Hating Christmas (Holiday Series) (8 page)

“Maybe.”
Damn, damn, damn.

Levi followed behind his father as the older man made
for the house. Holly wasn’t going to understand even a little, how
this thing had turned. He wasn’t sure he understood himself.

* * * * * * * * *

“What were you thinking?” Holly hissed as she passed
Levi in the hall later that morning. “Talking your dad into giving
this marriage another shot? Are you crazy?”

He didn’t respond, merely sending her a sardonic
glance as he moved passed her and opened the door to his room.

With a glance at her mother’s closed door, Holly
didn’t move. “Levi. What were you thinking? They were so close to
splitting up. My mother was so mad at your dad that she was crying.
My mother
never
cries.”

“Come in here, if you must talk about it.” He held
his door open, lifting his brows as he glanced meaningfully toward
her mother’s room.

“Okay, but they’re too busy canoodling and promising
each other they’ll never fight again to hear anything I say.” Holly
knew her voice was waspish, but she couldn’t care less. To have
gotten so close to the goal, only to have Levi mess things up was
maddening.

Holly resisted the urge to tap her foot impatiently
as she looked around while he closed the door quietly behind her.
She’d been in the guest room a hundred times—even helping her
mother paint it Sonoma Taupe several years before. Having Levi’s
unmistakable Brioni suit jacket hung on the back of the colonial
desk chair, however, and a large pair of men’s running shoes in the
corner by the white ruffled bed made the whole room look different.
It even smelled of a subtle men’s cologne that she couldn’t quite
identify.

It suddenly seemed very personal, to be in his
bedroom with him. Holly kept her focus on Levi, but the inviting
white bed obtruded into her peripheral vision, as if it was calling
to them. Dirty, fun options suddenly occurred to her and she
squashed them immediately.

Focus, Holly. Focus.
She was mad at him, for
heaven’s sake.

“I didn’t encourage my dad to give it another shot,”
Levi denied, leaning back against the closed door.

“Well, you must have said something. When you
followed him out of here, he was furious, but he came back all
sweetness and light.”

“I know.” Levi let out a gusty breath of air, looking
down at his shoes.

“And then when I’m in there, comforting my
mother…talking to her about getting an annulment, your dad comes
bounding back in, begging for her forgiveness.” Hands resting on
her hips, she glared and waited for him to defend himself. “Tell me
that you couldn’t find him. That he drove off or locked himself in
the downstairs bathroom or something.”

A smile creased Levi’s tanned face. “Now, that would
have been funny.”

Her foot started tapping, despite her earlier
decision. “Levi!”

He shrugged, the smile disappearing from his face. “I
found him by the wood pile.”

“And?” She couldn’t help the impatience in her voice.
“Did you talk to him about the fight?”

“Yes, we talked about it.”

“Didn’t you point out to him that this fight just
shows they never should have married? Didn’t you say something
about their different money philosophies? Anything?”

“Look,” he said, pulling away from the door to walk
over and sit at the end of the bed, “I want our parents to see the
error of their ways just as much as you do—“

“Well, it doesn’t seem like it,” she said, unable to
keep the snide note out of her voice.

“—but,” the glance he sliced her was irritated, “I
don’t lie to my dad. I couldn’t agree that she was being
unreasonable not to want to spend money on another cruise so
quickly. He talked himself into forgiving your mother.”

Holly sank down to sit next to him at the foot of the
bed. If there was something she might have suggested when she and
her mother were redoing this room, it was to point out the lack of
seating options.

“They might have different approaches to money
management, but I happen to agree with your mother on this.”

“Really? I thought you expect all women to try to
bilk their husbands of their wealth?” The sarcastic remark left her
lips before she even realized it.

His glanced at her with loathing. “
Why
she
said what she said is up for debate, but what she said made
sense.”

Shaking her head, Holly mused, “Now why would an
older wife want to save her new husband’s money? I mean, what
nefarious reason could she have had?”

He didn’t answer this, looking even more
saturnine.

