Santa's Playbook

“Wow. Deep.”

“Hey, I’ve been listening to this crap my entire life. It was bound to come out of my mouth eventually.”

Juliette laughed. Rosie could make her as mad as all get-out, but she could always make her feel better, too. And deep down, she knew Rosie—or her grandmother—was right: she was going to have to be patient. To trust. And okay, to maybe dig a little deeper to find the magic inside herself, or at least to look harder for it. But as they went down to the kitchen, and she saw the strain tugging at her dad’s mouth, heard the flatness in his voice, it occurred to her that, if she were still little enough to believe in Santa, she knew exactly what she’d ask him for.

Chapter Three (#ulink_34a2e209-3e67-57f1-a5cc-d2def99e7f1b)

Seated at the dinged metal desk taking up nearly half the tiny office near the locker rooms, Ethan propped his hands behind his head, yawning so widely his ears popped. The overhead fluorescent light flickered, then settled back into the mesmeric one-note hum that inevitably lulled Ethan to sleep. Practice had ended a half hour ago, right before the sun whisked away its last feeble rays, leaving a bleak, damp cold in its wake. Possibility of light snow, they said. Ethan’s knee protested, offering an unwelcome second opinion.

The silence this time of day... He hated it. Mainly because he could hear his own thoughts much too clearly. He glanced at the PE tests he was grading, blowing out a breath before shuffling the papers into a neat pile and stuffing them into his leather briefcase—Merri’s present that first Christmas after he’d started teaching. Since he’d made a promise—to himself, to the kids, to Merri on the day of her funeral—to let nothing interfere with family time, he wasn’t a fan of taking schoolwork home. But Jules, whose rehearsal would have ended two hours ago, was probably more than ready to be relieved by this point. As capable as she was at handling the boys and Bella, that wasn’t her job. So—he yawned again—he’d finish up the grading after the younger ones went to bed, while Jules was doing her own homework.

The movement sent another paper on the end of the desk fluttering to the linoleum floor below. Ethan bent to retrieve it, puffing out another breath. A notice from the office that two of his best players’ grades were jeopardizing their positions on the team. Ethan rubbed his eyes, then squinted at the names. Roland White and Zach Baker, both juniors, both in imminent danger of failing English III.

With Claire Jacobs.

Ethan almost laughed. Didn’t that figure? The good news was, it was still early enough to turn things around, at least for next year. The bad news was, they had to bring up their grades, fast, or be cut from the team for the rest of the season. And that would not be good. For a boatload of reasons.

But not a damned thing he could do about it right now.

He zipped up his Hoover Hawks jacket against the icy cold as the heavy metal door clanged shut behind him, trapping the silence inside...if not the memories. Despite the facelift the school had gotten since his own student days, every time he set foot in this place he imagined a grinning Merri sashaying down the tiled hallway in her blue-and-white cheerleading uniform, her blond hair pulled into bouncing, twin ponytails. Hell, yes, he thought as he trudged to his Explorer on the far side of the faculty lot, they’d been the stereotype “perfect” couple, the cheerleader and the star quarterback...except there’d been nothing typical about the girl who’d knocked the wind clean out of him from the moment he saw her—

Footsteps crunching behind him made him whip around, immediately on guard—a permanently ingrained habit from his time in Afghanistan.

“Sorry,” Claire said, appearing like an apparition in front of him. “Didn’t mean to spook you.” She nodded toward her car, parked in the one spot the halogen lights didn’t reach. “I’m right over there.”

He remembered White and Baker, that he needed to discuss their grades with her. Except it was cold, and late, and he not only needed to get home but to line up his ducks before broaching the subject. He’d had these conversations before, with other teachers about other players, and they didn’t always go so well. So he needed a minute or two to gather his thoughts, plan a strategy. Tomorrow would be soon enough. So he waved, expecting her to continue on to the sedate, middle-aged white sedan he was guessing she had not picked out herself.

Instead, she came closer. He frowned, still cautious, his heart thumping a little harder than usual. Okay, it’d be a lie to say she hadn’t occasionally popped into his head in the past week and a half, especially after Juliette had told him about her and Claire’s little chat. It would also be a lie to say he didn’t sometimes catch himself half hoping their paths would cross, if only to get a glimpse of that smile. Those glittering brown eyes. Like a spark of warmth in a cold, barren landscape. And lie número tres would be that, caution aside, he wasn’t completely unhappy about her appearance now, even if only because right now he’d welcome almost any excuse to escape from his own head.

Although, since Claire was inside his head—taking up way more real estate than was prudent...

Hell.

“What are you doing here so late?” Ethan said, aiming for friendly but detached. Instead of, you know, slightly deranged. “Juliette said rehearsal was over at four.”

