by Lisa Plumley
Reid shook his head. “I’m not going. I’ve got several calls in to Edgware. I think I could still change their minds.”
“Aww, Reid. I know you don’t want to quit, and that’s admirable. But don’t you think there’s a break-even point here? Even Grammy and Grandpa said—” Vanessa broke off, her gaze falling to the other items in his arms. She tugged out one of them, then wagged it at him accusingly. “Is this Digby’s holiday sweater? Did you steal the sweater off our dachshund’s back?”
“It was more of a wrestling match, really.” Reid pointed. “You can still see the tooth marks.”
“Digby’s, I hope.”
He nodded. “I liberated that dog. Digby hated Christmas.”
“You mean you hated Christmas. And the moment you started liking it again—the moment you started feeling it again—”
“Now you’re just talking crazy.” Reid grabbed the doggie sweater, added it back to his pile, then dumped the whole caboodle in the housekeeping closet. “I didn’t feel a thing.”
At least not anything I can’t forget. Eventually.
Sighing in apparent censure—or maybe sadness—his cousin shook her head. “You are not the same man I used to know.”
Reid only shrugged. “That’s probably true.”
Since Karina, he felt turned inside out and upside down. First, those changes had made him feel brand new. Now they only made him feel gullible and wrecked and curiously hollow.
“But it doesn’t have to be true!” Vanessa actually grabbed his arms and shook him. Or tried to. He was a lot bigger than she was. Exasperated, she poked his shoulder. “Don’t you get it? If you would just forgive Karina for keeping her secret, everything would be fine! She did what she had to do—for her sister’s sake. You, of all people, should understand that.” Another poke. “Karina is loyal! She’s sweet and helpful and kind. She’s special, Reid. The rest of us have forgiven her. All the guests, all the staff, the neighbors, Nate and Angela, Amanda and Rodrigo, Grammy and Grandpa. Everyone. Even your own children have forgiven Karina. You should too.”
At the thought of Nicole and Alexis, Reid felt his resolve strengthen. He couldn’t afford to weaken. Not when giving in meant leaving his daughters vulnerable to loving a family of Barretts who could never be trusted to love them back.
Judging by the way Alexis and Nicole had bonded with Karina and her children, they’d probably come dangerously close to making the same mistake he had—to loving the wrong person.
But Reid still had time to fix that. That was his specialty, wasn’t it? Taking the big risks before anyone else? Heading straight into danger, figuring out the potential hazards, and protecting other people from them?
He hadn’t managed to protect his grandparents. They’d chosen him to run The Christmas House this holiday season specifically because of his lack of sentimentality. Reid had repaid them by falling headlong into…stupid sentimentality.
He didn’t know if he could forgive himself for that. But he still thought he could repair the damage—if his busybody cousin would get off his case and leave him alone for once. And if someone at Edgware would return his calls (their voice mail messages all claimed the executives were out until New Year’s Day). And if he could explain himself to his grandparents.
I fell in love, he imagined himself saying. I fell in love at Christmastime, with a wonderful woman—and her three children.
Betty and Robert Sullivan would never buy it. Their Scrooge-like grandson smitten with a homebody suburban divorcée from California? Their globe-trotting, multilingual, eel-eating great-granddaughters morphing into members of the Brady Bunch?
His grandparents would laugh themselves silly at the idea.
“I knew coming home for Christmas would be a mistake.” Reid frowned at Vanessa, at a loss to explain how bereft he felt. He never should have allowed himself to enjoy the holidays again—to allow sentimentality to creep in and ruin him. “I have a beard to shave,” he announced, then headed back to his room.
This time, Reid resolved, he’d get the job done.
With a heartfelt sigh, Karina set the last wrapped gift on her Kismet hotel room’s wide bureau. She took a step back, then examined the small pile of gifts and, next to it, the tabletop Christmas tree the hotel management had provided. It was the kind of tree that emerged intact from its cardboard box, needing only to be bent into shape, with LED lights embedded in its artificial branches and miniature ornaments stapled on. There was even a diminutive star glued to the tree’s plastic tip.
