by Lisa Plumley
ERIC AND I ARE OVER came next. Then, I HATE THE BAHAMAS!
Feeling shocked, Karina stared at her cell phone. Her ex-husband and his bodacious bikini-clad girlfriend had broken up?
Karina hesitated, waiting for a well-earned bout of schadenfreude to sweep over her. After all, Eric’s fling with Chelsea had caused the breakup of her marriage. It had made him behave like a punk-obsessed, video game–playing idiot. It had upset her children and caused her endless turmoil. Given the circumstances, Karina figured she deserved to feel vindicated.
Instead, she only felt sad. Soberly, she thumbed out another reply to Chelsea. SO SORRY, C. CALL ME. MAYBE I CAN HELP?
Almost instantly, her cell phone rang.
Moving toward the hallway, where it might be a little quieter, Karina prepared herself to answer. Maybe the college students she was paid to advise didn’t need her help over Christmas break this year, she realized, but this one particular college student did, and Karina intended to do her best to help her. If that meant patching up her eyeliner-wearing ex with his supersexy, twentysomething paramour…well, so be it.
“See? This here’s your problem.” The local Kismet electrician jabbed one callused finger at the electrical panel. He nodded at Reid to make sure he was paying attention, then jabbed again. “You’ve got yourself a one-hundred-amp system here. That’s not enough for all that fancy gadgetry and all those big light displays. What you need to do is heavy up to a two-hundred-amp setup, like your newer houses on the other side of the lake have.”
The other side of the lake. Where Lagniappe at the Lakeshore was located, Reid couldn’t help noticing. Grr.
“But we’ve been using the same Christmas lights for years,” Vanessa mused. Standing beside Reid and the electrician with a flashlight in her hand, she cast the electrical panel a worried glance. She looked at Reid. “We’ve never had a problem before.”
“Could it be sabotage?” Reid asked bluntly. “Rewiring or tampering? Could anything else have caused this problem?”
“Hard to say.” The electrician scratched his head. “Can’t think why anybody would want to tamper with anything.”
Unfortunately, Reid could. Lagniappe at the Lakeshore would love to shut them down, by whatever means possible. But he wasn’t likely to get very far with that line of reasoning with the kindhearted electrician. The man clearly couldn’t conceive of Kismet’s business rivals harboring any ill will toward each other.
Feeling resigned, Reid agreed to an immediate partial upgrade of the power system. He paid the electrician—out of his own pocket, for the sake of expediency.
“You know, it would save a few watts to take down some of those lights you’ve got all over this place,” the electrician advised. He finished writing an invoice and a work order for a new sub-panel and a power surge arrester, then handed the paperwork to Reid for his signature. “They look nice, sure. But even with the upgrade I’m installing, there’re only so many amps to go around. You’re pushing your luck with these overloads.”
“We’ve never had a problem before,” Vanessa reiterated. “How are we supposed to make this place look like a festive winter wonderland if we don’t have all our Christmas lights?”
“Dunno.” The electrician shrugged. “Use your imagination, I guess. Those orange-and-clove pomanders don’t draw any power, and they look pretty this time of year. My wife makes ’em. They make good gifts too. Fit right in a stocking, nice and neat.”
Reid’s cousin gave a frustrated sound. But Reid only paused, struck by a new idea. The electrician was right. All they needed was a little imagination. Lagniappe at the Lakeshore couldn’t take away their innovation. They could dent their spirits only if the folks at The Christmas House allowed them to.
“Come on,” he told Vanessa. “Let’s leave this job to the experts. We’ve got some Christmas cookies to bake and decorate.”
“But…the power isn’t even back on yet!”
“Prob’ly won’t be for an hour or so,” the electrician specified with a dour expression. “That’s if things go well.”
“That doesn’t matter.” With new vigor, Reid grabbed his coat, then headed outside to one of the B&B’s outbuildings. “For the strategy I’m thinking of, we don’t need electricity.”
