by Cate Remy
“Hi. You both are ready to go.”
“Actually, I need to turn the heat on in the van.”
“I hired a driver to take us.” He stepped aside and showed her a modern, shiny wheelchair accessible vehicle parked outside her driveway.
Kianna rolled her wheelchair to the front door. She gazed at the van. “Is that for us?”
“It is. I’m told there might be a popcorn machine inside.”
Brie enjoyed the look of astonishment on her daughter’s face. “You didn’t have to go out of your way.”
Jackson shook his head. “It’s no trouble. I figured you’d like to relax on the way there.”
“That’s thoughtful of you.”
The driver came out to get Kianna onto the wheelchair ramp and inside the van. There was a row backseat where Brie could sit across from her daughter. Jackson climbed in beside her. Once everyone was inside and the van started moving, Brie reached into her coat pocket. “Before I forget again.” She handed Jackson his blue handkerchief.
He put it in the back pocket of his jeans. “I was losing so much sleep over this.”
Brie liked his sense of humor and the relaxed way he conducted himself. She felt like she could be herself around him without having to tone down her jokes or risk being seen as a smart aleck. During the drive, she listened mostly as Kianna began asking Jackson questions about his favorite video games and basketball teams. He showed her daughter how to make the popcorn machine work. Kianna loved the idea of making popcorn in a moving vehicle.
They arrived in Harper at seven o’ clock. Lights adorned the welcome sign of the small town and continued up the main street where the shops all were decorated with lights. Some lights were on the rooftops in the shape of tin soldiers and snowmen.
The driver let them out at the city hall building, where guests could purchase tickets to see more of the show. Jackson paid for three tickets, including a ride in Santa’s sleigh.
The attendees, dressed as elves, helped Kianna into the big red sleigh. Brie and Jackson took their seats while Kianna got to ride with Santa Claus further up front. The horses pulled them through Main Street, past more houses and props designed to look like a beautiful nineteenth-century Victorian village at Christmas.
A cold breeze blew across the sleigh. Brie removed her daughter’s scarf from her purse and went forward to drape it around Kianna’s neck. “Mommy,” she groaned.
Brie settled back in her seat. Jackson looked at her with just a smile. “Where’s your scarf?” he asked.
“At home where I forgot it on the couch. I was trying to remember your handkerchief.” She pulled the collar of her coat against her neck. Sitting close to him seemed to provide her with just the right amount of warmth.
Kianna’s laughter drifted back towards them. She and Santa’s elves were sharing a joke. Brie felt a surge of emotion as she caught the big smile on her daughter’s face. Jackson saw her wipe her eye.
“Brie? Are you doing okay?”
“I’m fine.” She turned to him so he could see she wasn’t completely melting to pieces. “I always wanted to take Kianna to see the lights, but we never got a chance, either because she was recovering from surgery or I had to work extra shifts.”
He patted her knee. “I’m glad you’re here tonight.”
The horses turned and the caravan of sleighs continued up another street. Brie heard carolers singing to a crowd. They were dressed in Victorian clothing. The men had on stovepipe hats and the women had on dresses with cute matching shawls. Brie enjoyed listening as they passed.
The sleigh ride ended there. As the ride attendees helped get Kianna down from Santa’s sleigh, Jackson got out and offered his hand to Brie. “I never got a chance to do this.”
“What?”
“Pretend to be gentleman and help a lady down from a carriage. Sleigh, same difference.”
He wasn’t pretending to be a gentleman. Brie accepted his hand. His touch made her fingers tingle. He supported her weight as she stepped down. “Careful,” she warned him. “I watched a lot of British period dramas growing up.”
He put on a smirk that somehow managed to be both teasing and sweet at the same time. “Are you saying chivalry goes to your head?”
Before she could answer, she felt a tug on her coat. Her daughter joined them. “I want to sing like the fancy-dressed people. Show people how you sing, Mommy.”
Brie froze in place.
