A Snowy Little Christmas

by Fern Michaels

  I think it’s a full-size.

  “I could take the love seat,” she says.

  “Oh, sure. Let’s have this argument again,” I deadpan.

  And for the second time in a week, she surprises me.

  She laughs.

  “Oh my God,” she says through a gust of it. “This is really ridiculous. We’re snowed in.” She laughs again. “We’re snowed in and I—I kissed you!”

  “Kris,” I say, still standing there with those blankets, watching her laugh and feeling my heart lurch happily in my chest at the sight of it. “Are you all right?”

  She’s braced herself on the love seat as she nods, leaning forward slightly with her laughter, her hair dusted with snowflakes, her cheeks flushed pink again, and I feel myself smiling too.

  “There’s only one bed,” I say, and she practically howls.

  “Gil thought we were married.” She presses a hand to her chest. “What would Carol say?”

  “She’d probably plan an office party. She’d wear a wedding-themed sweater. She’d put ‘Going to the Chapel’ on her computer speakers.”

  She has to sit on the arm of the love seat after that, wiping her eyes. It’s the best part of my day, seeing her laugh like that. I should set down the blankets, but I can’t. If anything, I hold them tighter to my chest, the wet of the melting snow sinking through the fabric of my coat.

  But after a few seconds she quiets, her face falling at the same time she moves to the side, sitting fully on the cushion now. Her eyes drift to the window—it’s nearly nine, full dark, but the drifting snow, combined with what I worry is some fresh snowfall on its own—gives the outdoors an almost eerie lightness.

  “It doesn’t look good for tomorrow, does it?”

  I move on instinct, setting the stack of linens on the bed and stripping off my coat before coming around to sit beside her. It’s a small piece of furniture, suited to the space but not so much to either one of us, who’re both above average in height, and definitely not so much if we’re trying to avoid more of the physical contact that had seemed—at least to me—to fill up the Dreyers’ living room with pheromones.

  “Maybe it’ll clear.” I watch the space where the cream wool of her coat presses against the starched blue cotton of my shirt.

  She purses her lips, her expression doubtful. She sits forward, takes off her coat, and tosses it over the arm before settling again. Back at the house, she’d been the one trying to cheer me, to contain my frustration about my having gotten us into this mess. But now that she doesn’t have to put a face on for anyone, I can see how upset she is. It hurts to see her this way, but it’s also a reminder. Kris can show me this because—even in spite of the way it’s been between us since that kiss—we’re friends. We’re that close; we know each other that well.

  “Hey.” I nudge her lightly with my shoulder. “Tell me what you’d be doing. If you were with your family right now, I mean.”

  She rolls her head my way, looks up at me through dark-lashed eyes, her mascara a little smudgy. She gives a halfhearted shrug. “The usual stuff.”

  “What’s the usual stuff?”

  “You don’t like Christmas. I saw you drink that hot cider. You made this face.” She pulls her lips to the side, scrunches her nose slightly. This time, I laugh.

  “I didn’t.”

  “You did. You only kept drinking it to wash down the cookie.”

  “It was dry!” I nudge her again, and the missing, it’s less now, the way it always is when we spend time together this way. As more than colleagues. “Anyway, I want to know. The usual stuff.”

  Kris takes a deep breath, and the action sinks her closer to me, her head almost resting on my shoulder. “Well, we’d make cookies. They’re my grandmother’s recipe, sour cream sugar cookies, with vanilla frosting. They’re not dry at all.”

  I shift, pushing myself farther into the seat, resting my own head against the back of the cushions. “Cookies, all right. I’d try them.”

  She snorts, and it sounds like the rare times she’s gotten a little tipsy around me—one late-night delay at an airport bar, one too many beers during a ballgame. “My dad’s a singer, did you know that?”

  “I did.” She told me once, not long after we first met, out at a bar in Houston with Ben. He may have asked all the questions, but I remember all the answers. Mac Fraser. Classically trained at a conservatory somewhere in Ohio. Now, singing for fun in an eighties cover band, playing on Thursday nights at some dive bar outside of Lansing. His favorite song is “Eye of the Tiger.”

