A Winter Symphony: A Christmas Novella

by Tiffany Reisz

  “Why does he think your sister should take piano lessons and not you?”

  “Says music is for girls. Mom tells him he’s crazy and that it’s good for me to know music so I can play in church.”

  “Music’s for girls?” She looked up at the store owner and winked at him. “I’ll have you know the strongest, smartest, toughest, and most intimidating man I know also plays piano. What do you think of that?”

  “That true?”

  “Very true. And when he plays piano every woman in the room falls in love with him. Girls love musicians.”

  “That’s true,” said the store owner. “My wife said she didn’t even notice I existed until she heard me playing saxophone.”

  Isaiah seemed to think it over. “Maybe I’ll keep playing,” he said. “Maybe I’ll keep playing basketball, too. You know, double my chances with the ladies, right?”

  “I like the way you think, kid.” Nora chucked him under the chin. He scrambled off the piano bench and headed back to the other room of the store. “It’s an amazing piano,” she told the owner. “I love the sound. Richer than a Steinway.”

  “It’s got beautiful bass notes. Holds the sound better. There’s no piano like the Bösendorfer. They call them the Rolls Royce of pianos. If you change your mind, let me know. Like I said, price includes delivery.”

  The store owner left her alone with the piano. Nora touched the top and felt the ghost of a thousand concertos lurking in the polished wood.

  Nora fished her phone out of her pocket.

  “To what do I owe the pleasure?” Kingsley asked when he answered.

  “Call Moretti back. Tell him I’ll do it.”

  Kingsley said nothing and Nora rolled her eyes. Typical dominant trick—stop speaking to force the other to fill the silence.

  “I’m at a music store,” she explained.

  Silence.

  “It’s December.”

  Silence.

  “Did you know they call Bösendorfer pianos the Rolls Royce of pianos?”

  Silence.

  “It’s almost Christmas. And it’s almost his birthday, King.”

  Silence. And then...

  “I’ll tell him fifty or nothing,” Kingsley said. “And I know him. He’ll pay fifty. You can keep my cut this time.”

  “I knew you still loved him.”

  “I could say the same to you,” Kingsley said.

  The past year had been a cold war between her and Søren, between Kingsley and Søren. She didn’t know what had started the war, but she knew she wanted to finish it. Maybe this would help. Even if it didn’t, she had to give Søren the piano. She didn’t know why, except for the reason Kingsley had named: She still loved Søren.

  “I’ll front you the money. Buy him the piano,” Kingsley said.

  “Joyeux Noël, King,” Nora whispered.

  “Merry Christmas, Elle.”

  She hung up the phone and called out for the store owner. “You said you deliver?”

  “We deliver,” he said, stepping back into the room with a broad smile crossing his wizened face.

  “Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Wakefield. It goes to the rectory, not the church. You’ll have to drive up to it around the block. It’s tucked back in a little wooded area. You should be writing all this down. And it’ll need to be delivered on December 21st. Do it after six, otherwise he’ll be at the church working.”

  “Quite a Christmas gift you’re giving,” he said as he wrote down the details.

  “Well...” She kissed her fingertips and touched the top of the piano in a benediction. “It’s really for Christmas and his birthday.”

  * * *

  That Friday, Nora boarded a plane for Vegas. A limo picked her up at the airport and took her to a sprawling mansion in Summerlin outside the Vegas city limits. Some sort of servant attempted to take her toy bag from her, but she waved him away as she entered the home. A man of about forty with a dark tan, a face that had once been handsome, and desperate eyes met her in the sunroom.

  “Mistress Nora.” He took her hand and kissed it. “It’s an honor to have you in my home.”

  “Fuck your honor. You can do better than that,” she said without a smile. “Floor.”

  He dropped to his feet and kissed the toe of her dirty boot.

  “You know, Vic,” she said as she pulled a riding crop out of her toy bag, “I really hate you mob guys. Bunch of fucking rich bullies. You act like royalty and you’re all just lowlife thugs in expensive suits.” Victor didn’t disagree with her. He was too busy worshipping her feet with his tongue. “I hate the mob so much that I’m probably going to do some shit to you this week that you’re not going to like. It’ll be immoral, indecent, and very likely illegal. And you won’t even get to fuck me. Not once. And then you know what I’m going to do?”

  “What, Mistress?” he asked, looking up at her from the floor with groveling eyes.

  “I’m going to leave this shit-hole house of yours and forget you ever existed. Now take off your clothes.”

  * * *

  Nora made it back to New York on December 20th. She spent a sleepless night in her bed wondering if she’d done the right thing fucking around with a mob guy. Victor hadn’t been that bad. He, like her, had been an unwitting accomplice to the mafia far more than a willing participant. Victor hadn’t chosen to be born of a crime boss and claimed to hate his father’s world.

  “Yeah, you hate the sinner,” she said as she carved a shallow dollar sign into his back with a razor blade, “but you love that sinner’s money, don’t you?”

  “I couldn’t give it away, could I?” he asked as if she’d suggested he should put the money into a rocket ship and aim it at the sun. “Who would do that?”

