Late for Christmas by Amy Lane

Author:Amy Lane [Lane, Amy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dreamspinner Press
Published: 2021-09-21T00:00:00+00:00

DINNER WAS—surprise!—lasagna, and Cassidy was effusive in his praise. Yvonne laughed and told the kids that this was how it was done—she was tired of hearing complaints from her children that she was trying to make them fat.

Of course the grandchildren loved it, and Cassidy felt… spoiled.

By the end of the evening, he was exhausted from all the noise, from the kids, from the excitement, and as happy as he’d ever been in his life.

“I’ll be back in a minute,” Mark said as he stood up to follow his mom out. “I need to get my clothes for tomorrow. I’m sleeping on the guest bed again, if that’s okay, but I need to leave you in the morning after I walk Gus-Gus. Work.”

“Of course,” Cassidy said. He hadn’t told Mark this, but just knowing the other man was under his roof at night had led him to dream… things. Fantasies, spun sugar, about how he would wake up in the morning and this man would be there, smiling at him, and his life would be happy and warm.

He knew it would end. His leg would get better, and Yvonne and Mark would go back to their regularly scheduled lives. Perhaps a little warmer and friendlier—Cassidy would ask if he could walk Gus-Gus, and he’d definitely keep mowing the lawn. Mark, for all his devotion to his mother, would be working residents’ hours after Christmas, and they’d both been so kind. Cassidy would find ways to repay their kindness, to stay in their lives, but he had no delusions.

Mark Taylor was every boy’s dream—handsome, kind, so much fun—but he’d long ago reconciled himself to the fact that Cassidy Hancock did not get every boy’s dream. He would content himself with the joy of having new friends and of knowing that if another tree fell from nowhere and hit him on the head this time, more people than just Rose would miss him.

But in the meantime, he was going to treat the whole situation like the Christmas he’d never had as a child, and he was going to accept his good fortune as some sort of karmic balance for swimming in the smoky depths of disappointment for so long. Good people were being kind to him.

He would be kind in return and enjoy their company.

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