Christmas at Cade Ranch Read online

  He’d learned from the best, she thought, thinking of the creative license she took now and then since she never could get an entire song straight. When the final words of the carol eluded her, she simply went with “O Christmas tree, you are so charming.”

  “Unchanging,” James corrected, his mouth hooking up at the corners in a gorgeous half smile. At the tender affection in his eyes, a war of emotions, vulnerability and exhilaration, erupted.

  “Are we a family?” Javi asked.

  Sofia felt James’s hand tighten around hers. Their near kiss had changed things between them, created an intimacy that she needed to guard against. “Yes.”

  Her heart picked up speed and she forced herself to let go and put some space between them. James seemed to be stealing the air from her lungs, the thoughts from her head and the barriers she’d erected from around her heart. For a moment, vertigo whirled inside her so that it felt as if she stood on a precipice, about to tumble, head over heels.

  “What’s next, Uncle James?”

  “The next step is...” James dropped his backpack to the ground. To her astonishment, he produced a thermos and three Styrofoam cups. “Hot chocolate.”

  “With marshmallows?”

  James paused in pouring and pursed his lips. “Might have forgotten them, buddy. Sorry.”

  “It wasn’t on your list?” she asked, then smiled at the stunned expression that crossed his face.

  “I didn’t make one,” he admitted, abashed.

  Her heart softened. Was he finally lowering his strict standards? Did she have anything to do with it?

  “Looks like you went off-grid. Must be my bad influence...” Sofia teased.

  “I wouldn’t call it bad.” He grinned back at her, their eyes locking.

  “Is it ready?” Javi leaned over and sniffed the chocolate with a red-tipped nose.

  James shook his head and blew on the steaming brown surface. He would make someone a good father someday, she mused. While she didn’t like being micromanaged, watching Javi with James proved that boundaries did work for some kids.

  A moment later, she breathed in the rich, chocolaty smell, then sipped the warm, sweet fluid.

  “Did you use the Keurig?”

  James nodded.

  “Hmmmmmmmmm... You weren’t too keen on it when I first mentioned it.”

  “Let’s just say...” He lowered his cup and met her eyes over the brim. “That some of the changes around here are starting to grow on me.”

  * * *

  A FLUSH SPREAD up Sofia’s neck and pooled in her cheeks. Her teeth appeared on the full bottom lip that he’d nearly kissed just moments ago. Her long lashes fell and obscured her eyes. They had little flecks of green to break up the brown color, he’d observed under the bright sun today.

  In fact, he’d been noticing a lot about Sofia lately. Much that he liked, despite the lingering concern about the missing pills. He thrust aside the worry. Today was about Javi. About family. He wouldn’t ruin this incredible day. Nearly kissing Sofia, despite everything that stood between them, had felt right. No. That wasn’t the word. It’d felt meant.

  In the distance, a snowmobile engine whined and he pictured Justin plowing through the fresh powder, immune to the risks of speeding around hairpin turns thousands of feet above sea level.

  “What do we do next, Uncle James?”

  He shoved aside the allure of her soft lips, gathered the empty cups, stored them, then held up the hacksaw. “We cut the tree.”

  Javi’s eyes widened. “That’ll hurt it!”

  Sofia put a hand on Javi’s arm. Her dark hair curled out from beneath her red wool cap. In her white jacket, fitted jeans and boots, she’d never looked prettier. “Trees can’t feel.”

  “Yes, they do!”

  “Honey, it’s just a tree. Plus, now it’ll get to be a Christmas tree. That’s special.”

  “Will it die?”

  When Sofia paused, James jumped in. “Yes. But not right away. Not until we throw it out.”

  Javi grabbed one of the boughs. “Can we bring it back?”

  “No, honey. It doesn’t work that way.” Sofia knelt in the snow in front of her son and placed a kiss on the tip of his nose.

