Sleigh Bells

by Fern Michaels

  She hadn’t seen Angus for a long time. At least five years—she really couldn’t remember. She tried to come up with the exact year. In the end she thought it was five years ago, the same year her older sister, Peggy, a childless widow, had been in that bad car accident. She’d gone to Florida and stayed on for four years because her sister’s health had deteriorated, and with no children to help out, it was up to her to see to her sister’s comfort. Then, she’d stayed to handle all the legal matters, sell the house, the furnishings, and the car. She’d been home for a year now. She swiped at the tears that threatened to overflow.

  Would Angie take care of her the way she’d taken care of Peggy? Of course she would. Angie had a heart of gold and loved her. She couldn’t help but wonder who was going to take care of Angus Eagle. Not that hard-as-nails son whose mission in life was to make Angie give up the gift wrap department. Well, Angus could certainly afford in-home health care around the clock.

  Eva looked up to see her daughter standing in the doorway holding three large pizza boxes, one for the two of them and two for the other patients. Angie was so kind. She watched as Angie handed two of the pizza boxes to Betsy and moved across the room to join her mother. Angie hugged and kissed her.

  “How’d it go today, Mom?”

  “Not too bad. I think I’ll be out of here in a few days. Honey, Angus Eagle arrived today for additional therapy. He had a hip replacement a month ago, according to Betsy. He’s sitting over there between Cyrus and Harriet. Don’t look now.”

  “And this means…what?” Angie asked as she sprinkled hot peppers on the pizza, then handed her mother a huge slice. She chomped down on her own as she casually looked around. She had no trouble locating the elegant-looking Angus Eagle. At seventy years of age, he still looked dashing, with his snow-white hair, trim body, and tanned complexion. It had been a few years since she’d seen him in the courtroom alongside his son. How angry he’d looked that day. Today he looked like he was in pain. A lot of pain.

  “Well…I don’t know. I’m sure he hates us both. He’s probably regretting giving me that lifetime lease. You know that old saying, blood is thicker than water. Josh is his son, so it’s natural for him to side…whatever,” Eva dithered as she bit down into her slice of pizza.

  “Business is business, Mom. Isn’t that what you always told me? Sometimes people make deals that go sour. As long as it’s done legally, the way your deal was done legally, you live with it and go on. Josh and I had a rather heated exchange as I was leaving the store this evening. By the way, it’s cold out in case you’re interested. I think today was the first day that shop felt warm.”

  “What happened? Wait, look—is he eating your pizza?”

  “Oh, yeah, and he looks like he’s enjoying it. What happened? Well, Josh thought he could dictate to me. He called a meeting for six-fifteen for all department heads. I’m sure you remember he does that every September. He wants me to gift wrap his customers’ packages. For free. I told him if he paid me, I would. It was a standoff. I have an idea. Want to hear it?”

  Eva smiled at the excitement in her daughter’s voice. She leaned forward to hear what she just knew was going to be a smashing idea. “What’s he doing now?”

  “Watching us. I am going to decorate the shop like a fairy land. Gossamer, angels, Santas, sleighs, Santa sacks. I’m going to gift wrap Santa sacks for the kids. I already ordered the red and green burlap. Colored raffia ties for around the sacks. I’m going to suspend some reindeer from the ceiling with wires. Bess said her husband will make us a wooden sled and paint it. The best part is the room is big enough to do all this. We’ll get some publicity with the local paper. Parents will bring their kids to see it and, hopefully, shop. Extra business for Eagle’s, but Josh won’t see it that way, would be my guess. This is the part you might have a problem with, Mom, but hear me out, okay? I’m going to, for a price, agree to wrap purchases from other stores. On a drop-off, pick-up-later basis. I’ll hire a few extra people, and we’ll do it after hours, when the store is closed. Josh won’t have a comeback because I pay my own utilities.”

  “Can you do that, Angie?”

  “My lawyer said I could, so that’s good enough for me. Josh will fight me, but that’s publicity for me. I’m looking at it as win-win. You look worried, Mom. Are you seeing something I’m not seeing?”

