Late for Christmas E-Book

Amy Lane

• Herausgeber: Dreamspinner Press
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 216

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

Cassidy Hancock hates being late—he's pathological about it. Until the crisp fall morning when he pauses to watch his neighbor's handsome son chase his dog down the sidewalk… and gets hit by a tree. Mark Taylor sees the whole thing, and as a second-year medical resident, he gets Cassidy top-notch care. In spite of himself, he's fascinated by his mother's stodgy neighbor, and as he strives to help Cassidy recover from a broken leg, he begins to realize that behind Cassidy's obsession with punctuality is the story of a lonely boy who thought he had to be perfect to be loved. Mark and his family are far from perfect—but they might be perfect for Cassidy. As the two of them get to know each other, Cassidy fantasizes about the family and happy-ever-after he never thought he'd have, and Mark starts to yearn for Cassidy's wide-eyed kindness and surprising creativity. But first they have to overcome Cassidy's fears, because there is so much more fun to be had during Christmas than just being on time.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Blurb

Watch Out for That Tree

Proximity

Big Eyes in the Corner

Natural Habitat

The Dark and the Light

Different Plans

The Nature of Things

Old Growth

Grown Accustomed

A Late Start

Choose Your Lane to Love

About Amy Lane

By Amy Lane

Visit Dreamspinner Press

Copyright

Late for Christmas

by Amy Lane

Cassidy Hancock hates being late—he’s pathological about it. Until the crisp fall morning when he pauses to watch his neighbor’s handsome son chase his dog down the sidewalk… and gets hit by a tree.

Mark Taylor sees the whole thing, and as a second-year medical resident, he gets Cassidy top-notch care. In spite of himself, he’s fascinated by his mother’s stodgy neighbor, and as he strives to help Cassidy recover from a broken leg, he begins to realize that behind Cassidy’s obsession with punctuality is the story of a lonely boy who thought he had to be perfect to be loved.

Mark and his family are far from perfect—but they might be perfect for Cassidy. As the two of them get to know each other, Cassidy fantasizes about the family and happy-ever-after he never thought he’d have, and Mark starts to yearn for Cassidy’s wide-eyed kindness and surprising creativity. But first they have to overcome Cassidy’s fears, because there is so much more fun to be had during Christmas than just being on time.

Watch Out for That Tree

CASSIDY HANCOCK hated being late—loathed it. Spent his entire life waking up early, setting alarms, and passing up invitations on the off chance a trip to the park with a friend would make him late for a Zoom meeting he had in two hours. What if something happened? What if he sprained his ankle? What if he found a dog and absolutely had to get it back to its owner? What if he didn’t want to get it back to its owner? There was always that. Cassidy really did long for a dog—but dogs were messy and unexpected and he was afraid they would make him late.

A life in foster care had made him dread the sudden placement in someone else’s house, made him dread the new schedule, the sudden left turn, the unexpected anything that might make him miss an appointment. Missed appointments meant bad grades, bad grades meant getting put somewhere else, getting put somewhere else meant new schools—it was all bad if you were late.

The minute he’d moved out of transitional care and into his own apartment with his own job and his own space, he had set out to become the Boy Who Wouldn’t Be Late.

And now, at twenty-eight, that hard work had paid off. He had a good job that he enjoyed, and he’d managed to buy his own house in the cul-de-sac of a cute little suburban neighborhood, and while his house looked a lot like the house next to it and the one after that, he didn’t care. He’d plant flowers, trim the tree, mow the lawn, and he would be the Man Who Wouldn’t Be Late with the House That Fit In.

As one of the few teachers who had really seen him in high school had said, it was important to have goals.

Unfortunately, goals didn’t mean jack when a drought-ridden tree cracked in a windstorm and took out all the power lines in the area. Cassidy’s alarm didn’t go off, and his phone was charging in the kitchen. He slept through the phone alarm, the coffee maker didn’t go off, and by the time he woke up, he had half an hour to get to his daily morning meeting with his boss.

The meeting he never missed.

The meeting he was always ten minutes early for because Cassidy was never late.

He’d worked his way up from receptionist for the editor/owner of Folsom’s most prestigious lifestyle magazine—in both print and electronic formats—to personal assistant, contributor, and part-time editor by being always on time, always impeccable, and always polite.

And now he was late!

He was hurrying outside into the blowy gray December day when he caught sight of the new neighbor.

Or rather the old neighbor’s college-age son, who had moved into an apartment over his mother’s garage this past year. He was escorting a ridiculous dog that had a pit bull head with the smooth, hypoallergenic brindle fur, and a corgi body.

