[Ladera by the Sea 01] - A Wedding for Christmas Read online

  Explaining it to Ricky wouldn’t be easy—especially since she would have to fabricate a story.

  “He’ll see through lies,” Shane warned. The boy had truly impressed him. At five, Ricky had a better grasp on some things than children a lot older than him. “He’s a smart young man.”

  “He’s not that smart,” she countered. “This is a lot to take in.”

  Especially, she added silently, if she told him everything. How she and Shane were only pretending to be husband and wife—for his sake.

  “The simplest thing,” Shane was saying to her, “is to just tell him we got married and I’m going to be his other dad.”

  “I don’t want to lie to him,” she protested.

  “You’re not lying,” he pointed out. “The next time we see him, we will have gotten married. That’s the whole purpose of this road trip, remember?”

  “Before, you said something about telling Ricky you were his ‘other’ dad,” she said, getting back to a question she had. “Did you actually mean to say that?”

  They hit the Santa Ana Freeway. It was surprisingly empty this evening. For the time being, he turned the headlights on high beams.

  “No matter what you decide to tell him, I don’t want Ricky thinking that I’m going to try to take his dad’s place. That might make him balk—and that’s the last thing you need.

  “Even if we were getting married with the intention of truly beginning a new life together,” Shane continued, “I wouldn’t want him to think I was replacing his dad. Just being another dad to him would be enough.”

  It was a beautiful sentiment and hearing him say that warmed her heart. She admired his thoughtfulness and the way he could put himself into someone else’s shoes—small shoes in this case—and understand how someone thought. That was rare in a person, she couldn’t help noting.

  “You’re right,” she told Shane.

  He smiled in response. “I am,” he agreed, then expanded on the subject just to tease her a little. “Not every time, granted, but a lot.”

  Cris laughed, getting a kick out of Shane even under all the pressure. “Now that sounds like a husband.”

  “I guess we’ve got our roles down pat,” he said with a grin.

  Were they just roles, she wanted to ask, or were they something more? Dress rehearsal for the real thing?

  But instead of pressing home the point, she let the subject go.

  It was easier that way.

  * * *

  LESS THAN EIGHTEEN hours after they had taken off for Las Vegas, they were back in Shane’s truck, returning to San Diego and the Ladera-by-the-Sea Inn.

  It was a bright, sunny day and Cris watched in fascination at the way the sunlight shone on the ring on her finger.

  The new ring.

  Currently, the surface of her ring was turning a sunbeam into an explosion of warm rainbow colors that bounced around the interior of the vehicle.

  “You really are an Eagle Scout,” she said. “Most men wouldn’t actually bring a wedding ring to their spur-of-the-moment wedding.” She looked up from the ring, something belatedly occurring to her. “This was your wife’s, wasn’t it?”

  He didn’t want her taking it off, claiming some superstition or other. The ring looked right on her hand, like it belonged there. “She would have approved of my marrying you to keep your former in-laws from getting their clutches on Ricky. She was always rooting for the good guy to win—or in your case, the good girl.”

  “Your late wife must have been a really nice person.” That sounded so trite to her ear, she decided. But she really did mean the sentiment, she thought, frustrated.

  “She was,” Shane assured her. “And I have a feeling she would have liked you,” he added.

  She supposed that it was silly, but hearing Shane tell her that made her feel warm inside. As if, just for a couple of hours, she was actually immersed in the world they were verbally creating as they went along.

  She turned the ring on her finger, still amazed that it was there. She’d worn Mike’s ring until this morning, and although the rings were astonishingly the same size and similar in appearance, it still felt different on her finger.

  Cris wondered if it was just her mind playing tricks on her.

  She shifted in her seat and, though restrained by the seat belt, she managed to turn her body toward Shane. “I can’t believe how fast you can get married in Vegas. It was even faster than when Mike and I got married at city hall.”

