She looked. "Holy sh…holy cow."
Four guys were driving up pulling a flatbed trailer with an eighteen foot tall Douglas fir tied on it.
"I know," Gabriel said. "Isn't it gorgeous?"
"It's big!"
As pleased as any five-year-old, he grinned down into her awed face. "The living room has a twenty foot tall ceiling. What else are we going to do to fill the space?"
The guys were professionals. Within an hour they had set up the tree in front of the tall front windows, strung the lights and decorated the top twelve feet. The bottom eight feet, Gabriel explained to Arabella, was for tonight, for the family to decorate.
As the guys left, he tipped them fifty dollars apiece and wished them a merry Christmas.
They enthusiastically returned the greeting, and headed out into the chilly afternoon.
Gabriel shut the doors behind them, then moved to an open box of decorations. He chose a gaudy sparkling mirrored star with large plastic red rhinestones and dangled it in the air. "I always sneak an ornament on early. It's my own personal tradition. Do you want to pick out something to put on the tree, too?"
"Can I? I'm not one of the family."
"We're friends. Aren't we?"
She thought about it very seriously. "Yes. I think we are." She knelt down and sorted through the box, then pulled out a long garland of silver bells. "Can I put this on?"
She had unerringly chosen Hannah's favorite ornament.
"You are the perfect person to put that on the tree," he said.
He hung his star at eye level.
She strung the bells toward the bottom, and explained that whenever someone brushed against those branches, the bells would ring.
Hannah always put them in the same place for the same reason.
Stepping back, he looked up at the star at the very top of the tree, and sighed in satisfaction. "I love Christmas. I love everything about it. When I was little, when I was with my mother, Christmas made her meaner. It was the time of year when she yelled more, hit me harder, said horrible things."
In a small voice, Arabella said, "My mom tells me to be careful of the words I use, that once I say something cruel, I can never take it back."
"That is so true. My wife says, 'Be careful to make your words sweet and tender, because tomorrow you may have to eat them.' Same thing, different way of saying it."
Same small voice. "Yeah… Why did your mother hit you? Why did she say mean things to you?"
"She hated my father for not loving her, and hated me for being my father's child." He sat down on the rug, leaned against the couch and looked up at the tree. He seldom talked about his childhood to anybody. Yes, it had made him the man he was, but it was the past. Yet he wanted Arabella to know how lucky she was to have a mother like hers, and how very, very much she did not want to go into the foster care program.
"But she slept with him to make you. You were her kid, too." Arabella's voice rose in indignation … and hurt.
"You're pretty smart for a ten-year-old."
"I'm almost twelve!"
"Of course. I should have realized that." Good guess on his part. "I have thought my mother was angry at herself because she screwed up her life and she was the only one to blame."
"It sucks when you're the only one to blame," Arabella muttered.
"More than anything in the world," he said fervently.
She seated herself beside him, leaned against the couch, slumped down and stared up at the tree.
He could almost hear the wheels spinning in her head.
"Tell me about your mother. What happened to her?"
He didn't want to keep talking about it. He didn't like remembering those times. But this was a good cause, so he talked. "My mother didn't want me to enjoy any residual Christmas joy. Then, when I was a foster kid … trust me. Even in the good homes, you always know you're not theirs, especially at Christmas time. They give you weird gifts. One time I got used underwear."
"Ew!"
"Yeah. I wore them, too, because my other underwear was too small and so old the elastic had given out. Best Christmas present I got was a snow globe — nice snow globe, with a snow man and sparkly snow. I really liked it — that had obviously been bought on clearance, because it had the previous year's date on it. The real kids in the family made fun of it, and of me for liking it, but even that was okay. Next time I changed homes, I tried hard to keep it intact. The father in that home was an alcoholic. He slammed the trunk lid on my backpack, broke the snow globe, drenched all my clothes and his car. That made him mad, so he hit me, and he hit his wife who was taking in foster kids so he'd have the money to drink. Then he hit me again and made me change into the wet clothes. In the parking lot. It was January, and I damned near died of pneumonia before a social worker came to the house to see why I wasn't in school, realized I was sick and took me to the hospital."
