His mother laughed and his father barked like a seal, slapping his meaty hand down on the corner.
“It’s a good thing you’re nice looking, son,” his father said, “Because the brains didn’t take well in the womb.”
“Wh…what?” he sputtered.
“Letting a good woman go isn’t honorable. It’s plain stupid, is what it is.”
“What choice did I have?” he asked. “Her dream is to travel the world. Not be stuck in Snow Creek.”
“Do you know what century it is, Daniel?” his mother asked. “They have cell phones now. And airplanes and Skype and chatting.”
“Do I need to show you the Skype, son?” his father asked. “Did they not educate you in that school of yours?”
Daniel set down the peeler. “Looks like I’m missing Christmas this year.”
***
Jessica debated the different camera angles. The Rockefeller Christmas tree was so tall that the only way to get all of it and herself in the frame was to stand a block away, but then the crowds blocked the bottom of the tree where the toy soldiers would be marching tomorrow.
Her stomach grumbled. She’d missed lunch, and would have to come up with a plan for dinner, but she wanted to get this right. Her viewers had doubled in the past week, making hers the number one amateur travel channel on YouTube. She didn’t want to lose her place.
She still didn’t know where to go next. She had a few extra days at her friend’s place, but she couldn’t live on couches forever. She needed a base where she could return after trips, recharge her batteries and come up with new and exciting material.
The obvious place was….
She moved her thumb over the St. Christopher’s medallion. Everything made her think of Daniel. Even that guy in the crowd looked just like him. He was tall with wind-blown chestnut hair, green eyes.
God, he really did look like him. She closed her eyes. Stop daydreaming, Mendez.
But then she opened them and there he was for real, in the flesh, twenty feet away.
Her heart quickened—it was Daniel. In New York! She wasn’t crazy. She dropped her camera into her backpack, slung it over her shoulder and ran after him. “Daniel!” She pushed through the crowd, running faster.
His head disappeared again, then abruptly reappeared. He turned and faced her and she ran into his chest.
“Daniel?” she asked. “It’s you, right?”
“This is crazy,” he muttered, wrapping his arms around her.
“What are you doing here?”
“I can’t keep away from you,” he said. “Even though I should.”
Was she daydreaming again? Was this another Daniel fantasy?
“I tried,” he continued. “I really did, because I know you have this dream and I didn’t want you to give it up, and even now I see how happy you are and I feel like I’m going to come in and mess it all up. But I think I’m not giving you enough credit because you’re going to be fine. It’s me I have to worry about. My own feelings but—I just need to say this.”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“You want to be a travel reporter,” he said. “But every travel reporter has to come home.”
“Oh weird, I was just thinking that,” she said.
“I want to be home, Jessica. I want to be your home.”
She grinned, lighting up as much as the tree.
“Say something,” he begged.
“Are you nuts?” she teased. “I’ve known you forty-eight hours. Give me some time.”
He pulled her against him with a low growl and kissed her. “Don’t make me beg. It’s been a long flight.”
Falling snow landed in their hair as she snuggled against him. “You know what everyone else is doing right now?”
“Waiting with bated breath for an answer?”
“Dancing at the Fezziwig Ball. I always wanted to go, but I’m a terrible dancer.”
He pulled her closer as the snow fell faster. “I have a whole year to teach you.”
About Cecilia
Cecilia Gray lives in the San Francisco Bay Area where she reads, writes, and breaks for food. She also pens her biographies in the third person. Like this. As if to trick you into thinking someone else wrote it because she is important. Alas, this is not the case. Her series of young-adult contemporary Jane Austen retellings was named a What’s Hot pick (RT Book Reviews magazine) and is a Best of 2012 pick (Kirkus Reviews) where it was praised for being a "unique twist on a classic.” She loves thinking about, talking about and blogging about books – check her out on her website.
Second Chances
by Adrienne Bell
There’s no doubt in Eileen Ledger’s mind that the last time she saw hockey superstar Paul McAlester she made the biggest mistake of her life. Only, she’s never been sure if the mistake was in kissing him, or in running away. But ten years later, Paul is back in town for Christmas, and Eileen has a second chance to make things right…as long as she can keep herself from falling in love again.
Second Chances
"And now for the news on Paul McAlester."
"Wait! Don't turn it off," Eileen Ledger shouted from between the 19th-Century steamer trunk and the framed, original Goonies poster. Smacking her ankle into the ornamental scroll that protruded from the leg of the French armoire as she rounded the corner, she winced but kept going. She had to get to Crystal before her friend hit the power button.
She shouldn’t have worried. Crystal was standing frozen in front of the television that hung on the wall, her empty hands held up in a show of surrender. The remote was safely on the other side of the glass countertop.
“I was hoping I’d catch this,” Eileen said.
“So I gathered,” Crystal said. A spark of amusement twinkled in her friend’s eyes. Eileen did her best to ignore it and focused her attention on the television instead.
There was nothing strange about her behavior. Half the town was probably huddled around their televisions right now. No one missed news about Paul McAlester, not in Snow Creek.
