One Great Christmas Love Story

by Kaylee Baldwin

  “If they’re as good as they claim to be,” Jack added. “This is quite a title to live up to.”

  He grabbed the bowl and measured out the softened butter. He snagged her mixer from the cabinet and mixed it around for a few seconds before getting the sugar. His forearms flexed beneath the sleeves of his sweater he’d pushed up his arms.

  “Like watching me work?” he asked her mildly, throwing a wink at the camera.

  To her surprise, she felt her cheeks grow a little warm. Jack, Jack Shay, had never made her blush before, but then again, she’d never gotten caught up in watching his forearms flex either. “It’s kind of nice not doing it myself,” she said, trying to recover.

  He snorted and then turned on the mixer to cream the butter and sugar.

  Holly opened the file of questions on her phone and pulled it up. “Okay, first question. This one is very serious, based on how many people asked it.” She paused for a beat. “Do you work out?”

  His eyes twinkled with humor, but he kept his face straight. “I was born this way. Genetics.”

  Holly shook her head and turned to the camera. “He runs every day and lifts weights at least a few times a week.”

  “You’re telling all my secrets. There’s going to be no mystery for the woman I end up with.”

  “Second question. Do you prefer to be hot or cold?”

  “Really digging deep with these questions.”

  “I can go more personal.”

  He gave her a quelling look. “I prefer cold weather. It’s a lot easier to add layers than to take them off. What about you?”

  “I don’t think I’ve thought about it that much.” She slid the egg carton to Jack, and he cracked two eggs into the sugar/butter mixture. “Probably cold, for the same reason. Why else would we live here?”

  “For that view.” He nodded his head out her back window, where you could see the mountain rising in the near distance.

  “True.” Turning to the camera, she added, “The mountains are gorgeous this time of year. And in the spring, there are a ton of fantastic waterfalls to hike to.”

  Jack carefully added the vanilla. “Remember the waterfall we found about a mile up the Birch Trailhead?”

  About five months after Dallon died, they’d decided to leave all their electronics at home and explore nature for a day. It ended up being one of her most tangible healing experiences. There had been a family of deer drinking at the base of the waterfall, and the sight had moved Holly in a way she hadn’t expected. It had been quintessentially peaceful, and peace had been something she’d missed over those months.

  “So pretty. We’ll have to see if we can find it again this year. And one of us needs to actually remember to bring a camera this time.”

  Jack shrugged. “I don’t mind living in the moment. What else have you got?” Jack nodded toward her questions doc.

  She asked him a few more superficial questions: favorite ice cream flavor, the three items he’d take on a deserted island (a survival guide, a knife, and a satellite phone—cue her eye roll, but it was also so very Jack), and where he’d grown up and what his hobbies were.

  They took a break from taping while the cookie dough chilled in the fridge.

  “I don’t think Georgia’s coming,” Holly finally admitted. She’d sent her a couple of texts, but Georgia hadn’t responded yet. She rubbed her temples, trying to stave off her budding stress headache. “I need to upload an episode tomorrow.”

  “Then upload this one,” Jack said.

  “I can’t do another one of just me and you! #JollyForChristmas people will go nuts.”

  Jack’s eyes lit with amusement, the way they always did when she mentioned the hashtag. “So let them! I know you can make it work, though. Do an intro about the road to love not being smooth, or talk about how I have bad luck in love and this proves it. I think getting stood up is pretty relatable.”

  “Maybe, but getting stood up twice isn’t normal. Right?”

  “You started dating Dallon when you were both med school babies. Of course getting stood up is normal, especially with online dating, which is essentially this. People will relate.”

  Her mind started whirling. Maybe he was right. But Georgia had sounded so excited last night. It didn’t make sense, but hadn’t she seen how often people no-showed appointments? Things came up. People flaked out. There were countless reasons people might not show up.

