Unwrap Me. Susan Lyons
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Название: Unwrap Me
Автор: Susan Lyons
Издательство: Ingram
Жанр: Эротическая литература
isbn: 9780758236968
isbn:
“Wow.” He could understand her mom doing that. But on the other hand, the guy was Jude’s dad. Surely he wouldn’t have disappeared from her life. “What happened?”
She snorted, and now, finally, she looked at him. Her eyes gleamed with unshed tears yet were fierce and angry. “He wrote a letter. We got it on Christmas Eve day. Mama tore it up, but I collected the shreds and put it back together. Turns out, getting caught was what he needed to, quote, ‘come to his senses.’” She gave the last phrase a bitter twist, face contorted. “He was in some hard-line religion ‘back home’ and talked to a ‘spiritual adviser’ who told him his whole relationship with Mama was a dreadful sin. He had to repent and renounce her and me.”
Nick winced. “Crap. That’s awful.” He couldn’t even imagine how a little girl would have felt.
“Yeah, but it’s what Mama and I wanted, too.” She tossed her head. “We were better off without a loser like him.”
Oh, sure, like an eight-year-old was mature enough to decide something like that. “Are you saying the letter was it? He didn’t apologize? You never saw him again?” How could a father walk away from his child? From Jude?
She nodded. “A clean break. Like with bones, it heals faster that way.”
Her mother might have told her that, but Nick could see Jude had never healed. “And this all happened at Christmas. Bad memories, for sure.”
“Yeah. Being betrayed—abandoned—at what’s supposed to be some big emotional family time can sour you on the whole holiday.”
She freed her hand from his and poured more ice wine into her glass. “We spent Christmas day ripping up the pictures with that jerk in them. We took his clothes and other stuff to the Salvation Army. Our Christmas things, too. We had roast beef for dinner. We banished Christmas from the house and were better off without it. Mama changed our names back to Benedetto. It’s not like we were legally entitled to his name anyhow, and we sure didn’t want it.”
The words “better off without” rang in his head. The same ones she’d used to describe the loss of her father. Not an eight-year-old’s words. Her mother’s.
What had the woman been thinking? Okay, he could understand the first year. The hurt, bitterness. But after? “Your mom sounds pretty immature. Depriving you of Christmas because some guy turned out to be a jerk.”
She glared at him. “Don’t you dare criticize my mama.”
“Sorry.” Okay, he shouldn’t judge. He didn’t know Jude’s mother. Besides, all he cared about was understanding the vulnerable woman beside him. Finding a way to help.
Silence grew between them. He broke it. “You said there were two strikes? You mean, finding out about your dad, and then him renouncing you and your mom?”
She’d been staring into her glass, apparently lost in thought. Now she glanced up. “No. The second was being dumped by my fiancé last year on December twenty-second.”
“Shit.” She did have bad luck with men at Christmastime. Should he ask what had happened?
Jude’s eyebrows lifted. “Aren’t you going to ask?”
“Trying to decide.”
“Don said I had commitment issues, but he’s the one who did.” She wrinkled her nose. “We met at a New Year’s Eve party, hit it off. Dated, got serious; he proposed in August, and I accepted. We planned a March wedding. Things started to go wrong in the fall.” She slanted him a glance. “Partly about Christmas. His folks live in Kelowna. I’d met them in the summer and liked them. Don wanted us to spend the holidays with them. I said no, I didn’t do Christmas. He said if I loved him and we were going to build a future together, I had to celebrate Christmas.” Now her gaze challenged him.
He held up his hands, palms toward her. “Hey, I’m not pressuring you.”
“Okay.” A hint of a smile brushed her lips. “Wise decision.”
Yeah, but this wasn’t done. Now he understood where she was coming from, but, damn, she had to get past this stuff. Problem was he didn’t have a clue how to help her. Don, a man she’d loved, hadn’t been able to change her mind. What chance did Nick have?
Should he even try? They barely knew each other. What they had was good, so maybe he should just respect her views on Christmas.
They both sipped in silence for a few minutes, and then she said. “Subject closed?”
“Okay.” For now, at least. Until he decided if he wanted to pursue it.
“Speaking of decisions,” she said in a teasing tone that sounded forced, “I’ve been thinking about the four condoms that are left.”
“Lady’s choice.” In bed, he could give her the hug she needed, and she’d let him because it was about sex, not Christmas.
She shrugged. “You pick.”
He deliberated. They needed something to lighten the mood. “The glow-in-the-dark one.”
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