She snatched up the remote and cranked the volume, even though she wasn’t ten feet away and the store was stone silent. They’d closed up shop twenty minutes ago. Eileen knew that Crystal was itching to go home, but the Hockey Report had been teasing at this story for the last hour, so she'd been stalling. She wasn't proud of it, and she knew Crystal was on to her, but there was no way she was going to risk missing news about Paul McAlester.
"It looks like the Washington Generals are going to have to go another month without their captain, star center Paul McAlester," the anchor said from the sound stage set. The shot cut to a man with a Hockey Report microphone chasing Paul across the parking lot of the Generals' training facility.
"So how are you feeling about the doctors saying that you’ll be out for the rest of the month?” the reporter asked.
Paul stopped mid-stride and turned. Injured or not, he looked great. His short brown hair was wet, either from a shower or a hard workout.
"Well, obviously I'm disappointed," Paul said. Eileen's breath hitched. It was one thing seeing him in a game or on the cover of Sports Illustrated. Then he was Paul McAlester: Hockey Star. But when she heard that familiar voice, all the memories came flooding back, and he was just her old friend, Paul.
"But I'm ready to focus on my recovery,” Paul continued. “I’m looking forward to getting healthy and coming back ready to make a contribution to the team.”
"What are you planning to do with your time off?" the reporter asked.
"Well, I haven't had a Christmas off in over a decade, so I’m going home to spend it with my family."
The reporter thanked him and threw it back to the studio.
Crystal leaned around Eileen and grabbed the remote out of her hand. The television clicked off, but Eileen still stared up at the flat black screen, her mouth hanging open.
Paul McAlester was coming home.
It was just for Christmas, she told herself. J
ust a couple of weeks. There was no guarantee that their paths would even cross. Snow Creek wasn’t a big town, but it wasn’t dinky either. Unless he sought her out, came into her shop or looked her up, it was unlikely that they’d run into each other.
But what if they did?
Oh, God. What would she do then?
It certainly wasn’t worth obsessing over for the next few weeks. Not in the middle of the Christmas season, the busiest time of year. Not when she needed to focus on making her new business successful.
No, she wasn’t going to give Paul McAlester a second thought.
"So are you ever going to tell me what happened between you two in high school?” Crystal asked.
Eileen shook herself out of the trance that held her frozen and turned around. “Nothing,” she said, a little too emphatically.
“Uh-huh.” Her old friend didn’t look convinced.
“Seriously, nothing ever happened between us in high school.”
Technically it was true. She and Paul had been out of school for a whole three hours before she pulled him into the bushes at Greg Azeri’s graduation party and kissed him.
It had only been one kiss. One searing kiss that had haunted her for the last ten years.
She had no idea what Paul thought of that kiss, or if he even remembered it—or her, for that matter—because she’d come to her senses behind that evergreen shrub. She’d remembered everything—that he had a girlfriend, that she had a boyfriend, that they were nothing more than friends, that he was probably going to be picked in the first round of the draft and she was off to Los Angeles to study law. There was no way it would work between them.
So she did the only thing that a coward could do when she realized that she’d let one too many light beers cloud her judgment. She’d bolted. She’d run and never looked back.
She’d spent the last decade as just another one of Paul McAlester’s devoted fans, and with any luck she’d stay that way.
***
"I've got cookies," Eileen declared as she wedged the door of Second Chances open and slipped inside. She held the two platters of decorated sugar masterpieces out in front of her. A dozen faces swiveled toward her. No one could resist the allure of a Rosie's Bakery Christmas cookie.
Customers grabbed expertly-decorated Santa hats and silver bells as she made her way through the crowded shop. Eileen smiled and thanked them. It was always easier deciding on the perfect Christmas present with a little something sweet in your belly.
Eileen put the heavy trays down on the front counter. She didn't mind going out in the snow flurries for the cookies. If her customers could bear the freezing temperatures to come in and see her, she could take it long enough to go on a cookie run.
Eileen looked up to find Crystal grinning at her from the other side of the counter. There was a sparkle in her eyes that didn't have a thing to do with treats.
"There's a prospective client here to see you," Crystal said.
For a second, a flutter of panic took wing in Eileen’s chest. "There's nobody in the books for an appointment today."
She knew she hadn't missed anything in the book, but she flung it open to the day’s date anyway. She had a conference call with a client back east later in the afternoon and an appointment to Skype with an estate manager down in Georgia after that. But nothing else.
Since Eileen had bought Second Chances seven months ago, she had been slowly turning the humble little secondhand store into a one-of-a-kind emporium. Most people were looking for relics of their childhood: dolls and toys, maybe an old poster, or a certain dress, but there were those clients who were after valuable, harder-to-find antiques. It didn't matter. If someone wanted it, she could find it.
Because of the nature of the business, most of her clients were online, but the physical store was also important. She filled it with the odds and ends that she found through her estate and warehouse connections, the items she didn’t have a home for but couldn't bear to leave behind.
There wasn't a huge demand for unusual knickknacks along the Main Street of Snow Creek. Most of her customers were hardcore window shoppers. Still, the store pulled in a profit—a tiny one, but a profit all the same.
