’Tis the Season

by Judith Arnold

  Probably. He was pleased that Champion had performed so well this season, that he had nearly all his shopping done, that he would get to spend all day tomorrow with his children.

  And Filomena.

  He turned the corner onto Dudley and wove among the crowds until he reached the jewelry store. The windows had fake snow painted onto them, and multicarat diamonds glittered in velvet perches behind every pane of glass. He wasn’t looking for a diamond, though. Not for Fil. Not for a woman who was going to be gone once the old year rolled into the new.

  He pushed the door open—and simultaneously pushed all thoughts of Filomena’s departure out of his mind. He and she would be together tomorrow. They’d share the holiday. She had promised to help him cook a ham, which, as best he could figure, was already cooked but still needed something other than broiling done to it. She and the kids had constructed the gingerbread house and baked butter cookies shaped like snowmen over the weekend. The entire house smelled like an evergreen forest, thanks to the tree.

  Tomorrow would be wonderful, and he wasn’t going to think beyond that.

  As the door swung shut behind him, he dusted the snow from his shoulders and headed over to the glass showcase. There it was. Utterly impractical, grossly overpriced—and perfect for Filomena. He beckoned a clerk with a wave and pointed to it. “I want this,” he said. “Gift-wrapped, please.”

  “For someone special?” the clerk guessed, unlocking the showcase.

  “Yeah,” Evan murmured, promising himself that giving it to the most magnificent woman he knew wouldn’t be a huge mistake. “Someone special.”

  FILOMENA LEANED BACK into the embracing cushions of the sofa. The floor of Evan’s living room was a mess of wrapping-paper scraps and scattered ribbons. A few piles of gifts—articles of clothing, pairs of ice skates and the books she’d given the children—lay amid the debris, not neglected so much as reserved for a later time, when the initial flood of Christmas adrenaline dried up. She could hear the kids shrieking in the den, and the electric hum of the race-car set Evan had given them. Without a doubt, race cars were cooler than books.

  She didn’t mind that the kids had tossed aside the books she’d given them. Eventually, they would get tired, and then they’d want to sit quietly and read. In the meantime, Gracie was carrying her Piglet doll everywhere with her.

  The living room was surprisingly cozy and not too formal. The two chairs facing the couch looked a bit rigid, but the couch, a gentle blue brocade, was plush and comfortable, and Filomena felt almost decadent lounging on it by herself, the skirt of her velvet jumper tucked around her legs, the sleeves of her burgundy turtleneck pushed up and her hair falling loose down her back. Across the room stood the tree, its branches still wide and fresh, its silver garlands and ornaments glinting in the lamplight.

  She couldn’t exactly say this was the best Christmas she’d ever had. She recalled a Christmas when she was eight and she received a stained-glass ornament to hang in her window. It was a crescent moon, her first moon, and she’d brought it back to her prep school and fastened it to her window with a clear plastic suction cup. The light would spill through its pale-blue glass and cast mysterious shadows on the opposite wall. Not an expensive gift, but she’d adored it. That Christmas had been marvelous. So had the Christmas her family had celebrated in Hawaii when she was sixteen. She and her parents had hiked to the center of a dormant volcano and eaten a picnic lunch on the grass growing inside the crater. What an amazing way to spend Christmas!

  But this year’s Christmas definitely merited placement in the top three or four Christmases of Filomena’s life. From the moment she’d arrived at the Myers house at noon, she’d felt a part of this home, this family. The kids had given her a detailed tour of every single gift they’d received: “Grandma and Grandpa sent this,” they’d said, showing her some complicated Lego sets, “and our aunt and uncle sent these”—some Disney videos. They’d let her take a turn racing a car around the track Evan had set up in the den. Her car had skidded off the track three times, but Billy had assured her that was supposed to happen, sort of, and it was awesome when the cars fishtailed and stuff.

