A Seaside Christmas

“And now you’re paying the price,” Mick concluded. He shook his head. “As understandable as it might be, that hardly seems fair.”

“I don’t think fair has much to do with it. I doubt Jenny would trust anyone who came between her and her mother.”

“Probably not,” Mick conceded. “But she’s an adult now. She needs to suck it up and deal with the situation. I’ve known Connie for a lot of years. You’ve made her happier than I’d ever seen her before, and you know I don’t throw compliments your way lightly.”

“Believe me, I know,” Thomas said wryly. “What the heck am I supposed to do now, though? I can’t go over to Jake and Bree’s and drag Jenny home. It’s a little late for me to throw around my weight as her stepfather.”

“Want me to go over there?” Mick asked eagerly. He’d had far too little to do lately, with almost everyone in the family happily married and settled down.

Thomas fought a smile, but Mick caught it. He couldn’t say he blamed his brother for being amused.

“As generous as that offer is, you don’t have the finesse for this,” Thomas said. “Ma was very clear that I was to leave you out of it. She recommends being patient. She says if you try bossing Jenny around, she’ll only dig in her heels.”

“You talked to Ma and she said that?” Mick said.

Thomas chuckled. “And a lot more about bulls in china shops and lack of diplomacy. Dillon agreed with her.”

Nell O’Brien certainly had clear-eyed vision when it came to her family, Mick thought, much as her assessment might rankle. He put almost as much weight behind Dillon’s opinion. Since Dillon O’Malley and Nell had reunited in Ireland and married less than a year later, they tended to be in lockstep on this kind of thing.

“Okay, I’ll stay out of it for now,” Mick conceded reluctantly. “But you need me, say the word.”

Thomas stood up. “Thanks for listening, Mick. That’s what I really needed. I can’t let Connie see how frustrated I am. Then she goes and blames herself for putting me in the middle. It just complicates an already messy situation.”

“How about this?” Mick said. “You bring Connie and your boy here for Sunday dinner, like always. I’ll see to it that Jenny’s at the table.”

Thomas frowned. “Didn’t you hear a word I just said? No meddling.”

“I believe my instructions were to stay away from Jenny,” Mick said, satisfied that he’d found the perfect loophole. “Doesn’t mean I can’t put a bug in Bree’s ear about getting that girl over here for a family dinner. I’ll speak to Jess, too. We’ll make it a welcome home celebration. It’ll be downright rude of Jenny to refuse the invitation, especially if the gathering is in her honor. I know her mama raised her better than that.”

Thomas’s expression turned thoughtful. “I think you’re bending the spirit of Ma’s edict, but I’m willing to risk it,” he said eventually. “I want to see my wife smiling again. I thought just having Jenny back in town would do it, but not like this. Earlier, I asked Connie if she’d seen Jenny yet. She burst into tears and left the room. There wasn’t a thing I could do to comfort her.”

He sighed. “Just as bad, Sean knows something’s going on, too. He ran into Jenny at Bree’s theater this afternoon and came home with a thousand and one questions about his big sister and why she wasn’t coming to our house. Since I couldn’t answer most of them and Connie wasn’t up to dealing with his curiosity, I dropped him over at Kevin and Shauna’s to play with their kids. I need to get back over there and pick him up.”

“You go, and stop your worrying. We’ll fix this,” Mick said confidently. “It’s Christmas, after all, and don’t the O’Briens specialize in Christmas miracles?”

Chapter Two

It only took a couple of calls for Caleb to confirm what Ricky had told him. Jenny had, indeed, gone to Chesapeake Shores, and was expected to be there through the holidays. The second confirmation had just come from her agent, who wasn’t one bit happy about having inadvertently pointed him toward her whereabouts.

“Do not go anywhere near that town or Jenny,” Margo Welch warned him. “I swear, I’ll advise her to get a restraining order.”

Despite the unlikelihood that Jenny would do such a thing, Caleb was shaken. “On what grounds?” he asked, wondering exactly what Jenny had told people after the breakup. Hadn’t those tabloid pictures of him with another woman told the story clearly enough? Had she felt the need to elaborate? Didn’t it take some pretty serious accusations to justify a restraining order? Just being lower than pond scum in someone’s opinion usually wasn’t enough.

“You broke that girl’s heart,” Margo said, her raspy voice fiercely protective. “I won’t let you get close enough to do it again.”

