Midnight and Mistletoe At Cedarwood Lodge

by Rebecca Raisin

  And Bonnie Tyler, and you’ll be back to sobbing into your wine glass. Shut up, brain.

  Kai gave me an understanding smile. “It’s like we’re big kids at camp, having the most magical time, and then it’s going to be over, and become a distant memory that makes us smile. Cedarwood certainly gets under your skin.”

  “It does…” It was bittersweet, hearing him talk in such a way. “I wonder what it’ll be like having real guests stay here? It’s not like I can force them out of bed to have coffee with me, or yell at them for leaving their clothes everywhere. I’m really going to miss having Amory here.” And you.

  “You’ll get used to it. Soon you’ll be so busy you’ll fall into bed and forget you ever lived any other way.”

  “I don’t think so. These times where we’ve shaped the lodge, and all come together to make things happen… it feels so special, and so different. I don’t know how long I’ll have Amory and Cruz for, not really, and the same with Isla and Micah. And then there’s you. I just hope that even when you leave, you’ll all come back some day. That we’ll make it a tradition to celebrate Christmas or New Year’s together.” I swallowed a lump in my throat. I wanted everything to stay like it was, right then, at that moment.

  “Count me in,” Kai said.

  “You’d come all the way back here every Christmas?”

  “Why do you act so surprised?”

  I shrugged. Kai could be so hard to read at times and I often couldn’t distinguish between what I wanted him to say and what he really said. “I just am.”

  Quietly he turned to me and put a finger under my chin, tilting it up so that we were gazing into each other’s eyes. “Clio, you have no idea about how people see you, do you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “People want to be around you. That’s why they come here and they don’t want to leave. It’s not just the scenery, the picture perfect setting, it’s you as well. You paint this picture of a different kind of life, and you sprinkle your magic dust over it, and they’re spellbound. People want to be where you are. Cedarwood has its own pull, but then there’s you…”

  I let out a nervous laugh. “I…”

  “You’re intoxicating, and you have no idea how special you are. When we renovated before did you not see everyone coming to you every five seconds with inane questions they knew the answers to? Six phone calls from one painter, to query the color you told him a hundred times already? The way they tell you joke after joke just to hear you laugh?”

  I double blinked, sure he was making it up. The team was tight knit, and we’d had a barrel of laughs. “They were just good guys.”

  “They were. But you have this extraordinary power over people, Clio. You make them want to be in your spotlight. They want to be your friend, your confidante. Anything to be near you.”

  I couldn’t reconcile the person Kai was speaking about with myself.

  His finger smoothed a trace down my cheek and I felt myself lean into his warmth. “Believe it, Clio.”

  Any rational thought escaped, and I was lost in his deep ocean blue eyes. Kiss him, Clio. Before I could debate with myself, I reached up to cup his face and pressed my lips against his. A frisson of desire raced through me, provoking jelly-legs. Kai stepped closer, pushing his body hard against mine, and kissed me back deeper and more slowly. Heat flooded me, and it was all I could do not to gasp when he broke away, with heavy lidded eyes. How did he learn to kiss like that? It took my breath away.

  A second later Amory appeared in the doorway. “We found the cutest cottage… Oh, um, never mind,” she said, ducking back behind the door.

  Kai dropped his hands and laughed, calling out to her. “It’s OK, Amory. I’m going to help Micah and Isla with the chalets. I’ll talk to you later, Clio.” He headed out, giving me a look that said this isn’t over as he walked away.

  Knowing what was about to come I went to follow, but Amory hooked my elbow as I walked past, “You’re not getting away that easy,” she said, eyes bright. “What happened? Your cheeks are rosy pink and you’ve got those dazed-up manga eyes happening. He kissed you, didn’t he?”

  “I kissed him!”

  “And?” she said, hopping from foot to foot with excitement.

  “And then again you walked in! Do you have some kind of radar?”

  She cupped her face. “God, I want to slap my own face! We need a signal, like a napkin on the door handle, or a…”

  I laughed. “Amory, it wasn’t planned! It was a spontaneous thing! It’s not like I plan to swoon my way around the lodge, flinging myself against every surface so he can ravish me!”

