Home for Christmas

by Lizzie Lane

  “I didn’t want you to offer me the moon, George Bailey,” Sam said softly. “I just wanted you to love me.”

  “I did.” I do. Always.

  But he’d worried that love wasn’t enough. That he would never be good enough for her if he didn’t live up to his potential. The golden boy of White Falls had to make good. Didn’t he?

  “Sam?”

  She reached for the carafe of cocoa, refilling her mug and pouring a second for him. She handed him the cup before clinking her own against it in a toast. “I loved you too, Jase MacGregor. I guess we’re living proof that love doesn’t conquer all.”

  He didn’t miss the past tense, but he wasn’t giving up yet. He wasn’t the fool he’d been a year ago. He was listening now, compromising now, and this time he wasn’t giving up.

  Chapter Seven – Sabotage, Emotional Blackmail, and Other Holiday Traditions

  Jase stretched out on the bed, studying the woman beside him as she snored soft, kittenish snores. They’d watched the end of It’s a Wonderful Life and he’d convinced her to change into his shirt and climb under the covers before Sam had fallen asleep in the middle of a made-for-TV movie about a couple trapped together by a matchmaking Santa.

  They’d long since polished off the last of the snack tray and set it aside, but even without it as a tangible barrier between them, Sam had kept a careful distance. A distance he hadn’t tried to bridge since the lady had definitely over-imbibed on the Schnapps, though he couldn’t resist reaching out now to smooth a blond flyaway back over her brow.

  She’d always been the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. Not just her features—which were undeniably stunning—but the way life seemed to radiate out of her every pore. His Samantha. His shining beacon of happiness.

  And he’d lost her.

  All because he’d been so stupidly certain he knew what was best for them that he’d never stopped to listen to her dreams. Just assuming she would realize his idea of their life together was better.

  What an ass he’d been.

  Though, to be fair, they’d both been pretty asinine.

  Their talk tonight had been serious, but necessary. Now maybe they could get back to the business of remembering how good they could be together. Remembering why they fell in love in the first place.

  He still had his interview and the big romantic gesture of moving back to White Falls was good, but if she couldn’t love him again, it wasn’t worth a damn. He needed the little stuff. To remind her how amazing just the everyday could be when they were facing it together.

  He leaned over her, pressing a kiss to her forehead and she stirred sleepily, twisting beneath the covers for a moment before settling with a sigh. “Forever, Sam,” he whispered into her dreams. “You and me.”

  First thing tomorrow he’d start reminding her how good they were together, but for now he stretched out beside Sam and watched her sleep, right where he wanted to be for the first time in almost a year.

  *

  Sam woke up with a splitting head and the uneasy certainty that she’d shared too much last night. She probably shouldn’t have chugged so much of that potent hot cocoa on a nearly empty stomach, but it had seemed like such a good idea at the time. Just a little something to make spending the night in the same bed with Jase go down a little easier.

  She rolled over, cautiously cracking her eyelids, and wasn’t surprised to see Jase’s side of the bed was already empty. He’d always been a morning person, bouncing out of bed at the crack of dawn ready to take on the day whereas she stirred slowly, clinging to sleep and trying to grab fifteen more minutes of lazy bliss.

  His side of the bed had been made and on top of the comforter sat a tray with a selection of pastries and a carafe of what smelled invitingly like coffee. Sam managed to stop herself from lunging for the coffee like a caveman—barely—but decided to wait to see how it hit her stomach before she tried one of the turnovers.

  Next to the tray sat a small pile of winter clothes—including a red Christmas sweater—and a note. Sam sipped her coffee until she began to feel more human and flipped open the folded Christmas stationary. Jase’s slashing no-nonsense script marched across the page.

  Gone to check when the roads will be cleared. Back soon, J.

  There weren’t even little hearts dotting the I, but her heart fluttered as if it was a love sonnet.

  Danger, Will Robinson.

