But all that complaining didn’t match the serene look on her face.
“Why do you do it?”
“I don’t anymore,” she reminded him.
Semantics. Cory rephrased. “Why did you do it?”
Rebecca pulled the towel off her hair, and started to brush. A hundred strokes. He counted. “Because stuff happens.”
“Like what?” he asked, hoping to coax another laugh from her.
She took so long to answer, he thought she hadn’t heard. Finally she moved to stand in front of the bedroom mirror, and slowly she began to brush again.
“There was a kid I knew once. Every year they had Christmas at her grandparents’ house. Twenty-three relatives divided among two bedrooms. It was total chaos. Anyway, one Christmas morning, early—she always got up early on Christmas morning—her second cousin, Marty, cornered her in the bathroom. He’d always been really skanky, creepy, and in trouble with the law, but everybody wanted to believe he was good inside because he was ‘family.’”
She stopped brushing, paused and then started again.
“He bent her over the sink and raped her. And told her not to scream, so she didn’t. Not once. She kept waiting for someone to come and save her. They never did. And when he was done, she was pissed. Man, she was so pissed. Spitting mad. And she wanted to hurt him. Like he’d hurt her. She told him that Santa Claus would get him for what he had done. He laughed, told her that Santa Claus didn’t exist, and walked out the door. He knew she wouldn’t say anything. She was only nine, only a little girl. She’d looked in the mirror. Looked at herself. There was this emptiness in her eyes. Something was gone and she wanted it back. She never got it. But she tried.”
He sat quietly, frozen in place.
Rebecca turned away from the mirror, hairbrush in hand. When she looked at him, her blond hair was still damp from the shower, and there was an emptiness in her eyes.
Rapid-fire images shot like machine-gun fire in his brain. Silent screams,
milk-white flesh and innocence lost. Carefully he dug his nails into his palms, focusing on the pain there until the pain inside him was gone. It was a trick he used a lifetime ago.
He’d never thrown up, never allowed himself. But he wanted to now. His mouth was full of rage and terror and partially digested scrambled eggs. None of which would do her any good. Quickly though, his control returned and he swallowed it all.
Instead of cutting half-moons into her palms, Rebecca didn’t play the victim, she fought back. She became head cheerleader, homecoming queen and a teacher who most likely stuck her nose where it didn’t belong.
Then Rebecca smiled tightly and went back to brushing her hair.
What was a man supposed to do? Cory wanted to comfort her, pull her into his arms and tell her that everything would be all right.
The hell it was. He knew that nothing would ever be right. So did she, but she didn’t want pity any more than he wanted it. They had survived. Life went on—but it had changed for him.
“Do you still want to do that sleigh ride today?” she asked.
Rebecca seemed to want casual conversation, while he was still trying to keep his guts inside.
“How does she face Christmas every year?” he asked, his voice quiet. He had to know, had to understand her, had to go deeper into the dark places that he hated to delve. This was for Rebecca.
She shook her head nervously, the blond strands flying as she brushed faster. “She has to. She won’t let anybody steal her Christmas. Not anybody.”
“She ever tell anyone besides you?”
“Nah. She’s tougher than she looks. Her business, nobody else’s.”
“What happened to the guy?” Cory asked in a whisper.
“Murdered in a Florida prison. Seems inmates don’t like deviants any more than Santa Claus.”
His fists unclenched. “I’m glad.”
“Me, too. No kid should go through that.”
“No, they shouldn’t.” She didn’t say any more, and he knew the subject was now closed. Rebecca didn’t look back. Ever.
He watched her with new respect, watching as she never missed a step. He’d always judged her through his high school eyes and overlooked her, dismissed her. He’d never been more wrong.
“So when are you going to get your job back?” he asked.
Rebecca brushed her cheeks with pink powder, back and forth.
“I’m thinking of moving to retail.”
That brought Cory to his feet. There was no way. “You can’t do that. You can’t give up on your kids. There are people that need you.”
“Nobody needs me, Cory. Those kids will be fine.”
