“Seems like a bad idea.”
“Some of the best ideas start as bad ones.” I’ve been fast on my feet my whole life. A quick tongue to get me out of every tight spot. “You never know until you try it.”
Brooke weighs the idea by tilting her head back and forth. I could take her in my arms, and I know she’d surrender, but her permission is important to me. Like my food, I need her blessing on this before it happens. She leans closer, testing the space between us. I give up an inch or two, willing to show how badly I want it to happen. Her nose brushes against mine. Her lips are two inches away, warming my face with quick puffs of breath from her mouth.
A quick rap at the door steals my attention. Brooke presses her kiss against my cheek. I’m dying for more, but the person on the other side of the door won’t wait, and Brooke looks like she’s ready to shut me down.
✽ ✽ ✽
Brooke
I can’t believe I did that. At least I didn’t kiss him, kiss him. A cheek doesn’t count for much. Three more light knocks to the front door catch my ears. I didn’t imagine it.
“It’s late.” Evan pushes the space back between us.
“Are you going to get the door, or should I?”
Everything between us thickens, but not like before. This is more of his evasions, more of him not wanting to share any part of his life with an outsider.
“Goodnight, Brooke.”
He might as well say, “Get out.” I understand the tone well enough to read between the lines.
How is it that he can have me regretting not kissing him, while simultaneously being happy that I didn’t? I stand and move to the staircase that leads to the east wing where I sleep. I pause, glancing back, but Evan hasn’t moved, despite the knock coming a third time and louder than ever. He won’t get up until I’m gone.
I take the stairs, listening, wondering who is waiting for him in the cold.
The front door squeaks. I hear Evan’s voice, friendly, even happy to see whoever it is. I strain from the top step to hear the words, but all I can tell is that his middle of the night visitor is indeed a woman. Disappointment burns worse than the one I took care of on Evan’s arm. I thought he was feeling something for me, but there are only so many options when it comes to late night visitors.
His mother? His wife? At least a girlfriend. Nothing else makes sense. Who else would make the trip in the middle of the night? Did he hire a maid to clean the mess? Is that his secret? It sounds crazy but with as much money as he has to throw around, maybe that sort of thing is commonplace? Maybe he’s used to getting what he wants, no matter the consequences.
Chapter 11
Brooke
I’m up at six to be sure my guests have their breakfast, thankfully made by Evan. They wait around, hoping to catch a glimpse of him before the first floor is turned into a studio for the day. With Evan up most of the night, it’s no wonder that he’s not an early riser and most days they’re disappointed.
I set to work clearing their plates, refilling juices and coffees around the table, happy to hear the chipper morning chatter. It’s these moments where I actually believe this might work, I might make it.
The door to the west gable stairwell flings open. Evan fills the space, moodier than usual, if that’s possible. An hour more of sleep would have done him some good, but with his phone to his ear, I guess either his agent, or Winnie, woke him up early.
He sinks into a chair near the wall, head in his hands, only a few sounds coming from him every couple minutes. I fill a mug with coffee, grab a handful of creamers and sugars, because I don’t want to guess his preferences, and plate one of his orange and cranberry bagels with a smear of cream cheese. Like offering a sacrifice to an ancient god, I set it on the small table next to him and back away, eager not to anger his royal highness.
“Is that Granny?” a middle-aged woman at the table asks me in a hushed tone.
I smile, though it’s forced, and say, “Yes, that’s Mr. Skruggs, but he’s not much of a morning person. Best to let him wake up on his own.”
“Well, next time ask me before you make that kind of decision, Andrew!” Evan’s volume silences the room. He slams his cellphone against the table with such force that I worry he’s shattered the face. I suppose when you’re as rich as he is, that sort of thing doesn’t worry you. Maybe he has three more in his room.
My guests start packing their things, as if they can’t run from the room fast enough. Evan shoots them a glare, pinning them to their chairs, daring them to show that they’re truly scared of the man they once loved before they knew who he really was. I should smooth things over, try to ease the rough parts away from his prickly personality, but I’m no less scared than the rest of them.
