A Lot Like Christmas

by Dawn Atkins

  “Ignore it?” He grinned.

  “That’s really all we can do, don’t you think? I mean, you’re fun to spend time with, Chase, and you’re sexy and charming, but you’re not…um…”

  “I’m not your Thor. I get it.” Sylvie couldn’t quite read his expression, but he sounded almost hurt.

  “I’m not your kind of woman, either, right?” She felt a funny pinch in her chest at the thought. “What would you look for? If you were looking, which you’re not.”

  “I guess she’d be someone who kept me on my toes. She’d be restless like me, into travel and new experiences. Spontaneous, too. That’s important. Someone happy to dance all night, then skydive at the crack of dawn.”

  “You skydive?”

  “Not yet. But I fully intend to.”

  “I see.” She tried not to laugh.

  He tilted his head. “You think I should grow up, huh?”

  “You are who you are, Chase.”

  He laughed, low and rich. “Maybe I’m full of crap. Maybe I’ll find a place I want to stay, get married and have kids and a 401K and a damned picket fence.”

  “Why wouldn’t you?”

  “Because I could change my mind on a dime and break the poor girl’s heart. I should come with a warning label.”

  He had a point, but he sounded lost when he said it, like he wished he were different. She wished he were, too.

  “Like you said, you never promise more than you can deliver.” She pressed herself against him. “And, boy, can you deliver.”

  He chuckled and she could tell he was grateful that she’d shifted the subject to something more comfortable.

  She liked Chase even more for his honesty, but that almost made it worse. She could become attached, start making more of what was between them than could ever be. She knew better. Chase would leave. Whether he decided to sell Starlight Desert or keep it, he wouldn’t stay. He’d move on to the next project and the next woman. Sylvie had to keep that firmly in mind, or stay out of Chase’s arms for good.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  WHEN SYLVIE WOKE IN the middle of the night she was alone in her big, roomy bed. Instead of luxuriating in the space, she felt lonely. Not a good sign.

  Where were Chase and Dasher?

  She got up to investigate, reaching for her serviceable brown terry robe. Nope. Not tonight. Instead she pulled out the sexy silk thing she’d bought from Lucy’s Secrets for Steve, but had never worn because it seemed too silly.

  The fabric was slippery and smooth, tickling her skin as she put it on. She felt pretty damned sexy at the moment.

  She padded barefoot down the hall and found Chase in her living room, naked, looking at the books on her shelf, Dasher against one shoulder.

  “Hey,” she said softly.

  “Sylvie.” He gathered her into his arms, the puppy cuddled between them, and kissed her. “Dasher whined so I took him out. I didn’t want to disturb you.”

  “You didn’t.” What disturbed her was missing him.

  “Those shelves have to be from Captain Bean’s Wood Wonders,” he said, nodding over her shoulder.

  She turned to look. “Yep.”

  “And that stuffed bear is from The Teddy Stop.” He nodded at it. “You do support the stores.”

  “With every purchase I can, yeah.”

  “And this thing…mmm.” He stroked her body through the silk. “One of Lucy’s secrets?”

  “I don’t know what I was thinking when I bought it.”

  “You were thinking how easy it would be for me to take it off.” He tugged at the tie so it released the bow, then slid one hand around her bare waist to cup her backside.

  “Mmm,” she said, softening against him. “If that wasn’t what I was thinking, it should have been.”

  Dasher wanted to get down, so Chase crouched to let the puppy go. Sylvie retied her robe.

  “The place looks like you,” Chase said, looking around the room. He seemed so large and male, her living room tiny and feminine and far too orderly by comparison.

  “You mean girlie? Scary neat? Boring?”

  “No. Peaceful, everything where it belongs. Just so.” He leaned over to tip a pillow onto one corner. “That make you crazy?”

  “I can handle crooked pillows. Just don’t mess with my dollhouses. You’ll limp for a month.”

  “Show me. I promise I won’t move one tiny chair without permission.”