She was so confused. Clueless about it, but that didn’t change the fact that Rebecca Neumann was one of the few things right in the world. And he’d make sure she got her job back, if he had to go there himself…
Whoa. Hold it, Bell. He wouldn’t be seeing her in New York. Tomorrow was it. Their last day. The snow was still falling, but Tuesday was Christmas Eve, and she was leaving for Connecticut.
Rebecca Neumann, one of the best people to have ever come into his world, was going away.
She was putting on lipstick, and he wanted to put a sledgehammer through the wall.
His fingers flexed into his palms, he took a long breath, his heart slowing down.
Although Rebecca was leaving, that didn’t mean he couldn’t make the most of the situation. She wanted Christmas. He’d give her an amazing Christmas. It might not be Tiffany snowflakes on Fifth Avenue, but no matter how big she talked, Rebecca wasn’t Fifth Avenue, either. He’d still make it special.
So for the final time, Cory had a new plan. His eyes met hers and he tried to smile. His was a weak, half-assed smile, but after thirty-one years, he hadn’t yet mastered the art of looking happy.
* * *
Rebecca wasn’t sure what was up. Didn’t all men want perfection? Undamaged goods? But when she’d confessed her secret to Cory, he hadn’t run. When she’d done everything right, he ran. She showed him the worst parts of her soul and he acted as if she was his best girl ever.
Talk about throwing her system for a loop.
However, she went along with it. After she finished getting ready, he kissed her. Long, lingering. No passion, all tenderness, enough to bring a tear to her eye. She wiped it away before he saw.
Downstairs, Mr. Krause was dressed up in a Santa suit, wandering around like he owned the place, because, well, he did. Rebecca expected Cory to take off. Instead he came up, shook the old man’s hand and wished him Merry Christmas. It was oddly awkward, like when Maximillian Guerlain had played Abraham Lincoln for the President’s Day play. Her heart twisted.
However, right now there was a sleigh ride to look forward to. A sleigh ride she knew he would hate.
“We don’t have to go,” she offered, getting embarrassed by all his niceness.
“I love sleigh rides,” he answered, lying his ass off.
It was cold outside, but she didn’t feel it—she was warm and happy. Marvelously, gloriously happy. Two tall draft horses guided the sleigh, huffing their way along the mountain path. As they rounded a bend, Lake Placid appeared, nestled between the hills. She watched Cory, daring to brush the dark silk out of his eyes. Instead of pulling back, he quirked his lips in a half smile.
The afternoon went on from there, roasting marshmallows by the fire in the main hall. He teased her that her mascara would melt. She slapped him on the thigh, but oops, missed, her hand lingering. His eyes darkened; she shrugged innocently.
Supper was in the room. Salad and baked chicken, only in deference to what she now termed his sissy appetite. It didn’t matter what she ate, Rebecca was entranced. After he cleared away the dishes, he rubbed her feet until she was purring with delight as he found the exact place in her misshapen instep that cured all her pains.
He talked to her about the houses he had demolished, and then rebuilt, his eyes lively as he walked her through the process.
She listened, and fell head over heels in love with this very special man.
In her heart, she’d always kept Christmas in a place far away from the rest of things. It was her talisman and her strength, but it wasn’t Christmas in her heart anymore. It was him. So rough and hard at times, so tender and awkward at others. They made love that night in front of the fire, and she watched him with selfish eyes, keeping him close and near.
She watched over him while he slept, uncurled his fists when the nightmares came. He woke her in the morning, early, before dawn, and slid inside her, warmer than the sun.
Monday continued as the day before. They made a snowman in the morning, made love in the afternoon. She fell asleep listening to Christmas carols. When she woke up early in the evening, Cory was waiting with a box.
No wrapping paper, no bow. Plain and unadorned.
“Got something,” he said, pushing it across the bed.
She lifted the lid and dug through the tissue paper, only to find…
A pair of wool socks with a neatly stitched pattern of snowflakes.
Rebecca began to cry.
