Together for Christmas

by Lisa Plumley

  So he wrenched his steering wheel sideways, floored the gas, and pulled into his destination fifteen minutes ahead of schedule. He might not find the Teenaged Terror of TV Specials in the first place Heather had suggested he look, but anything was better than giving in to Christmas . . . and all the syrupy, sentimental, deceitful promises that came right along with it.

  Chapter 2

  Galaxy Diner, Kismet, Michigan

  Christmas Takeover: Day 8

  When her sister had called her in a panic, warning her about some L.A.-based “hatchet man” who’d come to Kismet to shut down her part-live, part-taped holiday TV special, Kristen Miller hadn’t thought much about it. She was used to Heather acting like a drama queen. The whole world was used to Heather acting like a drama queen. After all, Heather had earned multiple accolades, bucketsful of cash, and three People’s Choice Awards for her ability to “entertain” people . . . by acting like a drama queen.

  Whether the situation called for it or not, Heather was always up for a bravura performance. She’d become famous for singing, but she’d never been limited to that. These days, more often than not, her antics involved fashion shows, dating, or just “being seen” at a fabulous party or gala red carpet.

  People loved Heather. They loved buying the things she bought, going the places she went, and saying the catchphrases she said. They loved seeing her, hearing about her, and thinking about her. They loved reading about her. They loved . . . her.

  At least most people did. On the phone, Heather was insisting that the “hatchet man” had come to Kismet to destroy her career. So he probably did not love her. Very much.

  As far as Kristen could tell, he was a minority of one.

  “The production company must have hired him,” Heather said with an Oscar-worthy tremor in her voice. “He’s here to ruin me! He’s here to torpedo my chances with the network! Forever! If he’s here, it can’t be good. It can’t be. Casey Jackson is the industry’s hit man! He’s a contract killer! You should hear the stories they tell about him! This one time, they say, he—”

  “Hold on. Take a deep breath,” Kristen interrupted. She ducked into the tiny office space she kept at the back of her diner. It was quieter there, away from the clamor of the kitchen and the din of the front of the house. “I doubt anyone is out to get you or to ruin your career. There’s probably a reasonable explanation for all of this,” she said, because nothing ever went wrong for her famous sibling. “But I’ll be on the lookout anyway. Okay? Thanks for the warning. Now, the breakfast rush is still going on and this place is packed, so I’ve really got to—”

  “You’ve got to do more than just be on the lookout!” her sister shrieked. “You’ve got to stop him for me!”

  “How am I supposed to do that?”

  “Keep him busy. Distract him. Keep him away from me, no matter what!” Heather begged. “If Casey Jackson gets his way, I’ll never get my own reality show. And you know how much I really, really want my own reality show.”

  “I know.” Her sister was fanatical about getting her own TV show (“Like the Kardashians, only classier!”). She saw her Live! from the Heartland TV special as a crucial first step—as a real-time audition and showcase. She’d talked about little else since blowing back into town. Because despite all her success and popularity, inexplicably, Heather still wasn’t satisfied.

  “I know you want that,” Kristen said gently. “I do. I hope you get it. I really do. But I don’t know how I can possibly help with this situation, except to say ‘calm down’”—here, she mimed breathing in deeply—“and try to get some perspective.”

  There was a pause. The sounds of hammering and chattering filtered over the line in the background. Heather was on set, then. Just when Kristen started thinking she’d made a dent . . .

  “I know! Feed him some of your pie!” Heather suggested brightly. “Once The Terminator has had some of your pie, he’ll—”

  “Wait. ‘The Terminator’?”

  “That’s Casey Jackson’s nickname in L.A.”

  Kristen scoffed. “It is not.”

  “Would I lie to you?”

  Hmm. Better not answer that one. Instead, in her most soothing tone, Kristen said, “My pie isn’t magical.” It was her diner’s most popular item, though. Hands down. “I can’t just feed your Terminator some pie and then have my way with him.”

  “Yes, you can!” Heather blurted. “Feed him pie! You never know until you try. That stuff is addictive. Once you give The Terminator a few bites, he’ll be putty in your hands.”