Jackson liked helping Brie down from the sleigh. His ears perked when her daughter asked her to sing with her. He was curious to her what Brie sounded like. “Everyone has a favorite Christmas carol, right?”
Brie glanced from him to the crowd of people and then to her daughter. “I’m not sure I should.”
“I’ll start it. Ahem.” Kianna folded her hands in front like she was presenting at a recital. “Deck the halls with boughs of holly…”
Jackson watched her start the song. Brie shrugged and soon joined in on the carol. Her voice was a pleasing alto, rich and warm. She sang a lower harmony while her daughter sang the melody. He noticed people started to turn to them and listen.
He observed Brie as she went into the second verse. Her face was even prettier when she sang, like a light came on from within. She motioned with her hand for other people to join in, including him. He shook his head no quickly, but continued to listen as some of the braver, more pitch-accurate people sang along.
He applauded with everyone else when the song ended. As Kianna went back to watching the lights, he remarked to Brie, “You sounded amazing.”
Brie put her head down and gave a bashful smile. “It’s just a carol I like and have been singing since forever.”
“You got the crowd going. You really should think about cutting an album one day.”
She shied away from his compliment. Whoops. He remembered what she told him before about why she gave up a singing career.
“Sorry. You told me about the choice you made. I didn’t mean-”
“I promised Kianna she could go into the gingerbread house and hear a Christmas story. I think it’s right over there.” She got her daughter’s attention and the two of them proceeded to head in the direction of a house decorated to look like the graham cracker door could be made into a thousand s’mores.
Jackson followed behind. He said the wrong thing again. He just complimented Brie on her singing and ruined it by suggesting she go pro. Why did it seem like something more was bothering her, too?
Brie helped Kianna get her wheelchair into the gingerbread house. Singing with her daughter was fun, but she wished she hadn’t done it in public. And in front of Jackson.
She didn’t know how to take his compliment or his suggestion she record an album. She told him why she didn’t want to. Well, somewhat.
The storyteller, a woman dressed in an adorable costume that made her look like a gingerbread person, took a seat on a plump cushion in the middle of the house’s living room. The gated fireplace behind her kept the interior of the little house warm. She smoothed out her dress of patchwork quilt patterns before motioning to Brie to bring Kianna closer to be beside the rest of the children.
“Who wants to hear a story?” the gingerbread woman asked.
The children shouted out in reply. Brie stood back so more kids could come forward to listen. She looked for Jackson and saw him waiting by the door. The cluster of children and adults was too big for him to come forward.
When the storytime was over, it was also time to drive home. Brie walked back to the van with Jackson and her daughter. Kianna had fallen asleep, so he pushed her chair. He help her secure her daughter in without waking her.
“Thanks for taking us to see the lights,” Brie told him during the drive to Atlanta. She and Jackson shared the backseat again. When they were half a mile from her house, Brie spoke low so as not to wake her daughter, who still snoozed away across from them. “All the excitement wore Kianna out.”
“I’m glad you both enjoyed it.”
Brie saw him lean forward. She moved his way, feeling a glimmer of anticipation about what would happen next. He touched her face and drew her chin up. She closed her eyes as she experienced the first heated brush of his lips on hers.
The kiss he gave her was soft while the light stubble along his jaw tickled her chin. Forget butterflies. Tiny little firecrackers went off inside her body.
She opened one eye to see the driver had the privacy window up. “Has that window always bee up?” she asked Jackson.
“I’m not sure. I hadn’t really been paying attention to it, to tell you the truth.”
“What have you been paying attention to?”
The driver stopped the van. They arrived at her house. Jackson still held her close.
“To be continued?” he asked, his lips so close to hers she wanted him to kiss her again.
“To be continued.” She pushed his hair off his forehead before she unbuckled her seat belt.