  “Why not?” she asked, her face a mask of seriousness. “It’s your lodge!”

  I sat at the kitchen table and cradled my head. “Urgh. I’m thirty-three, almost thirty-four in fact, and I’m acting like a love-struck fool. He completely befuddles me, and the brain in my head goes on vacation.”

  “Lust, pure and simple,” she said with a firm nod. “I’ve seen it before; you’ll survive.”

  “It’s more than lust,” I wanted to snatch the words back as soon as they escaped. “Well, what I mean to say is, it’s just, it’s not…”

  She rolled her eyes and sighed dramatically. “Clio, you like the damn man, and he clearly likes you. It’s really a very simple equation. Girl tells boy, or boy tells girl, hey, I really like you, and I want to take this kissing thing a few steps further…”

  I held up a hand. “Oh, my god, please don’t school me on how to date a guy.”

  She huffed. “Someone needs to!”

  “They do not!”

  She stared me down, and I knew by the set of her lips she had a trump card. Damn it, she always had one up her sleeve. “OK, tell me the last guy you admitted your feelings to?”

  “You want me to go back through my past boyfriends?”

  She wrinkled her brow. “Clio, you dated them for about five seconds. I don’t think you committed to anyone in the whole time you were in New York!”

  Damn it, she had a memory like an elephant. “There’s no point dating someone when they’re not The One. Why waste my time?”

  “Stop trying to avoid the question. Who have you ever told that you’re keen on them? Given them the green light? Fluttered those silky long lashes and said with real words, ‘I, Clio Winters, think you’re a bit of all right, and I’d like to invite you to share my thousand thread count cotton sheets for the evening’. Give me a name. One name.”

  I let out a peal of laughter. So I really liked expensive sheets? They made good bedfellows! “I can rely on my sheets, you know? They’re always there, just how I left them. I get into bed and they wrap their silky threads around…”

  “Stop! You’re doing it again! When have you ever admitted to any man how you felt? Have you ever?”

  I considered it. Had I ever told anyone how I felt without knowing for sure how they felt about me first? There’d really been no one serious except for Timothy… Puppy love, I reminded myself. Too many years ago to count.

  “You know, I don’t think I have.” This time I stopped her from interrupting by placing a hand over her mouth. “And that’s only because they didn’t set my world on fire. My heart didn’t race, I didn’t think poetically. If I was away from them, they didn’t cross my mind. Shouldn’t real love be arresting, like stop you in your tracks, make your heart sing, your body tingle, make everything else seem unimportant? And anyway,” I took my hand from her mouth. “Why does it matter? You’ve distracted me on purpose to hear me blather on like a fool.”

  “Why does it matter? Because Kai is exactly like you! He’s not going to admit to it, and you’re pussyfooting around him, and I want to grab you two and bash your heads together.”

  I just stared at her, so she sighed and continued: “You’re both happy sneaking kisses here and there, but neither of you are brave enough to admit how you feel! He’ll leave, and you’ll pine for him. Admit, ev
en just to me, that he does make your heart sing, your body tingle, that’s how you know what real love feels like.” She folded her arms triumphantly.

  I still wasn’t convinced. “He did say the most beautiful things just now, but it was like he was talking about another girl,” I said, slowly.

  She laughed. “Oh my god! He’s trying to let you know, it’s OK to love him! GOD, WOMAN!”

  Was I that bad at reading his signals? Sure, I’d made the leap and kissed him a few times, it was impossible not to. But love was so complicated! Could I even call it love? This whole love scenario was so much easier when it was about someone else.

  “You see, he’s having some really huge issues with his family, and I don’t want him sort of using me as a pick-me-up and then realizing it was a mistake.”

  Just when I was hoping to change the subject Micah walked in wearing his perpetual half smirk, carrying in a parcel that had been delivered. He glanced from me to Amory and tutted, plonking himself on the seat next to me.

  “Boy talk?” he said, earnestly.