  “I know a guy who did.” Søren had inherited a vast fortune from his monster father and kept not a penny for himself. “I’d let you meet him, but you don’t even deserve to tie his shoelaces. Fuck you, Rich Bitch, you don’t even deserve to tie mine.”

  She showed him that night and all week how little he deserved any mercy, compassion, or kindness from her. By the end of the week, he was so in love with her he offered her another fifty grand to stay through Christmas. As she walked out his front door without even a backward glance, she’d told him to shove his dirty money up his ass.

  Knowing what a freak he was, he probably did.

  The morning after returning, Nora called Theremin’s and made sure the piano delivery would take place. They promised it would, and she spent the rest of the day working on her new book. Without Wes around, the house echoed with silence. She played some Christmas music, but it didn’t fill up the emptiness in the house. She put on her coat and went for a walk, but the emptiness went with her. It wasn’t in the house at all. It was inside her.

  At six that evening, she put her coat on, grabbed her keys, and got into her car. She drove to Wakefield and found herself parking across the street from Sacred Heart. The memories pressed in so close she had to shove them away lest she trip over them.

  The parking lot was empty, thank God. No one around to recognize her, ask her what she was doing hanging around.

  She stepped onto the cobblestone path that led down a tree-lined walkway to the rectory. It had snowed the night before, and a thousand footprints marred the new-fallen powder. The piano movers had come this way as they’d rolled the piano toward the house. She wished she’d been here to see the look on Søren’s face. She’d given the piano anonymously, although she knew he’d know the gift came from her. After all, it was she who’d broken the sustain pedal on his Steinway. She sort of owed him a new piano.

  As Nora reached the end of the path, she paused and cocked her head to the side. Through the windows of the rectory, she heard music emanating. She stepped closer and listened harder. Yes, music. Piano music. Søren was already playing his new piano. At the front door, she pressed her ear to the wood. She knew this song. Of course she knew it. She could even hear the lyrics in her head as the notes
drifted through the door.

  A thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices...

  For yonder breaks, a new and glorious morn...

  Fall on your knees...

  Nora wanted to fall on her knees right then and there. She wanted to fall on her knees at Søren’s side and rest her head on the piano bench like she had so many years ago. He played the song because he knew it was her favorite. He played even though he didn’t know she could hear him. He played it for the memory of that night and all the Christmases they’d celebrated together in secret, each one more holy than the last.

  She raised her hand and let it hover two inches from the door. When she knocked, the music would cease. He’d come to the door, open it and let her in, and he would beat her brutally, the way she liked it, and make love to her all night long.

  Tonight was Søren’s birthday. If she crossed the threshold tonight, she knew she would give herself to him. And not only for one night, but forever. She would lose Wesley. She would lose the life she’d made for herself. She’d even lose her name. Infamous, notorious Mistress Nora would turn back into Eleanor again if she returned to Søren.

  Maybe he would let her be herself. Maybe he would let her keep her name. Maybe they would find a new way to be together. And maybe magic elves would show up at her house and crown her Queen of the Christmas Fairies.

  Nice dream, but Søren had already told her when and if she came back to him, his first order would be to give up her job with Kingsley. She could be with Søren or she could be Mistress Nora. She couldn’t be both.

  Nora took a step back without knocking. But before leaving, she reached out and drew a heart with her fingertip in the window.

  “Merry Christmas, Sir,” she whispered into the crisp night winter air. “Happy birthday, my love.”

  When she walked away from the rectory, she didn’t take the path. Instead, she crossed the unmarred snowy ground, leaving her small and familiar footprints behind her. At least he would know she had been there.

  Sometimes that’s all one needed to get through a hard day—someone just being there.

  Maybe one of these days she would finally tire of being Mistress Nora, and she would go back to him and fall on her knees at his feet again. Maybe someday she’d give up the new life she’d made for herself and be his once more.

  But not tonight. She’d already given him his Christmas and birthday present this year. He wasn’t getting anything else from her.

  * * *

  Nora drove the forty minutes back to her house. She’d make it through Christmas even if she didn’t celebrate Christmas at all. Once upon a time, Christmas had been a fearful time for the early Christians, which is why they’d hidden their celebration under the mantle of a pagan one. The earliest Christians didn’t celebrate Christmas at all, she told herself. She would be like one of them this year. She would skip Christmas, and it would be fine.

  When Nora pulled into her driveway, she noticed a light in her window. Hadn’t she turned them off when she’d left?

  She opened the front door and found a teenage boy sitting in the middle of the living room floor wrapping a present. He was wearing jeans and a red-and-green plaid flannel shirt over a white V-neck tee. With the Christmas lights on the tree so bright and shining, even his sandy hair was glowing red and green.

  “Holy shit, Wes. What are you doing here?”

  Wes smiled at her, and it felt like summer had snuck in the house while winter had its back turned. “I told Mom and Dad I had to work over break and could only come home for a few days. We did Christmas yesterday. I got back this afternoon.”

  “But...”

