FLEMING HAD ALL BUT tackled her mother when she arrived at home the night before. Over hot chocolate and oatmeal cookies, they’d discussed what had happened with the shop and the loan, and then they’d gone to bed.
In the morning, Fleming woke to the smells and sounds of breakfast. She jumped out of bed and ran down the stairs. Her mother turned from the stove, where she was frying bacon.
“I thought pancakes and bacon and coffee and some fresh fruit,” she said. “How’s that with you?”
“Amazing. I usually just grab an apple or a boiled egg. Even your coffee smells better than mine.”
“Help yourself.” Katherine went to the fridge and took out pancake batter she’d already mixed. “We should be eating in about ten minutes.”
Fleming rubbed her stomach. “Can’t be soon enough.”
“Now tell me what you’re doing to bring up sales in the store.”
“I’ve distributed flyers for an ornament-making workshop. I haven’t decided what I want to do so it’s pretty vague, but I’ll provide the materials as part of the cost.”
“I wondered if you’d keep up with the ornament tradition. You should do one each week.”
“I was thinking papier-mâché. My friend Julia did some in art school. She might help me come up with something.”
“Would she consider running the workshop?”
“We could share the profits if she’s willing. I have the shop and she has the skills. She might even be able to put on other classes during the year.”
“I’d talk to her,” Katherine said. “Call her after breakfast.”
“I will. Actually, I kind of have an idea. You know the special ornaments we do each year? I modeled the ones for this year on the snowflakes the town puts on the streetlights.” They were 3-D stars with six sides, made so that each leg formed a diamond point. “What if we did something like that, only in jewel colors, with varnish? Nothing ornate—these would be for the children.”
“Might be worth the effort if it brings in shoppers.”
“And their little ones. We’ll keep it easy so the children can be involved in making them.”
“Good idea. You should try.”
Fleming smiled. “That wasn’t so hard for a few minutes of work.”
Maybe she’d been putting all her creativity into her writing. Writing her mother didn’t even know about. Her own little secret.
“Don’t rest your brain now. You’ll need more of that kind of work,” Katherine said.
“If you have ideas, I’m open to them.”
Fleming set silverware and plates on the table. Her mother brought the pancakes and bacon.
“I could stay until you feel better about handling the business and the new loan.”
“You could, and I appreciate the offer, but you have a life with Hugh. I’ll call you if I have questions. I’m so glad to see you, but I feel guilty that you’ve come all this way, and ended your vacation early.”
Her mom grinned. “Don’t. I’m not sure Hugh and I are vacation people. Remember, all you have to do if you need help is call me, and I’ll be on my way.”
Katherine reached out and squeezed Fleming’s hand. “I’m a little worried that you’ve committed to this because you feel as if you owe me the store. You don’t. It was my dream, not yours.”
“It’s part of all the Christmases we ever had, Mom. Part of the thread of my life. I want the store. And someday, if you and Hugh come home to this house, after he retires, you may be so bored you’ll want the business back.”
Katherine laughed. “I can’t actually deny that.” She sat, tucking her napkin in her lap. “I’m glad I came.”
“So am I. Stay a day or two, and we’ll visit, if Hugh doesn’t mind. You always restore my faith in myself.”
Faith that Jason had shaken, not because he was cruel or meant to hurt her, but because he was, himself, a pragmatic, practical businessman who’d shown her she’d been complacent and trusted the wrong person.
* * *
JASON WAS WALKING to a lunch meeting when he saw the chalkboard on an easel outside Mainly Merry Christmas: “Make a Blissful Ornament. Papier-mâché. Classes Inside.”
He lifted both brows. Not a bad idea. Something for parents and children to do together. Something for Christmas.
A gust of wind burned his eyes. He tried to imagine living here, being part of this community. It was easier to imagine his sisters and brother having families. Bringing some sort of Macland tradition back here with the kind of marriage his grandparents still kept alive.
But his grandparents were the exception, not the rule of Macland marriages. No one in his family would be coming back here. And he wouldn’t be staying.
He sped up, his feet eating up the sidewalk. Thoughts of his mother and her note came to mind. She was family. He hadn’t even tried to see her.
She hadn’t tried to see him, either, when he’d needed her most, but suddenly, for the first time in a long time, he wondered why. It wasn’t that he’d love to forgive and forget, but a guy who spent most of his life uncovering answers to troubling problems shouldn’t have been so content to just let the years slide by.