  “Well…You know me, I’m just a born worrier. If your lawyer says it’s okay, then I guess it’s okay.”

  Angie frowned. What was wrong with her mother? Normally, she’d be up for anything to make the shop prosper. She risked a glance in the direction of Angus Eagle. Caught staring, she offered up a wide smile. To her delight, Angus winked at her. Now that’s something I’ll have to think about later.

  “How’s that new company doing with your special order?” Eva asked.

  “Mom, you won’t believe it, but they came through royally, and the price is unbelievable. One-of-a-kind baubles, artificial greenery that looks better than the real stuff, and it’s been sprayed, so it even has a balsam scent. I ordered tons of stuff. Their ribbon is satin. Real satin, all widths. Our Christmas packages are going to be over the moon. And it’s just a little cottage industry in a small town called Hastings, in Pennsylvania. They’re going to start shipping the merchandise to the house next week.”

  Mother and daughter spent the next hour discussing a real tree versus artificial, paper wrap versus foil wrap, and other unusual ways to wrap gifts.

  A bell sounded in the hallway. Betsy appeared to take away the frozen peas. She chatted for a moment, asked Eva if she wanted to return to her room or stay to watch television. “Five minutes, ladies.”

  “I guess I better get going, Mom. I’ll be back in the morning with the order from Dunkin’ Donuts. Two dozen donuts, right? Same number on the coffees?”

  Eva smiled. “Plus one more for Angus.”

  Angie picked up her jacket and purse before she hugged and kissed her mother good night. She was almost to the door when she saw Josh Eagle standing in the doorway staring at her. She was about to move past him when a devil perched itself on her shoulder. “Spying on me, Mr. Eagle? Or are you stalking me? Shame on you!” She said it loud enough so everyone in the room could hear.

  “Don’t flatter yourself, Ms. Bradford. I’m here to see my father.”

  Angie whirled around and pointed to the clock. “Well, that figures! You have three minutes to visit. Oh, is that a gift for your father? A Hershey’s bar! How kind of you. Money-hungry jerk,” she hissed, before she sailed through the doorway and down the hall.

  “Witch!” Josh hissed back, but loud enough to be heard by the patients. “Hey, wait a minute, you forgot your broom!”

  Angie stopped in her tracks and turned around. “What did you just call me, you pompous, money-hungry, no-good pissant?” Venom dripped from Angie’s lips as sparks flew from her eyes.

  Josh Eagle immediately regretted his words, but he couldn’t back down now. “I called you a witch and said you forgot your broom. You called me a money-hungry jerk. So now I’m a pissant. Well, it takes a pissant to know a pissant.”

  The captive audience gasped as they watched the scene unfold in front of them. Even Betsy, mouth hanging open, could only stare at the two hissing enemies.

  “I called you that because I was too polite to call you what you really are. Now, if you don’t get out of my way, you are going to be minus a very important part of your anatomy.” To her chagrin, Angie realized her voice had risen several decibels. Stricken, she looked around at the patients staring at her. All she could think of to do was wave.

  As one, the rapt audience gasped. They returned her wave, even Angus.

  The final bell for visitation rang.

  “Looks like you have to leave now, Mr. Eagle. You better stay 150 feet away from me, or I’ll have you arrested,” Angie said coldly.

  “Oh, yeah?” Josh blustered.

  “Yeah!” Angie shot back. She flipped him the bird before turning on he
r heel and marching down the hall.

  The audience gasped again.

  “I’m afraid you have to leave now, Mr. Eagle,” Betsy said. “Try to come a little earlier tomorrow. You better wait a minute—Miss Bradford did say 150 feet. She looked to me like she meant business. It won’t look good for the center if she calls the police.” Betsy eyeballed the distance down the hall. “Okay, you can go now.” She reached out to take the Hershey’s bar, but Josh shoved it into his pocket.

  Eva did her best not to laugh out loud. She turned around when she heard something that sounded like hysterical laughter. Angus Eagle was laughing so hard one of the aides was clapping him on the back. She was stunned to hear him shout, “You got yourself a spitfire there, Eva!” She wished he would have said something she didn’t already know.

