LOOKING AT JASON’S facts and figures, Fleming felt as if she’d ended up at the top of the naughty list. “I’d love to talk to Mr. Paige about why he did this.”
“I’ve talked to him. He has a story about how the bank didn’t set him up with a fair retirement, and he was just providing for his own. Forget about him. You have to concentrate on what you want. Does this store mean as much to you as it did to your mother?”
“Are you suggesting I give it up?” Fleming eyed the numbers on his tablet screen with horror and reached blindly for her hot chocolate. “My mom and I both love that store. I have to find a way to keep it.”
He straightened. “For your mother?”
“For me.” She had a secret she never shared, not even with her mother. Writing. She’d thought she’d have that and the store, and one would feed the other. She’d been making up stories about their customers since she first stood on a step stool behind the counter.
So far her writing hadn’t gone the way she’d dreamed of, but none of her plans included walking away from the store that had been her after-school care, her shelter from the storms of childhood and her summer job each year of college.
It had been her and her mother’s place. Like their home. She couldn’t walk away.
“Fleming?”
“It matters to me, too, but I didn’t actually understand how much business has fallen off this year. How can a shop that caters to Christmas fail in November in a resort town that explodes in population this time of year?”
“Give me a try,” he said. “I’ll help.
She felt sick. “That’s exactly what Mr. Paige said.”
“But Paige was lying. I don’t lie.” Jason dusted his hands on his jeans. “It’s business,” he said. “The fewer loans we lose, the better off we are.”
“I think you’re telling me you’re giving me more time at a slightly lower interest rate, but I’ll still be paying almost the same amount over the life of the loan.”
He nodded. “I want to help you, but I can’t actually take a loss on the arrangement.”
With shaking fingers, Fleming leafed through the pages of notes and compared the figures he’d jotted down to her income and outgoing debt payments. She got up and grabbed her phone off the island to open the calculator and rerun the equations.
Her cheeks flushed, but she ducked her head and tried to let her hair flow over her face. She could almost feel his longing to get out of here, making the whole situation even more humiliating.
“It’s a building,” he said. “Not a person. Not a member of your family.”
“You say that because you haven’t found the place you want to stay. You aren’t tied to a building or people.” Though Fleming didn’t buy that all bankers were that detached.
“I’m asking you to think about this decision, the same way I’ll ask everyone else I have to see. If you take on new terms, you’ll be putting a lot of money and even more time into a place. You can get another job.”
She shook her head stubbornly, trying to see herself anywhere but in Bliss, doing anything else. Except the writing that was her secret joy, the dream she superstitiously feared shattering if she shared it. “This is who I am.”
He sipped his cocoa once, then again, but was so intent on her finances he didn’t seem to notice how much he clearly liked the drink she’d made him. “Have you considered carrying different lines from less expensive suppliers? Your profit margin seems to shrink every year.”
Her hackles rose. “I can’t sell tawdry items. That wouldn’t go over in this town. You don’t know Bliss.”
“You have that right.”
“And even if I were positive you’re in this with our best interests, rather than the bank’s, I can’t afford your consulting fee.” Fleming ran out of breath. “Sorry. Again. I’m sounding rude, but I’m really trying to be careful. This time.”
“I keep trying to make you see the bank won’t survive if its customers fail.” Standing, Jason took his jacket off the back of his chair. “You don’t trust me, and I don’t blame you, but talk to someone you do trust, and let me know what you decide.”
Maybe she could breathe deeply again without him in her house. He picked up his cup and headed toward the sink, but she took it from him. Washing her dishes was absolutely beyond the scope of his job description.
* * *
“YOU’VE BEEN HERE three weeks, Jason. You know people actually choose Bliss as a place to have fun?”
Jason looked over his coffee cup at Lyle. “When there’s snow on the slopes, I assume?”
“They’re making snow right now. You could take a car up the mountain and ski back down.” Lyle waited until Jason put his cup down, and refilled it.
“Thanks. I don’t think so.”
“Afraid one of the hundreds of people who’ve paraded through your office at the bank will follow you up there and shove you off? I heard what happened the day before Thanksgiving.”
“That was different. Paige lost his retirement fund.”
“He took funds from a lot of people. You can’t make it right for everyone.”
Jason pushed his chair back. “People tell you things, Lyle.”
“We’re a small community. We tell each other everything—except our secrets. But someone always discovers them and tells those, too.”
“No one’s told you I’m not here to make things right. I’m here to do a job for my grandfather and move on.”
“I remember your grandfather.”