  “You are seriously overstating my culinary charms.”

  “I am not. Just don’t be fooled! He’ll seem nice. He’ll seem charming,” Heather cautioned. “But underneath it all, The Terminator has all the heart and soul of a calculator.”

  “He can’t be that bad.”

  “Oh yes, he can.” Another clatter-filled pause. Then, ominously, Heather added, “He doesn’t even like Christmas.”

  “He doesn’t like Christmas?” Kristen froze. The idea didn’t compute. “What kind of person doesn’t like Christmas?”

  “The kind of person who comes to shut down another person’s Christmas special! That’s what I’ve been telling you!”

  “Okay. So you might have a point.”

  “I know! That’s what I’ve been saying. That’s why you have to keep him away from me.”

  “Right,” Kristen said sarcastically. “With magical pie.”

  “Yes,” Heather agreed, completely oblivious to her sarcasm. She could be very single-minded when she wanted something. “Or with . . . whatever else you have available. Sure!”

  Kristen sighed. “I’m not going to let you pimp me out to some uptight, permatanned CPA type from La-La Land, Heather.”

  “Well . . . he’s not quite a CPA type,” her sister hedged, sounding vaguely pensive. “I told you, he’s a hit man. But a hit man with charisma. A killer. But with a smile.” Possibly sensing that her hyperbolic descriptions weren’t helping, Heather tried again. “I guess he’s kind of a . . . necromancer. Yeah, that’s it. A necromancer! It sounds cool, sure, but—”

  “A person who communicates with the dead?”

  “Oh. No. Is that what that means? Not that, then.” The sound of someone else chuckling came over the line. Then a swat. Blithely, Heather regrouped by offering, “He’s a magician. A sorcerer. A charmer for hire. The Terminator is like George Clooney in that movie where he goes around and fires people for a living. He’s dangerous and charismatic. He’s—”

  “George Clooney, huh? That doesn’t sound so bad. Maybe you’re overreacting. It wouldn’t be the first time.”

  “—like one of those snakes that hypnotizes you and then bites you. Poisonously bites you,” her sister said with blatant melodramatic flair. “He’s sneaky. He’s smart. You never see him coming. You just see him leaving. I’m lucky I got out alive! Someone tipped me off this morning, otherwise I would have—”

  “I’ll try to find out why he’s here,” Kristen broke in, sensing this could go on a while. “I’ll see what I can do about keeping him away from your special, too.” For instance, asking him to stay away might work, she reasoned. Telling him her sister was a temperamental artist who couldn’t “create magic” while under stress might work . . . if she could pull off calling her own sister an “artist” with a straight face. “Maybe he doesn’t even know about your budget overruns and on-set delays.”

  Heather snorted. “He knows. He knows everything.”

  “Fine. He knows everything.” The easiest way to placate her sister, Kristen had learned through long experience, was to agree with her. “Now can I get back to my customers? The diner is jammed. Some of us have to work for a living, you know.”

  “Hey! I work for a living.”

  “Of course you do. Sexy dancing is backbreaking.”

  “Har har. Just help me, okay?”

  “I already said I would.” And I never go back on my word.

  H
er sister breathed a relieved sigh. “Thank you.”

  “Don’t thank me yet. I haven’t done anything.”

  “You will. I know you will! You’re smart like that.”

  At that blatant cajolery, Kristen smiled. Living in L.A. had certainly changed her sister. When they were kids, Heather would have tried bullying her into going along with this plan. She wouldn’t have bothered with flattery.

  “You don’t have to sweet-talk me. I already said yes.”

  “But it’s true! You’re the smartest person I know!” Heather assured her. “If anyone can successfully distract The Terminator, it’s you.”

  “I’m not going to call him The Terminator.”

  “Fine. If anyone can successfully distract Casey Jackson, it’s you. I mean it, Kristen. He totally arrived here out of the blue! You have no idea how disruptive that can be!”