  There was no alternative. Holly was going to have to use this footage and make it work somehow. Not only did the momentum mean the potential for more money for the foundation; she really wanted to spread the MyHeartChannel Talia’s Truth Cam #seethegood message. “Do you mind if I ask you about your romantic past while we’re decorating the cookies?”

  Jack tapped his fingers on his legs, contemplative. “Do you think they even care about that?”

  “It would go with the ‘love not running smoothly’ theme.” She rested her head against the back of the couch and stared up at the ceiling. “I seriously know how to pick them, right? Two people who don’t show up. Sorry.”

  “Hey.” Jack placed his hand on her shoulder. “It’s me, not you.”

  She tilted her head to the side to look at him and felt a giggle burst up in her chest. “Are you breaking up with me?”

  “Never.” A look of tenderness flashed over his face so quickly, she almost thought she’d imagined it, replaced by his normal bored look. “What would you eat without me around?”

  “Nothing. Followed by fat and sugar.”

  “Exactly.” He stood with a groan, held out his hand for her to take, and tugged her to her feet like she weighed nothing. “And on that note, we’d better start shaping cookies.”

  Chapter 18

  Jack filled pastry bags with all different colors of frosting. The baked and cooled cookies were laid out across the counter. He’d gotten a call from another doctor who needed to discuss a case, so their taping had been put on hold.

  Holly had heard from Georgia while she ran out to grab them subs for dinner. She showed him the text with a frown: Can’t make it. So sorry. Have fun, though! ;)

  She might have been disappointed, but all Jack felt was relief.

  Now, the camera was back on the tripod, and Jack was looking at printouts of cookie decorating examples, wearing the purple-flowered apron, and feeling more relaxed and happier than he had in a long time. Being with Holly had that effect on him. And he suspected, by the way her shoulders had finally relaxed from their tense stance near her ears, that the effect was mutual.

  Holly stood by the phone, adjusting the heights on the tripod. “Okay, ready for those deeper questions?”

  “Shoot.”

  She came around the counter to stand beside Jack. “Okay, it’s official. Georgia isn’t showing up tonight, which means two strikes for you, Jack.”

  “Some say I missed the ball; others might say I dodged it.”

  She gave him a dirty look, and he gave her an apologetic glance. He knew she needed him to be serious right now. It was the least he could do, given the circumstances.

  “Tell us about your romantic history.”

  Right for the gullet. He focused on picking out a cookie and then twisting the top of his frosting bag to keep everything inside once he squeezed. “Let’s see. I didn’t date much in medical school. You and Dallon were the only crazy ones who found time for romance and classes.”

  She shook her head and laughed. Her arm brushed his when she reached across him to grab a snowman cookie, sending his mind reeling. He swallowed and concentrated on his cookie.

  “When I look back, I don’t know how we did it. I think we were running off of four hours of sleep a night and caffeine.”

  “I was always envious of what you two had.”

  Her eyebrows lifted in surprise. For as little as Holly had thought of Jack, other than to be annoyed, she’d be shocked to learn how often he’d thought of her. At first, he’d only wanted to get under her skin, but that soon grew t
o a respect for how hard she tried—and subsequently succeeded—at everything she did.

  He continued as he piped a white beard onto Santa’s cookie face. It helped not to look at the camera or think of all his staff who would watch this tomorrow. It was hard, in general, to be vulnerable. He’d have to be extra gruff his next shift to make up for it.

  “But there was no way I could pursue anything more than the casual date here and there while we were in school. And as a resident, I could hardly do even that. In my last year, I met—” He cut off. There might have been zero love lost between him and Rebecca, but she was still Shiloh’s mom, and he needed to preserve what civility he could if he had a chance of seeing his daughter with any regularity.

  “Phoebe?” Holly supplied the name of her deceased cat who had hated Jack—and really all men—with a passion.

  “Yes, Phoebe,” he said. “Another resident in Chicago set me up with her, and we hit it off immediately. I used to tell people it was love at first sight.” He hated to think of himself back then, such a gullible pup taken in by good looks and charm, carefully overlooking her vapidity and raging temper. “I finished residency and did one more year for radiation, got a job out here the same time you and Dallon did, and within three months of moving here, I’d proposed to—Phoebe.”

