Laura Altom - The SEAL's Christmas Twins

Aerosmith’s “Walk This Way” spilled out the bar’s door at the same time as Harvey Mitchell.

“Got a ride?” Hattie asked.

Breath fogging in the cold night air, he hitched his thumb toward the road. “Wife sent the daughter to pick-me-up.” His last three words slurred into one. Looked as though someone should’ve gone home a few drinks earlier.

Hattie waited outside for the few minutes it took for Harvey’s sixteen-year-old, Janine, to show. The bar stood at the end of a pier. She took a deep breath, appreciating the water’s briny tang.

With Harvey safely gone, she headed inside, glad for the warmth and cheerful riot of Halloween decorations she’d put up weeks ago before knowing how tragically the month would end.

“Hey, sweetie.” Her best friend, Clementine Archer, stepped out from behind the bar, enfolding her in a hug. They’d gone to school together since kindergarten. When Clementine’s husband had lost his job at the fish-canning factory, Hattie had suggested her friend take an online bartending class, then come work for her. Five years later, Clementine’s husband had run off to Texas, leaving her on her own with their two sons, but she still worked behind the bar four days a week. Her mom watched the boys. “How’s it going? You’ve gotta be a mess.”

“Oh—I passed mess a long time ago. I’m currently a disaster.” Hattie deposited her purse in a lower cabinet beside the fridge. Before leaving, she needed to run upstairs to switch it out for her usual cargo-style bag. Might as well grab extra clothes, too.

“You leave Mason with the twins?”

Hattie nodded. “He wasn’t happy about it. Pouted like a second grader.”

“How is it?”

“What?” Hattie poured herself an orange juice on the rocks.

Hands on her hips, Clementine shook her head. “Don’t even try playing it cool with me, lady. I’m the one person aside from Melissa who ever knew exactly how much Mason meant to you. No way is his being here not impacting your life.”

Hattie looked at her drink. “Yeah, so maybe I’d like a splash of vodka for this, but you know...” She stared at the crowd of regulars: some played pool, others poker, others still watched one of the four flat screens or just talked. Everything about the night was normal, yet not a single thing in Hattie’s life felt the same. Her eyes welled with tears again. She blotted them with one of the bar’s trademark red plaid napkins she’d had monogrammed with Hattie’s. “It’s all good.”

“Oh, sweetie...” Clementine ambushed her with another hug. “You don’t still have a thing for him, do you?”

“No. Of course not.” Which was why when he’d swooped her into his arms outside of the lawyer’s her heart had skipped beats. When he’d stood beside her in her sister’s kitchen or they’d shared feeding time on the couch or he’d tugged her onto his lap for a comforting hug, everything she thought she knew turned upside down.

And that was bad.

It didn’t matter that Melissa was no longer with them. Mason would always belong to her. Their bond had been unbreakable. So much so that not only had her sister reached from beyond her grave to ask Mason to raise her girls, but she’d had the audacity to suggest he also be Hattie’s man.

Chapter Five

“Thanks for bringing all of this by, Dad—and thank you, Fern, for driving.” His ditty bag and iPad couldn’t be more welcome sights in this unfamiliar home.

While his dad grunted, prune-faced Fern waved off Mason’s appreciation in favor of snooping about the kitchen. She’d tossed her red down coat on the granite counter, but still wore her orange cap and a hot-pink sweat suit with striped blue socks. She’d abandoned her sturdy Sorel boots at the front door. “Where’d Melissa keep her coffee?”

“Couldn’t tell you.”

“Times like these folks need coffee. Hattie didn’t make any? And Danish. Doughnuts. At the very least, she could’ve set out a bag of Oreos.”

Mason tried like hell not to smile. “In Hattie’s defense, she hardly expected anyone to be here. I’m sure her mother’s got plenty of food left from the wake if you two want to head over there?”

“Lord...” Hands on her hips, Fern surveyed Melissa’s top-of-the-line Keurig K-Cup–style coffeemaker. “Prissy and downright pretentious is what this is. If I were you, I’d run this straight out to the dump and get you a nice stove-top percolator.”

“Sure. I’ll see what I can do.” What he failed telling Fern was that he thought the whole single-cup thing pretty damned cool. He’d never known coffee technology existed until his friend Heath’s new bride, Patricia, had it listed on her bridal-shower registry. The damn thing had been pricey, so Mason and his pal Cooper had gone halvsies on it. Which reminded him, he needed to call his CO and SEAL team roomie about not being home as scheduled.

“Ready?” His dad, Jerry, joined them. “I’ve got shows.”

Fern furrowed the caterpillars she called brows. “For cryin’ out loud, Jer’, step into this century. Haven’t you heard of a DVR?”

“Haven’t you heard the government uses those things to bug your house—they put pinhole spy cams in there, too.”

After a grand eye roll, Fern sighed. “S’pose next you’ll be telling me sittin’ too close to my TV’ll make me blind?”

Jerry shrugged. “Judging by your outfit, you may want to push your recliner a ways back.”

“Oh, for God’s sake...” Mason grabbed Fern’s coat and held it out to her. “Get a room and leave me in peace.”

“I wouldn’t sleep with your father if he laid gold nuggets.”

“Thanks for that visual.” Wincing, Mason held out the garment, wagging it in hopes of enticing Fern to slip it on and then slip right out the door. “I appreciate you two bringing my gear, but if you don’t mind, I’ve got baby-care research to do. Oh—and, Dad, here are your keys.” Mason fished them from his pocket. “Thank you for letting me use your ride.”

“No problem, but what’re you gonna drive now?”

“I suppose Alec’s Hummer.”

“Talk about pretentious.” Fern snorted. “I don’t mean to speak ill of the dead, but I never did approve of that car—if you could even call it that. More like a tank.”

Jerry snapped, “You didn’t seem to mind much last winter when you stuck your Shirley Temple curls out the sunroof for the Christmas parade.”

“Shut your pie hole, old man. You’re just jealous no one asked you.”

Fingers to throbbing temples, Mason counted to ten to keep from blowing. Fern and his dad had always been combustible neighbors, but he’d forgotten to what degree. At least they could now retreat to separate vehicles.

After ten more minutes’ bickering, Fern and Jerry finally left Mason in peace. Only, even then he didn’t truly feel calm because of the emotions warring in his head. Guilt for not feeling more sadness in regard to Melissa’s and Alec’s deaths, confusion over the sheer logistics of caring for their infant twins, hurt over being treated like a pariah by two families he’d once very much loved and felt a part of.

Thank God for Hattie.

Even though she’d temporarily left him in charge, he appreciated knowing he wasn’t ultimately alone. Knowing that by the time the babies woke she’d be back comforted him when otherwise he’d have been in a panic.

Mason tossed a couple logs on the fire, then grabbed his iPad, only to find the battery near dead. He rummaged through his bag for the charger but, when he returned to the sofa to do baby research, found his cord wasn’t near long enough.

In need of an extension cord, he headed downstairs to the utility room. His first trek to the home’s lowest level, he hadn’t ventured farther than the heater. Now he noted the kind of party room he and Alec had only dreamed of when they’d been teens. A fully stocked wet bar complete with two kegs on tap and a loaded wine fridge. A few half-empty beer mugs sat on a counter covered in longneck twist caps sealed in clear acrylic. Mason had never seen anything like it. Had the creation been his idea or Melissa’s or their architect or designer’s?