And he, he had been interesting, and strange, and attractive.
She closed the hand that had touched his, still feeling the warmth of his skin on hers. She wanted to go after him, apologize, take him for coffee or lunch or get him out of here.
Everything she wanted had nothing to do with her job, or his job, or anything they could do.
He had walked away.
She needed to as well.
Once Upon A Time…
A little closer to now…
6
THE WORLD CHANGED, like it always does.
Raine wrote the press conference story, did the analysis of the Uplift Fund, not that it mattered, because, just like Niko predicted, the Fund never really got off the ground.
For years, she wore the boots from the day the first snow fell until the day the snow melted, and as she predicted she would, she thought of Niko when she put the boots on, and sometimes, when she walked through deep drifts or cold slush, she thought of him too, because her feet remained warm and dry.
The boots lasted longer than her job at the Chicago Courier, longer than the Courier itself. The Chicago Courier tried to make the transition to digital, but failed mightily, and blamed the Internet—although Raine wondered if the problem was the fact that Chicago had two bigger dailies, and a third simply couldn’t handle the competition.
Not that it mattered to her; she had left the Courier before it had left Chicago, hired away by the first of several hard-news start-ups that never quite made it off the ground.
As a hobby, she started blogging under a pen name about non-hard-news things, almost magical things, combining her hard-news research habits and her love for the strange. Initially, she had planned to call the blog the Daily Raine, but decided against it when one of her start-up bosses found out she was going to write the blog and tried to claim ownership of it.
Instead, she used an alias and set up her website as a separate business, difficult to trace. She called the site Fiefdoms and Fairy Tales. She asked for donations to support it and didn’t hire staff, although she occasionally wrote under more than one name to give the appearance of a larger company.
By the time she started the blog, she no longer lived in Chicago. She had moved to Washington, D.C. for one of her start-ups, then to New York for another, and finally to Los Angeles for a third. She kept her apartment in LA when she started the blog, but she realized that the cost of living in California was double that of her hometown.
Besides, she didn’t count fire and flood as seasons. She preferred rain and heat and snow. She didn’t like LA. She wanted to go back to Chicago.
It had taken a while for her to decide to move, however, because she had been so very poor when she had lived in Chicago. Her memories of Chicago were tied to her memories of poverty.
She had to clear those links—and clear the thoughts of that girl who had stood in the snow in leaky boots, watching rich people dance.
She didn’t have enough money to buy a mansion, even though she made more money now than she could have imagined back in her leaky-boots days. In fact, she made a lot of money, more than her editors had made at the Chicago Courier, more than some of the local TV people made, as well.
But her income was based on donations and freelance articles, and she didn’t trust it, knowing it could all change in a heartbeat. She had a lot of money socked away, enough to make a sizeable down payment and still have money (earning next to nothing) in savings.
She knew she was being too conservative, but that was the result of her upbringing. It still had an impact on her every single day.
It didn’t stop her from taking some risks, though. Like leaving the L.A. Basin and moving back to the Midwest. Like freelancing. Like setting out on her own, something her parents had never done.
She finally settled on one side of a duplex near Lincoln Park, not too far from DePaul University. The neighborhood alone made her feel rich. The duplex added to the feeling, since she was in a brownstone with some history and a lot of extra room. The three bedrooms, narrow living room, and newly renovated kitchen made her feel like she had hit some kind of jackpot.
She had finished moving during October, as the leaves were turning colors and falling with each rainstorm. She had forgotten how much she loved the smell of decaying leaves, how nice the cool crisp air was, how nice the scent of wood smoke from fireplaces truly was.
She spent her days walking even when it rained, familiarizing herself with the changes in the city. Once, she had known it as well as she had known her own body. Now, she was relearning where some things were, what had been moved, and what had disappeared.
When she unpacked, she found her boots. She somehow had managed to keep them through all the moves and through the purging of possessions she went through as she went from tiny Los Angeles apartment to tiny Los Angeles apartment.
She set the boots near her door for the day of the first snow, which arrived a day earlier than predicted.
And, as she pulled on the boots, she thought of Niko North, just like she always did. And she wondered, just like she always did, what had become of him.
She had begun her blog way back when, as a means to track down information on Claus & Company. She had learned that it was a closely held private corporation that did not release much financial material to the media. From what she could tell, it made billions in annual revenue on a variety of projects, had more charitable arms than she could track, and had offices in every major city in the world.
The company also had a huge media arm, which she ran afoul of whenever she made even a passing negative mention. Other blogs would appear, refuting her claims or explaining them. Not that she minded. Whenever Claus & Company’s media friends mentioned her, her blog traffic increased. When her blog traffic increased, so did her donations.
She found it odd that she would profit from negative publicity. She knew that some of her fellow bloggers would often plant negative stories inside their blogs for that very reason, and she fought hard to remain as objective as she could, even when someone was throwing money at her.
She also kept what proof she could for her claims. She had no corporate backers, no legal team at the ready, and so she felt the only defense she had against defamation or libel charges was the research and links that she had found.