  He wasn’t about to dispute the impression. “They like to pride themselves on how effortlessly you can get married there. No hoops to jump through, no waiting period, just one-two-three and you’re husband and wife.” He also had a corollary to the heavy volume of quickie marriages. “Don’t forget they also deal heavily in painless divorces.”

  She thought about that for a minute, then laughed. “I guess Vegas is the only place you can get married, divorced, win a fortune and then lose it all in less than a week’s time. I wonder what the record for that is.”

  “Most likely you can find the information somewhere on the internet. Except for advertising my work online, I don’t have that much occasion to use it,” he confided. They’d been driving awhile now. He took his eyes off the desolate road for a second and slanted a glance in her direction. “Do you want to stop somewhere to eat, or do you want to drive straight through and just get home?”

  “I don’t know about you,” she said, “but that lunch we had after we left that funny little chapel certainly filled me up.”

  “Yeah, me, too. Okay, we’ll drive straight through,” he told her. “Have you figured out yet what you’re going to tell Ricky?”

  She had, and she had Shane to thank for that. He was turning out to be a very handy man to have around, she thought fondly.

  “I think what you suggested earlier is the best approach. Smart or not, I don’t want to overload Ricky with lengthy explanations. Besides, if this thing does wind up going to Family Court and those horrible people have their lawyer put Ricky on the stand for some reason, I don’t want them grilling him until there’s some kind of a slipup on his part. I wouldn’t put it past those people to use Ricky until they get their own way.” She paused for a moment, then said, “In case I didn’t say it before, thank you for doing this.”

  Shane laughed. “Yes, you did say it before, but I don’t think you’ve mentioned it this hour,” he teased.

  Cris inclined her head. “I guess I am repeating myself, but I really can’t thank you enough for doing this.”

  “I believe the proper response to that is—no big deal,” Shane told her.

  “But it is,” she insisted with feeling. “This is a huge deal. I can’t exactly go to Husbands Are Us and get a loaner father for Ricky. And as a family unit, our chances of beating that woman and her heartless husband increase a hundredfold—even if I can’t buy and sell a whole town the way they can.

  “If you hadn’t ridden to the rescue,” she told him, “I just might have given in to my inner coward and right now, Ricky and I would be driving for parts unknown with the future before us reduced to a glaring question mark.”

  He knew better than that, Shane thought. “No, you wouldn’t,” he contradicted her.

  He said that as if he actually believed it. “What makes you so sure?”

  “Because you’re a fighter,” he told her simply. “You might speak softly and keep things to yourself for the most part, but nobody’s going to push you around. One look into those mesmerizing blue eyes of yours and anyone who’s paying any attention at all would know that you are a tiger when it comes to fighting for things that are important to you.”

  He almost had her convinced. Oh, how she’d love to be the person he was verbally painting. “You sound like you think you know me better than I know myself.”

/>   His smile was laid-back. “Maybe I do,” he said. “I don’t just see and hear—I pay attention,” Shane added. “And like I told you, I’m usually right.”

  I hope so, Shane. I certainly do hope so, Cris thought as she turned her eyes back on the deserted road taking them home.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  RICKY WAS THE first one to see his mother and Shane when they walked into the inn that afternoon.

  The little boy had been sitting forlornly on the floor in the main room, listlessly watching the door. He would become tense, according to what Alex later told her, each time it opened, only to slump in disappointment when whoever entered was not her.

  The moment he saw her and Shane, Ricky lit up almost as brightly as the tree he was next to. He jumped to his feet, shot across the floor and had his arms wrapped around Cris’s hips before she had a chance to take more than one step into the inn.

  “Mama, you’re back!” Ricky cried excitedly, beaming so hard she thought it would hurt his face. “You didn’t leave me!”

  Stooping, Cris gathered the boy into her arms and picked him up. “Boy, you’ve gained weight since I’ve been gone,” she teased. “All muscle, I bet.”

  “Uh-huh.” He nodded vigorously.