“There!” Karina announced with forced cheerfulness. “Now we’re all set for Christmas tomorrow. We’ll sleep in—”
Her children all looked at her cockeyed. “No one ever sleeps in on Christmas morning,” Michael said. “Sheesh, Mom.”
“—unwrap our gifts,” she continued, undaunted, “have a nice celebratory breakfast at the restaurant downstairs—”
“It’s closed on Christmas Day,” Olivia pointed out.
“—or a festive hotel room picnic with muffins and juice that I’ll buy after the Kismet Christmas parade today—”
“I don’t care about the parade anymore,” Josh said.
“—and then, if the airline cooperates, we’ll all go home!”
Finally finishing her announcement, Karina beamed at them. It wasn’t easy. Heartbreak permeated every part of her, leaving her feeling weary, sad, and hopeless. All she wanted to do was climb into bed with a TV remote and a distracting nonholiday movie—and maybe a giant chocolate Santa (or three) to make herself feel better—and forget the past week had ever happened.
But she couldn’t do that. Olivia, Michael, and Josh were counting on her. She still wanted to give them a perfect holiday. Her personal heartache couldn’t interfere with that.
“What if the airline doesn’t cooperate?” Josh asked.
Before Karina could reply, Olivia did. “We’ll think of something else,” she assured her brother. “Don’t worry.”
Surprised, Karina gawked at her daughter. All of a sudden, she realized, Olivia had quit forecasting doom at every turn. She’d quit trying to protect them all from potential dangers. In fact, Karina thought, Olivia had become downright easygoing.
“Most of the things people worry about don’t ever happen,” Olivia went on, knowledgeably. “Reid told me that. It’s true.”
Reid. Again. Would his influence never end? While Karina was grateful that Reid had helped Josh overcome his sticky-fingered tendencies—and had, apparently, also helped Olivia see the world in a less worrisome light—Karina didn’t want to think about Reid. She didn’t want to remember what might have been.
She didn’t want to love him, either. But she still did.
“Reid told me that being smart is the best,” Michael piped up, “because it never goes away. It only gets bigger, the more questions you ask. So Mom, why didn’t we just go home already?”
“Because the airlines were all booked. Lots of people want to travel during the holidays. If an earlier flight opens up, we’ll take it,” Karina said. “Otherwise, our original plan sticks: Christmas in Kismet, and leaving a few days later.”
“Hey!” came a thin-sounding voice from the open laptop on the hotel room bed. “Isn’t anybody going to talk to me?”
Eric. Karina had set up a videoconference call for the kids. Evidently, they’d gotten distracted by her announcement.
“I’m all done talking, Dad!” Michael pushed away from the laptop. He waved, then blew a kiss. “Bye! Love you!”
The two of them exchanged good-byes via screencast. Karina checked with Olivia and Josh, making sure they’d had their turns too. They had. Resigned, she trooped to the laptop, ready to confront the image of her ex-husband…complete with palm trees, beach sand, and sultry blue Bahamian skies in the background.
All those things were there, with the unexpected addition of a red and white felt Santa hat on Eric’s head. It clashed with his eyeliner and the multiple chains around his neck, but at least h
e was trying. Affectionately, Karina smiled at him.
“Cute hat, Eric. That’s nice of you.”
Appearing embarrassed, he snatched it off. He fussed with his hair, deftly arranging those product-laden strands. Without the merry frame of the Santa hat, he didn’t look so good.
Concerned, Karina frowned. “Hey, are you okay?”
Her ex-husband scowled. Too late, Karina remembered how much Eric hated it when she comforted him or offered advice.
In fact, she realized, Eric hated help of all kinds. Just like Reid did. Was that an issue with all men, she wondered, or only the ones she—Ms. Helpful—had the misfortune to fall for?
“No!” Eric blurted. “I’m not okay. Chelsea and I are still on the outs, Kari. She’s changed somehow. And I don’t like it.”
Surprised by his use of his old nickname for her, Karina picked up the laptop. She sat on the bed, then arranged the laptop on her knees. Warmly—and welcoming the distraction of a problem to solve—she peered into its built-in camera with all the compassion she could. “Changed how? Can you describe it?”