She carried that philosophy through all of her posts. She had done an exposé of a business called the Archetype Place in Anaheim, which seemed to have all kinds of strange characters working for it. As far as she could tell, the people connected to the Archetype Place believed they were archetypes, or at least had magic, like the people from the original fairy tales they resembled.
Through the Archetype Place, she discovered a man who many were convinced was the actual Prince Charming. He owned a bookstore. Of course, she couldn’t prove he was Prince Charming, any more than she could prove that his ex-wife was Cinderella. Raine had to dismiss the strange things his daughters told her as fancies of young, lonely little girls.
But Raine had glommed onto the phrase “The Greater World,” which they had all said, just like Niko North had.
She couldn’t track down the usage of “The Greater World,” but it bothered her all the same.
She thought of that phrase, too, when she put on the boots the day of the first snow, just before Halloween. The boots were as warm and comfortable as she remembered, even though she could have sworn her feet had grown in size over the years. (The shoe salespeople told her that was normal—everyone’s feet spread with age. She was beginning to hate those “with age” comments, particularly since she was clearly no longer a young, cute reporter, but a woman with crepe neck and crow’s feet, who didn’t quite look her age, but didn’t look like she was twenty, either.)
Raine slung on a heavy winter coat, grabbed her gloves, and stuck a knit cap in her pocket. She hated wearing anything on her head. She had ear muffs if she needed them, but she hated those, too. She liked the coolness against her scalp. She would only pu
t on her cap when the tips of her ears felt like they were about to freeze off.
She knew she had probably overdressed for her walk, but she didn’t want the blast of cold that would hit her as she went outside to derail her daily exercise.
She loved the walks. Every day, they took her somewhere new. On this day, she had chosen to walk the few miles from her home to Old Town. Even though she had driven to some Second City and Steppenwolf Theater performances in the area, she hadn’t walked the neighborhood. It had looked, from her brief dashes from a secure parking space to the theater, like the neighborhood had gentrified since she last lived in Chicago.
It took a while for her to get to Old Town proper. She meandered her way there, taking North Avenue and North Wells only when she couldn’t avoid them any longer.
She walked past restaurants she hadn’t seen before, smiled when she saw the tobacco shop was still in its place. She had done a Life and Style profile on the owner, and had learned that back in the day, it had been a head shop, selling drug paraphernalia, but as the owner had outgrown his marijuana habit, so had his customers.
Raine couldn’t go inside, because the smell of tobacco made her sick, but she loved looking through the window at the beautiful humidors and the sculptures. She was glad the shop remained, since so much of the neighborhood had changed.
She headed down the tree-lined street, looking at some of the other businesses, ones she did not recognize. As she went farther, it became clear that the Old Town rents had gone up near North Wells, but not in the outlying parts of the neighborhood. Sketchy shops with only a bit of shelf space looked like they hadn’t been in business long, and that made her smile, pleasing her almost as much as the first thick, wet flakes of snow.
The flakes fell faster than the usual Christmas snow because they were so heavy. As the flakes fell on her, they melted, and she knew she couldn’t be out here long because she would get soaked. Still, she turned her face toward the pillowy gray sky, and let the snow chill her bare skin.
She had stopped walking. She turned in circles like a child in her first snowfall, feeling that same joy. Only she wasn’t jumping or extending her arms or crying out with happiness. She was trying to maintain some semblance of adulthood, not that it mattered. It had been a long time since she had known anyone here.
“Nice boots,” a man’s voice said.
She started, and looked around for the source. She didn’t see anyone. Some cars drove by, sending slush flying, but no one else was on the rapidly darkening street.
She was about to walk away, when the voice added, “Do they leak?”
The accent was faintly European, as if the speaker had learned English on the Continent. A tingle ran through her.
She probably should have assumed that the speaker had just stumbled on words tied to the boots’ history and walked on, but she couldn’t leave, not without looking.
Besides, that accent caught her. How could that voice have all three elements she associated with Niko North? The warmth, the clipped European words, the knowledge of her boots?
She swallowed, and searched for the voice. It had come from in front of her. She saw a shadow in a doorway not too far from where she stood. The shadow moved, and her heart pounded. It was clear the shadow belonged to a tall man, whose features she couldn’t quite see in the twilight.
She took a few steps forward, and the man stepped out of the doorway.
Her breath caught.
It was Niko.
His blond hair was longer, brushing against his collar. His face was thinner, and his skin had gained some sun damage, so he didn’t look quite as perfect as he had years ago.
His smile seemed more sincere, though.
“Raine?” he asked.
“Niko?” she said.
And the next thing she knew, they were embracing like old friends who hadn’t seen each other in years. That electric feeling caught her again—she had forgotten it—and she backed up, quicker than was probably polite.
He had taken a step back, too, and ended up beside the plate glass window with the words Uplift Foundation etched on it.
She pointed to them, feeling surprised. “So your family let you run the charity after all.”
“Oh, no,” he said. “I haven’t been in contact with my family in years.”