  She needed to get her head on straight and her heart in line before she wound up crying all over White Falls again. Yes, they’d agreed that they’d messed things up in the past, but that didn’t mean he wanted a future with her. She couldn’t afford to get ahead of herself. Letting her heart sweep her away while her brain went on hiatus was how she’d gotten into this mess in the first place.

  Unsure how long she had before he returned and they hit the road, Sam forced herself out of the cozy bed and tiptoed across the chilly wooden floorboards to the bathroom. She showered quickly, and then pulled a pair of jeans out of her roller bag and dressed in the sweater he’d left for her—trying not to be pleased that Jase had remembered her size.

  Presentable again, she ate two of the turnovers and downed the remainder of the carafe of coffee, but still he didn’t appear. Grabbing her phone off the charger, she checked for messages and then dialed her parents’ number.

  Her mother and step-father answered so quickly they must have been waiting by the phone, their voices tripping over one another in their eagerness. “Samantha! How are you? Where are you? Is Jase there?”

  “I see Elise has been talking to you.” It would be a minor miracle if all of White Falls didn’t know they’d driven up together by the time they rolled into town. News traveled fast in small towns. “Aren’t you even a little curious how the show turned out?”

  “Of course, darling,” her mother said too quickly, “but, well, we just sort of assumed…”

  Something in her mother’s tone snagged her attention and realization crystallized. “You knew he was going to dump me.”

  “No!” her mother protested.

  “Well,” her step-father hedged. “We might have inadvertently influenced…”

  “Frank!”

  “She was going to find out when the show aired anyway, Kaye.”

  Sam interrupted the conversation in progress on the other end of the line. “What am I going to find out?”

  “We accidentally sabotaged you,” her mother confessed in a rush. “And we’re very sorry. We didn’t mean to—how were we to know you had never mentioned Jase to him?”

  “You told Daniel about Jase? What did you say?” She’d wondered why Daniel had suddenly gotten so cagey, asking her repeatedly if she felt she was really ready to be engaged, really prepared to go into their love with an open heart.

  “We might have implied that you had never really gotten over Jase. We just didn’t want to see you married to the rebound guy when you were still in love with someone else. If we’d thought you were really in love with Daniel, we never would have…but now you’re with Jase—”

  “I’m not with Jase. We just ran into one another on the flight.”

  “Oh no,” her mother moaned. “Did you really love Daniel?”

  “No, but I would have liked to be able to figure that out on my own—” Though she wasn’t entirely certain she would have. Not in time. Not when she was throwing everything she had into loving someone other than Jase. “Never mind. What happened happened and I’m not mad. I would have been terrible for Daniel.” Though it was galling to realize her parents had contributed to her being kicked off the show by telling her on-screen boyfriend that she was still in love with the last guy.

  And the worst part was they weren’t wrong.

  She looked out the bay window and immediately saw why Jase hadn’t returned as quickly as promised. Mrs. Claus had put him to work shoveling the front walk. And there was a lot of front walk to shovel. The snow had stopped falling, but there were snow drifts up to his armpits and the st
reets were covered.

  Looked like they wouldn’t be getting out of here anytime soon.

  “We’re still snowed in somewhere in southern Wisconsin, but the snow has stopped so as soon as the roads are clear we’ll head toward White Falls.”

  “You and Jase?” her mother said with a speculative lilt in her voice.

  “Don’t get your hopes up, Mom. He’s just home for Christmas.” And even though she’d never gotten over him, she had no indication that the feeling was mutual.

  They may have worked through some of the issues that led to their break-up, but that didn’t mean they were getting back together. He’d made that very clear when he said he “did” love her. Past tense. And again when he hadn’t tried anything the night before. Not even when they were lying on the bed together watching romantic Christmas movies.

  She spoke with her parents for a few more minutes, assuring them that she wasn’t annoyed about the Daniel fiasco and making plans for later in the week. When she hung up, she tucked her phone into her pocket, grabbed the spare room key, and headed downstairs to find Jase.

  She found Mrs. Claus instead.

