Five Kids, One Christmas (The Brannigan Sisters) Read online

  Five Kids, One Christmas

  by

  Terese Ramin

  An Updated Edition of the Silhouette Intimate Moments Classic

  Please visit Ms. Ramin’s website: www.TereseRamin.com

  Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/terese.ramin

  Twitter: https://twitter.com/TereseRamin

  Copyright ©2012 by Terese Ramin

  Published in the United States by Blue Jay Media Group

  ebook ISBN–13: 978–1–936724–26–0

  Copyright ©1995 by Terese Ramin

  ISBN–13: 978–0373076802

  Cover design ©2012 Blue Jay Media Group

  All rights reserved. No portion of this book, whether in print or electronic format, may be duplicated or transmitted without written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law.

  Other Books by Terese Ramin

  Updated Silhouette Intimate Moments

  WATER FROM THE MOON

  A Futures & Securities Series Novel

  WINTER BEACH

  A Futures & Securities Series Novel

  FIVE KIDS, ONE CHRISTMAS

  A Brannigan Sisters Novel

  GUARDING GRACE

  A Brannigan Sisters Novel

  HER GUARDIAN AGENT

  UNEXPECTED ADDITION

  SHOTGUN HONEYMOON

  Harlequin Romantic Suspense

  DRIVE–BY WEDDING

  Independents

  ACCOMPANYING ALICE (Safe Haven)

  SEX ON THE BEACH (by Terese Ramin, Betty Hanawa, Beverly Rae and Sydney Somers)

  BABY BE MINE (2 Novels in 1 – by Anne Marie Winston and Terese Ramin)

  MARY’S CHILD

  BEWITCHED, BOTHERED & BEVAMPYRED

  To Mike, Cathy & all of their kids, with love.

  For the keeper of the K.A. doll who inspired Helen in the first place;

  and for blended families everywhere.

  My sincere thanks and appreciation to those who provided me with the information necessary to the completion of this book: Kathleen Daly, Med–tech Denver V.A. hospital, U.S. Army veteran; Les D. Grosinger, M.D., P.C.; Michigan Cornea Consultants, P.C.; the late Joan Shapiro, Debbie Vargas and the Upshaw Institute for the Blind.

  In memory of my Dad, whose corneas let somebody else see.

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title

  Other Books By

  Copyright

  Dedication

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  An excerpt from Guarding Grace

  About Terese

  Chapter One

  ~ NAT, DEVIL’S NIGHT~

  He loved the water.

  It was his intimate, his familiar. It slipped around him, cool silk against the fever of his skin. Dark and welcoming, it beckoned him into its depths, urged him forward, stroke against stroke, into its stillness.

  For an instant he wondered about the peace that lay at the bottom of the canal’s blackness, wondered about resting forever among the garden of lake weeds. Then he cupped a hand and slid it beneath the water’s surface, lifted it, streaming with coolness, to his nose. Cradled there, the pungent scent of inland lake exploded against his nostrils, spoke silently of life, decay, continuity. He smiled, dragged deeply on the smell, drew the smoky odor of lake and late Indian autumn into his throat, where he could taste it; into his lungs to hold and savor.

  Life…

  The vigilant, coarse–haired, yellow Labrador–Bouvier mix, whose harness lay waiting on the bank plunged joyously through the canal in front of him, playfully snapped a mouthful of liquid at his face. Nat caught water in his hands, squirted it at the spot where the dog’s warm breath first eased, then enhanced the chill along his arm. Toby barked at him and bounded away—part of the game—with water flying in his wake.

  Zach and Cara would love the game, love the dog, once Nat taught them that harness off meant okay–to–play time, harness on meant Toby was at work.

