by Leslie Kelly
* * *
“I JUST CAN’T BELIEVE she left without telling me,” Chaz mumbled, speaking more to himself than to Peggy, who’d come downstairs to find out why he was knocking and knocking on Lulu’s door the next evening. She’d told him Lulu was gone, having packed up and left the city while Chaz was at work.
“Why would she just go like that?”
“Sorry, Chaz, she said she wanted to beat the traffic heading out of the city tomorrow. Her brother was finished with his classes, her boss gave her an extra day off, so they packed up and left.”
That all made sense, and he knew Peggy wasn’t lying. But he still just couldn’t comprehend it. God, had Lulu bought that nonsense Tonia had spewed on the train? Did she have the crazy idea that he had gotten close to her only for a damn story—one that wasn’t even his own? How could she have believed that of him?
But there was no other explanation. Because there was no Lulu. She hadn’t met him outside for their train ride this morning, hadn’t answered his calls, hadn’t met him on the way home from work. And hadn’t answered his loud pounding on her door.
Now he knew why. She really was gone.
“What’d you do to mess it up?” Peggy asked, blunt as always.
“Honestly? I have no idea.” He thrust a hand through his hair, trying to understand. “It was so stupid, a dumb argument over what somebody else said. She got the wrong idea about something, I tried to explain it, and she took off.”
Peggy tsked and shook her head. “You shoulda shown up at the door with a dozen roses and a ring last night, before she had the chance to sleep on it, build her anger and take off.”
A ring? Chaz couldn’t hide his shocked reaction to that idea. His jaw fell open and he actually laughed.
“Oh, that’s funny? Gee, I think I’m beginning to understand why she left you.” Peggy glared her disappointment. “Maybe I shouldn’t have bothered to tell you she was gone.”
He rushed to explain. “Oh, I don’t think it’s funny. I’m crazy in love with her, and I’d put a ring on her finger in a heartbeat if I weren’t sure she’d laugh in my face.”
“No woman laughs at a diamond ring. Get her a great big, shiny, ridiculously ostentatious diamond and she’ll forgive you anything.”
If only it were that easy.
“Not Lulu. She doesn’t even want anybody to know we’re together. What the hell would she say if I proposed marriage?” Something struck him. “Hell, I wasn’t even aware you knew about us.”
“Good grief, the two of you are so obvious, I’m sure the newspaper delivery guy is aware you’re madly in love with each other. Hell, her own brother announced it at Thanksgiving dinner. You two have been in love for years.”
“She’s never said that. She made it pretty clear that she just wanted a fling, no commitments, nothing serious, absolutely nobody finding out.”
“Boy are you stupid, Chaz Browning.”
He leaned a shoulder against the wall and waited to find out why he was stupid. He had no doubt she was about to expound.
“From some things she’s said, I gathered your families are tight, and your siblings mucked everything up a while back?”
“Definitely.”
“And it’s not easy for her to trust you, after you’ve made such a huge deal of your big international career and how it comes before anything else.”
Chaz stiffened with shock. Had he been that much of an asshole about it? His career had come before everything else in the past. But did it come before Lulu? Had he given her reason to believe that it would?
The very idea made him nauseous.
“So of course she says she wants to be discreet, be cautious, keep it all a big secret. No point getting her heart invested if this thing between you is just sex and you’re going to walk away after New Year’s, right?”
“Actually, that sounds a lot like what she said,” he murmured.
“But she didn’t mean it, not deep down in her heart.”
Peggy glanced up as someone came down from above. It was Marcia, who stepped out of the stairwell, eyeing them both.
“I was listening from upstairs. Peggy’s right. Lulu is in love with you. Anyone can see it.”
“And I’m in love with her,” he admitted, acknowledging it himself for the first time. “I guess I always loved her a little bit. Now I love her a lot.”
Only, he’d never told her. Never gave her any indication that he was carving out a place for her in his life. He supposed they’d both been keeping things hidden. One thing was sure: if he got her back, they were going to do a lot of talking.
When he got her back.
“I can’t lose her,” he said. “Not now that I’ve found her again.”
Marcia patted his shoulder. “Then fix it.”
“How? With roses and a ring, when I’m not sure which stupid thing I’ve done made her leave?”
Boy, wasn’t that the ultimate male dilemma. He could be the poster child for how-to-screw-up-your-relationship-without-even-trying.
“She left because you let her think that a secret fling was just fine with you, too,” Marcia exclaimed.
Peggy piped in. “Duh!”
“What? Wait, I’m in the doghouse because I agreed with her?”
“I suspect so,” said Marcia. “A woman doesn’t want to believe she’s only good enough to be your dirty little secret. She wants to know you care enough about her to share your hopes, your dreams, your real life.”
“Are you kidding? She knows me better than anyone. We talk for hours every night.”
“In bed?”
He wasn’t used to such bluntness about his sex life, but nodded.
“Tell me, you ever take her out to a movie? Or dinner? Hell, even a walk?”
