He gave her one right back.
“Gettin’ kind of steamy in here,” Morris said. “Do you two need to go upstairs?”
“Yeah, I think we do,” David said. He pulled his wife up from the couch. “We got better things to do than sit around and talk.”
Better things. Livi would have liked to have better things to do, too.
So, from the way he looked at her, would Morris.
“I should turn in,” she said.
“I guess that means I’m leaving.”
“I guess so,” she said. “Anyway, you have to work tomorrow, right?”
“Yeah. Wanna get pizza after I get off?”
Lately it seemed she and Morris were drifting into the habit of spending more time together, and that was problematic. The more time they spent together the more it could feel like they were edging toward becoming a couple. At least to Morris. Of course, she enjoyed his company, but she couldn’t let them wander too far down the road toward couplehood.
“Thanks for the offer,” she said, “but I’ve got too much going on tomorrow.” She had to make turkey soup and do laundry. And decorate. That could take... Okay she’d be done by evening. But she did have a mystery novel to finish.
She hoped Morris didn’t ask her what all she had to do.
He didn’t, and he hid his disappointment quickly, but she’d still seen it in his eyes, had seen that quick frown. Poor Morris. He wanted his princess as much as she wanted her prince.
“That was fun tonight, though,” she said in an effort to make them both feel better.
“Yeah, it was,” he said, resigned to his fate of being dateless on a Saturday night.
Well, so was she.
She walked him to the door, said a platonic good-night and then went back into the living room, picked up her phone and plopped on the couch to scroll through her Facebook feeds. The last thing she was in a hurry to do was go upstairs, pass her brother’s old bedroom, and hear him and Terryl in there doing “other things.”
The next day, after her brother and sister-in-law had left, after the laundry was done and the soup was made, Livi pulled out the decorations, happy to have some time to reminisce. She set up the nativity set that came out every year, setting it out on the fireplace mantel along with red ribbon and fir boughs and then hung the stockings her mother had made for her and Dad and David. They were starting to look a little worn but Livi didn’t care. It showed they’d been well used and enjoyed.
As she dug the ceramic church from the box of decorations, she could almost see her mother setting it on the dining room table, nestling it in a bed of cotton snow and surrounding it with vintage candles shaped like choirboys that Livi’s grandmother had collected in the fifties.
“The light of the world,” Mom would murmur. “Don’t ever forget that, darling. And you be sure to keep your light shining.”
“I’m trying, Mom,” she whispered.
She hung the framed movie poster for It’s a Wonderful Life that she and David had given their mother one Christmas. It had been Mom’s favorite movie. Then she set out candles, Santas and angels, and hung the ornaments on the tree her father had set up, each one evoking a special memory. There was her “Baby’s First Christmas” ornament. And the angel someone gave her mother after Grandma died. There were the last two of the Italian blown glass ornaments Grandma had given her mother and father for their first Christmas.
By now Terryl and David had probably bought their tree. She’d mentioned planning to get one on the way home Friday and then decorate it Saturday afternoon. Of course, David would help her trim it. He’d been well trained. Their family had always trimmed the tree together.
Now it was something Livi did alone. She longed for that someone special to help her decorate, someone she could create Christmas memories with.
Finally, the house was all dressed up for Christmas. Almost. The only thing left was the mistletoe, a glitter-dusted silk sprig atop an acrylic jewel. She held it up and looked at it, debating. It seemed pointless to hang it.
In the end she did, simply because she couldn’t bring herself not to. And as she did she made a wish. Bring me a Prince Charming this Christmas, Santa.
* * *
Guy drove home from the slopes, tired but rested. A day of snowboarding had been exactly what he needed to recharge his batteries.
Normally after spending Turkey Day with the bros he’d have gone to see his mother. But this year Mom had been on a cruise with her second husband.
He didn’t begrudge her that. She deserved to enjoy herself and he was glad to see her happy.
Widowhood hadn’t agreed with her. When Dad died she’d lost her sparkle and her smile had shrunk right along with her dress size. She remained interested in what her boys were doing but had little enough to say about herself when any of them called to check on her. She sold the house and downsized not only her living quarters but her life.
“Mom, you should get out and do something,” Guy had told her once.
“Do what?”
“I don’t know. Something.”
“I have plenty to do, dear. I see the grandchildren. I have my friends.”
But you don’t have a life. “How often do you do things with them?” Guy had persisted.
“Often enough.”
Whatever that meant.
“She’s fine,” Mike had said, waving away Guy’s concerns. “She’s got all of us to keep her busy.”
Babysitting. Big whoop.
“Let her live her life the way she wants.”
So Guy had, even when she finally found Del.
That had been two years ago. His brothers had been suspicious, certain the man was a fortune hunter out to get Mom’s money. But it turned out Del had plenty of his own. Which was a good thing because Mom liked to live in style. These days she drove a new Range Rover, went to New York to shop and take in a musical, and took a cruise at least once a year with her new husband.
“I’m planning on you coming for Christmas, though,” she’d said to Guy when he’d learned of her plans. “I promise not to make fruitcake.”
And so it had been decided.
