Dirty: The Complete Series (Secret Baby Romance Love Story) (152 page)

“No.” I finished taping down a tail of
wrapping paper and turned the box around to make sure it didn’t look weird. “I
don’t know if I want him to come with me to the party.”

“Why not? He’s cute, and it’d get your
parents off your back for at least a few weeks.”

“Yeah, and they’ll spend half the night
asking him about how many dates we’ve been on, about what he does for a living,
whether he’s planning on having kids…” I felt my cheeks burning as the real
reason for not inviting him nagged at me: I didn’t know whether or not I was,
strictly speaking, even still in a relationship with Patrick.

“You’re hiding something from me about the
guy,” Amie said, frowning and crossing her arms over her chest. “Come on, Mack.
If he’s done something to hurt you…”

“It’s not really his fault,” I said. “At
least—I don’t think it is. I mean, it’s just gotten weird between us. That
isn’t anyone’s fault, right?”

“That depends,” Amie told me. “How has it
gotten weird?”

“Just…” I sighed. “Let me get us both some
more of the wine. I’m going to need it to explain.”

I stood up and gestured for Amie to stay
where she was, seated on my living room floor. I went into the kitchen and
refilled our glasses, taking as much time as I dared. When I came back into the
living room, Amie had finished off another one of her pen packages and was
waiting for me to start talking.

“Okay, so…”

“So the other day, he had to cancel one of
our dates,” I explained. “I didn’t really think anything about it; he said he
had a business dinner he had to go to, which I guess makes sense.”

“You had to cancel on him the night I got
hurt,” Amie said. “So what’s the deal?”

“In the back of my head I was…” I frowned
and took a sip of my wine. “I guess I was suspicious but I didn’t really say
anything. He promised to make it up to me with a date that was twice as good,
and that he’d bring me flowers, the whole deal—you know?”

“Sounds like he’s better than even I thought!”
Amie worked away at another package. “Where does it get weird?”

“Well after he canceled, I figured he’d
text me or call me that night to reschedule, you know? At least to set a date.
But he didn’t. And when I texted him the next morning to ask how the dinner
was, he said it was just about how he’d expected…but normally he kind of gets
flirty when he replies.”

“That can’t be it.”

“It isn’t. You haven’t been working, so
you haven’t seen Landon coming into the clinic alone.”

“Alone?”

“His dad’s out in the car. Supposedly
working. You know—busy since it’s about to be a week away from the office, and
he has to make sure everything is as it should be before everything shuts
down.”

“He could work in the waiting room. Or at
your desk.”

“Exactly,” I said. I shook my head. “So I
started to feel like he was avoiding me, but I didn’t really know what to do
about it. Finally, last night I called him to just basically ask if we were
okay.”

“And what was his reaction?” Amie took a
long drink of her wine.

“He said he’s just been really busy, and
he asked if I had any plans last night. I didn’t, so he suggested that we do
some Christmas shopping together.”

“That sounds promising.”

“It kind of was,” I agreed. “But then I
got to the mall and everything was weird between us the whole time. He hugged
me and kissed me but there was—it was like there was some weird thing between
us. Like we weren’t talking at the same speed, even though we were.”

“Ah.” Amie nodded. “So how did the date
end? Did you just throw yourselves at each other and go up in a blaze of
awkward passion?”

“Nope.” I sighed. “We made out a little
bit and then he had to go pick up his son. We couldn’t have gone home together
even if it hadn’t been so weird.”

“You’re right; men are all shameful creatures,”
Amie said. She raised her glass and I clinked mine against it, and for a while
we went back to wrapping presents without even addressing the topic of Patrick.

We finally finished up both of our
wrapping chores, and managed to finish off the wine, too. Instead of taking the
bus, Amie decided that she was going to spend the money to catch a cab, and I
offered to give her some leftovers out of my freezer so she wouldn’t have to
cook.

“I know you didn’t want advice from me, or
you would have asked me for it,” she said as she was putting on her coat to go
downstairs. “But here’s what I think, for what it’s worth. You and Patrick like
each other—even before you were dating I could see it on both of your faces.
Don’t worry about waiting for him to make the move again. Invite him over.”

“But what if he’s lost interest?”

“Then he won’t come over,” Amie said with
a shrug. “But at least you’ll know where you stand.” She gave me another quick,
awkward hug and settled her bag of presents on her shoulder again, heading for
my door. “You’re going to the party tomorrow, right?”

“Obviously,” I said, smiling in spite of
myself. I wasn’t sure how practical Amie’s advice was, but it definitely gave
me something to think about as I went through the rest of my day, getting ready
for the party and cleaning up my apartment. I felt a little bit better—but I
couldn’t end the nagging voice in the back of my head wondering what I would do
if it turned out that Patrick had lost interest.

Chapter Six - Patrick

“Hey buddy, make sure you pack your
toothbrush this time,” I told Landon even as I tried to find my own travel
toothbrush to shove it into my suitcase. “I’m not going to stop at the pharmacy
in the middle of the night on Christmas Eve to get you one to use.”

I had gotten off of work at noon, picked
Landon up from the babysitter’s house, and spent the rest of the afternoon
fighting against the clock. My parents expected me at the house by dinner time,
and while it was flexible—with so many relatives coming into town, it had to be—I
didn’t want to be more than thirty minutes late at most. Just like I’d told
Mackenzie, I’d had to buy a few last-minute gifts for in-laws; I’d stuck to
gift cards since they at least couldn’t be offended that I had no idea what
they liked, but it had taken forever to get through the lines, even at two in
the afternoon. Then Landon and I had come back to the house and I’d set him to
work right away packing his things.