  “And you know I would never leave you,” she said, growing more serious. “I just had to take a quick little trip, that’s all.”

  “With Shane?” Ricky asked, peering around her shoulder at the man standing beside her.

  “With Shane,” Cris confirmed. “He was a very important part of the little trip.”

  “And I couldn’t come?” Ricky queried. In his whole lifetime, he and his mother had never been separated for longer than his kindergarten sessions.

  “Not this time, Ricky,” she told him.

  “But next time?” He looked at her hopefully, his bright blue eyes pleading for an affirmative answer.

  There wouldn’t be a “next time,” not like this one. But no point in getting into that now. It would only confuse her son.

  “Next time,” she assured him just to lay the matter to rest.

  “I tried to tell him you were coming back and he could go to his room,” Alex said, running her hand over Ricky’s head, “but he wouldn’t budge. Insisted on staying right here by the tree and waiting for you,” she said.

  “So...?” Richard asked, looking from Cris to Shane. The rest of his question hung unspoken in the air. But then, everyone knew what he was asking about, with the exception of Ricky, who still clung to her, afraid to release her because she might leave again.

  Shifting Ricky onto her hip the way she used to carry him when he was smaller, Cris held up her left hand. The diamond-accented band did the talking for her.

  Richard smiled, nodding. He moved over to Shane, took the younger man’s hand and pumped it heartily while clapping him on the back. “Welcome to the family, boy.”

  Ricky looked from his grandfather to Shane and finally at his mother. “Why is Grandpa welcoming Shane to the family? Did you adopt him?” he wanted to know.

  Cris laughed despite herself and shook her head. “No. Ricky, Shane and I got married.”

  She approached the subject gingerly, not knowing what to expect once she told the boy what she felt was safe to tell him. She knew he liked Shane, but he liked him as a friend, not as his father. She wasn’t sure how he would react to the news she’d just given him and held her breath for a moment, waiting.

  “Why?” Ricky asked, his eyebrows wrinkling in his confusion.

  “So I could take care of you and be around when you or your mom needs someone,” Shane explained, cutting in and answering before Cris had the chance.

  Ricky fell silent for a long moment and Cris was worried that her son was taking the news the wrong way, viewing Shane as an invader.

  So she was very surprised, not to mention immensely relieved, when her son suddenly smiled and said, “Cool. Does that mean you’ll be my dad now?” he inquired, looking up at Shane.

  Cris almost felt giddy. She’d worried for no reason at all. With a sigh of relief, she set Ricky down on the floor. “Are you okay with that?”

  “Sure!” She’d put herself through torture for no reason, apparently. Ricky, meanwhile, had presented himself to his new dad and asked, “Wanna play catch with me and Wyatt?”

  “Oh, so now you want to play catch,” Wyatt spoke up, pretending to be offended. “After I couldn’t get you to leave this room.”

  “I’d love to, Ricky,” Shane told the boy, “but I really should get back to work.” He slanted a glance at his new father-in-law in name only.

  Richard waved his hand. “The work’ll wait. Go play catch with Ricky,” he urged.

  Shane inclined his head in acknowledgment. “You’re the boss,” he told the older man.

  “Actually, that would be Cris’s title,” Richard said with a laugh. “But I’ll fill in for the time being.”

  Excited, Ricky grabbed Wyatt’s hand with one of his and Shane’s hand with the other. Wyatt looked over his shoulder toward Alex. “Fill Cris in for me,” he told her.

  “Fill me in on what?” Cris asked, forcing herself to tear her eyes away from the sight of Ricky “bonding” with his new father. As much as it warmed her heart to see this, she couldn’t help worrying how Ricky would react when he found out that it was all just a charade, undertaken so that he could continue living with her. Would her son then be grateful for her efforts, or angry because he’d been lied to?

  Nothing was simple anymore, she thought, fighting despair. But now wasn’t the time to brood.

  She faced her older sister and asked, “What’s going on, Alex?”

