The Christmas Company

by Alys Murray

  Kate had only played dodgeball once in her life. This conversation reminded her of being the only person on one side while a barrage attack came from the other. He’d told her, in his stilted Mr. Darcy way, that he liked her, then immediately proceeded into why she needed to spend her holidays without him.

  And he’d called her beautiful. His stream of consciousness declaration came out nervous and unfiltered. Had he even realized he called her that?

  She changed the subject, if only to keep her heart from exploding with the possibilities. This time, she didn’t attack him. A sigh, heavier than any winter wind, blew out of her, releasing the anger and hurt. Clark hadn’t managed to say sorry, but he would. She believed in him. Besides, she didn’t know how to hold onto anger. It wasn’t in her character.

  “You know, they’re right. I’ve never left someone alone on Christmas.”

  “You probably bring them to the festival, don’t you?”

  “Not always.” Kate took a chance. Clark hadn’t responded to grand acts of magic or her charming personality. All she had left was her honesty. “Once, when I was eighteen, I’d finally gotten the part of Belle. She’s Scrooge’s love interest when he’s younger. I’d always wanted to play her. She has this beautiful gown and she’s just awesome, standing up for herself and breaking up with him when he’s not good for her anymore—”

  “You like her because she broke up with him?”

  “It would have been easy to live with something bad. It took courage to break free and start over.”

  “I see.”

  He wasn’t convinced, but she pressed forward. In her opinion, he could learn a thing or two from Belle.

  “Anyway, this was the only time I was going to be able to play her. I was getting too tall for the costume. I only barely fit into it that year as it was…” She sighed again. “And then Michael broke his leg in the big State Championship football game our senior year of high school. He was going to just stay home that year by himself while everyone went to the festival on Christmas Eve because his parents were working there, but…”

  “No one should be alone on Christmas,” Clark finished for her.

  “Yeah.”

  “You gave up your big dream just for him?”

  Kate scoffed and rolled her eyes.

  “My big dream is playing Scrooge. But unless I start growing a beard and some other chromosomes, I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

  “You know what I mean. You sacrificed for him.”

  “Yeah, I guess I did.”

  “Like you’re sacrificing for me.”

  A clear delineation of thought erupted between them. Kate didn’t see it as making a sacrifice. She understood she’d made a sacrifice, but she didn’t see it that way or remember it that way. Like tonight, for example, she couldn’t imagine ever looking back on it as, “that one Christmas I let a mean guy sneer and yell at me all day.” She imagined she’d remember it as, “the year I helped save the town and the soul of a handsome but lonely man with a hidden heart of gold.” In the same way, she remembered her eighteenth Christmas as the one where she and Michael played Go Fish until midnight and watched The Muppet Christmas Carol on repeat until four in the morning when they both fell asleep on the couch. She woke up with swollen feet because she’d slept in her shoes. She remembered laughing until her sides hurt and eating so much frozen pizza covered in turkey she almost threw up.

  Instead of letting him in on this secret, she chose instead to tease him. She liked teasing him. The tops of his ears always turned bright red, a fact that tickled her and made her wonder how many people in his life ever had the guts to make jokes at his expense.

  “It’s not the same thing.”

  “Why not?” He furrowed his brow.

  “Because I actually sort of like Michael.” She shrugged. “Jury’s still out on you.”

  “You don’t like me?”

  Kate didn’t think of herself as a vengeful person, but she internally cheered at the hurt in his voice. It lasted only for a moment before she thoroughly hated herself for it. He’d hurt her when he said he didn’t care about her. Part of her wanted him to hurt, however horrible that desire was.

  “Have you done anything to make me like you?”

  “Well…” He stumbled. “I mean…”

  “Uh-huh,” Kate retorted, triumphantly, happy to have a reason to smile again. She’d been frowning for too long. “So, why would I like you if you haven’t done anything to earn it?”

  “I can be nice.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  They sat in unmoving silence for one minute. Then two minutes. All the while, Kate stared. When he finally got uncomfortable with her gaze, he raised his eyebrows in confusion.

  “What?”

  “I’m waiting,” Kate said, unable to help chuckling.

  “Waiting on what?”

  “For you to be nice!”

  Clark joined her laughter. Not much. Not enough. But it was a start.

  “Why don’t we call a truce? A real one this time,” he said, the ghost of a smile still pulling at his lips. “You can have your Christmas, and I’ll have my peace and quiet in my study.”

  “My Christmas is the festival. Are you going to give me that?”

  “No.”

  “But—”

  The smile vanished. Clark’s right hand flexed.

  “We can’t call a truce if you’re going to be impossible.”

  “I am not being impossible!”

  “You know I’m not going to give you the festival back. We can’t afford it.”

  Here we go again, Kate thought. Two steps forward, one step back.

  “That’s not why we can’t have it.”

  “It’s a drain on our resources.”

  “Maybe, but that’s not the real reason you’re shutting it down,” she retorted.

  “Are we really going through this dance again?”

  “I’ll do it until you tell me what you’ve got against Christmas.”

  “You’ll be dancing forever, then.”

