A Family for the Holidays

“Is that right?”

“That’s what I think,” she said.

“With nothing to base it on but some beauty shop gossip?”

“With nothing to base it on but my own intuition and the sense I got from what little I overheard today. Your friends are wondering what’s going on with you, and if you don’t show up tomorrow night, they’ll be wondering even more.”

“How about you?” he asked with a sly twinkle in his eyes. “Are you wondering what’s going on with me?”

“It’s none of my business,” she repeated as if her curiosity about him wasn’t growing by the minute.

Still he wasn’t forthcoming. He merely smiled more broadly. “Maybe you’ll find out if you come to that dinner with me.”

“Would you feel better about it if you didn’t have to go alone?”

He grinned. “Would you feel better about going if I say I’d feel better about going if I didn’t have to go alone?”

Shandie was beginning to think this was a game she wasn’t any more likely to win than the struggle to keep Kayla’s hat and mittens on in the car seat. So she conceded.

“Yes,” she said. “It does sound like fun, and it would give me a chance to meet some people. I think it would be good for you to go, and so if it would make you more comfortable, I’d be happy to go with you. As long as it was just as friends and as your moral support, to pay you back for taking us home tonight and fixing my car tomorrow.”

His grin got even wider as he volleyed once more in the game she’d been trying to put an end to. “If that makes you feel better—just as friends, payback for the ride and for the jump tomorrow, no strings attached.”

Shandie took a deep breath and sighed. “Okay.”

He laughed as if he’d thoroughly enjoyed whatever it was they’d just played. “Gee, thanks,” he said facetiously.

Shandie rolled her eyes at him and released the portion of Kayla’s car seat that kept the little girl contained. Then she got out of the truck and turned back to help Kayla climb from the carrier. The three-year-old jumped across that section of seat into Shandie’s arms so Shandie could lift her down to the ground.

While she did, Dax unclicked the belt that held the safety seat and took it with him to cart up to the front door behind Shandie and Kayla.

“Can Dax-like-Max-the-dog have sam’iches with us?” Kayla asked as they made the trek.

“You aren’t having peanut butter and marshmallow sandwiches for dinner, Kayla, no matter what,” Shandie said, recognizing her daughter’s tactics and uncomfortable with the spot the child’s question put her in. But after already considering asking Dax to stay, she’d thought better of it.

“But I wan’ peanut butter and marsh’allow sam’iches!” Kayla insisted.

Shandie unlocked the door. “Go in and take off your coat,” she said, rather than getting sucked into what she knew was likely to be a battle.

“Then can I have ’em?” Kayla bargained.

“Maybe you can have marshmallows in hot chocolate before bed if you eat a good—not sweet—dinner,” Shandie countered to avoid the fight.

That appeased her daughter, who paused to say “Bye” to Dax before going inside.

Alone on the porch with Dax, Shandie turned and took the car seat from him. “Thanks,” she said, echoing the word but not the facetious tone he’d used moments earlier.

“Sure,” he answered. “Want me to send Misty down to meet you?”

“Misty?”

“The babysitter,” he said with a nod in the direction of his house up the street.

“It’s cold and a school night. I’d hate to make her come out. Maybe you could just give me her number and I’ll call her?” Shandie suggested, taking a pen and one of her business cards out of her purse.

She handed them both to him, and Dax wrote on the back of the card in the space allotted for appointment dates and times. Then he returned it to her.

“I put my numbers on there, too. In case you want to back out of tomorrow night for some reason,” he said, letting her know he wouldn’t hold her to something he’d essentially taunted her into in the first place.

Shandie couldn’t think of any reason she’d want to back out, but she didn’t tell him that.

Instead she said, “I’ll see you in the morning, then? With your battery charger?”

“First thing,” he promised before he said good-night and retraced his steps to his still-running truck.

Only in his wake did it strike Shandie that she’d just made what could be considered a date with him.

With Dax Traub.

And that was when a reason to back out of dinner with him the following night did occur to her.

