Free Mistletoe and Margaritas by Shannon Stacey Page A

believing it. You slept with Claire. You slept with the woman you love and who loves you and, as trite as it might sound, Brendan would want you both to move on. To be happy.”
    He might as well tell her the rest of it. Before she wished him any more happiness, she deserved to know it all. “I’ve always loved her, Mrs. R., even before he…before the accident.”
    “If I believed for a second you had in any way betrayed my son, I wouldn’t be able to look at your face, Justin McCormick. You know that, don’t you?”
    He nodded until she held his face between her hands again and made him look at her. “You can’t choose who you love. And you can’t will it away.”
    “I tried. I tried not to love her.”
    “And look where you’ve ended up. Both of you are miserable. Brendan might have been your best friend and Claire’s husband, but he was my boy and I know—I believe in my heart—that he would consider the two of you being happy together a blessing.”
    He wanted to believe her. But he’d spent so many years telling himself his feelings for Claire were wrong, and the guilt wasn’t a switch he could flip because Brendan’s mom said it was okay. He wanted to, though, and for the first time he allowed himself to imagine telling Claire he loved her.
    Mrs. Rutledge sniffed and then seemed to gather herself up emotionally. “Are you going to stop by the party tonight?”
    “Probably not. I’m not very good company and I’m not really up to pretending I am.”
    “That’s more or less what Claire said, too. You should go see her, Justin.”
    “I don’t know.” He wasn’t sure he could give her what she needed.
    The smile Judy gave him was warm, with only a hint of sadness. “You both lost Brendan. Do you really want to lose each other, too?”
    As he drove home, that parting question wouldn’t leave him alone. It echoed through his mind, over and over, until he wanted to beat his head against the steering wheel just to make it stop. He didn’t know what he wanted to do, but there was one thing he knew for damn sure. He didn’t want to lose Claire.
     
    When the knock at the door came, Claire knew it was Justin. She recognized the sound of his truck pulling into the driveway. She knew the sound of his boots on the stairs. And she turned up the television, determined to continue crying her way through one of the greatest holiday comedies ever made, even though National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation wasn’t the same without him.
    Justin knocked again. She ignored it. Ignored the pounding on the door and the pounding in her heart and the god-awful ache in the pit of her stomach.
    She heard the scratching of metal against metal and the ache intensified. His key wouldn’t do him any good. She’d changed the locks.
    He gave up after a few seconds and then resumed banging so hard she was surprised he didn’t dent the metal. Or maybe he did. Right now, she didn’t care. “Open the damn door, Claire, or I swear I’ll kick it in.”
    Since he’d helped Brendan install the thing, she knew there wasn’t much chance of that.
    She heard him kick the bottom of the door—not in a real effort to kick it in, but in frustration. “Claire…please.”
    The change in his voice went straight to her heart. But if she let him in and he pulled her close only to shove her away again, she wasn’t sure her heart could stand it. And he would because he couldn’t separate his friendship with Brendan from his feelings for her.
    “I’m not leaving, Claire. This time, I won’t leave.”
    Considering how long he’d been standing outside her door in the frigid cold, she was starting to believe him. And her nerves weren’t going to be able to stand much more, so she threw off the fleece blanket and walked to the door, flipped the deadbolt and opened it.
    “I saw you first.”
    He looked like hell and her heart twisted for him. “What do you mean?”
    “I saw you first.” He reached for her face, but she took a step