Evan ignores the coffee, stuffs half the bagel in his mouth and starts for the stairs again.
“The bagels were delicious.” The woman who spoke earlier blurts it out, likely with every ounce of bravery in her body. Evan spins, staring over his shoulder with dark eyes and an imaginary thundercloud booming over his head.
“What’d you say?” He takes a few steps toward the center of the room.
“The bagels,” she tucks her dark hair behind her ear and stares at her plate, “I thought you made them. I really liked the flavors.”
The unthinkable happens. Evan starts to smile. It’s weak, but it’s there, like a sigh at the end of a long day. “Really? I was worried the cranberry would overpower the orange.”
“Just the contrary.” The woman’s companion speaks up. “They complimented each other.”
“How’d you keep the cranberries intact?” Someone else asks. “When I bake with them they explode and leave craters in my muffins.”
Evan stops at the table, a new person when food is the topic. “I score the cranberries first, not deep, just enough to give them room to split. Toss them in flour too. It’ll help contain whatever juices escape.”
“And the orange peel? How do you keep it from going bitter? Add more sugar?”
Evan pulls out the chair he’s resting on and takes a seat with my guests. “When you’re zesting, are you getting just the peel, or some of the pith as well?”
They go back and forth for the next ten minutes. Evan signs a couple books and even gives a few of his well-guarded full-fledged smiles. The tense atmosphere releases its death grip on the room. Someone asks about his bandage, and Evan assures them that even he makes stupid mistakes.
There’s a bustle outside the front door. Through the floor to ceiling windows I spot some people in the courtyard. From their old-timey clothing, I’d wager they’re carolers. Not just any carolers, but the local favorites, The Front Street Carolers. I’ve been waiting for this moment my whole life.
“Oh, we’re in for a treat, everyone.” Any second they’ll ring the bell, and I don’t want my guests to miss this Willow Glen tradition. The Front Street Carolers have been around for over fifty years. “Look over here—”
I mean to draw their attention to the windows to point out the woman in full turn of the century costume, or perhaps the man in a top hat with a pipe between his lips, but one of the carolers pulls out a camera and snaps a picture through the window. The flash lights up the room. Evan’s chair explodes backward, toppling over and crashing to the floor.
“They can’t give me a minute’s rest, can they?”
He heads for the door, but I try to bar his way. “It’s not the press! It’s just local carolers.”
But when a bull sees red, there’s no stopping him. Frigid air swirls into our safe haven, whipping around each of my guests as Evan yanks the door open.
“Get out of here, you vultures!” He grabs a few of the apples I keep in a basket by the door and lobs them at the carolers. “Find someone else to harass. As if my life isn’t public enough!”
“Evan, stop it!” I yank on his arm, but he uses his other to toss another apple at Bee Stevens, the local head of the quilting chapter. “She’s like seventy-years old, Evan!
She’s not the press.”
His crazed eyes turn on me, as if I’ve gotten through for the first time. “What?”
I hang off his right arm, hardly able to catch my breath from the way my heart is racing. “They’re just carolers, Evan. It’s not the end of the world!”
Realization slaps him hard across the face. All the tension drains from his muscles. “No, I saw the camera. They were papara—” He doesn’t finish. Maybe he’s remembering the clothes they were wearing, or he’s noticing their sheet music discarded in the snow drifts. “I thought they were…”
“Not everyone is out to get you.” I should temper the frustration from my voice, but this won’t look good for me either. Being selected by Front Street is a mark of honor, one not even my grandparents ever enjoyed. “Dang it, Evan. They won’t come back now.”
“Who cares? So you miss out on a few songs. Why does any of it matter? It’s all a stupid holiday anyway.”
Anger explodes from deep within me. He hates Christmas, I get it, but that doesn’t give him the right to ruin it for everyone else. I shove him as hard as I can. He barely moves, but that’s beside the point.