“We went Christmas shopping at the mall the other night,” he said, sounding defensive.
“And did you sneak her into a maintenance closet and shag her between Macy’s and Gap?”
He didn’t answer. His flushed face was all the answer the two women needed.
“Yeah. She thinks it’s just sex,” Marcia said, shaking her head mournfully. “That she’s only good enough for you to fool around with, but not good enough to share your life.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
Peggy gave him a pitying look. “We can tell that just by the way you stare at her when you don’t think anybody will notice. Your feelings are written all over your face.”
Marcia, patting his arm, added, “It’s true. Lulu is the only one who hasn’t figured out that you love her. She needs you to make it clear. She needs tenderness from you. Words, promises. Not just sperm.”
Peggy snickered. “Ew. Sperm.”
Marcia rolled her eyes and shook her head. “You’re such an infant,” she said, fondly scolding. “Remind me not to leave you alone with our child, ever.”
“Sorry,” Peggy said, growing appropriately serious.
“I have to make her understand that I love her and that I want a real future with her.”
“Do you really?” asked Peggy. “Because that might mean you’ll have to make some changes in your lifestyle. No woman wants to think she’s less important than a job.”
The very idea that Lulu would think such a thing shocked him. “She’s more important than anything in my life. There’s nothing I won’t do to prove that to her.”
“Even if it means you have to gallivant around the world a little bit less?”
He didn’t even hesitate before answering. “If it’s a choice between Lulu and the entire world...I choose Lulu.”
Peggy patted his cheek. “I knew you were a smart one.”
Thanking the women sincerely, and thinking about all the ideas they’d put in his head, he bid them a Merry Christmas and headed home.
As soon as he got there, he picked up the phone and called Sarah, asking her if she could be ready to leave for home by tomorrow, and she immediately agreed. Promising to come by campus to pick her up, he told her it wouldn’t be until after lunch.
He had somewhere to go in the morning, and a very special present to buy.
But first, he had to call his editor.
12
EVER SINCE SHE was a child, Lulu’s mom and Mrs. Browning had co-chaired the town’s Silent Night, Holy Night holiday festival. It was always held on the Friday night before Christmas, and always in the high school gym.
People would come with crafts to sell, baked goods to share. Practically everybody in the entire town would show up to bid each other a Merry Christmas before folks devoted themselves to their immediate families.
There would be carols sung and eggnog drunk, and the younger children would put on a pageant of the Christmas story. Invariably, some kid dressed up as a shepherd would get the giggles, while an angel lost her halo, and the back end of a camel would scratch his butt.
Hmm. She’d been that angel once, with the dangling halo. And she was pretty sure Chaz had been the ass-end of the camel at least once, though she didn’t remember any butt scratching that year.
Being back here, with her family, in her hometown, was so much harder than she’d expected. She’d come home for the holiday season probably every other year since she’d left home, but never had she felt so surrounded by memories, so hemmed in by the ghosts of Christmas past.
Chaz was everywhere she looked. In her backyard, and in his. In the park, where they’d leaped into piles of leaves. On the playground, the baseball field. Every place she went was colored by a memory of something she’d done with him.
Including this festival.
Lulu tried to force her melancholy away, not wanting to spoil anyone else’s holiday. She had to be cheerful and find some Christmas spirit as she finished putting the final touches on the manger scene. Her mother had asked her to set it up while she and Mrs. Browning did the other million-and-one tasks for tonight’s pageant.
Lawrence was around somewhere, having been roped in to setting up tables or hooking up lights or something. It felt like the two of them were completely alone in the school, which had closed early today for the long Christmas break.
There were a few hours yet before people started to arrive, and Lulu ended up just sitting in a seat in the front row of the auditorium, remembering coming to see school plays in this very place. She smiled as she remembered Chaz’s performance in a talent show in freshman year, with a group of his fourteen-year-old buddies. They’d done a Backstreet Boys number, complete with choreography. She remembered thinking at the time that he was cute enough to be a Backstreet Boy, after which she told him the Backstreet Boys were totally stupid and N’Sync was totally where it was at.
Yeah. She probably always had loved him. How on earth was she going to face him when he showed up in town tomorrow? Somehow, they had to get through the holiday season without dragging the family into their situation.
Although she worried about it, she also desperately wanted to see him. She knew she shouldn’t have run away without an explanation. Chaz wasn’t the guilty party here; he’d only done what he’d thought she wanted.
She’d realized she couldn’t maintain a purely sexual relationship; her feelings were too entangled. But she also couldn’t go on treating him like he’d wronged her. Because he hadn’t.
“You okay down there, sis?”
She looked up and saw Lawrence standing on the stage. He’d been worried about her since she’d picked him up at school yesterday and dragged him out here, but he hadn’t pried. She’d done him the same courtesy, not asking for any details about him and Sarah.
“I’m fine. Just thinking, remembering.”
