ON SATURDAY, they arrived late, due to traffic, and Fleming seemed nervous as she danced across the parking lot to her parents’ apartment building. Jason turned back, holding out his key fob to lock the car doors. He caught up with her as she reached the foyer.
“What’s up with you?” he asked as they stepped into the elevator.
“I don’t know. I get like this. They have their friends there, and they want me to be all interesting, but I’m just me. I feel like a sore thumb.”
“You’re interesting. Certainly not an introvert.”
She punched the button to take them to the tenth floor. “I’m not sure how you’d know that.” She studied herself in the reflective metal walls and primped her hair a little. She fascinated him, a mixture of indifference to her own beauty and the will to look good for Katherine and her husband’s sake.
“You really don’t want to be at this party, do you? I’m not sure you were this nervous in my office, talking mortgage terms.”
“I always come to please my mother, and I’m glad that Hugh considers me his daughter and wants to show me off to his friends. My own dad was never that proud I was his.” She tugged at the scarf around her throat. “What are you going to say when Hugh starts giving you the once-over because you came with me?”
“I’m here to back you up.” That wasn’t bad. Not a commitment. Not a promise that they’d mean something to each other in the future. Not even a date. Just one friend having another’s best interests at heart.
“Are you?” She ducked her head to hide a grin that made him smile. “Thanks,” she said. “So if I decide to bolt—”
“Not sure why you would, but I’d remind you that bolting would not please your mother or your stepfather.”
“You understand more about Christmas than I thought you did—oh, no.” She looked at Jason’s empty hands. “Where’s the wine?”
“I’m sorry—I forgot it in the car. You go ahead. I’ll go back for it,” he offered as the doors opened on the tenth floor.
Fleming hesitated, her hand stopping the elevator from closing. “All right. I’ll see you inside. They’re the only apartment on this level.”
Fleming’s stepfather must be even more successful than Jason had understood. He wondered why she hadn’t asked him for help… maybe a loan of some kind. “See you in a few minutes.”
The doors began to shut, sliding along their track.
Fleming smiled, but tonight she was the one who looked as if she was alone and lonely. “I thought you had my back,” she accused.
* * *
IT WAS A silly thing to say, even as a joke. She wished she’d kept the thought inside her head where it had sounded funnier, but somehow going to her mother’s door with a handsome, self-assured man at her side had seemed easier than just showing up alone like the spinster daughter she felt she was.
A sore thumb of the greatest magnitude.
She didn’t need a man. It was ridiculous. What year was this?
But Jason wasn’t just any man. He was the guy who showed up when she needed a boost, a taller person to reach the awning where her Christmas lights hung, the guy who went back for the wine. He was the man who’d tried to help her.
He was also the man who didn’t mean to stay in Bliss, so she’d better not let herself feel any more than she already did.
Throwing back her shoulders as if preparing for a high jump, she walked to the door and pushed the doorbell.
A previous tenant had installed a chime that played “There’s No Place Like Home.” Fleming and Hugh thought it was funny, but her mother hated it, so they never used the bell unless a party was going on and knocking got drowned out by noise.
Everyone inside laughed at the song, too. Fleming was smiling as Hugh opened the door.
Behind him, people milled, men and women in their holiday finery. She caught the glitter of diamonds in earlobes and shiny, newly done hair. Formal gowns mixed with cocktail dresses and nice suits along with one or two tuxedos.
“You came.” Hugh hugged her as if she were a gift. She recognized “The Holly and the Ivy” playing on the sound system. “Come in, come in.” He dragged her over the doorstep and craned his head, searching for Katherine. “Your mother started to doubt, but I told her you wouldn’t let her down. You should have brought a friend. Are you staying the night?”
“I brought someone, but we can’t stay the night. I have to open the store tomorrow, and he always has a mountain of paperwork.”
Hugh straightened. “Do I know this guy?”
“He’s not a date, Hugh.” She shrugged her coat off. “It’s Jason, and we’re really just acquaintances.”
“The bank’s hired gun?” Hugh sized up the situation with a wry smile. “The one who might evict you? I was joking when I said he liked you too much to close the doors on the shop.”
“But you were sort of right. I’m sure Mom told you how he helped me with the loan.”
“Why would you bring him? I want her to enjoy Christmas, not have to face the guy who’s causing her sleepless nights.”
“Is she having trouble sleeping?” Fleming hoped not. “You should try to distract her from worrying about me. I’m working hard, and things are going all right. They could be better, but they’re all right.”
“Will that be enough? What does your banker friend say?”