  Jack had wanted what Holly and Dallon had, and instead he’d walked into something that looked like love on the outside, but was a festering heap of ugliness on the inside. They both knew how to put on a public face, and after a while, he didn’t know where the fake ended and the real began.

  “Everything started to fall apart right after that. Nothing was good enough for her, including me. I’d convinced myself the stress of the wedding made her so critical of everything I did; even the way I breathed got on her nerves.”

  Holly winced. “That must have been hard.”

  Now he grabbed the red for the Santa hat. “I started working longer hours to avoid coming home. I didn’t completely acknowledge that was the reason, but if admin needed someone to take an extra shift, I was the first to volunteer. When Dallon started the free clinic, I volunteered for four days a month instead of two.”

  And when he couldn’t work, he’d call Dallon to play basketball, or check out a new restaurant, or catch a movie. Dallon had precious little time at home and had given so much of what he did have to help his struggling friend. Jack never asked how that had affected Dallon and Holly’s relationship. He’d had been so caught up in his own problems that it hadn’t even crossed his mind until much later.

  “You still do four days at Bridger Cares,” Holly said.

  Now he grabbed the black frosting for the eyes. Holly had finished three cookies to his one: a yellow bell with a red ribbon along the top, a snowman, and a Santa that looked so much better than his. Everything she touched turned to gold. That fact used to annoy him, but now it only filled him with a sense of pride, and—surprisingly—honor that she would allow him to be in her life after all the crap he’d pulled over the years.

  She’d have every right to never forgive him for taking so much of Dallon’s time. They hadn’t known then that his time would be so limited, so specifically finite, and every moment was precious. She could have been angry at him for living while Dallon died. Or for showing up at her house a week after the funeral and coming back every single day afterward to check up on her when she said she wanted to be left alone.

  To his great shock, a clot of emotion ran painfully through his chest. He couldn’t imagine his life without Holly and was grateful she was the kind of person who forgave.

  “Then Phoebe got pregnant,” Holly continued when he’d gone a long time without saying anything, lost in his thoughts.

  “Right.” He cleared his throat and concentrated carefully on the thin black outline he’d decided to do. “And our daughter is definitely the very best thing to come out of that marriage. But it quickly became apparent we were not good together. Six months after our daughter was born, I was working another double shift, one of many I did at the time. When I got home, their stuff was gone, divorce papers on the table. I honestly didn’t know how long she’d been gone for; that’s how rarely I was home. I didn’t see our daughter for three months. The longest three months of my life.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  He glanced over, surprised. “Dallon didn’t tell you?”

  She shook her head. “I knew he worried about you a lot, but no, he didn’t tell me the details of your divorce.”

  “Anyway,” he said, desperate for the mood to be lightened. “Since then, I’ve gone on a handful of dates, was convinced to go on a matchmaking show, have since been stood up twice—” He looked meaningfully at the camera. “—and have decided love isn’t in the cards for me. So there’s the sad, pathetic love life of Jack Shay—which, by the way, wouldn’t be a horrible title for this episode.”

  Holly looked at him, incredulous. “I’m not calling the episode that.”

  “Why not? It’s better than ‘Dr. Handsome Seeks Love,’ which I thought you promised not to use.”

  “I promised not to use ‘Doctor Love.’ You never asked for titling rights in your contract.”

  “What contract?”

  “The one you should have been smart enough to ask for.” She smiled impishly at him before pushing aside yet another perfectly decorated cookie.

  He barked in laughter, then impulsively dipped his finger in a frosting bowl and slid it slowly down her crinkled nose, leaving behind a line of black frosting. Her eyes widened. “There’s something on your face,” he said.

  “Oh?” She grabbed the spoon they’d used to stir red coloring into the frosting. “That’s so funny, because there’s about to be something on your face too.”