Arabella looked pale and ill. "But what happened to your mother? Your own mother? The one who hated Christmas?"
Of course she wanted to know. He'd gone this far. He supposed he could tell her. But she was already so shocked. He couldn't add more to her distress, so he kept his voice steady and detached. "She abandoned me when I was four."
"Just … dumped you?"
"Like garbage." Okay. That was not so detached. Maybe he still had issues. Maybe he should turn the conversation to her. "From what you've said, it doesn't sound like your mother thinks you're garbage."
"No! What an awful thing to say. No!"
"The thing is, I'd hate to see you become a foster child. It's a tough, unloving environment. Why don't you consider going home? Other than those things she said to you, your mom sounds like a really nice person. Maybe she had a bad day. I'll bet she's sorry for what she said to you."
"I can't go home." Arabella sat up straight. "She doesn't want me to come back."
"Why not?"
Words came in a rush. "Because I told her … I told her … I told her I hated her, that she was an awful, selfish mom. I said I was tired of being poor all the time and never having what the other kids have. I said I was tired of being teased for wearing stuff from the consignment store. I said if she worked two jobs, we wouldn't have to live in such a crummy neighborhood and if she'd been a good wife, my dad wouldn't have screwed around with my first stepmother and we'd still have money. I s…said…" She struggled to speak against threatening tears.
He tried to help. "You said mean things to your mother."
"Y…yes! And she'll never forgive me. Never ever, and I'm so ashamed." Putting her face into her hands, Arabella cried pitifully.
In between the sobbing, Gabriel heard the occasional, "I'm bad." "I'm stupid." "I'm mean."
Finally, when she wound down a little, he got up, got a box of tissue, came and sat down next to her and stuffed one into her hand.
She blew her nose noisily. "She said she wants me to have a cell phone so she can keep in contact with me, make sure I'm safe all the time, but we can't afford it. After that I said she was selfish and she hated me. Then she explained we couldn't afford the phone because I have to get b…braces."
He winced. "Braces instead of a cell phone. That does suck."
"Then I felt sort of … guilty, and I said all that other stuff, and her eyes got really dark blue with rage. She was scary. She said her stuff back, and she hurt my feelings. That's why I ran away. I kept thinking … it served her right to be alone, and she'd be sorry if something happened to me, and I never wanted to see her again." Arabella rubbed her denim-clad legs as if they ached. "But now, I've been alone for three days, and I keep thinking back, and right before her eyes got so furious … she had tears in them. I hurt her feelings. I know how hard she tries. I really do." Her voice rose to a wail. "Why did I say that stuff? What's the matter with me?"
No wonder she didn't want to smile. Not only was she alone, she was carrying a load of remorse.
"Do you want to know wha
t I think?" he asked.
She hesitated long enough that he grinned.
She was twelve. Of course she didn't care what he thought. But he was going to tell her anyway. "You're not stupid, and you're not mean, and you're not bad. You lost your temper and mouthed off. You blamed your mom when you knew it wasn't her fault. You made a mistake. That doesn't make you stupid. That makes you human. And you're sorry, which makes you smart."
"Yeah." She sniffled pitifully.
"In my life, I've had times when I've said the wrong thing. I've trusted the wrong person. I almost lost Hannah, the woman I love more than anyone in the world, because I acted badly. It took a while, and I had to grovel, but she did forgive me."
"Did she?" Arabella sounded hopeful.
He got soft and mushy, as he always did when he talked about Hannah. "She forgave me with all her heart."
In a switch to total practicality, Arabella asked, "Then why won't you get a baby with her? Are you afraid that you're like your parents?"
He'd been playing the role of wise, omnipotent counselor, and with a single question, Arabella filleted him like a trout.
Are you afraid you're like your parents?
