Christmas of Love

by Erin Wright

  Yeah, Austin figured that out – a little too late, but no way to fix that now. “So what’s the deal with Ivy?” he asked, as casual as he could manage as they stood side by side, facing towards the groups of people mingling, Christmas music playing quietly through it all.

  “I can tell you she’s leaving tomorrow,” Declan said, serious for the first time. “Ivy hates Long Valley with a passion, and actually, Tiffany and Ezzy play a big part in that. They made her life a living hell growing up. I tried to defend her a few times from it, but they’re girls. I couldn’t take ‘em out back and punch ‘em.” He shrugged. “Iris tried to stand up for her too, but…Anyway, Ivy left the night of high school graduation and never looked back. Knowing her, she’ll do her best not to be here for another decade, if she can get away with it. Iris practically had to twist her arm off to get her here for this party. She’s a California girl, through and through. And the thing is, I’m not sure I blame her.”

  Austin nodded, soaking the information in. It was too damn bad, really. She sure was cute, what with her dark red hair and easy smile and curves in all the right places. It would’ve been perfect to take her out on a date or two, maybe even wander on over to the diner where Tiffany was a waitress. He could’ve used her to finally get some breathing room from Tiffany, and Ivy could have gotten her revenge.

  But between now and tomorrow? Dammit all, it wasn’t real believable to pretend that he and Ivy had somehow fallen madly in love.

  Saying goodbye to Dec, Austin made his way over to the refreshment table to get another cup of mulled apple cider. It was probably a good thing Ivy was leaving, anyway. She was a little too cute and a little too fun to laugh with. He needed to get Tiffany off his back, not find an actual girlfriend.

  Austin was single, and with any luck, would stay that way for life. He’d tried falling in love once before.

  Never again.

  Chapter 3

  Ivy

  So warm. She snuggled down deeper under the covers.

  But screaming.

  There was screaming.

  Why is there screaming?

  Ivy jackknifed up in bed. Her mom was screaming and crying, the sound muffled through the closed bedroom door. Holy hell! She leaped out of bed and threw on her ratty old bathrobe that she hadn’t worn since high school, yanking her bedroom door open, where she promptly plowed right into her father, who was also tearing down the hallway.

  “Oof!” she grunted.

  That made it a second time in two days that she’d run into someone. So much for her waitressing skills keeping her light on her toes.

  No time to apologize to her dad or laugh about it, though; they untangled themselves and then were running down the hallway and into the living room, the cries of Betty Rae getting louder as they moved. “Help! Oh God, you have to help! Call 911!”

  They rounded the corner into the living room and Ivy skittered to a stop, seeing but not understanding. Her mom was dragging Iris’ limp body into the house, covered in blood and melting snow. Iris’ eyes were closed; her pale cheeks a stark contrast to the deep red spreading everywhere. Mom laid her down gently and began rocking back and forth over her, crying and stroking her hair away from her face.

  “My baby, oh my baby!” she wept, as the blood and the snow swirled together and dripped onto the tile foyer floor.

  Ivy just stood there in shock, staring. How…what…Her brain refused to comprehend what was in front of her.

  Somewhere in the distance, she numbly heard her dad barking into the landline, “My daughter! She fell. She was outside. She hit her head and is bleeding everywhere. Yes…okay…Betty!” he shouted, covering up the mouthpiece of the phone. “The dispatcher wants to know if she’s awake or not.”

  Her mom shook her head. “I’ve been begging her to wake up, but she isn’t moviinnnnggggg…” She broke back down into sobs, rocking back and forth, cradling Iris’ head against her. “Iris, baby, wake up for Mom. You have to wake up.” The icy winter air curled inside through the open front door, along with snowflakes, still falling endlessly from the sky.

  Snow? When did it start snowing? It must’ve started after her parents’ party finished last night. She hated snow. White and cold and endless and…

  Ivy’s vision blackened around the edges as the world narrowed. She breathed in through her mouth slowly, trying to quell her panic. Iris needed her. Passing out wouldn’t help anything. Blood had always been Iris’ thing, not Ivy’s, and seeing it everywhere, mixed with the hated snow…

  The room went a little darker still. Ivy fought it back. She had to. She could help. What would Iris do?

