Christmas at Mistletoe Lodge: New Holiday Romances to Benefit St. Jude Hospital

by Sabrina York

  “Are you okay?” Chase asked her, his legs shaking, his arms burning, and his back ready to give out. Not that he’d tell her that, because it’d make him feel weak when he felt like Superman flying over the world’s tallest building.

  At least internally he felt that way, externally, he felt like he ran that marathon she talked about, but sprinted the entire way while being dehydrated.

  “I’ll let you know in a few minutes. I’m not sure yet.”

  He started to panic and set her down on the table, then stepped back. “Did I hurt you?”

  She looked up at his face, the laughter erupting. “Hardly. I’m just not sure I’ve got any feeling in my body other than my lady parts. Or I should say they’re feeling so magnificent that I might have lost some of the sensitivity in other areas of my body.”

  “Don’t scare me like that,” he said, his pulse racing again. “I’m not sure my heart can take anymore exertion right now.”

  “That’s too bad,” she said, standing up and walking toward him. Stalking was more like it. He’d given her space when he set her down so that he could look her over for any injury. Now her body was moving like she was a tiger on the runway and coming to get her dinner.

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because I’m feeling pretty energized and I’d hate to think I’ve got more stamina than you.”

  The last thing any guy wanted was the woman he was with to think he couldn’t keep up. “What do you say we put it to the test and see who lasts longer?”

  “I’m game for that. But shouldn’t we let the dogs in?” she asked.

  He turned to see what she was smiling at, then saw Bruno’s big paws on the window of the door with his big head looking at the two of them standing there naked.

  He sighed. “Probably. Let’s get dressed, feed ourselves and our boys, then we can put it all to the test in the bedroom.”

  “You just need time to build your energy up.”

  “No,” he said. “I just don’t want any distractions when I get you in my room. Nor do I want to stop to feed or let anyone out.”

  “We can do it your way for tonight,” she said, dressing herself faster than him, then opening the door so the dogs came barreling in and running into his legs while he was pulling his shirt over his head.

  “How the hell did you manage to get your clothes on so fast?”

  “The stories I could tell you of behind the scenes on a runway show. Trust me, you don’t want to know.”

  That statement was just another reminder of how different the two of them were and Chase was wondering if there was any way to make this work when he’d never been able to make any other relationship work before in his life.

  15

  Rainbows and Puppies

  “So tell me about your family,” Noelle said later that night. They were in Chase’s bed just relaxing, both of them worn out. Her body felt loose, limber, and sore all at once. But it was a good kind of sore. The kind that told you you’d feel it the next day and it’d remind you of what you could look forward to again.

  “Why?”

  “Because I told you about my parents and how they’ve supported me. You know about my best friend Emma. You actually know a lot about my life, even if half of what you know, you read, and it’s not true. I just realized I don’t know much about you on a personal level other than you’ve got a younger sister with two annoying poodles.”

  He laughed. “Not much to really say. I’ve lived here my whole life. My parents are divorced. I don’t talk to my mother often and my father not at all.”

  She pushed up on her elbow and looked at his face. His tone said he was fine with that statement, but his eyes said something else. “Why? Was it a nasty divorce?”

  “It was a nasty marriage. The divorce was a relief for Tricia and me, but it was too little too late to impressionable kids.”

  She wanted to ask more but decided not to. She could tell it might not be a conversation for now, even if she desperately wanted to know.

  Though she knew a lot of people whose parents divorced, not too many of them let it dictate their own future, but she had a feeling the same couldn’t be said for Chase. He talked about wanting to know more about her before they took the next step in their relationship, but she got the feeling he had enough of his own things locked away.

  How was it possible that for most of her life she’d avoided relationships and the one time she’d gotten involved in one it turned nasty and vindictive? It made her feel used and worthless when most idolized her. She had to keep it all locked away though, not wanting the world to know. Not wanting anyone to suspect she’d been as hurt as she was.

  That her pride might have suffered more than her heart, but it was a close race back then.

  The more lies that were out there about her, the easier it was—easier than worrying people would learn some of the truths. That she hid behind a shield to protect herself. The fewer people that knew about her, the easier it was to protect herself from those kinds of hurt.

  Just because she always gave the impression she had it all—that not much bothered her—that had never been the case with relationships.

  Her greatest fear was that she couldn’t or wouldn’t be loved for her, but only for what she could bring to someone. Her fear became reality years ago and she hadn’t been able to break away from it.

  She left that world behind in the hopes that she could finally live a normal life.

  That she could look forward to a family someday.

  Now she was realizing that that hurt might not be nearly as bad as falling in love with someone who just wasn’t capable of it, or wanted no part of it.

  The last thing Chase wanted to do was talk about his parents’ or his family life growing up.

  There were just some things in his life he didn’t want to share. Things that held him back from committing, that forced an ugliness in his life when he always wanted rainbows and puppies.

  Rainbows wouldn’t be reached or touched like a puppy. So he settled for puppies.