“I care! I care about all of this! Do you know how long I’ve waited for Front Street to select this house? I grew up watching out the front windows every year hoping they’d pick us! Now they did, and you chased them away by pelting them with apples!”
“Calm down, would you?”
“Laughable coming from you! You just lost your mind because one of your fans took a picture of you being nice. Were you concerned they might spread the word and hurt your street cred? Maybe people might believe you actually have a heart! Don’t worry! I’ll be happy to inform them that it’s not true!”
“Hey, I have a heart. I just don’t wear it on my sleeve for the whole world to see. I don’t gush over every snowflake, or daydream about my future while the world falls down around me. Some of us have real jobs to worry about, honey.”
“A real job? Evan, you’re so removed from reality I doubt you’ve ever had to work a day in your life!”
Evan grabs me by the shoulders, pulling me close enough that there’s no mistaking the anger in his eyes. “You don’t know anything about me, so get off your high horse and stop judging what you don’t know.” He releases me, but the force knocks me back a couple steps. I search for some searing words to fling his way, but I’m at a loss, left only with a frozen, empty dining room, and the picture of his face burned into my mind.
His footfalls echo up the staircase. I pull the door shut. I hate animosity. It feels like tar on my skin, burned in, and fused, never coming off. I have a habit of rolling arguments on replay through my mind after the fact, as though I’ll be able to fix wherever it went wrong. It’s stupid because you can’t take words back, and they leave the scars whether you meant to or not.
As I pile the dishes in the sink, I can’t shake that look in his eye. Yes, the anger was on the surface, impossible to miss, but I swear I saw something else behind it.
Pain.
Heartbreak.
Misery.
Whatever secrets he’s hiding, they’re certainly not happy.
✽ ✽ ✽
Evan
If cabin fever is a real thing, is there such an ailment as farmhouse fever? Because, if so, I have that. Over a week without connections to the outside world, stuck here with Brooke ‘better than you’ Cratchett is making me crazy.
Symptoms of farmhouse fever include, but are not limited to: crankiness, frustration, erratic baking hours, screaming at carolers, and obsessive need to be with a woman I should have no interest in at all. She hasn’t talked to me since my blow up this morning. I’ll never hear the end of it from Andrew. Great job charming her. She wants nothing to do with you.
I look up at the make-up artist working on me. Nothing wrong with her. She’s even blonde. Her sweater hugs every freaking curve on her body, but here I am watching Brooke talk with the sound guy across the room, wondering what he said to make her laugh like that. I could ask this woman in the skin tight leggings if she wants to run away with me to my place in Miami, escape all this snow and ice, and I have no doubt in my mind that she’ll drop everything and everyone in her way to do it. But no. I’m obsessing about the perfect angel on the other side of the room.
“Okay, the vlogger wants you to really get into the nitty gritty with your decorating.” Winnie brings up a few pictures on her phone, like I don’t know how to decorate a sugar cookie. Chapter three in my book, thank you very much. “He wants these really detailed designs.”
I should be listening to her, but I can’t take my eyes off of whatever is transpiring on the other side of the room. “What do you think they’re talking about?”
Winnie looks at me, then follows my gaze to Brooke in her reindeer sweater and black leggings that make her legs look longer than they are. “I don’t know.”
“Do you think he’s hot?”
My publicist shoots me a look. “Do you think he’s hot? I can get his number if you’re looking.”
“Not what I was asking.”
Realization dawns on her face. “I can get you Brooke’s number instead.”
I clamp my mouth shut. Her phone number won’t do me any good if she’s into Mr. Full Beard with his matching reindeer sweater. I run my hand over my clean shaven face, feeling naked. “Is Brooke doing this segment with me?”
“We weren’t planning—” Winnie stops short. “Do you want her to?”
Perk of being the talent, I guess. I get what I want. And If I happen to want that crunchy mountain man to lose contact with Brooke, I’ll get it.