  A sudden splash came from the direction of the bank and a sheet of water cascaded over him when Toby returned and launched his hindquarters sideways, sending another pungent wave and a cheeky woof into Nat’s face. Spluttering, Nat grabbed for Toby’s ruff, caught only a couple of stiff wisps of fur and a bark of canine laughter before the dog tossed another mouthful of water at him and splashed away again. Too late Nat scooped an armful of water at the beast and missed—a fact attested to by the miscreant barking triumphant taunts at him from somewhere out of teach.

  "Rotten dog," Nat said with affection.

  Toby barked his delighted, "Ha, ha!"

  Nat threw back his head and laughed for joy, reveling in the game, the lake and the unexpected late autumn heat, taking pleasure from one of life’s ironic quirks: if he hadn’t been in the wrong place at the wrong time what now seemed a lifetime ago, he would never have needed the dog. Without the dog, once Amanda had taken Zach and Cara and gone off to marry John, Nat would have forgotten how to laugh. Without laughter, he’d be a bitter, sorry bastard not worth the dust his body would have become if he’d been killed outright almost six years ago the way he’d once wished.

  God, he was one lucky son of a gun.

  Soon—tomorrow in fact, strange as it seemed to think of Devil’s Night as the eve of something so momentous—he would be luckier still, the luckiest Halloween–born bastard who’d ever walked the planet. At 11:00 a.m. precisely, exactly forty years from the moment of his birth, Zach and Cara…

  All at once happy thoughts deserted him. The smile left his face and he stiffened. Without caring how he knew, Nat realized his parents were hovering on the deck of the house above him, watching, trying not to appear as though they were there to guard him from another misadventure over which they’d have no control. He spun to face the white wall of blankness between himself and them, almost able to see their faces filled with concern, pity, guilt, fear. Phantom eyesight, not unlike an amputee’s illusory limbs.

  His fists clenched beneath the water. He hated to be watched.

  "Nathaniel Hawthorne Crockett." Nat’s mother’s voice echoed down the long bank, admonishing, cautioning—still underlining his name the way she had when he was six by using all of it. "Be careful. Don’t go too far. It’s getting dark."

  Nat’s fists tightened, mouth twisted at the irony. As if nightfall made a difference anymore.

  She’d called to him the same way when he was four, eight, twelve, seventeen and twenty–five, as though at thirty–nine he was still some careless kid incapable of finding his nose with a tree–friendly, recycled tissue, some reckless child rushing brazenly forward to get the snot kicked out of him by life. He’d been both a free–lance, then a navy photojournalist, for pity’s sake; had survived some of the most violent pieces of the world he could imagine—and some he couldn’t. He was one of the most sought after free–lance journalists available even now. That didn’t come easy, especially now, but he was old enough, adult enough to handle what life had dished out. Particularly now. And hell, he was old enough to be a parent himself.

  Was a parent himself.

  Carefully he unclenched his fists, unknotting old angers, and let the water sift smoothly, cleanly, through his hands. He was a dad whose ex–wife, Amanda, had taken away his children five and a half years ago, at the same time that an alkali burn had taken away his sight.

  An ex–wife who’d told the divorce judge t
hat, despite how much he loved them, how good he was with them, Nat’s visits with Zach and Cara should be supervised, since he couldn’t actually "watch" his then barely school–age children.

  An ex–wife who’d been killed along with her second husband, John—Nat’s former friend—by a drunk driver just over a week ago.

  An ex–wife who had, at the last, appointed him guardian of his own children in her will.

  A few legal tangles had stood in the way of his picking them straight up once he’d gotten the news about Amanda. A few more frustrating tussles had prevented him from collecting them immediately after the funeral—and God, it had fairly killed him to have to walk away from them there. But finally, tomorrow…

  With the court’s blessings and periodic supervision, Nat, with his driver and his seeing–eye dog and his one–bedroom apartment, would pick them up, bring them home and watch them sightlessly forever.

  He hated the way he was finally getting them back, but God, he’d missed his kids.

  "Be careful, don’t go too far…."