  It was a joke that he was better off with his animals, but the sad part was...it was the truth.

  Animals often depended on their owners. Were loyal to them. Trusted them. Loved them unconditionally. They didn’t treat you badly, they didn’t berate you or make you feel worthless when you were trying your best.

  Too many years of being talked down to by his father, then thrown into the middle of fights with his parents soured him on any type of a relationship. He didn’t know what was healthy or what was toxic.

  He’d only ever experienced toxic, hoping for the healthy that was always out of his reach.

  The few times he ventured out and had a serious relationship, he was often accused of not focusing or paying enough attention to the woman.

  If he tried, he failed at it so miserably, that he was accused of not trusting them. Smothering them, getting on their nerves.

  There was no happy medium and he’d given up even trying for anything remotely serious.

  Casual worked for him just fine, or so he started to lie to himself.

  Then Noelle came into his life and reminded him that what he thought was working out just fine actually sucked.

  He told himself that sleeping with her without knowing what really made her tick was just going to set him up for more heartache when he wanted to avoid that at all costs.

  From the beginning, he knew casual couldn’t exist with her so he was hoping to try one last time.

  Instead, he ended up doing what always happened. He almost messed it up. He made her doubt herself—which he was still having a hard time believing—and in turn, could have lost her before they got to this point.

  But now that she was here in his bed, he was wondering what he needed to do to keep it that way. The only problem was, he was clueless.

  She asked about his family, and he shut down. She saw and she dropped it.

  If he noticed the hurt behind her eyes from that, he kept it to himself. It
was too early to even get into it, but there was a part of him that wanted her to understand. To understand him. A hope, that he was looking for.

  “My parents probably should have never gotten married,” he finally said. If he couldn’t talk about this, he’d get nowhere.

  “You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to. It makes you uncomfortable. I can see that. I’d rather not ruin what we had tonight.”

  “See, that’s the problem. No matter what I do, I always ruin it.”

  She turned sharply. “How?”

  “I don’t know how to be in a relationship. I don’t know what to do. Everything I do or try is wrong. I can’t seem to make anyone happy. Not even you.”

  “Did you confuse the tone of my yelling of your name earlier? I can assure you that it was with joy and not anger, but if you want to work on it some more, that’s fine with me.”

  “You’re good for me,” he said, pulling her in and hugging her.

  “Then what’s the problem?”

  “Just what I told you. There was a lot of pettiness and cheating in our house growing up. My parents stayed together and kept saying it was ‘for the kids. We’re doing it for the kids.’”

  “Oh,” she said. “Yeah, I’ve heard that before, and seen that it’s more for the parents than the kids.”

  “Not in this situation. I think they used Tricia and me to stay married because they were both too ticked off to take the first step. Then when Tricia graduated from college, they had no excuse, and suddenly we get a call out of the blue that they’d filed divorce papers.”

  “No warning?”

  “There was over twenty years of warnings. The tough part was how angry my mother was over it. She should have left my father years ago, but instead hung on and then tried to blame him. Then he blamed her.”

  “Did he abuse her?”

  “Not physically. Verbally, there was a lot of yelling. My father talked down to everyone. My mother did the same, but only to him.”

  She ran her hands across his jaw. “So that meant your father did it to you too.”

  He didn’t want to admit it. He was a successful adult now and refused to hold onto old childhood memories. “It’s old news.”

  “Old news controls our future though.”

  “Yeah, it does.”

  “Don’t let it control yours, Chase. I don’t know your parents. I’d like to say maybe I could meet them because I want you to meet mine, but I think you’d prefer I don’t get introduced.”

  “Maybe,” he said. “Not now. But if you want me to meet yours, then I’ll gladly do it.”

  If she was willing to give him a chance knowing what he just said, then he was going to take advantage of it. He wouldn’t blow this. He wouldn’t let it fly away in the wind like so many other relationships had.

  16

  Away from Home

  Getting everyone together to meet hadn’t been as easy as Noelle thought it’d be, or so she’d told him. October turned to November and now it was the day before Thanksgiving. They were on their way to her parents’ house on Long Island. He didn’t want to be intimidated they were going there rather than her parents coming to Noelle’s, but she was excited to have everyone meet and he wasn’t about to say no and hoped to maybe learn some more about her in the process.

  Somehow in the past two months, they’d made things work more than he ever thought could be possible.

  She was a staple at the shelter during deliveries and adoption days. She not only took tons of pictures and completely overhauled his brochure, but she managed to get him some much needed funding by letting colleagues from New York a few hours away know what she was doing.

  He was a bit nervous at first when she offered to do that. To put his shelter out there like that, where it could be judged. Where he could be judged by people in her world. But she was doing it for the right reasons.

  Next week there was going to be a big write-up about the shelter in a paper closer to the city. He decided to reach out himself and get local papers involved the same day.