Eric nodded. He started talking, his volubility doubtless enhanced by the pair of tropical umbrella-wielding drinks he appeared to have enjoyed already—at least if the tabletop display of empty glasses beside him was to be believed.
Within moments, Karina was in her element. She nodded and asked questions, listened and probed for more, empathized and brainstormed as her ex-husband described his relationship problems. It seemed that Chelsea had begun asserting herself, starting the day they’d met up with her parents in the Bahamas.
“And it only got worse from there!” Eric complained. “The next thing I knew, Chelsea had an opinion on everything! Where we went. What we did. What I wore!” Mournfully, he shook his head. “It’s like she became someone else, Kari.” He lifted his accusing glare to the camera. “It’s like she became you.”
“Well, that’s flattering, Eric.” Karina smiled, liking the idea that her friendship had had a positive influence. “But more likely, Chelsea just remembered who she was before she met you. Sometimes, when people are around their parents, they revert to their younger selves temporarily. Most people experience that phenomenon to some degree around the holidays. In large and small ways, they inadvertently find themselves stepping into old familial roles. That’s part of the reason conflicts tend to be repeated at Christmastime. Everyone is reenacting their—”
“Right. I get it.” Impatiently, Eric held up his hand. His studded-leather wristband glinted in the beachy sunshine. “I wasn’t looking for a psychology lecture, Einstein.”
Pleased, Karina hid a smile. She was pretty smart when it came to advising people. Even if her students had (mysteriously) stopped contacting her for help between semesters.
“I wasn’t looking for any of this, either!” Eric went on. “Chelsea is exciting and all. I mean, come on!” Wide-eyed, he gave a lascivious gesture. “Have you seen her? She’s—”
“Gorgeous, I know.” Karina gave him a wind-it-up signal.
“—but the best thing about Chelsea was that she didn’t bug me, you know?” Eric said. “She let me be me. No matter how dumb that might have been sometimes, she never hassled me. She was impressed by everything about me. I liked that about her.”
Drily, Karina said, “I can see where you would.”
“But now,” Eric said, “all that is gone! I don’t like it.”
“That’s understandable. So what do you want to do next?”
“Easy.” Brightly, her ex-husband sat upright. He fixed his own laptop camera with a gimlet gaze. “I want you to tell me how to get the old Chelsea back—the one who thought I was the bomb.”
Karina shook her head. “I don’t think I can do that. If Chelsea was downplaying her own confidence and assertiveness to get along with you better”—which, based on the conversations Karina had had with Chelsea lately, seemed probable—“it’s actually a good sign that she feels free enough to be herself.”
“Bah!” Eric waved off that notion. Tipsily, he pouted. “Can’t be. Chelsea’s new ‘self’ makes me feel teeny tiny.”
And that was the crux of the problem, wasn’t it? Karina realized abruptly. She watched as her ex-husband blearily accepted another umbrella-garnished beverage. Eric wanted to feel powerful. And that was what Karina hadn’t given him.
Her marriage hadn’t ended because she hadn’t been nice enough. Or because she hadn’t helped Eric enough. Or because she hadn’t been able to fix their relationship problems. It had ended because she’d married a man who wanted a Barbie doll for a partner—not a real, live, confident woman with a mind of her own and a very normal tendency to nurture the people she loved.
Nearly knocked over by the revelation, Karina blinked.
“I’m sorry, Eric,” she said. “But if you can’t handle Chelsea’s self-confidence, the problem is with you, not her.”
Her ex-husband thought about that. He tried to sip his drink—and was forced to chase his straw around the glass instead, lips puckered like a blowfish. He’d never looked more…needy. But wasn’t everyone needy? On some level?
Right now, Karina needed love. Her children needed an exemplary Christmas. Stephanie needed a job that allowed her to spend the holidays at home. Eric—and maybe even Reid, it occurred to her—needed to feel powerful. Capable. Invulnerable.
“Well, I guess that settles that, then,” Eric announced.