  “Don’t look as if you expect me to pull a ghost out of my pocket. What I have to tell you is a good thing,” Alex prefaced, then got straight to the bottom line and told Cris what she needed to be aware of. “Wyatt called that lawyer friend of his last night—”

  “I know that.” He’d been on the phone when she’d run out of the inn, overwhelmed.

  “What you don’t know is that the lawyer dropped everything and hopped on a commuter plane this morning. He was here for a little while, talking to us, and Wyatt’s right. This guy is fantastic.”

  Cris wasn’t ready to cheer just yet. She needed details. “Define fantastic,” Cris said.

  “He got right on your case the second he hung up with Wyatt yesterday. The investigator his firm employs immediately started digging into your past and Shane’s past.”

  And this was a good thing? Cris thought. What was she missing?

  “Hold it,” she exclaimed. “The investigator dug into our pasts? If anything, I would have thought that he’d dig into the MacDonalds’ past.”

  “Travis—that’s Wyatt’s lawyer friend,” Stevi said, eagerly picking up the thread of the story, her eyes shining, “wanted to find out what he’d be up against. You know that those people would have you investigated with a high-power magnifying glass. Travis just wanted to see if they’d find anything.”

  “And?” Cris asked.

  She knew there was absolutely nothing compromising in her past, but she wasn’t really knowledgeable about Shane’s. She assumed there would be nothing bad, but she would have been the first to admit she was naive when it came to the ways of the world.

  Cris held her breath as she waited for either Alex or Stevi to fill her in.

  “And so far, you and Shane are in first place for the Mr. and Mrs. Norman Rockwell award,” Stevi told her with a huge grin, falling back on her art history knowledge to cite the popular late artist whose drawings became synonymous with family values and normalcy.

  “He couldn’t uncover so much as a single blemish in either of you,” Alex told her.

  “Which I find a very comforting thing,” Richard said, speaking up. And the
n he grinned. “It’s not every father who gets to have an extensive background check run on a son-in-law.”

  “Fake son-in-law,” Cris reminded him. “Shane’s just doing me a tremendous favor.”

  Stevi appeared skeptical. “You two didn’t stop for a quickie honeymoon before coming home?” she asked.

  Cris shot her younger sister a quelling look. “That wasn’t part of the arrangement,” she reminded Stevi.

  The skepticism gave way to disappointment. “Too bad,” she said with a deep sigh.

  Cris pretended to just ignore Stevi and drop the subject, but inside, she could feel something echoing Stevi’s very sentiment. Granted she and Shane were just pretending for the benefit of the MacDonalds and their lawyer—but they were legally married and...

  And nothing, she upbraided herself.

  “If you’ll excuse me, I’d better get to my kitchen.” She knew Jorge would have pitched in and taken her place, but the meals at the inn were her responsibility. “I’ve got some catching up to do,” she told the others.

  Nodding, Alex imparted one final piece of information. “Travis said he’d get back to us when he had anything to share.”

  Cris paused to acknowledge that she’d heard her sister, praying at the same time that the call would come soon. She couldn’t really breathe a sigh of relief until she was certain the MacDonalds’ threat was null and void.

  * * *

  “YOU SURE YOU want me to put my things in here?” Shane asked that evening, still holding the suitcase he’d hastily thrown together for their impromptu trip yesterday. To add substance to their charade, he’d moved into the inn as she’d proposed. But he hadn’t thought he’d be moving into her room. “I don’t require much space—I could sack out in your Dad’s office. Nobody would be the wiser,” he added. His point was that she could keep her privacy while they pretended to live together.

  “I’m sure,” Cris said, answering his question. “I don’t want to risk the MacDonalds’ investigator finding out that we’ve got separate sleeping arrangements. I just know they’d use that to say I was unbalanced or had some sort of emotional issues. Since we’re doing this, humor me. I don’t want to take any unnecessary chances with these people.”