That wasn’t information Jason felt inclined to investigate. He didn’t remember this place. He didn’t necessarily want to remember it later. The only important thing he needed to know was that when he left, his father would make sure a decent loan officer and bank manager took over.
“Thanks for breakfast.” Jason stood up, sliding his phone into his pocket. “I’m going out for a while.”
“Sure.” Lyle smirked a little, as if to say he didn’t mind a dismissal.
Jason felt like what he was. Rude, uncomfortable, and maybe pushed a little too far, because he didn’t know how to react to people here, who didn’t outwardly want to use him. Unlike his father.
He started down the sidewalk, his pace as fast as it would have been in New York. After he weaved around the third stroller, he realized he was racing with himself. At the same time, he almost ran into a harried father holding on to two children and an oversize shopping bag.
Jason caught the shop door that almost hit one of the boys. Toy store. For once, maybe he could choose his own gifts. He knew where to buy wrapping paper and bows and tape, and Fleming could also tell him where to deliver his packages.
Every shop in Bliss seemed to smell as if someone had just baked an apple pie in it. Did the scent of apple pie prompt people to part with their money?
He took a basket from the stack by the door and started by filling the bottom with small cars. Even he could wrap an undersized square. He chose a few foam puzzles and some cylindrical barrels of building logs. He’d loved those things when he was a kid. He’d built ranches for his superhero action figures to live on.
They made superheroes smaller these days. After he topped the basket off with them, he took his purchases to the counter.
“Whoa,” said the young guy waiting to check him out. “Big family?”
“Sort of. Can I leave these here and finish?”
“Sure.” He started unloading. “We’ll push them all to the end until you come back.”
Jason had one more thing he wanted to buy. He loved trains as much as Fleming did. His grandparents had given him one every year. He still had them packed away. Somewhere.
He chose a wooden one, like the one he loved best. The cars were hand painted. Each fitted neatly to its mate via wooden couplings. The train ran on a wooden track that made a neat series of wide turns, accommodating play for a young child not yet completely in charge of dexterity.
Shopping bags in hand, he went on to Mainly Merry Christmas, passing both a card store and a stationery shop that probably carried a wide selection of paper and ribbons.
Fleming looked up from her open laptop when the bells jingled above his head.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
He smiled at her. “Nice to see you, too.”
She grinned, her embarrassment kind of charming. “I meant, welcome. What can I do for you?”
“I need a few things.”
“You have a few things.” She pointed to the bag. “Getting to your Christmas shopping early?”
Her soft mockery left him a little tongue-tied. “I was thinking last night, while you were wrapping your gifts…”
Fleming came around the counter, her smile a welcome into her community the likes of which he’d never been offered. “You bought some things for the shelter?”
“I always ask my assistant to write a check or choose a charity, or even to buy gifts for those trees in the department stores.”
“Oh.”
“You made me feel ashamed last night,” he said.
“I doubt anyone cares how the gifts arrive.”
“Maybe not.” He lifted the bag onto the counter. “But I thought I could put in a little effort.”
“I like to see a rich guy trying to walk in normal shoes.”
“I’m not that rich.” But just for a second, he wasn’t himself. He wished he could offer some of his own money to ease the holiday suffering he was causing here in Bliss.
“Let me donate wrapping paper,” she said.
“Fleming, are you insane?” He walked so close to her that his breath stirred the red strands around her face. “You can’t afford to give me paper. I’ll buy enough to wrap these, and some bows and those little cards.”
She laughed, but then hurried around the counter to a tree, where she touched a shiny, hard plastic candy cane. “If you wanted, you could add a little ornament to the bows. Nothing breakable, but something a child might keep for her own home next year.”
He hardly heard because he was so busy taking in Fleming’s happy face. She might tempt a man to believe in magical holidays.
“You choose,” he said.
She shook her head, touching his arm with her fingertips. “I’ll help you.”
He wanted to cover her hand and pull it to his mouth, to feel her soft skin against his lips and learn what she would say if she knew how her happy warmth touched him.
Instead, he completed his purchases, took his bags and left, reminding her to read the refinancing paperwork he’d given her.
* * *
FLEMING CLOSED THE shop early after Jason left, barely managing not to press her face to the door and watch him walk away. He would not be staying, she reminded herself. He’d always walk away.
And she had to focus on her own work. Sadly, no one was fighting to come inside the shop. Maybe they’d seen her collaborating with the enemy and hadn’t wanted to join them.
She locked the back door behind her and walked to her car, shivering in the cold night air. What she wouldn’t give for one more of those years when she and her mother had held the doors open during the first post-Thanksgiving week until ten or eleven at night.