“I gotta do Christmas with the in-laws,” Bryan had said. “I’ll go down for New Year’s.”
“You can represent all of us,” Mike had said. Mike still looked on Del as an interloper—who knew what Freud would say about that?—and refused to go down, saying, “I’ll take her to Cabo in January.”
That was just as well. Mike wouldn’t exactly be good company. It wasn’t happy holidays with him lately. It had been hard listening to him trash his soon-to-be ex while he drank himself into a stupor at Bryan’s, where they’d gathered for Thanksgiving.
“Don’t ever get married, bro,” he’d slurred as Guy drove him home. “Women’ll break your heart and decimate your bank account.” He waved a finger back and forth. “And don’t think that you’ll find the one exception. There is no such thing.”
As if he needed his brother to tell him? He’d already learned that.
He was pulling into his garage when a text came through from Hudson, whom he’d met earlier in the month at a fund-raising event for the Seattle Art Museum, one of the few charities Hightower still supported. She was divorced, in her late thirties and claimed to be an avid skier. They hadn’t hit the slopes together yet, but had met for coffee a couple of times. It had been all he could squeeze in. Still, he kind of liked her, so some time on the slopes in the future was a definite possibility.
Come save me. I have leftover pumpkin cheesecake tempting me, she texted.
Couldn’t have a girl falling into temptation. At least not cheesecake temptation. Be there in an hour, he texted back.
He hadn’t been to her place yet, so she gave him her address to put in his GPS.
He stored his snowboard, cleaned up, grabbed a
bottle of wine and then made his way to her house in West Seattle.
“Nice place,” he said as she let him in. Nice-looking woman, too. Her hair was dark and long. Tight jeans and a sweater showed off a great body. The woman had a rack on her.
“It’ll do for now. I’m going to do some serious renovation in the new year.”
“A fixer-upper, huh?”
“Yeah, right now it’s a bit of a dog, but the bones are good. I never really liked it—Sean inherited it from his grandmother when she died and we’d been renting it out—but when he offered it as part of the divorce settlement I figured why not. I think I can turn a nice profit once I’ve renovated it.”
Sean’s grandma’s old house and now it was Hudson’s little moneymaker. Mike’s bitter warning popped up in Guy’s mind like a road sign. Warning. Dangerous Curves Ahead.
Suddenly Guy wasn’t so interested in cheesecake. He stayed awhile, listened while she went into detail about how she was going to replace the old brick mantel with something new and sleek—what would old Sean’s grandma have thought of that?—and redo the entire kitchen, then he suddenly remembered some work that had to get done before he went into the office the next morning.
“No. Really?” A full lower lip went out in a sexy pout. “I was thinking we could spend a little more time getting to know each other better.” They’d been sitting on the couch, and now she set her glass of wine on the coffee table and leaned in toward him. He caught a whiff of perfume.
Too late. Hearing about the spoils she’d gotten in the divorce had been a buzzkill. Mike was right. Women were all alike.
4
Livi looked at the figures on her computer screen and plowed her fingers through her hair. “We may as well change our name from Christmas from the Heart to Christmas from Half a Heart.”
“It’s not that bad,” said Bettina.
But it was and they both knew it. “We’re only going to be able to do half as much this year as we did last year. We’re hobbled!”
“We’ll still be giving people more help and encouragement than they’d get if we weren’t in business.”
“Business,” Livi said in disgust. “Don’t bring that word anywhere near our organization. It only makes me think of Hightower. Oooh, I hope that horrible man is plagued with nightmares this Christmas, that he sees ghosts even scarier than the ones Scrooge saw.”
“Livi,” Bettina said gently, “you need to let this go. He made a business decision. It was nothing personal.”
“All business is personal,” Livi retorted. She heaved a sigh. “But you’re right. I need to let it go.”
So what if the man had called her a leech? She knew she wasn’t a leech. She was working hard to help people get through tough times, have hope, feel better about themselves. What was Guy Hightower doing?
* * *
“I don’t know why I bother to give you reports if you’re going to ignore my advice,” Guy said in irritation.
He was sitting in his brother’s office in the Hightower Building. Hightower Enterprises spread out over the entire top floor. Mike’s corner office had the best view, the Seattle waterfront. The average person would see the fancy building, the plush business office environs and think Bill Gates had nothing on the Hightowers. But the company wasn’t nearly as healthy as it looked. Still, Guy had hopes that they could turn things around if they were careful and shifted their focus in a new direction. If his brother would listen to him.
It was a long shot. Mike wasn’t the best at listening. Maybe that went with being the eldest. When they were growing up, he’d been good at watching out for Bryan and Guy on the slopes, giving them pointers on how to improve their basketball game or impress girls. And, of course, he’d been good at bossing them around. Theoretically, he should have been good at running a company. He wasn’t.
He looked the part of a successful businessman though—expensive haircuts and custom-tailored suits from Beckett & Robb. A watch that one of their middle-management employees would have to spend six months’ worth of paychecks on.
Not that Guy begrudged him his fancy trimmings. He just wanted him to live up to the image. Really, when you were on a sinking ship who cared what was on your wrist?
