His Ultimate Temptation. Susan Crosby
rubbed her hands along her thighs, a gesture Ben couldn’t interpret.
“More hotels?”
“I don’t know. I never intended to have this many. So far I’ve been able to create completely different environments for each location. I believe I could build more with the same success. But I’m tired of traveling.” He shook his head. “Yet the personal touch is what’s made them a success. People want to know who they’re doing business with.”
“Sounds like you’ve got some decisions to make.”
He hesitated. His conversation with Erin this morning had stuck with him all day. He didn’t know how much of it to relate to Les. She apparently had enough on her mind. Even now she couldn’t seem to sit still. He wondered if she knew how Erin was struggling with their divorce. Their not-so-perfect divorce.
He picked up the thread of their conversation again. “Decisions. Well, I guess I haven’t really been away from the business long enough at a stretch to just let my mind wander.” And wander it had, all day, all the way back through their relationship. Eighteen years. It was a long time—and yet a drop in the bucket of what they’d expected to have.
“It’s my personal life that needs changing.” He angled toward her, deciding to tell her what happened with Erin that morning. “Les, we need to talk about—”
“Erin’s probably waiting for us,” she said, pushing herself up.
Caught off guard by her abrupt end to the conversation, he watched her walk away. He should be grateful the moment was ending, he decided. He probably would’ve said too much, expected too much from her.
When Les sat on the bed to kiss Erin good night, it was all he could do not to sit behind her, as he used to, the image of the past rising unbidden before his eyes. Bedtime had been a ritual for the three of them on the nights he was home. A story read, a gentle tease or two, prayers said, good-night hugs and kisses all around. God, he missed that.
A shard of loneliness sliced into him. He’d thought it would be better to be alone than to be hurt, but he wondered now if that was true. This was painful, this longing to be a family again and knowing it wouldn’t work. The same problems sat between them now as before. He’d fought hard to keep his family together. It hadn’t changed anything.
And the irony was that now that he could provide well for his family, his goal all along, he had no family. Just fragments of one, parceled out in short visits. At least if something happened to him now, Erin would be provided for, even Les, if she needed it.
He was proud of that.
Les stood, moving aside to let Ben hug their daughter.
“’Night, sweetheart.”
She held him extra tight and whispered in his ear. “This is how it’s supposed to be, Daddy.”
Guilt joined the rest of the turmoil inside him, choking off his ability to answer her. He couldn’t tell her everything would be like before, because it wouldn’t. So he kissed her good night then left.
Leslie followed a minute later. She found him resting his palms on the fireplace mantel and staring at the flames. Tempted as she was to rub his back or soothe him in some way, she kept her distance.
“Is something wrong?” she asked.
The phone rang. Who would call on Christmas Eve? Gabe wouldn’t dare. Sebastian couldn’t. If it was Ben’s mother, Leslie would probably cry. She missed Maura dreadfully, the woman who had mothered her through her high school years, when she’d needed a woman’s influence. While they hadn’t lost contact completely, their relationship was different now, more distant, and not just in the miles that separated San Francisco from Chicago, where she’d moved when she’d finally remarried.
The call was for Ben. She couldn’t tell who was on the other end, except that it was business, which didn’t stop on holidays. She’d forgotten that.
Deciding to give him privacy, she slipped into her ski jacket and headed outside. The warmth of the cabin, which had wrapped her in memories and made her hopes soar, froze in the brittle snap of winter air, a stinging reminder of the tears that had turned to ice on her cheeks last night.
She leaned against the porch railing. After a minute she heard the front door open and close, then the sound of his boots on the wood planks.
“You didn’t have to leave,” Ben said, coming up behind her.
She turned abruptly, losing her footing. He caught her by both arms, keeping her upright as she peered at him through the dark. “I don’t have a present for you,” she said softly, painfully.
“I don’t have one for you,” he replied as softly, not letting her go.
“Oh, Ben. How did it ever come to this?” She clutched his jacket. “No. I won’t put you on the spot. I know how it came to this. I know what happened. In my head, anyway.” She loosened her grip, then pushed past him to return to the house, wondering what to do with the emotions threatening to burst from her.
He didn’t follow, giving her too much time to think. She glanced at the photos on the mantel, focused on the one taken twelve years ago when they’d all just finished building the cabin. Sebastian, Gabe, Chase, Ben and her—five twenty-year-olds poised on the brink of adulthood, the slates of their futures not blank, but filled with hopes and dreams. Goals. She and Ben had stayed on an extra night to celebrate Valentine’s Day alone, and from that night of passion had come Erin, a surprise but welcome gift. Leslie had switched from a diaphragm to birth control pills after Erin was born, knowing they couldn’t afford to be caught off guard again.
Such a simple time then, for all of them. Who would’ve thought their lives would veer down such surprising paths. Ben and Leslie, divorced. Sebastian, in hiding after being falsely accused of a crime, trying to overcome paralysis and become strong enough to defend his good name. Chase, married and expecting a baby. Gabe—
Frigid air blasted into the room as the door swung open. Ben trudged in carrying a bucket holding a two-foot-tall pine tree.
“I spotted it earlier today,” he told Leslie, sweeping past her to set the bucket on the coffee table. “Can’t have Christmas without a tree, right?”
Certainly she thought so, but did he? “The ground was frozen, Ben.”
He gave her a look so cocky—and so familiar—it set her heart spinning like the Sugarplum Fairy dancing across a stage. Of course a little frozen earth wouldn’t stop him from accomplishing what he wanted.
This was the Ben she remembered—spontaneous, giving, fun-loving. He’d withdrawn from her so long ago. Long before the divorce. She never thought she’d see him like this again.
They found a tablecloth to drape around the bucket. From aluminum foil they fashioned ornaments to decorate it, then stacked his presents for Erin around it. Almost midnight, Leslie realized when they were done. Almost Christmas. Her most-favorite day of the year.
“Erin will be surprised,” she said, adjusting a foil wreath balancing precariously on the tip of one branch.
He met her gaze as she straightened. “It’s for you, Les.”
Tears welled. She blinked them back instantly. How much worse could she feel? She didn’t have anything for him—nothing that he wanted, anyway, although certainly something she wanted to give him.
“Don’t cry,” he said, his voice rough and tender at the same time.
“I’m not crying. You just make me so mad,” she said, curling her hands into fists.
“You’ve always insisted that Christmas is magic,” he said, his gaze intent.
“I do. It—” she swallowed as he closed the distance between them “—is. But you don’t.”
“Accept the gift in the spirit it’s given, Les.”