  James’s heart zoomed in his chest at the tender gesture, his reservations about Sofia fading to dust. She loved her son. Absolutely. Unselfishly. The struggles she’d forged through on her own, without family, her determination to serve on the Cade Ranch board, her follow-through on attending NA meetings, even her sobriety, weren’t actions she took for herself. She’d made that clear. Yet the fact that she did them anyway, for her child’s sake, deeply impressed him and touched him. There was a lot to like about Sofia. Love even...

  “Then I don’t want it.” Javi sniffled.

  “But you said you wanted a Christmas tree.”

  “We can’t take it from its family.” Javi pointed at the surrounding pines, spruce and firs.

  A crazy, complicated tangle of feelings rose in his chest. For a kid who’d never had much family, or maybe because he’d never had it, he treasured it most of all. Deserved it. Was there a chance Sofia might consider leaving Javi here on Cade Ranch when she left for Portland? They could keep him until she was settled and have more time to bond and cement their ties. Now that he’d discovered Javi, James had made a place for him in his heart, and he couldn’t imagine their family without him. Or Sofia.

  “But...”

  Javi flung his arms out. “I’m saving the tree. Like Batman.”

  “Oh, honey.” Sofia sighed a long, white exclamation of air. She held out one of Javi’s gloves that had slipped off. “You don’t have to rescue everything.”

  “Batman would.”

  James stored the hacksaw in his pack and approached Javi. “Your father could never bring himself to kill anything, either.”

  Sofia brushed at Javi’s damp cheeks. His lashes, wet and clumped, rose. “Nothing?”

  “Nope. Not even a spider. Whenever we’d spot one, he’d holler for us not to kill it so he could trap it and set it outside.”

  “Daddy was a hero.”

  “Yes. Yes, he was. He wanted to be a veterinarian and rescue all animals.” James’s throat swelled right along with his heart, an aching pressure. In this moment, he remembered his little brother the savior, not the addict. How easily one aspect of a person could overshadow the rest if you let it, he thought, his eyes alighting on Sofia.

  He’d been hard on her, too quick to accuse when the pills went missing—he now saw that. His suspicious nature blinded him to the possibility that Sofia’s former addiction didn’t automatically make her guilty. There was much more to her than her past. “Let’s leave the tree right here.”

  “Then it can’t be a Christmas tree.” Javi angled his head to look up the length of it.

  “Yes, it can,” James insisted, thinking of an old tradition his mother had taught him and his siblings. “We’ll make some ornaments at home. The kind birds and squirrels can eat.”

  “They can eat it?”

  “Yep. I’ll show you.”

  A few hours later, he, Sofia and Javi sat in the kitchen. Newspaper covered the long table along with pinecones. On the stove, Tuscan bean soup bubbled, spewing a rich, buttery aroma that had his stomach grumbling. Sofia had moved on from her French cooking obsession after watching Roman Holiday and promised (threatened?) Italian cuisine like none of them had ever tasted.

  He grinned a bit to himself at that. On Sunday, she’d offered to make them homemade pizza while they watched the football game. Good thing he had Domino’s on speed dial.

  “Smells good, Sofia.”

  Her head snapped up. “You think so? I didn’t have fresh basil, but I rubbed the dried flakes to bring out the flavor.”

&
nbsp; “Where’d you learn to do that?”

  “The catering company I worked for. They didn’t let me cook, but I used to watch the chefs, wishing I could be one someday.”

  “I believe you can.”

  Her eyes searched his, as if she didn’t trust her ears.

  “I do,” he insisted. “You’re smart, hardworking and—uh—creative.”

  One side of her mouth hitched up. “The duck à la grapefruit wasn’t my finest moment.”

  “But who else would have thought of it?”

  “No one, thank God.”

  Their shared laugh felt like sinking into a warm tub, a comforting homecoming.

  “Is this right?” Javi held up a pinecone he’d smeared with peanut butter.

  The spread rose so far up the cone that it’d make a huge, sticky mess when they attached it to the tree. Javi had also missed a few spots, leaving the pinecone bare in places so it couldn’t be evenly coated with birdseed.

  He opened his mouth to correct Javi then heard himself say, instead, “Good job, buddy.”

  Sofia’s slightly gummy smile brightened the air around him, and he found himself smiling right back until Javi yelled, “Googly eyes!”