  “She’s at it again,” Amory said.

  “Oh no you don’t. Don’t think you’re talking over me again, you two.”

  They just ignored me, and continued: “So she’s kissed him again, but he’s got some family problem – I mean who doesn’t these days, but for the sake of argument, let’s roll with it – and she seems to think he thinks she’s a nice soft landing pad on which to lick his wounds, but then and once healed he’ll flit off to the never-never.”

  Micah nodded, and linked his fingers, taking his time to consider it all. “But she knows him, right? She knows he’s not exactly the love ‘em and leave ‘em type? I mean, we haven’t seen him act remotely like that, have we? He’s been almost gentlemanly with his favors, like something out of a period drama.”

  “Right? It’s amazing people like her manage to procreate. At this rate they might hold hands by 2020.”

  I held up a finger. “Aha. We’ve held hands, thank you very much.”

  They continued to ignore me and instead diagnosed my love life. “So what is her problem? Commitment-phobe?” Micah asked, wrinkling his brow.

  Amory shook her head. “Even though that’s the kind of vibe she gives out. Like, stay away, I am too busy for the likes of you, here’s me, running my business, crooning to Bonnie Tyler when I’ve had too many glasses of red wine. Here’s me buying one thousand thread count sheets online again. And so they stay away. She’s scared of rejection. Would rather keep her steely heart in one piece even if it means the only love in her life is an eighties ballad and some freshly washed Egyptian cotton.”

  “Guys, seriously, you’re not Oprah, OK? Not even Dr Phil. You’re so far off base it’s not even funny.”

  Micah gave me the sweetest smile, but it was sad too, like he could see something I couldn’t.

  “What is it, Micah?”

  The day stilled. He and Amory exchanged a glance and she nodded. “I have to go help Cruz,” she air kissed me. Micah you talk some sense into her.”

  Softly, he said, “It’s your mom, Clio. You act this way because of your mom. You don’t let any man close in case they push you away, because you grew up lonely, with a mother who was absent almost all of the time, even when she was sitting right beside you.”

  It felt like I’d been punched. It was one thing for me to recognize that but another for my best friends to notice. “It’s not because of that,” I said, thinking I’d come to terms with all of it. With Mom and everything that had happened. Or… maybe I’d been trying to heal everything too quickly? Sure, she’d admitted she hadn’t been there for me and that had helped, but had I really dealt with everything that had happened? All the years of feeling hurt and lonely. Was it time for me to finally open my heart up to someone again? Someone who could smash it into little tiny pieces?

  Chapter Nine

  At quarter to midnight, headphones in, Bonnie Tyler crooned to me as only she could. Tears stung my eyes, and I swatted at them angrily. What Micah and Amory said had shaken me up, but I knew they were speaking from a place of love. Still, it hurt. Sure I could forgive my mom as an adult, but the memory of my childhood would always be there.

  There was a light tap on the door, and I took an ear jack out. “Yes?” I called, wondering if Amory had a sixth sense when it came to me weeping away to Bonnie Tyler.

  “Up for a little midnight yoga?” Kai whispered through the crack in the door.

  I froze. Firstly, I wasn’t climbing up a snow-covered mountain, I’d be swept away in a mini avalanche I was sure of it. Second, I was a puffy-faced mess. No, I had to avoid him at all co–

  He opened the door and walked in. Damn it!

  Surveying me and the multitude of screwed-up tissues surrounding me, he frowned. “What’s wrong?”

  I took a shuddery breath, trying to formulate a lie. An eyelash malfunction had been done already so that was out. Work issues, no, he knew too much. In the end I settled for the truth.

  “Sometimes I feel like I’m the only person on the planet who doesn’t know her own mother.” I wanted to slap myself when I realized what I’d said, and to Kai of all people whose birth mother had died before he even knew about her. Wasn’t he suffering the very same fate, albeit in different circumstances? “Sorry, I mean…” I tailed off.

  “Don’t apologize.” With a smile, he walked over and settled on the bed beside me. “And why has that suddenly upset you tonight?”

