Christmas at Two Love Lane

by Kieran Kramer

  “Nah. They never stuck around long enough. The craziest part is that Aunt Fran says she still believes in love.”

  “How many doctor husbands did she have?”

  “Four.”

  Macy smiled. “I like that she still believes.”

  He shook his head. “I don’t get the fairy tale obsession. And honestly? I think it’s a sham. People who love love are as self-interested as the rest of us.”

  “Hmmpph. You’re so cynical.”

  “With good reason. This is the important detail I didn’t tell you in your office because, quite frankly, it’s embarrassing.” He got up close to her ear, which was like a small seashell, perfect and delicate, and lowered his voice. “Aunt Fran wants me to marry a Charleston girl. Not for love, although that’s what she claims. She thinks if I marry into a local family, she’ll become society’s darling down here.”

  Macy drew back, staring at him with those big brown eyes. “Excuse me?”

  He laughed. “The plain and simple fact is that Aunt Fran needs the spotlight, even in retirement. She wants to be Scarlett O’Hara’s mother-in-law. Those dates you’ll set up for me—which you and I will make sure go absolutely nowhere—are my Christmas gift to her.”

  That was it. Plain and simple.

  CHAPTER THREE

  So there you had it. His aunt wanted Deacon Banks to marry into Charleston society. Macy thought it was a crazy plan, honestly, considering how tight that group was and how difficult it was to get in—except for the fact that it just might work.

  Sure, Deacon was “from off,” as they said around town, but he was also rich, good-looking, charming, and funny. Maybe—just maybe—she could find him his own Scarlett O’Hara.

  “Wow, so that’s why you came to my office.” She remembered how determined he’d been to get his way, and now she saw his persistence in a new, more forgiving light. “You’re doing this for your aunt.”

  “When she’s happy, I’m happier too,” he admitted. “So I told her I’d go see you at Two Love Lane. She was ecstatic. But she can’t ever know my heart’s not in it.”

  “Oh.” Macy didn’t like that. She stirred her straw slowly in her glass and tried to think what to do.

  “What?”

  “Well, if you’re faking it, she’ll be disappointed in the end. So what good is this supposed Christmas present?”

  “It buys me time.”

  Kara and Kiki Montagu squeezed past and stared at Deacon. He ignored them, and Macy pretended not to see them. They always asked her to their designer trunk shows, where they’d try to sell her a five-hundred-dollar blouse or a thousand-dollar dress. All her money went to her house and business, so T.J. Maxx was her jam—that and Goodwill for the ball gowns she needed each year during the debutante season.

  “My aunt,” Deacon continued seamlessly, “has a fragile ego, like a lot of celebrities. She thinks she doesn’t have much to offer outside the TV business, and everyone will find out she’s a phony. If she stays busy this month, she’ll figure out she doesn’t need me to marry a Charleston girl to become a success here.”

  “I’ve got great news,” Macy said. “She’s a slam dunk for fitting in here. She’s interesting. Entertaining. Smart. Not to mention well-connected professionally. Those qualities will serve her well in Charleston.”

  “I’m happy to hear that.”

  His grin jolted Macy down to her nude Victoria’s Secret seamless low-cut briefs. She came to a decision. “I’m a businesswoman too—as you’ve pointed out.”

  “Yes?”

  “So I’m renewing that proposition I made to you on our walk here. I’ll find you these dates you’re looking for. Per your wishes, I’ll tell them you’re only interested in having fun while you’re visiting your aunt for a few weeks, a fact I’ll make very clear because I don’t want anyone’s heart broken. But I’m going to do my very best—for your aunt’s sake and my own—to find you The One.”

  “The One?” He put finger quotes around the phrase.

  “Your Scarlett O’Hara.” She sucked on her straw again, draining her glass a little noisily. “There’s a caveat, of course. I’m accepting your offer to pay me double what I charge my regular clients.” Did he really mean it? Now was the time to find out.

  He didn’t blink an eye. “Great. But here’s my caveat. I’m not going to help you. No wheedling data out of me to feed into your algorithms.”

  “It’ll be fun to wing it again,” she said. “Before the algorithm and Two Love Lane, I still made matches. Lots of them.”

  “What was your secret in the good ol’ days?”

  Other people might make fun of her for accepting her ancestor’s belief that he was related to Cupid, so she rarely shared her theory about her matchmaking heritage. “Let’s just say it’s a gift that runs in the family.”

  “I see.” The twinkle in his eye made her a little breathless. “I’m going to shell out a lot of money to be your burst of nostalgia. You should be paying me, don’t you think?”

  She laughed. “Spoken like a true negotiator.”

  He shrugged, grinned. “I’m an enigma wrapped inside a puzzle. So said my last three girlfriends—but in much more colorful language. I doubt you’ll get a handle on me.”

  It felt a little bit like they were flirting. And she was loving every second of it, even though she wasn’t supposed to flirt with clients. “I can see that you’ll be a challenge.” She strove to sound as professional as she ever had. “Does that make you feel better?”