This year, with an über-efficient businessman putting fear in everyone who’d fallen behind on one of Paige’s loans, people seemed to have locked up their wallets. Her business was an easy luxury to cut.
Driving home, she took comfort from the decorations going up in the heart of town. Snowflakes on Victorian streetlamps. Wire-and-light Santas and snowmen waving from the corners. Eight tiny reindeer grazing on the grassy areas of the courthouse square.
Even as she plunged into the darkness of the country roads she passed signs of the coming holidays. The Hadleys’ fence sparkled with loops of twinkling red and green lights. Blue and white stars loomed on the Petersons’ iron gates. The Bradleys’ Christmas-tree farm was an oasis of holiday decor, inviting passersby to stop in and choose a tree of their own.
Fleming pushed her anxiety to arm’s length. She’d read the refinancing contracts. She hadn’t called her mother during what was essentially a honeymoon. She had to refinance or give up the store, and that wasn’t a choice.
All her anxiety had given her a plan for the pages she needed to write tonight, a scene that cried out for the emotion she was fighting so hard not to feel in real life.
She turned in at her driveway, pausing to collect the mail from the black metal box that still bore the dents from an unfortunate mailbox-baseball incident on Halloween. She should replace it, but every little penny…
* * *
ON THURSDAY MORNING, Fleming waited outside Jason’s office, uncertain whether she was more anxious about seeing him or dealing with the loan.
Voices rose loudly inside the office. Instantly concerned that someone else might be attacking Jason, Fleming glanced at Hilda, who grimaced and stared at her phone. “I have 911 on speed dial now,” the woman said.
“I’m sorry you have to. It’s just a bad time of year for this to happen.”
Hilda scrunched up her eyebrows. “But if he’d waited, some people would have lost their homes and businesses.”
“I’m one of them,” Fleming said without thinking.
“What a mess.”
The office door opened and Jason came out, his arm across the shoulders of a man in coveralls. Fred Limber, who owned a tire shop a few blocks from the square.
“So don’t worry. I’ll send you the terms. I don’t see any reason you can’t meet this obligation, Fred, and if you have problems, you get in touch with me.”
“I can’t afford your advice on my business, Jason.”
“My name is on this bank.” Jason wiped his free hand down his leg, as if it were sweating. “I can spare you the time.”
Fleming stood, and both men looked at her. Jason’s gaze, warm with a smile, made her heart seize in a funny, clenching cramp. She smoothed the skirt of her navy shift dress.
He didn’t believe in Santa? With his offers to help the people who were in trouble thanks to Mr. Paige, it was like he was carrying around a big old sack of gifts.
Fred turned and shook Jason’s hand. “Sorry for yelling at you.”
“Sorry for yelling back.”
“I’ll read those papers and talk to my brother. He’s an accountant. Then I’ll set up an appointment with Hilda.”
“Good. We’ll see you then.” Jason walked Fred to the door, and after he shut it, he leaned against the heavy wood for a second. He might pretend to be detached, but clearly, walking away from the problems he was making for people in Bliss was not as easy as he might have thought. He smiled at Fleming, and then rubbed his hand over his mouth. “I know you don’t make coffee, Hilda—”
“No, I don’t.”
“But—”
“Just this once.” She rose from behind her desk. “Want one, Fleming?”
With brandy, for goodness’ sake. “Yes, please.”
“I’ll bring it in.”
Jason went into his office and Fleming followed.
“Where do we start?” he asked.
No need to beat around the bush. “I’m going to save the store.”
“Are you sure?” He took a stack of papers from his desk and then came to the sofa, where she’d already taken the same seat she’d occupied the other day.
“Maybe I can help you, too.” He lifted the first page and glanced toward the doorway. “Like with Fred,” he said.
It seemed clear that he was trying to tell her he didn’t care more for her than he should. She was just another victim of the bank’s bad loan officer.
She knew Jason’s plans. He was leaving town as soon as he finished this unwelcome favor.
“I’m happy to take advice,” Fleming said, purposefully rejecting the idea that it would come straight from him.
“I have a few suggestions.”
“But you won’t be here.” She closed her eyes briefly, determined to fight her own inner demons. Since the day her father had walked out of her life, she’d mistrusted men in authority. And yet let a guy go out of his way to help someone, and she couldn’t restrain herself from being attracted. “And I can’t entirely trust a bank that agrees I can afford their loan.”
“I’m not pretending it will be easy, but maybe we can streamline your processes in the shop to save some overhead. Spend more wisely.”
She lifted her chin. “The shop is still mine. I make the decisions.”
“You have three days to change your mind, Fleming. Don’t let the deadline pass.”