Tara Taylor Quinn - The Holiday Visitor

“Okay, I’ll take a look,” Craig said when she stopped to catch her breath. And let her brain catch up with her. “I hadn’t really thought about Christmas dinner,” he admitted, opening the black book. “I’ll probably just spend the day on the beach. Or driving along the coast. I’ve always wanted to do that.”

“The trip up State Route One is remarkable.” There. A good answer. “If you’ve never taken it before, you might want to give it a try. It’s slow going in some parts, but follows the coast. You can go all the way to San Francisco without losing sight of the ocean for more than a few minutes.”

“San Francisco. That’s, what, about three hours from here?”

“Three or four, depending on how fast you drive. And on traffic.” No one liked to be rushed, or run out of time. Which would explain why she wanted to stand there with him for…a long time.

He nodded. And she realized that they’d been looking each other straight in the eye for too many seconds. She was going to look away. To take a sip of wine.

“My parents are both gone,” he said, answering her earlier question.

Her heart filled with compassion. Empathy. “I’m so sorry. Recently?”

And as his golden-brown eyes glistened, continuing to speak to her even before he spoke again, Marybeth knew that this man was special. Different.

“My dad’s been gone a long time,” he said with little emotion. And then swallowed. “Mom died this past year. Kidney problems.”

“Do you have brothers and sisters?” Maybe they were all at spouses’ family homes for the holidays. Maybe they’d invited him and he, not wanting to crash the party, had declined. Maybe he had a sibling here, in Santa Barbara….

The thoughts chased themselves around her mind more quickly than she could keep up with them. She just knew she didn’t want him to be alone. Didn’t want him to have to know how alone felt.

“I’m an only child,” he told her and Marybeth peered across the room. Sipped her wine. Studied the lights on the tree, the patterns in light color repetition. There weren’t any patterns.

“Me, too.” The words were soft, only half spoken, really. She was breaking cardinal rule numbers one through ten. Marybeth did not speak about her private life to her guests. Ever. Or drink with them. Or open her heart to them. Or feel attraction…

“You’re an only child?” The question was quiet, respectful. His head was cocked slightly as he watched her.

When her usual yes, without further elaboration, wasn’t enough, Marybeth knew she was in trouble.

“My parents are both dead.”

She was really reacting to this guy.

Was she just vicariously living Wendy’s feelings for Randy? Suffering from transference?

Was it the holidays?

“Recently?”

She couldn’t stop looking at him. “My mom died when I was a kid. An…accident. Dad passed just this year. He had a heart attack on the tennis court.”

“Completely unexpected.”

She nodded. “I…have a friend, who lost a parent this year, too.” Thoughts of James while she was sitting here attracted to another man made the whole situation that much more surreal.

James should be sitting in her living room, making her tongue-tied and uneven. Not this stranger. She and James had history. Things that could never, ever be duplicated. They understood each other on levels most people didn’t even know existed.

She needed him this week. More than ever.

And he’d refused to meet her. Ever.

“Someone here locally?”

He’d promised, from the ripe age of thirteen, that he’d always be there for her. “No,” she said. “He’s in Colorado.” Or at least his mailing address was.

“With family?”

She had no idea how to answer that. The truth—that she didn’t know if James had any family other than the mother who’d just died, didn’t even know if he was married, or living with a woman, or gay for that matter—would be too hard to explain in light of the fact that she’d just called him a friend.

And the greater truth—that her best friend since junior high school was a pen pal she’d never met—wasn’t sharing material. Ever. With anyone.

“He’s not alone,” she said in the end. It was the only information pertinent to the current conversation.

“And what about you?” Craig’s lids lowered slightly as he asked the question.

“I…” She parried personal questions. Always. And not just since she’d become the keeper of a house filled with others’ memories in the making, either.

The silence was long enough for him to bow out of the conversation. To let her off the hook.

He didn’t. He simply sat there. Watching her. Waiting.

Time to clean up the cheese and crackers. To call Brutus over. To start breakfast. Or glue something.

“Yes.” Dammit. She’d known the word was coming. Should have tried harder to prevent it from slipping out. She had no idea where any of this could go.

No idea if he even noticed she was alive, other than as a hostess he was paying to take care of him for a few days.

“My surrogate family wants me to come over, as Dad and I have done every year since Mom died.”

“But you turned them down?” He didn’t sound critical. Or even as though he thought her crazy.

“I told them I was working. Breakfasts don’t cook and linens don’t get changed by themselves and I sure wasn’t going to call my cleaning lady, Grace, away from her family.”

Frowning, Craig set his glass on the claw-foot, cherry coffee table. “I’m keeping you away from your friends? I can go—”

“No!” What was it about him? And her? “I’d stay home whether you were here or not. Truly. I already told them I wasn’t coming.”

Her choice to live her life alone might seem odd to most people, but she didn’t have to justify herself. Nor would she. She was all grown up now. An adult. Her life was her own.

And she was happy.

She was also completely turned on for the first time in her life.

CRAIG TRIED TO CALL Jenny when he went back to his room to grab a jacket before heading out for the short walk to a quaint little diner he’d seen about a block away from the inn. When she didn’t pick up, he stifled his frustration mixed with relief, quickly left a message letting her know that he’d arrived in Santa Barbara, that he was hoping she’d arrived safely, as well, and that he’d call her again in a day or so, reception allowing.

“Love you.” His final words were offered with sincerity.

Her flight might have been delayed. Or she could be out. Or with her family and not able to answer. She could have left her cell phone in her room. Or failed to charge it. One thing was for certain. If Miss Jenny Fournier-Chevalier didn’t end up safely at her folks’ castle situated on richly grown acres of French countryside, Craig McKellips would be hearing about it.

HE DIDN’T SEE his hostess again that night. Though he made eating a business, tackling the task efficiently, rather than lingering and appreciating the anomaly of free time, the door to her quarters had been firmly closed when he returned to the Orange Blossom. The light shining from beneath her door had called to him, though.

He’d thought about knocking. And thought about Brutus and privacy and the fact that he had nothing to offer the young, vibrant woman who lived on the other side of that portal—no matter how much he wanted to be in her presence. He was married. More, he had secrets, things Marybeth Lawson couldn’t ever know, things that prevented them from ever being more than casual acquaintances.

Craig spent more hours than he’d have liked in front of the window in the Juliet room that night, and again, the next morning staring at the ocean in the distance—unwinding, thinking, trying to come to terms with his life—until it was finally time to head downstairs to breakfast. Dressed in baggy black shorts and a white polo shirt topped with a black sweater to protect him from ocean breezes, he forced himself to take the steps one at a time when what he wanted to do was jog the whole way.