  Kate explored two distinct possibilities laid out before her. Either he was a snob who would never attempt to open himself up to her or anyone else, for that matter—a possibility she found remote now that he admitted to liking her, something he never would have this morning—or he was going to flourish into the man she thought he could be. The man she saw hiding behind his thick curtains of cold detachment. Either way, she had to keep trying. The town hung in the balance and a man’s soul was at stake. This was no time to hide at Emily’s house and drink eggnog until she passed out, even if she wanted to.

  “Why don’t I make you a deal? Instead of hiding in your office like the saddest man in the world, you spend Christmas with me. Really with me. Not on your phone pretending I don’t exist. And if you still hate it tomorrow morning, you don’t have to tell me why. But if you like it, even a little bit, you have to fess up.”

  She wanted that secret. Knowing it could be the change in everything. It could make the difference.

  “…Why do I have a feeling you won’t take no for an answer?”

  “Because I won’t.” She smiled and popped up from her rock. The cracked face of her childhood Mickey Mouse watch flashed in the dim light peeking from behind the towering fir trees. Already 5 o’clock? When had it gotten so late? There were so many Christmas Eve traditions to get through before the evening was out. Her mind raced with timetables and planning strategies as her boots crunched the frosty grass beneath her feet. The slight shower still trickled overhead, but she paid it no mind; they’d be warm enough once they made it inside and in front of a roaring fireplace. She rubbed her hands together to warm them, not considering the fact that she might look like a plotting, evil supervillain.

  “Then I guess I accept your deal
.”

  All at once, Kate bloomed into her normal self. It was Christmas. Anything could happen at Christmas. And what was more, she was great at Christmas. Renewed faith squeezed her chest.

  “Then you’d better get ready for the best Christmas of your life,” she commanded.

  “That’s an incredibly low bar to clear.”

  “Then you’d better get ready for the best Christmas of all time.”

  “You haven’t convinced me so far.” He smirked. “I accept your challenge.”

  Chapter Nine

  He accepted her deal only because he convinced himself it was impossible to falter. He would never like Christmas, and even if she did make him enjoy it a little bit, he could just lie and save himself the humiliation of telling his story.

  And besides, he was a businessman. He didn’t respect any deal not in writing.

  When she fled the house, he had no choice but to go after her. Reason told him he couldn’t let a woman wander around outside alone, especially not on his property. Reason told him she’d gone outside without a coat or an umbrella. She’d catch her death! She’d slip on the ice and fall and break her neck! She’d see a stray lightbulb and electrocute herself trying to fix it!

  Reason instilled him with a sense of fear for her safety, but reason, if he ever decided to be honest with himself, only served as a justification for stepping out into the biting rain and following her footprints through the wet grass into the forest. As a kid, these woods terrified him. He hadn’t stepped foot past the treeline since his ninth birthday. Twenty years later, these woods still featured in some of his worst nightmares.

  But he’d forged ahead anyway. Kate couldn’t be out in the woods alone, not when he had been the one to push her out there.

  Clark didn’t have the time or patience for feelings like guilt. At least, he didn’t until he met Kate. She was the human face behind his corporate destruction, and even if he still believed he was doing the right thing, she made him want to apologize. She made him wish there was another way.

  So, that’s why he said what he did about her, about her being kind and good-hearted. She needed to know this wasn’t personal. She hadn’t failed him. He just didn’t buy into her gimmicks about the holiday season, that’s all.

  “We might as well get it over and done with,” he said, picking himself up from the muddy forest floor. Usually, he preferred clean, Scandinavian office design to dirt and outdoors of any kind, but he made an exception for Kate.

  “No need to sound so excited,” she teased.

  “I don’t want this deal going to your head.”

  “Don’t worry. I’m under no illusions you’ll be an easy nut to crack.”

  “Good.”

  “But you shouldn’t let this deal go to your head, either.”

  “Why?”

  She spun on him, her long hair whipping waves of cinnamon and evergreen-scented air Clark’s way. It stunned him as she leaned in close, too close for comfort. Not that he minded. With her this close and this mockingly intense, he could count the millions of near-gold flecks in her eyes and feel her puffing breath on his lips.

  “Because you’ll find I’m a very persistent gal.”

  “I already know that,” he whispered, too low for her to hear, a fact he was grateful for. If she heard him, she might discover that I already know that was code for something else, an electric hum that stirred inside him every time she said his name.

  Unfazed, she stretched her arms out. Arms open wide as if to hug the scenery around her, she tilted her head back and breathed. This place held nothing but anxiety and headaches for Clark, but Kate was perfectly at peace. Out here, away from the distractions of the Christmas lights and the electric bill no doubt climbing, he beheld her. Every soft curve of her beautiful face glowed against this frigid terrain. She smiled even as frozen raindrops slid down her skin. A cold would no doubt be in both of their futures if Clark didn’t usher them back to the house soon.

  A cold seemed a small price to pay to get to see Kate like this, surrounded by silver rain falling down in thin sheets against the emeralds and ambers of the woods towering around them. Set against this backdrop, she reminded him of a princess in a fairy story, one raised so deep in the forest she didn’t even know she was royalty.