The best part of the cookie-baking and -decorating session wasn’t the cookies, Reid realized shortly after he hauled his cousin outside to help him set up. The best part wasn’t the colored sugars, sprinkles, red and green icing, or silver dragées. Instead, the best part was the awestruck looks on the faces of the children as Reid carried in each platter of freshly baked cookies, then set them in the staging areas Vanessa had arranged. One area was for cooling cookies, one was for ready-to-decorate cookies, and one was for finished, fully decorated cookies. There were a few of each type of cookie lined up in each zone already, tempting everyone to start nibbling.
“Hey, be sure to save some icing for the cookies.” Smiling, Reid swiped a dab of frosting from Michael’s cheek. The boy grinned back at him. “You can’t eat all of it between batches.”
“Oh, that’s not a problem,” Michael assured him, licking his fingers. “We can just make twice as much frosting!”
“Good solution.” Amused, Reid double-checked the battery-powered camping lanterns he’d found in the outbuildings. Vanessa had arranged them down the centers of the tables, where they provided plenty of light despite the still-nonfunctioning power.
“Hey, Reid!” Olivia waved at him. “Look what I did!”
He peered at the cookies in front of her. “Is that…?”
“Yes! A gingerbread family!” Proudly, she smiled at it.
Reid did too. He tilted his head. “It looks like—”
“Yep. It’s us!” With her fingers stained red and green, Olivia pointed out various cookies, assigning each an identity. “There’s you, and me, and my mom.” All three featured prominent smiling faces made of icing. “This one’s Michael.” It was small but adorable. “This one’s Josh.” It was stumpy and skewed. The next two cookies were lovingly decorated with sparkling sugar and extra sprinkles. “And these two are Alexis and Nicole!”
“Aww!” His daughters exclaimed, glancing over. “Cute!”
“Nice work, Olivia.” Reid wiped his hands on his bibbed BBQ apron—which he wore atop his jeans and flannel shirt, beneath his puffy, quilted vest—then glanced around the room. The adults were still occupied with some gung ho project of Karina’s in the front room. All the children were here busily decorating. There wasn’t much chance he’d identify the Edgware evaluator here. But Reid couldn’t help looking. He’d been doing it all week. “Keep it up. You’re doing great,” he told Olivia. “And have fun!”
“I will,” Olivia promised. “Oh! Wait!” She tugged his sleeve, then showed him a small pad of notepaper situated at her elbow. Several pages were flipped back, as though they’d already been used. The top sheet showed a handwritten list of worries. A long handwritten list. “I already started my list. See?”
Reid swallowed hard. That was a pretty scary list. But he didn’t want to alarm Olivia. “Good job,” he said. “I can’t wait to read it.” And help you deal with all those worries, too.
Olivia beamed at him. Reid hoped he could live up to the trust she was so obviously placing in him. But before he could ponder that concern any further, Karina arrived from the other room. Her blond hair looked tousled. Her chin was smudged with frosting. But her smile was as wide—and as beautiful—as usual.
Instantly, Reid felt better—about Olivia’s problems and everything else, too. Whatever went wrong, he’d figure out how to deal with it. He always did. Besides, there was no way he could feel anything less than happy around Karina.
It’s no wonder I love you, Karina.
Even without her writhing half naked in his arms, even with her simply approaching him now, Reid knew it was true. And he was glad. He might not be a man who examined his feelings deeply…but he did recognize those feelings (eventually) when they smacked hi
m upside the head with their intensity.
He wasn’t afraid to express them, either. He might not have wanted other people to tell him how he felt—he swept the room with a grumpy gaze, eyeballing his interfering matchmaker cousin, Nate, Angela, and everyone else who’d advised him—but once Reid knew how he felt, he laid it on the table. Fearlessly.
Although he was afraid—a little—that Karina wouldn’t reciprocate those feelings. After all, she had admitted that she was only using him for his body. And she hadn’t admitted that she cared about him, too. Although she had approved of his beard.
Contemplatively, Reid stroked it. It was his good-luck beard, damn it. He didn’t care what anyone else said.
“Wow. I can’t believe this worked!” Karina stood beside him, arms folded over her chest, and watched the B&B’s young guests as they went to town decorating Christmas cookies. “What made you think of baking cookies on the barbecue grill?”