  Oh, duh!

  She forced herself into the kitchen, where she snatched some hand towels out of the drawer. Iris would stop the bleeding. A ten-year-old kid would know to stop the bleeding. Ivy felt like she was swimming through syrup, everything distorted and moving slow.

  Her sister needed her, dammit. She could have a panic attack later. As soon as Iris was okay.

  She moved back into the living room, the cold air swirling and mixing with the warm air of the house, but it still wasn’t enough and Ivy shivered in her bathrobe, or maybe it was shock settling in. She could be going into shock. She felt shocky. And weird. Her vision was fading in and out with every breath. A distant part of her brain heard the gas heater kick on as she knelt next to Iris, hand towels at the ready.

  “Yes, my daughter is putting some towels on her head,” Ivy heard her dad tell the dispatcher and with a grimace, she pushed the first towel down. The red of the blood mixed in with the red of Iris’ hair, making it deeper and more dramatic against her pale skin, which was growing whiter by the moment. Dammit, she was losing too much blood.

  Her mom’s tears splashed on Iris’ face as she begged God to save her baby. “She’s a good girl. She loves everyone. You can’t take her away…”

  The wail of the ambulance finally made its way into the house and her dad shouted, “Thank you!” to the dispatcher. After a moment, he hung up and rushed over. “Can you feel a pulse?” he demanded.

  Her mom nodded. “She’s breathing but John, I can’t get her to wake up!”

  Ivy stared down at her beautiful older sister, red hair encrusted in drying blood, the second kitchen towel starting to soak through so Ivy put a third one on and pushed down, trying to staunch the flow. How could she bleed so much and still be alive?

  I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Iris. I shouldn’t have accused you of inviting Tiffany and Ezzy to the party. I should’ve forced you to move to California with me. There’s no snow in San Francisco. You would be okay if you lived there. The shivers only got worse as she stared down at the person she’d always wanted to be. If you live through this, I promise to help you move to California. I’ll take care of you there. You’ve always taken care of me; it’s time for me to take care of you. Please wake up. I need to tell you how sorry I am.

  The wails were incredibly loud and then hurrying feet crunched through the hated white snow, still swirling from the sky, and then they were in the house. The EMT eased Ivy’s grasp from the bloodied towels and with practiced efficiency, the two EMTs loaded her up onto a stretcher, pushing her outside and into the back of the ambulance.

  Ivy stared after them through the open door, frozen to the floor, as her mom and dad begged the emergency personnel for more information.

  “We’re taking her to the Long Valley Hospital. The Life Flight helicopter is on its way and should be landing shortly. We aren’t equipped to take care of this kind of brain injury here, especially with the previous trauma she’s had. We’ll fly her to St Luke’s in Boise from there. There isn’t enough room in the helicopter for any passengers, so you’ll need to drive and meet up with her there.”

  Ivy forced herself to her feet, stiff and so very cold. She wasn’t sure if it was from kneeling just inside an open door, letting in the arctic air, or the terror from seeing her sister hurt. She made herself throw the towels away in the kitchen trash, and t
hen scrub her hands clean of the dark and crusty blood. She had to clean up. She had to get dressed. She would go with her parents to Boise, and she would take care of her sister.

  Her parents were coming back in, shouting as they hurried to get dressed, and as Ivy slipped a sweatshirt over her head, she suddenly realized that today was the day she was supposed to be going back to California. Her mom was supposed to be driving her to Boise this morning, but not to see her comatose sister in the hospital, but so she could fly back home.

  Panic clutched at her again. There was no way she could leave Iris. Not now. Not when her sister needed her. When Iris had originally gotten into her car wreck just over three months ago, Ivy hadn’t been able to afford to fly up to see her, and had been forced to sit on the sidelines as her sister made her slow recovery.