“He seems as hopeful as we are, but that could be wishful thinking.” Which didn’t seem like Jason’s style. “But be nice to him, Hugh. He doesn’t have anyone in Bliss. Not even in Tennessee, really.” She thought about his mother, but let the thought fade away. The woman must have come to Bliss after she heard about Jason’s arrival, or surely Fleming would have heard of her by now. “Anyway, I thought he’d enjoy some Christmas spirit with us, and he offered to come.”
“He won’t try to talk business with your mother?”
“You mean will he offer me another deal I can’t refuse through her?”
Hugh cracked a smile. “Is he that kind of banker?”
“He’s not a banker. He understands banking, but he’s a consultant who fixes sick businesses, and he seems like an honest guy. I don’t think he’s enjoying his current job.” She held up her coat. “Not that he’d be spreading his doubts around if he had any. Where can I hang this? Is the closet full?”
“I’ll put it away. Your friend’s meeting you here? He didn’t come with you?” He took the coat and wrapped it over his arm.
“We drove from Bliss together. I brought some wine, but we forgot it in his car so he’s gone back for it.”
“Honey.” Her mother materialized from the crowd of happy, laughing guests. “You came. I’m so glad. How was the drive? You look lovely.”
“Thanks, Mom.” She’d owned this dress for at least four years. It was starting to look like a schoolgirl’s best. Acquaintance or not, she wanted to look good for—with—Jason. He’d go home and maybe he’d talk about the backwoods woman from Tennessee who still dressed as if she were on her way to a college formal.
Or maybe he’d forget her the second he crossed the city limits, never to return.
“There’s No Place Like Home” rang out, and her mom sighed.
“One day I’ll persuade Hugh to change that thing.”
“That’ll be Jason, Mom.”
“Jason?” Katherine’s brows arched as she reached for the doorknob. “When did you start seeing him?”
“I’m not seeing him. Please don’t embarrass me. He’s not staying in Bliss, and I don’t need a matchmaker, not you or Hugh.”
“I’m not matchmaking. I notice you say he’s not staying?”
“He’s not.”
“So you’ve asked?”
“I don’t have to. He’s been clear about it from the start.”
“And that matters to you. Oh, dear. I have clearly been too uninvolved in your life.”
Thank goodness, thought Fleming, because unfortunately, she feared she was getting serious about her feelings for Jason. “Mom, I’m begging you to be careful. Don’t say anything mean to him. Don’t be unkind about his job.”
“You’re the one who brought Scrooge to my party.” Katherine had yanked the door open. Jason had to have heard. Unless he’d gone deaf. Hardly the kind of holiday joy to wish on anyone.
“Ho ho humbug,” Jason said.
Fleming envied him his cool.
* * *
“I DIDN’T MEAN IT. What I said earlier.” Katherine passed Jason a glass of wine when they finally met up again. Fleming had towed him around the room, introducing him to her parents’ friends. “I just meant that your job requires you to be a sort of Scrooge to the people in Bliss who—” She stopped.
“May lose their homes or businesses.” He finished the thought for her. He took the glass and sipped. “I’ve thought of that a time or two.”
“I’m sorry. I was incredibly rude. I can only blame my lack of manners on my concern for Fleming.”
“You mean because she brought me this evening?”
Katherine measured him with a look, as if she wasn’t quite sure what to expect from him, and he turned to search for Fleming. What was going on with her that had made her mother so overprotective?
“I worry that she’s giving up her dreams to support mine.” Katherine clearly wasn’t sharing the whole truth. He read people well enough to know when someone was hiding something. “I probably shouldn’t have told you that.”
If Fleming had other dreams, she was keeping them close to the vest. What were they, if not the store? “I know how hard she’s working. She must want that shop. Maybe more than even you know.”
“Probably.” She turned, a little harried. But she was a hostess, and this was a large gathering. She had a lot on her mind. “What can I get you? Are you hungry?”
“I’m fine, Katherine.”
“Where has Fleming gone?”
“She’s talking to her stepfather.” Jason nodded toward Fleming and the stocky man. Fleming glanced his way. He nodded. She smiled, a blush coloring her cheeks.
They were a couple tonight. He’d brought her. She’d come with him. They were together. Just for tonight—no past, no future.
He took another wineglass from a passing server. “Will you excuse me, Katherine?” he said.
“She doesn’t like wine.” Katherine plucked the second glass from his fingers. “She usually arrives early at a party, and she asks for cranberry juice in a nice glass. It’s not exactly the right color, but most people don’t notice.”
“Why?” he asked.