It was a date.

With Dax Traub….

Chapter Three

What was going on with him?

It was the question that Shandie had said people were throwing around the beauty shop, and as Dax got ready for Wednesday night’s dinner, it was something he was wondering himself. Again—because the truth was, it was something he’d been wondering for a while now.

He’d turned thirty this year, and it had hit him hard. It was an age, he thought as he got into the shower, when there was no more denying he was an adult, that his life had gotten to where it was going. And he’d had to take stock.

His friends, the guys he’d grown up with and known all his life—Grant Clifton, Marshall and Mitchell Cates, Russ Chilton and even his own brother, D.J.—were all around the same age. And yet if they looked back, they could all list success in their lives, their careers and in their relationships—since most of them had found women they wanted to spend their futures with. And where was he?

Nowhere.

Business was lousy. His marriage had lasted only a few years. That flash-in-the-pan engagement to Lizbeth Stanton…

What was going on with him? he asked himself.

He wished he knew.

Maybe a better question was what the hell had happened to him.

He’d been on top of the world all through high school. He’d thought he was cool, and so had everyone else. Girls had fallen all over him, there had never been a party he wasn’t invited to, a person who hadn’t wanted to hang out with him. He’d snatched Thunder Canyon’s golden girl from under every other guy’s nose—apparently including his brother’s, even though he hadn’t known how D.J. had felt about Allaire at the time. And fresh from graduation and his honeymoon, he’d begun what had proved to be one of the most stupendous winning streaks motorcycle racing had ever seen.

He’d had it all, and he’d been sure that his entire future would be the stuff of dreams….

Shampoo suds were running down his face. He clamped his eyes shut, stepped under the spray of the shower and let the water beat down on him.

The stuff of dreams…

Then his fresh-out-of-high-school marriage to Allaire had tanked.

And fast on the heels of that, his biggest dream had ended in a nightmare against a retaining wall.

And when all the dust had settled and the stitches had come out and the casts and bandages had been removed, he’d found himself with no choice but to try picking up what pieces he could salvage from what was left.

That was where the shop had begun.

But it wasn’t booming, and he knew why. Sure, he was good with an engine, with the mechanics, working with his hands, but his heart just wasn’t in the business that seemed like nothing more than a consolation prize.

So here he was, a washout at thirty. A loser. Or at least that was what he felt like. A royally messed-up, couldn’t-make-anything-work-out, didn’t-know-what-he-wanted loser. Who probably deserved the strained way all his friends were acting around him and the fight he’d had with his brother.

Maybe he should lock up, load his Harley into the back of the truck and get the hell out of Thunder Canyon, he thought as he went on standing in the punishing spray of the shower. Maybe he should go somewhere where he could forget everything here—past and present—and start over.

He considered it. Seriously. Even contemplating where he might go.

But that didn’t do anything for him either, he realized. In fact, it seemed like an even more dreary route to take.

Thunder Canyon was still home. Still where he’d grown up. Where he felt he belonged.

“But something’s gotta give,” he growled.

Going nowhere, enjoying nothing, adrift and wondering, What now? It sucked.

Although it struck him suddenly that the enjoying nothing part wasn’t altogether true of the past few days. He’d enjoyed Kayla Solomon. And Kayla Solomon’s mom…

Just the thought of the two of them lifted his spirits a little.

Kayla with her tousled hair and three-year-old’s confidence—sure of herself, of what she wanted, of how she could get it.

And her mom.

Shandie Solomon.

He’d heard there was someone new at the Clip ’n Curl who was worth a look. It just hadn’t really registered through his misery and he hadn’t given it a second thought. Or put any effort into taking a look.

But to say that Shandie was worth a look was an understatement.

Shandie Solomon was hotter than hell.

She and her daughter shared the same hair color—blond so blond it nearly gleamed. They had the same pale skin, too, and Shandie’s was no less smooth or flawless than the little girl’s. Their eyes tagged them as mother and daughter as well. The blue of a mountain sky on a clear winter’s day, and with the longest lashes he’d ever seen.