  “So we sing, usually on Christmas Eve. Most of us are terrible, but he and Malik are so good they drown the rest of us out.”

  “Singing,” I say. “Sounds awful, but okay. What else?”

  “Kelly and I, we watch Hallmark movies. A lot of them. You know what Hallmark movies are?” She too pushes back into the cushions, sets her feet—narrow and high-arched in the black tights that wrap her long, shapely legs—on the edge of the coffee table. I’ve already forgotten the question, which is okay because she keeps talking.

  “Basically, one hundred and twenty minutes of pure sugar, right into your eyeballs. Cupcake shops, Christmas parades, some zany dog with a jingle bell collar. Happily ever afters. They are great.”

  “Oh, yeah,” I say. “Sounds like it.”

  She nudges me this time, but doesn’t pull back after she leans. She’s fully resting against me, her head heavy on my shoulder. “Lots of snowed-in scenarios in these movies. You wouldn’t believe it.”

  I shrug. “Guess I would, now.”

  She laughs, quieter now, and we settle into silence. The restless sleep of the last week, the early morning, the travel, the stress of everything from the day—I can feel it catching up to me, maybe to both of us. My eyes droop slightly, the weight of her body warm and comforting. There’s only a couple of lights on in here, one above the kitchen sink, one small, shaded fixture beside the bed I’m still trying not to think about.

  “Jasper,” she says.

  “Mmm?” I know I should get up, know I should deal with that bed, convince her to get in there alone. But it feels so good here, quiet words between us and soft cushions beneath our bodies. So close to my fantasy that I wonder if I’m already dreaming.

  “How come you don’t go home? For the holidays, I mean?”

  I resist the urge to shift, to move away from her, though my eyes blink open, and I stare up at the still ceiling fan above us. I clear my throat. “I’m not welcome there.”

  I feel her head tip to look at me, but I keep my eyes on the ceiling. I think she’ll ask me why, but she chooses a different tack, a smarter one—one that’s more likely to keep me talking. “What’d you used to do, then? When you were welcome?”

  I take a deep breath, closing my eyes again. It’s been so long since I’ve been there for a Christmas, almost seventeen years. “Mostly we celebrated Christmas Eve.” Too many chores to do in the mornings, no matter what day it was. “My dad’s brothers and their families would come out to the ranch. All fifteen of my cousins.”

  “Wow,” Kris says. “Must’ve been fun.”

  My lips tug into a smile, in spite of myself. “Could be, yeah. We made a lot of trouble.” No running in the house, no snacks before dinner, no shaking the packages, no going out to the stables. Every rule, we broke, and almost always I’d be the ringleader. Because back then, that’s what I was used to being.

  “We’d have a big barbecue dinner, and pineapple cake my aunt Sarah used to make. Then church.”

  “Sounds nice.”

  “It was,” I admit.

  “Do you miss it?”

  I don’t let myself miss it, I think. I only ever let myself miss you.

  “No.”

  We’re quiet again for long minutes, and I wonder if Kristen’s dozed off, if maybe I’m dozing a little too, feeling the time stretch unusually with fatigue, pleasure in her body next to mine.

  “What are we going to do abo
ut the job?” she whispers finally, and her voice sounds so worried. The job. This one with the Dreyers, the firm in general. The job has always been between us, but for once I don’t want the reminder. This night—the close of a long day at work, ending with quiet talk about our families—it feels simple, natural. Natural in a way that makes me think about the other layers Kris and I could have between us, if only I could stop being so afraid of what would happen if it went wrong.

  So this time, I do the unexpected thing. I move my hand from where it rests on my thigh and reach for hers, linking our fingers together. I hear her breath catch slightly, but before I can wonder if I’ve made a mistake, she squeezes my hand slightly, her cool palm pressing against mine.

  “We’ll worry about it tomorrow.” I squeeze back.

  I fall asleep thinking about Christmases—past, present, future.

  Chapter Eight

  KRISTEN

  December 23

  I wake up alone.