  He got a cool, assessing glint in his eye. She was already coming to recognize that look as his New York CEO face. “Honestly? People do their best work for me when I’m not easy on them. And that’s how I get to know them, too. Their weaknesses. Their strengths. Whether or not we can ever work together again.”

  “That makes sense.”

  He leaned in so close, they could kiss if she bent forward just a few inches. “I have a few phone calls to make,” he said. “But I’d love to continue our conversation someplace more quiet. What do you think?”

  Something arced between them. He wasn’t—he couldn’t be.

  Was he actually coming on to her?

  Yes, of course, he was. Her instincts were always on target, and she’d been flirting too. “I’ve got to get back to work,” she said, her tone light. There. That interrupted the moment, whatever it had been.

  “You’re a noble soul, Macy.”

  She stood. He did too. “I’m going to charge you triple now,” she told him. “For pushing your limits.”

  “You wouldn’t dare.” He helped her on with her coat.

  Something seemed inevitable. A kiss. She could feel it hovering between them and was shocked at herself for longing to kiss a man she barely knew, especially this man. He was her client. And he was so different from the men she was used to dating. He had that New York accent, for one. And his fashion sense was classically masculine, elegant in a big-city way. He’d never wear a bow tie or a seersucker suit, the two most popular looks for guys in Charleston. Over his dead body, she was sure.

  He followed behind her as they wended their way through chairs to the register. It took them five minutes to go twenty feet because she felt compelled, being a social person, to stop at every table and say hello, plus introduce him as “Deacon Banks, a visitor from Manhattan.” She didn’t say “friend from Manhattan,” or “businessman from Manhattan.”

  On purpose.

  Everyone was nice enough. But she could see their wheels spinning. Who was this guy, really? Why was he with her? Was he looking for love?

  Let them wonder.

  A few of the women seemed to assume he was fair game on the singles market since he was with a professional matchmaker. Then again, Southern women in general made feminine-and-flirty an everyday art form.

  “I’m getting my aunt settled into her new condo,” he told them.

  The small but fascinating fragment of news about his aunt was enough to get the other diners a
sking a string of questions, but Macy was adept at cutting everyone off before they got details.

  “We’ve got to run,” she said, and her friends fell right into line.

  “You go on, you busy young lady,” the older people said affectionately, or “Talk to you at So-and-So’s party Thursday night,” the younger ones replied, letting her off the hook because she was well-liked in this town—by everyone, that was, except for a woman about her age with strawberry-blonde hair, a slender nose, and a high forehead who had reminded Macy of Queen Elizabeth I reincarnated for as long as she could remember.

  “Hello, Celia.” For the first time that day, Macy felt sort of bummed, which was natural, she supposed, since Celia Waterford wasn’t at all fond of her. Not one little bit.

  “Macy.” Celia inclined her head. Her pursed lips might as well have formed the words Get the hell out of here. But then, shockingly, she turned and said, “Hello, Deacon.”

  “Celia,” he said. “Nice to see you again.”

  They’d met? How? Celia was the one person Macy knew she’d never, ever be friends with. Everyone else had a fighting chance.

  When they got to the register, Macy whispered, “I’m not going to ask how you know her.”

  “Fine,” he replied.

  Surely he could tell she really wanted to know. But he wouldn’t fess up. Instead, he insisted on paying for lunch.

  “You didn’t have to, but thank you,” she said.

  “My pleasure.”

  “Pleasure.” That word coming from Deacon Banks took on a slightly improper—but delicious—meaning, at least to Macy. “You’ll have a good time in Charleston,” she told him. “I promise. Shall we shake on it?”

  “Sure.” He grinned, his eyes two pools of deep blue beneath his dark brows.

  She found she didn’t want to release his palm, pressed flat and warm against hers. But she retreated first, proud of herself for doing so. He opened the door for her, and she stepped over the threshold in her boots, which held her currently wobbly knees steady. “Where’s your aunt’s condo?” she asked him on the sidewalk. The lampposts on Broad Street had been festively adorned with wreaths for at least a week, but for some reason, the Christmas spirit had passed her by, until that very moment. It hit her willy-nilly, which was always the best time for it to strike.

  “At One South Battery,” he said.

  She felt heat spread to her toes and her ears, her chest and her forehead. The Battery was the tip of the peninsula, facing Charleston harbor, where all the big, historic homes were. The first shots of the Civil War had been fired there.

  She lived on the Battery too.

  “The house has three stories, but it’s sideways,” he said. “Each floor has been made into a separate condo, and there’s an elevator onto these amazing porches—”

  “Piazzas,” she interjected. “They allow for sea breezes. And most houses here are sideways. They take up less street space that way. In the old days, it saved on taxes.”

  She could say all that in her sleep. She was talking for talking’s sake so she didn’t have to think about what was actually happening—a shakeup in her predictable, comfortable life that was bothersome and possibly cataclysmic, if her intuition was right, as it usually was.