The plan was the same as it had been every
year of Landon’s life: we would go to my parents’ house for Christmas Eve, open
presents early on Christmas morning, eat breakfast with the family, and then I
would take Landon to Joanne’s parents’ house about an hour outside of the city
to spend some time with them. I wanted to keep Landon in touch with my in-laws,
his grandparents on his mother’s side, even more than anyone else in Joanne’s
family. They had lost their daughter at the same time that I had lost my wife
and Landon had lost his mom; I didn’t want them to ever think that I was
ignoring them or trying to forget Joanne.

“I’m all finished, Dad!” Landon came into
my bedroom with his suitcase in his hands, looking as proud as he had when the
Principal at his school had announced that he’d won the award for Most Improved
Reader for his grade level.

“I’ll be the judge of that,” I said,
grinning at my son. Landon threw his suitcase onto my bed and I put aside the
clothes I was trying to fold long enough to unzip it and look inside. Of
course, being five, Landon had no real concern for making sure any of his
packing was neat; so to make sure that he had everything that he was going to
need for the long weekend, I had to pull almost all of it out piece by piece. I
found his toothbrush, his pajamas, a few extra pairs of socks beyond what I’d
told him to pack, plenty of warm clothes. He’d snuck in a toy as well—but that
was fine with me. “Looks good, kiddo,” I said, turning to give him an approving
grin. “But this is a mess. Fold your clothes and put them back in.”

“Why does it have to look nice?” Landon
picked up one of his socks and pouted.

“Because then you’ll know where everything
is, and you’ll be able to fit as much as possible,” I explained. I pointed to
my own suitcase. “See?”

“Yeah, but you’ve got a lot more than I
do,” Landon pointed out. “I don’t have to worry about fitting things.”

“It’s a good habit anyway.”

I looked at Landon sharply for a moment,
wondering if he’d gotten overtired and was going to start throwing a tantrum
out of sheer boredom and worry. “Come on, bud. You know Santa can still make
changes to his big list.”

“Okay,” Landon said, shrugging. He began
to fold his clothes, and I went back to trying to make sure I had everything I
wanted to bring with me. I’d dropped Landon’s “Santa” presents at my parents’
house a few days before, and the ones that were coming from me were wrapped and
in a big bag with all the rest.

“Are you excited to see your cousins?” I
asked as I shoved a charging cable into one of the compartments on my suitcase
as a backup to the one I kept in my car.

“Yeah,” Landon said. “More excited for
desserts.” My parents always had a huge table of sweets set up starting
Christmas Eve, through until Christmas night; it was the universal favorite of
all of the kids—as it had been when I was Landon’s age. He continued folding
and putting his clothes into the suitcase for a moment and then spoke again. “I
wish Mack was coming.”

“Well, she’s got her own family she needs
to see,” I said.
He’s getting really
attached to her. Maybe I shouldn’t have told him that she and I were dating.
“She’s going to have a really good time with her parents and brothers and
sisters and nieces and nephews.”

“Couldn’t they come over to Granny’s house
too?” Landon looked at me. I tried to laugh it off, but I worried that I’d
given Landon too much to hope for in the bet he’d made with me.

“Why would they do that? They’ve got a
perfectly good house of their own.” I looked into my suitcase and checked the
contents against the mental checklist I kept running through my head. “You’ll
see Mack again soon.”

“Okay,” Landon said. “Can I have as much
of the desserts as I want?”

“After you’ve had dinner, absolutely,” I
said. Landon pouted again, but he kept packing his things away, struggling with
a sweater with a weird shape. I started to suggest that I could help him and
then remembered what his teacher had told me about letting Landon do things
himself and only intervening if he actually asked for help.

“It’s going to be so much fun, buddy,” I said,
checking my suitcase once more. “We’ll have dinner, and there will be all those
sweets—the candy, and the cookies, Granny’s pies.”

“What are we going to do after that?”
Landon finished the last of his clothes and closed the lid on his suitcase,
turning to look up at me.

“Well, we’ll play games—you can play
anything you want. I think your Granny’s going to have Apples to Apples, and
Monopoly, and Uno. And I’m sure that your cousins are bringing their own games
too. Maybe before we leave you can go into the closet and find something you
want to bring with you.”

“But I might forget it.”

“I’ll let you put your name on the box so
that everyone knows it’s yours,” I promised.

“What are we going to do after the games?”

“Movies,” I said. “We’re going to watch movies
and have fun together until everyone goes to sleep.”

“And we’re going to make sure that Santa
has cookies and milk?”

I nodded. “Of course. We can’t let him go
without—he might give us all coal.”

“What about tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow you’re going to open all your
presents, and then we’re going to have a nice big breakfast with the family.” I
thought I had everything—I hoped, at least, that I did. “Then we’re going to
visit your Gramma and Granddaddy, and they’ll give you their presents to you.”

“I’m getting a lot of presents this year,”
Landon observed.

“You are! In fact, Mack got a present for
you, even. You’re going to be the most spoiled little boy on the planet.”

“No I won’t!” Landon frowned up at me. “I
am going to be nice even if I get all the presents in the world.”

I laughed. “I believe it shrimp.” I took a
deep breath and looked over the contents of my suitcase once more. “I think
we’re ready to go, don’t you?”

“Remember the presents,” Landon said. “You
told me remind you.”

“I did tell you to do that,” I agreed,
reaching out and tousling my son’s hair. “Okay. Let’s go look at the present
bag and make sure everything is in there, and then we can go.”

I made one last pass through the house to
check on everything; the last thing I needed was to leave something plugged in
where it could light on fire while I was gone. I checked again to make sure I
wasn’t forgetting anything in my luggage or in the present bag. I’d stashed
some stocking stuffers at my parents’ house as well; once the kids had all gone
to sleep, sometime after midnight, we’d all be going through and putting the
presents from Santa out, making Christmas happen for all of the young ones.