  “I know your dad’s long gone,” he said a little sheepishly. “And you said you and your mom don’t get along. You don’t do Christmas with your friends like you used to… I just didn’t want you to be alone.”

  “Well. Damn.”

  “Since I don’t want to be a liar, you’re gonna have to put me to work,” Wes said. “Does your office need cleaned again?”

  “You swore you’d never clean my office again after last time.”

  “Oh yeah,” he said, blushing slightly. “That was…traumatic.”

  “I swear the butt plugs in the bottom drawer aren’t for me,” she said. “Mine are in my bedroom. The ones in my office are for a client.”

  “That really doesn’t make it better, Nor. And I don’t even want to know why you store them next to your spare printer cartridges.”

  “It’s the bottom drawer. Of course I store them there. Where do you store your butt plugs?”

  “In my butt. Duh.”

  “Why didn’t I think of that?”

  Nora knelt on the floor in front of Wesley’s mess of wrapping paper, ribbons, tape, and bows.

  “So no office cleaning. What can I do for you?” Wes asked, taping the ribbon to the bottom of his box. The wrapped box looked legitimately awful and absolutely adorable. She would teach him how to wrap a present the right way this week.

  “You came back from Christmas with your family early to spend it with me. You don’t have to do anything else. Nothing. You didn’t even have to do that.”

  “I like giving big Christmas gifts. I can’t buy you a new car or a house or anything, not like you need another car or another house. But I can give you me for Christmas. If you want me. You know, my company.”

  “Right,” Nora said. “Your company.” She was already picturing their Christmas together. Ice skating. Christmas present shopping. Going to the Nativity play at St. Luke’s down the street. He hadn’t just given her his company for Christmas. Now that she wasn’t going to be alone, he’d given her Christmas for Christmas.

  “You have to give me something to do or I’m a liar,” he said.

  “Telling men what to do is my specialty, kid. Go and get your guitar,” she said. “You can sing for your supper. I need some Christmas music.”

  He brought out his guitar and quickly tuned it. “Any requests?” he asked as he picked out a few stray notes.

  “Anything you like.”

  “Anything?”

  “Anything but ‘O Holy Night.’”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it makes me sad.”

  Wes narrowed his eyes at her and then nodded. He had learned by now that “makes me sad” was code for “makes me think of Søren.” That was the last thing either of them wanted tonight.

  “No worries.” Wes grinned at her and all the sadness went away. “I don’t even know how to play that one. How about this?”

  Wes leaned back against the couch and stretched out his legs. Nora put a pillow on his shins and laid her head there, curling up like a child. With the tree lights lit and evening draping itself over the house like a black silk sheet and Wes here with her, it finally felt like Christmas. Wes began to play “Silent Night.”

  Silent night. Holy night. All is calm. All is bright.

  And it was beautiful.

  The End.

  Acknowledgments

  My deepest thanks to Bethany Hensel, Karen Stivali, and Kristi Falteisek for their help editing A Winter Symphony (especially Bethany, who had to read it twice when we sent her the wrong version). I couldn't do it without you, ladies. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

  About the Author

  Tiffany Reisz is the USA Today bestselling author of the Romance Writers of America RITA®-winning Original Sinners series from Harlequin’s Mira Books.

  Her erotic fantasy The Red—the first entry in the Godwicks series, self-published under the banner 8th Circle Press—was named an NPR Best Book of the Year and a Goodreads Best Romance of the Month.

  Tiffany lives in Kentucky with her husband, author Andrew Shaffer, and two cats. The cats are not writers.

  Subscribe to the Tiffany Reisz email newsletter and receive a free copy of Something Nice, a standalone Original Sinners ebook novella:

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  More Books by Tiffany Reisz

  The Go
dwicks—Standalones

  THE PEARL

  THE RED

  THE ROSE

  Gothic Romances—Standalones

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  THE HEADMASTER

  THE LUCKY ONES

  THE NIGHT MARK

  The Original Sinners—Series

  THE SIREN (Book #1)

  THE ANGEL (Book #2)

  THE PRINCE (Book #3)

  THE MISTRESS (Book #4)

  THE SAINT (Book #5)

  THE KING (Book #6)

  THE VIRGIN (Book #7)

  THE QUEEN (Book #8)

  THE PRIEST (Book #9)

  The Original Sinners—Standalones

  THE AUCTION (previously published as DANIEL PART TWO)

  THE CHATEAU

  THE GIFT (previously published as SEVEN DAY LOAN)

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  LITTLE RED RIDING CROP

  A MIDWINTER NIGHT’S DREAM

  MISCHIEF

  THE MISTRESS FILES

  PICTURE PERFECT COWBOY

  THE RETURN (THE CHATEAU sequel)

  SOMETHING NICE

  The Original Sinners—Collections

  ABSOLUTION (Australia exclusive; out of print)

  THE CONFESSIONS

  MICHAEL’S WINGS

  SUBMIT TO DESIRE/IMMERSED IN PLEASURE (duology)

  WINTER TALES

  Men At Work—Standalones

  HER HALLOWEEN TREAT

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