God. He felt so stupid. She was right. Why hadn't he seen the truth? That was exactly what he was afraid of. "Yes. Yes. Yes. What if I'm like my father, so uncaring I can father five sons and not love any of them? What if I'm like my mother, seething with hate, cruelty and abuse?"
"You're not like that now," she pointed out.
"Everyone says, 'It's different when it's your own.' They mean I'll love my own kids more if I change their diapers and rock them to sleep and tell them stories. But what if that means I'll hate my own kids because they're always there and talking and there's never time alone and I have all that responsibility and I'm a bad parent?"
"Are you a bad person?"
"No." He was sure of that.
"Then you can't be a bad parent. You might have bad days, or say the wrong thing, but if you love your family, they'll help you. You just have to try to do the right thing."
Whoa. "You're pretty smart."
"Yes. This running away thing has taught me a lot." She shivered. "You're right. I don't want to be alone. I don't want to be a foster kid."
"I think your mom is probably worried to death about you. Don't you?"
"No. She said she doesn't want me anymore."
"I think she may have said more than she meant to. Like you did. But since you said it first, you'll have to apologize first."
Arabella curled into a tighter ball.
"I had to apologize to Hannah before she would forgive me," he reminded her. "If I can do it, you can do it."
She turned her head and pinned him with a critical gaze. "You're right. I almost called Mama on your phone and asked if I could come home. I dialed and everything. I wanted to, so bad. But I hung up because I thought when she heard my voice she would hang up, and I couldn't stand that."
"You should have talked to her. I'll bet that would be the best Christmas gift you could give her."
"I could call her now."
He got up, grabbed the home phone off the table and handed it over.
Arabella eagerly dialed her number.
It rang and rang.
When voice mail picked up, her face fell and she handed the phone back to Gabriel.
He hugged her shoulders. "We'll get you back to her, sweetie."
"But not by Christmas," she said dolefully.
He wanted to assure her they would. But he couldn't, not with travel as busy as it was today.
Arabella started sniffling again.
Then with a bang, the front door blew open, and Kate and her three kids ran in on the chill north wind. Kate was brisk and efficient, pretty and kind. She opened her arms and embraced Gabriel. She kissed Arabella like she was a beloved relative, and wiped the remnants of tears off her cheeks.
Her children stood under the tree and squealed with excitement, then Kate chased them all upstairs to unpack. Arabella went too, looking back at Gabriel, then up at the kids, then back at Gabriel.
He made a shooing motion, and when they had all disappeared, he turned to Kate. "What news?"
"Can you believe it? The kid stowed away on a plane from Philadelphia to Dallas."
Incredulous, Gabriel asked, "How does anybody stow away on a plane these days?"
"According to the airport cameras, she crowded up close to a family and got through security, then boarded early with them, then sat in a middle seat in the back row. The plane wasn't full. No one was in the seat. She sailed right through." Kate's blue eyes snapped with excitement.
Gabriel tried to say something that made sense of the situation, then faltered to a stop. Nothing made sense of this situation. "How the hell did she get out here?"
"I imagine she pulled the same stunt on a bus to Hobart. I do know she caught a ride to the ranch with Melissa Cunningham." In a droll voice, Kate said, "Melissa thought she was one of ours."
"Melissa Cunningham. Of course. The town busybody."
"Susan's mother was frantic, calling the police, appealing to her ex-husband — who is a spectacularly uncaring jerk — trying to talk to that guy on the news who fixes everybody's problems." Kate pushed her hair off her forehead. "Then she got a phone call, a hang-up, from Texas, and figured her daughter had to be in Texas."
"Arabella tried to call her."
"Arabella? Her name is Susan Kaya."
"Susan. Yeah. Of course. Susan." Nice, plain name. "You better tell your kids not to call her Susan, or she'll know we know…"
"I told my kids you had a young girl visiting you, that she was far from home, that it was the holidays, and they should treat her like a friend."
"You have good kids."
"I do." Kate whipped out her phone and sent a text. "There. Now everyone knows they should call her Arabella."