Shandie also had a small, perfect nose, which was slightly different from her daughter’s upturned little pug, and high cheekbones and bone structure that looked fine and delicate, as opposed to Kayla’s chubby cheeks.

And then there was Shandie’s compact, not-too-thin, not-too-curvy body—he’d wanted to pull that up against him and…

Dax dropped his head backward and shook it as a dog shakes water from its coat, despite the continued pelting of the shower.

The last thing he needed to be thinking about was pulling some woman—any woman—up against him.

He grabbed the bar of soap to get on with his shower. And as he lathered up, he reminded himself that he wasn’t interested in starting anything with Shandie Solomon—or anyone else—right now.

After the fiasco with Lizbeth he knew better than to think a woman could be the bandage that would fix his screwed-up life, and he was determined to sort everything out before he let himself get involved with anyone again. He knew that was the only hope he had of getting it right, and he just couldn’t take any more failures.

So why was he going to this dinner tonight and taking Shandie Solomon with him?

Another good question.

Maybe because when he was with Kayla and Shandie, he got a rest from his own depressing thoughts. He actually forgot about how damn unhappy he’d been lately.

So when Shandie had started talking about this dinner—which he’d had no intention of going to until she’d brought it up—and he’d heard in her voice how much she would have liked it if she had been included in something like it, the whole thing hadn’t seemed like such a bad idea.

Especially when taking her also meant that he was certain to see her again tonight—without having to hope her daughter might sneak into his shop again and act as a lure for her mother to follow, or that the car battery he’d charged today might not hold the charge and give him the chance to take them home again.

But he was probably making a mistake, he told himself as he rinsed off the soap. It was probably a mistake to go to this dinner when he and his brother were liable to fight again. When his ex-wife and ex-fiancée would be there. When everybody was walking on eggshells around him and playing down their own successes and happiness rather than make his lousy life seem even worse.

Going to this dinner was probably a mistake when spending an entire evening with Shandie Solomon would give free rein to a weakness for her that he shouldn’t be having at all, let alone giving in to. Particularly since it would undoubtedly just feed the thoughts and mental images he’d been having about her since they’d met.

“Man, how stupid are you?” he muttered.

Maybe he should call Shandie and say he was sick or something and couldn’t make it…

But like his earlier deliberation about leaving Thunder Canyon, not going through with tonight with Shandie was a short-lived consideration, too.

Because since she’d agreed to go with him he’d been looking forward to the damn dinner just so he could have a little concentrated time with her. And if he wanted to be with her badly enough to make him look forward to this dinner? He wanted to be with her too badly to cancel out now.

“So apparently you’re plenty stupid,” he answered his own question of a moment before.

But he wasn’t going to refuse himself the only thing he’d actually wanted to do in as long as he could remember. He would just make sure to abide by the terms she’d set, he told himself as he turned off the water and reached for his towel.

No strings attached—that was what she’d said. And that was what he needed—and wanted—too.

They’d go to the dinner as friends, and maybe his showing up with her on his arm would be the key to shutting down those freaking sympathetic looks he kept being the recipient of, and Shandie would get to meet some people—everybody would come out ahead.

Yeah, that was another way to look at it.

Then Shandie Solomon would go on about her business and he would go on about his—no harm, no foul, no strings.

Maybe this was actually the best route to take.

Or maybe he was kidding himself.

But for once—and unlike his usual perspective these days—he decided to opt for the better of the scenarios and believe that this evening would accomplish a few good things.

He already knew for a fact that something positive would come of it—he was going to get to see the new blonde on the block for a while tonight. And that was definitely something good.

Good enough to almost make him feel as if things were already looking up….

“Did you say you were from Denver?”

“I did,” Shandie confirmed in answer to the question Dax asked her as he pulled away from her house Wednesday night.

