The Mistletoe Kisser - Lucy Score Page 0,57
the photo around so Young Ryan was right side up. His hair stood on end, but the grin on his face looked much like the one on Carson’s on his wedding day.
When had he stopped smiling upside down and started worrying about spinal injuries?
“So, how much trouble is Carson in? Do I need to take up a collection from the cousins?” she asked.
“I’m still not sure. The bank is giving me the runaround, but I’ll figure something out.”
“Oh dear. Well, I hope you’re at least getting a chance to enjoy the holiday festivities. It’s been a few decades since I’ve been there, but I recall the whole town going all out.”
“That hasn’t changed,” he said.
“Speaking of the holidays, I was talking to your father at dinner yesterday,” his mom was saying.
“Hang on. What? You and Dad had dinner?”
“Of course. We have dinner every week.”
“Why?” He couldn’t quite contain the shock. His parents divorce had been contentious, ugly… devastating. He had no idea they were capable of speaking cordially to each other let alone having dinner together.
Lisa laughed. “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe because we share five children and four grandkids? We have to catch each other up in case one of us got news the other one didn’t hear yet.”
“How long has this been going on?”
“Honey, where have you been? We’ve been having dinner for years.”
Years?
“I guess I just didn’t realize how much things had changed.” In Ryan’s reality, when he’d gone off to college, his parents had still been arguing over visitation and holidays and sports uniforms. He had never returned home for anything other than short visits, dividing his time between his parents’ homes.
Was it possible his perception had frozen in place while reality had actually moved on?
“Anyway, we were talking about your sister and wondering if she and Jeff are going to move now that baby number three is on the way.”
“Marcie’s pregnant?” He tried to remember the last time he and his oldest sister had talked. There’d been that missed call a few weeks back. But he’d been in the middle of a merger and too busy to talk. Hang on. The merger had been months ago, not weeks. But he’d never returned her call.
His mom laughed like he’d told a joke. “Of course she’s pregnant. She’s due in February. It’s another girl, and they can’t decide on a name yet. You know Jeff and his terrible taste in names.”
Did he? He wasn’t sure he could pick Jeff out of a line-up if his sister wasn’t standing next to the man.
“Anyway, are you going to be able to make it home for Christmas since you’re still on the East Coast or have you used up all your measly vacation time on Uncle Carson?”
He winced. Misleading his mom hadn’t exactly been intentional, but when she’d called with the emergency he didn’t feel mentally up to confessing that he’d been fired and was, for the first time in his life, adrift. “I don’t think so, Mom. I have to get back soon.”
His mom sighed. “Well, I’m not going to pretend I’m not disappointed. But I understand. I suppose Marsha wants to spend Christmas with you. How is she doing? You haven’t mentioned her in quite a while. Where does her family live?”
Ryan pinched the bridge of his nose between his fingers. “Marsha and I broke up.” Last year.
“Oh no! I’m so sorry. Did you tell me? Your dad and I were just saying you hadn’t brought her up in a while. We both just assumed you’d been busy.”
He had been. But too busy to mention that he’d broken up with the woman a year ago? Too busy to know his oldest sister was expecting another baby? Too busy to know that his parents had become friends?
“I rode a horse yesterday.” He blurted the words out.
“On purpose?”
It seemed he and his mother had managed to shock the hell out of each other in the span of one phone call.
“It wasn’t my idea. But yes. On purpose.”
“I’m impressed. Who convinced you to overcome your Napoleon thing?”
“I accidentally spent yesterday with a veterinarian. She took me to a dairy farm, I got kicked by a llama, and then we rounded out the day on horseback after looking at a horse’s uterus.”
It was eerily silent on his mother’s end of the call for thirty seconds, and then she started laughing. “I haven’t heard a more un-Ryan-like sentence come out of your mouth in years. It sounds like your vacation is turning out