Secret Santa

  Secret

  Santa

  Rebel Wayfarers MC

  Book #9.75

  MariaLisa deMora

  Copyright © 2016 MariaLisa deMora

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination, or are used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is entirely coincidental.

  First Release 2016

  ISBN 13: 978-0-9967486-0-5

  DEDICATION

  The afternoon knows what the morning never suspected.

  ~ Robert Frost

  For those of us who long for love and companionship in our afternoons. Sometimes we simply need a reminder to keep the faith. That love is not something you discover. It cannot be acquired or invented. Love will come looking for you when you are ready. Be happy, and be hopeful. I see good things.

  SECRET SANTA

  Get ready for dancing, dining, and dunkings, because when you open your door on Christmas Eve to see Santa on your front porch, what else do you do?

  Meet Peter Teravest, also known as Truck, a nomad biker who finds himself sitting in the Florida panhandle alone one Christmas Eve. Truck has seen challenges in his life, and made his way out the other side with the help of his brothers in the Rebel Wayfarers MC. Ready to start a new chapter, he's purchased a home sight-unseen, and arrives a day ahead of schedule and in a bind.

  Cue Vanna Reicht, his nearest neighbor who just happens to have friends in common with Truck. They share a meal, chatting and talking like long-lost friends. It's late. It's Christmas Eve. It's also comfortable, sweet, and oh-so complicated. In the series timeline, this story sits alongside Watcher, book #9.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Thank You

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Wanna know a secret? For reals? Okay. In this story, I’m Vanna. Big secret, right? My road name, CB radio handle, trail name, and nickname is Peepers. I hike, love to help people, hate to ask for help, and am a single mom to a special needs son with autism. So totally Vanna. Ta dah! Like you didn’t already know it. Pfffttt.

  Christmas Eve this past year was classically tough, with my minion having meltdowns over nothing and everything; some for reasons I knew, and many more I couldn’t decipher. Around midnight, I was seated on my couch, reading, waiting for his tossings and turnings in the bed overhead to stop so I could put out the overfilled stocking, and deal with the cookies and milk. Within couple of weeks from writing this note, I’ll be doing the same again this year. Yup, at 22-years-old, he still half believes in Santa, and I won’t be the one to break that news to him. As long as he believes, Santa will come. Promise.

  Last year, I spun up some old-school Christmas songs, thinking they would help pass the time. Those songs evoke sentimentality on a primal level, and within a matter of minutes I was driven to what seems to be my coping go-to these days: I grabbed the computer and opened a fresh, new document. And I wrote.

  It felt good as I settled Vanna and Kitt. Helping them find their way through Kitt’s growing adulthood, stamping the developmental changes into place that I know so well. By about 5 a.m., I had pretty much solidified Truck in my head, as well as on the page. He roared in and took control in places, and I gotta say, I love how he is with Vanna and Kitt. Truck enjoys a kind of intuitive empathy I wish everyone had.

  I might be Vanna, but my minion isn’t Kitt. Not quite. As my son has aged into a deeper emotional and cognitive maturity, he has developed the ability to articulate how it felt when things were more difficult. He can talk about the workings in his brain, feelings he experienced when his body reacted to certain stimuli, how he self-soothed, and the satisfaction felt as he developed independent coping mechanisms. There are bits of him in this story, of course, but Kitt wound up more profoundly impacted on the Autism spectrum which means a lot of Kitt’s inner dialogue might be flavored by my son, but is straight from the source of my imagination.

  I cannot speak for every parent or caregiver of a special needs child, but I know I long for the day when my son can be more independent. Not for me, but for him. He definitely recognizes how his age peers have moved along, passed him on the road to adulthood, and impatiently waits to join their journey. Emphatically and loudly, he wants more. And he’ll get there, I have faith.

  One of the toughest things about being a parent, regardless of the abilities of the child, is giving them the opportunity to branch out and flourish. Because with each opportunity to succeed, comes the same chance to fail. I keep reminding myself of a poem by the young Australian writer, Erin Hanson, What If I Fall? It’s a short bit of poetry, but is poignant in a way that resonates with me. Five lines long, but rich in meaning, it ends in a voice filled with hope, “Oh but my darling, What if you fly?”

  My Christmas wish? Here’s hoping all our fledglings soar.

  Woofully yours,

  ~ML

  Chapter One

  Truck

  “Aw, what in the hell…” Turning off the highway and onto the country road, Truck rolled his bike to a stop, staring at the large wooden sign planted not twenty feet away. BRIDGE OUT was written in block letters across the top, while the just as ominous ROAD CLOSED was printed out across the bottom. What in the fuck am I supposed to do now? He was mentally strangling his direction-giving and house-selling friend back in Texas.

