A Baby For Christmas

“Okay.” Sophia said into the phone after a pause. “Thanks for checking up on me. Tell your mom and dad that I’m fine. Danny and I are doing just fine.” She rested her hand on her stomach as she spoke those words. “Okay. I’m glad your uncle’s feeling better. And listen, have some fun while you’re there. Stop worrying about me. I’ll see you when you guys get back. All right. Bye, Tyler.”

Sophia hung up the phone. “You could have at least told Tyler you’re here. He’s as tight-lipped as you are.”

“And ruin the surprise?”

Luke said this with a deadpan expression. She could rarely read him, and this time was no different, but something in her gut told her that Luke’s early arrival didn’t have much to do with surprising his family. She just couldn’t figure out what else it could be.

She put the kettle on for tea. “I already got the third degree from my parents this morning...again. They want me to have this baby in Boston. I can’t really blame them, this is their first grandchild. But this is your parents’ first grandchild, too. And I don’t know...I think it’s more important for your parents because this is Daniel’s son.”

“No matter what you do, someone’s always gonna be ticked off.” Luke shrugged. “Do what’s best for you, make yourself happy; everyone else will fall in formation. Or not.”

Sophia smiled faintly. “You’re right. Not always easy to do, though. For me, anyway. Coffee?”

Luke nodded. She brought him a cup of black coffee. He was surprised she remembered that he didn’t take cream and sugar.

“Eggs okay?”

“I wish you’d stop waiting on me.”

“I wish you’d stop giving me a hard time about something I want to do. You’re actually doing me a favor. My days are packed in Boston with clients and meetings, friends, shopping. I’m used to being on my BlackBerry all of the time at home. I swear I’m having serious withdrawal because the reception is so bad here. I actually have to stand up on the window seat in my room and smash myself up against the wall in order to get just one lousy bar! I have to find stuff to do here, or I swear to you I’ll go stark raving mad.” She pulled eggs out of the fridge and located a pan. “I mean, your family’s great. Your mom, your dad, Tyler...all of them. They’ve been wonderful to me. But I’m a city girl. I’m used to keeping up the pace all day long. Coming and going as I please. Out here, I feel like I’m stuck in slow motion.” She paused from her task for a minute so she could punctuate her words with her hands. “Quite frankly, it’s driving me nuts. There are only so many sunsets I can admire, so much foliage I can appreciate. I never thought I’d hear myself say this, but bring on the traffic and the noise.” She dug in the cabinet for a bag of decaffeinated green tea. “And I can only hope that your parents aren’t going to want me to make this a permanent situation once Danny is born.”

Luke nodded. His mom just might try to convince Sophia to stay. His mom was all about family, and she would want to see Dan’s son grow. “It’s gotta be tough to be away from your business. Who’s taking care of your clients while you’re away?” Luke asked, before he took a sip of coffee.

Sophia started to scramble the eggs, just how he liked them. Another thing she had remembered about him. Dan only ate his fried.

“It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done, leaving the business. I’ve had horrible abandonment issues. What kind of therapist abandons her patients? Luckily I have a great group of therapists in our office who were willing to take on my patients. I still feel bad, though. Like I’m letting them down. Especially during the holidays. I’m booked between Thanksgiving and New Year’s. A lot of depression.” Sophia took the kettle off the stove and poured the piping-hot water over the tea bag.

“Dealing with your family can do that to a person.” Luke nodded.

“The holidays are a tough time. People get depressed if they have to spend time with family, and then other people get depressed if they don’t have family to make them miserable during the holidays. Either way, the holidays are a therapist’s busy season. Kind of like tax season for CPAs.” Sophia put the finished eggs on a plate and brought them to Luke. “Here ya go.”

“Tax time’s probably busy for you, too.”

That made Sophia smile. Lately, Luke had been having that effect on her. She liked it. “Come to think of it, I do get a boost during April.”

When Sophia leaned over to set the plate on the table, her arm brushed against Luke’s. The sensation of his skin against hers set off an instantaneous chain reaction; the fine hairs on her arm stood straight up on end, and wherever his skin had touched hers a trail of goose bumps popped up. Horrified, she immediately started to rub her arm to smooth the goose bumps away.

Luke admired the food on his plate. “This looks really good. Thanks.”

“My pleasure.” She turned away from him. “Hey... Where’s Ranger?”

“I put him in the bathroom. He needs to use the head,” he said, then corrected himself. “I mean the facilities.”

“Gotcha.” Sophia smiled; she continued to rub her arm.

