I hadn’t consciously tried to push
anyone away. Things just never seemed to really work out. Guys always tended to
expect a girl to stop working or to get serious on a schedule. I’d met lots of
guys who had wanted me to want to get married and have kids, and when I hadn’t
been serious about them—when I’d been serious about my studies and then my
career instead—they’d gotten more and more distant.

I’d thought that with Patrick that
wouldn’t be as much of an issue. He obviously spent a lot of time at work
himself, and whenever he wasn’t at work he tried to be with Landon as much as
possible. I’d figured a guy like that would be able to understand that I had
priorities in my life that weren’t him. But now that things had become so
strange between us, I had to wonder if I’d been wrong about that too.