  Ivy couldn’t do it again.

  Screw her job. Screw her boss. He was going to be angry when he heard the news, but she couldn’t find it in herself to care.

  Iris needed her, and this time, Ivy wasn’t going to let her down.

  Chapter 4

  Austin

  The clear, bitterly cold air hurt his lungs with every breath, with a cloud drifting up from the nostrils of Bob as they plodded along. It was the perfect winter day – cold, bright, and beautiful, ice and snow sparkling as far as the eye could see.

  He’d thought about asking Declan to go riding with him this morning, but then decided against it, figuring he was probably spending all of his free time with Iris. After being apart for years, Austin knew it only made sense that his friend would want to spend as much time as possible with her, although it did leave Austin wanting for companionship of his own.

  Too bad Ivy has gone back to California.

  Austin shoved that thought away. Ivy was gone, and wouldn’t be back. One moment of staring at each other, almost kissing, before that damn Tiffany showed up, did not a relationship make.

  Which was fine. Good, even. He didn’t want a relationship. He apparently just had to remind himself of this fact more often in the last four days than he normally had to, was all.

  He saw a glint of red through the trees, and sat up straighter in the saddle. He must be losing it. He’d spent so much time forcing himself not to think about Ivy McLain that he’d begun to see her out in the wilds of Idaho.

  Bob stepped through the snow, carefully setting down each hoof to make it through the treacherous footing, while Austin kept his eyes trained on the dark red blob of color, growing larger by the moment.

  That’s…

  That’s really her!

  He’d recognize that brilliant red hair anywhere, falling in curly waves over a dark blue jacket. The same dark blue jacket Ivy had been wearing the other night at the party.

  He broke into the small clearing to see her perched on a rock, a notepad spread open on her lap as she sketched, staring down at the pad and then up again into the distance. He squinted, trying to figure out what it was she was drawing, when she heard the jingle of Bob’s bridle and turned with a squeal, snapping the notepad shut.

  “Oh!” she exclaimed, her hand over her chest, staring at him like he’d just descended from an alien spacecraft. He smiled, trying to put her at ease.

  “Hey,” he said, swinging down from his horse, patting his dark brown coat on the side for a moment before turning back to Ivy. “What are you doing here?”

  The words came out before he could think through them, a rarity in his world. He usually thought through every word, every statement, before he even opened his mouth, but somehow, around Ivy, things just came out.

  Sometimes, horribly awkward things, implying shit he didn’t mean.

  Her eyebrows snapped together in a glower. “I’ve always come here, way before you moved to town,” she told him pertly. “I’ve been coming here for years. What are you doing here?”

  He rubbed the back of his neck, wishing he could start this conversation over again. Finding her in his favorite thinking spot had rattled him. He needed to get this conversation back on track. “I found it when I first moved here. I like it. The creek is nice during the summer, although it’s frozen solid right now, of course, and the view of the Goldfork Mountains…” He pointed to them, as if she wouldn’t know where in the hell the Goldfork Mountains were, and then rolled his eyes at himself. Ivy grew up in Long Valley. She knew the area better than he did. He did not need to give her a geography lesson.

  He wasn’t exactly doing a good job of getting the conversation back on track, something her deepening glower was only reinforcing.

  “What are you still doing in Long Valley?” he tried again. “Declan said you were going to leave the day after the party.”

  Okay, so that made it worse.

  Much worse. In a totally-different-way worse, but that wasn’t exactly a consolation at that moment.

  Ivy stood up, tucking her notepad under her arm, and then walked over to Bob, letting him snuffle her hand before she began stroking his long neck. She shot Austin a knowing grin as she petted Bob, letting the silence stretch out between them, obviously picking up on the implication that Austin had been asking Declan about her, and reveling in it.

  Dammit! That was not what he’d wanted to tell her. It was stalkerish and weird, and he didn’t want her to know that he’d been that interested after their literal run-in with each other.

