Her Christmas Surprise

He gave an impatient shake of his head. There were many dumb things he could do, but getting involved with his brother’s fiancée—or ex-fiancée—pretty much landed at the top of the list. He didn’t even like the woman. He’d never had any use for her or her Junior League kind.

So why did he find himself distracted by wondering whether if he kissed her, the Junior League girl would turn into a woman, hungry and urgent?

Ridiculous. He’d kissed plenty of women in his time. He didn’t need to kiss one more, no matter how much she kept popping up in his thoughts. What he needed to do was get his mother off the hook and get gone, because the longer he stayed, the more bound he felt—by the need to help Olivia find someone to run her finances, by the questions about her estate. The maid had shown up in his room that morning with his father’s old tux, to measure him for alterations so Lex could wear it to the Christmas gala as Olivia’s escort.

Charity balls and investment advice weren’t him. Servants and tuxedos weren’t him. He was about tramping through bush and desert and jungle, looking to capture that elusive moment that could encapsulate a place and time, giving people an immediate, gut-level understanding of what was happening in their world.

And maybe after fourteen years, he was starting to get tired of the dirt, the exhaustion, the crappy beds and food, starting to get soul-deep tired of man’s seemingly endless capacity for destruction. That just meant he needed a break, that was all. It sure as hell didn’t mean he needed to come back to Chilton and take up where his father and Bradley had left off.

He stared at the fading light on the horizon and thought of sunsets along the equator, where the transition from dark to light took place in the blink of an eye. Where the sunsets and sunrises hit at the same time every day, no matter the season, because the seasons were just warm and warmer and you slept naked in the heat. And that quickly, images of Keely were back dancing in his head.

To derail his thoughts, he pushed open the door to Darlene’s.

Darlene stood behind the baked-goods case with a white bag in her hand as she filled the order of a harried woman trying to buy muffins and manage the children hanging on to her legs.

“Two corn, four blueberry— Tommy, stop,” the woman snapped. “Two bran and two…” She paused for thought, studying the baked goods in the case.

Darlene shook the bag a bit. Impatient, Lex thought with a smile. “Apple banana?” she suggested. “Carrot?”

“I’d go with carrot,” Lex said, stepping forward. “They’re the best. I swear, I could smell them all the way over in Tanzania.”

The woman stared at him. “Cranberry,” she muttered.

Darlene raised an eyebrow at Lex. “About time you came back. You hardly even said hello yesterday,” she complained, dropping the customer’s final two muffins into the bag. “And what’s this about Tanzania? The last postcard I got from you was from Chechnya.”

“I thought I’d head somewhere warm for a while.” Darfur, to be precise, at least until he’d seen all he could take. Taking photographs of endangered species being slaughtered was a hell of a lot harder to stomach when they were human beings.

With an almost physical effort, he turned his thoughts back to the present.

“Well, I still think you’re too skinny, wherever you’ve been. Here, take one of these. No, two.” Darlene shoved a pair of carrot muffins to him before she went back to her customer.

Grinning, Lex watched her hand the woman change. Back when he’d lived in Chilton, Darlene had been one of the rare adults he could tolerate, one of the few who hadn’t treated him like either a brainless clone of a previous generation or a felon in training. So he’d broken a few rules; that made him a misguided kid, not a criminal, whatever anyone had said. Darlene hadn’t cared. She’d just treated him like a person and he’d adored her for it.

“So what’s Tanzania like?” she asked, pushing a cup of coffee toward him.

“Beautiful. So open and gorgeous it takes your breath away. You’ve got a postcard coming.” With a pair of smooching baboons on the front, he recalled.