“Why what?” Katherine smiled. “Why the wine? Why the juice?”
“Why try to pass one off for the other? I wouldn’t have thought Fleming cared what other people thought about her.”
“She was in college when she turned twenty-one. All her friends embraced drinking, but it just never appealed to her, and she said she felt like the odd woman out. She told me she had a friend who called her their token temperance crusader. She doesn’t care about drinking—I mean, she doesn’t think there’s anything wrong with it. She just doesn’t enjoy the taste.”
“I still can’t imagine her pretending to be someone she isn’t.”
Katherine tsked at him. “She would never do that. She’s the most honest woman I know. Just a little quirky.”
He held up both hands. “We seem determined to misunderstand each other. I’m sorry.”
“So am I. Let me get Fleming for you.”
“Katherine, I don’t need you to get her.” He touched her arm, gently, because she seemed so wary, even here in her own home. “I’m sorry we’ve gotten off to such an uncomfortable start tonight.”
“That’s my fault. I love my daughter. I’d do anything for her, and I’m concerned about her future.”
He took a sip of his wine. That was a concept foreign to him, a parent worrying and fighting for their child’s happiness. “I don’t know you very well, but I respect the fact that you love your daughter, and that you appreciate the store for what it gave you when you needed a living.”
She nodded. “That’s right.”
“You don’t have to be afraid I’m going to shut down the place on a whim, or push Fleming to keep it until she can’t get out of it without losing everything.”
“Because you might lose your job if the bank fails?”
“I couldn’t care less about that,” he said, and in that moment, he meant it. His family’s bank mattered to his father. It was a consultancy for him.
“You don’t care right now because you want to get along with Fleming’s family and friends, and I assume you’re decent enough to hate what this job is doing to people already in financial trouble. But later, if your reputation is involved…”
“My reputation is always involved. I get new work via word of mouth from satisfied clients, but I’ve never pushed anyone to undertake business they couldn’t handle.”
A palm touched the small of his back, and suddenly, he was deeply in the present, aware of Fleming’s touch, yes, but also of the scent of gingerbread, the glitter of the tinsel, and the wrapping paper on the gifts beneath Katherine and Hugh’s tree.
This was what a Christmas could be. Family, looking out for each other, caring. This was what it should be. But it was also what he’d missed since the earliest holidays he could remember.
“Mom, what are you saying to Jason? I thought we were celebrating the season tonight, but you seem to be talking business.” Fleming glanced at the glasses on a tray that sailed by on a server’s hand. “Maybe you should have a bite to eat and a drink. And try to let down your guard.”
“I know,” Katherine said. “I get nervous and I talk too much. I’m not myself tonight.”
“What’s up?” Fleming asked.
“Nothing.” Katherine made a valiant effort to shake off her concerns. “I’ve behaved in a shocking manner toward Jason, and I should be apologizing, rather than making my excuses.”
Seeing Fleming’s deepening concern, he backed up and touched her arm. “I’ll give you two a few minutes.”
He took a turn around the room, moving anywhere the two women were not. A set of glass doors were thrown open onto the balcony, presumably to allow cool December air inside the stuffy apartment. A man and woman drifted outside.
Jason crossed to the bar and asked for a beer and some juice in a wineglass. Afterward, he saw Katherine and Fleming standing together, apart from the crowd.
“Just in time,” Katherine said as he returned. “I think we were on the verge of an ugly argument.” She smiled, bringing to mind the old saying about there being truth in every slightly bitter joke. “I must see to my guests. You two have a lovely evening. If you decide you want to stay, we have plenty of room, and we’d love to have you both.”
She sailed away, pulling poise around herself like a jacket.
“I like your mother. She just wants you to make choices that give you the best life. I don’t mean to sound as if I’m offering sage advice from behind my desk, but you want her to live her life, and she’s trying to help you live a safe one. I understand you’re both trying to make things right for each other.” Jason passed the glass of juice to Fleming. “Your own special concoction,” he said.
Confusion passed over her face. “Mom told you about the juice. You probably think I’m immature and ridiculous.”
“I think you prefer juice.”
She paused, but then laughed, and her laughter bathed him in familiarity. They might not get along smoothly 100 percent of the time, and they might want different things from life, but they met somewhere in the middle. In some ways they were like calling to from the isolation of two lonely lives.
Maybe Jason was right in his outlook, refusing to see possibilities. Loneliness was not a rock-strong foundation.