Not that it would have mattered. Eileen would have kept the doors open even if it never made a dime. She loved the cramped little brick shop. Just like she loved Main Street and the town itself. This was her home. It had taken her a few years and a whole lot of mistakes to realize that. But now that she had, there was no way that she was leaving it behind.
"Did this person say what he wanted?" Eileen asked quickly scanning the crowded store. No one stared back.
"That." Crystal pointed to the hockey stick that hung above the counter.
Eileen blew out a long breath.
"Did you tell him it wasn't for sale?" she asked.
"Yeah, but he wasn't about to take my word for it."
Great. Another guy had set his sights on the one thing in the shop that wasn’t for sale. She'd probably received a hundred offers for the stick. Some of them had been pretty impressive. She'd refused every one, and that wasn't about to change.
It didn't matter that the stick wasn't signed. If there was a piece of hockey memorabilia in this town, everyone knew who it once belonged to. Snow Creek was known for two things: over-the-top Christmas celebrations and Paul McAlester.
"Well, is this guy still around?" Eileen asked.
"He said he'd look around until you got back. He seemed pretty determined." There was a mischievous sparkle in her friend’s eyes, one that did nothing to quell the uneasiness inside her.
It was moments like this that Eileen questioned her judgment in taking Crystal on as part-time help. Second Chances had been open less than a month, and Eileen was just starting to get overwhelmed with the workload when her old friend had walked through the door. Crystal was a happy wife and mother of two, but she said she was going to start peeling the paper off the walls if she didn’t find something to get her out of the house a few times a week. At the time, it seemed like a natural fit.
Right now, Eileen wasn't so sure.
She sloughed off her heavy, blue peacoat and bright pink scarf. The snow that had settled on her shoulders was already melting in the pleasant heat of the store and puddling on the hardwood floor. She turned around to hang her coat on the rack.
"Well, whoever he is, I hope he deals well with disappointment,” Eileen said.
"I don't know. I'm pretty used to getting my way," a voice behind her said. A familiar voice.
Eileen froze with her hand halfway to the coat rack. Her heart kicked violently against her breastbone.
Oh, no. It wasn’t him. It couldn’t be.
But it was.
She sucked in a breath. "I'm sorry, sir," she said. "But as my assistant said, that particular piece isn't for sale."
"But you haven't even heard my offer yet.”
"I don't need to hear it," she said. “The stick isn’t for sale.”
“Come on. Everything has its price."
"Not everything.”
Eileen forced herself to turn around. Her fingers were still curled around her damp jacket, and she clutched it to her chest like a shield. As if her heart could ever be protected from Paul McAlester.
"Hello, Paul," she said.
A little dimple appeared in his left cheek as his lips lifted in a smile. "Eileen."
"It's good to see you.” It wasn’t until she said the words that she realized that they were true.
“You too,” he said.
Suddenly Eileen realized that the whole store had gone silent. Every eye in the place was on her. She opened her mouth to say something—anything—but nothing came out.
“I guess it’s some comfort to know that my old lucky stick is in such good hands,” he said after a few more seconds had ticked by.
That shook her out of her daze. “That’s not your lucky stick.”
He raised his brow. The left corner of his mouth quirked up.
"You don't remember,” she added, even if it wasn’t fair of her to expect him to recall every detail of their time together the way she did. “That’s the one you let me borrow when you took me out on the pond to teach me—“
“How to shoot one-timers. It was the afternoon before you…before the graduation party.”
“Right.” She flicked her gaze down to the floor and up again, trying to regain her composure. She’d been in more stressful situations than this before. She’d been a lawyer, for heaven’s sake. Surely she could handle talking to an old friend for a few minutes. “It was just some practice stick you pulled from your trunk.”
"I remember. Better than you do, it seems. I never would have sent you out there with just…any stick.”
Eileen's cheeks began to burn. She wasn't about to ask what he meant by that. Certainly not with so many people spying on them.
So she changed the subject. "How long have you been back in town?"
"Three days."
"How long are you planning stay?"
"I'm not sure."
"How's the shoulder?"
His eyebrows pulled together. "Are you interviewing me?"
"Sorry. I really am glad to see you again, Paul," she said. Though she knew she wasn't doing a very good job of showing it. She was barricaded behind her counter, a good six feet away from him.
"Have dinner with me tonight."
Eileen's mouth fell open. She hadn't been expecting that. She figured after ten minutes of awkward babbling they’d end with 'It's been too long, let's not lose touch', neither of them planning to reach out again.
"I can't tonight," she said. "I have this...thing."
"A thing?" he asked. "What thing?"
The thing where she sat on her couch with a bag of microwave popcorn and berated herself for being an utter coward.
"Oh, your thing,” Crystal jumped in. Of all the gawkers in the shop, Crystal was the most shameless. Eileen shook her head, but Crystal plowed ahead anyway. "I forgot to tell you. I rescheduled that thing for you."
Love on Main Street: A Snow Creek Christmas Page 25