Kianna was sound asleep. Brie didn’t wake her to say goodbye to Jackson. She took her daughter inside the house and proceeded to get her to bed. As she went to bed herself a little later, she went to sleep with memories of Christmas carols still in her ear, the smell of gingerbread in her nose, and the taste and feel of Jackson’s kiss on her lips.
Chapter 9
One week later
Jackson sat at work in his office. He couldn’t stop thinking about Brie or that kiss ever since they went to Harper to see the Christmas lights. He liked spending time with her. She was attractive, witty, and actually got his jokes. Her daughter was adorable. He thought about what Brie said about her divorce and wondered what man would be such a turkey to leave a beautiful family.
He wished he could see Brie during the week before Christmas but she had a tight schedule at the store. With those last-minute Christmas shoppers, it was crunch time. Jackson thought of how he could ask her out again. Maybe she’d like to go to a movie with him next week.
He hit save on the spreadsheet and breathed a big sigh of relief. At long last, after hours of work day in and day out, the record company’s artist catalog was sorted. Georgie Peach Records could move forward in the new year with a clean slate and a more structured bookkeeping system.
His celebration was cut short when the phone buzzed. “Jackson?”
“Uh-oh, Lamar. I hear that voice. Where’s the fire now?”
“Not exactly a fire. Your twelve o’ clock appointment with Romero needs to be pushed back to two. His attorney is backed up in a court settlement with another client.”
That was one meeting Jackson didn’t mind being delayed. He recalled how his previous introduction to the singer took a nosedive. He hoped Romero’s attorney had coaxed the artist into hurrying things up with that new song. “I’ll just catch up on other work while I wait. You can take a long lunch, Lamar.”
“Are you sure?”
“No sense in both of us being cooped up in here on Christmas Eve Eve.”
Jackson hung up the phone and opened his desk drawer. He shuffled papers around and found the flash drive. He meant to listen to it a couple weeks ago and forgot to return it to the vaults. He took it out of the desk and inserted it into the computer’s USB port.
A menu opened, giving him the option to view the drive’s contents. He clicked on it. Eleven audio files came up. Jackson grabbed a pair of wireless headphones from another drawer and connected them to the computer before he opened one of the files to listen.
A woman’s voice filled his ears. She sang the first words of a verse against the gentle notes of a piano. The hair on Jackson’s arms rose. He knew that voice.
A gospel choir joined in with her on the chorus. The woman’s warm alto got stronger and more emotive on the second verse as she powered through the rest of the song. Jackson had chills run down his spine. This was a recording of Brie singing.
He opened the next audio file to hear Brie sing a contemporary praise song. He opened the third, where she had a faster, uptempo number. Jackson sampled the remaining audio files. Each and every single one featured her beautiful, rich voice.
What was going on?
He removed his headphones and took the flash drive out of the USB port. He breathed before calling Brie on his cell.
She answered on the second ring. “Hi, Jackson.”
“I need to see you.”
There was a pause on her end. “I’m at work right now. I don’t get a lunch break until twelve-thirty, and then it’s only twenty minutes.”
This couldn’t wait. “I’ll meet you in the food court.”
“Um, okay.” He heard the hesitation in her voice again. “I have to get off the phone now. There are a lot of people here.” She ended the call before he had a chance to tell her goodbye.
Jackson got up and snatched his coat from the back of his chair. He went back to the desk, grabbed the flash drive to stick in his pocket, and tore out of the office. Employees gave him weird looks as he shot past them.
“Is there a driver available?” he asked the valet attendant at the front of the building.
The valet pointed to a black SUV outside. Jackson made a dash for it.
He startled the driver who was checking updates on his social media page. “I need you to get me to Darcy’s in the mall.”
The driver also gave him a strange look before nodding and starting the car. Jackson didn’t care. He climbed into the backseat. He needed to find out what was going on with the record company and Brie. What was she not telling him?