  He fished around for something to say, someway to get himself out of this pickle without making it even worse, something he seemed completely incapable of today, when she finally took pity on him. “I wish I could say it was a good thing that I’m still here.” She paused, her breath disappearing in a cloud around her head, her smile fading. “Iris is going to be at St. Luke’s for at least another week, though.”

  They were close enough now for him to see the dark flecks in her otherwise brilliant blue eyes, and the dark bags under her eyes. He wouldn’t exactly consider himself to be an expert on Ivy, but even he could see that she looked exhausted.

  “I’m so sorry,” he said quietly. “I hadn’t heard.”

  “The gossip chain here in Long Valley must really be broken then,” Ivy said with a small laugh. “Usually, this kind of thing gets around town, almost before it happens. Somehow, Sawyer is constantly breaking the time-space continuum, and yet, no scientists have shown up to study this phenomenon.”

  They both laughed for just a moment at that, and then quickly sobered up. It almost felt irreverent to laugh under the circumstances.

  “So what happened to Iris? Did she get into another car wreck?” He hadn’t met her before the wreck, of course, although while he and Declan were college roommates up at the University of Idaho, he’d sure heard a lot about her. When they’d first met after Iris moved back to town, Austin had looked her over discretely, searching for her angel wings. Declan had made her seem one step short of perfection, and although Austin had thought her plenty nice, she wasn’t…

  Well, she wasn’t Ivy, that was for sure. Something about Ivy made his heart skip a beat in his chest, an altogether unexpected and not entirely desired reaction.

  “No, no car wreck, thank God. Although the whole thing happened because of that.” Bob whinnied and nudged Ivy’s hand, obviously growing discontented at the amount of attention he was getting from her, which made Austin roll his eyes inwardly. Bob always was a glutton for love. Unlike other horses that could take it or leave it, Bob lived for it. Ivy absentmindedly began stroking him again, her eyes focused off in the distance. “Mom found her outside. Iris had thought she ought to clean off her own front steps after that snowstorm the night of my parent’s party. I swear, her stubbornness is going to get her killed.”

  She focused back on him, a small smile on her lips. “We McLains excel at a lot of things, but stubbornness is truly our crowning achievement.”

  A bark of laughter tore out of him at that. He guessed it was a real good thing that Iris had hooked up with Declan, then, because he had never met someone more stubborn than Declan. Not eve
n his parents, and that was saying something.

  “So when are you heading back to California?” he asked, and she cocked an eyebrow at him. He cursed inwardly again. She hadn’t told him she lived in California; they hadn’t had enough time to get that far during their one and only encounter.

  “You spy a lot on girls you meet at anniversary parties?” she asked dryly, but then spared him from coming up with a suitable response. Which was good, because he had none. “I’ll be here another couple of days. I hadn’t planned on that originally, something that you seem to already know—”

  He coughed, his cheeks turning red.

  The cold was getting to him. That was it. He did not blush, so no other explanation made sense.

  “—but since I’ve been here this long, why not stay a little longer, you know? I want to make sure Iris is okay before I head back home.”

  Austin nodded, his mind going a million miles a minute. If she was staying on a little longer, well…

  “While you’re here in town, want to go out sometime?” As soon as the words left his mouth, he felt like an idiot. She probably had a boyfriend back in California. As beautiful as she was, she probably had ten boyfriends back in California. She wouldn’t want to hang out with him.

  And yet, she didn’t laugh him off, or ridicule the idea. She didn’t even gently let him down. Instead, she just cocked her head to the side and said contemplatively, “And if I said yes, where would you take me?”

  Oh shit.

  Since he hadn’t exactly planned on asking her out, he most certainly didn’t have a specific place in mind. “Somewhere” wasn’t going to work as an answer. He scrambled, trying to come up with something.

  “The bells concert!” he said triumphantly, thrilled that his brain had come up with something better than, “Ummmm…” which was originally all that it was supplying him with. “The annual bells concert at the Methodist Church. I didn’t get to go the last couple of years, and I’d love to have someone to attend with me.”