  “Hmm. I have some idea.” Heather’s unexpected return to Kismet had thrown Kristen’s entire life into turmoil—and put a serious hitch in her Christmas this year, too. She didn’t exactly want her sister to leave town already . . . but she would have preferred not having her holidays hijacked by the glam squad. “Don’t worry. I’ll handle it.”

  Biting her lip, Kristen considered the tricky logistics of trying to extract information from and/or “distract” a professional career killer and/or sneaky snake like Casey Jackson. It was a good thing Heather was prone to exaggerating—and there probably wasn’t a genuine problem here—because Kristen definitely didn’t have time for this.

  Especially not when . . . “He really hates Christmas?”

  “Almost as much as he hates children and puppies.” A dramatic pause. “That’s right: He hates children and puppies.”

  “Come on.”

  “Cross my heart and hope to end up on TMZ tomorrow.”

  Uh-oh. This was serious. Heather hated trashy tabloids. Especially TMZ. Tabloid “news” shows, magazines, paparazzi, and stalkerish celebrity bloggers were her nemeses. Which was ironic, given that gossip media had, arguably, created her fame—and did a lot to keep it stoked, too.

  “And speaking of TMZ,” Heather went on in a harassed tone, clearly winding up for a good tirade, “do you know what those bastards think they caught me doing now? On camera?”

  “Actually, I have to get back to work now. So—”

  “Buying toilet paper at Walmart. The economy pack!”

  Genuinely mystified, Kristen shrugged. “So?”

  “So I have people to do that stuff for me! I wouldn’t be caught dead doing my own toilet-paper shopping!” Heather’s voice dropped meaningfully. More on-set hubbub came over the phone. “You wouldn’t know anything about that TMZ story, would you?”

  “Huh? Why would I know anything about that?”

  “Just wondering. Okay. Never mind. We’ll talk soon! Ciao!”

  And that, as they said, was that. Thanks to one typically baffling and overwrought phone call, Kristen was stuck running interference between her self-absorbed celebrity sister and the supposedly robotic, number-crunching, child-hating, puppy-kicking, soulless, Grinchy, charming bastard who’d just hit town to shut down Heather’s TV special.

  As if Kristen didn’t have enough to deal with right now.

  Because as much as she wanted to be on her sister’s side—first, last, and always—Kristen knew better than to blindly trust Heather’s take on things. Her sister’s judgment wasn’t the best. Heather’s view could be . . . well, seriously skewed.

  Her advisors were completely out of touch with reality, too. A person only had to look at the indoor set for her holiday TV special to realize that. There, Heather had four glammed-up Christmas trees, all “sponsored” by various companies, each with a particular “designer” theme: Vogue Christmas, “Russian Czar” Christmas, prairie Christmas, “Elvis-in-Vegas” Christmas . . .

  And the madness hadn’t stopped there, either. Since sweeping into town, Heather’s “glam posse” had taken over Kismet, pretty much ruining the holidays in the process. Who knew what other havoc they’d wreak before they were through?

  Things had been fine until Heather and her entourage had arrived. Kristen had been content with visiting her sister in L.A. or New York or London. She’d been content with having a long-distance sisterly relationship via phone calls and Facebook and texting. She’d been perfectly content with her cozy, happy, regular-gal life in Kismet, her job, her friends, her modest apartment, and her weekly Drunk Yahtzee night. She’d been looking forward to Christmas, too, just the way she did every year. But Heather’s invasion had thrown everything into a tizzy.

  Now everything that Kristen had worked for, everything she treasured, everything that was good and normal and non-showbizzy and real in her life was at serious risk of vanishing.

  She was at serious risk of vanishing.

  At least it felt that way.

  And since even her parents—who were normally caring and sensible and smart—didn’t see the problem, she was on her own.

  Except for her friends, of course, Kristen remembered as she pocketed her cell phone and headed back to work.

  But her friends had all been inexplicably “busy” ever since Heather had stormed into town, so . . .

  So Heather had abandoned Kismet years ago, and this was her territory now, Kristen reminded herself resolutely. It was her place to be herself, to live her life . . . and to find out exactly what Casey Jackson wanted before her sister had a full-fledged meltdown. It was the least she could do, right?