“My mother feels guilty because as soon as she sold me the store, we started having problems,” Fleming said, taking the glass from his hand. Her fingers brushed his, though she didn’t seem to notice. “She was just quizzing me on sales figures. This should be our best month. That’s why she’s worried. If we can’t turn a profit in December, she fears we’re doomed.”
“She might have a point,” he said. “But remind your mom that the first payment on the new loan isn’t due until February. You have time if you really want it, Fleming.”
He couldn’t help encouraging her, because he didn’t want her to worry. He wanted to save the holiday for her.
“Why do you and my mother keep treating me as if I’m playing store in my spare time? I’m working as hard as I can to make a living. I’m invested, and I’m not sure why I have to prove it to either of you. You’re not involved. Remember?” She sipped her cranberry juice and her lips pursed, making him smile instead of reacting to her taunt.
It wasn’t the time or the place, and she had a point.
“You don’t like that stuff, either?” he asked.
“I like the way it hits the front of your mouth. Orange juice gets you in the back of your throat, but cranberry is more intense.”
“You talk as if it’s a fine wine.”
“And you managed to change the subject.” She held out her hand. “Come with me. I’ll show you my very first Christmas ornament. You’ll understand Mom better when you see she’s kept every ornament she’s given me since the year I was born.”
“I thought mothers did that to give them to their children as a start on their own collection of ornaments.”
“Mom’s different. Maybe she’ll pass them along one day, but right now, she likes to relive my childhood via the ornaments. We end up talking about them every Christmas season. Same stories every year.”
“You don’t want to hear them?” he asked, and suddenly, old memories flashed through his mind, images of a big, red, metal fire truck, or the window he’d sat in, blowing to fog the glass so he could write his name with his finger. He’d waited for his own mother in that window until he was so cold he was shivering, and his grandmother had appeared, insisting he needed to warm up in bed before Santa came.
“I love hearing them over and over. We travel through the good years and the bad ones until we reach the present, which always seems more hopeful on Christmas Eve. Mom suggests it’ll be the same for me when I have children of my own. Then I’ll want them to know who I was, and I’ll need to remember—and according to her, I’ll bore the daylights out of them with the stories she’s told me.”
Fleming didn’t sound as if she minded the idea. They’d slowly circled the room together as they talked, and they ended up in front of the tree.
“I wonder if she’s right.” Jason palmed a small, perfectly recreated train that fitted as if it were made for his hand. “I do wonder who my parents were.”
“Why your mother left, and why your father didn’t go after her and drag her back to your home, where she belonged?”
He turned to look into Fleming’s face. Knowledge gleamed in her gaze. “That’s what you thought about your own parents?” he asked. “Even though you knew what your father was like?”
“I don’t think anyone should be dragging anyone else, but yeah, I wonder why my father chose to disappear from my life for so long.” She glanced her mother’s way as if thinking about her birth father was somehow a betrayal. “How could I help wondering why he didn’t love Mom and me? A lot of the kids I knew had divorced parents, but they all had two of them. Fathers showed up every other weekend, maybe baffled about what they were supposed to do, sometimes forgetting treats for soccer practice, but they were there—and happy to be with their children.”
Jason didn’t want to look her in the eye. He was afraid of what his own expression might expose. “You remember those times more at the holidays. When you see other families together, enjoying each other, it’s hard not to wonder what went wrong with your own.”
Fleming moved around the tree.
“This is my first ornament.” She touched a small woven basket that held a pink-diapered baby whose dark red curls were disheveled by time or small hands that had touched them too often. “Mom told me she and my father chose it together. I was born in October, and I like to think they were still happy, at least when they found this.”
“It’s well loved,” he said, wishing for her sake that Hugh’s obvious affection for her could have been enough to heal all the wounds her birth father had inflicted.
“I guess I kept looking into that basket,” she said, putting it back. Then she bent and took another ornament off a low-hanging branch.
This one was a small, white clapboard house on a platform of snow. Smoke curled out of the chimney. A Christmas tree blinked chips of brightly colored glass as lights just off the porch. The windows glowed with golden light that flickered as if it came from candles. “This one’s my favorite. That glow was like love to me coming from the imaginary family that lived there. I made up stories about lots of families who might have lived in this house.”
“How old were you when your mother gave you that one?”
“I bought it myself when I was seventeen.”
“You made up your own family at seventeen,” he said, with no attempt at subtlety.
Her smile wasn’t real. Her gaze shifted away from his. “Maybe we’ve talked enough.”
“Maybe the reason we talk so much is that you know I’m leaving, and I don’t doubt you’re staying.”