  Noelle had said she feared reaching out to people would cause this kind of publicity, which he hadn’t planned on.

  She just talked to others that had more contacts than her. But she’d said if he was up for the interview and article, she would do anything to help. “Calvin was the best thing that happened to me,” she’d told him. “I’ve got you to thank for it and I want to make sure a lot of other strays end up in good homes.”

  “Just Calvin?” he’d asked. He was hoping he at least fell in the same category as Calvin, but all she did was lean up and kiss him, then slapped his ass and walked away. He didn’t want to be hurt...but he was.

  The only thing that was softening the hurt was the quick stop they’d made at Mistletoe Inn before they left town. He’d known the inn was here his whole life but never had a reason to stop or eat here.

  Noelle’s excitement made him pull in and listen to her as she explained what she was going to do and her conversation with Carolyn. He liked that she made him a part of her work. A part of her life like that.

  He had to admit the place was just beautiful and knew right away he was going to book a night for him and Noelle. Just the two of them to experience the wonder together that was in her voice as she talked about her photography.

  “So it’s just your parents and us, right?” he asked, maneuvering through traffic now.

  “Just the four of us. Why?”

  “I didn’t know if you had any other family or not. Aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents.”

  “I do, but they don’t live around here. Christmas is the holiday that is big in our family. Though I think my parents said many had other plans.”

  She’d said that before. That Christmas was her parents’ favorite holiday and one she loved so much. One he did too. Not because of any great family love, but because his parents chose that day to be civil to each other.

  “So you’ll be coming back here for that next month. Or will you stay home?”

  “I’ll come back here. I’ve never had a Christmas away from home.” She turned her head to look at Calvin sleeping next to Bruno and Snacks in the back. “I hope you’ll come with me, but I understand if you want to spend it with your family.”

  “There’s time yet.”

  He didn’t even want to think about a family holiday again. Last year, Christmas was a joke full of tears and anger on his mother’s part. She’d drunk a little bit too much and went on a rant about her ex-husband.

  His mother failed to remember she cheated just as much as his father did during their marriage. She was more pissed he was with someone and she was still single.

  Maybe he shouldn’t have voiced that to his mother, but Tricia laughed. Since the divorce, being civil during the holiday disappeared like a plate of hot dogs at a speed-eating contest.

  “My parents are excited to meet Calvin.”

  “Just Calvin?” he asked, grinning at her. That damn hurt was coming to the surface again. He could never get a read on her.

  “Well, I’m sure they’re going to like Snacks and Bruno too. Maybe not Snacks if he has one of his massive gas attacks.”

  “Everyone has gas,” he said and laughed at her wrinkled nose.

  “Can we change the subject?”

  “You brought it up,” he pointed out.

  “Yeah. Take a left right now. It’s only a mile down the road,” she said.

  He was trying not to show much of a reaction to the houses they were passing, and that wasn’t an easy feat. He always considered himself middle class. He was better off now than he was growing up, better off than his parents were, but the Bennett’s were in a league of their own.

  “The gray house up there,” she pointed.

  He turned down the driveway expecting a massive estate. It wasn’t an estate like some of the other properties, but it was huge, a Cape Cod weathered gray style with a massive wraparound porch that he didn’t expect.

  Not
only that, it was already decorated with red and white. Definitely professionally done and stunning. “Wow,” he said.

  “I told you my parents’ loved Christmas too. They have the house decorated differently every year.”

  “And you need to make sure you come home to see it?” he asked but knew the answer.

  “One of the reasons I come home, yes.”

  “The other is because you wanted to feel normal?” he asked. She just winked at him.

  Brick or modern clean lines was what he thought he’d see with her parents’ home. Not something out of a storybook. This house looked like it had been in the family for generations. It was charming and said a lot about Noelle. It reminded him that there was more to her than what people saw on the outside.

  More than assumptions. And most of those assumptions were way off base.

  Too bad he didn’t know much more himself at times.

  He suspected that might be the draw she had to Mistletoe Inn. It wreaked of old wealth and was decorated just as well for the holidays. He was looking forward to making some memories there with the two of them.

  He parked his car in front of the large circle out front and before he could even get all of the dogs out of the back, the front door was opened by an elegant woman that could only be Noelle’s mom. There wasn’t a lot of resemblance he could see, but when her mother made her way down the steps, he noticed they walked the same. They carried their bodies the same. And he wondered if Noelle’s mother had been a model at one point too.

  “Mom,” Noelle said, rushing forward and giving her a hug. “This is Calvin.” Figures she’d introduce the dog first.

  “What a handsome young fellow you are. And messy,” her mother said when she pulled her hand back. But all she did was laugh—a sound that echoed Noelle’s so much—then wiped her hand on her pant leg.

  “Mom, this is my boyfriend, Chase. Those are his dogs, Bruno and Snacks. I’m sure you can figure out who is who. Chase, my mother, Elizabeth.” She’d said boyfriend for the first time, so some of the hurt was evaporating.