  He let the echo of his mother’s voice reach him before he turned his back, ashamed of his bitterness, his weakness. He never felt, never behaved this way except when he was here. Despite their best intentions, his parents brought out the worst in him. Seventy years old to his nearly forty, they had begun to need him to parent them sometimes, while needing still to parent him. Especially since the accident. He hated it, but they were his parents, after all. That entitled them to worry, to care.

  The same way he loved and worried about Cara and Zach. Would probably always and forever treat them the way his parents still treated him.

  Poor kids.

  He grimaced wryly, caught by the irony, trapped in the cycle of the parent–child–parent wheel of life. Hell, where his parents were concerned, he was still a reckless sixteen–year–old taking out the car for the first time. But he hadn’t been sixteen for nearly twenty–four years, so, damn it, was it too much to wish that his own parents would do their worrying and caring and nagging somewhere else, and about someone else, like perhaps his younger brother? Was it too much to expect them to acknowledge and respect his capabilities and independence—trust him, finally, the way he’d learned to trust himself in his blindness?

  The way Amanda had never done.

  Too many emotions were left unresolved by her death.

  He squelched canal muck between his toes, listening for the click of the screen door above that meant they weren’t watching anymore. Then he took a deep breath and sank beneath the still surface of the canal, into the peace of a blackness where it didn’t matter that he couldn’t see….

  ~HELEN, HALLOWEEN~

  If she’d known it once, she’d known it forever: God was, at heart, a jokester of the first order. Never in her life had Colonel Helen Brannigan been more aware of that.

  She studied the front door of the ivy–colored Queen Anne Victorian manse on Ottawa Street off Huron, threshold to Pontiac, Michigan’s historic Seminole Hills. Okay, so here she was—thirty–nine years old with a silver eagle on either shoulder, promoted and decorated for bravery during Desert Storm and afraid to open a little door behind a figurative white picket fence to what awaited her on the other side.

  Some heroine she made, huh?

  It was a nice house, dark and cool. Not quite her style, perhaps, but her style didn’t matter, since she hadn’t inherited the house, only the disposal of it and some of its contents as the second–choice executor of her late ex–husband’s estate.

  It was the contents of the Queen Anne causing her silent conference with the massive oak doors that hid them.

  To ring or not to ring, she wondered moodily. That indeed was the question.

  Serenity, not nobility, was the crux of this debate.

  Baking banana bread, cutting out Christmas cookies, Thanksgiving turkeys and costume making—going out trick–or–treating tonight! PTA, school field trips with thousands of excited children doing their best to get lost, bingo nights and fun fests… None of the essentials of mothering a child in grade school was up her alley.

  Except for love.

  Love was good; she could do that. She was, in fact, real good at love, real good at the mother–she–wolf protecting bit. But the real–life, day–to–day, home–and–hearth earth–mother parts of it…

  Helen sighed gloomily. There was nothing for it but to admit that Colonel Helen Marie Brannigan, commander of armed men, third of seven sisters, favorite aunt to numerous rug rats of various ages—some of whom now had rug rats of their own—was afraid of a seven–year–old girl.

  Elizabeth Jane Maximovich, Libby for short.

  Her daughter.

  Heart full of qualms, Helen studied the four wavery, leaded panes of glass set at eye level in the door’s lovingly kept surface. This wasn’t the first time she’d doubted her abilities to handle what lay within the confines of this residence, not the first time she’d wondered at John’s sanity in naming her to this position in the event of his—and his second wife’s—deaths. But then, it was just like John to choose this sneaky, unopposable means to teach her lessons, expand her horizons—to bring her up short by dropping the daughter he’d taken and fought to keep from her as an infant unceremoniously back into her life.

  Lord in heaven, what was she going to do with a child?

  Her child. Their child.

  Especially one she would always love but, cognizant of her own failings and limitations, had never intended to have?

  She hadn’t a clue.