Cassidy sort of craved that dog. He had, in fact, been having a really nice dream about that dog curled up at the foot of his bed, making whuffling sounds in his sleep, when he’d reached out to pet his imaginary dog and realized that not only was the dog not there, but the sky was much lighter outside than it was when he usually woke up.

So there went his neighbor, running after Gus-Gus the dog—Cassidy knew his name because he frequently did the corgi hop off-leash and waddled down the sidewalk with unabashed glee—wearing pajama pants and a homemade sweater in vibrant green, his longish, unkempt dark blond hair swirling in all directions, his pleasantly scruffy face twisted in sheepish annoyance, and Cassidy was forced to stop for reasons that had nothing to do with being late and everything to do with…

Reasons.

The young man really did wear the crap out of the sweater his mother had crocheted him, Cassidy thought with a lump in his throat. She’d even made a matching sweater for the dog.

Cassidy was so busy watching the young man that he didn’t notice the tree in the neighbor’s yard leaning precariously in the wind, the recent rain making the powder-dry earth unstable but not wet enough to hold together. He’d gotten to his car, which sat in the driveway because he’d converted much of his garage to a woodworking shop, when he heard the ominous crack. He looked up just in time to miss the tree crashing down on his head, where it would probably have killed him, but as he stumbled back, he fell on his ass, and when the tree landed, a solid branch impaled his leg and broke his fibula and tibia instead.

As he fell against the pavement, he was aware of two things.

One, the dog had run back and was licking his face, which was nicer than he’d thought it would be when he’d dreamed of owning the dog.

The other thing was the neighbor’s college-age son was crouched down by him, telling him he was going to be okay while he talked into a telephone using the crisp diction and vocabulary of someone who knew exactly what they were doing.

Cassidy’s leg was on fire, and he couldn’t reach his pocket to find his phone to call his boss and tell her he was going to be late. He squinted up at the neighbor’s son and said, “Which college are you going to, anyway?”

The boy smiled gently. “Stanford School of Medicine—I’m a resident of Mercy San Juan Folsom, orthopedic unit. Lucky you, Mr. Hancock—my boss is probably the guy who will set your leg.”

Cassidy stared at him. “But you’re not that old,” he whispered, and then his eyes rolled back in his head and he passed out completely.

Proximity

MARK TAYLOR—not to be confused with Chuck, he often said—was surprised to see his parents’ stodgy neighbor, who never met a dress shoe he couldn’t spit-polish or a hair he couldn’t smooth back, was only twenty-eight.

But passed out and medicated, Cassidy Hancock was not only much younger than Mark assumed, he was also a lot cuter.

He had pointed features, which, when his brows were drawn down and his mouth pursed in disapproval, could appear severe and nearly fortyish. Relaxed with the medication, the skin was smooth and the mouth was actually softer than it first seemed.

Cassidy didn’t look disapproving so much as he looked vulnerable, and Mark wasn’t prepared for that. In spite of the praises his mother sang, Mark thought the guy was some sort of neighborhood sour plum, scowling at everything, talking to nobody.

And then Gus-Gus had licked his face and he’d smiled.

Mark loved the big tube of weird himself, but to see this guy, who was as buttoned-up as anyone he’d ever seen, including his ex-boyfriend, succumb to that charm—that was interesting.

Mark stood over Cassidy’s hospital bed, studying his chart, when he heard a rustle behind him. “Isn’t this your day off?”

He turned around and smiled. Holly Jacobsen was in her early thirties, with two children and a husband who was a delivery driver for UPS. She wore her thick blond hair in a short pixie cut and even had sparkly blue eyes and dimples. If she didn’t have the slight crow’s feet that indicated experience—and humor—she would definitely not look old enough to be the charge nurse on the orthopedic floor.

“It is,” Mark said, shrugging. “I’m barely on the schedule until after Christmas.” This had been on purpose. He was a senior resident at Folsom Medical Center, but he’d served his junior residency in the Bay Area. His father’s passing and a bad breakup had given him a reason to apply for the senior position. He’d lucked out—Harry Chu, his boss, also happened to be one of his best friends coming up through Stanford and had given him a chance.

Mark didn’t have the best record on paper.

His grades were great, yes, but he had a real problem with time management. Harry had known this, but he’d also frequently said Mark was one of the best doctors he’d ever worked with, and that was long after the internship they’d served together in the Mission District in San Francisco.

“You care, you listen, you pay attention—you catch things other doctors don’t,” Harry had said when he’d given Mark the job. “But you have got to learn to get your ass in gear!”