“Good memories?” he asked, brushing back an errant strand of hair, which always dangled in his eyes. He was a young man, but still had a sweet, earnest, boyish look. When they were kids, it had always made her want to pound him, because she’d feared the world would be cruel to tender-hearted boys like her brother. Now, she found him just about perfect, and hoped Sarah realized what she had.
“Some good, some bad. I guess I’m trying to rediscover the joy of Christmas.”
“What’s not to love?”
This year? “Everything.”
“Aww, come on.” He stepped to the edge of the stage, his youthful, angular face caught in the spotlights he’d been testing up in the booth. “How can you not love Mom burning the gravy, and Dad cutting too many bottom limbs off the tree so he has to go buy another one, and Uncle Warren drinking too much eggnog and Aunt Shelly complaining that nobody made sugar-free cookies?”
The memories brought a wistful smile to her mouth.
“You used to sneak into my room on Christmas Eve night,” Lawrence said. “We would shine our flashlights out the window at Chaz and Sarah’s house. They’d flash back so we’d all know we were on guard, waiting to catch a glimpse of Santa Claus.”
She nodded. “And all of us would argue the next day over who had fallen asleep first.”
“Remember how Dad always read us ’Twas the Night Before Christmas? I was eleven when you had to explain to me that reindeer have hooves, not paws, and they were really pausing up on the roof.”
“You dope,” she said, actually laughing. “We had some great holidays.”
“Definitely. Remember when you convinced me that Chaz would find it hilarious if I wrapped up a box of raisins and gave it to him as a present?”
“You should have quit while you were ahead. Or while I was.”
“He loved the attention,” Lawrence told her, serious and earnest. “Always. For as long as I can remember, you’ve both done everything you could to get the other to notice you, neither of you ever realizing why, even if everybody else knew.”
“You truly believe we love each other?” she whispered.
“I’m certain of it. You always have, you always will, whether you end up together or not.”
“Right at this moment, I’m thinking not,” she said, sniffing and blinking away moisture that rose to her eyes.
“It’s the season of miracles. A time for precious moments that we value because we know nothing lasts forever and we should take whatever happiness we can while we can get it.” He came to the edge of the stage and hopped down from it to stand right in front of her. “Christmas is the perfect occasion to do that, Lulu. To be happy, to love and to appreciate all the blessings in your life.”
Tears swam in her eyes as she recognized that her kid brother had grown into a remarkable man. Deep and thoughtful, kind and so loving.
She got up and put her arms around him, hugging him tightly. “You’re pretty wonderful, you know that?”
“I know somebody who thinks you are, too,” he whispered back.
She pulled away and stared at him. But he was looking past her, over her shoulder. Confused, Lulu turned around and saw a man standing there.
It was Chaz.
He walked toward them in the shadowy darkness, saying nothing, his attention glued to her face. As he drew closer, she’d swear she spotted tenderness in his expression, but that might just have been wishful thinking.
“Hello, Lulu,” he said.
She didn’t reply, for once at a loss for words. She truly didn’t know what to say to him. She’d hoped she’d have another day before having to face him, but he’d caught her off guard, caught her emotional and teary. Damn it.
“I’ll see you later,” Lawrence said, walking by Chaz and fist-bumping him.
And then they were alone.
“Merry Christmas.”
She sniffed, finding a stray thought and throwing it out. “Silly, Christmas is a week away.”
“For me, Ch
ristmas always started with the Friday night pageant.”
Yeah, it had for her, too.
He came closer, and then closer still, until she could feel the warmth of his body radiating toward her.
“You left,” he said, his expression betraying his hurt.
“I know. I’m sorry, I was being a coward.”
“Why did you go?”
She blinked to keep any tears from falling. “I was dumb, blaming you for something that was never your fault.”
“Oh, there was a lot that was my fault. Let’s start with the article—you don’t have to worry. I talked to Tonia and got the whole story, as I should have done from the beginning. Her ‘source’ was a disgruntled former employee. She can’t find a single thing on your employers—they’re very good people. There will be no article.”
“Oh, thank you,” she said, relief lifting her spirits, even though she was still numb about his presence here.
He lifted a hand and cupped her cheek, brushing his thumb across her lips, searching for something in her eyes. Lulu stared back at him, wondering how things could have gone so crazy, how having a wild affair could have led her to acknowledge a truth she’d run from her entire life.
She loved this man. She wanted him for her very own, for as long as she could have him.
When his tender smile widened, she got the feeling he’d found whatever it as he’d been searching for in her face.
“Next, I don’t want to have a secret affair with you anymore,” he told her.
Lulu flinched, feeling like he’d slapped her. Whatever she’d expected him to say, it wasn’t that.
She swallowed, hard, trying to remain calm. Not that Chaz didn’t have the right to dump her—she’d acted like a jealous fishwife, when the only title he’d ever offered her was bedmate. Still, a part of her had hoped it wouldn’t be that easy for him to give her up. And her heart, which she’d hoped had begun to mend, split apart all over again.
Damn it, loving this man was painful. Especially now that he had come to end things once and for all.