  The score for this round, if anyone was counting, was one-zip, with the point going to Angie.

  Chapter Two

  Josh Eagle, his shoulders slumping, entered the house through the kitchen. Delectable aromas wafted about the kitchen, thanks to Dolores, the day lady who had been with his family for the past twenty years. He knew his dinner was warming in the oven, but for some reason he wasn’t hungry. The fact of the matter was he was too damn mad to eat.

  As he yanked at his tie with one hand, he opened the oven door with the other and set his dinner plate on the kitchen counter. Maybe he’d eat later. First he needed a beer, and he needed to calm down. He carried a beer from the fridge and swigged at it as he made his way to the second floor. He stripped down. Within minutes he was in sweats and slippers. It took him a minute to realize he was cold. He marched out to the hall to turn the thermostat to eighty before he made his way downstairs to grab another beer.

  Heat gushed from the two vents in the kitchen. At least he would be warm while he drowned himself in ice-cold beer.

  Josh sat down at the kitchen table and propped his feet on a chair as he swigged from the bottle in his hand. Who in the damn hell did that female think she was? He answered himself by saying she was the female who had him over a barrel. He stretched out a long arm to snag a chicken leg off his dinner plate and was just about to bite down into the succulent-looking piece of chicken when the phone rang.

  Josh eyed the phone suspiciously. He didn’t know how he knew, but he knew it was his father on the other end of the line. He might as well get it over with. He was a small boy again when he picked up, knowing full well his father was going to have something very profound to say. Something he wasn’t going to like.

  Josh looked at the caller ID. He squared his shoulders, clicked the ON button, and said, “Hi, Dad.”

  “Good evening, son. I’m sorry we didn’t get a chance to talk this evening. I was looking forward to a long chat.”

  “I’m sorry, Dad. I had a meeting. I’ll come earlier tomorrow. Do you need anything?”

  “No, I don’t need anything, Josh. Is there anything you want to talk to me about?”

  Well, hell, yes, there were at least two dozen things he wanted to talk to his father about, but the old man only pretended to listen to anything he had to say. Josh threw caution to the winds and said, “Since when do you ever listen to anything I have to say? So, the short answer is, no. Is there something you want, Dad? Like maybe my hide, a pint of blood? Name it, and it’s yours.” His voice was so bitter that Josh could hardly believe it was his own. He heard his father sigh. He always sighed when Josh let loose with his feelings.

  “You were pretty hard on that little gal, weren’t you?”

  “If you say so, Dad. Is there anything else? If not, I’m going to turn in early.”

  “Okay, I’ll see you tomorrow, son.”

  “Actually, no, I won’t be stopping by. If you need something I can have someone from the store drop it off. But now that you’ve brought it up, there is something I’ve been meaning to say. I guess this is as good a time as any to tell you that I’ll be leaving the first of the year. I’m moving to London. I got a job at Harrods. I leave New Year’s Day. You can have Eagle’s back. I guess I’m not really giving it back to you since you never really relinquished your interest in the store to me the way you agreed to. The way I figure it is this: you’ll probably have a week in January before you have to close Eagle’s doors for good. Good night, Dad.”

  Josh tossed his beer bottles into a wire basket in the laundry room. As he made his way up the stairs he could hear the phone ringing. He knew it was his father calling back because he was in shock over his son’s cold announcement. “It’s been a long time in coming, Dad,” Josh muttered as he settled himself in his small home office. He clicked on the computer and ran some stats. Nothing had changed since earlier in the day. Eagle’s was still at the bottom of the list. Just a few months until Eagle’s would have to close their doors. Well, come the first of the year, Eagle’s Department Store would no longer be his problem. He was sick and tired of battling his father, sick and tired of batting his head against a stone wall. Eventually he would get over the shame of failing. He had a job waiting for him at the prestigious Harrods in London, where his expertise would be appreciated.

  The phone at the end of the long second-floor hallway continued to ring. “Give it up, Dad, I have nothing more to say.”

