I'll Be Home for Christmas

by Debbie Macomber

  She eyed the parka. Mr. Cox lying in the snow without his coat. “I’m thinking this is some Christmas.”

  “How were you planning to spend the holidays?”

  Adelaide hadn’t decided. Since Mark’s death she generally volunteered at a homeless shelter on Christmas morning, to remind herself that she should be grateful for what she had. Then she went to her former in-laws’ for dinner. But visiting the Fairfaxes wasn’t the same without Mark. His older brother had remarried and had an obnoxious stepson who loved to bait her on political issues. Mark’s mother’s health was deteriorating, so she was getting cranky and inflexible and spent most of the dinner berating her stepgrandson. And Mark’s father remained as uncommunicative as ever. These days, Adelaide felt like a stranger when she went there. Until she got stranded and couldn’t see anybody even if she wanted to, she’d actually been thinking she might work as if it were any other day. She’d told herself she’d get more done without all the interruptions. “With Mark’s family, I guess.”

  “You’re still close?”

  “It’s only been two and a half years.” Only? Those two and a half years had seemed like an eternity. But that response saved her from having to answer more directly. They’d never been close; they were simply all she had. “What about you?” she asked.

  “My kids are expecting me to be home.”

  “Do you have dinner at your place?”

  “Yeah.” He surprised her with a disarming smile. “I’m hoping I’ve got a few more years before either of them marry and Christmas becomes a negotiation.”

  Adelaide could picture the domesticity of the scene—the roaring fire, the eggnog served in wineglasses, the laughter over dinner—and had to suppress a twinge of jealousy. The Donahues no longer had Chloe, which was heartbreaking. But they still had one another. “Who does the cooking?”

  “I’ve hired someone to help.”

  “A woman?”

  He glanced at her. “Yeah, a woman. Does it matter?”

  She wasn’t sure why it seemed important to clarify that. “I’ve just...had trouble finding the right person to help me with the same kind of thing,” she said, but she didn’t really need anyone to cook or clean. She wasn’t home long enough to get her house dirtier than what the maid service could manage each Saturday. The dry cleaner handled most of the laundry. And it didn’t make sense to hire a cook for one person who was gone most of the time and had a microwave available when she wasn’t. She’d just thought it would be nice to have someone waiting for her at the end of the day.

  She’d once interviewed a few applicants, but it seemed far too pathetic to pay for a warm smile, a “welcome home” and a TV companion. So she usually stayed at her office until she was too tired to do anything except listen to the news before bed.

  “A friend recommended her to me,” he explained.

  “She doesn’t mind working on Christmas?”

  “Look what I found!” He held up a first-aid kit.

  “That’s great,” she said, but she didn’t see how a few bandages would make much difference to them. Either they’d be rescued before they froze to death—or they wouldn’t.

  He rooted around some more while she continued to ponder the woman who cooked his Christmas dinner.

  “So...does she?” she asked when the conversation lapsed.

  He was on his stomach, riffling through a compartment that was so smashed he couldn’t get much out. “Does she what?”

  “Mind working on Christmas Day.”

  “I guess not. She doesn’t have to. It’s her choice.”

  “Doesn’t she have family of her own?”

  “She’s never been married.”

  Adelaide’s feet were beginning to tingle and burn. They hurt—but she hoped the return of sensation was a good sign. “Does she eat with you, too?”

  “Yeah. Then we exchange gifts and she goes to visit some distant relatives.”

  Adelaide drew her knees to her chest. There was something about this cook woman that bothered her, but she couldn’t put her finger on why. “So you get her a gift?”

  “Of course. Wouldn’t you?” He groaned as he strained to pull out a blanket.

  “How old is she?”

  “Maybe if I had a hatchet...”

  “How old is she?” Adelaide repeated.

  “At least twenty-five.”

  “So she’s not matronly Alice from The Brady Bunch.”

  He laughed. “Definitely not.”

  Definitely not? “What’d you get her this year?”

  “I’m not sure. I think my daughter picked out a nice purse.”

  “Nice” meant expensive, at least in Maxim Donahue’s vocabulary. Adelaide had never seen him wear anything that wasn’t the best money could buy. She wondered what this young housekeeper would think of receiving a Gucci or Dolce bag. “Sounds like she does a fine job.”

  He didn’t answer. He’d found a box of matches and was trying to light one. “Damn, they’re ruined.”

  No fire. No heat. No help.

  Adelaide pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes and brought the conversation back to Christmas dinner. “What time do you usually eat?”

  “Midafternoon. You?”

  She ignored the question. “That means she stays with you most of the day.”

  He straightened as much as possible in the upside-down aisle of the shattered plane. “Why are you so interested in my housekeeper?”

  Adelaide pulled her coat tighter. “It just seems...like an odd situation.”

  “It’s not odd. She cooks and I pay her.”

  “And she spends most of her Christmas with you, even though she’s only twenty-five!”

  He angled his head to look at her through the crack between two suspended seats. “Okay, now I see where you’re going. But don’t get too excited, Candidate Fairfax. You’ll have nothing to report to the press when we get back, because I’m not having an affair with the hired help.”