  She led him to the second bedroom, her workshop. She’d ringed the room with shelves and compartments to hold the finished houses and the ones in progress, along with her supplies of nails, screws, varnish, paints and fine brushes, as well as small pieces of paneling and plywood.

  Chase zeroed in on the shelf with her latest finished houses—a Victorian, a log cabin, a Tuscan villa and a fairy-tale cottage. “These are amazing.”

  “I’m pretty pleased with them. I’m thinking of giving the cottage as a prize for the Starlight Desert Christmas raffle. What do you think?”

  “I think you do a lot for the mall. And for the people—all those gifts and loans and taste-testing favors. You know everybody’s birthdays—hell, when their kids graduate. Not to mention the fortune you spend in the shops.”

  “Of course. We’re family.”

  “Not exactly,” he said slowly. “I know you love the place, but—”

  “You think I’m too attached? It’s good business practice, Chase. Happy tenants stick around even when times get tough…like now with the vandalism.”

  “I guess so….” She could tell it still bothered him. But she wasn’t up for arguing about it now.

  “These are so beautiful,” he said, looking back at her dollhouses. “Have you ever thought of selling them?”

  “You sound like Desiree. She wants to create a website for me and market them.”

  “But you don’t want that?”

  “Desiree gets lots of ideas.”

  “And you don’t want to get let down again.”

  “Again?” She jerked her eyes to his.

  “She left you.”

  His words were three matter-of-fact punches to her solar plexus. “It wasn’t like that. Desiree was selling her crafts at state fairs and shows, so she was on the road a lot. She knew I adored my grandparents. I had a room of my own there and the school was better, since our neighborhood was kind of sketchy.”

  “You have every right to be hurt, Sylvie. Angry, too.” He held her gaze, not letting her escape. “She let you down.”

  “What’s the point?” she said, a bitter taste in her mouth. “Desiree did her best. Why expect more?”

  “You don’t think people can change?”

  “Not that I’ve seen, no.”

  “I’d like to hope they can.” His eyes seemed distant.

  “I used to wish for more, but…” She shrugged, remembering with sudden clarity waiting in her grandmother’s needlepoint window seat for Mommy to pick her up that last time.

  She must have fallen asleep, because the next thing she knew it was morning and she was in bed in her room at her grandparents’ and they stood over her with fake smiles and told her how, guess what, she would get to live with them for a while and wasn’t that so lucky and such a gift?

  Which it had been. Truly. But it didn’t change the fact that her mother had left her. She swallowed the emotions surging inside her. “It’s better not to get your hopes up. Then you don’t get disappointed and you don’t make people feel like they’ve failed you.”

  “So you step back from people, right? Keep your distance?”

  “I guess.”

  “We’re alike in that way. We’re both surrounded by people, but no one really gets in.” Chase’s dark eyes drew her closer. His words poked through her defenses. She preferred to skim painful realities, work around them or ignore them altogether.

  “Maybe. I just make the best of what I’ve got and go forward. Why get overwrought about it?”

  “You feel how you feel, Sylvie. And that
’s okay.” Hearing him tell the truth so clearly made her emotions snarl and twist. She turned to her dollhouses with their precise beauty. “Building a dollhouse is like a meditation to me. All my focus narrows to varnishing this tiny chair or attaching these curtains to the fragile toothpick rods.”

  Her words rushed out and she picked up a Victorian hutch with tiny pewter dishes and a pitcher. “For the furniture, I buy the crude imports because the wood is better, then sand them down and paint and upholster them myself.”

  She rattled on, breathless, her throat tight. “It’s all to one-inch scale. My favorite part is putting all the pieces in place, like a delicate puzzle, where everything fits just so.”

  “Sylvie…” Chase turned her toward him and pulled her into his arms, tucking her head under his chin. “I didn’t mean to upset you. God knows I’ve ducked plenty of tough moments, but seeing you, with your heart so big, I just want more for you.”

  She pulled back. “I don’t need more. I’m fine.”