  And Evan. Evan in a soft flannel shirt and even softer-looking jeans, demonstrating surprising culinary flair by marinating the ham in orange juice and brown sugar and cooking it in the microwave—a recipe he told Filomena he’d gotten via a panic-stricken phone call to his mother last night. Evan smiling, beaming at the children, relating funny stories about his colleagues, filling Filomena’s glass with wine and whispering, “I have something for you, but we’ll do that later.” His words kept echoing inside her, even as she watched part of a video with the kids, let them demonstrate their new computer games to her, helped Evan to prepare a salad and oversaw the children’s efforts at setting the table. I have something for you, he’d said, and for some reason, she couldn’t exactly think of it as the sort of something that would come in a gift-wrapped box. He had something and they would do it later.

  If only his eyes didn’t glow so seductively when he gazed at her; if only his smile didn’t make her breath catch. If only he didn’t touch her so casually, arching an arm around her to reach into the silverware drawer, brushing a strand of her hair back from her face, resting his hands on her shoulders as he stood behind her at the computer terminal, giving her pointers on how to play the game Billy had loaded onto the machine.

  If only he hadn’t returned her kiss the way he had the night he’d invited her to spend Christmas with him, maybe she wouldn’t keep thinking about what they were going to do later.

  Exchange presents—that was what they were going to do. And she was pretty sure later had arrived. She’d set her gift for him under the tree, next to a box wrapped in shiny silver foil and adorned with a white-and-silver bow. Obviously it wasn’t a gift for the children, or that beautiful wrapping paper would have been torn to shreds hours ago and the contents of the box exposed, scrutinized, played with or ignored, depending on whether the gift was a toy or a book.

  Was that box something for her? She didn’t want to guess what was inside it, because she didn’t want to be disappointed. Yet she couldn’t imagine being disappointed by anything Evan gave her.

  She heard his voice drift in from the den, quietly reminding the kids not to play rough with the race cars. Then his footsteps in the hall, past the stairway and through the arched doorway into the living room, a balloon-shaped glass of brandy in each hand. “Hi,” he said. His smile melted something inside her.

  “Hi.”

  He set the two glasses on the table in front of the sofa, then crossed to the tree and pulled the two remaining packages out from under the low boughs. He eyed her gift to him curiously, pretending to weigh it in his hand, scowling and shaking it. “Don’t!” she warned him when the click of marbles inside the package deepened his frown.

  “Is it fragile?”

  “Not really, but if you shake it like maracas, it could break.”

  “It doesn’t sound like maracas,” he said, placing both packages on the table. “I’m bummed out. I was really hoping for maracas this year.” He sent her a wicked grin.

  “Well, go ahead and open it,” she suggested. “Get bummed out.”

  He settled onto the sofa next to her, his weight causing the cushions to sink slightly, drawing her closer to him. The children’s squeals and the whine of the toy cars zipping around the track sounded far away. They seemed even farther away when he lifted the two glasses, handed her one and tapped it with his. “Merry Christmas,” he murmured.

  “Merry Christmas.” She sipped. The brandy was smooth and tart, sliding down her throat and leaving warmth in its wake. Her father hadn’t taught her much about brandy, but she didn’t need his expertise to know this was delicious. “Now, open your maracas.”

  He lifted the box, held it as if about to shake it again and then tore at the gift wrap. He didn’t tatter it as mercilessly as his kids might have, but he wasn’t exactly fastidious about ge
tting the paper off the box. Once he’d accomplished that, he removed the lid and studied the contents. Although his smile remained, a line etched across his forehead. “What is it?”

  He hated it. She’d aimed for whimsy, creativity, something he would never buy for himself or even think about. She had known she was taking a risk, but everything she did with Evan carried a risk, so this hadn’t been much different.

  “It’s a clock,” she told him, trying to keep her tone positive. She eased the contraption out of the box so he could see it better. “See, this column marks the minutes. The small silver balls drop into the column, one per minute.” She pointed to the tube down which the balls were supposed to fall when the clock was plugged in. It was marked in increments of five. “Then, when there are sixty balls in the column, it empties and a bigger ball drops into the hours column.” She pointed to the wider tube, which was marked from one to twelve. “There are instructions on how to set it. The back is clear, so you can see the mechanism while it’s working.” She rotated the contraption so he could view the back, which was constructed of clear plastic to display all the gears and levers and the motor.