  “This place is beautiful, isn’t it?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” he breathed, never once glancing at the scenery. He was too wrapped up in her. “I guess it is.”

  “You guess? Don’t you know?”

  “I don’t like these woods. Haven’t since I was a kid. I got lost in them once.”

  The memories of that day still haunted him. He prayed she wouldn’t pry.

  “And…” She trailed off, her eyes narrowing in cautious suspicion, “you still came out to look for me?”

  “It was the logical thing to do.”

  It wasn’t only logical, but Kate didn’t push. In the fashion of a distracted hummingbird, Kate broke the tenuous emotional connection between them. She changed the subject with surprising deftness, adopting a half-bent pose to examine his feet.

  “What’re your shoes like?”

  “What?” An unapproved laugh escaped. How had he gotten from wanting to sweep her into his arms and kiss her in the middle of a drizzle to being asked about the quality of his shoes?

  “Let me have a look at them,” she demanded, bending down even further to pick up one of his legs. Clark gripped the nearest tree for support when his left leg was hoisted unceremoniously in the air. If Kate were any other woman, if this were any other day, and if he hadn’t struck that deal, fury would have ruled him.

  It was, however much he resented it, Christmas Eve. He did make a deal. And the woman holding his leg in the air was Kate, this strange, smiley, fireplace of a woman who weaseled her way behind his defenses.

  “Why do you need to look at my shoes?”

  She dropped his left leg and reached for his right. A sudden wave of embarrassment gripped Clark by the scruff of the neck, digging cold, sharp nails into the skin beneath his hairline. These shoes were—he mentally counted backwards—about twenty years old. He’d watched countless YouTube tutorials on cobbling so he could fix them up and keep them instead of spending a few hundred bucks on a new pair. Besides, they were his father’s shoes. He didn’t want to just throw them away. Could she tell they were holding together with shoe glue and a prayer?

  “I need to make sure they’ve got enough grip on them.”

  “Okay. Wait, grip on them for what?”

  Clunk. His right leg hit the ground, returning him to even footing. Kate rose, her cheeks flushed from the weather and whatever excitement bubbled behind that skull of hers. Having spent approximately zero time out in freezing rain before, the pink tint of her skin concerned him. His obliging attitude was going to land both of them in the hospital with a horrible flu or something.

  Though he couldn’t deny, at least to himself, how beautiful she was. With her hair now damp from the rain and her clothes sticking to her skin, a woman who should have looked like a drowned cat ended up glowing in the hazy sunlight like a beached siren. She kicked her own shoes against the nearest tree trunk, knocking out clumps of dirt and mud from between the treads. Her pink cheeks and nose belonged on a romantic Christmas card. Clark’s confusion only grew.

  “Are you up for an adventure?” she asked.

  “Uh…” As much as he relished the golden thrill streaking through her gaze, he didn’t like the sound of the word adventure on her red lips. “Not really. Why do you ask?”

  Once again, Kate opened her arms to the scenery, only this time she didn’t relish it or show it off. Clark followed her gaze out into the clearing before them. It was only now, with his attention fully focused on it, he realized this wasn’t a clearing at all.

  They’d reached the river.

  “There’
s a family of cardinals across the water. Can you hear them?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “When I was a kid, one of my teachers used to hand-paint these Christmas cards with cardinals in snowy trees. We don’t get snow here, but we’ve got to see if we can spot them.”

  Oh, no. Her voice recovered its bell-like ring, the same bell-like ring it got every time she wasn’t going to take no for an answer. A snake of panic slithered down Clark’s spine as she inched towards the long log bridge connecting the two banks of the still river; in less than a second, his anxious mind conjured up a list of at least twenty-eight things that could go wrong. He grasped at any reason not to follow through with this scheme.

  “Don’t you have a zoo around here? A bird sanctuary or something? You can see cardinals anytime.”

  “Oh, please,” Kate scoffed and peeled off her now properly wet overcoat. It landed with a splat on her lounging rock. “Why would I go to a zoo when there’s a perfectly good nest across the river?” When she sensed his hesitation, she sighed and extended her hand, her energy very much projecting a just shut up and have fun for once in your life vibe. “It’ll be fun.”

  “That bridge isn’t up to code.”

  “They’re big old logs. It’s probably been there for a hundred years. What more do you want?”

  He pressed his back into the nearest tree. If wishes came true, the massive trunk would open up and swallow him whole. No such salvation came. He cursed this stupid forest; no wonder he hadn’t come in here for almost twenty years. All the trees were jerks.

  “Nope. No way.” He shook his head, hoping his stern voice would be enough to indicate that he was putting his foot down about this one. He’d given her run of his house, his car, and his kitchen, but he really meant it this time when he said no. “It’s not safe. Kate—”

  Pleas fell on deaf ears as the woman in question took a challenging step forward, slapping her heeled boot onto the bark of the makeshift bridge. Clark’s steady heartbeat picked up tempo and volume until it sounded like an overexcited drumline had taken a residency in his ears.