Mistletoe Mommy

Geoff sounded as if he had a reserve of patience. Adam decided to intervene while that was still the case. “Who’s ready for the pool?”

“Me!” the kids chorused.

Geoff took the checkers back to the front desk while Eliza helped her little sister apply sunscreen. Once they were inside the fenced pool area, they took turns passing back and forth the tube of SPF 55. Adam prided himself on not doing an aghast double take when Eliza removed her long T-shirt and revealed an electric-blue bikini. It wasn’t so much the cut of the suit that was disconcerting-as two pieces went, he supposed it was modest enough-it was how much older she suddenly looked. His little girl, far too grown up. He wondered if there was any chance Morgan would humor him and wear a one-piece into her twenties.

They had the pool practically to themselves. A man slept beneath the shade of an umbrella, a brunette read a book on her chaise longue, and a mother sat on the steps of the shallow end while her toddler repeatedly filled with water and dumped out a purple plastic pail. The lifeguard, a boy of about sixteen, looked bored to pieces.

Or at least he did until Eliza balled up her shirt and stuck it in the duffel bag.

She’s twelve! Adam wanted to scream. Rather than do so, Adam settled for a dark glower in the punk’s direction.

Geoff and Eliza both went immediately for the waterslide, but Morgan was more tentative. She got in the water slowly, step by step, seeking frequent reassurance that her dad would stay close. Once she’d made it all the way into the pool, she wanted him to help her practice floating on her back. She made swift progress with that and had moved on to a clumsy but solo backstroke when she announced in a panicked whisper that she needed to go potty.

The nearest restrooms were in a bathhouse midway between the pool and a river dock. “Geoff, Eliza! I’ll be right back,” Adam called.

Morgan slid on her shoes, then tucked her hand in his. “I’m having fun,” she told him. “You should come on trips with us and Mommy and Daddy Dan.”

“Or maybe you can just alternate. Take turns,” he clarified. “Go somewhere with them, then somewhere else with me. That way you get twice as many vacations.”

“Okay. Hey, know what I want for my birthday?” She kept up a running commentary for the duration of their stroll, and Adam realized he didn’t even miss the hospital. He hadn’t thought about any of his patients today or wondered how his eminently qualified colleagues were doing filling in for him. Waiting by a restroom door while his preschooler cheerfully called out the name of every My Special Puppy in the Puppydale toy collection, he wouldn’t want to be anywhere else in the world.

It was a nonsensical, trivial moment-except that it was a moment in Morgan’s life.

On their return trip to the pool, Morgan suddenly shrieked, “Kitty!” and darted off the path. “Daddy, did you see it?”

He caught her elbow before she stumbled over a rock. “Can’t say that I did. Remember what we talked about, that animals are scared by loud noises?”

Her face puckered into a worried scowl. “It shouldn’t be here with the river down the hill and the pool. Cats can’t swim.”

“They can,” he told her. “Most of them just prefer not to. I’m sure the cat will be fine.”

She hesitated, unconvinced, but ultimately resumed her pace. It took Adam two tries to unlatch the gate because his attention was zeroed in on his other daughter. That punk lifeguard had climbed down from his elevated chair and stood entirely too close to Eliza.

Bionic-father hearing kicked in and Adam eavesdropped, only missing a few words here and there, while the kid boasted of how he’d had his driver’s license for months and planned to buy a “second generation” Camaro from a family friend at the end of the summer. Eliza-who usually rolled her eyes whenever Geoff waxed rhapsodic about automobiles-morphed into a Devoted Car Enthusiast, all oohs and ahhs and big brown eyes.

Geoff took Morgan to play on the waterslide, so Adam sat down and tried to relax. He noticed the brunette sunbather in the halter-top suit smiling in his direction; reflexively, he smiled back and she gave a coquettish little finger wave. She was attractive, he noted objectively, but she was no Brenna Pierce.

He frowned, recalling Eliza’s indignation that he might try to steal time from their family vacation to make room for romance. Definitely not. He’d unintentionally made his children feel as if they weren’t a top priority, and this trip was a major step in reversing that. Ironic, though, that Eliza had lectured him less than twenty-four hours ago when she clearly had no qualms about abandoning her family to chat up a bronzed man-child whose smirk bordered on predatory.

Reminding himself that Eliza was in plain sight and therefore perfectly safe, Adam dug a medical journal out of his bag. He even made a halfhearted attempt to read an article about the rise of robot-assisted cardiothoracic procedures. Mostly he skimmed while keeping one ear on his daughter and the punk. Minimized trauma, reduced risk of infection.

“So, have you ever, like, saved anyone?” Eliza asked.

“Sure. Just last week I jumped in to rescue a lady with a cramp in her leg. And this kid who panicked and was flailing like crazy.”

Faster recovery time, wave of the future, blah, blah, blah.

“But I’ve never given mouth-to-mouth,” Punk added smarmily. “At least, not in the line of duty. During my off- hours-”

Adam shot out of his chair, tipping it sideways with his sudden movement. It clattered against the pavement, drawing the notice of just about everyone-including his daughter and the punk lifeguard at whom he happened to be glaring. Now what, O Father of the Year?

He hadn’t really leaped up with any sort of plan. It had simply been an instinctive reaction. But judging from the mingled horror and fury settling across his daughter’s face, that explanation was not going to mollify her. Especially since it would involve him admitting that he’d been listening to her private conversation in the first place.

“Uh…” The lifeguard glanced from Adam back to Eliza, his earlier smirk gone. Looking pale beneath his tan, the kid jerked his thumb up at the elevated seat. “I’d better get back to work.”

“Yeah. Nice talking to you,” Eliza said through gritted teeth. She ducked her head, her shoulders slumping slightly as if she was curling in on herself in hopes of becoming invisible, and stalked toward her father.

Adam assumed she was making a beeline for confrontation, but her gait never slowed as she neared. Instead, she strode past, exiting the pool area. He experienced a stab of indecision so intense it was almost panic. Should he give her space? For all he knew, she was excusing herself to go to the bathhouse for an adolescent cry. That you caused. Then again, did he know for an absolute certainty that she wouldn’t do something dramatic like run away? Try to hitch back to Tennessee?

This was excruciating. In the O.R., he didn’t second-guess himself. He took decisive actions and saved lives.

“Geoff, keep your sister in the shallow end until I get back,” he called over his shoulder. Giving a girl “space” might sound like a sensitive, insightful parenting move, but Adam rejected it after a moment’s thought. She was twelve. While she might have the right to be angry with him, she did not have the same right to storm off alone into the forest or down toward the river.

“Eliza!” Though she didn’t overtly speed up to evade him, she didn’t stop, either. “Hey, I know you hear me. Slow down so we can talk about this.”

When she actually did stop, he released a tense breath. He hadn’t known if she would-or what he’d do in the face of direct disobedience.

She whipped her head around, and his heart clutched at the sight of her watery eyes. “I don’t want to talk to you. I don’t even want to be here! I could have stayed with friends while Mom and Dan are away.”

Adam tried not to take her words personally. Didn’t all children go through an “I hate you” phase as an automatic part of growing up and wrestling with independence? “This trip wasn’t about your mom needing a babysitter. It was about me wanting to spend time with you guys.”

“Do you even care what we want? Geoff was freaked out when you said you were taking us away for so long. He’s worried Gina will meet someone else before we get back. And Morgan-”

“-is having a blast. She told me so herself. I think if you give this vacation a chance, we could all have fun.”