Her mascara was running, she knew her mascara was running, and she couldn’t stop the silly tears from flowing down her cheeks, ruining the natural finish to her blush. Oh, heck.
“Don’t cry, Bec,” he said, which made her laugh in her tears, because Cory wasn’t a “Bec” guy. He didn’t use nicknames, didn’t use endearments, anything that would personalize anything.
Except for snowflake-patterned socks.
Which started her bawling all over again.
He pulled her into his arms, hardened, tough arms with work-roughened hands, and slowly he rocked her, like a child. It was done with a slow, hesitant movement, a man so unused to this. Unused to touch, unused to love.
She cried for him, cried for the scars on his palms, cried for the nights he’d lost, and she cried for all the things that would never be righted.
“You’re strong, Rebecca. Stronger than you’ll ever know,” he murmured against her hair, her face, covering her tears with his lips. He thought it was her pain that was killing her, but it was his.
She wanted to lash out at the people who hadn’t cared about him when he was younger. Stupid people. People who didn’t know him, know what was buried inside. So deeply buried. She cried for a long time, and she knew he was worried and confused, but she couldn’t stop. At some point the kisses changed. No comfort anymore. There was an edge of desperation there, she tasted it in him, and she took shameless advantage. She wanted to feel him next to her, bare and raw, and soon he was. She used her mouth to love him, to taste the salty heat of his skin.
He cried out when she took his sex in her mouth, his muscles straining, but she stroked him with her hands, with her mouth, soothing him, pleasuring him, loving him.
It was so easy to love him, but he wouldn’t let her finish. He pulled her up, and then rose above her, so careful not to hurt her, but she was having none of that. She scored her fingers into his back, wringing a shudder from him.
Then he thrust inside her, and she met his eyes, met his lips. Outside the snow began to fall again, the sounds of sleigh bells and laughter. Inside, it was quiet. So quiet she could hear her silent whispers.
Later, when the sounds were gone, he touched her cheek, kissed her mouth, traced her eyes. His eyes were so worried, and she stroked his face. It should have been forever, but this wasn’t, and she knew it. It was there in his face.
Cory was saying goodbye.
* * *
8 Tuesday, December 24
The train ride from Lake Placid to her parents’ home in Connecticut was longer than she imagined. Fourteen hours of sitting, with nothing to do but think. Now she had a new regret weighing heavy on her. Cory Bell.
He’d left while she was asleep. She knew that would be his way. Odd to have been strangers before Friday. Four days later and she had seen his soul.
There were so many things that she should have told him. But he hadn’t said a word, and she hadn’t said a word. And so they had a solitary, magical moment in time.
Ha. She rubbed her heart because the pain was strong. Did love come that fast? Would it fade so quickly? She knew it wouldn’t. She had confided in him and he’d stayed by her.
Outside the window, snow was falling, and she watched it, writing a name on the fogged glass like a schoolgirl. As the compartment heated, the name faded, but the memories would stay with her for a long, long time.
* * *
Cory was driving in the shadow of the Laurentian Mountains when the snow started to fly in huge, blinding flakes. The road was nearly invisible. He turned on the radio to drown out the yelling in his head, but there was nothing but Christmas music.
Damn.
He’d never heard yelling in his head before, never felt this pain screaming inside him, but he wished it would go away. He wanted the numbness back.
He shoved the wiper switch to high, but it didn’t matter. He couldn’t see jack, so he pulled off the road. Cory slammed his hands against the steering wheel because damn it, her suitcase weighed a ton and she’d have to change stations four times to get from the lodge to her parents’ place in Stafford Hill.
He hadn’t meant to ask anything this morning, only wanted to disappear at dawn, but when he’d seen Mrs. Krause at the desk, he’d asked. Like he had a right to know.
The old woman had sent him off with a ham sandwich, homemade chocolate-chip cookies, and a piece of paper with a Connecticut address on it. At the Canadian border, he’d stopped and looked at the paper. When he got to Montreal, he pulled into an electronics store and checked her route on a computer. Now here he was, nearly at his destination in the mountains, when the name-calling started.
