A Cape Cod Holiday
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Jo McNally
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23
Prologue
Max Bellamy wondered for the hundredth time if he was doing the right thing as he pulled his pickup truck into the parking lot of a hotel outside of Buffalo. He was towing a twenty-foot trailer, so he had to park in the back. He turned off the engine and sat for a moment, staring out the windshield at the commercial office park surrounding the hotel.
“Is this Cape Sod, Max?” his five-year-old son asked. “Is this our new house?”
“It’s Cape Cod, like the fish,” Max answered, still staring straight ahead. “And no, Tyler, this is not a house. It’s a hotel.” Anticipating the next question that was sure to come—the kid never ran out of them—Max added, “We can’t get into our house until Friday, after the closing.” He cringed, knowing he’d just opened himself up to more questions. Max was still learning to edit his answers to avoid being stuck answering questions for an hour.
“What’s a closing? Why do we have to wait for it? What if it’s already closed?” Tyler’s brown eyes went wide. “Will we have to live in the truck?”
Max gave his son a quick smile, which was, of course, not returned. “Tyler, we won’t have to live in the truck. Your new grandma owns a motel, remember? We’ll be there tomorrow night, then I’ll go pay for our new house Friday morning. Once that happens, we can move in.” Assuming the moving truck arrived on time with the scant amount of furniture he owned, but he knew better than to mention that to Tyler and give him something new to fret about. Luckily, he’d managed to buy some of the existing furniture from the sellers, so it wouldn’t be too empty.
“I liked my old house and my old grandma. Will she come to Cape Cod, too?”
Max bit back a very bad word. At the moment, he wouldn’t mind if he never saw Tyler’s grandparents again. Not after they tried to keep his son from him. First, by supporting—and possibly encouraging—Marie’s decision not to tell Max that Tyler even existed while she was alive. Then, after Marie’s sudden death, they’d fought the social workers who’d insisted on tracking down Tyler’s father—Max—instead of automatically handing them permanent custody of the boy. If Marie hadn’t put Max’s name on the birth certificate, he may have never found out he even had a son.
But Sally and Ed Cosma were Tyler’s grandparents, and, as angry as Max was, he knew it would be wrong to keep them out of Tyler’s life.
“Sure, they might visit. Or maybe we’ll visit them.”
When hell freezes over...
Tyler perked right up. “When? Tomorrow?”
“Uh, no. First, we need to get settled in our new house, and you need to get registered in your new school. But...someday.”
Tyler let out a huff and threw himself back against the seat. Great. The kid was ticked off. Again.
Max opened his door. “Come on, Ty. Let’s get some dinner. You can watch a little TV before bed.”
Like a yo-yo, Tyler bounced from sulking to excitement. But not happiness. Smiles came very rarely to the dark-haired, dark-eyed boy.
“What are we going to watch, Max? A movie? The new cartoon one?”
“Maybe.” He was new at this fatherhood business, but he’d learned the magic of that word—maybe. It wasn’t a no but wasn’t exactly a yes. It seemed to satisfy Tyler, and the boy hopped out of the truck and came to the front, where Max waited. Max held out his hand, but Tyler shook his head sharply. There were no cars around to worry about, so Max let it go and followed his son across the lot.
He couldn’t help wishing the boy would call him “Dad,” but the social worker told him not to push too hard, since Tyler was dealing with so much grief and upheaval. Pick your battles, Sandy said. The problem was he had no idea which battles to pick. He wanted his son to be happy, but right now, that seemed a long way away.
Insta-father or not, whenever he thought of Tyler as his son, it did something funny to his heart. They were virtual strangers. They didn’t have the same last name—Tyler’s birth certificate gave him his mother’s last name, Cosma. But this boy was his, and Max would do anything for him, even if it might feel like the wrong thing. Like buying a house in Winsome Cove and settling down like an actual grown-up, instead of traveling from Renaissance fair to Renaissance fair with a portable forge, making knives and swords and the occasional art piece.
Being a nomad was no life for a little boy.
Max’s mother and sister both lived in Winsome Cove, and they’d vowed to help him with Tyler. It had been an impulsive move, but things had been moving at light speed for months now. He could have bought a place near the small rural town in southern Ohio where Tyler had lived with his mom. But Marie’s family had been so grief-stricken over the car accident that took Marie’s life—and so hostile to Max’s arrival—that he’d decided to give Tyler and him a fresh start away from them.
Maybe Winsome Cove would work its magic on Tyler, just as it had on Mom and Lexi. His big sister had only gone there temporarily, to help their mom get settled in the old motel she’d inherited a year and a half ago. Then Lexi ended up opening a restaurant and falling in love while in the little seaside town. Those family ties would be good for Tyler, and Lord knew Max needed the help—no matter how much he chafed against the idea of settling down and buying a hundred-and-fifty-year-old house sight unseen in some little New England tourist town. That had never been part of his plan.
Of course, fatherhood hadn’t been part of his plan, either.