  I’m curled on the love seat, a pillow tucked under my head and a blanket from the pile Jasper brought in last night draped over me. I sit up quickly, looking toward the bed, knowing already I’ll find it unmade—if Jasper had woken up in the night, he would’ve made it. And he would’ve insisted that, at the very least, I get in.

  So we must’ve . . . slept together?

  I rub a hand over my eyes, my hair. I’m not surprised that I was dead to the world last night—Kelly and I shared a room until she left for college, and she could literally spend an entire night loudly making playlists on her computer without me waking up—but I am surprised I was comfortable enough to fall asleep in my clothes, my makeup. I probably look like the Crypt Keeper, but I can’t summon the energy to care.

  I know already that I’m not getting to Michigan today. I grew up on the west side of the Upper Peninsula, which means I know snow. I know the sound of its silence outside, the muffled quality to the air, even when you’re inside. I know the way the light changes, whether it’s gray—like it is now—or sunny. I even know the smell of it when it’s freshly fallen.

  So I know it’s snowed more while I was sleeping.

  I grab my phone from the coffee table, see Jasper’s watch and phone there, pause briefly to listen for him moving around in the bathroom. But—nothing. He’s brought our bags in; they sit right by the cottage’s front door, so he must be dressed and at the Dreyers’, probably using the extra time to work on Gil. I’d be mad, him on the job without me, but I can’t help thinking about the way he spoke last night, the way he talked about his family’s Christmases past. The way we’d sunk into each other, talking quietly, Jasper saying things he’s never said before. I didn’t even know he’d grown up on a ranch. Maybe he’s escaping a bit, working on the job, reestablishing some boundaries, and I certainly can understand that.

  Even if I do still feel that holiday bell in my heart.

  I stand and walk over to my bag, my body stiff with sleep, and take a quick glance at my phone. The screen is stacked with texts, nearly all of them from the airline: DELAY, DELAY, DELAY, CANCELLATION.

  But the most recent one is from Kelly, a single line.

  Your Jasper is lovely.

  I stare down at it, my brows crinkling in confusion. Kelly met Jasper a couple of times when she’s been in Houston for visits, and obviously—as she reminded me last week—I talk about him a good deal. But I’m not sure what’s prompted—

  Just then, the door opens, nearly hitting me in the face. “Oh!”

  “Holy shit!” says Jasper, stumbling slightly across the threshold as he tries to keep hold of the various brightly colored tote bags in his hand while catching the door. “I’m sorry!”

  I step back, reaching a hand out to stop him dropping his haul. “What—?”

  He steadies himself, pulling the bags slightly closer to his body, like he’s trying to hide something. His cheeks are reddened—maybe from the cold, maybe from embarrassment, and my lips press together in an effort to suppress my smile.

  “I was at the house. Gil and Romina’s house, I mean.”

  “Yes. I figured that.”

  He’s got snow all up the shins of his jeans, and he lowers the bags to the floor gently and then turns back to the open door, reaching outside to haul in a box. When it’s in, he closes out the cold, the wind, the world—and for a second we stand there in the quiet. Me in a wrinkled skirt and blouse, stockinged feet and day-old hair and makeup; Jasper in jeans and boots, a thermal and a heavy coat, like he’s natural to this place.

  “I called your sister,” he says.

  I blink at him.

  “She sent me the recipe for the cookies.” He looks down at the stack of bags. “Romina didn’t have everything, but she had most of it, and the oven here is small, but she said there’s a cookie sheet in here that’ll fit.” He crouches down, pulls the box between us, and opens the lid. “She gave us this tree. It’s small and fake but it’s got lights on it already.”

  “Jasper, is this . . .” I trail off, my throat thick with emotion.

  He stands, and he is holding the ugliest artificial tree I have ever seen. It’s not plugged in, obviously, but I can see that the lights he referred to are, in fact, fiber-optic threads imitating pine needles. I love this hideous, slightly crooked tree. I love that he got it for me.