  “I want more for me, too,” he said, sudden determination clear in his dark eyes. “You make me want more.”

  She looked up at him, startled, and he kissed her with so much tenderness, it frightened her a little.

  They went back to bed, arm in arm, then whispered intimacies and touched each other gently, staring into each other’s eyes the entire time. Something was happening here. Something more than friendly sex. Silver threads of hope flew between them, binding them closer. Hope for more for each other and maybe, just maybe, for more for them.

  Afterward, Chase ran his fingers lazily up and down her arm. “The other night at dinner, I remembered that one Christmas you spent with us.”

  “Yeah. I was nine. Starr was so insistent when she knew Desiree wouldn’t be home and my grandparents figured I’d enjoy the bigger fuss you guys made. I was thrilled. You had eggnog and hot chocolate and homemade cookies and you played games and decorated the tree together.”

  “And fought the whole time.”

  She shrugged. “That tree was like a skyscraper to me.”

  “I remember in the morning, you ran downstairs and when you saw all the presents under the tree, you gave out this huge squeal and threw your arms around my mom.”

  “I remember that. Yeah.”

  “Then you pushed away from her like you’d been electrocuted. What happened?”

  She smiled. “I felt you all staring at me and I knew I’d overdone it.”

  “Are you kidding? We loved it. We’re guys. We don’t shriek and jump up and down, even when we want to. I was a teenager. I was perfecting my sulk. And Fletcher never was much of a hugger. Mom was thrilled. It made me sad to see you back off like that.”

  “I got carried away. I was your guest. Plus, it felt like I was being disloyal to my grandparents after all they’d done for me. It was complicated.”

  “You deserve so much more than you allow yourself, Sylvie,” he said, kissing her forehead, his breath warm on her face. “You’re standing at an all-you-can-eat buffet afraid to fill a spoon.”

  “What makes you so sure there will always be seconds?”

  “Maybe that’s my problem. I figure whatever I want will be there when I’m ready for it.”

  “Who’s to say who’s right?” she said. Was life an everlasting buffet or a single meal to be enjoyed spoon by spoon? She didn’t know. What she knew was that she was falling in love with Chase, despite all her attempts to be sensible.

  “I need to go out to Home at Last early in the morning,” he said. “Want to come with me? See the place for yourself? We’ll leave by six and be back to Starlight Desert by nine.”

  “I’d love that, Chase. I would.” And she hugged him hard, shutting out all the doubts and questions.

  DRIVING SYLVIE OUT to Home at Last, Chase felt as eager as a kid showing off a new toy. As he drove, he kept glancing at her smiling, Dasher in her lap. When she caught him, her smile would broaden and so would his. It was like they had some great secret they were bursting to tell.

  What the hell was going on here?

  You are who you are, Chase.

  Those simple words from Sylvie had set off a change in him. The instant she accepted him as he was, he wanted to be different—better somehow.

  He wanted to tell her more about himself than he’d ever told a soul. Somehow, her steady gaze, her close attention, her curiosity made him want to answer every question, explore every aspect of his life. Around her he felt like someone had dropped a bucket of ice into a pot of boiling soup. Instant calm and smooth, cool peace.

  He’d always been content with women as short-term bedmates and good friends. With Sylvie he wondered about more. What would it be like to settle down with one woman?

  Say, a woman like Sylvie.

  Maybe constantly traveling, doing deals, meeting new people wasn’t what he wanted anymore.

  Could he change? Sylvie sure didn’t think so. He had to wonder himself. He was thirty-six. If he had it in him to be a settle-down guy wouldn’t he have made the switch by now?

  When you love something, you find a way.

  Yeah, but what if staying put was just an experiment for him? A fleeting idea he’d get bored of soon enough? Where would Sylvie be then? Hurt. And he never wanted to hurt her.

  “What’s going on in your head, Chase?” Sylvie asked.