“So what did you say to your mother?” Levi’s question
was sharp. “Did you tell her to divorce my dad? Or did you try to
comfort her tears? Maybe
you
don’t actually want them to
break up.”

She gasped at this sudden assault.

Levi got up from his seat next to her on the bed,
pacing forward and then swinging back as if he were a litigator and
she was on trial. “Maybe this whole thing is a set-up and you and
your mom are working together to dig your claws into my dad.”

“That’s ridiculous!”

“What better way to work at that goal than to have
them fight over money with your mother looking as if she’s trying
to conserve his funds? I don’t see you doing anything to break up
this foolish marriage.” He glared at her, a muscle working in his
tight jaw.

“That’s because you were down on the woodpile talking
your father into giving it another chance!”

“Just admit it,” he insisted. “You both would benefit
from this marriage.”

“Oh, now I’m supposed to be in this, too?” She
bounced indignantly off the bed to face him. “I’m plotting with my
mother to steal your father’s retirement money?”

“Well, you’ve already shown–what with sneaking around
me to get Mac Toledo to appear in your documentary—that you don’t
mind taking the nefarious route.” His face was contemptuous.

“The two things aren’t the same, no matter what you
say, Levi Harper. Mac is his own person and I’m sure he’ll give
your cut of his pay from my film—“

“Probably buy my Starbuck’s for a month,” he
scoffed.

“—but this situation between my mother and your
father has nothing to do with that! I think they were impulsive and
foolish to get married so quickly. She had no need to do anything
that silly! My mom’s not hurting financially.”

He leaned back against the wall beside the door,
“You’re right about them getting married. They should have just
lived together and let this thing run its course.”

She looked at him in dislike. “I think they should
have just had a shipboard fling, like anyone in their right minds,
and let it go at that.”

“My dad’s old school.” Levi looked at her a long
minute. “He’s got this honor thing that always spells his
ruin.”

“Well, my mother won’t be his ruin—and she isn’t
after his money—but she’s old school, too.” Holly stood brooding,
staring sightlessly at the off-white pile in front of her. “They
should have just slept together and scratched the itch without
calling a parson.”

Levi came back and sat down on the bed, the steam
seeming to have left him. “We still need to find a way to help them
to realize this was just an itch thing.”

“My mother,” she said, going over to sit again next
to him on the bed, “doesn’t usually succumb to itches. She’s very
level-headed normally. I don’t know what got into her.”

“My dad’s a very sexy guy.” The glimmer of a smile
touched Levi’s lips. “Or so I’m told.”

She glanced at him with a quick answering smile. “I
can’t imagine who would have told you a thing like that, even if
they thought it.”

“She probably couldn’t control herself.” Levi
chuckled. “We Harper men have that effect on women.”

Holly snorted.

“You probably shouldn’t sit next to me,” he advised
her with a grin. “Lust might overcome you like it did your
mom.”

Starting to chuckle at the image his words brought to
her mind, she was soon giggling. “Stop. Eww. You’re making me
picture them naked together.”

Levi looked at her, dissolved with laughter, leaning
back on the bed next to him. “Well, it’s either that or she was
motivated by a desire to set herself up comfortably for the rest of
her life.”

“Now why’d you have to go there?” Holly’s desire to
laugh disappeared. “You have issues, you know?”

He shrugged. “That’s only true if I’m wrong. What if
I’m not wrong?”

“You don’t know my mother or anything about her,”
Holly snapped, the man had the power to madden, amuse and frustrate
her, all at once. How could she go so quickly from suffering a heat
wave at his nearness, to dissolving into laughter at his words to
wanting to strangle him?

***

“Mom, you don’t have to get these out every year.”
Kneeling beside the open ornament storage box, Holly carefully
dislodged the decorated ball from its tissue paper.

“I know,” her mom straightened from underneath the
tree they’d bought for the den, “but these ornaments hold such
wonderful memories from when you were younger. See? Remember when
we got this one that Christmas before your father started getting
really sick?”

Grimly affixing an ornament hanger, Holly passed the
ball to her mother. She remembered alright.

