Doctor Holliday (Doctors of Eastport General)

Chapter 19

Christmas Day

Lucy

“Happy Christmas!” Marty raised his glass. The adults around the dinner table raised their glasses and nodded.

“So, Aunt Lucy delivered a baby in your stockroom?”

Kade, Lucy’s nephew, stared at Keaton with big eyes. For once, he looked five, rather than sixteen. Lucy took a quick look around the table. She missed the old days, when Callie and her nieces and nephews were little. So much had changed through the years. Her brother’s dark hair was more gray than brown now. Her parents didn’t move as quickly, agilely, as they used to. Her little girl would leave for college next fall.

Keaton’s hand found hers under the table almost as if he felt her distress. She flashed him a quick smile.

“She did.” Keaton nodded.

“Sounds gross.” Kade shuddered in disgust. Lucy snorted as she sipped her wine.

“So gross, Kade,” she agreed.

“Remember that.” Her sister-in-law pointed at him and narrowed her eyes. “You don’t need a baby yet. Which is why you and?—”

“Mom!” Kade’s cheeks flushed deep red. Lucy and her sister exchanged a look.

“So, what’s going on with the baby, then?” Marty asked as he dug into his prime rib.

“You know I can’t tell you that.” Lucy didn’t even look at him.

“Oh, come on. It’s a little like the whole Christmas thing. A baby born out in the cold?—”

“A young girl giving birth to a baby in a stockroom in a strip mall is hardly like the whole Christmas thing,” Lucy argued. “Just stop.”

“Is that a smart TV, you said?”

Lucy looked at Kim again before turning to look at her dad.

“It is, Dad.”

He nodded as he took a bite of his mashed potatoes.

“How long have you been dating?” her mom directed her question at Keaton.

“Can we watch movies with it? Blue-Ray?”

“You can stream movies, Grandpa,” Kade told Lucy’s dad. “You won’t need the blue-rays anymore.”

“What about football?” her mom asked. “I like him, Luce. I think you got a winner this time.”

“Mother.” Lucy sighed, patting Keaton’s leg when he chuckled.

“How long have you been seeing each other, Luce?” Deanna asked.

Wine glass at her lips, Lucy looked at her sister-in-law over the top and held up a hand as if to ask for a second.

“Since the night she delivered the baby,” Keaton answered for her.

“That wasn’t a date,” she argued as she put the glass down.

“No. But it’s the night I saw you and hoped to get to know you better.”

“He’s good.”

From the corner of her eye, she saw her sister nod her head at Darrell, her husband, as if to suggest he could learn from him.

“Yeah.” Lucy nodded. She dragged her teeth over her lower lip. “Me, too.”

“Nope.” Keaton shook his head. “You were all in with that little girl and that baby. I didn’t exist right then and there.”

He had, though. She had noted, appreciated, his calm demeanor. His willingness to help. His outrage over the situation and his concern for the girl’s and the baby’s well-being.

And his sexy forearms.

She grinned and shrugged. “Sure. We’ll go with that.”

“You’re right, Callie.”

Kim again.

Lucy turned to silence her sister with a look. She hadn’t told Keaton she was in love with him. She wasn’t entirely sure she was, that he was the one, that they would last forever. But she did know that when she figured it out, she would be the one to tell him she loved him. Not her sister. Not her daughter.

The conversation continued around the table with laughter and more wine and after dinner, dessert. Christmas music played in the kitchen, though in the next room, Lucy knew the TV was on. Most likely, Home Alone or Christmas With the Kranks played to the currently empty room. As soon as the pie and cake was gone, her nieces and nephews and Callie would rush back to the TV, to the board games they dug out every year.

Keaton laughed and talked as much or more than she did. Like he had always been part of the family, just as Callie had said last week.

When dinner was over, she and Kim helped Deanna with the dishes. Their mom always fought her way into the fray, but all of them tried to keep her from having to actually work. She had done the holidays all those years when they were younger. She usually ended up sipping wine and putting away the clean dishes.

“I can finish this,” Lucy told Kim as she scrubbed the last of the pots—the worst of them, with dried gravy caked at the top. “If you wanna step outside.”

She hated giving her sister permission to smoke, but it was as much a tradition as dinner. As they finished cleaning up, Kim would go outside for a cigarette. And eventually Marty would follow. And Lucy would join them with a glass of wine and ignore the smoking and just share a few minutes of sibling time.

“I quit.”

“You what?” Lucy froze, hands in the hot dishwater.

“Haven’t had a cigarette in three days.” Kim shrugged. “I know. I know. Not a big deal, but?—”

“That is a big deal, Kim!” Lucy insisted. She pulled her hands from the water, slinging soap bubbles over the counter and the wall, and threw her arms around Kim. “I’m so proud of you.”

“Well.” Kim shrugged. “I figured if you could let yourself fall in love after all this time, I could give this a shot. Maybe I won’t?—”

“You can do this.” Lucy nodded.

“Promise me one thing?”

“What?”

Kim looked over her shoulder to make sure they were alone. Deanna was at the table with a dishrag, and their mother was sorting leftover containers and making room in the refrigerator.

“Don’t run.”

“What?”

“Don’t run.” Kim shrugged. “When he tells you he’s in love with you, don’t run.”

“I’ve never run from?—”

“But you’ve always run ahead. Chasing your professional dreams. And I love that for you, Luce. I do. But follow your heart this time.”