  From the mouths of babes, his mother always used to say to his father whenever he or one of his siblings said something that made them laugh. He supposed Javi had it right. He was staring a little too long at Sofia, listening a bit too close, lingering longer than he should, but he couldn’t help himself. Gone was his ironclad control. She was kryptonite to his self-discipline. Worse, he wasn’t sure he minded anymore.

  He even found himself looking forward to seeing whatever unconventional dish she’d make for dinner. Burned, undercooked, over-spiced, bland as cardboard... The anticipation and surprise kept things interesting. And no denying, he liked coming home to Sofia and Javi. Would he miss Sofia as much as Javi when they left? Lie in bed, thinking about her soft lips and that smile that lit him up from the inside?

  He watched her out of the corner of his eye as she painstakingly sprinkled birdseed all around her pinecone. Without her, life would settle back to its quiet, ordinary routine. Not a comforting thought like it had once been, he realized. A narrow world by comparison. It tipped him sideways to imagine the house, his family and himself without them.

  Suddenly, he had so much feeling trapped within his chest, he had to take shallow breaths while he waited for it to subside.

  “I’m glad we didn’t kill our Christmas tree.” Javi paused in his work to lift a baleful Clint onto the table. “Oof. You’re heavy.”

  Clint’s short, stubby tail, a comical proportion given his huge girth, flicked in rebuke. Then he flopped on his side, lifted his head in a futile attempt to lick his basketball of a stomach and dropped his head back to the table. His paws batted at the birdseed rolling on the table.

  Sofia scratched Clint behind the ear. “Now the tree can give presents to the rest of the forest.”

  “What about me?” Javi turned with the birdseed bag he’d picked up. In a pinging shower, the pellets poured to the floor. James and Sofia hurried to pick up the mess. “Do I still get presents? Santa only leaves them under trees.”

  “Well. We’ll get an artificial one. So that counts.” James grabbed a broom and handed Sofia the dustpan.

  “What if I’m on the naughty list?”

  Sofia looked up sharply from where she crouched on the ground.

  The broom made a swishing sound as James flicked the mess into the dustpan. “You’re not on the naughty list.”

  “Of course not, honey,” Sofia chimed in. She dumped the seed into the garbage.

  “If you’re a liar, Santa puts you on the naughty list.” Javi’s lower lip trembled.

  Sofia swept him in her arms. “You never lie, Javi.”

  “What about taking stuff?”

  Sofia kissed the top of his head. “My Batman would never steal.”

  Javi squirmed free, dropped his brow to the table and covered his head with his arms. When his muffled voice emerged, they had to step close to hear him.

  “I took Grandma’s pills.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  “POOR JAVI.” Joy sighed. “He really didn’t mean any harm.”

  Sofia nodded, then flicked on her turn signal and waited beneath a blinking red light at the intersection. Sleet pinged against her windshield and hood, a hollow, ominous sound with the world a swirling, writhing black mass beyond her headlight beams. Her insides twisted along with it, turning round and round as she replayed Javi’s confession about the missing medicine from earlier this afternoon.

  Javi had lied and stolen.

  Like mother like son?

  No.

  He was nothing like her and never would be, she vowed. His motive had been to protect her. Although he didn’t know about her addiction, he’d gleaned from conversations that she thought pills were dangerous. He’d wanted to save her and that admission both touched and hurt her most of all. Her little man, the superhero who would save the world if he could, had tried to rescue her. She was the mom. The strong one. She never wanted him to worry about anything, least of all her.

  “I hate leaving him.” Sofia cranked the wheel and eased off the gas as the truck slid in the turn as she headed into town. She should have stayed home from tonight’s NA meeting. In fact, since Javi’s revelation exonerated her, she no longer had to honor James’s attendance request. Yet she’d come anyway. Why?

  “Me, too.” Joy brushed the snow that had fallen on her navy wool dress coat and stamped her boots on the rubber floor mats. “But he only wanted James to stay with him.”