“Harry,” Mark had ventured—carefully, of course, because he’d wanted the job and he hadn’t wanted to piss his old friend off, “has it occurred to you that the reason I catch things other doctors don’t is because I’m taking the time to pay attention?”

Harry grunted. “Yes. I completely get that. But you can’t be Dr. Superman—everybody needs your time, not the first people on your roster, okay?”

So Harry gave Mark the job in a probationary way, with a light schedule before Christmas so he’d have time to help his mom fix up the house and get settled in the area and perhaps learn to arrive punctually more than 50 percent of the time.

Mark had managed about 80 percent so far, and Harry was pleased, but that didn’t mean the rest of the staff wasn’t rooting for him.

But then, the 20 percent of the time he’d been late had been to stop and get them donuts. Mark wasn’t stupid. Keep the nurses and PAs happy and you could pretty much rule the hospital.

“So,” Holly said now, laughing, “what are you doing here?”

Mark shrugged. “This is my neighbor. There he was, walking to his car while I was chasing Gus-Gus down the sidewalk, and suddenly a tree falls on his head.”

“I thought it was his leg that was broken?”

Mark grimaced. “Well, he paused for some reason as he was walking toward his car, otherwise it would have been game over and lights out. Anyway, they got him free of the tree—and seriously, the branch impaled his leg, poor guy. Broke his tibia and his fibula, and isn’t he frickin’ lucky it wasn’t his femur—and as they were loading him up in the ambulance, they said, ‘Is there somebody you’d like us to call?’”

“And he said…?” Holly made a get-on-with-it gesture.

“Nobody,” Mark said. “He said, ‘No one.’ And I felt awful for the guy. My mom came and got Gus-Gus, and I got in the ambulance with him. While Harry was operating on his leg, I showered up and put on a coat so I could look official in scrubs, because seriously, I’m just here for him.”

“Aw,” she said, actually looking at Cassidy as he lay dozing under the anesthetic. “Good-looking guy. Is he nice?”

“I have no idea,” Mark said. “My mom seems to think so. I know he’s obsessed with not being late because he’s always looking at his watch.” It was an old-fashioned timepiece too—not a Fitbit or a Garmin but a gold watch on a leather band, like something a father would give to his son.

She gave a snort. “Didn’t you say that’s why you broke up with your boyfriend?

“Well, he was obsessed with being on time and he was a dick,” Mark said, although, like with most things, there was more to it than that. “But this guy gets a chance to prove he’s not a dick, at least. Besides, my mother would never forgive me. Apparently he’s been mowing her lawn along with his, and raking her leaves too, since Dad passed. He did it for months before she noticed, and when she went over to say something, he looked mortally embarrassed. She said about all he got out was ‘I’m so sorry about your husband,’ before he excused himself and closed the door. But he kept doing her chores for her—including cleaning her gutters. Not expecting thanks, just, you know, doing nice things.”

“Oh,” Holly said. “So he is a good guy.”

“Either that or he’s a plant from the HOA,” Mark joked, and Holly laughed as he expected she would. But in truth, he was curious about the guy. His mother seemed to think he was just a little shy, but Mark wondered if there was more to it than that.

“Well, I’ll leave you to ponder,” she said. “Let me know if you need anything.”

Mark shook his head and pulled up a chair, yawning. “Thanks, Holly. I’m going to wait until he wakes up and see if he needs anything.” He’d been up late the night before, studying new grafting procedures so he could be ready if it came up, and he wouldn’t mind a nice little doze in the comfy guest chair now.

She left, and he’d just gotten settled in, with his eyes closed, when a tired and surprisingly deep male voice said, “She brought me muffins when I moved in.”

Mark blinked awake. “Who—”

“Your mom. She brought me muffins. I wrote her a thank-you note, but it didn’t seem like enough.”

Mark smiled fondly. “Well, my mom’s like that. Nice, nice lady.”

“You’re lucky,” Cassidy Hancock said. He squeezed his eyes tight. “I need to call my boss. Tell her why I’m late.”

Mark grimaced. For a moment he’d been so human. “Buddy, I hate to break this to you, but you’re more than late—you’re going to be stuck at home for at least a month, and you’ll need in-home nursing and someone to stay with you overnight too.”

Cassidy closed his eyes tightly. “No,” he muttered. “No, no, no, no, no….”

“Hey,” Mark said gently. “It’s okay. You have insurance and even the extra work insurance—I saw your card as the nurse was admitting you. I’m sorry. They can’t fire you for this—”

Cassidy shook his head. “I can work from home,” he said. “I don’t always, but… I just… I don’t know anyone. I… I live alone. Who’s going to come stay with me? I’ll be late!”