  “I’m not digging for dirt!”

  “Then why would you care if my housekeeper is young, attractive and unmarried?”

  Adelaide forgot about her prickling feet. “You didn’t tell me she was attractive.”

  “Well, she is.”

  “How attractive?”

  Victory lit his eyes. “My housekeeper, Rosa, is nearly three hundred pounds, at least fifty-five years old and stays with us because she’s supposed to. She’s live-in help. Except for the relatives I mentioned, the rest of her family remained in Chile when she immigrated—legally—thirty-five years ago.”

  Adelaide rocked back. “You set me up! What a jerk!”

  A wicked grin curved his lips. “You knew it was me last night and you enjoyed it, anyway, didn’t you?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she grumbled.

  “In the cave,” he said. “I’m saying there were moments you enjoyed our lovemaking even knowing I wasn’t Mark. You—”

  “Stop it.” She scowled. “You’re deluded.”

  He lowered his voice. “Am I?”

  “Of course.” She met his eyes because she wanted him to believe her; she wanted to believe what she was saying, too. Crediting all that passion to fantasy made everything so much...simpler. But she was having too many flashbacks. His hands cupping her face with palms too large to be Mark’s. His mouth on her breast, warming her just when she thought she’d never be warm again. The sounds he’d made, the words he’d whispered. It was all unique to him.

  “Would it hurt so much to admit it?” he asked.

  She didn’t answer.

  “I knew it was you,” he added.

  “But it could’ve been anyone, remember?”

  An expression of chagrin wiped the subtly coaxing sm
ile from his face. “Could’ve been, but wasn’t.”

  “I thought we decided to forget about last night, pretend it never happened.”

  “Some of us are better at pretending than others,” he muttered. He was trying to hang a blanket across the opening to keep out the snow and cold.

  “Was there a lot of blood?” she asked as she watched him.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Mr. Cox.”

  The blanket he’d anchored on one end fell, forcing him to start over. “No.”

  “What killed him?”

  He sighed but shifted to the other side. “A head injury, I think. I didn’t want to look too closely.”

  She could understand that. He was wearing the man’s boots. “Right.”

  “We have a total of four blankets. Well, three,” he corrected, “if you don’t include this one.”

  “That’s better than none,” she said, but she couldn’t manage any enthusiasm. She had yet to hear the swoop of a helicopter, which meant the Civil Air Patrol or whoever was out there searching for them, probably wouldn’t make it today. Temperatures were falling as it grew dark. And the wind was picking up.

  Remembering the hopelessness they’d faced immediately following the crash, she shivered. In an hour or so they’d lose what little sunlight they had.

  “What time is it?” she asked.

  He checked his watch. “Almost four.”

  They’d been in subzero weather for nearly twenty-four hours. “How’re your feet?”

  “I don’t know,” he said with a shrug. “I can’t feel them. What about yours?”

  “They burn.” She chafed them, hoping to relieve the pain. “Did you ever hear about that little boy, back in the eighties, who survived in these mountains for five days? He did it alone. Both his parents died on impact.”

  “I’d rather not remember that, thanks.”

  “He made it out. They found him.”

  “He lost his legs.”

  “He’s now a successful businessman.”

  “So you were being optimistic in bringing it up?”

  No, she was considering how she’d deal with something so traumatic, if she could deal with it. “Here, let me help—”

  He lifted a hand. “Stay where you are and keep covered.”

  “But it’s snowing again.” Which would make the crash site that much harder to spot, even if rescuers could get a helicopter in the sky.

  “Other than hunkering down in here, there’s nothing we can do—at least not until morning.” He finally managed to block most of the opening, which cut down on the wind. “We’ll be okay,” he said over his shoulder as he finished.

  She nodded, but that wasn’t enough for him. Squeezing through the narrow passage, he crouched in front of her and raised her chin so she had to meet his eyes. “We’ll be okay... Adelaide.” The way he said her name made it a challenge. He wanted to see if she’d object to his use of it, but she didn’t. It still brought memories she’d rather forget, but he’d done too much for her; she had no right to complain about anything.

  “Okay.”

  A day’s beard growth—something she’d never seen on him before—covered his lower jaw, and his hair fell across his forehead in windblown tufts. She liked him this way. In a suit, he was too suave, too perfect, too...formidable. Or maybe it was just that she preferred a more rugged form of masculinity because she dealt with men in suits every day.

  “Great.”

  “I—Let’s take inventory, see what we have.” She pulled out of his grasp.

  He didn’t immediately move. She could feel his gaze lingering on her but pretended not to, and he eventually turned to his cache. “We’ve got a sleeping bag, some wool blankets, a pair of snowshoes, two boxes of matches—which are no good because they got wet—half a dozen colored smoke bombs—which we can’t light because we don’t have matches—and rations.”

  “Rations?” Adelaide didn’t think she’d ever been so hungry.

  “Looks like military stuff.”

  “So it’s freeze-dried?”