“That’s really up to Jenny, isn’t it?” he said mildly. “Look, Margo, I know you only have her best interests at heart. You always have. Believe it or not, so do I. I’m not going over there to cause trouble, I swear it.”

She sighed heavily. “But you are going to Chesapeake Shores? There’s nothing I can say to talk you out of it?”

“Nothing,” he confirmed. “And, just so you know, I intend to try my best to talk her into selling me the rights to record that ballad she wrote and sold to Ricky Nolan.”

“There’s a contract, Caleb. If that song is what you’re after, you can forget it. When I write a contract, it’s airtight. You should know that.”

“Believe me, I do. But Ricky and I have already agreed to this. He’ll relinquish his rights. To tell you the truth, he could probably make a deal with me on his own, but I didn’t want to go behind Jenny’s back. I want to do this in a straightforward way, by convincing her I’m the right man to record this song. If you’re honest, Margo, you know that’s true.”

“That song will be a hit no matter who does it,” she contradicted. “I’ve already spoken to Ken Davis. He wants to make it Ricky’s first single. Are you going to strip that boy of the opportunity to go platinum right out of the gate? That just proves every rotten thing I’ve been thinking about you.”

Caleb decided it was best not to remind her how eager she’d once been for him and Jenny to work together. She’d been even more ecstatic when their relationship had become personal. It had provided a publicity gold mine that had benefited Jenny and, by extension, Margo herself, quite nicely.

Instead, he said, “Ricky has the talent to go platinum with any song he chooses. He recognizes that this particular song was meant for me. It’s a done deal, Margo. I just need to work out the details with Jenny.”

“And if she says no?”

“I’m hoping she won’t, but if she does, that’s that,” Caleb said. “I’ll be disappointed, but I won’t pressure her.”

“I’ll advise her against it,” Margo informed him. “Jenny listens to me, Caleb. You know she does. I’ll do whatever I can to prevent her from hooking up with you again, professionally or personally.”

Even though it wasn’t in his own best interests, Caleb actually respected her more for protecting Jenny’s back with such maternal ferocity. “I wouldn’t expect anything less.”

“Caleb, please don’t do this,” she requested quietly. “It’s taken Jenny a long time to get over what you did to her. If you ask me, the only reason she’s in Chesapeake Shores right now is to get some distance from Nashville and all her memories of you.”

“Then it’s past time I apologized for the pain I caused her,” he countered. “Maybe that will give her the closure she needs to move on.”

“If that’s all you intended, I might not argue,” Margo said. “But you want more. You want that song and, unless I’m a whole lot worse at reading you than I used to be, you want Jenny back, too. I was there when you staged that full-court press to win her the first time. That’s what you’re planning now, isn’t it?”

He hesitated, then decided now wasn’t the time to add a lie to his sins. “Can’t deny it,” he admitted.

He thought back to the first time he’d laid eyes on Jenny. His manager had brought her over to his place, but he’d been hung over and miserable. While he’d pulled himself together, his manager had sent her onto the patio to wait.

A half hour later, showered and in a more receptive mood, Caleb had found her strumming her guitar, bathed in sunlight. She’d looked ethereal. The music had been just as heavenly, striking an immediate chord in him.

When she hadn’t noticed him, he’d continued listening, falling just a little bit in love with the songs and the woman. It was hard to say which had grabbed him more. The music, more than likely, because his work was his life at that point. His feelings for Jenny had deepened with time.

And then he’d gone and ruined it all.

He sighed, remembering.

“Oh, Caleb,” Margo murmured, real pain in her voice. “If you still love her, can’t you leave her in peace?”

Long after he’d hung up the phone, he thought about Margo’s heartfelt request. The older woman was probably right. The kind thing to do would be to let Jenny go to start over with someone more deserving. And if it was all about a song, perhaps he could do that, but it wasn’t. It was about reclaiming the missing piece of his heart.

* * *

When Jenny left Bree at her theater, she walked along the waterfront trying to get her emotions under control. Leave it to Bree to call her on her behavior in the gentle, chiding way that forced her to see herself more clearly. It hadn’t been an entirely comfortable confrontation.

Not that she could argue with a single thing Bree had said. She’d struggled with herself over those very things for a long time now. Each and every time reason had lost out to emotion.

Chilled after just a few minutes in the icy breeze off the water, she crossed the street, walked briskly back toward Main and went into the café. Her cell phone rang, but a glance showed that the call was from her agent. Right this second, business was the last thing on her mind. She let Margo’s call go to voice mail and settled into a booth.