Read A Christmas to Remember Online

Authors: Hope Ramsay,Molly Cannon,Marilyn Pappano,Kristen Ashley,Jill Shalvis

Tags: #Fiction / Contemporary Women, #Fiction / Romance - Contemporary, #Fiction / Romance - Erotica, #Fiction / Romance / Collections & Anthologies

A Christmas to Remember (10 page)

BOOK: A Christmas to Remember
11.99Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

“Okay, but don’t say I didn’t warn you,” she replied.

He’d eat her cookies, they were brilliant or they sucked. If Tabitha Allen made it, he’d eat anything.

Shy didn’t share that.

He gave her hand a squeeze, nabbed the bottle, and took off down the bar toward the cues on the wall.

Tabby followed.

* * *

They were in the dark, in his bed, in his room in the Compound.

Shy was on his back, eyes to the ceiling.

Tabby was three feet away, on her side, her chin was tipped down.

She was obliterated.

Shy wasn’t even slightly drunk.

She’d won four games, he’d won five.

Cookies for a year.

Now, he was winning something else, because tequila didn’t make Tabitha Allen a happy drunk.

It made her a talkative one.

It also made her get past ugly history and trust him with absolutely everything that mattered right now in her world.

“DOA,” she whispered to the bed.

“I know, sugar,” he whispered to the ceiling.

“Where did you hear?” she asked.

“Walkin’ into the Compound, boys just heard and they were taking off.”

“You didn’t come to the hospital.”

He was surprised she’d noticed.

“No. I wasn’t your favorite person. Didn’t think I could help. Went up to Tack and Cherry’s, helped Sheila with the boys,” he told her.

“I know. Ty-Ty told me,” she surprised him again by saying. “That was cool of you to do. They’re a handful. Sheila tries but the only ones who can really handle them are Dad, Tyra, Rush, Big Petey, and me.”

Shy didn’t respond.

“So, uh… thanks,” she finished.

“No problem, honey.”

She fell silent and Shy gave her that.

She broke it.

“Tyra had to cancel all the wedding plans.”

“Yeah?” he asked quietly.

“Yeah,” she answered. “Second time she had to do that. That Elliott guy wasn’t dead when she had to do it for Lanie, but still. Two times. Two weddings. It isn’t worth it. All that planning. All that money…” she pulled in a shaky breath “… not worth it. I’m not doing it again. I’m never getting married.”

At that, Shy rolled to his side, reached out and found her hand lying on the bed.

He curled his hand around hers, held tight and advised, “Don’t say that, baby. You’re twenty-two years old. You got your whole life ahead of you.”

“So did he.”

Fuck, he couldn’t argue that.

He pulled their hands up the bed and shifted slightly closer before he said gently, “If he was in this room right now, sugar, right now, he wouldn’t want this. He wouldn’t want to hear you say that shit. Dig deep, Tabby. What would he want to hear you say?”

She was silent then he heard her breath hitch before she whispered, “I’d give anything…”

She trailed off and went quiet.

“Baby,” he whispered back.

Her hand jerked and her body slid across the bed to slam into his, her face in his throat, her arm winding around him tight, her voice so raw, it hurt to hear. His own throat was ragged just listening.

“I’d give anything for him to be in this room.
Anything
. I’d give my hair, and I
like
my hair. I’d give my car, and Dad fixed that car up for me. I
love
that car. I’d swim an ocean. I’d walk through arrows. I’d
bleed
for him to be here.”

She burrowed deeper into him and Shy took a deep breath, pressing closer, giving her his warmth. He wrapped an arm around her and pulled her tighter as she cried quietly, one hand holding his tight.

He said nothing but listened, eyes closed, heart burning, to the sounds of her grief.

Time slid by and her tears slowly stopped flowing.

Finally, she said softly, “I dreamed a dream.”

“What, sugar?”

“I dreamed a dream,” she repeated.

He tipped his head and put his lips to the top of her hair but he had no reply. He knew it sucked when dreams died. He’d been there. There were no words to say. Nothing made it better except time.

Then she shocked the shit out of him and started singing, her clear, alto voice wrapping around a song he’d never heard before, but its words were gutting, perfect for her, what she had to be feeling, sending that fire in his heart to his throat so high, he would swear he could taste it.


Les Mis
,” she whispered when she was done.

“What?”

“The musical.
Les Misérables
. Jason took me to go see it. It’s very sad.”

If that was a song from the show, it fucking had to be.

She pressed closer. “I dreamed a dream, Shy.”

“You’ll dream more dreams, baby.”

“I’ll never dream,” she whispered, her voice lost, tragic.

“We’ll get you to a dream, honey,” he promised, pulling her closer.