He’d come to her door only a few minutes earlier and won more of Kayla’s fondness by giving the three-year-old a set of toy racing motorcycles complete with a track. Then he’d helped Shandie on with her black, calf-length coat while telling her she looked terrific in her gray pin-striped, cuffed trousers and the white angora sweater she’d judged just dressy enough for the evening.

She’d returned Dax’s compliment, but it had been an understatement. He didn’t merely look nice, he looked jaw-droppingly fabulous in charcoal slacks and a black turtleneck sweater that gave him a man-of-mystery-and-danger sort of edge while still dressing him up, too.

But now that they were on their way, he was making small talk that Shandie thought was designed to conceal that he was very much on edge. And while she didn’t wish him any stress or discord from his other relationships, she just hoped his tension wasn’t a result of being with her.

“I was born and raised in Denver,” she continued. “It’s where I’ve lived all my life.”

He smelled wonderful, too, she thought as the scent of a clean, airy cologne wafted to her in the cab of his truck.

“And you just decided to chuck it all and move to Thunder Canyon?” he asked.

“Well, I wasn’t really ‘chucking it all.’ I was a late-in-life baby, and both my parents are gone. Judy is all the family Kayla and I have left, so when she offered me a partnership in the Clip ’n Curl and it meant moving up here, I thought why not? Especially since Thunder Canyon is relatively small—it just seemed like it might be a better place to raise a child on my own.”

Dax nodded.

“What about you?” Shandie asked to keep the ball rolling. “Are you from here or from somewhere else?”

“Thunder Canyon—born and bred.”

“And you’ve always lived here?”

“I’ve done some traveling but, yeah, this has always been home. For better or for worse.”

“Do you not like it here?” Shandie inquired, wondering if that was what he was implying.

“No, I like it. Well enough not to leave it, I guess.”

“Has that been a possibility? Your moving away?”

“It’s something I think about from time to time,” he said. “But don’t let that change your mind about Thunder Canyon—you’re right, it is a good place to raise kids. I had a lot of fun growing up here. I think Kayla will, too. If Jack S. gets off her back.”

“I don’t know. Kayla and Jack S. seem to have a love-hate thing going,” Shandie joked.

They’d arrived at the main lodge of the Thunder Canyon Resort by then.

Like a tour guide, Dax informed her that what had begun as a ski resort was now a four-season destination that drew upscale tourists from around the world.

Shandie wasn’t surprised that the beauty of the rustically elegant Alpine-flavored gateway to the mountain had become a big draw.

There were parking spots closer to the entrance, but several cars had pulled in just in front of them and Dax seemed to hang back from where they were all headed, choosing a spot behind them.

“Looks like everybody’s getting here at once,” he observed, apparently recognizing the cars.

“Then we won’t be too early or too late,” Shan-die said brightly, as if she hadn’t noted the more somber note that had edged Dax’s comment.

He turned off the engine, removed the keys from the ignition and put them in his pocket, but he made no move to leave the truck. Instead, his gaze was glued to those other cars and the people who were emerging from them without any hesitation.

“Who’s who?” Shandie asked as they all seemed to gather to say hello without any knowledge that she and Dax were there watching.

“The tallest guy in the coat that looks like it came straight out of a magazine? That’s Grant Clifton. He manages the resort now, which seems right since he’s always been driven and ambitious. He’s the man to make it be all that it can be.”

“And the woman he’s holding hands with?”

“Stephanie Julen. Steph, Grant’s fiancée. She’s our nature girl—more at home on the back of a horse than anyone I’ve ever known. Next to them—the guy built like a brick wall—is Mitchell Cates. He’s the founder and president of Cates International, a company that sells farm and ranch equipment. He caused some trouble when we were kids,” Dax said affectionately and clearly with fond memories of the trouble. “But he’s pretty serious now. That’s Lizbeth Stanton with him…”

Dax’s tone had slowly brightened as he’d talked about his friends, and Shandie could tell that he was genuinely fond of them and even proud of their accomplishments and attributes. But that brighter tone dimmed with the mention of the woman Shandie had heard he’d been engaged to.