  “There you are, dear!” Mrs. Claus exclaimed as soon as she came into view. “Did you sleep well?” she asked, then plowed on without waiting a beat for an answer. “I see the sweater fits. And doesn’t it suit you! Your young man must have spent twenty minutes looking over every sweater in my little gift shop searching for just the right one for you. And then would you believe he volunteered to shovel my walk when he found out that most of my staff couldn’t make it through the snow today? You have yourself quite a catch there. Has he always been so thoughtful or do you think he might be sweet on me?”

  Mrs. Claus did pause then, giggling at her own joke and giving her words time to work their way into Sam’s brain. He had always been thoughtful. Mrs. Claus wasn’t the first elderly woman whose walk he’d shoveled after a storm. It was part of what had endeared him to her in the first place.

  Jase had been the golden boy of White Falls not just because he was bright and clever and destined for big things, but also because everyone loved him. He’d been right there beside her at every charity car wash and bake sale.

  And at every event someone would ask him when he was going to get out of White Falls, when he was going to make good on all his potential. He was the home town golden boy they all wanted to see succeed. She’d never really thought about how much pressure that must have put on him because he never buckled under it. Never even winced. But it had been there all the same. Driving him away.

  “I expect the roads should be clear by noon,” Mrs. Claus went on, “but I’m afraid that won’t be in time.” Their elderly hostess sighed fretfully, wringing her age-spotted hands.

  “Noon is fine,” Sam assured her. “We aren’t in a hurry. Unless you need us to check out sooner…”

  “Oh no, no, dear, it isn’t that! It’s the children.”

  “The children?” Sam asked, lost.

  “The volunteers were supposed to arrive at nine, but none of them can get through because of the snow. Oh, the poor children!”

  “Which children?” Sam asked again, beginning to understand how Jase had been suckered into shoveling the walk. Mrs. Claus had martyrdom and manipulation down to an art.

  “We’re the angel tree drop off point for the area,” Mrs. Claus explained as the front door opened and Jase stepped through, pausing on the threshold to stomp the snow off his shoes. “People have been dropping presents here for the last couple weeks and we’ve been storing them out in the barn until they were ready to be wrapped and taken over to the local women and children’s shelter for the party tonight.”

  Sam tried to focus on Mrs. Claus’s words, but her attention kept wandering to the man in the foyer. He looked so good, wearing a Christmas sweater of his own with flakes of snow clinging to his dark hair. His face was scruffier than usual with the beginnings of a beard, but the look was unspeakably sexy on him.

  “We have all the presents in the barn and all the trimmings to wrap them,” Mrs. Claus went on, oblivious to the sexual revolution happening in Sam’s girl parts. “But we don’t have any of our volunteers to actually do the wrapping. They were supposed to be wrapped this morning and picked up this afternoon to be taken over to the shelter where Santa will be on hand to pass them out, but if they aren’t wrapped…Oh, those poor little dears.”

  Jase stripped off a pair of gloves and crossed the lobby to join them near the front desk. “We could help out until the roads clear,” he offered. “I wrap a mean present. What do you say, Sam? You up for it?”

  His winter eyes glinted and she was up for a lot more than just wrapping presents, but all she did was nod dumbly. She wanted to keep her distance—especially after the feeling of exposure she’d woken up with after their conversation last night, but it was hard to do that when he was reminding her of all the reasons why she’d never been able to resist him.

  In her mind she’d accused him of being selfish when he’d run away to LA, but she’d forgotten all the ways he could be so giving, asking nothing in return.

  It was hard to keep her distance from that. But she was going to. She was going to be smarter this time. Her heart always had her leaping in, but she wasn’t leading with her emotions anymore. Pragmatic and practical. That would be the new Sam. And the new Sam knew better than to let Jase MacGregor in. He wasn’t staying and she couldn’t live her life as a parasite on his.

  No matter how good he looked.

  Chapter Eight – Baby’s Got Her Blue Jeans On

  Jase trailed behind Sam and Mrs. Claus—whom he’d learned was actually named Mrs. Clouse of all things, though he preferred to keep thinking of her as the spouse of his favorite jolly old elf. They crunched through the snow that had blown across the covered pathway leading to the barn and he tried to keep his gaze from fixing too noticeably on Sam’s ass in her snug blue jeans.