  Josh climbed into bed and pulled up the covers. Then he climbed back out of bed to turn the thermostat down to sixty degrees. Back in bed, his last conscious thought before drifting off to sleep was that he had to apologize in the morning to the witch with the broom.

  Eva knew that Angus was coming up behind her. She could hear his walker on the tile floor. Then again, they were the only two patients in the sunroom, so who else could it be? She steeled herself for Angus’s sharp tongue and whatever he was about to say. She clicked the OFF button on the remote control. What was left of the evening news report disappeared.

  “Do you mind if I sit down, Eva?”

  “Not at all. It’s nice to see you again, Angus. It’s been a long time, five years if I’m not mistaken. How strange that we should meet up like this after so long.”

  Because she was a nurturer by nature, Eva wanted to get up to help Angus ease himself into the chair across from her, but these days it was a production to get herself up and moving. “Are you in pain, Angus?”

  “A bit. How about you?”

  “At times. I try to ignore the pain and just use the frozen bags of peas. They really do help. Other than the hip replacement, how are things?”

  “Are you asking to be polite or do you really want to know?” Angus asked.

  Eva thought she’d never heard a sadder voice. “Is there anything I can do, Angus?”

  “Not unless you have a magic potion that will turn my son into a charming young prince. What was that all about earlier?”

  Eva decided not to pretend she didn’t know what her old friend was talking about. “Rivalry would be my guess. Two strong, bullheaded people pushing each other’s buttons. How is the store doing, Angus?”

  “According to my son, not well at all. He blames me. Says I’m an old fuddy-duddy. He says I have no foresight. He claims I’m locked in the past. He said the last time I had an idea was the day, almost twenty years ago, when I gave you the lifetime lease on the gift wrap department, and from that day on, it was all downhill. He doesn’t like me much, Eva. Yesterday he called me a meddler.”

  Eva threw her hands in the air. “What did you do? Or should I be asking what didn’t you do? Josh was always such a wonderful young man. How did it all go wrong? I don’t understand any of this, Angus.”

  Angus leaned forward. “Look at me, Eva. I have something to tell you that is going to affect you as well as your daughter. My son just told me a few minutes ago when I called him that he’s leaving the store the first of the year. He’s accepted a job at Harrods in London. That means the store will be closing. He’s been telling me that for the past year but I…I just blamed him for not knowing what he was doing. I was…I was cruel about it, saying things like I made a mistake whe
n I turned things over to him, that he wasn’t up to the job.”

  “Oh, Angus, how could you do something like that?” How was she going to tell her daughter they would both be out of a job after the holidays with only her Social Security coming in?

  “Because I’m a horse’s patoot, that’s how. Josh has been telling me for years that we had to streamline the store, we had to keep up with marketing trends. He wanted to hire new buyers, be more mainstream. I fought him every step of the way. He wanted to restructure everything. That meant layoffs. I didn’t want to deal with it. One time he actually called me a dried-up old fart and told me I deserved whatever happened with the store. He was right and I was wrong. And I’m not going to lie to you, Eva, but the gift-wrapping shop was always a thorn in Josh’s side. He thought, and I’m sure he still thinks, that you and I had an affair that is ongoing. I think that’s another reason he keeps going to the mat with your daughter.”

  Eva’s thoughts were all over the place as she stared at her old friend. “I thought the store was doing well. How could I have been so wrong? What are you going to do?”

  “What can I do? Josh’s mind is made up—he’s leaving because he’s fed up. I have to admire his spunk. He gave it his best shot, and I just kept fouling up everything he did. Now all my chickens are coming home to roost.”

  “For heaven’s sake, Angus, Josh is your son. You can’t let him leave under these conditions. You have to make this right. There’s nothing in this world more important than family. If you don’t take a stand now, you’ll never get Josh back. What’s so hard about saying you’re sorry, that you made mistakes? You can’t just let Eagle’s close their doors. Eagle’s is an institution in this town. Shame on you, Angus Eagle. I’m going to bed now. I don’t want to talk about this anymore. I have therapy at seven o’clock.”

  “Eva, wait. Help me out here.”