Kate never wasted time. She always got things done.
Kate continued, "Mrs. Kaya flew to Dallas. About the time she was landing, Mac found Susan's photo in missing persons and traced Mrs. Kaya. He had to pull some strings, but of course, being Mac…"
With a sense of growing relief, Gabriel said, "He succeeded."
"Right now, she's landing in San Antonio with Hope and Zack and their kids, and Devlin and Meadow and their kids."
Something tense inside him relaxed. "All we have to do is keep Arabella around until she gets here."
A huge crash sounded upstairs.
"The twins probably just broke both her legs. That'll keep her here." Kate stepped to the bottom of the stairs and shouted, "Don't make me come up there!"
A chorus of voices. "No, ma'am!"
Loud and clear, she said, "If you're not unpacked when your cousins get here, you can't help decorate the tree!"
No answer.
"I can't hear you," she yelled.
"Yes, ma'am!"
She turned to face Gabriel, all sweet-faced and graceful, and in his toughest Texas drawl, he said, "You look like such a pleasant li'l thing."
Kate batted her eyes at him. "I am. I'm also a television reporter who covers national politics and, even worse, Texas politics. Don't kid yourself, Gabriel. I eat nails for breakfast."
Gabriel's extended family was packed with successful people, all determined to get their own ways. It caused some almighty loud battles occasionally, but when the dust settled, everyone was still friends, and the children were all well-loved, bright and happy.
"I have to start dinner." Kate headed into the kitchen.
He followed. "I made chili."
"Oh, no!" She walked more quickly. She stepped into the kitchen, stopped and looked around in amazement. "Who cleaned up for you?"
She didn't even for one moment imagine he had cleaned up after himself. "I could have done it."
She ignored that. "Must have been Susan. Arabella. She's a good kid."
He gave up. He was
n't going to win this one. "She is."
The front door swung open. The cold wind rushed in. The bells on the tree chimed. A babble of voices and a clatter of footsteps brought another rush of family into the house.
Gabriel headed out into the living room and collided with Roberto and Brandi and their children. Brandi and the kids screamed with excitement and he got hugs and kisses. Roberto embraced him and kissed his cheeks, too — Roberto was an Italian count and Gabriel's half-brother — then faced the stairs where Kate's children were launching themselves at him. "Bella bambini!" He kissed and hugged, then turned to Susan who lingered on the last step. He took her chin and looked into her face. "I don't remember you, and I always remember a beautiful woman. You must be this friend of Gabriel's I have heard so much about."
She nodded, her jaw dropped, her gaze fixed on Roberto, as she fell in love for the very first time. Without even trying, Roberto had that effect on women from newborns to 100 years old. Gabriel knew it was okay; Roberto was a good, safe crush for an adolescent.
They barely got the luggage into the living room when Mac and Nessa and their kids arrived. More cold wind. More bells. More greetings. More laughter. More open affection.
They got the luggage in and the big double doors shut, and as Nessa hugged Gabriel, she said in a low tone, "Mac got me a full-length down coat for Christmas, for Philadelphia when we visit, and I convinced him it would be okay if we gave it to Susan so she'd have a present to unwrap. She needs it more than me."
Gabriel said, "I heard from a good source" — from Mac — "that the coat was a surprise."
"It was supposed to be," she conceded. "He's not very good at keeping secrets."
Or Nessa was good at prying them out of him.
She continued, "Also, he's got an opening at the bank for a bookkeeper that will be a substantial raise over what Mrs. Kaya makes."
"She wants to go to college."
"That's good. Mac loves ambitious people. We'll help her with that."
"We can all give her a hand financially." Gabriel didn't ask how Mac had found out where Mrs. Kaya worked or how much she made. Mac was a ruthless, powerful son-of-a-bitch, a man so arrogantly confident he had almost lost Nessa before he won her. Only her love and the love of her family — and the good will of the city of New Orleans — had saved him. Gabriel was grateful to Nessa; if not for her, Mac would be a damned uncomfortable brother to be around.