  The lyrics to an old Conway Twitty song echoed in his head. Lord have mercy, indeed. Not exactly Christmasy, but definitely the spirit of the season he was feeling at the moment.

  The barn turned out to be nothing like the rustic shack he was expecting, but rather a well-lit, fully heated outbuilding with just as much Christmas cuteness dripping from the eaves as the main building of the inn had.

  “We have weddings out here in every season,” Mrs. Claus explained with a wink as she reached for the carved wooden handle on the giant doors. “Just in case you’re ever looking for a venue.”

  Then she pulled open the door and Jase got his first good look at exactly what they’d gotten themselves into.

  Santa’s workshop didn’t have this many toys.

  They were piled everywhere—along with every kind of wrapping, ribbon and package decoration imaginable. There must have been over a hundred presents filling the tables set up around the barn, keeping the presents off the rustic wooden floors.

  “All of these need to be wrapped?” Sam’s eyes rounded.

  Mrs. Claus flipped a switch beside the door and Christmas music began to play over the sound system as strands of white lights wrapped around the exposed beams overhead began to twinkle. “It is a lot of work,” she acknowledged. “We were supposed to have twenty volunteers, but I’m hoping a few more of the guests will be willing to volunteer their time. You two get started—all the supplies you need should be on that table—and I’ll see if I can scrounge up some more help. And gingerbread! You can’t be expected to wrap without gingerbread.”

  With that, Mrs. Claus was gone, leaving them alone with the mountain of toys.

  Jase extended his arm toward the supply table. “I’ll wrap, you decorate?”

  Sam—and her blue jeans—led the way. “Deal.”

  *

  It was impossible to be awkward with a man with tinsel in his hair and a red Christmas bow stuck to his butt.

  Jase and Sam had barely begun when several more guests arrived to help, instantly taking the atmosphere from one o
f quiet, nervous intimacy to festive Christmas jollity. Among the new helpers was a girl of about eight named Courtney—who had grown bored with wrapping after her first package and decided to decorate Jase’s person instead.

  He’d removed most of the bows and ribbons on his arms and shoulders, handing them to Sam as he somberly thanked Courtney for finding the perfect decor for each present, which only made the girl giggle more and dive into the supplies in search for even more outlandish ways to bedazzle her new friend. But he’d missed the bow on his butt.

  Sam’s lips twitched every time she stole a sideways glance at him—which was often. Every quick, sure movement of his hands seemed to draw her eye.

  They’d fallen into an easy rhythm. A familiar rhythm. Jase would put paper on the packages with clean, sharp corners and military precision, and then Sam would make them beautiful, with curls of ribbon and bits of holly and fancy tags.

  Mrs. Claus had managed to scrounge up eight more willing guests and a cartload of gingerbread. Fueled by the group sugar high and spurred on by Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree and Jingle Bell Rock, the volunteers sang and laughed their way through the piles of packages, with Mrs. Claus overseeing things and directing the placement of the completed packages on pallets according to the target age and gender of the recipients.

  Sam kept her hands moving, trying to focus on her task as she snuck glances at Jase, until she realized he was no longer wrapping with his usual skill and precision, but leaning against the table, watching her decorate her package.

  “What?”

  He nodded toward the package in her hands. “Last one.”

  “You’re kidding.” But when she looked around, she saw the waiting-to-be-wrapped piles were gone and the pallets of wrapped packages were overflowing. “I thought it would take us all day.”

  He shrugged, smiling. “We make a good team.”

  The words seemed to carry a certain weight and Sam found herself blushing and looking down at her hands as she fumbled with the curling ribbon on the last package. Suddenly she was all thumbs with Jase watching her. She tried to concentrate, but when he leaned close to pin the ribbon with one finger so she could tie a knot she inhaled his frosty evergreen scent and her knees wobbled.