Once Upon a Christmas (2 page)

“Then what’s with all the candles, Holly? I can hardly
see a thing in here,” he complained, finally whipping off his tie with a
last irritable tug.

He’s had a hard day,
Holly told herself.
Be nice
to him.

She patted the sofa cushion. “Mood lighting. You’ll get
used to it in a minute. Come sit by me.”

He did, first catching hold of her feet and swinging her
legs up on the coffee table to make more room. So much for her seductive pose.
She leaned into him and lay her head on the rain-dampened curve of his
shoulder. “Tough day?”

Brad dropped his head back and sighed, staring up at the
ceiling. “Yeah, you could say that.”

“Sorry,” she murmured, turning her head to glance
up at him. Even wet and grouchy he looked good, like a glossy sort of Young
Republican poster boy—not a single dark hair deviated from its prescribed
course. Holly admitted to no one but herself Brad was more skilled with styling
gel than she was.

She didn’t want to ask about his day and be treated to an
hour-long discourse on the impossibility of practicing medicine on a bunch of
patients who—as Brad put it—wouldn’t recognize common sense if it fell on their
heads. Once he got started on that, things would really go awry. So she slid a
little closer and started undoing his top shirt button.

“Holly.”

Buttons two and three down. He was always telling her how he
was tired of making the first move. Tonight would be different. She moved lower
and tackled button number four.

“Holly.” This time Brad caught her wrists in his
hands, as though she’d maul him if unrestrained. “Give me a little time to
decompress, okay? It’s been a long day.”

“Okay. Sure.”

He let go of her wrists and pulled the ends of his shirt
together again. Paradise lost.

“How about a drink, then?” Holly asked brightly.
She filled two wineglasses with rosé and handed him one.

He drained his glass, then set it on the glass-topped
wrought-iron coffee table with a thunk that set the tabletop ringing,
completely bypassing the coasters he usually insisted on using. Holly frowned.
Either Brad was very, very thirsty or his mood was even worse than she’d
thought.

She splashed more rosé in his glass, hoping it was the
former. When Brad finally looked at her, fixing her with what she immediately
recognized as his I’m-serious-as-Hell look, Holly knew it was the latter.

“I’m sorry, Holly,” he said, now looking
everywhere but at her. “Really sorry. But I just can’t do this anymore.
You and me…it’s not working. Things just aren’t right for me.”

Cold trickled down her spine. Of course things were right.
She’d planned everything, down to his favorite ratatouille simmering on the
stove, down to the CDs she’d programmed on the stereo, down to the perfume the
tastefully made-up woman at the Esteé Lauder counter had assured Holly was “irresistible,
dear.”

She wouldn’t have gone to such trouble for a doomed
relationship, would she?

“What do you mean?” Her voice sounded faraway,
broken. She finished off her wine for fortification and glanced at him. Any
second now he’d come out with some clichéd line like, “I need some space,
that’s all,” and she’d nod wisely and tell him she’d been thinking exactly
the same thing about herself, wasn’t that funny, ha ha. And then she’d brain
him with the wine bottle and boot him out into the rain.

“I—” He spread out his arms in a choreographed
sort of helpless gesture, careful not to actually touch her. “I’ve got to
get away for a while, do some thinking. I guess I just need some space, that’s
all.”

Oh, God.
“Brad, I—” Her lower lip trembled
and her chin wobbled. She would
not
cry, she wouldn’t. Holly poured more
rosé and gulped it down. “I…that’s funny, ‘cause I was just thinking the
same thing.”

Her croaked statement lacked a certain conviction, but it
was the best she could do under the circumstances.

He pressed both hands to his thighs and pushed up from the
sofa. “I knew you’d understand,” he said, ruffling her hair as he
passed by.

So much for her carefully arranged, seductive hairstyle.

“Mmmm—what’s that great smell?” he went on,
looking brisk and assured.
Whew,
his expression said.
Glad that’s
over with!
Brad hated scenes. “Mind if I eat before I pack up? I’m
starving.”

“It’s ratatouille,” she replied numbly. “Help
yourself.”

“Help yourself?
You actually said to him, ‘Gee,
Brad, help yourself’? Oh, Holly.”

Feeling miserable, Holly slumped further in the corner of
her kitchen banquette. She rested her cheek against its soft yellow upholstery.

