A Family for the Holidays

“But I wan’ peanut butter and marsh’allow sam’iches!” Kayla insisted.

Shandie unlocked the door. “Go in and take off your coat,” she said, rather than getting sucked into what she knew was likely to be a battle.

“Then can I have ’em?” Kayla bargained.

“Maybe you can have marshmallows in hot chocolate before bed if you eat a good—not sweet—dinner,” Shandie countered to avoid the fight.

That appeased her daughter, who paused to say “Bye” to Dax before going inside.

Alone on the porch with Dax, Shandie turned and took the car seat from him. “Thanks,” she said, echoing the word but not the facetious tone he’d used moments earlier.

“Sure,” he answered. “Want me to send Misty down to meet you?”

“Misty?”

“The babysitter,” he said with a nod in the direction of his house up the street.

“It’s cold and a school night. I’d hate to make her come out. Maybe you could just give me her number and I’ll call her?” Shandie suggested, taking a pen and one of her business cards out of her purse.

She handed them both to him, and Dax wrote on the back of the card in the space allotted for appointment dates and times. Then he returned it to her.

“I put my numbers on there, too. In case you want to back out of tomorrow night for some reason,” he said, letting her know he wouldn’t hold her to something he’d essentially taunted her into in the first place.

Shandie couldn’t think of any reason she’d want to back out, but she didn’t tell him that.

Instead she said, “I’ll see you in the morning, then? With your battery charger?”

“First thing,” he promised before he said good-night and retraced his steps to his still-running truck.

Only in his wake did it strike Shandie that she’d just made what could be considered a date with him.

With Dax Traub.

And that was when a reason to back out of dinner with him the following night did occur to her.

It was a date.

With Dax Traub….

Chapter Three

What was going on with him?

It was the question that Shandie had said people were throwing around the beauty shop, and as Dax got ready for Wednesday night’s dinner, it was something he was wondering himself. Again—because the truth was, it was something he’d been wondering for a while now.

He’d turned thirty this year, and it had hit him hard. It was an age, he thought as he got into the shower, when there was no more denying he was an adult, that his life had gotten to where it was going. And he’d had to take stock.

His friends, the guys he’d grown up with and known all his life—Grant Clifton, Marshall and Mitchell Cates, Russ Chilton and even his own brother, D.J.—were all around the same age. And yet if they looked back, they could all list success in their lives, their careers and in their relationships—since most of them had found women they wanted to spend their futures with. And where was he?

Nowhere.

Business was lousy. His marriage had lasted only a few years. That flash-in-the-pan engagement to Lizbeth Stanton…

What was going on with him? he asked himself.

He wished he knew.

Maybe a better question was what the hell had happened to him.

He’d been on top of the world all through high school. He’d thought he was cool, and so had everyone else. Girls had fallen all over him, there had never been a party he wasn’t invited to, a person who hadn’t wanted to hang out with him. He’d snatched Thunder Canyon’s golden girl from under every other guy’s nose—apparently including his brother’s, even though he hadn’t known how D.J. had felt about Allaire at the time. And fresh from graduation and his honeymoon, he’d begun what had proved to be one of the most stupendous winning streaks motorcycle racing had ever seen.

He’d had it all, and he’d been sure that his entire future would be the stuff of dreams….

Shampoo suds were running down his face. He clamped his eyes shut, stepped under the spray of the shower and let the water beat down on him.

The stuff of dreams…

Then his fresh-out-of-high-school marriage to Allaire had tanked.

And fast on the heels of that, his biggest dream had ended in a nightmare against a retaining wall.

And when all the dust had settled and the stitches had come out and the casts and bandages had been removed, he’d found himself with no choice but to try picking up what pieces he could salvage from what was left.

That was where the shop had begun.

But it wasn’t booming, and he knew why. Sure, he was good with an engine, with the mechanics, working with his hands, but his heart just wasn’t in the business that seemed like nothing more than a consolation prize.

So here he was, a washout at thirty. A loser. Or at least that was what he felt like. A royally messed-up, couldn’t-make-anything-work-out, didn’t-know-what-he-wanted loser. Who probably deserved the strained way all his friends were acting around him and the fight he’d had with his brother.

Maybe he should lock up, load his Harley into the back of the truck and get the hell out of Thunder Canyon, he thought as he went on standing in the punishing spray of the shower. Maybe he should go somewhere where he could forget everything here—past and present—and start over.

He considered it. Seriously. Even contemplating where he might go.

But that didn’t do anything for him either, he realized. In fact, it seemed like an even more dreary route to take.

Thunder Canyon was still home. Still where he’d grown up. Where he felt he belonged.

“But something’s gotta give,” he growled.

Going nowhere, enjoying nothing, adrift and wondering, What now? It sucked.

Although it struck him suddenly that the enjoying nothing part wasn’t altogether true of the past few days. He’d enjoyed Kayla Solomon. And Kayla Solomon’s mom…

Just the thought of the two of them lifted his spirits a little.

Kayla with her tousled hair and three-year-old’s confidence—sure of herself, of what she wanted, of how she could get it.

And her mom.