  “They’re close,” Sofia said without taking her eyes off the treacherous road. The thin scrape of white atop the shining tarmac suggested the sanders hadn’t passed through in a while. She pressed the snow button on the dash to give the tires more weight and traction.

  “Careful on the speed. Looks like black ice.” Joy pulled off her leather gloves and folded them on her lap. “It does me good seeing James and Javi together.”

  “I thought he’d be furious about the pills.” Sofia gripped the wheel and concentrated on keeping them on the road. When she flipped on the defroster, a blast of stale warm air roared from the vents.

  “I’m not. For all James’s bluster, he’s got a big heart. In fact, he’s the biggest softy of all my children and a huge pushover where Javi’s concerned...and you.”

  “Me?” Sofia squeaked.

  “We’ve been asking for a new coffee maker for years. You mention it once, and it’s on the counter the next morning.”

  “Oh... I...” Sofia clamped her babbling mouth shut. Could she sound any more awkward and inarticulate? Ever since their almost kiss, her thoughts and feelings for James had been a tangled knot. “Maybe it was on sale?”

  “Like the chrysanthemum centerpiece that appeared the day after you mentioned they were your favorite flower? Or the steam iron you vowed got rid of wrinkles better? And what about how he replaced all our cleaning products with the environmentally safe brands you recommended? He’s changing, Sofia. Willing to try new things, and it’s because of you.”

  “You mean Javi.”

  “I don’t think I do,” Joy replied, her tone sounding slightly amused and a little too knowing for comfort.

  Did Joy sense anything between them? Every time Sofia caught James looking at her lately, she grew warm and flustered. “But I...ah... I mean...he’s just being nice.”

  “I can say a lot of good things about my son, but nice isn’t one of them. He’s a proud man. And decent. Moral through and through. But he’s also stubborn and closed off. A lot in life has made him that way, his father for one.”

  Sofia peered into the whirling white murk, trying to distinguish the rapidly disappearing media
n. “James loved him.”

  “Oh. It was a complicated relationship. My husband considered feelings a weakness and he wanted his children to be tough. Working these mountains requires a mental and emotional fortitude they wouldn’t get if we spoiled them, he always said...and though I didn’t quite agree, I knew he meant well. He loved our children. I just wished he could have actually told them that now and again. It would have gone a long way. Especially with James, who hero-worshipped his dad.”

  Understanding and empathy welled inside her. She knew how it felt to chase after the shadow of a parent’s love.

  “Sometimes I wonder if people who love easily don’t love as deep,” Joy observed. “Maybe it’s because they don’t have as much to lose? Haven’t invested as much? James. Now, once he lets someone in, he doesn’t hold back. I think that’s why he’s as closed off as he is. We always guard that part of ourselves that’s the most vulnerable. For James, that’s his heart.”

  Sofia’s mouth opened and closed. What to say? She wished she could be loved absolutely by someone, but she was too flawed, too scarred, too full of past mistakes to ever inspire those kinds of feelings. Someday, when she reinvented herself, she might be worthy. Sofia 2.0. A new person without the blemish of her past to hold her back from love.

  “Sometimes I think Javi will be the only person to ever love me,” she confessed, then nearly clapped her hand over her mouth. Why had she said that out loud? Joy’s motherly caring inspired Sofia to open up. “If he ever finds out about my past...”

  “It wouldn’t change a thing.” Joy leaned forward and swiped at the condensation misting the glass in front of the steering wheel.

  Sofia’s pressed lips couldn’t fully contain the wounded sound that welled in her throat. It escaped in a pained groan.

  “Oh, honey. I’m sorry. But please believe me.” Joy patted Sofia’s hair, her arm, her knee... The act drew a bit of the pain from her heart. Joy meant well and cared about her. It was a strange feeling. A wonderful one. Was this how it felt to have a mom?

  Sofia slowed down as the back of a snowplow loomed ahead. Fans of white sprayed from its right-angled blade landed on drifts now swallowing up the guardrails. The grating sound of metal on ice mixed with the rough whoosh, whoosh, whoosh of her wiper blades. “I don’t want Javi looking at me like I’m some—some—”