“It was. Then I had lesson planning,” Claire said in that voice he now realized reminded him of a very dry martini. Something else he hadn’t had in a long while. “If I don’t do it here, it doesn’t get done. And I suck at improv.” Her hands jammed into the pockets of her big puffy purple coat—she wore a backpack, like one of the kids—she quietly laughed, her loose curls dancing around her face. “Both onstage and in the classroom. You seriously drive the four blocks from your house?”

“When it’s twenty degrees at six forty-five in the morning, yes.” He wasn’t about to tell her the real reason, that the cold was brutal on his bum knee, even with the brace. Because whining was for losers.

“Gotcha,” Claire said, removing her hands to wrap the coat—she looked like a cross between the Michelin Man and the Fruit of the Loom grapes—more tightly around herself. “So you haven’t seen Juliette, I take it? In the past hour, I mean?”

“No. She always goes right home so her grandmother can get back to her home.” His mouth pulled to one side. “We have a system. A complicated one, but it works.”

“I can imagine. Well, I won’t keep you,” she said, smiling, and Ethan almost felt something thaw inside him. Almost. Until she said, “But Juliette is probably going to be very excited when you get there.”

“Oh? About what?”

“I’ll let her tell you,” she said, then started toward her car, taking the warmth with her, and suddenly he didn’t want her to leave. Not yet.

“She told me about your conversation,” he called after her. Already at her car, she turned.

“What conver— Oh. You mean from the morning I took the little one to dance class?”

He nodded, feeling the rims of his ears start to burn from the cold. And maybe something more. “Yeah. I should have said something before. To thank you, I mean. She promised... She said she was out of the matchmaking business. For me, anyway.”

Claire walked back a few steps, clearly trying to keep her teeth from chattering. “Good. Considering I did everything short of making her sign an affidavit. In blood.”

Ethan’s cheeks hurt when he tried to smile. Because it was so cold. “You have the magic touch.”

She humphed. “Hardly. But I do remember what fifteen felt like, when my entire life could be summed up in one word—yearning.”

“For what?”

A short, choked sound pushed through her lips. “Oh, God. Everything. Or at least, everything I felt was being unfairly kept out of my reach. Cool clothes. A boyfriend. Straight hair,” she added with a smirk, and Ethan’s cheeks ached again. “The difference is, though, that I never had the chutzpah to actually do something about my discontent. Well, except for the hair, but we won’t go there. Juliette... Yeah, she might overreach, but at least she’s reaching. And the thing is...she’s not reaching for herself. Not about this, anyway.”

“What...what do you mean?”

Claire stuffed her hands into her pockets again, her skin sallow in the ugly bright light. Despite her height—or lack thereof—there was nothing even remotely delicate about her, Ethan realized. Good thing, since many of her students were a lot taller than she was.

“I don’t know Juliette that well, of course,” she said. Cautiously, he thought. “And I certainly don’t know you, what’s going on in your head. But I do know what it’s like, to lose a parent. The empty feeling that leaves in your heart. And how much you wish...” Briefly, she glanced away, then back at him. “All you want is to plug up that emptiness. But what struck me about Juliette is that it’s not only her heart she wants to plug up. It’s yours. The matchmaking... She only wants you to be happy again.”

Ethan started. “She thinks I’m not happy?”

“Apparently so. And for a teenager in the throes of adolescent self-involvement? That kind of empathy is pretty remarkable. Which says to me she’s got a remarkable dad. And criminy, it’s getting late, I’m so sorry—”

She hustled back to her car before Ethan could even begin to figure out what to say, only to turn around again. “Oh! I almost forgot—I got a notice from the office about those two players of yours in my sixth period class? We need to talk.”

“Uh, yeah. We do. When’s your prep period?”

“First.”

“Mine, too.”

“So.” She grinned. “Your place or mine?”

“Mine,” he said, wanting to be on his own turf. “Room 110, right behind the gym.”

“Got it,” she said, then climbed in her car and took off, leaving Ethan to realize his aching knee was the least of his problems.

* * *

As usual, all four kids accosted him the instant he set foot inside the house, yammering about their days. Also as usual, he swept Bella into his arms to get a hug and kiss, and as usual, she made a face about his pokey end-of-day beard. And the twins were doing their speaking-in-tandem thing about something that had happened at school, and Juliette was telling them all to go wash their hands, dinner was almost ready, and he thought that while this obviously wasn’t the life he’d envisioned, it was the life he had, and he was determined to keep that life on as even a keel as humanly possible.

Then Claire’s words about his being remarkable—there was a laugh—smacked him upside the head, and for a moment everything tilted again.

“Dad?” Juliette said, setting a huge bowl of spaghetti and meatballs in the middle of the table as the others scampered off to wash up. “You okay?”

Finally he looked at his oldest child, noticed how much she was beaming. “Yeah, baby, I’m fine. Wow, this looks great. Did you make this, or your grandmother?”