Mark was going to laugh at him just like he’d laughed at Brad, his ex, but he couldn’t. Something about the half-panicked, almost tearful note in his voice when he said I’ll be late! really tore at Mark’s chest. This wasn’t just a quirk of being uptight, was it? This was something deeper.

“Well, we can make some modifications to your house to help you,” Mark said. “First, though, let me get you your phone, and you can talk to your boss and explain. There’s got to be someone at work who can help you out.”

Mark listened unabashedly to Cassidy’s phone call and was even more mystified when he was done. Cassidy’s boss, Rose McCormick, seemed like a real nice lady. She was not, in fact, a fire-breathing dick.

“Honey, don’t worry about it. We’ll miss you, for sure, but you’re laid up! We’ll make do until you get your computer and your house set up, okay?”

Cassidy nodded, looking miserable. “I should be able to be online tomorrow—”

“The day after, at the earliest,” Mark said, appalled. Cassidy sent him a tortured look, and he shook his head sternly. “It would be better if you took a week,” he said, not sure how much he could get away with.

“A week it shall be,” Rose said. “You haven’t taken any time off in years—practically since I hired you, which was when?”

“Five years ago,” Cassidy said.

“That’s terrible! Take a week off! Don’t worry, Cass—the job will be here when you get back.”

Cassidy looked stricken. “You promise?” he asked in a small voice.

Rose’s face softened over the phone screen, as though she knew something about Cassidy Hancock that Mark did not. “Of course, sweetie. You don’t just forget your assistant—and your friend—because he got hurt.”

Cassidy nodded into his phone, looking lost and sad—and definitely younger than fortyish, and even younger than twenty-eight. “Okay. If you’re sure—I can do online if you need me—”

“Honey, relax,” she said. “Let this nice young man take care of you for a little while. He seems capable.”

“Oh—he’s not taking care of me,” Cassidy said, as though he’d found his footing again. “He’s my neighbor. And a doctor—but not mine. He was nice enough to call the ambulance and check on me and—”

“My mom and I will help him set up his house,” Mark said, barging into his video call. “He’s going to need a little help and looking after.”

Rose—who looked to be in her fifties but spectacularly in her fifties, with smooth skin, short auburn hair, and cheekbones to die for—nodded, frowning. “Will he need help renting the equipment? We had to set up my mother’s house when she broke her ankle. Does he have anyone to order for him and open up his house before he’s discharged?”

“Rose, I can handle that—” Cassidy began, so Mark tugged gently on the phone until he had it to himself.

“I can help him set up the delivery,” Mark said, “and my mother will be there to help him set up the house. We both work, though. I’ve got a light schedule, so I can check in a lot, but if we could coordinate tomorrow? He’s going to need things like meal prep and housecleaning help for the next six weeks at least. I guess he doesn’t have any family in town?”

“He doesn’t have any family at all,” Rose said, her voice dropping with compassion.

Mark turned his head to see Cassidy studiously looking away from this conversation, like it didn’t have anything to do with him.

“Well, that’s going to change,” he decided. “No man’s an island—particularly not with a cast that sticks out from the wheelchair.”

“He’s got insurance,” Rose said, “but you’re right. He’s going to need help. Go ahead and take down my number from his phone—you seem like a capable young man. Between the two of us we should see that he’s taken care of.”

“And don’t forget my mother,” Mark said. “Believe me, once Yvonne Taylor gets her hands on a project, it’s a lock.”

“Wonderful. Well, between us, Dr. Taylor, let’s see if we can’t take care of Cassidy. He’s a very sweet boy, and my office can’t function without him for too long.” She gave him a wink that let him know Cassidy was more to her than just her assistant. “Call me as soon as you have the details for setting up his home.”

And with that she signed off, leaving Mark to smile encouragingly at Cassidy. “See? She was lovely. You can rest today; we can get you set up in the next few—you’ll be fine.”

Cassidy nodded, but he didn’t look happy. In fact, his big hazel eyes were red-rimmed and shiny, and as Mark watched in dismay, he leaned back against his pillow and closed them, forcing the tears to spill over.

“Hey, hey,” Mark soothed, wondering if this was just shock and exhaustion. Poor guy had, in fact, had quite a day. “Don’t worry—you’ve got people. We’ll take good care of you.”

“I don’t have people,” Cassidy whispered. “And in the end, it’s only me.”

Mark opened his mouth to protest, but Cassidy’s eyes were closed and he looked like he was probably falling asleep, so all Mark could do was look at him in surprise and wonder what had happened to this man before the tree had fallen on him.