  Pulling out his phone he looked at the display, shoving it back into his pocket at the message of no service. Fuck. While computing the time it would take to detour back to the small town up the road, he eyed the moon hanging overhead in the sky and decided to take a chance. His new house might be on this side of the bridge, after all.

  Idling up the road, he was appreciative of the isolated slices of landscape glimpsed in the washed out glow from his headlight. Trees crowded the road, pines still in full coverage. Black in this light, but he knew if seen under the midday sun, that same canopy would glow green. A few hardwood trees, their branches bare, leaves piled in the ditch in bow breaks, testifying to the speed of a recent rain runoff.

  A mailbox planted next to a right-hand driveway captured his attention and he saw a tidy house set slightly back from the road. Even at this late hour, the downstairs windows glowed from within, testifying to the insomnia of the occupants, perhaps. Twinkling lights adorned a tree in what was probably the front parlor or dining room. Welcoming and cozy, a home.

  Not quite a mile down the road he sighted a driveway leading off the other side of the road and slowed. Moonlight shone down on a two-story farmhouse set in the middle of a clearing. Darkness ringed the edges and there were no lights from the house to push back the shadows. The realtor’s sign placed prominently near the sideways sagging mailbox proudly proclaimed SOLD.

  A twist of his handlebars caused his lights to flash across the front, a temporary illumination shucked off as easily as rain from a duck’s back. Rolling to a stop he looked at the house as he killed the engine, blank windows giving him nothing back. Fitting accommodations for a man de
termined to go it alone, needing nothing more than a secluded place where he could lay up for a while, lick his wounds. Old wounds, but that didn’t mean they didn’t still bleed. Silence flooded the space around him as the noise from the bike died. Isolation, solitude, and privacy. His new house.

  Chapter Two

  Vanna

  The smooth, dulcet tones of Nat King Cole rolled out of the speakers and Savannah Reicht settled her head more comfortably against the back of the chair. Fingers plucking at the fabric-covered arms, she slowly relaxed and allowed her eyes to sink closed. Echoing strings held the melody of ‘The Christmas Song’ together through the bridge and she found herself softly mouthing the words about simple things others took for granted during the holiday season. Open fires, family activities, and childhood joys. Now, you’re just being maudlin, she thought as the song wound down to silence. Mister Cole would frown on maudlin thoughts on Christmas Eve.

  The scratching needle on the record signaled the beginning of the next song and she smiled to hear Dean’s voice sliding through the room. He would have her dreaming of a ‘White Christmas,’ something that seldom happened down here in northern Florida. Reaching for the glass of wine sitting on the table beside the lamp, she leaned over and with her other hand picked up the open book lying there. Easing back into the chair, she shifted slightly and tucked one foot underneath her bottom before moving to find the ultimate comfy position. Her wine glass balanced on one thigh, elbow to the chair’s arm, the book lifted to the level of her eyes.

  It had been a busy and stressful few days. A race to get the last of the presents wrapped, boxed, and mailed off in time for a pre-holiday delivery for those of her friends living far away. Her gaze flicked up and she glanced across the room, staring for a moment at the tree standing in one corner of her dining room. Brilliant, the tree was covered in multi-colored lights and tinsel carelessly tossed by the handfuls. The homemade felt skirt underneath littered with bright packages and bags, while one stuffed-full stocking lay on its side nearby.

  Only a few of the packages under the tree were from her, and she knew in his quiet way Kitt would appreciate the efforts of those who sent presents for him. Kitt was her son, now a young adult. Living at home wasn’t what he wanted—and given the development of his independent streak a mile wide over the past couple of years, wouldn’t be something she’d have forever—but him living at home was what they had, for now.

  She knew she would eventually be able to find a good living arrangement for him, one that hit all the tick marks on her list, but not this year. She still had life lessons to teach, and Kitt responsibilities to accept, duties to carry out. So this year she still had him at home, and felt blessed that he was at this moment upstairs, sleeping in bed—even if his journey to that bed had been conducted under protest tonight—and waiting for Santa’s appearance. Baby steps.

  Vanna sighed, looking back at the words on the page and used the edge of her thumb to flip forward in her book. The unconscious movement of her hand allowed her imagination free rein to advance through the story, and she was quickly caught back up in the foibles of a dense-as-mud heroine. One shoulder of her oversized t-shirt slipped off her shoulder as she lifted the glass of blush liquid to her lips, and she adjusted the shirt with practiced ease. She sipped the wine, shivering slightly at the still-chilled temperature.

