In the kitchen she showed off all the possibilities for centerpieces, the wreath made of basil and strawflowers on the open cupboard door, and the garland made of fruit and vegetables above the fireplace.
“Now stay with us,” she encouraged, “and learn to make a special angel Sherrie and I have designed to share your Christmas with you.”
“Okay,” Chris said, “film’s rolling. Now we’ve got about six minutes including the station break to get our act together in the kitchen.” He sighed heavily. “Is there a chance?”
“Sylvia’s taken over the kitchen,” Liza said, leading the way in while cameras moved around and the crew cast wary looks at each other—expecting the worst, she was sure, of the next half hour.
Whittier had been called into service in the kitchen and was arranging rolls in a basket lined with a lace-trimmed serviette.
“How’s it going in here, Mr. Whittier?” Chris asked hopefully.
“Better than we have any right to expect,” he replied, indicating a flushed and bright-eyed Sylvia painting glaze on a still-anemic-looking ham and potatoes.
“We’re almost there,” she said, closing the oven door on the ham and checking something in the microwave. “Cranberry-apple relish is done, baked onions will be by the time we get to them. I started the cider pie in the microwave and baked the piecrust by itself, so by the time we combine the two it ought to look as though they were baked together and almost done. Rolls are ready, we’re in the middle of broccoli with pimiento butter, but we had to scratch the corn stuffing balls unless Liza would like to show the ingredients and describe what they’ll look like.”
Liza wrapped her arms around her. “Thank you,” she said. “I don’t deserve you. You fell out of the sky today like a miracle.”
Sylvia hugged her in return. “I don’t think many of us deserve our miracles, and yet we get them. It’s Christmas. I’m glad I could help.”
“Two minutes to air!” someone shouted.
Liza looked around for Jeff, but couldn’t find him. She wondered if that would be the pattern for the rest of her life.
Sylvia was a perfect working companion. She was there with the right dish every time Liza asked for it and could contribute tips on it without taking over, though by that time Liza would have been grateful to let it be the “Christmas with Sylvia Stanford” show.
“I’d like you all to meet Sylvia Stanford,” she told the camera as Sylvia showed off the cranberry-apple relish, which she’d transferred to a beautiful fluted bowl. “As you know from the interview you saw earlier, she’s a friend of Jeffrey James, and stopped by to visit today. She was conscripted into service when my…my husband was called away suddenly and a few other details of our day were changed at the last moment.”
They did fill time with the recipe for the corn stuffing balls, and Sylvia showed how to scoop them with an ice cream scoop, then added with a grin, “If you’re one of those cooks who likes to save her acrylic nails.”
They showed off the ham and potatoes, which Sylvia had managed to glaze beautifully so that they appeared as finished as though they’d had the extra hour to bake, then Sylvia checked the cider pie and announced regretfully that it wasn’t done.
“Well, it might be when we come back,” Liza said. “Stay with us for pie and flaming punch, then we’ll invite you to join us for carols.”
The moment Chris said they were off the air Liza turned to him in horror. “Carols! We’re supposed to sing carols for five minutes to end the show! If there’s anything I do worse than cook, it’s sing!” She turned to Sylvia with desperation in her eyes. “Tell me you used to sing backup for Whitney Houston.”
Sylvia shook her head apologetically. “I was thrown out of choir in the fourth grade. There’s even an APB out on me at karaoke bars.”
Liza groaned and sank into a kitchen chair. She had to face it. This show, though it was turning out miraculously glitch free, meant the end of her professional life. But having to sing alone for five minutes was bound to mean the end of her personal life, as well.
No one could possibly listen to her sing four bars of “White Christmas” and not want to kill her.
Chapter Thirteen
“Two minutes, people!” someone shouted.
Liza determined that she would find whoever owned that voice and teach him to say something else—like, “Technical difficulties! We’re off the hook,” or “We’ve been preempted by a message from the president!”
No. There was no rescue imminent. She was going to have to get through this on her own, and if she had to, she was going to sing all by herself for five interminable minutes.
She looked around for Jeff again but couldn’t spot him. She wondered if he’d left, finished with her and Whittier and their entire Christmas fiasco.
The kitchen door opened a crack suddenly and Sherrie peered around it. She saw everyone running around and talking and pushed the door the rest of the way open. “Are we on a break?” she asked.
Liza ran to her, pulling her into the kitchen. Bill and the boys spilled in after her. “Are you okay? What are you doing back so soon?”
“I’m fine.” Sherrie waved her away, shrugged out of her coat and went to the food. “It was a sinking thing.”
Liza frowned at Bill. “A syncopal episode,” he corrected. “No real reason for it, except probably that she was hungry and edgy.”
“What can I do at this point to…?” Sherrie was asking, looking around the kitchen. Then she noticed the finished dishes in the middle of the table and gasped. “What happened? You didn’t do this.”
It wasn’t a question, it was a statement of fact. Sherrie was back.
Liza shook her head. “Sylvia finished everything. But we’re not slicing anything, because she pulled a few fancy maneuvers to make things look like they’re finished when they’re really not.”
“Wow,” Sherrie breathed. “A miracle.”