“Quit shaking your head at me, Clarissa. Come on, it
wasn’t as dumb as it sounds. It just popped out. I couldn’t help it.”

“Uh-huh.”

“It was supposed to sound cosmopolitan. ‘Sure,
darling—of course we can still be friends,’ something like that. You know. And
I didn’t say, ‘gee,’ either,” Holly added indignantly. “Geez, you’re
supposed to be my friend! What am I supposed to do now?”

Clarissa gave her a sympathetic look. “Sorry. I didn’t
realize Brad the Bad meant so much to you.”

“Ha, ha.” With a sigh Holly wrapped one arm around
her upraised knees and reached for her cup of cappuccino—courtesy of the
espresso machine Brad had left behind. She’d need to drink a gallon of the
stuff to feel awake after what she’d been through. Maybe two gallons. In fact,
maybe she should just skip a step and gnaw on the coffee beans. The wine she’d
drunk last night had been a mistake, especially when followed by a can of Brad’s
orphaned beer and a vodka chaser. She didn’t know what she’d been thinking.

“I feel like such an idiot. I didn’t even see it
coming. How could I have been so blind?”

“You weren’t blind, he was stupid,” Clarissa
replied loyally. “What kind of cheesy line is that anyway?” She
flipped her long pale hair over her shoulders and pantomimed a Brad-like
stance, both hands on her hips with her chest thrust forward. “‘Babe, I
need my space.’ Didn’t that line go out about the same time lava lamps did?”

Holly managed a brief smile. Clarissa was right. Brad’s
reasons for ending their relationship were weak, but the fact of the matter
was, he didn’t really need an excuse. He only needed to be gone for it to be
over, and he was.

She was alone. All alone. Completely, utterly alone. The
holidays were on their way, and she’d be alone then, too. Thanksgiving for one.
A solo Christmas. A blue Christmas. A blue, blue, blue, blue Christmas.

Lord, she sounded pathetic. Poor me. Pity party.
Get a
grip already,
Holly commanded herself.
You’ve got a good job, good
friends, a good life. Where’s your self-respect?

“Anyway, I have a plan,” she announced.

Clarissa grinned. “Somehow, I thought you would.”

“What’s funny? In case you haven’t noticed, this could
be considered a tragic moment in my life, here.” She picked up a pen and
opened her day planner, trying to ignore her friend’s skeptical expression. “Okay.
Brad and I have been together for a little over a year now. No problems until
last night.”

“Really? That’s amazing.”

“You’re turning into a cynic.”

Clarissa carried both coffee cups to the sink. Prompted by
Holly’s meaningful glance at the brown-ringed mugs, she turned on the tap and
gave each one a cursory swish. “No, really. Didn’t the two of you ever
argue? About anything?”

“Nope.”

“Hmmph.” Clarissa grabbed a cinnamon-raisin bagel
from the basket on the kitchen table and settled back on the other banquette,
picking out the raisins with her long red manicured fingernails. She popped a
raisin in her mouth, then another. “I’ve got to be honest here, Holly
Berry. That’s abnormal.”

“It’s true,” Holly insisted, printing one last
note in her day planner. “Maybe we didn’t argue because we were so
well-suited for each other.”

“Well-suited? Did we warp back into the dark ages when
I wasn’t looking? What are you talking about, well-suited? I don’t think
arranged marriages are happening anymore.”

“Very funny.” Ticking off each similarity on her
fingers, Holly said, “Brad and I are the same age. We went to the same
schools. Both of us grew up here. We’ve got the same goals—”

“Career, career, and…career?” Clarissa
suggested.

“No, I mean life goals. Like we both want a family.”
Or at least Brad hadn’t actively discouraged her on those few occasions when
she’d talked about having children together someday. Holly tilted her head
sideways, thinking. There had to be more things they had in common. “We’re
even the same height,” she announced triumphantly.

Twirling the remains of her bagel on one finger, Clarissa
asked, “Really? I always thought Brad was taller than you.”

“I slouched,” Holly admitted. They both grinned.
Meanly. “But all the right elements were there, and I’m not just going to
let this pass me by. I’m practically thirty—”

“Nearly dead,” Clarissa broke in, nodding and
grinning.