  For half an instant Helen Brannigan, a woman who’d faced Iraqi artillery without batting an eye and briefly spent time as a prisoner of war without flinching, debated running. What did she know about children—particularly a child she couldn’t send home when it fussed?

  Not too much, despite growing up with four younger sisters and two older ones, because she’d also had a mother who mothered.

  Still mothered, truth be told.

  Helen expended another half an instant thinking—wishing?—that perhaps, since seven was supposedly the age of reason, Libby might not really need any more mothering or Halloween costumes or cutout cookies—or anything except guidance, something Helen was most adept at providing. Just look at all her nieces and nephews. Not a throwback in the bunch—due, thank you very much, to her erratic but frequent interference in their lives, and despite their sometimes overly conventional parents’ efforts to instill them with orthodoxy and decorum in between her visits.

  In the shrinking, rapidly changing world they lived in, orthodoxy and decorum were worth less than two cents wholesale, hardly half a plugged nickel on the retail shelf. You had to think creatively to get ahead in this life, be ready to travel and fight, outwit and maneuver, launch a full–scale offensive at your objective at the drop of a whim—live life to its fullest and most–capricious opportunity.

  Or so she’d always professed to believe.

  Helen sighed. The truth was that mothering, that most conventional and worthwhile of institutions, the true teaching ground of future generations, the proof in the gene pool, was her most stubborn nemesis. Because, like it or not—and the court that had given full custody of Libby to John five and a half years ago hadn’t—orthodoxy and decorum had never been hers to command.

  A distorted face peeked out through the wavery, leaded glass, and the door to the unknown and studiously feared opened.

  "Colonel Brannigan?" a slim, jeans–clad woman inquired.

  Helen nodded at the foster care provider and stepped into the house. Trick or Treat, she thought.

  By all the angels of heavenly glory, she who was about to die saluted you.

  ~NAT~

  In his sleep he heard the roar. He woke with his face buried in his pillow, his throat sore from stifled screaming, his lungs strained inside his chest. He knew faded broncos bucked cowboys on his pillowcase, but he couldn’t see them, couldn’t see the splayed fingers he used to force himself erect.

&nbs
p; Sensing movement, the dog at his bedside lifted his head and thumped his tail in greeting. Nat dropped a hand onto Toby’s head, gently pulled one soft ear, hoping the animal wouldn’t pick up on his distress the way he usually did. Toby nuzzled his fingers, licked his palm, offering affection and calm.

  Not enough.

  Beside the bed he’d slept in as a youth the roar began again. Shaking, Nat made himself sit and listen to the whoosh of air, the tapping sound; made himself smell the dust, put out a hand to feel the blast of heat.

  In a minute the roar faded, the tapping receded, dust settled, heat gentled to warmth. Nat shut his eyes and breathed deeply. It was a cool morning and one of his parents had switched the furnace on. When would he be used to it? Sixty–seven months and he still woke up most mornings expecting to see… light, see something… anything when he opened his eyes. Expected to go back to work, using the cameras piled on the shelves beside his bed. Expected…

  More than he was entitled to, probably.

  Unconsciously, he reached out to touch the equipment, absorbing textures in a waking ritual he’d observed since his parents had given him his first rugged Playskool camera the day he’d turned nine. The cameras were his eyes, better than the twenty–twenty he’d been born with. Through their lenses he’d seen things impossible to see otherwise: beauty and ugliness, unfettered decency and evil. Their shutters had led him to take chances he’d never have taken on his own, to see…

  To see. His life, the roots of his soul, was housed in sight; without his eyes half his life was gone.

  A twinge of anxiety and excitement curled within him. The other half of his life was coming back to him today: Zach and Cara, ages eleven and nine. It felt like Halloween, Thanksgiving, New Year’s and Christmas all rolled into one, with the trick–or–treating part tonight.

  He grinned. He hadn’t gone trick–or–treating on his birthday in years. Too grown–up. Hadn’t done a lot of things he was looking forward to doing again.