Something about the holidays must be getting under his skin. He glanced at Fleming’s sign again.
A car slid to the curb at Jason’s side. A luxury SUV. A man rolled down the window.
“Jason, I thought that was you. Glad I made it in time for our appointment.” Gabe Kaufman, a client who happened to be driving from Knoxville to Asheville, climbed out of his car. “I’m glad you could see me.”
Jason felt for the phone in his overcoat pocket. “I’ve got your files. Let’s talk.”
He walked the guy over to a little restaurant behind the square. A server seated them at a linen-covered table, brought a silver carafe of coffee and unobtrusively served a five-star lunch while they discussed Gabe’s trading business. They finished the details about the same time dessert arrived, a chocolate mousse confection that took Jason’s mind off work for the first time since they’d sat down.
“What are you doing out here?” Gabe asked. “It’s a cute little place, and I can’t believe you have access to dining like this.” He looked around the smoke-scented, low-beamed room. “But why have you buried yourself in the Tennessee mountains at this time of the year? You don’t even have convenient access to an airport.”
Jason allowed himself a small smile. Gabe was an important client, but they weren’t such close friends that he’d be sharing his family’s business with him. “I lived here when I was a kid. I’m just home for a visit.”
“Seriously?” Gabe made a big show of his disbelief. “I never knew that. I thought you were Beekman Place, born and bred.”
“I spent most of my childhood there, but my roots are here.” Nothing had ever sounded more foreign to him. Or less true. He’d never had roots. He didn’t need roots like most of mankind. He needed the next challenge. “Everyone goes home once in a while. What are you doing in Asheville for the holidays?”
“The music scene,” Gabe said. “My oldest daughter plays a violin. Well—” he swallowed hard “—apparently, it’s a fiddle now. If I could tell you the money I’ve paid for lessons… But she suddenly loves bluegrass, and she heard there was good music here. My wife wanted to spend some time away from the city where there was a chance our phones wouldn’t work.
“And you know what? She succeeded. Here I am, and my phone is useless at the place where we’re staying. The wife did a little recon trip ahead of our family holiday, and she chose this chalet where she couldn’t get reception anywhere on the grounds.”
Jason laughed, commiserating. “No one understands a guy who can’t relax.” Women just assumed such men ran from one place to the next to avoid commitment. Like Fleming… But no—he had to get her out of his head. “Has your family gone to Asheville ahead of you?”
“We’ve been there a few days, but they came with me today. They seemed to think I might get distracted and not show up back at our equivalent of a desert island.” Gabe’s smile was wry, as if he was only about half as impatient with his downtime as he was pretending to be. “I dropped them back at that little holiday shop. Can you imagine anything as hopeless as running a store devoted to Christmas year-round? I might beat myself to death with one of the ceramic Santa Clauses in the window.”
To his surprise, a surge of irritation stiffened Jason’s spine. “It does all right for business,” he said, as if there were some good financial reason for him to lie about Fleming’s store being in the peak of good fiscal health.
“Yeah? You know the people who run it? Maybe the snow and the ski resorts put visitors in mind of Christmas. So how do people keep busy up here in summer?”
Good question. Jason had no answer. His mind went blank, as if he didn’t know how to have fun. He usually worked. For fun, he’d started flying lessons last summer. One year, he’d done some work in Hawaii and dived in the clear waters every free moment he could find. “What do you do anywhere in summer? Whatever’s available, I guess.” He glanced at the discreet crowd of would-be customers milling quietly by the door. “We might be taking more than our allotted share of time here.”
He dropped a wad of cash for lunch on the table and stood, leaving Gabe no choice but to follow. On the street, Jason put out his hand to shake his client’s. “It’s been good seeing you. Study the files I emailed you, and call me with your questions.”
“Oh, no, you don’t. You’re not running out as if you can’t afford a few minutes off the clock. Come down to the little store with me. I want you to meet my wife and girls.”
Another great idea. Fleming had made her position pretty clear during their last uncomfortable meeting. Jason made a show of checking his watch. “I don’t know…”
“Forget it.” Gabe pounded his back as if they were old football teammates. “The global economy won’t collapse if you take your eye off it for a few minutes.”
Without ever actually agreeing to go, Jason found himself walking with Gabe to the store. He even stepped in front of his friend and opened the door, which was wreathed in hand-drawn candy canes.
