Wrapping Up Christmas (Blushing Books 12 Days of Christmas 9)

by Ashlynn Kenzie

  The opportunity did not present itself, however, and the newlyweds passed their evening together in seemingly companionable pleasure.

  As the clock's hour hand inched toward ten, Keryn stretched up from her position on the couch with her head in Mark's lap and headed for the bathroom and her nightly shower. He squeezed her hand and murmured that he would turn out the lights. Moments later, having checked the locks and flipped off the kitchen switch, he made his way toward the Christmas tree and knelt to unplug the sparkling lights.

  He fought the temptation for almost a minute and then, glancing over his shoulder toward their bedroom, picked up the present closest to him—the one he had carefully wrapped himself two days before. He tapped the package thoughtfully against his palm for a few seconds and then swallowed hard and tilted it so that he could inspect the carefully folded narrow end pieces, one at a time. The faint pencil marks he had drawn from one overlapping edge to the other no longer met. To a less careful eye, there would have been no noticeable lack of alignment, but the engineer in Mark was quite certain the line had been broken and there was only one way that could have happened.

  Keryn, it was clear, had peeked. A quick look at the other gifts also revealed a slight misalignment in the wrapping paper.

  Mark sighed as he replaced the last package. So Suzanne had told him the truth. He bit back his disappointment and went slowly down the hall, where he cuddled his freshly showered wife with a little less enthusiasm than he might have shown otherwise.

  * * *

  The days leading to Christmas passed in a busy haze for the Mark and Keryn. A few more presents were added to the pile beneath their cheery tree, but none of them were for the new bride. She was no closer, either, to making a connection between the gifts that would lead her to a more satisfactory resolution to the present problem.

  She had gone through the house with a fine-tooth comb, looking for one more package, and had managed to sneak into both their cars to search, as well, operating on the theory that he might have planned a truly devious hiding place among her own possessions. There were no presents to be unearthed, however.

  She had even managed to do some quick snooping in his office when she dropped by on her lunch hour one day and suggested he run out and pick up salads for them to munch on. He had obligingly taken the bait and left her alone for fifteen minutes, but it did her no good. Neither did a search of her parents' house while they were out of town one weekend. Although she had stumbled across the gift they would be giving her—a card informing her she and Mark could enjoy a long weekend get-away at one of three Florida coastal resorts, come dismal February.

  Her excitement over that prospect was cheering, but only for a moment.

  When the monthly credit card statement arrived, she perused it carefully once Mark had paid it and filed it away. No clues there, either, nor had any unusual sums been withdrawn from their bank account to cover a purchase of the magnitude she had been expecting when it came to her husband's gift for her.

  The "real" present, she was forced to concede, was not at a place where she could get to it, and there was nothing she could do but wait out the giver. Or, perhaps, she thought dismally, the three puzzling items she had opened were actually all he planned to give her. The thought made her irritable as Christmas drew closer and nothing changed beneath the tree or in any of the areas she could search.

  * * *

  Finally, Christmas Eve arrived and the couple spent a busy day and late evening visiting their families and exchanging presents with their loved ones. With Suzanne's heads-up still at the forefront of his holiday thinking, Mark watched carefully and was sure his bride was feigning surprise over the generous gift from her own parents. It was clear they knew it, as well. But his own enthusiasm and genuine shock at the nature of the present, coupled with the joyous and spontaneous reactions of his new in-law siblings to their own identical gifts, seemed to make up for Keryn's manufactured response.

  And, he realized, his wife did seem truly surprised at the small remembrances from her brother and sister and even more taken off-guard and pleased with his own families' presents, which, he was certain, were items she could not possibly have ferreted out.

  He wondered, observing her reactions to the latter, why she could not see that the joy was divided when she spoiled the excitement of the exchange and it was multiplied when her surprised enthusiasm was truly unrestrained and genuine.

  They finished up the day by beginning a new one as they emerged from the midnight communion service at their church, and by the time they arrived home, both of them were too exhausted to contemplate sharing the items left under their own tree with each other.

  They went to bed, curled in the comfort of each other's arms, as the clock in the hall struck one.

  * * *

  Mark awoke first Christmas morning and stretched and grinned with the joy of the day. He sobered in the shower, however, wondering if he was using the right method for dealing with his bride's problem, the one that had become his own deep disappointment.

  Keryn opened her eyes sleepily when Mark sat beside her on the bed, fully dressed, and whispered, "Merry Christmas, sweetheart."

  She smiled at him and then sat up in a rush, her eyes dancing with expectation. Today was the day the mystery would be explained.

  "Ready for our first Christmas morning?" he whispered as he kissed her gently. "I'm betting it will be one we never forget."

  "Of course. But you're already dressed. I can't wait for that. Is it okay if I open my presents in my nightgown?"

  "Whatever you choose, honey."

  They hurried down, arm in arm, to a tree already glittering and coffee already bubbling, thanks to Mark's early rising efforts.

  Keryn was scrambling beneath the tree, gathering up four boxes of assorted sizes to deposit on one end of the couch, when Mark delivered a steaming cup of caffeine to her.