  “Nothing.” Nothing he could share anyway. They were passing through one of the West Valley towns hit hard by the housing crash. “Let me show you why Home at Last is needed.” He took the exit ramp, headed for a neighborhood of modest tract homes.

  “Check out the signs,” he said, nodding down the street when they’d reached it. Everywhere they looked were for sale signs, bank auction signs, trashed yards and boarded-up windows.

  “These were starter homes—first-time buyers going for their dream, getting in over their head on payments for loans they shouldn’t have qualified for.”

  “How terrible,” she said. “This is so sad.”

  “Very. That’s what happened to Nadia’s son and his wife. They came away bewildered and ashamed. How did Nadia put it…? ‘They fail at doing dream of America.’” He drove them back onto the freeway, heading for Home at Last.

  “I think it’s great that you can help them.”

  “Like Nadia says, I’m not chickens counting before hatching. We’re being very cautious this time.”

  “This time?”

  He’d forgotten she didn’t know about his failure. “We started Home at Last in Las Vegas last year. It failed because we trusted a builder without verifying what he’d promised. We lost a lot of money.”

  “That’s awful.”

  “Yeah. I’ve never screwed up like that before. We’ll pay back our investors, no question. Every dime.”

  “You had a partner, too. Chet? It wasn’t just you.”

  “I took the lead. I knew better.”

  “And you’re trying again here. Is that why Marshall said it was a house of cards?”

  “Oh, yeah. He loves the fact that I made a mistake. He thinks I’ve learned my lesson and I’ll finally join McCann Development. He’d love it if I kept managing Starlight Desert.”

  “But you’ve had your own company for years.”

  “That means nothing to the General, Sylvie.”

  “He wants you to stay on as the GM?”

  “Don’t worry. If we keep the mall, the job’s yours if you still want it.”

  “Of course I do. You know I do.”

  “I’ll be in Oregon as soon as I can get there. There’s a new project in Portland I want in on.” He paused, feeling his enthusiasm wane just a bit.

  “That makes sense,” Sylvie said, though she seemed a little sad about it.

  He pulled into the gravel parking lot of Home at Last.

  “Wow.” Sylvie was looking at Jake’s prototype resting next to the nearly completed model. She got out of the car and set Dasher down, holding on to his leash.

  “Come into th
e office. I’ll introduce you to Chet, go over a couple things, then get the key and show you inside.”

  Soon enough, they were in the prototype. Dasher wandered the rooms while Chase explained the modular aspects of the design, the precision required by Jake’s blueprints, the use of glass to give openness and recyclables to keep costs down.

  “Inexpensive doesn’t have to mean ugly or boring,” he said. “You have to be smart about materials, use every scrap, be savvy about angles and tolerances.”

  “This is lovely.” Sylvie ran her hand across the recycled cork countertop in the kitchen, which gave him a jolt. If they didn’t have to be at the mall in an hour, he’d make good use of the futon in the bedroom.

  “I’m glad you like it. Come on, I’ll drive you to the acreage where we’ll build.”

  She grabbed Dasher and they set off, going slowly on the dirt road.

  “Back there you sounded like an architect,” Sylvie said.

  “That was my major for a while. That’s probably why I spent so much time on the Home at Last plans.” At the drafting table with Jake, he’d felt the familiar joy. He’d been focused, synapses firing away, completely at home, absolutely present.

  “Why’d you change majors?”

  “I’d already had a string of them—mechanical engineering, environmental biology, even industrial design for a semester. I’d run through too much of Dad’s cash, so I gutted out a finance degree, which led to a great internship, which meant I could pay back the General right away.” He figured it would help get his father off Fletcher’s case, too.

  “He didn’t expect that, did he?”

  “I wasn’t about to owe him a dime.” His mother had told him the General had been offended by the payments. “Mom used the money to set up a college account for her future grandchildren.”

  “That sounds like her, planning ahead that way. So was architecture your dream?”

  “Everything’s a dream until you start living the details. What I regret was believing anything I did would make things right with my father.”

  “That sounds pretty harsh. He clearly loves you.”