Gabe entered ahead of him, but stopped so suddenly Jason thudded into his back. Then he caught sight of the chaos. The door was the only clean thing left in Mainly Merry Christmas.
Three girls and two small boys, all covered in white goop, along with two women who apparently had some connection to the shrieking children, seemed to be wrapping mummies at the small table opposite the cash registers. Their animated voices drowned out Fleming’s attempt to calmly instruct them. A third woman had given up to retire, laughing, behind the checkout area.
Fleming caught sight of Gabe and Jason, and said something that got lost in the racket. From her look of consternation, Jason had to assume she wasn’t rejoicing at his arrival. Nearly encased in papier-mâché herself, she squared her shoulders, smoothed the white stuff off her hands onto the newspaper-covered table and smiled.
“Good afternoon. May I help you?”
Jason, bemused, didn’t have to answer. The two smallest girls bolted for Gabe and pummeled his suit with their sticky hands, shouting “Daddy!” with the elation of children who’d thought their father might have disappeared forever.
One of the women looked at Fleming, her body language an expression of sheer helplessness. Fleming dampened a length of paper towel in a plastic tub of clean water and passed it to her.
“Gabe,” the woman said, “maybe we should stay here in Bliss tonight. I think we’ve got the hang of this papier-mâché thing, and the girls want to finish their ornaments.”
The older daughter, clearly bored and nowhere near as coated in goop and glue, shook her head. “I don’t.”
“The girls want to finish their ornaments,” her mother said again. Then she lifted both hands, sticky still, and now slightly fluffy with paper-towel remnants. “And so do I.”
“Then, by all means.” Gabe turned toward Jason. “Maybe you could give me directions to a good hotel?”
“Sure.” Jason brought up the web page for Lyle’s place and texted a link to Gabe’s phone. “You can call and arrange for a room. Or just walk down the block. It’s on the right at the end of the square.”
“Go ahead, Gabe,” his wife said. “We’ll meet you over there after we finish.”
“Jason, this is Anita. Anita, my friend Jason. And these are my daughters. Starting with the tallest and least interested in hanging out with the family,” he said, grinning with affection, “Delia. And this one—” he flattened his hand in the air above a small, glue-laden head of brown hair “—is Kay. Last but not least, this limpet on my leg is Georgina.”
The small redhead clung to him with all her gluey might. “Daddy, I come with you.”
“After you finish your art project,” Gabe said with justifiable reluctance. “Jason, join us for dinner tonight.”
He should welcome the break. Some time with people who didn’t owe his family or the bank anything and had no reason to resent him. But he dreaded more questions, and he suspected Fleming and her store might be a topic of dinner-table talk now that Gabe and his family had met her. “Thanks,” he said, “but—”
Without thinking, he glanced at Fleming, and she ran her fingers through her hair, streaking it with white. She took a moment to decide to take mercy on him, but then came to his rescue. “Actually, Jason and some friends and I have plans for tonight. We’re planning…” She stopped, her blank expression certainly not helping Jason’s cause. “A Christmas thing. On the square. Caroling.” She finished with a look of triumph.
Gabe’s smile was crooked with disbelief. He glanced at Jason assessingly, as if he couldn’t decide how best to make fun of him. “Okay. See you in a while. Anita, hose the kids down before you let them be seen in public, will you?”
He hit the sidewalk, wiping at his suit.
His wife made a face at his back as he walked away. “He was joking.” She dampened her hands again with the clear water. “I think.”
“Jason, why don’t you come make an ornament?” Fleming asked, with irony in her voice as if she expected him to say no to the possibility of participating in something fun. “We’re doing a test run today, but we’re thinking our methods need a little work. Let us try some changes on you.” She waved toward the young woman behind the cash register. “This is Julia Walker. She’s our instructor for today.”
“Julia.” He couldn’t help doubting her skills, because the place was covered in glue and globs of wet paper. He looked back at Fleming with a nod. Did she think she could scare him off with a challenge?
She came around the counter, rubbing her hands together like a mad scientist on a bad television show. “We may have to turn these snowflakes into snowmen. Here we go again.”
* * *
“OF COURSE YOU turn out to be a papier-mâché prodigy,” Fleming said later that afternoon, as she scooped the last of the glue off the table with a scraping tool Julia had lent her before she’d left for a dinner date.
Jason twirled his ruby-colored ornament above her head. “I think I’ll lacquer this.” He held it out to her. “You want it?”