  I tried not to sniffle and snort because how unattractive was that, but it was impossible. Once I started the ‘woe is me’ game it was hard to stop. “Micah and Amory were giving me a kind of pep talk, and then they mentioned that the reason I don’t really ever put myself forward…” Urgh, how to say it without mentioning Kai’s name? “Put myself out there, you know, in life, is because I’m scared of getting rejected. Which stems from the way I grew up beside my mom, but not with my mom.”

  He put an arm around me and pulled me close; leaning into his warmth, I felt calmer. “And what do you think? Is that how you feel?”

  “I guess I stopped thinking about it, because why keep reliving it? Mom was Mom, and I knew from early on things would probably never change. The thing is, I didn’t think I internalized it, and put up barriers. That came as a shock to me. But I guess it makes sense.”

  “For what it’s worth I don’t think your mom’s able to see much out of her peripheral. It’s like tunnel vision, she gets through each day the only way she knows how. But for what it counts, to me you come across like the girl who knows what she wants, but is careful and considered about it. Except maybe when you bought Cedarwood on a whim… but everything else you’ve told me about has been well thought out. I don’t think it’s necessarily a barrier, more a process of yours, and that’s OK. We all deal with things differently.”

  I closed my eyes and listened to thrum of his heart. “I know you’re right, about Mom I mean. Being back, it’s made such a difference. I can see it now and I hope together we can move past it.”

  He stroked my arm softly as we both stared off into the darkness, contemplating it all. “What about you, Kai? Have things got any clearer for you?”

  Turning to face him I realized how close we were, almost coiled together like lovers, but somehow it felt like more than that. It felt deeper, as if Kai was someone I could trust and lean on, someone who’d listen and understand when I talked.

  “Things are better for me,” he said, sighing softly. “There’s a lot to be said for having space to think. Up the mountain, where it’s just me and the birds, I realize I’m just a tiny speck in this huge, wide world. You know? So yeah, my parents could have been honest with me from the get-go, but I can’t hate them for hiding it. I get it, they would have said something like, ‘we’ll tell him when he’s old enough to understand, when he’s ten’, and then I’m suddenly ten and it’s not the right time, and then twelve and that’s not either, and before long it
’s too late, and they sleep with that knowledge every night and it eats away at them but they don’t know how to say it, how I’ll act. And so they try and forget.”

  “But then they did tell you.”

  “And look how I reacted! Which is exactly why they didn’t tell me.” He scrubbed his face with his hand. “I’ve come to terms with it, I think, more than I thought I would a few days ago anyway. Like when I hike, and I’m surrounded by the fog, the low slung clouds, I think if the worst thing that ever happens to me is knowing this secret, then I’m doing OK.”

  “We humans do like to complicate things.” In Kai’s arms the world started to make sense. Big things, past hurts, loss and loneliness dimmed, and all I could feel was his particular kind of calm washing over me. I didn’t want to say anything to ruin the moment. I was happy, just being, euphoric even, and grateful for the universe for showing me the kind of person I wanted to love. And that was Kai. I’d tell him, before he left, but not right now. Right now I wanted to enjoy this, this realization that I was ready to take a risk on love. Just the knowledge of that made me smile.

  Stars twinkled through the snow-dusted window as we lay there and I fell asleep in his arms.

  Chapter Ten

  Friday rolled around bright and clear with the snow glistening across the ground. It was one of those days that just makes you smile and was perfect for dinner with my mom – and Aunt Bessie was joining us as a last-minute surprise. It was the perfect way to finish off a long week of planning, ordering, decorating and overall panicking that we could pull off the Gastby party. As I chopped potatoes into rough cubes, certain even I couldn’t mess up mashing them, Mom was baking some chicken concoction of hers. I wasn’t sure chicken needed so long in the oven, but I kept my lips zipped. She was the one who had been taking lessons from Aunt Bessie, what did I know?

  Aunt Bessie sashayed in, kissing our cheeks and unwinding her scarf as she went. “How are my two favorite people?” she said, her voice high with excitement.