Idiot. Moron. Jerk. He deserved it. There was never a woman he wanted more than Rebecca. Why was he running away from the best, the purest woman he’d ever known, touched or loved?
No, that was it. Cory Bell was done running. He was driving to Connecticut—in a blizzard.
Six hours later, he had made it to New York. Barely. He stopped, got more coffee and bought a Connecticut map. The clerk was a teenager with a name tag that said Happy To Serve You.
“Merry Christmas,” Cory said, slapping some change on the counter.
The kid frowned, glanced at him as if he was a nut job. “Merry Christmas to you, too.”
It was three hundred and ten miles and some five hours later before he reached the tiny town where he’d find her. He should have been bone-tired, but after all the caffeine and something that felt suspiciously like hope in his heart, Cory was more alive than he’d ever been.
The streets were decorated with lights that glimmered in the darkness, and he found the Neumann house easily—it was the one with thirty-seven cars lined down the block. In the window, the Christmas tree shined and beckoned. Just like her.
Inside the security of his truck, his palms were sweating, and he rubbed them on his jeans. For a long time he stared at the house, waiting for the familiar need to run. The clock on the dashboard said it was seven o’clock, five hours to midnight, and Christmas Day.
Ten minutes later, then twenty minutes. Two hours later, with the moon high in the sky, he realized the panic inside him was gone. He had other needs now. Rebecca. He walked up the snow-covered sidewalk and rang the bell.
An older woman answered, a light-up reindeer pin clipped to her sweater. “Mrs. Neumann?” he asked.
“Yes?”
“I’m here to see Rebecca.”
“Certainly. Come in.”
“I’ll wait outside, thanks,” he told her.
She frowned, but nodded and went to find her daughter.
The noises coming from inside the house were loud. Laughing, singing, a million voices were talking at once. Those sounds alone terrified him. This was new and strange. But he would do this. He could do this.
Rebecca came to the door, and when she saw him she smiled at him, her eyes full of excitement and
hope. He looked at her, looked at the sprig of mistletoe hanging over the door, and smiled back.
Then he kissed her. Full on the lips.
“Merry Christmas,” she whispered against his mouth.
“I’m late. I had to go to Canada, but I’m back. For good.”
“I told you the French language was overrated.”
“Yeah,” was about all that he could say, because he had to kiss her again.
Dear Santa,
I just want you to know up-front that Rebecca is making me write this letter to thank you. She’s convinced you’re real. Me? It’ll take a while to convince. I’m not so big on the whole Christmas experience, and Santa, and “peace, love and joy,” but I’m starting to understand, especially the love part. That I’m getting down. So, thank you.
Sincerely,
Cory Bell
Epilogue
“What is it about the snow that makes people fall in love?”
Roland heard his wife’s question as he burrowed in the refrigerator looking for the ingredients for his wife’s favorite cocktail. He knew some of the younger guys tried to sway their dates with expensive champagne, but Roland had learned long ago that hot chocolate was his wife’s aphrodisiac of choice.
And Roland had learned never to argue with anything that made his wife sigh with happiness.
“Well, it’s pretty.” He poured milk in a pan and turned it on just high enough that he wouldn’t scorch it while Helen kept her eyes trained on a spot out on the lake.
Their home was a stone’s throw away from the inn. Close enough for them to run over in an emergency, but far enough away to let them feel as though they could get away from it all on the hard days.
“Roland Krause.” She turned from the window to frown at him, clearly displeased. “Is that the best you can do? Your wife asks you a thoughtful question about the nature of love and what inspires something so profound and you suggest that snow is pretty?”
He hid a grin as he stirred the cocoa into the pan, and attempted to give her question more serious thought. Because no matter how effective chocolate had been at lighting his wife’s fire in the past, he knew from long experience that the best aphrodisiac for a woman—for his woman—was a sense of mental connection.
A Blazing Little Christmas Page 22