Liza looked at her family, at the woman who’d saved her life at the last moment, and at the wonderfully festive atmosphere of the kitchen despite all the cameras, cables and lights all over, and decided that the past few days had indeed been a miracle.
She’d met Jeff James, and, though she’d well and truly blown that opportunity, she would never forget last night in his arms in the cabin. Bill and Sherrie had solved their problems and were getting married. Sherrie would have her inn, Liza would see that Edie kept her job, and then she would use her part of the money to take a brief break and decide what to do with the rest of her life.
Somewhere the loving warmth this home exuded had to exist for her. All she had to do was find it. And she knew she couldn’t do that with dishonesty between herself and the public who looked to her for their homemaking ideas.
“All right,” she said briskly, pulling chairs out at the table. “I want you all sitting around the table like dinner guests while we display the food.”
“But you’re supposed to…” Chris began.
Liza shook her head. “I know. But I want to do it this way.”
“Liza,” Whittier’s voice warned.
She blew him a kiss. “You’ve already fired me, Mr. Whittier,” she said amiably, “and threatened to leave me globally jobless. There’s nothing more you can do to me at this point, except go along with whatever I want.”
He opened his mouth to protest, then closed it again with a frown, apparently deciding she was right.
“Aunt Liza.” Davey tugged at the hem of her sweater as he walked around her to take a chair. “I’m sorry I forgot about you being my mom.”
She hugged him tightly, then kissed his cheek. “It doesn’t matter, Davey. It was a dumb idea in the first place. But I’ve fixed everything.”
Travis looked worried. “But Mr. Whittier fired you.”
She shook her head. “Doesn’t matter. I’ll find something else even more fun and more exciting to do. You two did a great job and your bikes are already in the garage, so don’t worry about it.”
; The boys squealed gleefully, guilt forgotten as they took their places.
“Okay,” she said to the group around the table. “Just follow my lead.”
Bill looked up at her. “Isn’t that why we’re in doodoo up to our armpits already?”
Liza kissed the top of his head. “Yes, it is. So, once you’re dirty, what’s a little more?”
She looked toward Chris, watching for his fivesecond countdown, and spotted Jeff, standing behind him watching the action.
She made a frantic beckoning movement. “Jeff!” she whispered. “Come here!”
He came toward her with a look of puzzlement. “What do you…?”
“Five…four…”
“Just stay with me, okay?”
“Three…”
“I’m not singing for you, Liza,” he warned.
Liza pulled him into position beside her and held for dear life on to the back of the chair at the head of the table.
The “two” and “one” were mouthed rather than spoken, and Chris counted them off on his fingers, then pointed to Liza.
This was it, she knew. The segment that would make or break her entire life—professional and personal.
“Welcome back to Christmas with Liza De Lane,” she said into the camera, the tension that had eluded her during the previous segments suddenly crashing down on her full force.
She did her best to ignore it and concentrate on what she had to do.
“We’ve all gathered around the table to enjoy our sumptuous Christmas Eve dinner, but because my readers, and tonight, our viewing audience, have become like family to us, I want to invite you into the real world of Liza De Lane. Since we can’t have you all around the table to chat, I’m asking you to pretend that my sister, Sherrie, and I are sitting with you in your homes while I tell you how the Liza De Lane column came to be.”
Sherrie, seated to the right of the head of the table, looked up at her in alarm. Liza ignored her.
As clearly as her nervousness would allow her, Liza explained how she’d lost her job a year and a half ago, how Sherrie had been a single mother, and how she’d talked her into working the column with her as a silent partner. She talked with a slight tremor in her voice about how she’d never shown any skill in the kitchen, but loved to write and had always dreamed of raising a family in a home like Bill McBride’s.
“Sherrie, on the other hand,” she said, “has always been a genius in the kitchen and is usually too busy cooking to take the time to write about it. And she’s not comfortable with speaking in front of a group of people.
“It wasn’t that we ever intended to deceive you,” she explained, “but because Sherrie and I have always turned to each other for what we needed, this seemed like a perfect way to combine our talents.
“Your response to us was so warming that we wanted to do more for you, and the more we did, the more you responded and soon there was no turning back.”
She paused to draw a breath, hoping it would steady her. It didn’t. The crew was casting nervous looks at each other, Whittier had turned his back to her and Chris was waiting in apparent agony for it to all be over.
But she owed her audience the truth, and her sister some recognition.
“So, when the opportunity came to do tonight’s show in my home and with my family,” she went on intrepidly, “I didn’t want to disappoint all of you by showing you around my Manhattan apartment, and introducing you to my goldfish. So I talked Sherrie into letting me borrow her family.”
She could almost hear the collective gasp across America.
“Travis, Davey and Betsy—” Liza indicated them and saw Chris point to a camera to focus on them “—are really Sherrie’s children. And Bill…” She reached a hand out to touch Bill’s shoulder. The camera moved in his direction. “Is really Sherrie’s fiancé. He is a pediatrician here in Rockbury, though. That part was true. He agreed to help me because he loves Sherrie.” She smiled, imagining a receptive response from her audience, refusing to think that they’d already shut off their televisions and were throwing their Wonder Woman magazines into the fire.