She felt a pang of sadness. She was alone too—her parents having moved too far away for casual visits—and she felt it as the holidays approached. In the past, she had tried to hook up with a new boyfriend long about Halloween, but then she realized she was acting out of need rather than desire and resigned herself to a life alone.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” she said.
Niko shrugged. She had forgotten the shrugs, and how communicative they were. That had been a let’s-change-the-subject shrug.
“The snow’s coming down pretty hard,” he said. “There’s a great coffee shop nearby.”
“Shades of the past,” she said.
He smiled.
“Don’t you have to stay with your—what is it? A store? An organization?”
“It’s five,” he said. “I’ve shut down for the day. I was just heading to my car when I saw you.”
Then he raised a finger and touched it to the side of his nose. She flashed on a painting she’d seen in a child’s book illustrating the poem A Visit From St. Nicholas, “laying his finger aside of his nose…”
She glanced around to see if there was a chimney nearby, but there wasn’t.
Fanciful. That was her problem. That had always been her problem.
“You know,” Niko was saying, “I still owe you dinner.”
She smiled. “These are the same boots that you bought me,” she said. “I’ve worn them for years, and they’ve been wonderful. So if anyone owes someone dinner, I owe you.”
“Well, then,” he said, “let’s go somewhere lovely and haggle over the bill.”
He extended his arm. She took it, faintly startled at their comfortable familiarity. She was older now, more sure of herself and what she wanted. She also knew how to get out of difficult situations.
But he seemed calmer too, a lot less upset and a lot less stressed. That attraction she had felt from the moment she met him flowed strong and fine between them.
Maybe she was comfortable because she had thought of him so often, and regretted her part in their strange interaction. Or maybe she was comfortable because she had researched the North family and their company deeply now. She had tried to figure out who they were and what they really did.
Although she hadn’t known that Niko was estranged from them.
They walked back to North Wells Street. The streetlights had come on, and the snow flurries reflected in the light. Quite a little storm was brewing. She hadn’t expected it.
They discussed the weather and the snow—always safe topics in Chicago—as he led her to DiGillio’s, an Italian restaurant that had been part of the city longer than the cigar shop. The entire neighborhood smelled faintly of garlic and tomato sauce.
Her stomach growled. She hadn’t realized how hungry she was.
The outdoor tables on the brick-lined patio still had chairs beside them, but the tabletops were covered with wet leaves and a growing blanket of snow.
The plate glass windows on either side of the door contained further reminders of the season. A poster for a Halloween party two days away mentioned a live band. A poster on the other window advertised Brunch with Santa. The poster showed a slenderish Santa, handing a present to a pretty little girl with red and green ribbons mixed in her cornrows. A large red sticker beside the poster said, Brunch With Santa! Get Your Reservations Early! Usually sold out before Thanksgiving!
Niko pulled open the door. Warm air hit Raine as she stepped inside. The scent of garlic and tomato sauce mixed with baking bread and a faint hint of wood smoke.
It took a moment for her eyes to adjust. The restaurant looked just like it had the last time she had been here, at least ten years before. T
ables lined one wall, and doors led to larger rooms behind. The beautiful bar glistened in the evening light. Fake spiderwebs hung off everything, and tiny pumpkins sat in the middle of every table.
It felt odd to see Halloween decorations as the first snow fell. The snowfall had put her in the mood for Christmas, something that almost never happened to her.
“Niiiii-ko!” the bartender shouted, setting down a rag he was holding and coming around the bar. He gave Niko a guy hug, then turned to Raine, eyebrows raised. “What do we have here?”
“Someone I met long ago,” Niko said. “Brett DiGillio, meet Raine Wilkins.”
The owner. She hadn’t expected to see him there on a weekday afternoon.
Raine pulled off her gloves and extended her hand. DiGillio took it. His fingers were vaguely damp, probably from that towel.
He grinned at her, muttered something about it being a pleasure, and then looked at Niko.
“Niko, my man,” DiGillio said, “be careful or your lone wolf reputation will fade.”
Niko gave a sideways shrug, almost unnoticeable. Raine saw it, but she doubted DiGillio did—or if he did, he ignored it.
“Ms. Wilkins,” DiGillio said. “Do you know who you’re with?”
“I haven’t seen him in—”
“Niko North is the best Santa we have ever had in this city, maybe in this state. We’re lucky to get him to work the room for our brunch. Word’s gotten around, and the damn thing is the most popular event we host, period. Even if the Cubs or the Sox or Da Bears or Da Bulls are in the playoffs, this place is never as crowded as it is when our Niko dresses up like a jolly old elf.”
“Please, Brett,” Niko said. “You’re not supposed to—”
“And the gifts! Oh, my word,” DiGillio said. “We buy them, but they somehow get some of that Niko magic. Because people rave about them years later. The man is gifted, pun intended.”
Raine smiled. DiGillio’s enthusiasm pleased her rather than putting her off.
Santa Series: Three Stories of Magical Holiday Romance Page 24