Snapped back to attention, Karina gazed at him. “Settles what? We’ve only just started talking about this, Eric. You’re going to have to—”
“That settles that between us!” Bobbing around on his beach chair, Eric set down his drink. Then he righted his laptop, straightening her view of him. “It’s official, babe!” he said magnanimously, beaming at her from the videoconferencing software. “This thing with Chelsea was just a stupid mistake. I’m over it! We can be a family again, Kari! You, me, the kids—”
Startled, Karina snapped shut her laptop.
Eric’s voice cut off. Heart pounding madly, Karina glanced around, wondering if her children had overheard their father’s careless promise. We can be a family again! You, me, the kids—
All Karina had ever wanted was for Olivia, Josh, and Michael to be happy. Likely, they’d never stopped hoping she and Eric would reunite. Would it really be so bad if they did?
She knew Eric. She cared for him. Now she knew exactly what had caused their marital problems, too. He’d made a mistake. One mistake. But mistakes could be forgiven, right?
Cautiously, Karina contemplated her children. Olivia flopped on their hotel room’s second bed, watching cartoons with the sound turned down. Josh sat cross-legged on a nearby chair, playing PSP. Michael hunched near the Christmas gifts, lightly running his fingertips over each one, undoubtedly calculating their individual dimensions and estimating the probability that one of them contained a Transformers toy meant for him.
How much did their happiness mean to her?
Everything.
Holding her breath, Karina opened her laptop. Knowing exactly how momentous this decision was, she smiled at Eric.
“All right,” she said. “Let’s talk about this.”
Despite his resolve, Reid didn’t get very far. Sure, he’d cleared the bathroom—and his attic B&B room—of deleterious Christmas paraphernalia. And yes, he’d worked up a good head of lather and slathered it on (again), fully prepared to demolish his so-called good-luck beard for good and prove (goddamn it) that he was finished hoping Karina would love him. But then…
“Dad!” Nicole hurried into his room, her stuffed dingo clutched in one arm. She stopped in his bathroom doorway, then gasped. “Oh no! What are you doing with your beard?”
“I’m going to shave off this beast, once and for all.”
“But…Aunt Vanessa says that’s your ‘nookie beard.’”
“Aunt Vanessa is a little bit crazy sometimes.”
“Really?” Nicole’s eyes widened. “Because Mich
ael told me that mental illness is partly genetic. Which kind of makes sense, actually. Because you’re acting crazy about Karina.”
I am crazy about Karina. On the verge of foolishly admitting it aloud, Reid frowned at his image in the mirror. Then, belatedly realizing this beard would be too much for any ordinary razor to tackle alone, he wiped off the lather again.
He reached for the scissors. First, a close trim.
“Aren’t you supposed to be going to the Christmas parade?” Vanessa had promised him she’d take the girls. “From what I remember, it’s quite a show. Everyone in town goes to it.”
Unconvinced, Nicole sighed. “You’re not going.”
It would break my heart to go this year. “I’ve already been to the Christmas parade,” Reid told her. “I’ve seen it.”
“But doing it over and over and over again is part of the magic of Christmas!” Nicole gulped in a breath. “Michael told me that. He said people like traditions. He likes traditions.”
“Honey…” Sadly, gently, Reid gazed at his daughter. He abandoned his scissors—just for the moment. “You’re going to have to quit talking about Michael—about all the Barrett kids.”
Nicole looked puzzled. “Why? I like them. They’re nice.”
“Because…They live in California. We don’t.”
“So?” His daughter wrinkled her nose. “We’ve lived all over the whole globe!” She stretched her arms wide, leaving her stuffed dingo to dangle from her hand. “Why not San Diego next?”
For a heartbeat, Reid gave in to that idea. He imagined them in a sunny beachside home. All seven of them. Together.
“I haven’t decided what to do next,” Reid said truthfully.
“Well, I vote for California!” Nicole said. “It would be so cool to go to Olivia’s school! We could see Twilight movies together, and visit the mall, and have slumber parties.”
Alexis arrived, pushing her way into the bathroom doorway. She slumped next to her sister, then glumly started picking at her fingernails. “Don’t be dumb, Nicole. Dad is totally going to hide out someplace more remote than ever now. We’ll probably wind up in some backwater country we’ve never even heard of.”
