Brock glanced out the window, half hoping to catch a glimpse of a woman he knew was long gone. “You don’t know her, Dad.”
“Oh?” His father’s eyebrows shot up. “And you do?”
“No,” Brock said, and raised a hand to flag one of the waitresses over. “But you raised me to look beyond the surface of buildings and people. We don’t know what brought her back here.”
His seventy-three-year-old father rolled his eyes. “Maybe you don’t, but the rest of the town does. It’s all anyone talks about.”
“Since when do you care what anyone says about anything?”
The waitress came over and took Brock’s order, momentarily delaying his father’s response. Once they were alone again, his father took another swig of coffee and said, “You did this to me. You told me to retire, and now I’m sitting here gossiping with the town cronies. I should come back to work part-time.”
“Dad, the doctor said you need to take it easy on your heart.”
“What’s easy about fighting with everyone about local politics? Do you know what they want to do with the monument near the park? They want to replace it with a red light. Men gave their lives in battle for our freedom, but a few fender benders, because your generation can’t drive, and they call the monument a hazard. I’ll tell you what’s a hazard—forgetting what people sacrificed for this country. All you young people can do is text on your smarty-pants phones and crash into each other. I almost got myself arrested yesterday when some young asshole politician came in here and claimed he was moving the city forward. I asked him what he thought of the monument, and he didn’t know what I was talking about. Moving us forward, my ass. How can he do that if he doesn’t know what’s happening in the city he wants to run? I told him that, too.”
Brock sighed. “Okay, Dad, you can come to the office a couple mornings each week. You can help Sue input the billing information.”
“I don’t want to work inside. I spent my life outside. So did you, until you started working on those mill projects. Now look at you, going to the gym. In my day, we earned our muscles the old-fashioned way—by lifting things, not prancing around in gym shorts and running on machines that take you nowhere.”
“I work hard, Dad. Foster Developments has to turn down projects, we’re in such high demand.”
His father grunted in disapproval. “Foster Developments. What was wrong with Foster and Son?”
“It sounded too local. Too small. I explained that to you.”
“I don’t know who you’re trying to impress, Son. Everything you need is right here in this town. Trying to be more than you are just leads to trouble. Your little friend Kate learned that the hard way.”
Their food arrived. For a few minutes Brock and his father ate in comfortable silence. “Is Aunt Stella still coming for Christmas?”
His father laid his fork beside his plate and made a pained sound. “Yes. She comes in tomorrow. I’ll give you your inheritance early if you tell your mother you need me in the office every day.”
Brock hid a smile behind his coffee mug. “That bad?”
“Don’t laugh. One day you’ll be me, Brock. What would you want your son to do for you?”
“I don’t see children in my future, Dad. I’m too busy right now. I don’t have time for anything serious.”
“It’ll happen, Brock. When you least expect it. And you’ll be happier for it.”
“Like you?”
“I didn’t say I’m not happy. I love your mother more than I love life itself. But that doesn’t mean I can spend the next two weeks in a house with her and her sister as they reminisce about their childhood and play Christmas music until I get homicidal. Save me so I don’t kill the woman I love.”
“Okay, okay. I’ll tell Mom you’re essential to the success of a project I’m working on. Maybe you can give the outside of the building a face-lift or something.”
Brock paid for breakfast and left his father there, sipping on what he said was decaf coffee, arguing with the man in the next booth about which day of the week was best for trash pickup. Brock stopped beside his truck and took out the letter Kate had dropped.
She might have been delivering it for a child. Didn’t many letters to Santa end up in the hands of organizations who answered them? He vaguely remembered once reading an article on that. He decided to open it. Hell, if the child had provided an address and asked for something simple, he might even buy the requested gift and have it delivered.
It was, after all, almost Christmas.
He hopped into his truck, started the engine, and studied the still-sealed envelope. His breath was visible in the cold morning air. It could be from Kate. Would a grown woman write a letter to Santa? And, if so, what would she ask for?
He considered himself an honest man with high moral standards.
But the letter—it was sheer temptation.
As was the woman who had dropped it.
In the privacy of his truck, he opened the envelope, careful not to tear it. Once he’d started reading what was written inside, he couldn’t stop.
When he reached the end, he shifted in his seat to accommodate his hard-on, then read the letter again.
Dear Santa,
I hate you.
I know hate is a harsh word and that a lady never uses it, but my days of being proper are over.
I’m sure you recognize my handwriting. There can’t be many twenty-eight-year-old women who still write to you.
You can thank my mother for that. When I stopped believing in you as an actual person, she held out that you were the spirit of hope and dreams. Each time I doubted you, she would retell the story of the year her family had nothing and you brought them food, clothing that fit, and shoes for each child.
Between you and me, your involvement in that was a crock of shit. We both know it was probably someone from her church who felt bad for her family.
When I think of all the time I wasted crafting the perfect letters to you just because it made my mother smile, I want to hunt you down and kick your red-velvet-covered ass. You never gave me what I asked for. You only sent a mockery of it.
Remember in high school when I asked for a boyfriend who would hold my hand and listen to me? What I got was a borderline stalker with hands so sweaty they felt like sponges. Sure, he wanted to hold my hand. He also wore the underwear he stole out of my gym bag. He said it was his way of staying close to me. Then he followed me all over town trying to explain why that was normal. I told him not to touch me so much that I gained the nickname Untouchable Kate.
I didn’t out him because ladies are above vindictiveness.
I guess I’m not a lady anymore, either, because I want to find him and beat his sorry ass, too.
I wrote to you in college. I don’t know why. I guess it made me feel closer to my mother, and I missed her. I was in such a hurry to grow up back then. My friends were all getting married. I asked you for a husband—and you sent Wayne Price.
Just like you, he was all show. He came from a good family, made the right amount of money, looked like one of the Kennedys, and said he loved me. I thought you had finally listened to me. When he asked me to marry him, I had no idea what a twisted sense of humor you have, Santa.
If you were going to send me a man who would sleep with every last one of my friends, couldn’t you have at least made him good in bed? Is an orgasm here or there too much to ask for?
When Mom found out she was sick, I wasn’t going to ask anything of you. I’d stopped believing in you long before that. But there we were last year, Mom and I, in a hospital room just before Christmas, and she wanted both of us to write to you. I didn’t ask you to cure her. All I asked was for you to take away her pain.
I hate you more than I thought I was capable of hating anyone.
It’s Christmas time again. If Mom were here she’d ask me to write to you. So here is your fucking Christmas letter.
Santa, if you are indeed real, I’m not looking for love anymore.
You’ve thoroughly killed my belief in happily ever after. I do, however, have a Christmas wish.
To help me get my mind off how much this time of year sucks, I’m asking for a good old-fashioned, down-and-dirty fucking. I want a man who knows his way around a woman’s body. Give him a long tongue and a nice big cock, and make him strong enough to be able to fuck me against a wall.
He should not only know where a G-spot is, but what to do with it once he finds it. Someone who doesn’t finish until I do. I don’t give a shit who the man is or if I ever see him again. I want to come so many times I can’t remember my name. That’s what I want under my tree this year.
This is the last time I’ll write to you.
Hating you in a most unladylike fashion,
Untouchable Kate
P.S. Fuck you
Ruth Cardello, Maximum Risk
(Series: The Andrades # 3)
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