Was he jealous now that Lizbeth Stanton was with his old friend? Shandie wondered. Or were there harder feelings between him and his former fiancée than he’d let on when he’d said what little he’d said before about her being at this dinner?

But Dax didn’t offer anything else on the subject of Lizbeth Stanton, and Shandie didn’t think it was the right time to pry.

So, instead, she prompted him to go on by saying, “Next to them?”

“That’s Marshall—Mitchell’s brother.” The warmer tone returned to his voice. “He’s a doctor. Sports medicine. He practices at the resort now that it’s grown, but he was at the hospital in town before. He’s with Mia—she’s actually an heiress who came to Thunder Canyon to hide out. That’s how they hooked up.”

“They look happy,” Shandie commented, feeling a twinge for what she’d lost herself as she looked at them standing there with their arms wrapped around each other’s waists.

“Russ Chilton is beside Marshall. Russ has a ranch outside of town. He’s our good ol’ boy. He likes things the way they are, doesn’t like that change and progress are not only on the way, they’re here. He and Grant have always been as close as brothers. Closer than I ever was with mine…”

Again Dax’s tone reflected a darker side that Shandie didn’t delve into.

“Is your brother there?”

“D.J.” Dax named him. Then he pointed a long index finger in the direction of the entrance to the lodge. “There he is. Looks like he and Allaire are playing host. See them standing in the doorway, waving for everyone to come in?”

Shandie altered her line of vision until she located the couple Dax was referring to.

Even from the distance she could see a resemblance between Dax and his brother, although they were opposite sides of the same coin. Where Dax was all bad-boy good looks, D.J. was pure boy next door.

“He made a fortune selling barbecue sauce after he left Thunder Canyon,” Dax was saying. “Then he sank that money into opening a chain of his Rib Shack restaurants. He just opened one here. That’s where the dinner is tonight, so I guess that’s why he’s acting like everybody’s coming to his house.”

Dax sounded as if that made him reluctant to go through with this, but Shandie wasn’t going to give him an easy out by asking if that were the case. Rather, she said, “And Allaire…”

“My ex-wife,” he said. “She teaches art at the high school.”

Nothing more was offered, and again Shandie didn’t think she had a right to delve into it.

“There’s a late arrival—well, besides us,” she said when the driver and passenger of the car that had just joined the others got out and were greeted by the group.

“Riley Douglas and his wife Lisa,” Dax said. “Riley is Caleb Douglas’s son. Caleb is as close to the town’s patriarch as there is. He’s the richest man around, has his hand in just about everything. He owns the resort, but he’s turned over running it to Riley now.”

“That’s different than Grant—what was it, Clifton?”

“Grant Clifton, right.”

“Didn’t you say he ran the resort?”

“He manages it. He supervises the day-to-day operations, while Riley is still the higher-up.”

“And Riley’s wife, Lisa? What does she do?”

“She’s an animal lover. She’s devoted to animal welfare—if there’s any suspicion of an animal being abused or neglected, Lisa’ll come out with both barrels blazing.” He paused, then concluded, “And that’s the whole bunch.”

For a moment they just sat there silently, watching everyone gather at the lodge’s entrance to continue their hellos inside, to shake hands or clap backs, to exchange a hug here and there. It was very clear what a close-knit group it was and how happy they all were to be together. And Dax was making no fast moves to be in on it.

“Well, it looks like this’ll be fun,” Shandie said with nothing whatsoever to base that on, merely trying to be encouraging.

“Looks like it will be for them,” Dax muttered.

Shandie finally decided to concede what she’d been trying to avoid and said, “If you don’t want to go, we don’t have to.”

It took him a long time to answer that, during which he watched his friends, his exes, his brother from the distance and obviously reconsidered.

But then he said, “Nah, we’ve come this far, we might as well go in.”

“Like I said before, you might be sorry if you don’t,” she said gently to support his decision.

“Yeah,” he agreed halfheartedly. “Who knows? Maybe it won’t be so bad.”

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