“I’m not ignoring your advice,” Mike insisted. “You’re right. We need to diversify. But we can’t do that until we get rid of some of the deadweight, and right now there’s not a rush to buy what we’ve got to sell.”
No surprise there. Guy had lobbied strongly for dumping some of their less profitable businesses, for hiring more tech support for others and growing their online presence in order to compete with giants like Amazon. But they’d dragged their feet too long, and many of the businesses the company owned were struggling, shrinking their profit margins. The retail spaces in their mini mall were only half-filled and two of their commercial real estate projects were in trouble.
“We wouldn’t be in this mess if you’d listened to me three years ago,” Guy said, not for the first time.
“Well, I didn’t. And quit harping on it. My God, you sound like Bethany.”
“Maybe if you’d listened to her once in a while, too, you guys wouldn’t be splitting now.”
Mike’s eyes narrowed. “Do you have anything useful to say?”
“Yeah. It’s all there in the report, so how about you actually read it? If we put my plan into action we might still be able to pull out of this tailspin.”
The narrow stink-eye stare vanished. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“If that happens, little bro, you can count on a raise. Hell, we all can.” That was Mike, always looking for the quick payoff.
“No, we can put the money back into the company,” Guy corrected him.
What a mistake it had been to put Mike in charge. He was incapable of seeing the big picture.
Not for the first time, Guy thought about defecting from the family business. Anyplace else he’d be pulling in twice what he was now. And speaking of pulling, working with his brothers was pulling him down. But it was hard to break loose from the generational beast that was Hightower Enterprises.
In all fairness, that same beast had allowed Guy to attend prep school and an Ivy League college. It had allowed him to live in the family home on Lake Washington and enjoy a summer place on Hood Canal. It had given him ski trips to Aspen and Whistler and European vacations. It had bought the family place in Vail. It had defined his life growing up and it defined who he was as an adult. So, while he resented the beast he continued to serve it. He supposed he always would.
Some people might not think him very noble. Some people might think of him as a greedy businessman, a corporate slave. But then some people might be suffering from class envy. Some people might not get the big picture, see the jobs his company provided. If they did, then they’d be grateful for whatever donations they got for their pet charities.
* * *
December had now officially arrived, and with it came all the busyness of the season, doubled for Livi. In addition to baking cookies to freeze for later and finishing up the last of her shopping—which she vowed to get an early start on every year and never did—came all the to-dos associated with Christmas from the Heart.
The first Friday in the month she sat with Bettina, going over their checklist.
“We don’t have as many entries in the fruitcake competition this year,” Bettina reported.
“It’s still early. They have until next week to sign up,” Livi said. “Remember, we usually get several coming in at the last minute. Where are we with our donations for the silent auction?”
Bettina consulted her notes. “For gift baskets, so far we have one from the Candy Shoppe, Tillie’s, of course, The Bath Shop, Robinson’s Hardware, and a gift basket full of Tupperware from Trudy Olsen, and one from Jillian George with a collection of her books as well as chocolate and champa
gne.”
“That one’s always popular. What about Calories Don’t Count? I talked with Carol last month and she said she was going to do something.”
“She is. This year instead of a baked goodies basket she’s doing a giant holiday-themed cake.”
“Ooh, we’ll have to give that a spotlight location on the auction table. I’ve got gift cards from Little Italy, certificates for a free massage from Wellness Massage, a free styling and cut from Babes, and a free lube job from Pine River Automotive. And The Sportsman is offering two hundred dollars’ worth of merchandise.”
“Jimmy called while you were out and said Family Tree will donate a fifty-dollar gift card.”
Fifty dollars to spend at the town’s favorite local restaurant would also be a popular item. “Good,” Livi said. “I’m glad they came through. And Jimmy finally committed to being one of our fruitcake judges, so now we’ve got our three.” In addition to the restaurateur they also had Tillie and Carol Klaussen, who owned Calories Don’t Count. Livi hoped they’d get their usual large turnout for the event. It was their biggest fund-raiser, and heaven knew they needed the money.
They moved on to discuss the community Christmas Day dinner. “We’re not going to be able to buy as much food this year,” Livi said with a sigh. “Thanks to the company that shall not be named,” she added with a frown. “But at least we’re good on the Christmas stockings.” Some of the dollar stores in larger towns and cities had come through, and between their contributions and other donations, Christmas from the Heart would be giving away nice, full stockings. “Have you had a chance to see who’s coming to help stuff them?”
“Yep,” said Bettina. “We’ve got you, me, Kate, Jean and Annette.”
Her faithful crew. Those women had been good friends to both her and her organization over the years.
Livi’s cell phone summoned her. It was Morris, making sure they were still on for picking up donations the following day. They had gotten a toy store in a neighboring town to contribute and had to hit that as well as several supermarkets that were giving them a deal on frozen turkeys, which she and Morris would take straight to the spare chest freezer in Tillie’s kitchen that she let them use. Closer to Christmas they’d get transferred to the walk-in cooler to thaw for the big day.
Christmas from the Heart Page 4