  Grabbing a full coffeepot, Kristen shook out her hair, put on a smile, and then prepared to save the day, sister-style.

  After all . . . how problematic could one “Terminator” really be?

  Chapter 3

  ANOMIA (uh-NOH-mee-uh) noun: the inability to recall names of people or objects

  On set in Kismet, Michigan

  December 4

  Heather Miller hung up her cell phone, then used it to wallop the man standing next to her. “Quit laughing, you dope!”

  Alex Taylor only guffawed harder. “You should’ve seen the look on your face.” He adopted a smug, smarty-pants expression—one Heather doubted she’d ever sported. “‘I guess he’s kind of a . . . necromancer,’” he mimicked in a high-pitched voice. “Ha!”

  “You’re the one who got me that Word of the Day calendar.”

  “I was being thoughtful. You said you left yours in L.A.”

  “Oh yeah. Right.” Uneasily, Heather squirmed. She didn’t want to fib to Alex, but she didn’t want him to think she was stupid, either. “I guess I was just so happy to have another calendar that I got all overzealous about using it.”

  “Aha. See there? ‘Overzealous’ was yesterday’s word.”

  He smiled at her, probably unaware of the high-octane sex appeal he was unleashing. He seemed unaware of a lot of things. Like, for instance, the massive crush she had on him.

  “I know.” She hadn’t. “I was testing to see if you knew.”

  “Looks like I did.” Another smile. “So . . .”

  “So . . .” Dreamily, Heather gazed at him. Alex was so smart. And talented. And disciplined. As the construction manager for her holiday TV special, he was responsible for designing and building all the sets she used. He had the muscles to show for all that heavy lifting, too. Not that Alex was just a meathead. He was also a trained architect, a partner in a firm in L.A., and the holiday production’s unofficial trivia champion.

  Ordinarily, Heather didn’t go for the brainiac type. But there was something about Alex that really got to her.

  Unfortunately, the minute they wrapped production on Heather Miller: Live! from the Heartland, she and Alex would go their separate ways, probably never to see each other again.

  Heather couldn’t let that happen. She just couldn’t.

  She’d never felt this way before. Not even when she’d signed her first recording contract—and that had been a thrill.

  “So . . . you really did everything you coul
d to make Casey sound like a serial killer just now.” Alex nodded attentively, appearing wry and adorable and clever, as usual. “I thought you wanted to set him up with your sister. On a blind date.”

  Again, Heather squirmed. She wasn’t good at fibbing.

  She was good at performing, though. She was very good at pleasing people. So she pretended that the cover story she’d concocted—to ensure that The Terminator didn’t shut down her TV special before she managed to make Alex fall in love with her—was true, and hoped that it would please Alex, too.

  “I do want to set her up with him,” Heather agreed, wide-eyed. “I think they’ll be perfect together. But it has to feel like her idea, or it’s doomed.” She gave a helpless shrug. “What can I say? The worse I make him sound, the more my sister will want him. It’s a reverse-psychology thing.”

  “Wow. I will never understand women.”

  “I know. We’re crazy, right?” Heather heard herself give a hideous giggle and wanted to kick herself. Alex already thought she was a vacuous airhead. He’d practically said so. She didn’t have to help along that impression, did she? But something about Alex just obliterated every ounce of her cool. “Kristen is kind of a . . . contrarian when it comes to dating,” Heather lied.

  “‘Contrarian’!” Alex beamed. “That’s tomorrow’s word.”

  Heather felt as though she’d scored a million points by using it. Maybe if she learned enough new things, Alex would be impressed. She needed to get more books. Like, yesterday.

  Heather had never regretted leaving high school early to take her shot at stardom. After all, she’d succeeded. But now she regretted not knowing more . . . not being more than she was.

  “You peeked, didn’t you?” Alex was saying. Adorably.

  “At my calendar?” At his nod, she gave a carefree wave. “Well . . . I’m not very good at waiting. I shake all my Christmas gifts, too. I drive everyone crazy by guessing them.”