  “It’s a clock?” He was still frowning slightly, but she detected an edge of excitement in his voice. “Let’s get it running.” The instruction pamphlet in hand, he carried the clock to an outlet near the door and plugged it in. She heard repeated thunks as the balls dropped into place. “Wow! This is cool!” he exclaimed, a boyish eagerness charging his voice. “This is the most amazing clock I’ve ever seen!”

  “You like it?”

  “It’s great! Where in the world did you find it?”

  “At a little specialty-gift shop I remembered from when I was a child.” She began to relax.

  “This is really cool.” He turned the clock around so he could watch the gears turn and a wide screw rotate, lifting the minute balls up to the top of their tube. “I’m not going to get any work done ever again. I’m just going to stare at this all day.”

  “I got it for you because I thought if there’s anything you need, it’s time.”

  He left it on the floor, facing the couch, and rejoined her, his gaze lingering on his new toy. “I love it,” he murmured, scrutinizing it from that distance. He let out a hoot when another minute ball dropped down the tube. “The kids are going to want to play with it, but I won’t let them. It’s mine,” he said with exaggerated greediness. After a long moment—she wondered if he was waiting for the next ball to drop—he turned and planted a sweet kiss on her lips. “It’s perfect,” he whispered.

  The kiss? she wondered. Or the clock?

  “I love it that you wanted to give me time,” he added, punctuating the statement with another brief kiss. “That clock comes pretty damned close.”

  “It was the best I could do.”

  “It’s wonderful.” From across the room came the tap of a ball falling into place. His lips were so close to hers she could feel their movement as he grinned. “I wish I’d found something as wonderful for you, Fil, but I hope…” His voice trailed off as he turned from her and reached for the silver-wrapped box. His humor seemed to fade, and she realized he was nervous about the gift he’d gotten for her. She vowed to herself that whatever it was, she would swear she loved it. Since it came from Evan, she would love it, no matter what.

  The box was heavy. She rested it on her knees and meticulously lifted the taped corners. Unlike him and his children, she wasn’t going to destroy the paper in her eagerness to get to the gift inside.

  He leaned back into the upholstery, glancing at the clock when another ball rolled down the tube. She smoothed the folds of the paper and set it on the table, then studied the heavy white box. Taking a deep breath, she opened the lid and removed a layer of protective tissue. Below it was what appeared to be a crystal ball.

  She suppressed the urge to laugh. Did he think that because she read cards she could divine the future in a crystal ball? Did he think she actually believed in the tarot and all that? If she did believe it, she wouldn’t be here with him right now. Her cards had told her to play it safe and not get involved with him.

  Yet sitting next to him on the sofa, their glasses of brandy side by side before them and the taste of his kiss still on her lips, she felt more involved with him than she’d ever felt with a man before. They hadn’t known each other long, yet their lives had become intimately linked, and the hell with the tarot reading.

  Cautiously, she lifted the crystal ball from the box—and realized it wasn’t really a crystal ball. It was a sphere of crystal, all right, but suspended inside it was a silver crescent moon and three small, elegant silver stars. She gasped at its beauty.

  He looked hopeful. “You like it?”

  “Oh, yes.” She sighed, utterly transfixed. She would take it back to New York with her and display it on her dinette table. No, on the shelf in front of the window, so what little sunlight seeped through the narrow glass would shine on it and make it shimmer.

  No, she would keep it on her nightstand, so it would be the last thing she saw before she fell asleep, the first thing she saw when she opened her eyes.

  A waxing moon. From Evan.

  “It’s wonderful,” she murmured, then set it carefully on the coffee table, freeing her hands so she could wrap her arms around him. The kiss she gave him was slower and deeper than the one he’d given her, but he didn’t object. Quite the opposite—he opened his mouth to her, invited her in and then followed her back, his tongue dancing with hers, his mouth devouring hers. His hands moved restlessly through her hair, and when she brushed her teeth against his lower lip, he groaned and went still. Deliberately, he extricated his hands from her hair and leaned back. She saw his chest rise with each breath.