She went to stand behind her sister’s chair. The camera moved to focus on her. “And this is Sherrie, my sister, my friend and the chef at the Rockbury Inn in town. She’s been there every time I needed her, and all the column’s recipes and household hints came from her. She decorated Bill’s house for Christmas, planned and prepared this wonderful menu, then ended up in the hospital just before our show began because she worked too hard and forgot to eat.”
Liza reached a hand off-camera for Sylvia and drew her into the picture. “I thought I was doomed, that I was going to have to admit to you at the beginning of the show what I’d done and beg your indulgence while I read Christmas cards or played Christmas CDs. But Sylvia is an old friend of Jeff’s, who showed up this morning to welcome him home. She stepped in to finish what Sherrie had begun for me.” Liza pulled out a chair for her near the end of the table and encouraged her to sit. “I guess the point of all this is that without the support of my family and friends, I’m no one special. But with it…well, here we are.”
She went back to Jeff, trying desperately to read what was in his eyes. They watched her with dark intensity, but she couldn’t tell if they showed approval or condemnation for her on-air confession.
She hooked her arm in his and saw Chris gesture the cameraman to move in for a close-up. “And something remarkable has happened to Jeff James and me over the last few days. He says that the image of me in his mind is what helped him get home. Well…” She turned to look into his eyes. “His image has lived in my mind since I was a very young girl, putting together my notion of the perfect life’s mate. He is home. We’re going to be married before the New Year.”
This time she did hear the collective gasp—at least, from that small fraction of the country collected around her table and over mikes and cameras in her kitchen.
Jeff didn’t move or speak, but she felt the tightening of the arm she held.
“I think love is always the strongest force in the universe. But at Christmas, when it was truly born, it ignites in all of us. It led Jeff home, it flows from Sherrie to me to everyone gathered around our table, and tonight it lives in this house in Connecticut. I wish you could be here to share it with us, but since you can’t, we send it out to you with full hearts.”
All right. She’d said everything she’d intended to say. Sherrie and Sylvia were crying, but it was impossible to tell what Jeff thought.
Chris Page was clearly worried about the next five minutes of the show. He kept making a stretching motion and pointing to the book of carols he held in his hand.
Liza had no idea how she got through the next five minutes. Luckily, the boys were enthused about singing and helped carry the reluctant adults’ first tentative bars of “Away in a Manger.”
By the time they moved on to “We Three Kings,” the crew had joined in and they were beginning to sound to Liza’s ear like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.
Soon it was time to say good-night. Chris silently encouraged the group to keep singing, but made a quieting motion with his hands.
Raising her voice, Liza focused on the light on the camera. “From Rockbury, Connecticut, to every corner of our world, Merry Christmas from my family to each and every one of you. And we wish you all the love and warmth we share tonight.”
She blew a kiss and—mercifully—Chris yelled, “Yes! That’s a wrap! We did it. We actually did it!”
There were shouts and applause from the crew, but Whittier stepped out in front of them, his severe expression dampening and finally stopping their excitement.
“You told the whole world,” he said, pointing his finger at Liza, “that Wonder Woman Magazine is a liar. And you didn’t have to. Sylvia here saved us, but that wasn’t good enough. You had to grandstand! I’m taking you before a judge, young lady, and suing you for…”
Bill pushed himself away from the table, but Jeff stopped him with a
hand on his shoulder. “You’re the make-believe husband, remember? I’ll handle this.” He left Liza’s side to confront Whittier.
“You consider being honest grandstanding because you wouldn’t know an honest thought if it fell on your head from a twelfth-story window! You never do anything without an eye to how it’s going to affect your corporation’s bank balance. You don’t give a damn about Liza, just about what she does for your circulation. And you never cared a rip about me except in as far as I might plump up your audience.”
Jeff leaned a little closer. Whittier took a step back. “And don’t you ever raise your voice to her again, or you’ll find yourself without one.”
Liza listened in disbelief. Then Jeff rounded on her and she realized quickly that he might be on her side, as he’d admitted earlier that day, but that didn’t mean he intended to remain in her life. The dark snap in his eyes didn’t look at all like the expression of a loving man who was thrilled that she’d introduced him to millions of viewers as her fiancé.
But before anyone could say anything more, a loud commotion could be heard coming from the living room.
“I waited until you wrapped!” an angry male voice shouted. “Now I want to see her, or there’ll be bodies from here to Texas. Let me through!”
“Oh-oh,” Sylvia said ominously.
Jeff turned to face the intruder and Bill went to stand beside him.
Liza was not surprised to see a tall cowboy storm through the dining room and to the edge of the kitchen where Jeff and Bill stood as a barrier to his entrance. The loud voice had had the lilt of Texas to it.
The man wore a Western-cut sports jacket in gray over leg-hugging gray slacks. Liza saw a white dress shirt under the jacket, and a white silk scarf around his neck, both ends of it dangling over a formidable chest. He held a gray Stetson in one hand. He was about Bill’s age and seemed as vital.
He took one look at Jeff and Bill and stopped. It didn’t seem to be fear in his eyes, but a sort of resigned acceptance.
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