His Holiday Crush - Cari Z. Page 0,20
into the kitchen, dressed in weather-appropriate and vaguely matching clothes. “We’re ready!” Marnie announced. Her snow pants were electric purple, whereas Steph’s were neon pink. I think Ariel had been afraid of losing her kids in the snow or something when she bought them.
Not that she ended up giving a shit about losing her kids in the end.
I tried to turn my mind away from her—thinking about Ariel always put me in a bad mood fast. I could understand wanting to get a divorce and even understand her divorcing my brother. I couldn’t understand how she could just pick up and leave one day, leave everything, leave her children, and not give a shit about the turmoil her leaving produced. Edgewood PD had looked for Ariel for three days before she finally bothered to make contact from two states away.
No, I couldn’t think about her now. I shook my head a little and draped a smile over the sour taste she left in my mouth. “You guys look great. Should we start by introducing Max to the snow family out back?”
“Yes! And we can make a new one for him, too.” Marnie started to run for the back door.
“Gloves, hat, and jacket first, please.”
“Ugh!”
An eternity later, we made it into the backyard, where Marnie immediately began to explain how the five misshapen snowmen were “Daddy, Mommy, Uncle Nicky, Steph, and me.” There was enough fresh powder for her to scrape together a starter ball. “Help us make a you, Max!”
“You got it,” Max said. He let Marnie work on rolling her ball around and started a new one then handed it to Steph, who was following him around like a duckling. “Do you want to help me get it going?” he asked her gently. She nodded, and they started to roll it around together. I watched them until Marnie loudly reminded me that we needed three balls for a snowman, so I had to do one, too.
The powder was fresh, but it was too cold for it to stick well. In the end, Max’s snowman ended up being about the same height as Steph’s, but he didn’t seem to mind. We found sticks for the arms, carved a face into it, and then drew on a suit jacket and tie. “Very fancy,” I said with a chuckle.
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“We’re all very beautiful, but we could be more beautiful,” Marnie said critically. “Can we use some food coloring on them?”
That threw me for a bit of a loop, but… “Sure. Let me go and get it.”
After I handed over the basic red, yellow, blue, and green bottles, Max and I both stood back and watched as the girls experimented with the dyes, spattering drops, squeezing streaks and making attempts to mix them into new colors in the snow. Five minutes in, it looked like a rainbow had been brutally murdered by our snowman crime family, but the girls were having a fantastic time.
“I’m not sorry that they’re handling this part by themselves,” Max said quietly from his place beside me. “I love them, but this is the only jacket I brought.” It was a luxurious one, too, way nicer than my old camo coat, with a sheepskin collar and dark brown leather that looked like it would feel silky soft under my hand.
Or someone’s hand.
Anyone’s hand.
“It’s nice that they’re old enough to entertain themselves pretty well most of the time,” I agreed. “Marnie is really good at including Steph.”
Max looked contemplative. “I remember how adamant Ariel was that she was done after Marnie. Hal told me he’d basically given up on more kids, and then all of a sudden she changed her mind on Marnie’s second birthday.”
I didn’t want to talk about Ariel—I already knew I didn’t have anything nice to say. “She’s never been really consistent,” I managed in an even tone. Max glanced sidelong at me, one eyebrow raised. Shit, maybe that hadn’t been even enough. I knew he’d been friendly with her, not just for Hal’s sake, either—he and Ariel had run the drama club back in high school.
“Talk to me a little about Steph.”
Thank goodness for people who read the room. Not that Steph was a particularly easy subject right now, either, but she was better than talking about her mother. “About the not-talking thing?”
He nodded.
I exhaled harshly. “She hasn’t handled her mom’s departure very well,” I said. “Ariel dropped her off at kindergarten that morning. She was supposed to be back to pick