His Holiday Crush - Cari Z. Page 0,49

that bastard of an ex-mayor.”

I wondered how he’d categorized Dominic.

“Well. Ah,” he went on. “You’re here for, um, the holidays?”

“Yep,” I replied. God, I was a lawyer. I was supposed to be better than this at words.

“Max, we need chocolate chip ice cream,” Marnie informed me, not caring one bit about the weird tension in the air.

“We still have so many cookies, we do not need chocolate chip ice cream on top of that,” I told her, grateful for the distraction.

Two bright faces beamed up at me winsomely. “We could make ice cream cookie sandwiches!” Marnie said.

“Aw, nice try, but no.” I ruffled her hair. “You’ll have to make do with cookies.” I looked over at Mr. Fiddler, who seemed fascinated by the interplay. “Sorry, we’ve got to be going.”

“Ah, right. Well. Good.” He cleared his throat. “Nice to, uh, see you again. Hopefully not for the last, mmm, time.”

“Um…thank you,” I said, all retrograde awkwardness coupled with an odd sense of relief, and took off for the register. Whew. That had been uncomfortable but…not as bad as it could have been. Not by a long shot.

Edgewood would always remember the past, but maybe not everyone was still hung up on it.

My optimism promptly smashed to bits when I turned the cart toward the only register with a cashier manning it and saw another—barely—familiar face. My entire body locked up. I couldn’t push the cart. I couldn’t even move.

It was my dad.

His back was to me, but I could see him in profile as he argued with the person behind the register, one hand resting protectively on the case of cheap beer he’d plunked on the belt. His thick hair was hidden by a worn black cap, and his face sported a lot more lines than I remembered, but it was definitely him.

“—the hell do you need to see my ID for? Do I look underage to you? Don’t you know who I am?”

“Yes, Mr. Robertson, I do,” the girl behind the checkout said calmly. Apparently, she was used to belligerent customers—or maybe my dad made a habit of this. “But checking IDs for anyone buying alcohol is store policy.”

“It’s the dumbest policy I’ve ever heard of,” my father scoffed.

A manager headed for the checkout stand, an annoyed look on her face. Was she about to kick my dad out? Was she going to have him escorted out by the cops?

“Max?” Marnie tugged on my sleeve. “Shouldn’t we get in line?”

I almost gasped as her question broke the weird paralysis that had taken me over. “L-Let’s use the self-checkout today, okay?”

“Cool! I want to help scan!”

We turned away from the unfolding drama, and by the time Marnie and Steph had helped me scan and pack up everything we’d bought, my dad was gone. He hadn’t seen me at all.

I think I was relieved by that. Probably. Mostly. Seeing him in person again was hard enough, but seeing him like that, drunk and angry and downright mean, made me want to cringe in secondhand embarrassment and an almost unbearable sense of sadness. I couldn’t think about that now, couldn’t think about him right now. Who he was now, what he was, had nothing to do with me. Seeing my father was over and done with, but I still had a full day planned with the girls.

Good. I needed activity to keep my mind off what had just happened.

We went home for lunch—peanut butter and jelly, at Steph’s request, and I was inclined to give her almost anything she actually asked for—then it was off to the mall downtown.

The mall was one of the newer constructs in Edgewood, having been built when I was in high school. It was the last big deal for the town that my father had brokered as the mayor, and from the way cars were packed in the parking lot, I could only assume it had been good for the town’s economy. There were a few big flagship department stores on either end of it, a sports store, a big-box computer store, a bunch of places for kids, and in the middle of it all was a food court with a domed glass ceiling. That, or so the advertisements said, was where we’d find Santa.

There was a huge tree on the right side of the food court, next to windows that looked out on the playground attached to the mall. The tree was festooned in tinsel, red and silver and gold garlands that wrapped the tree up