She pressed in, and he listened as her breath evened out, felt as her body slid into sleep, all the while thinking her hair smelled phenomenal.

Shy turned into her, trapping her little body under his and muttering, “We’ll get you to a dream.”

Tabby held his hand in her sleep.

Shy held her but didn’t sleep.

The sun kissed the sky and Shy’s eyes closed.

When he opened them, she was gone.

 

 

 

 

 

Dear Reader,

Nothing gets me into the holiday spirit faster than listening to Christmas music.

And I have a little secret: my favorite Christmas music is the traditional stuff. Every Christmas you’ll find me with the stereo cranked up, singing along to all four hours of Handel’s “Messiah” while I bake cookies.

So, when I was asked to contribute a story to this collection, of course I went looking for inspiration from music. I put together a playlist of favorite carols and songs, most of them traditional. I plugged in the earbuds, found a comfy spot on the couch, and waited for the Christmas muse to find me.

She did—right at the moment “Silent Night” came up on the iPod. I suddenly realized that I’d picked a playlist composed entirely of carols and songs with images of a stable and a star and a bunch of wise men searching for a miracle—all traditional Christmas themes based on the story of the first Christmas.

And that’s how my story, “Silent Night,” was born. It features a single mom, a baby, a stable, and a man looking for a miracle.

I wish you all a wonderful holiday season, filled with laughter, love, light, and peace.

Merry Christmas,

Silent Night
Hope Ramsay

The engine sputtered a couple of times and died. Maryanne swallowed back a curse and guided her ancient Honda Civic to the side of the road.

She stared at the fuel gauge. She’d run out of gas, which was hardly surprising because she’d also run out of luck. And money.

Her last few dollars had gone into the gas tank, and now here she was two miles short of her destination.

She turned in the driver’s seat to check Joshua, her three-month-old son. He was fast asleep like an angel.

She was going to have to walk to the farm. And if Cousin Jennifer didn’t open the door for her, she’d be officially homeless. And spending Christmas here.

In her car.

The thing was, Maryanne had no guarantee that Cousin Jennifer would even remember her. They had only met that one time. So, all in all, coming here had been a crazy idea. But then crazy ideas usually came from being desperate. And desperation had set in yesterday when Maryanne’s landlady had thrown all her possessions out onto the street.

She unfolded the wrinkled Google Maps printout that she’d made at the library early this morning. She couldn’t be entirely sure, but it looked like she was just a mile short of the turn-off onto Ridge Road. From there it was only a mile or so to her final destination: the Carpenter family farm, where her father had been raised and where her grandfather had grown peaches.

Maryanne had visited the farm one Christmas when she was six years old. She remembered Cousin Jennifer as a sweet teenager who had played dolls with her. Maryanne was banking her future on that memory.

And what the heck—if Maryanne had nowhere to go, going to Nowhere, South Carolina kind of fit the bill. Not that this itty-bitty town was really called Nowhere. No, it was called Last Chance. And that was what Maryanne needed more than anything else.

She looked up at the sky. It was lumpy with dark clouds that hung low over the brown fields on either side of the road. The weather had turned cold.

And rain was coming. Maybe even snow. Maryanne had never really seen any appreciable snow, having grown up in Montgomery, Alabama. But those clouds looked menacing.

She had to find shelter. So it looked like Cousin Jennifer was about to have unexpected Christmas guests.

She pulled together a change of clothes, and some diapers and other baby stuff, and threw it all into a tattered backpack along with her last two Cliff Bars. She bundled Joshua into the Baby Björn front carrier she’d found at the Salvation Army, zippered her two-sizes-too-big North Face jacket around the both of them, and started walking.

What was a couple of miles? She could probably walk it in less than an hour. And if she was lucky, she might get there before the skies opened up.

But this wasn’t her lucky day. She was maybe a mile down Ridge Road when the first cold drops of rain spattered her parka. Good thing it was GORE-TEX.

She saw the big red barn and the white farmhouse just as the rain changed from a drizzle to a downpour. She ran up the drive and onto the porch.

The house was weathered, and the porch seemed way smaller than the one she remembered. In fact, the house of her long-ago Christmas memory had been grander in every respect. She remembered the lights—all different colors strung along the eaves—and a gigantic tree in the front windows. She remembered a bay window.

This house didn’t have one of those.

But that didn’t mean much. Over the years, she had certainly embellished her memories. That’s what abandoned kids did. In fact, as a lonely girl living in a succession of foster homes, she’d gone so far as to imagine a pretend life for herself, right here on Ridge Road in Grandpa’s farmhouse, with a boy next door named Joe, who was her best friend in all the world.