Her mother sighed nostalgically. “Such a pretty blue.
Your father loved this color.” Swinging around, she looked at her
daughter. “You should wear this color more often.”

“Because you have a Christmas ball that matches?”

“No,” her mother said as if she were talking to a
slow child, “because your dad loved it on you. Goes well with your
coloring, all that wonderful red hair of yours and your ivory
complexion.”

“Keeping the sunscreen companies in business,” Holly
muttered.

“Your dad loved the holidays, too. He wouldn’t have
wanted you to dislike Christmas the way you do.”

She didn’t respond, digging another tissue-wrapped
ornament out. Her own small apartment in LA was streamlined and
uncluttered. No Christmas crap there which was just the way she
liked it, despite her mother’s infatuation with the holiday.

“I don’t understand you not loving these.” Her mom
held up a pair of glass reindeer, depicted in frisky postures.

“Mom,” Holly paused in digging through the box, “how
come you still love all this stuff? I mean, the season hasn’t
always been good to us.”

Her mother swiveled around from the half-decorated
fir. “What do you mean?”

“You know,” she went back to digging through the
tissue. “Dad…everything after that.”

Her mom received the heavy mini-snow globe Holly
handed her. “Honey, you know I’ve always loved this time of year.
It’s magical and joyful. Your dad just happened to die in December.
It would have been terrible any time of the year.”

“I guess it’s just associated with loss for me.” Her
voice was flat to her own ears.

“I know.” Her mother’s smile was compassionate. “We
had different ways of coping with your dad dying then. I felt it
was a wonderful gift—to have him released from the cancer. To have
it happen just before the Christmas season seemed like a new start
for us. I know he wouldn’t have wanted us to grieve him
forever.”

Holly’s look was somber. “You stayed single a long
time…grieving.”

“That’s true.” Her mother’s voice was matter of fact.
“Your dad and I had a good marriage and I missed him terribly…I
still miss him sometimes. And now I’m married to Michael. I waited
until the right man came along and now I’m ready to start a
relationship again.”

“If he is the right guy,” Holly muttered under her
voice.

“I know this all took you and Levi a little by
surprise.” She hung up a tiny sled next to a red twinkling light.
“And I know that neither of you has the same enjoyment of Christmas
as Michael and I do, but I’m hoping you can wish us both happiness
and spend this short time here with us.”

Choking up suddenly, elbow-deep in tissue paper as
she searched for the last of the ornaments, Holly swallowed and
said, “I do wish you happy, Mom. Very happy. I just wish you and
Michael had dated a little longer….”

“Longer doesn’t mean better. We knew each other when
we were kids,” her mother said placidly.

Holly clenched her jaws to keep from pointing out
that shorter was almost guaranteed to mean the opposite. She’d
tried to dissuade her mother from taking this step when she’d
gotten the original phone call in Zambia before the ceremony.

Her mother sighed as she placed a frosted giant glass
acorn ornament near the top of the tree. “I just wish Levi wasn’t
so worried about his father. I’d never do him like Rebecca
did.”

Straightening from the ornament box, Holly frowned at
her mother. “Who?”

Audrey sighed again. “Rebecca. She was the woman
Michael married not long after Levi’s mother took off. She was a
little younger than he was and poor Levi just bonded with her.”

Shaking her head at the jarring image of the dark
sexy guy upstairs as “poor Levi”, she handed her mother the last
ornament. “What do you mean?”

Her mother carefully hung the twig ornament—made by
Holly when she was in grade school—before she turned back to her
daughter. “Levi connected to this woman after his mom abandoned
them and then when Michael and she had been married only two years,
it came out that she was stealing money from his checking account
and she’d run up a huge debt on his credit card. He’d given her
jewelry, too. Expensive stuff, which was all she liked.”

Bracing the step stool for her mom, Holly said, “What
happened?”

“She just left. Took the jewelry and left, without a
word to Michael or Levi. It was in November, I think, and Michael
had to pick up the pieces as best he could. I think it took him
several years to pay off the debt.”