  Vanna and Kitt lived alone; the few visitors they had these days were expected and scheduled. Known and quantified. No surprises, not ever. With Kitt’s disorder it was important his environment be tightly managed and controlled. While the reality was he was autistic, she liked to say that on the spectrum he was blessedly high-functioning. Which meant he was both verbal and cognitively advanced, which further meant he could communicate important things. And that meant he could also argue the paint off a fencepost when he was in the mood to want something. Like tonight, with his pleas for just one more story, one more cartoon, one more snack. It was only the threat of Santa bypassing the houses of boys who weren’t good that scooted his feet up the stairs and into bed.

  She sighed, the past few days had seen a retreat in his behaviors. She knew it was likely just stress from the holiday’s change in routine putting him off balance in a way that came out as combative. With these kids, nothing was ‘just,’ though. He had lost much of his language, retaining only a few of his most-used words, and she had watched him withdrawing more every day, even from contact with her.

  Vanna desperately wanted him to have memories to draw on for future Christmases. She struggled to balance the need to give him sameness with her desire to create a wealth of experiences he could use to better offset stress as he moved through life. Each moment offered learning opportunities, and she spent a great deal of time working with him to develop scripts and coping mechanisms. Beginning in early December, they went over the game plan every day, talking through the process of buying and wrapping presents. Decorating the tree required a conversation all its own, as did gift opening protocol. She knew all this work wasn’t about making Christmas merry for him this year, but an attempt to make it less difficult for him in ten years, or twenty.

  My whole life is an evolving script, she thought, putting down the book, giving up on the romance novel when it failed to retain her attention. She let her mind swirl and pick at the past few days, trying to find her own balance. She wasn’t wrong about the scripting, because much of her time spent with Kitt was angled with an eye towards what he would need in the future. She wouldn’t be around forever. There you go again, that’s another maudlin thought. She sighed at herself, taking another sip of wine. True, though. And if something happened to me…when something happens, there are only a few people Kitt would trust enough.

  As she often did, she began making a list in her head, only half listening as the record transitioned to the last track on the holiday album. When the music began to play she paused, smiling as Perry Como brought the holidays home with a reminder that the season meant family and friends. As he sang, the smile faded from her lips and she felt the stinging at the back of her eyes that was all-too familiar this time of year. I wish for a Merry Christmas, too. A Christmas with friends, family…a lover. She sighed. At least I have Kitt, she reminded herself, trying to shake off the tears, swallowing hard against the lump choking her throat, ignoring how very empty the house felt.

  Kitt’s father hadn’t handled the diagnosis well, and their marriage quickly became one of many dreams that fell as a casualty to autism. Her ex had quickly remarried—happily or unhappily, she didn’t know and didn’t really care. Other than to be annoyed at times that he had moved on so fast, believing it meant the relationship they had before Kitt mattered less because of it. Which makes me feel like a fool, she thought, swallowing again, because I loved him.

  A low rumble edged into the room, grabbing her attention. Her isolated home sat on the outskirts of town, positioned alongside a copse of hardwood trees, somewhat rare in this section of the state. The sound grew until it enveloped her little house, windows shaking in their frames for a few moments. She watched through the front windows as headlights slashed through the night, flickering across the outside of her house before continuing on their way.

  Odd, she thought, because there was hardly any traffic on her road during the day, much less at night. Someone must be lost. I’m sure I’ll see their lights headed back out in a minute or two.

  The narrow blacktop road dead-ended about a mile past her home. There was only one other house on the road, and once the excitement of the bridge washing out a couple years ago faded, there was nothing to warrant travelers to where the little creek meandered around the backside of her property.

  That house, on the market now for more than a decade, once belonged to the uncle of a good friend, but the owner had been dead longer than the house had been for sale. Maybe Blackie sold the place, she thought. Just one more line on her mental list of things-to-do and she made a note to ask him about it when she talked to him in the morning. He and
his wife Peaches were one of a half a dozen calls she would make once Kitt got up. Handling the frightening first contact to ensure there’d be no misdials or identification missteps. Waiting for his signal all was well, then passing the phone off to him so he could express his thanks for the gifts in safety. She, in turn, would receive thanks from their children, all five of whom she loved dearly.

  Blackie had been a friend when she needed one in the worst way, and they had stayed in touch through the years. He had saved her in so many ways; she would be forever grateful, not just for what he had done, but for his continued friendship. Months could go by between calls and yet, when they talked, it seemed as if they saw each other every day. I love him so hard, she thought, shifting in her chair. She suddenly realized that, for a while now, she had been listening to the skritching crackle of the record needle circling the inner grooves of the album. Setting down her glass, she shook her head.