“Something the electrician said sparked an idea,” Reid told her. He lifted the edge of his chef’s apron and wiped the icing from her chin. “I figured, if it’s possible to grill pizzas, it should be possible to bake other things on a barbecue grill.”
“And we wouldn’t need electricity to do it. Genius!”
Reid shrugged. “People bake without electricity every day, all over the world. They use tandoors or hornos, shichirins or woodstoves—all kinds of ovens. I knew that already. All I needed was a different perspective to remember it.”
“Well, if you can’t get a new perspective at Christmastime,” Karina said cheerfully, “when can you?”
“Christmas had nothing to do with it.” Reid crossed his arms. “I would have had the same idea at any time of year.”
“Maybe. But would you have had the same impetus to do it?”
He didn’t know what she meant. “Probably.”
“Admit it.” With her eyes sparkling, Karina nudged him. “You wanted the cookie-baking and -decorating session to happen. Vanessa told me how determined you were. She told me what you said.” Here, Karina adopted a he-man stance, with her arms held out at her sides. She lowered her voice—presumably in mimicry of him. “It’s a tradition!” she growled. “We’re doing it!”
Reid smiled. “Funny. But don’t get hung up on thinking I’m secretly sentimental. I’m no Christmas-crazy traditionalist.”
“Sure. That’s what you say now,” Karina agreed. “But once you get a load of what I’ve been planning in the other room—”
Vanessa arrived, appearing pleased. “Sorry to interrupt you two lovebirds,” his cousin said. “And by the way, you two look completely adorable together. Have I mentioned that?”
“You might have,” Reid said drily. “Once or twice.”
Karina only smiled. Gently, she squeezed his hand.
“But I thought you’d want to know,” Vanessa went on, “that the electrician is almost finished. Another fifteen minutes or so, he told me, when I went to check on his progress just now.”
“That’s great!” Karina brightened, smiling in the lamplight. “That means the problem is solved then, right?”
“It’s solved for now,” Reid agreed. “We should be set for the rest of the season. But the B&B will need more extensive upgrades later—especially if Edgware wants to split up the suites into smaller rooms and increase occupancy.”
“Is that likely? That sounds expensive,” said Karina.
“It could be very expensive.” Reid checked his watch, realized it was almost time to retrieve the next batch of baked cookies from the grill, and decided to cut to the chase. “But it probably won’t matter. Most likely, Edgware will glean all the information they can about The Christmas House’s concept during their assessment, then demolish the place and build a more cost-effective B&B on the site after they’ve acquired it.”
Karina looked appalled. So did Vanessa. “Demolish it? They’re going to demolish it?” Vanessa shook her head. “Nobody said anything about taking a wrecking ball to this place.”
“That’s the risk we take with selling.” Reid shrugged. “It’s business. Grammy and Grandpa must have known that might happen when they made the deal with Edgware.”
“I doubt it,” his cousin said darkly. “They’re not that cold-hearted. Some of our guests have been coming here for years, Reid! Years! Where are they supposed to go now?”
Why was she asking him? As though in search of an answer, Reid looked around the room. The staff members—and a few of the older children—glared at him, almost as if he were the one leading the wrecking crew. “If Lagniappe at the Lakeshore has its way,” he said, “some of them will probably go there.”
His cousin’s frown deepened. So did Karina’s.
“You act as if you don’t even care,” Vanessa said. “Don’t you want The Christmas House to stay in the family?”
Of course Reid wanted that. He liked the idea of this place being here, welcoming and Christmassy, just the way it had always been. Just the way it was in his memories. Just the way it had been all week. It wasn’t unthinkable that he’d get a jones for a family-style holiday someday. It was just unlikely.
“It’s not up to me. The B&B isn’t mine to keep.”
“But it is yours to keep!” Vanessa insisted. “It’s all of ours! It belongs to everyone in the family. In a way, The Christmas House belongs to everyone in the community.”
Reid disagreed. But before he could say so, several of the B&B’s guests crowded into the room. They appeared fully prepared to do…something. And it probably wasn’t decorate cookies. Maybe they’d planned a protest about the power outage?