  “It’s not going to be like home,” he says. “But just in case you can’t get out tomorrow, I don’t want you to miss—”

  “Christmas.”

  He shrugs. The red on his cheeks isn’t from the cold. “Yeah.”

  The smile I was holding in, it’s irrepressible now. Probably my crooked bottom teeth are showing. “I need to put on my pajamas!” I blurt.

  Jasper frowns at me, confused. “You just woke up.”

  “I know, but on Christmas, it’s pajamas all day. Baking in pajamas, movies in pajamas.” I bend down, unzip my bag.

  “I don’t have pajamas.”

  I laugh distractedly, pushing past a couple of sweaters to what I’m looking for. “What do you mean, you—oh.”

  His mouth curves up again on one side, his expression sheepish.

  “You can just wear that, then.” I gesture at his current attire, which is absurd. Like I’m a schoolmarm granting permission. All I can think about is Jasper, no pajamas, and that bed. The holiday bell is ringing somewhere different at the moment.

  “Thanks,” he says, his smile fuller now. “How about you change, and I’ll get us set up?”

  I mutter a flustered agreement and grab my bag of toiletries before ducking into the small bathroom.

  When I come out twenty minutes later—the quick shower and teeth-brushing doing wonders to make me feel more human and less embarrassed—Jasper’s put the tree in the center of a small café table to the side of the kitchen, has set out ingredients and cooking supplies over the small counter space. He’s staring down at the screen of his phone, reading something.

  “Ta-da!” I say, throwing my arms wide. It’s silly, but now I’m determined to be silly. I promised Jasper we’d have fun, and he’s made an effort, too. We’re doing this thing, a friendly snowed-in Christmas at our lost recruit’s guest cottage, so I might as well go for broke.

  He looks up and for a second he only stares, lips parted and eyebrows raised. “Are those—”

  “Snowmen? Yes! Yes, they are.” I point to a spot on my thigh. “Frosty, right here.”

  “Wow. Did Carol give you those?”

  “No, my mom did. But my mom’s a lot like Carol. Is there coffee?”

  I step into the kitchen area, and Jasper points to a Keurig hidden behind a stack of mixing bowls, a cup of steaming brew already prepared. Despite the fact that I’m wearing flannel pants and an oversize sweatshirt, and that I’m pretty sure Jasper is reading my grandmother’s cookie recipe rather than his usual news feed, this moment is familiar, like mornings in the office where we meet up to go over our days.

  “Says here we have to start with the sour cream mixture,�
� he says, brow furrowed. I sip my coffee, peek over his shoulder to read the e-mail my sister’s sent, and this is familiar, too—me and Jasper, working on a project together. Within minutes we’re swept up in the rhythm that’s been absent from our interactions lately. He’s arranging tools and ingredients, I’m doing assembly; he scoops balls of batter onto a cookie sheet while I start on the icing.

  And all the while, we talk easily. Some about work and some about life—Ben’s recent proposal to Kit, my eldest niece’s ballet class, the new high-rise that’s being built not far from our office, the burger place we ate at a few months ago that neither of us can remember the name of. It’s the kind of conversation that’s made it feel, for years, like Jasper is, truly, one of my best friends. That it’s not just work that brings us together.

  “I don’t think these are right,” he says. I look up from stirring more powdered sugar into my buttercream. Beside me, Jasper is bent over, peering through the glass door of the apartment-size oven. “Look how much they’re growing. They’re gonna stick together.”

  I shift, crouching beside him. “They’re not. That’s just what happens when they bake. They’ll slow down.”

  He frowns. “I don’t like it.”

  I laugh, returning to my post. “Okay. Well, I’m telling you, it’s going to work out. You can’t tell dough what to do.”

  “Hm.” When he stands, he leans on the counter right beside the oven, as though he wants to be close enough to keep checking on them. I duck my head, hiding another smile, stirring my icing. After a few seconds, he clears his throat. “The Dreyers said they have a big meal for Christmas Eve. A lunch.”

  “Oh?” My smile dims, the thought of my family pointed at the mention of something like this—another family’s traditions, another family’s gathering.