A Boy's Christmas Wish

The bell above the door jingled behind her, and Beth turned to see Granny step inside. Her coat was open in the front, and the old lady smiled sweetly when she saw Beth and Danny.

“You two lovebirds,” Granny said with a low laugh. “Don’t block customers now.”

Granny wasn’t completely with them, it would seem. Her mind was firmly fixed in the past. She headed over to the shelf that still held some dusty bags of sunflower seeds and assorted items like windshield scrapers and expired lip balm.

“These prices,” she tutted. “Far too high. Nothing will sell at this price...”

And ironically, Granny might be right. None of that product had ever sold.

* * *

DAN COULDN’T HELP but steal another glance at Beth. She had always been gorgeous, but pregnancy had brought out a glow in her that he’d never seen before. Her golden hair tumbled around her shoulders in glossy curls, and her lips were fuller with the extra weight she carried. Her belly was like a perfect dome out in front of her. She seemed softer, somehow, and more vulnerable. And if the twenty-seven-year-old, trim-waisted Beth had been enough to fire his blood back then, this more mature version of the same woman, rounder and fuller, just about stopped his heart.

Except he knew better than to entertain those thoughts. Beth had dumped him because she couldn’t handle being a stepmother. Obviously, he should have told her about his son sooner, but until Lana had shown up on his doorstep, he hadn’t known that he would ever be allowed into his son’s life. Regardless, Beth had walked out because she didn’t want to be stepmom to his child, which he’d understood back then. He’d lied to her, and if there was one thing Beth could not abide, it was an untruth, and knowing that should have been enough to make him come clean. Except that was a part of his life he hadn’t been proud of—being the deadbeat dad of a kid he’d never met. It wasn’t that he’d been trying to hide anything from her—Lana had made it clear that she wanted nothing to do with him when they broke up before he moved to North Fork. He’d tried to contact Lana a few times afterward, and he’d gotten nothing but silence.

“Someone had to buy the place,” Dan said, and Beth’s attention whipped away from her grandmother and back to him. Her eyes glittered.

“You never liked my dad.” He could hear the accusation in her tone. What did she think, that he’d done this as some sort of revenge plot because Rick Thomas hadn’t thought he was good enough for Beth?

“Your dad never liked me,” he retorted. “And this has nothing to do with old tensions. I think we’re pretty much past all that, don’t you?”

Her dad had been right. Dan hadn’t been good enough for Beth. He’d come to North Fork for work—the oil fields about three hours north providing a lot of employment opportunities for large-equipment mechanics. When he’d seen Beth around town, he’d been drawn in by her effortless charm. She came from a respected family—her father being the Rick Thomas of literary fame—and she’d gone to University of Alberta for a degree, something that felt wildly out of reach for a guy like him. He’d never been terribly scholarly. He was a skilled worker and he loved his trade, but she had a way of talking that exposed a world he knew little about—a world with books and theories, history and primary sources. Her dad had written weighty masterpieces that were studied in Canadian literature classes the country over. There were three of them, and a fourth that he’d been working on for the last decade.

Beth sighed. “So what are you going to do with this place?”

“I’m going to open a tool shop,” Dan said. “A lot of guys in the trades have to drive into the city to get their tools, and it’s a waste of fuel and annoying to boot. I want to open a tool shop that carries most of the basics. I’ll order in the specialty tools on demand—”

Beth was staring at him, tears misting her eyes. Shoot. Okay, maybe she hadn’t wanted to hear his business plan, but what did she expect him to do with the place?

“I can’t keep it a corner store,” Dan qualified.

“I know.” She sucked in a breath.

“And the price was shockingly low—”

Beth shot him another pained glance, and he kicked himself. He wasn’t trying to hurt her here, but when the store had come up for sale at that price, the timing had been perfect. He’d been selling tools out of his garage for months, and he was making a pretty good profit. There was a demand for tools in this town, and this could be his first retail space. Lucky for him the bank agreed.