Maryanne had never really had a best friend. Except in those pretend moments. So she couldn’t be absolutely sure about anything here in South Carolina, except that being here was better than being in a women’s shelter in Montgomery.

Still, the house of her memory, or her fantasy, had never seemed dark and abandoned like this one.

She knocked on the door and got only an echo for her trouble.

Her feet were wet, and her toes were starting to go numb. She looked toward the barn. She’d only been inside a barn once in her life, that same Christmas Eve, when Mom had left her with her grandparents. Grandpa had told her that on Christmas Eve, if you sneaked quietly into the barn, you could hear the animals talk.

And of course she’d gotten up in the middle of the night and tried to find out if it was true.

It hadn’t been.

Joshua started to wiggle and fuss. He was making his hungry noise. It was sort of amazing how she could tell what he needed just by listening to him. That noise triggered her let-down reflex. She needed to feed him.

She pulled her soggy hood back over her head and dashed to the barn. Thank God it was open.

And empty.

It didn’t look like there had been animals here for a long time. The stalls were barren earth, and the only hay she found was old and up in the loft. She headed up that way and found a musty horse blanket. She settled into the hay, took off her wet socks, and found a pair of dry ones in her sack.

And there, nestled in some straw, covered by an old blanket, she nursed her baby.

* * *

Daniel Jessup pushed the grocery cart up the aisle at the Last Chance BI-LO. He was headed for the freezer section when the big spiral-cut hams caught his eye.

He stared down at them, lost in happier memories. Momma had always cooked a huge ham on Christmas Eve. And a couple of pies. And mashed potatoes.

His stomach rumbled.

“Can I help you with one of the hams?” the guy behind the meat counter asked.

Daniel shook his head. “No, I just wish they weren’t so big. It’s just me this year.”

The guy smiled. “You could get a canned ham. They’re on aisle five. They’re already cooked. You can just slice and eat. Or you can warm it up in the oven.”

“Really?”

The guy nodded and gave him one of those looks—like Daniel had been living under a rock somewhere. And in a way he had been. Ever since Julia had walked out on him.

For five years, he’d been barely managing to feed himself, living on frozen dinners and takeout. Daniel headed toward aisle five, where he found the canned hams. The directions on the back seemed easy enough. He found himself putting the ham in his basket.

But how was he going to manage mashed potatoes? What about pie? And why was he doing this?

He continued up and down the aisles. He found a box of instant mashed potatoes that required nothing more than a little water and milk. He could nuke some frozen butter beans. And the bakery still had one apple pie left. A bottle of inexpensive merlot would make the icy night go faster.

He wheeled his cart down the seasonal aisle on his way to the checkout line. The offerings were picked over on this Christmas Eve afternoon, but there were still a few bright and shiny new toys that hadn’t found homes. It was kind of sad. They’d all be marked down the day after tomorrow.

And that’s when it all caught up to him.

He didn’t have anyone to share a dinner with. He didn’t have anyone to buy a gift for.

He wasn’t expecting any gifts either. But that didn’t bother him in the least. He had everything he needed, except his family.

He picked up a stuffed reindeer with a red nose and bells inside. It was the sort of toy you hung over a baby’s crib. It had an elastic loop on the top. A baby was supposed to pull on it to make it bounce and jingle.

“Daniel Jessup, this is a surprise.”

Daniel looked up to find Miz Miriam Randall wheeling a shopping cart in his direction. Miriam had to be pushing eighty-five. But the old gal was pretty spry. She sure was a character, with her Princess Leia hairdo and those 1950s rhinestone trifocals. Today she was wearing a sweatshirt with a big Rudolph on the front. She looked festive.

“Hey, Miz Miriam. How are you doing?” Daniel said.

“Oh, same old, same old. Just picking up a few last minute items before the sleet starts falling. So, what brings you home to Last Chance? I’m sort of surprised.” She gave him this enigmatic smile. She was on to him. Like every church woman in Allenberg County, she read him like the daily paper.

He managed a smile, although the guilt gnawed at him. He’d often been absent these last few months as Daddy’s health and mind had faded. But it had been so hard to visit. It hurt so bad to have his own father look him in the face as if he were a stranger.

“I know I was a terrible son,” he muttered.

“Oh, Daniel, I didn’t mean it that way. I can hardly blame you for staying away. Ruben didn’t know who anyone was toward the end. I’m sure that was hard on you. I was just saying that it’s surprising to see you here over Christmas when your kin are all gone. Atlanta must be a much livelier place to spend the holidays.”

