But, flee she did.
William blasted through the crowd. “Excuse me,” he bolted through the double doors hard enough to break them down. Snowflakes danced and tumbled in the air, hitting his face, stinging his eyeballs. “Lucy, wait!”
She belted her coat, skidding to a stop on the sidewalk. “Go back to your party.”
“What was that in there?”
“You’re the one who wanted this. I’m just a pawn in your daddy issue therapy.”
“That’s not fair.”
“You took a quality piece of literature and turned it into a capitalized and lucrative personal business plan for your own needs. You didn’t even ask if we wanted this party.”
“This is my job, Lucy. It’s what I do.”
“Well, now you can do it without me. Find yourself another superstar.”
“So, was it all a lie?” he ground out, holding his hands open. “You, me, the kisses, the dancing.”
“Of course not. The book just brought us together.”
“Or, you played me in more ways than one.”
Lucy slapped her now-freezing hand on a streetlight post. “It wasn’t like that. Don’t you hear me?”
“Why would you do this to me?”
“You should understand ambition more than anyone in that room.”
“Sure, but who pretends to be somebody else to publish their book?”
“I sent it to so many publishers. Nobody wanted it.”
“It takes time, Lucy. There are thousands of publishers in the world and millions of books.”
“I didn’t have time,” her own yell matched his. “Don’t you see?”
“How can I see? You haven’t explained anything to me.”
“We were about to lose our apartment, the bills were stacking up, and then I found out my mom could get her sight back if we had the money for a surgery. The rest was all you.”
His brain scrambled to tie the pieces together. “So, this was all about money?”
“Wasn’t it for you? Make the Top Five, right? That’s all you talked about.”
“But I didn’t deceive anybody or break laws.”
She balled her fists and parked them at her hips. “Oh, is that right? What about not telling Bibi, who you thought had social anxiety, that she would be forced into the public? Didn’t you blatantly confess that you were going to deceive her for your own good?”
“Not deceive her. Just not mention it.”
“Oh, well, that’s just so much more ethical,” she snarked.
“Says the queen of deceit yelling at me in a snowstorm on Christmas Eve.”
Cars zipped by sending up a spray of slush and ice into the air. Hotel guests exited the doors behind them, stopping to stare at their blowup. William waved them on to keep moving.
“I’m so sorry,” offered Lucy, now in a mess of tears. “You asked me that day if I had any more books. You wanted something different, and I had something different.”
“You couldn’t have just told me?”
“The company forbids the publication of employee work. I’d have lost my job and, as it is was, we couldn’t pay the rent due to medical bills. When I first gave you the manuscript, I didn’t expect you to actually like it.”
“Then why submit it?”
“Just the night before, I had a rejection letter from Walton and Cartwright. I wanted your opinion, I guess, without knowing it was my book. Low and behold, you have a fetish for holiday novels.”
Stomping up and down the walk with abrasive snow crunching, he shook his head. “Now you’re rich. Some hardship, right?”
“No, because the contract isn’t legal.”
“You took the first payment.”
“And, I haven’t spent a dime of it. You’ll get it all back.”
“All of this work for nothing,” more hollering that shamed him to his core. It wouldn’t have been so bad if she hadn’t humiliated him in front of his father. Not only would he have to hear about his failure for overlooking a mistake, but any bit of remaining respect took a flying leap.
Lucy wiped her face. “I tried to tell you so many times.”
“You either do it or you don’t. There’s no try.”
“I was going to, but then your father bought the company. The first time I was going to tell you was right before I found out my mom could get her sight back. I had no money, so can you really blame me?”
“What about the emails? You pretended to be somebody else, then kept it up even as we discussed this fake person who I thought I was talking to. What about the restaurant, Lucy? You made me into a complete fool.”
“I meant every word in the emails, regardless of the name I used.”
“And, the rest?”
“You insisted on a meeting in person. Pushed me into the restaurant, begging me to bring Bibi.”
He circled his eyes so wide that they could have painted a spaceship in the sky. “Oh, pleaseeeee.”
“Well, it’s the truth.”
“Unlike everything that’s come out of your mouth. Still, you think this is my fault then?”
“I’m just saying by that point, I was knee-deep.”
“I’ll never be able to trust you again.”
More pedestrians stared as they hopped out of taxis headed for the hotel. Why now of all nights did his luck have to plummet? He had lived too long in the bowels of inefficiency in his father’s eyes. Now, his every cell seethed in humiliation.
“I truly am sorry,” she pleaded.
“You should be, since this is terrible for me.”
“Believe me, I looked for a way out to the point that I was willing to marry that toad you saw me in the lobby with just to get my mom’s surgery and cancel this deal.”
“Good Lord, Lucy,” he said into the fog, looking at the sky. “This is a mess.”
“I couldn’t let the world see her face and think it was me. Believe it or not, I do have morals, and the entire hoax grated on my nerves like a cheese slicer. I haven’t been able to sleep in two weeks.”
“So, you wanted your fame then?”