Somehow, his not wanting to keep it made her feel as if it didn’t matter to him. But why should it? He didn’t go in for things like tradition. “You aren’t planning to have a tree?”
“I don’t even know where I’ll be on Christmas.”
“With your family?” She couldn’t imagine Christmas without her mother and Hugh.
Could Jason be that detached? Didn’t his family celebrate, even with several different mom-and-child combinations?
He still hadn’t answered her question.
“Aren’t you going home?” She handed him a moist paper towel, but he wasn’t entirely covered in glue the way everyone else had been: she and Julia and Anita Kaufman and the rest of the small class who’d agreed to be her guinea pigs.
“Christmas is like Thanksgiving. It’s just a day, Fleming. I don’t have children. I don’t have to eat cookies for Santa or carrots for Rudolph.”
“You have family. Surely you all want to be together.” She hated the thought of his loneliness; it seemed so sad to her. Someone ought to do something about it.
“Can we talk about something else?” he asked, though it was clearly not a question.
She didn’t want to make things worse for him, but a small voice whispered that he hadn’t stayed within the bounds of temporary bank manager. He’d intruded in her life just because he thought he should. Surely she could return the favor. But he’d interfered with her business life. That was different.
“Okay,” she said. “We have to go to carol practice, anyway.”
“What?” He looked as eager to sing carols with her and her friends as he might be to make another ornament for a tree he didn’t plan to put up.
“What if Gabe and Anita see the rest of us practicing on the courthouse steps, and you’re not with us?”
He stared at her, not following. “There’s really a group?”
She laughed. “They started practicing at Thanksgiving.”
He remembered. “You think Gabe and his family are going to search a crowd of carolers for me?”
“I have no idea. But you turned him down for dinner, and when you looked as if you needed help coming up with a reason, you made me your accessory. You have to come sing with us.”
“You don’t take ‘no’ easily,” Jason’s grin told her he didn’t see that as a bad thing. He looked doubtful, but not entirely against the idea.
“I can’t sing,” he warned. “Your group will be sorry if you force me to do this.”
“No one is against you here, Jason.” She smiled, letting herself feel how much she liked him, but so much emotion startled her enough to make her try to take it back. “Well, hardly anyone.”
“Thanks,” he said, his wry tone touching her.
“You don’t have a choice about this unless you want to hurt your friend’s feelings. You should have let him take you to dinner.”
“Maybe I should have.” Jason gazed at her as if he couldn’t believe she’d caught him in this net. She wasn’t sure how she’d done it, either. She wasn’t even sure she should have, but she wanted time with him whether getting close to Jason was good for her or really bad.
She excused herself to the back room and changed quickly, wondering whether he’d duck out the door if she took too long and there’d be no decking the halls, after all. To her surprise, when she walked out, hopping to put on one of her ballet flats, she found Jason righting the train cars and tracks that had suffered derailments during the class.
“You like those,” she said.
“It was this or pretend I didn’t notice all the people walking past the window, staring in and wondering what I’m up to.”
She looked outside. Lights flickered green and red and blue from the stars on the streetlamps. “I’ll bet they did stare. I didn’t think of that. There’ll be talk about us in the old town tonight.”
Jason glanced at the window again, to find an elderly man peering at him with disapproval as he passed. Fleming laughed. Mr. Fogerty never approved of anyone, but Jason wouldn’t know that.
“Apparently so,” he said.
“Julia told me people have been suggesting you’re offering me special treatment.”
“But you know that’s not true.”
“Not unless you also have a soft spot for Mr. Limber,” she said. “I’m not going to worry about what anyone says—let’s just enjoy the fun this evening, even if we are hoisting on our own petard.”
“How old are you?” he teased, holding the door for her, and then following her through and waiting while she locked it. “My grandfather says that.”
“Think what you like. I spent a lot of time with elderly people when I was young,” she said. “I was shy, and my mom’s older friends liked me. I liked their stories. I didn’t know I wasn’t cool.”
What the heck was wrong with her and her loosened tongue? Something about Jason Macland compelled her to confess her every thought, as if she were under spotlights in a police station.
He didn’t need to hear all about her. He already knew too much.
She wouldn’t worry about that, either. Tonight was about having a good time. It wasn’t a lifetime commitment, and she didn’t have to let him get too close.
And that would be easy. He didn’t want to be close at all.