“I’m putting the farm up for sale. Christmas seemed like a good time to go through the last of Momma’s and Daddy’s things and get the house ready. It’s a slow time for me at work.” He didn’t know why he added the last bit, because it wasn’t true. Maybe it was a cry for help. Maybe he was truly burned out. Or maybe he was just hiding out.

Christmas was hard. He wanted to be left alone.

The old woman studied him from behind her thick glasses, her brown eyes sharp.

“Son, there’s something I need to remind you of.” She pushed her cart up next to his and reached out to touch his arm. It was strange to be touched. It had been a long time since anyone had touched him like that—person to person, with friendship and caring.

“I’m sure you know the story of the three wise men. How they each looked up at the sky and saw that star. How just the sight of that light was all they needed to get going. They just saddled up their camels and went off to find a miracle. But have you ever stopped to think about the fact that the star was there for everyone to see? Why didn’t everyone go to Bethlehem?”

Daniel stood there. He had no answer for Miriam. He’d never given this much thought at all. And besides, Miriam had a reputation for talking in parables, when she wasn’t working hard to match up all the unsuspecting single people in town.

She nodded as if she understood his confusion. “I’ll tell you why. Because everyone else decided to go back to sleep. The point is, Daniel, most folks didn’t really see that light—not with their hearts, anyway. So they just stayed home and waited for the miracle to come find them, instead of going out looking for one. I’m a firm believer in folks working for their miracles.”

She smiled and patted his arm again, and then she gestured toward the toy. “You know, you might think about buying that toy and putting it in the charity box at church. You have a merry Christmas, now, you hear?” she said. She turned and wheeled her cart down the aisle.

Daniel looked down at the toy. Miriam was right. He ought to get on with his life. And he’d been trying to do that.

But mostly failing. He’d just heard that Julia and her new husband were expecting a child. And the news had eaten into him like acid.

He stared at the little reindeer. And then he put it in his shopping cart.

* * *

Maryanne rigged up a temporary place in the hay for Joshua to sleep, swaddled in her big, warm, North Face jacket. Without her jacket it was cold in the barn, so she draped the old horse blanket around her shoulders. It stank, but it kept her from freezing.

If no one came home, it was going to get dark in the barn tonight. She needed to find a lantern or something. So she left the baby asleep and climbed down from the loft.

Twenty minutes of searching netted nothing like a lantern. Weren’t barns supposed to be cluttered with junk? This one was practically pristine.

The rain beat on the tin roof, and from the little ticking sound, she could tell that it had ice in it.

She cracked the big barn door and gazed out. The trees were taking a beating. Ice formed on the long, thick leaves of the big magnolia in the front yard. The tree stood at least thirty feet tall, but its branches were beginning to sag under the frozen weight.

The farmhouse remained dark. It brooded there in the fading light, making a mockery of her long-ago Christmas memories and the fantasy life she’d created out of them.

Maryanne squeezed her eyes closed and berated herself for the decision to leave the car. She would have been better off there. It was easier to warm a car’s interior with body heat than a big, wide-open barn. And besides, someone was sure to have found her out on Route 78 sooner or later.

But, then again, a single mother in a car with all her worldly possessions and a three-month-old baby was the sort of thing that brought out the do-gooders. She needed to avoid them at all costs. You could never trust a do-gooder. They always had ulterior motives.

Just then, a car pulled into the drive, its LED headlights looking ghostly blue in the rain. She ducked back into the shadows and watched the silver car’s back wheels spin as it struggled up the drive.

Wow, Cousin Jennifer was doing all right if she could afford a BMW 535i. In all the scenarios she’d spun about this moment, she’d never seen Jennifer driving a luxury car. She’d never thought of her cousin as being a rich person. Rich people were mostly mean, in Maryanne’s experience. They looked down on her. Or they self-righteously tried to “help” her.

In the end, all those well-meaning people tended to see her as a stereotype—a product of the foster care system. And lately, since Joshua, as a “single unwed mother” or a “welfare queen.” Half of them tried to get her to give Joshua up so she could finish college and make a better life, and the other half called her names for keeping her baby, like they thought being on public assistance was her goal in life.

Rich people had no idea what it was like to be a waitress, making less than minimum wage and hoping for tips. Rich people didn’t have to work that hard. Rich people didn’t have thankless jobs that provided no health care or child care. Rich people didn’t know what it was like to work your way through college one course at a time because that’s all you could afford. They didn’t know what it was like to fall through the safety net.

BOOK: A Christmas to Remember
11.99Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

The Abducted Book 0 by Roger Hayden
Midwinter Magic by Katie Spark
Glitter on the Web by Ginger Voight
Leaving Epitaph by Robert J. Randisi
Exposing the Bad Boy by Nora Flite