She crossed her arms stubbornly. “I don’t give a flying flute about that. All I ever wanted was to see my book in print with my name on it, and see my characters come to life in a movie. Proof of success well done.”
“And, gobs of money, let’s not forget that perk.”
“I only wanted enough to get my mom’s surgery.”
“Why is that your responsibility? Her accident wasn’t your fault.”
“I know that now.”
“You may have been drunk and disorderly, but you didn’t hurt anybody. The drunk driver who hit your mom can’t say the same thing. He’s in jail, Lucy.”
“What on earth is your point?”
“My point is that even the judge said it was the driver’s fault; that’s why he’s in prison. Why do you flagellate yourself like that? I know it’s hard to see your mom suffer but blaming yourself is hurting her more.”
She pressed her lips together. “Don’t presume to understand my mother.”
“Fine, don’t listen to me. Clearly, you have it all figured out, right? Have some actress pose as you for the rest of your life while you give her a cut of the money. Real brilliant.”
“I was desperate, Will. It was for my mom.”
“You let a stranger sign a legal-binding book contract.”
“She was no stranger to me.”
“None of it’s legal. We’ll have to stop everything in its tracks and start over.”
“Why do you think I confessed?”
His finger aimed at the hotel. “Your little prank will be all over the news by morning. Your speech was recorded by press and paparazzi who gave up their Christmas Eve to get the story of a lifetime.”
“Well, they sure got that now.”
“You lied to me; you used me. I’m just sick with it.”
Her jaw sagged to her knees. “I used you? You used me, William.”
“So I be
came a kingmaker, but what you did was downright despicable.”
“You used the book to win a triathlon you have with your dad. The movie, the TV series, the three-book contract, the cruise ship, the real-life book town, all of that was to make you somebody worth knowing, since you have no self-worth or self-identity outside of your father. You played Bibi for your own personal gain, and never even asked her if she wanted any of that. It’s just a stinkin’ book, Will!”
“You mean you, right? I played you, not Bibi, not Goldilocks inside.”
“Same thing.”
He waved his arms in the air. “Then I guess we’re both nutzoids. At least we have that in common, if nothing else. Some great match, right? Both talented left-handed swindlers.”
“What you’re doing with my book isn’t normal.”
“Right, and you’re the poster girl for a sane person.”
“At least I had a heartfelt reason for what I did. It wasn’t some selfish, egotistical showoff, masculine, feather-fluffing display of my talents at somebody else’s expense as a way to stay in denial about my problems.”
“You couldn’t possibly understand. Besides, you were well-compensated.”
Lucy sobbed for air and opened her hands. “I’m not the same person now. Falling in love with you wasn’t something I expected. Don’t you know what I just did inside was for you?”
Loves me. She loves me. But why?
He gawked, unable to formulate words. At least he recognized the hypocrisy in his previous ones. They really were no different. Emotional wounds pushed their actions. Their past histories tied them together.
“You love me?”
She concluded, “Your father won’t want Big Apple Books now. He won’t win this war you’re in with him, which means you can keep your job, since obviously I no longer work for you.”
“You ruined me in front of him.”
“Oh, Will, you have so many talents. You don’t need your father saying so for it to be true. Everything you did for Bibi with my book, was all you. The whole world will see it whether he does or not.”
“Trust me, I’m not the one they’ll be looking at.”
“Snowdrop Valley is my creation. I couldn’t let Heather lie to the entire world. I deserve to see my book published, or the movie made through the eyes of joy and pride, not obligation and redemption. I don’t want my book out in the world if I can’t be the one to send it out there.”
He pinched his nose. “No longer the flawed caterpillar.”
“I want to be a butterfly. I deserve to be the butterfly.”
“So long as you don’t mind flying alone. I’m out!”
Despite the brutally painful betrayal still plowing over his heart, he couldn’t help but feel proud of her transformation. Standing up in front of all those cameras and people took courage.
Something he lacked.
She stepped right up to him with those large, dreamy, Lucy Carpenter eyes that believed in magic and Santa Claus and elves who delivered candy, and placed a hand on his chest. “You need to love yourself.”
There was nothing more to be said.
He could barely stand looking her in the eye knowing he told her so many personal things in email. Only a complete blockhead would put on the air of a respectable man only to blow the image.
“Merry Christmas, William.”
She kissed his cheek with lips so warm they could have melted the skin where they touched, leaving him there hunched deep into his coat as she darted in front of a car to cross the street. The honk snapped him to attention to chase after her, yet his feet wouldn’t lift from the slush.
Then she was gone.
He worked back into the crowd in the Terrace Room where people mingled and gossiped amongst themselves. His father bent over Mary Carpenter parked safely in a chair against the wall.
“Mr. Harcourt?”
He whipped around to a striking female voice previously known as Bibi Roquette; a total stranger who could have just as easily been the daughter of a Swedish diplomat for all he knew.
She smiled. “Don’t hate her.”
“Maybe it’s you I should hate. Whoever you are.”
“Nothing as fun as a total mystery. Like playing Clue.”
“Yet, now we know what’s in the yellow envelope.”