Brie finished ringing up her last customer before her break. “Thanks for shopping at Darcy’s. Happy Holidays.” She clocked her time out on the computer and then proceeded to close down her cash register. “I’m out for lunch.” She told the next sales associate who came to take the afternoon shift in the shoe department. “I’ll be back at one.”
Brie grabbed her wallet and cell phone from beneath the counter. She only had wafers for breakfast, but still didn’t feel very hungry. Jackson’s strange phone call in the middle of the day set her off. She wished she asked why he wanted to meet with her right away instead of hurrying to get off the phone and get back to work.
She got an incoming call. Thinking it was Jackson, she answered without glancing at the screen. “Can you tell me what’s going on?”
“Miss McIntyre? This is Ann from Dr. Gallagher’s office. I wanted to call about your account.”
Brie got nervous. “Is there any way I can make small payments on Kianna’s bill so she can keep seeing her doctor? I can’t pay it off by January, but I will be consistent.”
“That’s what I was calling you about. Your account’s been paid in full.”
“It has?”
“Every year, the children’s hospital receives Secret Santa donations to help families pay for their children’s medical bills. This year, Kianna’s was chosen.”
“I…can’t believe it. That’s great news.”
“Merry Christmas.”
Brie ended the call. The news brought lightness to her step. She couldn’t wait to share it with someone. She could tell Jackson when she saw him.
Outside Darcy’s, in the mall, lunch hour shoppers scrambled between stores. Some walked with plastic bags of takeout from the food court. Although Brie worked in retail and saw the greedy side of consumer spending on a frequent basis, there was still something sweet about choosing gifts for loved ones this time of year.
She took the escalator to the first floor to get to the food court. The sizzle of the wok at the teriyaki chicken place reached her ears. She hurried to the food court’s seating area, declining a sample of beef fajita from the guy at the burrito bowl stand.
She neared an empty table. As she started to go near it, a man bogged down by pink shopping bags from a lingerie store beat her to the punch. He put four of those bags down to claim the spot. Brie recognized the man after he removed his baseball cap. “Romero?”
Her ex looked up fast, as if he were caught in the act of som
ething scandalous. He saw her and remained tense. He exchanged a nod to a beefy guy seated at the next table. Brie didn’t have to ask if that was his security. “What are you doing here, Brie?”
“I’m on my lunch break. You?”
“I’m waiting for my lawyer to get out of a meeting. I had to pick up a few last minute Christmas gifts, anyway.”
“Gifts?” She looked at the frou frou lingerie store bags. “I thought you were outfitting your groupies to make your next social media post go viral.”
“I don’t have time for your smart mouth right now. I got a record deal to sign today with Georgie Peach’s new exec.”
“Brie.”
She turned when Jackson called her name. He ran to her, coat unbuttoned, tie flying behind his neck. She got out of the way in case he couldn’t put the brakes on in time.
Romero made a face. “You know him?”
Jackson stopped in front of her and glanced at Romero. “You know him?”
Brie looked back and forth between them. “You know each other?”
Jackson fixed his tie. “Romero’s an artist with Georgie Peach records.”
Romero pointed at him. “He’s the new record exec.”
Shock made Brie’s stomach catapult into a swan dive before her blood ran cold and then hot. She peered at Jackson. “You’re head of the recording company?”
“Yes, and I found this in the vaults.” He showed her a flash drive he took out of his pocket. “It has eleven songs with a woman whose voice sounds exactly like yours. In fact, I know it’s you. Brie, please sign with us.”
“Wait a minute.” Romero moved so fast he upset one of the pink bags. A scrap of racy black lace fell to the food court floor. “I asked to go in the vault. That’s my music.”
“What?” Jackson eyed Romero as if he said he was Krampus.
Brie’s hands started shaking. She kept her secret for so long. Now pain and anger threatened to spill over. “He’s lying. I wrote and recorded those gospel songs. George Pierson promised me a record deal. Instead, he signed Romero, my ex-husband, after the divorce when he lied to Pierson and said he wrote the songs and arranged the music.”