  “I guess you like it, huh?” he joked, although he was hardly smiling.

  “Not only because it’s beautiful but because it’s gloriously impractical. Maybe even more impractical than the clock.”

  “I don’t get to be impractical very often,” he admitted, sliding one hand down her arm until he could lace his fingers through hers. “I like being impractical with you.”

  He kept her hand snugly in his as they lifted their glasses and drank. The tree sparkled. The clock dropped another ball. Filomena’s gaze alighted on her moon and she smiled. Evan’s shoulder felt solid against hers.

  Impractical. Yes. Everything about this was impractical, and she savored it. What else was Christmas for, if not to be impractical, to forget about the cold reality waiting outside the door and revel in the magic, believe in it, let it triumph for just this one night? What better way to celebrate Christmas than with a gift of time, time spent with a loved one, a night lit by an enchanted moon?

  She wasn’t sure how many balls dropped before their brandy was gone and they stirred from their companionable silence. Evan stretched and stood, his hand still clasping hers so he could pull her to her feet. Without a word, he led her out of the living room and down the hall to the den. “Bedtime, guys,” he announced.

  “Daddy, you’ve just got to see one thing—” Billy began.

  “Daddy, you should see how he made his car wiggle back and forth!” Gracie chimed in.

  “Tomorrow,” Evan insisted. “You can show me tomorrow.”

  “You don’t have to go to work tomorrow?” Billy asked.

  “Nope. The stores will be open, but I don’t have to be there. So let’s tidy up a bit and then it’s upstairs time.”

  They didn’t protest too much about having to part temporarily with their new toys, although they did seem to spend longer than usual picking up their things and straightening out the room. When Gracie asked Filomena if she would read some of Winnie-the-Pooh to her, Filomena couldn’t say no.

  The evening rituals felt so normal to her, so familiar: bathing Gracie and then leaving her hairdressing to Evan. Sitting with Billy and discussing something profound and solemn. Tonight their conversation dealt with the logistics of Santa’s visiting so many houses in one
night. “That’s why Christmas always seems like the longest night of the year,” Billy reasoned. Then a few minutes in Gracie’s room, where Filomena read the first chapter of Winnie-the-Pooh while Gracie clutched her Piglet doll and fought to keep her eyes open. By the time Filomena reached the end of the chapter, Gracie’s eyelids had won the battle. Filomena tucked her blanket around her and tiptoed out of her room.

  Evan was in Billy’s room, talking about Billy’s new skates. “This weekend,” he was promising, “I’ll take both you kids to the rink and you can break them in, okay?”

  “As long as I don’t have to stay with Gracie. She goes too slow.”

  “I’ll skate with Gracie,” Evan promised, then glanced over his shoulder at Filomena, standing in the doorway. “Or maybe Fil will skate with her.”

  She shouldn’t let such suggestions invade her heart. She shouldn’t allow herself to believe she was a part of this family.

  “I don’t mind skating slowly,” she said.

  Evan kissed Billy’s forehead, then backed out of the room, switching off the light. He closed the door and turned to face Filomena. His hair, as always, was adorably mussed. His shirt was slightly rumpled, his grin slightly crooked. Gazing at him, she felt a rush of emotion that wasn’t quite like what she’d felt when she’d unwrapped the crystal moon, when he’d kissed her, when he’d said he liked being impractical with her. It was a combination of all those feelings and more, a soul-deep yearning to give in to the magic, just for this one magical night.

  “Please don’t go,” he whispered, and she understood that he was thinking what she was thinking, feeling what she was feeling. Wanting what she was wanting.

  She looped her arms around his neck and rose on tiptoe to kiss him. The only place she would go tonight was wherever Evan wanted to take her.

  HIS BEDROOM was at the other end of the hall. It boasted a broad window overlooking the backyard, which was covered with a creamy layer of snow that glowed in the moonlight. Beyond the yard the forest that connected his house with hers stood dark and still, all shadow and silhouette.