had proved to be email.
“So you’re baking cookies with my son, are you?” he teased.
“We had a blast.” Gabe was leaping up and down, eager to speak to his father. “Here, I’ll let Gabe tell you about it himself.” She passed the phone to her nephew, who immediately grabbed it.
“Dad! Dad, guess what? I went to Aunt Holly’s office to help her decorate and then she took me to see the big tree at Rockefeller Center and we watched the skaters and had hot chocolate and then we walked to Central Park and had hot dogs for dinner, and, oh, we went to see Mrs. Miracle. I helped Aunt Holly roll out cookies and...” He paused for breath.
Evidently Mickey took the opportunity to ask a few questions, because Gabe nodded a couple of times.
“Mrs. Miracle is the lady in the toy department at Finley’s,” he said.
He was silent for a few seconds.
“She’s really nice,” Gabe continued. “She reminds me of Grandma Larson. I gave her a plate of cookies, and Aunt Holly gave cookies to Jake.” Silence again, followed by “He’s Aunt Holly’s new boyfriend and he’s really, really nice.”
“Maybe I should talk to your father now,” Holly inserted, wishing Gabe hadn’t been so quick to mention Jake’s name.
Gabe clutched the receiver in both hands and turned his back, unwilling to relinquish the phone.
“Jake took us on a carriage ride in Central Park and then...” Gabe stopped talking for a few seconds. “I don’t know what happened after that ’cause I fell asleep.”
Mickey was asking something else, and although Holly strained to hear what it was, she couldn’t.
Whatever his question, Gabe responded by glancing at Holly, grinning widely and saying, “Oh, yeah.”
“Are you two talking about me?” she demanded, half laughing and half annoyed.
She was ignored. Apparently Gabe felt there was a lot to tell his father, because he cupped his hand around the mouthpiece and whispered loudly, “I think they kissed.”
“Gabe!” she protested. If she wanted her brother to know this, she’d tell him herself.
“Okay,” Gabe said, nodding. He held out the phone to her. “Dad wants to talk to you.”
Holly took it from him and glared down at her nephew.
“So I hear you’ve found a new love interest,” Mickey said in the same tone he’d used to tease her when they were teenagers.
“Oh, stop. Jake and I hardly know each other.”
“How’d you meet?”
“At Starbucks. Mickey, please, it’s nothing. I only met him on Friday.” It felt longer than two days, but this was far too soon to even suggest they were in a relationship.
“Gabe doesn’t seem to feel that’s a problem.”
“Okay, so I took Jake a plate of cookies like Gabe said—it was just a thank-you for buying me a coffee—and...and we happened to run into him last evening in Central Park. It’s no big deal. He’s a nice person and, well...like I said, we’ve just met.”
“But it looks promising,” her brother added.
Holly hated to acknowledge how true that was. Joy and anticipation had surged through her from the moment she and Jake kissed. Still, she was afraid to admit this to her brother—and, for that matter, afraid to admit it to herself. “It’s too soon to say that yet.”
“Ah, so you’re still hung up on Bill?”
Was she? Holly didn’t think so. If Bill had ended the relationship by telling her the chemistry just wasn’t there, she could’ve accepted that. Instead, he’d left her with serious doubts regarding her parenting abilities.
“Is that it?” Mickey pressed.
“No,” she said. “Not at all. Bill and I weren’t really meant to be together. I think we both realized that early on, only neither of us was ready to be honest about it.”
“Mmm.” Mickey made a sound of agreement. “Things are going better with Gabe, aren’t they?”
“Much better.”
“Good.”
“He’s adjusting and so am I.” This past week seemed to have been a turning point. They were more at ease with each other. Gabe had made new friends and was getting used to life without his father—and with her. She knew she insisted on rules Mickey didn’t bother with—like making their beds every morning, drinking milk with breakfast and, of course, putting the toilet seat down. But Gabe hardly complained at all anymore.
“What was it he told Santa he wanted for Christmas?” Mickey asked.
“So he emailed you about the visit with Santa, did he?”
“Yup, he sent the email right after he got home. He seemed quite excited.”
“It’s Intellytron the SuperRobot.”
At her reference to the toy, Gabe’s eyes lit up and he nodded vigorously.
“We found them in Finley’s Department Store. Mrs. Miracle, the woman Gabe mentioned, works there...and Jake does, too.”
“Didn’t Gabe tell me Jake’s name is Finley?” Mickey asked. “He said he heard Mrs. Miracle call him that—Mr. Finley. Is he related to the guy who owns the store?”
“Y-e-s.” How dense could she be? Holly felt like slapping her forehead. She’d known his name was Finley from the beginning and it hadn’t meant a thing to her. But now... now she realized Jake was probably related to the Finley family—was possibly even the owner’s son. No wonder he could afford to live where he did. He hadn’t given the price of the carriage ride or the car service a second thought, either.
She had the sudden, awful feeling that she was swimming in treacherous waters and there wasn’t a life preserver in sight.
“Holly?”
“I...I think he must be.” She’d been so caught up in her juvenile fantasies, based on the coincidence of their meetings, that she hadn’t paid attention to anything else.
“You sound like this is shocking news.”
“I hadn’t put two and two together,” she confessed.
“And now you’re scared.”
“I guess I am.”
“Don’t be. He puts his pants on one leg at a time like everyone else, if you’ll pardon the cliché. He’s just a guy.”
“Right.”
“You don’t seem too sure of that.”
Holly