This woman was part of the hoax who made him look the fool in front of his father. Yet, looking across the room now at his dad, all he could see was sympathy in the man’s eyes. Maxwell Harcourt watched him carefully.
“She’s been punishing herself for her mom for years,” said Goldilocks.
“I know that.”
“It’s been terrible for her. She was desperate, is all.”
“I know that feeling, too.”
She pushed the proof of Lucy’s book meant for the reading into his hands. “I finally read it. She truly is a talented writer. I mean, I don’t read or know books, but this one felt real.”
“It really is a gem.”
“Lucy just wants to be happy. The rest isn’t for her.”
“Thank you,” he said with a bit of chagrin. “I see that now.”
The mystery woman frowned. “She was going to marry a man she hated who wanted to use her to build his career, just to get her mom’s surgery paid for. She was going to withdraw the contract, then you happened.”
“I see.”
The man in the lobby. His soul ached with jealousy. Not a bad-looking guy.
“Am I going to get in trouble?” she asked.
“She gave you permission to sign as her pen name. You didn’t commit fraud or identity theft. You’ll be fine, so will she. Yet, all of the contracts are void.”
Her head angled, curiously. “Then make a new one.”
When she wandered into the crowd to men waiting for her attention, William thanked the stars that she wasn’t Bibi Roquette. The injury to his pride and heart gaped raw. Yet, he had no attraction to the actress and couldn’t be more pleased to learn that the emails came from Lucy.
The author.
Lucy.
Bibi.
The beautiful red-headed fireball who was more like a ferocious little Pokemon creature from his youth days that sprouted to power when vexed out of form.
She did it for her mom. I did it for my dad. Can I blame her? We’re the same.
It was time for him to pull out that shard of glass. He didn’t kill his mother. The cancer wasn’t his fault due to being an unruly child who caused her terrible stress.
Just like Lucy didn’t cause her mom’s accident. Fate was cruel, life was hard, and destiny had a hand in the grand design where nobody had any control. All he could control were his thoughts and actions.
Illness wins; illness loses.
People smoke and drink and eat salt pork their whole lives and live until they’re ninety. Others work stressful careers and eat brown rice and vegetables, and they’re the ones who get sick. Life had no rhyme or reason any more than a polar blast in Manhattan or an earthquake in Ho Chi Minh City could be predicted.
Life happens.
Cancer happens.
Not my fault and he knows it. He blames himself.
As William worked his way to the podium, he made the decision that life was going to happen to him in a way of his choosing. He would choose to Neosporin and Band-Aid his festering childhood wound.
Finally.
He took four steps up as heads turned his way, accepting that there was a real possibility his father would never offer his acceptance, praise, or love. Yet, that didn’t mean he didn’t feel it or see it.
His father was no Grinch.
Nor was he.
Life was the Grinch. A ball of misery with a lesson to learn.
No, they weren’t Grinches.
More like a broken network with misfiring wires that demanded reconnection and repair. A few tweaks, a little patience, and he would get it working again.
“Good evening,” he said gruffly into the mic. “Please, I’d lik
e to say something.”
The room went silent. People stopped chewing and champagne glasses went down. Every camera and eye in the place raked over him for an explanation to the unfolding drama.
It happened then.
The melting of the ice-fish. All of the fear and guilt and shame he’d been carrying around his whole adult life erupted at the surface and began to thaw. It felt like sugar-plum fairies pranced out of his body to Tchaikovsky’s ballet.
He could breathe again.
For the first time since before his mom passed, he’d get what he wanted for Christmas. His life was like a thick piece of peppermint bark. Multiple layers of sweetness, slickness, and crunch, with a surprising core.
“About what happened tonight...”
He thought of the first line in Lucy’s book. If you don’t breathe Christmas in your soul, you won’t find it under a tree. Then pondered his Grinchy guide to life. Then he got a wonderful and awful idea.
“Mr. Harcourt?” A reporter cupped a hand over his mouth. “Can you comment on the actress?”
Heather waved, enthusiastically. “Here I am, still here.”
William closed his eyes. “About tonight…”
He visualized line after line of the Grinch in the way his mother once read it out loud. He puzzled and puzzled ‘till he thought of something he hadn’t yet thought before.
Lucy loved him.
So, this is what it felt like. It occurred to him getting love from his dad wasn’t the only option. He was lovable; somebody loved him. There were other people in the world.
“Mr. Harcourt?” A lady reporter stuck a mic in the air. “Are you a part of this hoax?”
It all unfolded clearly.
People loved differently, and that was okay. Respect and love don’t always come together. William knew then that he had to find respect within himself while allowing others the freedom to express love uniquely.
He’d start with himself.
“Can you tell us why you paid an actress to pretend to be the author?”
Reaching a height higher and brighter than his father wouldn’t make him a better person. It made him the kind of person that he didn’t want to be. Acceptance of himself was now all that mattered.
More paparazzi.
“Are the contracts legally binding?”
William cleared out the nerves in his throat.
My Christmas Darling Page 24