“I think it would be better that way. Andrew wanted me to have more air time with her.”
“Sure.” Winnie pushes back to her feet. “If that’s what Andrew wants.”
I wait for her cousin to deliver the news to Brooke. Winnie sets an arm to her shoulder, calls her away from the guy with the boom, and says maybe three words before Brooke’s wrath lands on me. I can’t help but smirk a little for upsetting her plans.
“Okay, we’re ready.”
I don’t even know who said it. I’m like a trained dog at this point. They say smile for the camera, and I’m there. They’ve got us set up on her farmhouse table. The last minute addition I requested has one minion arranging a station for Brooke. I take the first station and wait for Brooke to say goodbye to the bearded wonder. To my dismay, he hands off the boom and follows Brooke to the table, his hand on her lower back. She jerks her side of the bench out, nearly knocking me to the floor and slides in beside me.
“I heard you requested my presence, my liege.”
The guy I was trying to get her away from takes the station across from me.
“I requested yours, yes.” I’m sure she can hear the implied complaint that I didn’t request his company.
Her smug smile lights me on fire. “Evan, I want you to meet, Adley Barnes. It’s his channel. He has interest in turn of the century architecture. We were just having a fascinating conversation about this farmhouse.”
Adley, the host I thought was the sound guy, sticks his hand out toward me. “Great to meet you, Evan. My channel hosts a wide range of back to basics tutorials. I love the downhome feel of your cookbooks, real family-first kind of vibe. Having someone of your caliber will easily boost my numbers another hundred k or so.”
“Glad to help.” I won’t shake his hand, but he gives me a salute instead. Who is this guy? I feel like we should put hair net on his face to keep that scraggly growth out of my cookies. I grind my teeth back and forth, glaring at the table because I can’t glare anywhere else without his whole following seeing me. That’s all this experience has taught me, I can be alone in a room, but on the other side of the camera there’s an invisible audience breathing down my neck. Another symptom of farmhouse fever, being on edge twenty-four freaking hours a day.
“Why don’t you walk us through the basics?” Adley picks up his pastry bag full of r
oyal icing, but hands another one to Brooke. “Here you go, gorgeous.”
I shift in my seat. I hate this feeling. I don’t lose well, not that I won her, or own her, or this is a competition. I glance her way, hoping for one of her reassuring smiles. Instead, she glares. It’s not helping that she’s taking joy in my misery.
“You want to outline first. I work with white most of the time, the smaller the tip the better.” I swear if Adley makes some comment about size, I might kick him under the table. “It takes practice, so don’t be worried if you don’t get it at first.”
A quick peek at Brooke’s cookie confirms what I said. It’s a mess of tangled strands of icing doing everything but outlining her cookie. I remember practicing for weeks at first. It takes time to learn the technique, the amount of pressure it takes, the steady hand required. It’s not something you luck into.
“How about that, mate?” Adley holds up his cookie, and I curse out loud. Brooke smacks my arm with the back of her hand. His cookie is perfect. He casts a quick glance across the table to Brooke’s and makes a sympathetic noise. “Aww, looks like you need a quick lesson, yeah?”
Without waiting for her permission, the lumberjack stands and comes around to her side. His arms wrap around her slender frame before I have a chance to object. “Just like this, love.” He lays his hand over hers, guiding her through the twist and turns of outlining a snowman.
“Let me get a little closer.” Adley’s rear slams against me, shoving into the edge of the table. I’d hit him, but I’m pretty sure smacking his butt would send the wrong message. I wait through the barrage, happy when he finally retreats a bit.
“Should we move on?” Brooke asks, showing me her newly prepared cookie.
“Please.” I don’t bother to hide my annoyance. Could she be any more helpless? Oh help me, help me burly beard man. Maybe they both pick up on my frustration because Adley takes his seat again and waits.
Christmas With Granny McPherson Page 9