“I’m sorry about your dad,” Dan said, softening his tone. “I know he worked hard to build the business, and losing it all like that is horrible. I feel for him.”

She didn’t answer at first, and then she rubbed a hand over her stomach. “Well, he’s had more than one big shock in the last few months.”

“Linda leaving,” Dan clarified. That divorce had taken North Fork by surprise.

“Oh, no. They planned it out so they could separate ‘amicably.’” She did finger quotes around the last word. “Dad says it was coming for a while. Linda’s nothing if not detail oriented. I was referring to me.”

“The baby,” he confirmed.

“He worries a lot,” she said. “And he’s got a lot going on right now, so the timing could have been better.”

“So how’s your brother?” Dan asked.

“Perfectly successful in Illinois, thanks,” she replied with a wry smile.

Her older brother was a professor at a state college—the bar had been set quite high for the Thomas family. He could sympathize with Beth’s position right now. She’d deserved better than being left on her own for the biggest challenge of her life.

“Don’t know if this is rude to ask, but who’s the dad?”

“None of your business,” she retorted with a cool smile, and Dan laughed.

“You haven’t changed a bit,” he said.

She smiled and rolled her eyes. “You’d be surprised, Danny.”

Danny... He hadn’t been called that in a long time.

“Look.” He cleared his throat. “If you see anything that you want in here...I bought the whole place, contents included. But I don’t need any of it—” He was doing it again, minimizing a lifetime of Thomas family memories in this old place, which wasn’t his intent. “What I mean to say is, if there is anything that you want from the store, it’s yours. I only got the keys today, so I’m looking at everything for the first time, too.”

“Thank you.” She nodded. “There will be things. Like the bell over the door.”

“Yeah, yeah.” He nodded. “Take it.” He glanced up and realized it was high over her head, and in her current state a stepladder would be a bad idea. “Or I can get it down for you.”

He caught her eye, and he felt a swell of sympathy. Things had been hard for the Thomas family lately, and he was just an added insult.

Beth was beautiful and smart, with a sharp sense of humor. He’d always imagined that she’d gone to Edmonton and met some bookish type who would be impressed by her father’s name. Then she’d get married and drive a quality SUV, have some beautiful babies... She was making good on that last one, and for that he was grudgingly glad.

Parenthood had a way of improving a person. It carved them out and deepened them. It took a heart and stretched it farther than a person thought possible. It changed weekend plans from drinks or watching the game into cartoon movies and playing in the snow. Luke’s arrival had been a shock, but he’d changed Dan’s life for the better in every way possible. Dan had always hoped that he’d be a successful business owner here in town, and that when people saw him coming they’d call him “Mr. Brockwood.” Turned out that his deepest satisfaction came from being called “Dad.”

He glanced at his watch. Luke would be out of school soon.

“So how is your grandmother doing?” he asked.

They both instinctively looked over to where Granny was arranging the shelf, wiping dust off the packages with her palm.

“Not so good,” Beth said softly. “She keeps slipping into the past. And apparently, she’s been wandering off a lot.”

“I noticed that,” he agreed. He’d driven her home a couple of times when he’d found her on the street looking confused.

“And she keeps asking about Grandpa.” Beth’s eyes glittered with emotion.

“What do you do?” he asked.

“We tell her that he’s gone out for milk,” Beth said with a shrug. “It sure beats breaking her heart fourteen times a day telling her that he died. So if she ever asks—”

“Yeah, right. Milk...” He nodded.

Everyone loved Beth’s grandmother, whom most people called Granny. She was that sort of lady. And when Beth had agreed to marry him, when a furious Rick had kept encouraging his daughter to think this through a little more, Granny had been happy for them. Dan would never forget that. She’d taken his hand in hers and smiled up into his eyes and said, “Marriage is a blessing, Danny. May you two be brilliantly happy.” For a guy who’d grown up with minimal encouragement, her words had meant the world.

“Granny, we should go,” Beth called. “We need to get back.”