  "I've put some homemade cinnamon rolls in the oven for after gifts," he said. "My mom always served them on Christmas morning and she sent some home with us last night with instructions about how to fix them. You were busy talking to my dad about the new fishing tackle box and rod and reel we gave him at the time. By the way, he loved it almost as much as my mom did the appointments at the day spa. Those were wonderful surprises. They'll never forget them or the thoughtfulness behind them. I was so proud of you, sweetie—the way you found something special for each of them."

  Mark kissed the tip of her nose and felt his heart melt at her own delighted grin.

  He turned toward the tree to collect the trio of gifts he had purchased and wrapped for his new and beloved wife.

  "Wait, honey. Come and open yours first and then I'll do mine. But hurry. I can't wait to see what you got me," Keryn said.

  Mark felt his holiday spirit plummet at this new evidence that the woman he loved and trusted with his whole heart was playing him false with her contrived enthusiasm for the gifts he had selected so carefully.

  "Sure. Whatever you want," he said, but his tone was subdued.

  Moments later, he was surrounding Keryn with a bear hug, having unwrapped a state-of-the-art computer design program for engineers and a promise, securely nestled in the last of a half-dozen gay, graduated-sized boxes, that he was on the student list at the local university for training to use it. He also was the proud new possessor of a buttery-soft suede jacket and a pair of tooled leather boots to replace the battered and scarred but very comfy ones he had been clinging to for ten years.

  "Are you surprised?" Keryn asked when he let her come up for air.

  "Of course, I am. You had me convinced I was getting a new battery for the car."

  She preened. "You took all my little hints about that possibility to heart so well, and I loved watching you try to act all happy about it. You're easy prey, honey. Easy prey."

  "Yeah, well, it's your turn now. Let's see how you feel about your surprises."

  He handed her a gold foil-wrapped box with a bright red ribbo
n.

  Keryn made a great show of shaking the box and even hazarded a couple of guesses about its contents—an act Mark conceded to himself might have fooled him, if he hadn't been warned. When at last she popped off the pre-made bow, peeled off the paper, opened the box, and dug into the white tissue paper nest, there was nothing left to do but to pull out the ash-backed hairbrush with the oval blade.

  "Oh, my goodness," she cooed. "This is beautiful, honey. I've never had a really nice hairbrush before. Will you promise to brush my hair for me every night?"

  "You really like it?"

  "Of course. What's not to like?" she said.

  "And you were completely surprised?"

  "Well, yeah. I mean, I would never have expected a new hairbrush."

  Mark considered her carefully for a moment. Before his inspection was over, Keryn had swallowed with a noticeable effort and lowered her eyes as she made a great show of scooping up the wrappings and depositing them in the small trash bag that already held the gift wrap from her husband's recently opened presents.

  Her reaction to the long-handled wooden spoon she lifted out of the second tissue paper bed—the one lining a silver foil box—and the even longer-handled leather crop with the double tongue she revealed from the depths of its very own slender cardboard packaging, disguised with shiny white gift wrap and curly red ribbon, came across with increasingly artificial gaiety.

  He would have given quite a bit to see her initial secretive reaction to each of the gifts, Mark thought. He wondered what she had been thinking over the past few days as she tried to make sense of his choices.

  Finally, the three gifts were laid out neatly on the big square coffee table, beside Mark's own rather haphazard stack of presents.

  "So," he said at length, "what do you think?"

  "Well, I— I suppose these are all really unique presents. I hardly know what to say, except, of course, that I love you for thinking of me in such unusual ways, and I'll find ways to enjoy each of them, I'm sure."

  "Will you?"

  "Of course," she said with feigned enthusiasm so brittle he thought he would have spotted it even without Suzanne's explanation. "But if there are, you know, suggestions you want to give me about using them, I'd love to hear..." her voice trailed away uncertainly.

  "Suggestions. Hmmm. Well, as a matter of fact, I do have a suggestion."

  She brightened visibly and smiled happily in anticipation, her hand stealing out to capture his as she prepared herself for some exciting explanation of the unusual holiday offering.

  "I suggest," he said, looking deeply into her sparkling eyes, "that you stop spoiling happy occasions for the people who love you by ruining their opportunity to see your real reactions to their gifts."

  Keryn blushed deeply and pulled her hand away. "I don't know wh-what you mean," she said.

  "I think you do. You have a habit of trolling for your gifts and then faking a surprised reaction when they are actually presented to you. Don't bother denying it. I marked each of your gifts carefully, and I know you unwrapped them and then tried to put them back together so I wouldn't notice. And I know you've been playing that little game for a long time, sweetheart."

  Her chin came up at that and she stiffened her backbone. He could almost see the internal debate going on: should she deny the accusation or admit it and try to excuse it?

  She chose the latter option.

  "So what? They're my presents. What difference does it make when I open them? I just can't resist peeking a little bit, but it doesn't hurt anyone else."