“—and it’s time I settled down.”

Clarissa shook her head. “You’ve got to be the most
settled down person I know. You’ve got a retirement plan. You’ve got
coordinated bath towels, for crying out loud. Even my mother doesn’t have
towels that match.”

Holly’s towels did match. Down to the washcloths, they were
all a suitably masculine burgundy color, the only one she and Brad had both
liked.

“There’s more to life than decorating,” Holly
said, ignoring Clarissa’s raised eyebrows. “Besides, Brad and I had a good
relationship. Maybe we were taking each other for granted, maybe some of the
spark went out of things, but I think we had something worth saving.”

Clarissa looked doubtful. Well, let her, Holly thought
rebelliously. It wasn’t
Clarissa’s
love life that had taken a nose dive.
Clarissa had been happily married for three years now. She could afford to take
the high moral ground.

Squinting at the notes she’d penned neatly in her day
planner, Holly went on. “Anyway, my theory is what we’ve got here is a
fear of commitment. I think Brad and I just got so close it scared him.”

“I guess so. Maybe.”

“Your enthusiasm is too much for me,” Holly
muttered wryly. She gathered her convictions again. “It’s like I said.
Maybe Brad and I were taking each other for granted and got caught in a rut, or
something.”

She hoped her reasoning sounded more convincing to Clarissa
than it suddenly did to her. Last night, lying in bed alone, it had all made
perfect sense. Unfortunately, Holly hadn’t come up with any better
interpretations since then.

Her feelings, her love life, her pride were at stake. Her
life didn’t
feel
like it was supposed to anymore, and she couldn’t bear
to sit back and do nothing at all about it.

“I mean, Brad didn’t actually say we were through,”
she said, “not in so many words…”

Clarissa gaped at her. “Oh, geez, tell me you don’t
mean what I think you mean—”

Holly nodded, smiling with renewed hope at the notes she’d
made. Her plan. Just looking at it made her feel a little better.

“You guessed it. I’m going to win Brad back. I’ve
already got it all planned out. And I’ll need your help to do it.”

Clarissa smacked her palm against her forehead. “Lord
help us. That’s just what I was afraid of.”

Sam McKenzie had always loved the last day of school. His
final act as a student each year had been to haul everything out of his locker
and cram it in a backpack for the trip home—where it would sit, untouched,
until September. Now, as the college English professor he’d become, things
weren’t much different.

Sure, these days it was his desk he emptied out, and his
things were going in a battered old box instead of a backpack. But as he wedged
the last file folder beneath his weighty American Literature text, Sam doubted
he’d crack a book again before January rolled around.

For much of the semester, he’d been filling in for Professor
Alvarez, who—until this week—had been on maternity leave. Now that she was
back, Sam had cut his own semester short to turn her students over to her
again.

The decision left him at loose ends, with no classes to
teach until winter term—not that he minded very much. Somebody had needed to
fill in for Lupe, so Sam had volunteered. They were friends, and he’d never
been on the tenure track, anyway. He didn’t much care about impressing the
faculty. All he cared about was teaching.

Okay, teaching
and
his family. Which explained why
Sam was leaving Tucson for a couple of months, headed back to his hometown of
Saguaro Vista, where a temporary job with his dad’s construction company
waited.

Working for McKenzie & Sons was something Sam tried to
do on a regular basis, especially now that his father’s arthritis was kicking
up more often. He liked working with his hands, liked mixing it up with the
carpenters and roofers and bricklayers. They reminded him of where he’d come
from and what was
real
…as did the inevitable
get-a-haircut-and-get-a-real-man’s-job lecture from his father that was the
price of admission. Until after the holidays, Sam would belong to that world
again. Just as soon as he said good-bye to this one.

He hefted the box in his arms. “Okay, I’m outta here.”

Malcolm Jeffries, campus advisor for returning students and
Sam’s officemate for the past semester, sniffed vaguely but didn’t bother to
look up. He’d made his disapproval of what he called Sam’s “unorthodox
teaching methods” plain from the start, and Malcolm was nothing if not
unvarying in his opinions. It had made for a bumpy partnership.

Today, not even Malcolm’s standardized-test-approach to life
could get to Sam. “Hey, have a good rest of the semester,” he told
Malcolm with a grin. “See you next year.”