“Bet I know what Santa’s bringing us for Christmas this year,” Dad said as he joined Mom on the couch.
“A puppy?” Ryan asked with enough hope in his voice to make me wonder if he was joking.
He slipped his arm around Mom. “A daughter-in-law.”
She wrapped her arm across his waist and hugged him. “Won’t that be lovely?”
Ryan and I blinked at each other and simultaneously downed half our toddies. A laugh barked out of Dad at our reaction. Then my phone buzzed with a text.
Fishing it from my pocket, I noted the unknown number, but I opened it anyway and read:Merry Christmas, Wyatt.
Aside from my family, there was only one person who called me Wyatt. For some reason, she’d decided to give me the best Christmas present this year. Even though it left me wide-open to whatever torture Ryan wanted to put me through, I couldn’t stop the grin spreading over my face.
Chapter Twenty
Piper
“Thank you,” Isaid to the server who handed me another lemon drop martini. Only my family would have Christmas Eve dinner catered at eight o’clock at night when the people serving us should be home celebrating the holiday with their families. Still, I was glad for the bottomless supply of alcohol the caterers had brought with them. It was the only pleasant part of the ordeal of sitting across from the lovebirds cooing at each other all through dinner.
Charlie had never acted like that with me. Most of the time, he’d made comments about how much I drank—so ridiculous when I only twisted off when I was safe with my friends—or my hair color or my choice to continue my education with an MBA after I finished up at Mountain State. Now that I thought about it, ever since we spent last Thanksgiving with his parents, he’d found things about me he thought I needed to change—things that in the beginning of our relationship he’d said attracted him to me.
I sipped my drink and thought back to the morning and the handsome guy I rode the lift with on my first run. In many ways he was exactly like Charlie—or my dad. Tall, sleekly muscular, handsome in a monied sort of way. In the not-so-distant past I would have taken him up on his subtle come-ons to spend the day together on the slopes, especially with what awaited me back at the condo.
But a picture of a hot football player with shoulders for days had invaded my mind, and I zoned out of the guy’s conversation wondering if Wyatt skied. Then I answered my own question. Of course he didn’t ski. Aside from the fact his coaches would probably skin him alive if they ever caught him on the slopes, he was from Kentucky, a state without a single ski-able mountain. The thought made me sad because I absolutely adored skiing. A ski resort within an hour’s drive of campus had been the deciding factor for choosing where I attended college, in a place with big mountains and loads of snow.
“Your sister tells us you blocked her number. Would you explain that to us, please?” Dad interrupted my thoughts when the server retreated to the kitchen to prep the second course.
During hors d’oeuvres we’d discussed skiing and our day on the mountain. I’d expected a dressing down for not meeting up with the fam for lunch, but apparently, my monosyllabic contribution to the conversation had kept me out of the line of fire. Either that or Dad was deliberately saving the first salvo for the soup course, which told me the big guns would come out during the entrée.Oh, joy. Oh, rapture.
“Did she happen to mention why?” Though I addressed my dad, my eyes rested squarely on my sister, who had the common decency to color at my question.
Beside her, Charlie remained stoic, though he tried to imitate my father and intimidate me with his eyes.
“She said you had a disagreement, but Piper, that’s no excuse for abruptly moving out of your shared apartment and blocking Pippa’s number.” He leaned his forearms on the edge of the table and dialed up his ice-blue eyes to maximum intimidation. “We count on you to watch out for Pippa.”
Since the day of The Fuckery, I’d taken the high road. I hadn’t lost my temper and made a scene, I hadn’t called our parents and told them the whole sordid story: I hadn’t tried to ruin my sister’s reputation. I’d simply gathered my things, moved into a new place, and avoided Phillipa and my ex at all times. After my conversations with my father on the phone earlier in the semester and again over coffee this morning, I saw my error in being the better person.
Again I addressed my dad while my eyes remained zeroed in on my sister. “When Phillipa tells the truth, I’ll consider unblocking her.” I returned my dad’s intimidating stare. “And not before.” For good measure I swung my focus to my ex. “Perhaps Charlie has a few amendments to make to his story about what happened at the lake house last summer as well.” Though he tried to hold my gaze, in the end, Charlie’s eyes dropped to the table.
Guess he had something of a conscience after all.
Throughout dinner Mom had remained silent. It would have been fine with me if she’d maintained the course.
“You’ve always been something of a drama queen, Piper.” Mom sipped her three-thousand-dollars-a-bottle wine, her expression telling me to get over myself.
Before I had a chance to address that choice bit of gaslighting, the soup course arrived. The only food I’d eaten all day had been a breakfast sandwich I’d grabbed at a cantina in one of the chalets between runs. My second martini had gone down rather quickly and without any conscious thought as I bore the brunt of my parents’ disappointment when they didn’t know the true story. All of which meant I needed to eat something. Yet the thought of sitting through more of this blame-the-victim BS courtesy of the lies my sister and my ex insisted on clinging to had my stomach twisting in knots.
When the server set the bowl of squash bisque in front of me, I motioned for her to lean down so I could whisper a request that she put the leftover soup in the fridge. For whatever reason the menu for tonight’s meal so far had been my favorites. We’d had cheese-and-nuts stuffed dates and bacon-wrapped prawns for starters, squash bisque for soup, the heavenly scent of roast beef wafting from the kitchen implied prime rib for the entrée. It was as though the meal had been devised with a plan to keep me captive at the table. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn chocolate crème brulée awaited us in the wings to cap off the evening.
We ate in silence, the conversation only resuming after the server cleared the soup course.
“For the record the drama queen in the family has always been Pippa. But the two of you weren’t around to witness the weekly meltdowns over a new boyfriend or the devastation of not making cheerleader.” My drink was empty, so I stood and helped myself to another from the sideboard where part of a pitcher of my favorite martini sat on a silver salver. “You left it to me to take care of those.” I sat down and stared hard at my sister who refused to meet my gaze.
Mom sighed. “Oh, Piper. You just proved my point.”
For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out how I shared DNA with people who never took personal responsibility for anything they did—unless they won accolades for it or made stupid amounts of money at it.
Drawing in a long, silent breath, I concentrated on taking my time with my third drink of the evening, determined to make it last through the main course.