  "As a matter of fact, Keryn, it does hurt other people. It robs the ones who love you and want to share the joy of a happy moment of the pleasure of doing that. You're a little emotion thief, and while that may seem like a small thing to you now, I don't think it will be in the future. Because after a lot of thought about it, I've decided you deserve a little bit of pain yourself—distress that will help you break this nasty habit and stop hurting other people."

  "What do you mean?"

  He gestured toward the spoon, the hairbrush and the riding crop laid out on the table.

  "You have a choice, sweetheart. You can allow me to decide how to make sure my gifts have made a real impression on you and will help change your behavior, or I can simply stop buying gifts for you. That won't be easy for me to do, because I love giving you some proof of my love that you can hold in your hands or look at or listen to and enjoy. But that pleasure turns to sadness when I know you will cheapen that exchange by cheating me out of your spontaneous reaction. It shows either contempt for the giver or, at best, a lack of self-discipline on your part. Now that you know how your actions affect other people, it's up to you to decide how we move forward."

  The tip of her tongue slid out to moisten dry lips, and Keryn swallowed hard as tears pooled in her eyes.

  "It's not like that. I didn't mean to hurt you—or anyone else. I just want to know ..."

  "It is like that. Exactly like that. Listen to me, Keryn, as much as I loved the things you bought for me, I would exchange them all in a heartbeat to have seen you open a single gift from me that was a complete surprise. It's a two way street here in gift giving—one person hands over something tangible and the other gives an honest reaction, in return. I don't buy you presents because it's a gift-giving day, according to the calendar. I buy them because I've found something you would like to have and I want you to have it, or because I've been attracted to something that reminds me of you in a very special way. When you open it behind my back and then pretend to be surprised later, it feels as though you have spit in my face."

  Keryn gave a little gasp and brought her fingers to her lips to stop their trembling. "I would never do that."

  "You did, though. Three times."

  She shook her head wildly and then threw herself into his arms. "I'm sorry. I'll never do anything like that again. I just didn't know; I didn't think about—"

  "That's not exactly true, Keryn. You've known for years that your family didn't like having you sneak a look at their gifts to you. But you kept doing it anyway, and now you've included me in your ugly little habit."

  "Who told you that?" she demanded.

  "Doesn't matter. I watched the way things went down at your parents' house yesterday. I would have known there was something wrong, even if I hadn't been clued in. The whole scene was so different from when you opened your gifts at my folks', where you were honestly surprised and pleased. But this isn't about the way I found out. It's about what you're going to do about it."

  "But I already told you. I won't ever—"

  He pushed her upright gently and looked into her eyes. "You've been making that same promise for years, it seems. Every time someone has called you on it. So you not only sneak, you fib, as well, because you have no real intention of keeping your word. Your parents have learned to live with that, but I'm not willing to. If I can't trust you to tell me the truth and to change a behavior you have to know makes the other person involved feel as though you've somehow treated them with contempt, then I have to wonder about what our marriage really means to you. About what I really mean to you."

  "But, Mark, I love you. I never meant to hurt you or anyone else, I just can't seem to stop."

  "I know. I think it's because you aren't willing to give up the power it gives you over other people, especially the people you love."

  "That makes me sound so awful. Like I'm determined to be in control," she pouted.

  "Aren't you? Isn't that what it's really all about?"

  "Of course not. I'm not like that."

  "You know, ever since I found out what you were doing, I've been trying to figure out why, and what I could do to help you change—provided you wanted to, of course. I've discovered there are lots of ways you use your power to get what you want, although it's always very quietly and low key. And most of the time, I'm proud of the way you manage to get things done without a fuss. I never want you to let me or anyone else walk over you or control
you. But you're misusing that power badly in this instance, and it's going to mar so many times that should be happy in our future."

  "I've already told you. I'll never do it again, not to you or anyone else."

  "And I've told you I have reason to believe that's another example of your saying whatever will get you out of trouble for the moment. Not good enough, sweetheart. I need to see some genuine remorse and to feel you're willing to take responsibility for what you've done. Until you've shown me that, you're not ready to change things."

  "I am ready, but I don't know how to show you if you won't take my word for it," she said with frustration in her voice.

  "Then hand me the hairbrush and put yourself over my lap."

  "What?"

  "You heard me. I'm willing to help you change. If you're sincere about wanting to, put yourself in a position to repent. Taking a good spanking with each of your gifts will not only show me you're committed to changing, it will help you make a different decision when you're faced with the next temptation. Because I can promise you, there will be a repeat of this punishment if you can't discipline yourself in the future. That, or a more hurtful damage to our relationship that will be even worse in the long run. So, now, we're at the moment of truth: are you sorry enough to take a good bottom blistering that will wipe the slate clean for our first Christmas and help you change course in the future, or were you just talking the talk to get through an unpleasant showdown?"

  "I didn't know I married an abuser," she said with a sneer.

  "Neither did I, because you didn't, you know. An abuser wouldn't offer you a choice, and he wouldn't care about making you a better person. I am offering and I'm doing it because I care. What happens between us now is all up to you."

  "But it will hurt."