Luke noticed the rubbing, of course. Had to comment, of course. “You cold? I’ll get a fire started if you want.”

Sophia looked down at her arm. She wasn’t cold, but what was she going to say, “The feel of your skin on mine gave me goose bumps, Luke”? Not likely! Instead she said, “I’d like that. Tyler or your dad would always build me a fire. I’ve missed them. Do you need anything else? Toast? Orange juice?”

“I’m good. Thanks.”

“Then I’m gonna check on Ranger. Maybe he’ll be brave enough to explore downstairs today.” That little kitten had been a great distraction. She needed a reason to get away from Luke and the bizarre, completely unacceptable feelings he kicked up inside of her; Ranger was a perfect excuse. This reaction she was having to Luke was starting to get really old. She was obviously having some sort of emotional transference brought on by the fact that Luke looked exactly, for the most part, like Daniel. And it was obvious that she missed Daniel and was transferring some of her unrequited desire on to his twin! It had to be that. She didn’t want Luke.

“No. Of course you don’t,” she said under her breath as she climbed the stairs.

Luke had always been a pain. He had always given her a hard time. He was nothing like Daniel, except for the outside package. And even that wasn’t exactly the same. Case in point: a nearly naked Luke had looked quite a bit different than a nearly naked Daniel. Okay, perhaps that wasn’t the best example she could have thought of. But still!

Sophia reached the top of the stairs and put her hands on her hips as if she were scolding a small child. “You want him to be Daniel. But he’s not Daniel. He never will be Daniel, so you really need to get a grip, Sophia!” Her psychology degrees were starting to come in handy; she could psychoanalyze herself.

Sophia opened the bathroom door, and Ranger was more than ready to be let out. He dashed out with a trill, wound his way around her ankles and rubbed his head against her leg.

“Hi, buddy.” Before Sophia could reach down over her belly to pet him, Ranger voiced another excited trill, stuck his tail straight up in the air and zoomed down the stairs without a moment of hesitation.

She stared after him for a moment, bemused. “He’s going to be an absolute terror.”

He’d probably do the family a lot of good during the holidays. This would be the first Christmas without Daniel. Perhaps having a crazy kitten in the mix would distract them all.

Before she went back downstairs, Sophia stopped off at the medicine cabinet to pick out the day’s fragrance. Unfortunately, none of the self-talk up the stairs stopped her from wondering which fragrance Luke would like.

Irritated, she reached for Daniel’s favorite, sprayed it on and went downstairs with a renewed determination not to have any bizarre reactions to Luke.

She found Luke standing in front of the giant bay window that overlooked the ranch. He was staring out at the horizon and seemed to be lost in thought.

“Mission accomplished with the kitty box. Did he come through here?”

“Yeah.” One side of his mouth lifted. Sophia could tell by that one small gesture that the kitten cracked Luke up. “He went tearing through here, ran headfirst into the cabinets, shook it off like nothing happened, jumped up a foot in the air, spun around and went flying back toward the library.”

“That kitten is a menace. Your dad is going to hit the roof when he sees him.” Sophia laughed. She picked up her tea and walked over to stand next to Luke. Perhaps she stood closer to him than she should have, but once she was there, she didn’t have any desire to be anywhere else.

“At first. But he’s always the one who gets attached the quickest,” Luke said as he continued to stare at the horizon.

“It must feel good to be home, especially with all of this,” she said of the snowcapped mountains in the distance. “It’s getting a bit old for me, but this is your home.”

Again, Luke was quiet, as he often was. He stood stock-still, but Sophia could feel his body become tense beside her. She almost moved away, worried she was invading his space, but something made her stay put.

All Luke could do was keep his eyes trained forward. He wanted nothing more than to drape his arm around Sophia’s shoulders and pull her close until her body was molded into his. She was wearing his favorite fragrance. She smelled like citrus and freshly cut grass, and he wanted to bury his face in her neck and breathe her in.

And then she would slap me.

Luke shook his head at himself before he drained his cup.

“What?” Sophia noticed him shaking his head.

“Nothing. I think it’s time for a fire.”

There was something raw in his voice that quickened her pulse. She nodded her head and put some distance between herself and Luke. “I’m going to check my email real quick and then I’ll be back down.”

They both went their separate ways, headed in two completely different directions. No matter how hard Sophia tried, she couldn’t stop her body from reacting to Luke. And it seemed that little Danny was having his own reaction to his uncle’s voice. Was it her imagination, or did her baby seem to get more active whenever Luke was around?