  “Some of it.” He opened a brown cardboard box the size of a large shoe box. “We’ve got bottled water, Cup-a-Soup, hot-chocolate mix, biscuits, cooked rice, granola bars, crackers and cheese, chewing gum, chicken pâté, orange-drink powder, a tin of tuna fish, fruit snacks, pork and beans and some condiments.”

  “That’s a lot to fit in a box that size.”

  “They’re not the largest portions I’ve ever seen.” He slanted it so she could take a peek inside. “But we should have enough.”

  Maybe. That depended on how long they had to survive out here.

  Eight

  They’d eaten the pork and beans for dinner and then drank some water, but now that the sun had gone down, they sat in the pitch-black, chewing gum and talking to keep their spirits up. Adelaide was across the aisle from him in the sleeping bag. He was wrapped in the blankets. But it was getting so incredibly cold he knew they’d soon have to huddle together. He would’ve suggested it already. They’d both be more comfortable if they gave in and made the most of what they had in each other. But he was afraid she’d assume he was using their situation as an excuse to touch her again, probably because he wanted to touch her again and shut out the desperation of their situation, the same way they had last night.

  “Do you miss her?” It was Adelaide who broke the silence that had fallen since Maxim had said he didn’t think this storm would be as bad as the last one. The rising wind seemed to contradict him, but he felt it was more important to remain positive than to acknowledge reality.

  “Who?” His mind was on his girls and whether or not they’d been notified that he hadn’t reached L.A. Megan and Callie were in school at San Diego State, but they’d be home next week, just in time for Christmas.

  “Chloe,” she said.

  Her mention of his late wife drew him back to the conversation. “Why do you want to know?”

  “I guess I’m wondering whether you’re as impervious as you seem.”

  Impervious wasn’t the right word. But this wasn’t a subject he had any desire to discuss, so he tried to dodge it by answering her question with one of his own. “What do you think?”

  “It’s hard to tell. You don’t reveal much emotion. Unless you’re angry. I can always tell when you’re angry.”

  He hadn’t realized she watched him closely enough to be aware of his personal habits. He’d made an art out of pretending he didn’t notice her. For the most part, he even tried to convince himself of that. What she called “anger” was actually frustration, because he felt envious of a man he didn’t even respect.

  “How can you tell?”

  “There’s a muscle in your jaw that tightens, and your eyes glitter with hate,” she said.

  Not hate—determination. She was wrong again. But at least he wasn’t as transparent as he sometimes feared. “When have I been angry around you?”

  “You’re always angry when you’re around me,” she said with a laugh.

  Apparently, she had no idea how hard he worked not to betray the fact that he was attracted to her. When they were in a room together, he had difficulty looking anywhere else. It was as if he could feel every breath she took, no matter how many people were crowded between them. It wasn’t until she’d decided to run against him that he’d begun to dislike her. When she jumped into the race, he’d been almost as relieved as he’d been worried.

  “I think you’re mistaking preoccupation for anger.” He tried to sound as indifferent as possible.

  “Maybe.”

  He couldn’t tell if she believed him or not.

  “Are you going to answer my question?” she asked.

  “About Chloe?”

 
“Yes.”

  “I miss her for the sake of my children.” He hoped that would suffice. When it came to his late wife, his emotions were too confused to analyze. Her perpetually negative outlook had made him unhappy. But they’d had children before their marriage completely fell apart so he’d decided to stick it out in spite of her instability and neediness. And then she’d been diagnosed with cancer and somehow he’d felt responsible, as if wishing to be rid of her had made it come to pass. Trying to turn pity and compassion into love hadn’t succeeded. He’d fallen short, been unable to do it, even for his children. Sometimes he still felt as though he wore a scarlet letter on his chest—a C for callous.

  “You weren’t in love with her.”

  “My decision to stay with her had nothing to do with my political aspirations, if that’s what you’re driving at.”

  “You stayed because of Megan and Callie?”

  He doubted she’d believe him, but it was the truth. “Yes.”

  “That’s how you made carrying on after her death look so easy.”

  Guilt washed over him. He hadn’t been capable of mourning Chloe the way he’d wanted to, the way a husband should mourn the loss of his wife, especially one who’d died in such sad circumstances. He’d never even hinted that she was a burden. And yet he couldn’t deny that there were moments when he recalled how much she’d changed after the birth of their second child, how difficult she’d become, and was glad to have her gone. She must have known he was merely tolerating her or she wouldn’t have taken her own life.

  What did that say about him?

  “Just because we didn’t share the same closeness you and Mark did doesn’t mean it was easy to watch her suffer. When I learned what she was facing, I would’ve traded places with her if I could.”

  She didn’t respond right away. When she spoke, she didn’t question what he’d said, as he expected. She made an admission. “Mark and I were having problems when he died, too.”

  The frank honesty of those words surprised him. Did she know about Mark? Did she suspect? “What kind of problems?”

  “I’m not sure exactly. He got so wrapped up in politics he grew almost...secretive.” She gave an awkward laugh. “I was beginning to wonder if he was seeing another woman.”