“You’re saying in yet another way that we’re off-limits to each other.” Fleming turned back to the tree. Her shoulders seemed to droop a little as she put the ornament back. Her hands seemed fragile, the small bones vulnerable, as she slipped the ornament’s sturdy gold cord around a branch. “But what I don’t know is why you continue to run. You don’t have to leave Bliss. You can live anywhere you want, and I know you’re getting attached.”
“Attached?” He felt as if he was holding his breath. No one made him feel like this. He didn’t want to. It was like suffocating.
“To the town. To your house.” She flicked a glance over her shoulder. “To some of the people who live in Bliss.”
Which ones? Deep inside, he faced the truth. Only one person. Fleming mattered to him. Fleming’s feelings were important, and he’d protect her from any more hurt if he could.
“I’m curious about the town, and the past I don’t remember. My family had a place there once. I don’t.”
“You’ve started building a life there, even if you never meant to.” She froze, as he tried to understand whether she was asking for a commitment he didn’t know how to make. “Or maybe I’ve said too much again.”
He turned her around, making sure he was gentle. He touched her hair, drawn to the silky texture because he’d never touched a woman so soft and so vibrant with life. Everything about her was different. “I like your town, and I’ve tried to help the people. I care about you, but Bliss is not my home. I don’t want to be tied down.”
Fleming looked up at the tree, not at him. “Why is living somewhere being tied down? Bliss could be your home if you chose. You only have to want to stay somewhere.”
“But I don’t.” He wouldn’t lie to her, and even her suggestion that he could choose to stay in one job in one place made his feet itch to travel. “Staying is not my strong point.”
“But why? Why do you choose to leave the place that belongs to you? Whether it’s New York where your family lives or here, why do you choose to leave the people who care about you?”
“Because I’m not the kind of man who inspires that kind of love,” he said. “And maybe I don’t know how to give it. I get bored. With the same work, the same faces, the same people.”
It might be brutal, but it would be crueler to pretend. She deserved more and better than a guy who lied to make her care for him.
Fleming reached out and touched the small house with her index finger. She didn’t speak. He didn’t push her.
She knew what he had to offer. Right now, and nothing more.
Suddenly, with energy that startled him, she turned. Her smile was as false as any lie he could have told her. “I’m staying here tonight. Mom will drive me home in the morning in time to open the store.”
She touched his sleeve, above his hand. The way she’d say goodbye to a customer she knew well, but not intimately. Her warmth was not real.
“Thank you for coming with me tonight. I enjoyed our talk. Be safe getting back through the mountains.”
With that, she turned and was gone.
Jason felt empty. He wanted to be with this beautiful, selfless woman, but he was no match for her. He wanted his own life, privacy, to come and go as he pleased, with no commitments. And no expectations.
She didn’t seem to understand he was offering her ultimate freedom, as well. They could choose to be together, but they didn’t have to spout the ridiculous promises people made to each other. And then always broke.
“Excuse me. I believe you’re Jason Macland?”
The stocky man who’d given Fleming’s mother the freedom to choose her own unconventional way of life stood at Jason’s shoulder.
“I am,” he said.
“My daughter asked me to tell you good-night.”
“I’m leaving. You don’t have to throw me out.”
Hugh’s smile tilted. “That was the impression she gave me, too—that I should make sure the door closed behind you. I don’t understand, and I don’t mean to be rude. You can’t see her again, because she told me she’s going to bed, but you’re welcome to food and drink.” Hugh turned, opening his hand to the room, like the ringmaster in a circus. “And to fellowship with our friends.”
“Thanks.” Jason offered his hand. “I should be going. I have a long drive.”
“Well, good night, then. Let me walk you to the door. I don’t see my wife anywhere.”
If he knew Katherine at all, she’d hurried down the hall toward the bedrooms, close on Fleming’s heels. “Thank her for her hospitality. And thank you. I enjoyed this evening.”
“Somehow I don’t think so,” Hugh said. “But I’m glad we had a moment to speak. I wanted to thank you for all you’ve done for Fleming. I wish she would have accepted my help, but I am grateful that you’ve offered her your assistance.”
“I may not have done her a favor.” Jason had to admit, finally, that he’d put extra effort into finding a loan that would work for Fleming because he’d been drawn to her from that first moment in his office. She’d become a part of his life, an urgent requirement he was determined to ignore.
He wasn’t ready to make the commitment she needed. He was still the guy who had her business in his hands. “I’ll have to foreclose if she misses payments.”
Hugh all but sputtered. “Well,” he managed to say, his face ruddy for a renowned cardiologist, “Merry Christmas to you.”