  He grabbed her wrist before she could run the spoon along his cheek. “You don’t want to do that,” he warned her teasingly.

  “Oh, I do.”

  “It’ll be all-out war.”

  With a flick of her wrist, a glob of frosting flew off the spoon and landed on his chin. “Whoops,” she said innocently.

  The lightness he’d been looking for spread through him as he grabbed the spoon from the green frosting bowl. She threw the red one down but was now holding the blue and yellow ones in each hand, the intense expression on her face making him laugh. Even in a frosting fight, he recognized her determination to win.

  With a surprise spin move around her, he grabbed the white bowl of frosting and held it over her head.

  She froze. “Don’t you dare.”

  He lowered it slowly over her head, but lifted it at the last minute before it could touch her hair. “I wouldn’t.”

  With a flash, the bowl was out of his hands and on his head. “But I would!”

  “Holly!” He laughed in shock. White frosting dripped from his hair, down his face, and onto the shoulders of his sweater.

  “You started it,” she defended through her own bursts of laughter. She reached up and pulled the bowl from his head. “I may need to make more frosting.”

  She started to walk toward the sink, but Jack grabbed her by the waist and pulled her back. “Oh, no you don’t.” He lowered his head to her laughing shrieks and rubbed one frosting-laden cheek against hers, and then the other.

  After a few seconds, the laughter stopped. They were both breathing hard, the air thick with desire. He pulled back and looked Holly in the eyes, searching for—something. Could she be feeling what he was feeling? Finally?

  Her cheeks were flushed beneath the white frosting, her pupils slightly dilated, and her breathing coming in the kind of tight gasps that indicated a racing heart.

  He leaned forward, closer, ever so slightly, giving her every opportunity to back away. Her eyes fluttered shut, and his followed suit. Almost there.

  Glop. A huge drop of frosting fell from his head, landing on his nose and then falling onto Holly’s lips. Her eyes opened and she flung herself across the kitchen, wiping at it, a nervous sort of laugh fall
ing from her.

  “We should get cleaned up,” she said, standing there awkwardly.

  “Holly,” he started, but the small, firm shake of her head told him she didn’t want to get into it. Okay, he’d respect that. For now. He ran a hand up through his sticky hair, coming away with a handful of frosting. “Can I use your bathroom?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she said, sounding way too relieved.

  He paused, wanting to say something, wanting to ask if she ached to kiss him the same way he ached for her. But he knew she wasn’t ready, knew that one heated moment in the kitchen didn’t erase an entire belief system about love. He glanced mirthfully at the camera and headed into the bathroom.

  Nope, this wasn’t something that could be rushed.

  Chapter 19

  Holly rinsed her face off in the sink, leaving the cool cloth across her cheeks and mouth for an extra moment. What just happened? She could almost convince herself that his goal had been to drop extra frosting on her all along, but what about the look in his eyes before her own had fluttered shut? The heat in his gaze was hard to explain away, too.

  She heard the shower turn on in the bathroom and turned to the rest of the cookies on the counter. The sooner they got this done, the sooner they could get delivered, and then she’d have a chance to process everything. Or better yet, forget everything. Everything after she’d gotten pulled into his arms, anyway.

  She didn’t want to forget their conversation and what he’d revealed about Rebecca to her. And playing around with him, she didn’t want to forget that either. Her life had so little time and space for moments of immature lightheartedness. Dallon, for all of his amazing qualities, wouldn’t have had the patience to decorate cookies, much less deal with the fallout of a frosting war. Although generally the fallout would be the mopping sort, not a mess of the heart-pounding, tingling-lips sort.

  With the remaining frosting, Holly decorated most of the cookies, finishing up the last bell as Jack came out of the bathroom, rubbing a towel over his freshly washed hair. He didn’t have his sweater on anymore, but underneath he’d been wearing a soft gray T-shirt that highlighted the definition in his chest and arms.