Perplexed, Reid watched as Suzanne moved to the head of the excited, jostling group. Rocky and Neil arranged themselves just behind Suzanne. Everyone else filed into position, including a few of the formerly grouchy guests to whom Reid had distributed candles earlier. Now, though, everyone appeared enthusiastic and downright merry.
What was going on? Reid wondered. He sensed a certain expectancy in the air, along with a growing eagerness. The newly arriving guests glanced at Karina. She glanced at them, appeared to realize what was about to happen, then held up her palms.
“Wait, everyone! Now isn’t the best time. I’m sorry.”
“Right,” Reid agreed. He didn’t know what was going on here, but when he glanced at his watch, he knew one thing for certain: Those cookies were probably on the verge of becoming charcoal briquettes by now. “I’ve got to get the next batch of spritz cookies off the grill.” He hooked his thumb toward the B&B’s expansive backyard, where the grills were set up. “So—”
But his guests ignored him and Karina. Obviously acting through some sort of prearranged signal, they raised their lighted candles. With their faces bright in the glowing light, they began to sing.
The melody began softly at first.
O holy night! The stars are brightly shining…
Reid recognized the song. He frowned in confusion.
“Wait. Hang on just a minute.” He raised his hands to quiet the crowd. “I know you’re probably all bored, with no power—”
But the impromptu carolers only cast proud, conspiratorial glances at Karina, then raised their voices a little higher.
O holy night!
Beside him, Karina blushed. She nodded, then joined in.
“—but we’ll have the electricity back on very soon!”
Vanessa elbowed him. “Don’t be an idiot, cuz! They’re not singing because they’re bored. They’re singing because they’re full of Christmas spirit—and they’re trying to share it.”
“Share it?” Reid looked around. Some of the children were singing now too, their sticky, frosting-covered fingers waving, their heads bobbing with the rhythm. “Share it with whom?”
“With you, you dolt!” Vanessa said. “Listen, will you?”
O holy night!
Baffled, Reid frowned. His cousin began singing too.
He looked at Karina. She stopped singing, just for a second. She sq
ueezed his hand again, then leaned closer.
“I knew you wouldn’t have time to accomplish the cookie-baking and -decorating session and the candlelight snowshoe Christmas caroling,” she told him, “so I…sort of…helped things along while I was in the front room waiting for you. We might not have snowshoes on, but we’ve got the rest right!”
First, it struck Reid that she’d been waiting for him. That had to be a good sign. Next, it struck him that Vanessa had been right. Someone was trying to share their Christmas spirit with him tonight—a Christmas spirit full of generosity and goodwill and love. And that person was Karina. Because that’s what Reid felt flowing from her to him in that moment: love.
Even as the candles flickered and the next verse of that old Christmas carol swelled around them, Reid felt love. He felt beloved.
O holy night!
He felt…merry. In a flash, the realization hit him.
This was what Christmas was all about. Feeling love. Sharing love. Being together. Now that he’d experienced it—for the first time in over twenty years—he didn’t want to let it go.
He also didn’t want to disappoint Karina. Which explained why, when Olivia handed Reid a lighted candle—along with a cautious look and a silently mouthed “Be careful!”—he took it.
Stepping closer, Reid began to sing. And as he added his deep, infrequently used baritone to the reverent carol in progress, he knew somehow that he’d never be the same again.
Stupid freakish sentimentality had its damn stranglehold on him at last, Reid realized as he sang along. It was going to turn him into some kind of caroling fool. Maybe it already had.
And he was glad. Glad, glad, glad. O holy night!…
Chapter Seventeen
Date: December 22nd
Edgware Project Name: The Christmas House
Evaluator Guidelines: remember: you’re working! REVEL!
Evaluator Caveats: jet lag, personal biases, and/or homesickness may cloud judgment SUFFICIENT FRUITCAKE, EGGNOG, AND/OR TRIPLE-CAFFEINATED PEPPERMINT MOCHAS MAY BE REQUIRED TO KEEP UP STAMINA FOR LONG “ASSESSMENT” HOURS (AKA, ROMANTIC INTERLUDES WITH REID SULLIVAN…WOO-HOO!)
