“You don’t have to share.” I wanted to know, but only if he cared to let me in.
He brought his free hand to my cheek, running his pinky over my heated flesh. “I want to, but it’s not all fun and fuzzy. It’s best left where it ended. In the past.”
I nodded, unable to find the right words. “It’s part of you, and I find myself wanting to know all your parts.” It was the closest I’d come to telling a man I liked him in over a decade. While it scared the crap out of me, this moment wasn’t about me.
With a glance toward the front, Cal spoke softly. “My parents had a later-in-life baby. I was twelve when Cameron was born. My older brother, Joseph, was sixteen. Joe was born during my dad’s first year of med school. I was born during the first year of residency. My mom was a saint, raising babies by herself during those years. When she got pregnant with Cam, my dad was excited to be a part of this baby’s early years. It was a second chance for them, and I don’t say that with envy. Joe and I were happy. We had one another and were very close back then, even though he’s four years older.”
He stopped talking, swallowing whatever emotion clogged his throat. I didn’t push.
“Cam was born with a heart defect. He died when he was two. Dad took it hard as a doctor. Although he was a urologist, so I’m not sure there was much he could have done. He walked out the day I started high school. Told me to study hard and take care of Mom. Joe was a freshman at college, and my mom didn’t tell him until he came home for Christmas.”
“Oh, Cal,” I said, slipping my hand from his and placing my palm over where his heart lay beneath his coat.
“It’s okay. Sure, it messed with me back then, but I put all my energy into golf and my studies. I decided to make my mom proud. I felt if I did everything right, she’d snap out of the depressive fog she’d settled in. It never quite worked, but I ended up finding happiness in what I do, helping babies come into this world.”
It all made sense to me now. What Cal did for a living, his eagerness to live and be a part of giving life, and not succumb to sadness. It was a precarious place I was setting up shop in—getting to really know someone while maintaining distance. My life didn’t allow me to be fully involved with a partner, yet I wanted all of Cal’s attention. Or maybe my life did? I didn’t know because I had never tried.
“What about Joe? What did he do? How did he react?” Another wave of sadness washed over Cal’s face, and I wanted to kick myself for asking. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t pry—”
“It’s okay.” With his hand back entwined with mine, he started to talk. “Joe took the news hard, especially with the secret being kept for a while when it came to him. At least, he saw it that way. For a while, he decided to take on the caretaker role, dutifully taking classes in college, coming home for visits, and teaching me life lessons. Sex, women, drugs…he’d talk about it all.”
“It must have been a lot of pressure,” I said. “Ford tried hard to be a better parent to Scott and me. I know he always felt like he had to be there, and we didn’t have to deal with what you and Joe did.”
“It was pressure, but mostly he was mad at my mom for not telling him. His senior year he went off the rails. Drugs, booze, whatever he could get his hands on. By the time he graduated he no longer cared about much. He went out to Vegas and got a job as a dealer. A blackjack dealer. Partied all day and night when he wasn’t working. And I’m sure you can imagine, it was awful to see. He came home for the first few Christmases until he stopped.”
“Is he still alive?” I couldn’t help myself, blurting out the most inappropriate question.
“He is. Been in and out of rehab, gets his life together for a while and then falls off the wagon. I usually hear from him when he’s in a good place, and then when he gets bad I help him to get better again. Rinse and repeat. Still in Vegas. He works as a waiter when he can. My mom actually moved to Sin City, to a retirement community. Joe visits with her, and she tries to keep him on the straight and narrow.”
Snow flurries picked up outside the car, the windows slightly fogging while our hearts banged a furious drum of emotions and feelings.
With a quick squeeze of my hand, Cal changed gears. “Enough of all that. Christmas is supposed to be a happy time, and here I am, going for a tree with you, the most beautiful woman on earth. And bonus, I just delivered your niece.”
“She’s kind of perfect.”
“She certainly is.”
The car bumped a bit, and I looked up and saw we had arrived. Immediately, Frank slipped into security mode, saying, “Wait here. I’ll let them know we arrived.”
Callum
“Can we have a moment?” I told the driver, hoping he would act on his own volition and not wait for permission from Frank.
With a quick nod, he obliged and stepped out of the vehicle.
Settled inside the warm car, I looked at Billy, equal parts majestic and cute in her puffy coat and hat, blond hair sticking out every which way underneath.
“Is this okay?” I nodded my head toward the window, and what we were presumably about to do. Buying a tree was mundane for most, but not when you were a Hollywood celebrity… I wasn’t certain.
“Yes.”
“Frank doesn’t appear to think so.”
She laughed, and I wasn’t sure if it was at or with me, until she said, “Frank doesn’t think anything is okay. He’d put me inside a shatterproof snow globe if he could.”
“I assume my track record doesn’t help matters. I’m sorry things went the way they did last time. That night was everything until…” I swallowed the pride lodged in my throat and held a hand up at a ready-to-interrupt Billy. Regrouping, I spoke, “That nightthere was nothing I wanted more than to continue exploring one another. With and without clothes on. But the phone call… That is my job, and since I’m in high-risk, I get calls a little more frequently. I hadn’t been expecting to get one that evening, but my patient who’d tried to get pregnant for a long time had an awful miscarriage. One of my partners was busy with another patient and the other was with his kid at Disney World, so they called me next. I could’ve said no, but that’s not me.”
She placed her hand over mine. “It was wrong for me to get so upset and shut down. It was so cliché Hollywood. I’m the one who should say she is sorry, and I am.”