Something had obviously left bigger damage than a broken leg.

MARK LEFT soon after Cassidy fell asleep, feeling bad about leaving him alone in the hospital but needing to get started on the retrofitting of the one-story ranch-style house now, before they took Cassidy home.

He also really wanted to talk to his mother.

He grabbed Cassidy’s keys from his belongings, feeling a little like a thief, and tiptoed out of the hospital room with more stealth than was probably necessary. On his way out, he met Holly, who was standing by the nurse’s station and charting on her tablet.

“You off?” she asked.

Mark glanced back to Cassidy’s hospital room, troubled. “Tell him I’m going to set up his house,” he said. “Tell him I’ll be back when I can make it.”

“Anything wrong?” she asked.

Mark shook his head. “No… yes… maybe?”

She laughed a little. “That’s clear.”

“He’s… sad,” Mark said, not sure why this should bother him so much, with the possible exception that this nice, handsome, vulnerable man had been kind to his mother when she’d needed it most. “I set his phone up to charge, but let me know if he needs anything, okay? And tell the next shift to do the same.”

“Sure,” she said before grinning at him. “I’ll make a note on his chart.”

“You’re very cute,” he said dryly and then left.

THE NEXT day, Mark visited Cassidy on his morning rounds, taking five minutes to reassure the man that he hadn’t been forgotten.

The way Cassidy’s face lit up—and then that light dampened as quickly as possible—as Mark walked in stuck with him. He kept Cassidy’s key—this time with permission—and promised to tell Cassidy how he and his mother planned to modify the house so Cassidy could come home.

“Can I call you Cass?” he asked as he pocketed the key.

“I guess my boss does,” Cassidy replied, looking disconcerted.

“We’ll feel it out and see if it works,” Mark promised. Something about that confusion twisted in his chest a little, and he was determined to solve the mystery of Cassidy Hancock if he did nothing else that day.

Later, as afternoon shadows stretched long across his tree-lined residential street, he opened the door to the neighbor’s house for his mother. They ventured inside a little bit timidly—it felt alien and wrong to be there without the mysterious and reserved Cassidy Hancock, but Mark knew it had to be done.

The house had a partially open floor plan, the kitchen widening to a small dining room with a table obviously set up as an office space. There was an office chair set at a slightly off angle on the side of the round table, with the other four matching chairs crowded a little to accommodate it.

“Why is this crooked?” his mom asked herself softly.

The answer came immediately. “He can look out the window!” Mark supplied. From that chair, the large picture window of a breakfast nook peered out into the neighborhood. “We’re in the corner lot. He can see the whole cul-de-sac from here—see?”

He pulled his mother to where he was standing, and she looked around as though pleasantly surprised.

“It’s the whole neighborhood,” she said. “What a lovely space.”

“Unless you wanted to do something untoward on the table,” he said with a wicked grin, because he would and he had, but also because he wanted his mother to react.

She smacked his arm and said, “Stop that!” and they were both satisfied.

The breakfast nook and dining room table were on one side of the foyer, and on the other side, still sharing space, sat a living room area that consisted of a couch and a love seat at right angles to each other but turned toward a television. He had gorgeous bookcases—hickory or oak, but hand-finished—filled with books on every subject from history to science to literature, all of them dust-free and, he noted in surprise, organized in alphabetical order according to author.

“Wow,” he muttered, looking down the hallway toward the bedroom. He wondered if something in there indicated a human lived in this space, because standing in the foyer, he couldn’t see it. The hickory picture frames over the mantel were spotless and dust-free, the diplomas on the wall behind the television in the same shape. Mark ventured closer to read the diplomas. Sac City High School, American River Junior College, CSU Sacramento—all local schools, but he’d been in the National Honor Society in high school and summa cum laude for his AA, BA, and MBA. He saw no pictures of Cassidy himself on the walls—which was reassuring, really, because the guys Mark had dated that lived alone but had their portraits on the walls were really sort of douchey—but the pictures on the brick mantel of the gas fireplace in the corner looked promising.

He’d just taken a step toward them when his mother spoke.

Her first words were not encouraging. “This is psychotically clean,” she said, horrified.

“You like a clean house!” he protested. “You haven’t stopped nagging me about my room since I was five!”

She gave him a droll look. “That’s because you think three-quarters clean is all-the-way clean. Your room isn’t clean if you’ve got a pile of moldy socks under your bed and you have to sniff the seat of your jeans to see if they’ve got one more day of wear.”

“Who told!” he asked, embarrassed.

She rolled her eyes. “Oh, Mark. We knew.”