  “The taxes, I’m sure, are going to be sky-high,” he replied, but it might as well have been blah blah blah. All she could think about was the fact that she wanted to step closer to him and run away at the same time, which was of course, impossible. “This place wasn’t cheap. It’s very nice. Aunt Fran got the middle floor.”

  “Your aunt Fran is going to be my next-door neighbor.” There. It was out. Like a rock dumped into a still pond. She was glad, too. Now she couldn’t think of kissing Deacon Banks against the front window of Fast and French.

  “What a small world.” He wasn’t nearly as rocked by the news of her home’s proximity to his aunt’s new place as she was. “But this is a small town, right?”

  “Yes, but still.” Didn’t he see how potentially inflammatory this was? Didn’t he care? Did she not inspire in him the same volatile, very wrong feelings she was feeling—about him? “I live right there. My bedroom window looks onto your aunt’s piazza.”

  Where he would be periodically standing for the next month, if not to bask in the winter sun then to look over the balcony at the palmetto trees and the magnificent harbor, at the people walking dogs along the Battery wall. She’d see him through the sheer panels on her bedroom window as she put on or took off her clothes, getting ready either for work or for bed.

  “Is that so,” he said easily, and fell in beside her as she walked east on Broad.

  “Wait a minute.” She stopped, so he did too. “You knew already.”

  He tugged on his ear. “Well, yeah. Aunt Fran’s realtor told us a little bit about all the neighbors.”

  “I’ll bet it was Sherry. She sells most of the real estate south of Broad Street. That’s how you knew to come looking for me at Two Love Lane.”

  “Yes.”

  And then it hit her. “You asked Sherry out, didn’t you?”

  “No. But Aunt Fran did, on my behalf. In the middle of the closing, she told Sherry that she and I would hit it off in the romance department.”

  “Sherry just lost her husband to cancer. Not even three months ago.”

  “So we discovered when she had to leave the room for a few minutes to compose herself. The whole thing was painfully embarrassing for me and far worse for Sherry. See what you and I are up against? Aunt Fran’s like Godzilla. She must be stopped.”

  Macy liked how they were already a team. “Sherry knows Two Love Lane doesn’t deal in short-term flings. I hope she told you so.”

  “Of course.” He paused on the sidewalk near a house Macy had always loved. It had a glossy hot-pink front door. “She said you’re in the serious business of finding people love. Aunt Fran was verklempt at the possibilities, but I hoped that since we’re going to be neighbors, maybe you’d help me out on my terms instead.”

  “Is that why I was going to regret not working with you?” Macy asked. “Because we’d be neighbors?”

  “Sure,” he said. “Wouldn’t you be embarrassed going out to get the paper in the morning and seeing me there, all alone, rejected, and dateless, on Aunt Fran’s piazza?”

  “I would not.”

  “Besides, I’m paying you a lot of money to help me out. Maybe you could use it to work on your house. It has that slight lean to the right, toward my aunt’s place. By next year, she might be able to crawl over her balcony rail through one of your windows.” He chuckled.

  “My home,” Macy said quietly, “which my dear grandmother left to me, has gone through the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and two hundred years of occasional hurricanes. And let’s not forget the massive earthquake in 1886. I love the tilt, and the engineers say the foundation is perfectly fine. It’s not going anywhere.”

  “Sorry. No offense meant. I figured you were putting your spare cash into the business, is all.”

  “You’re ninety-percent right,” she said, “but around here, we do our best not to talk about money. Some of the oldest, most distinguished families are poor as church mice. Now let’s change the subject. Tell me how you know Celia Waterford.” Knowledge was power.

  “Only if you tell me more about your family.”

  “Fine.” She’d just have to wait another minute to find out about his connection to Celia. “My parents are academics. They teach at the College of Charleston.” She couldn’t help hesitating. She barely knew this man, and she was a private person in some respects.

  “You look so serious all of a sudden,” he said.

  His face was so open and interested, she’d be honest with him. “I didn’t have the perfect childhood, but no one does, right?” She shrugged and smiled. “Mom and Dad meant well, and my sister Anne and I turned out just fine, thanks to them. We’re both hard-working, happy people.”

  “You get together a lot?”
>
  “Yes. I see them almost every week, at least for a cup of tea and sometimes lunch or supper.”

  “Nice,” he said. “I think it must be the hardest job in the world, to be a parent. That’s why I’m in awe of my aunt. She’s definitely not perfect. Things were rocky at times, when her marriages didn’t work out. But she’s incredible all the same, and I credit her with a lot of my success.” He grinned. “Tell me more about your family. It makes this place seem more real to me.”

  She liked that about him. “My parents are still in the house I grew up in,” she said. “It’s north of Calhoun, a fifteen-minute walk from here, in the garden district. A neighborhood called Wraggborough. Anne is married to Kyle Wright, a doctor at the Medical University of South Carolina, which is here in Charleston. I set the two of them up.”

  “Nice.”

  “Lucy and Sam are their two children. They’re three and five. Anne stays home with them, but she’s working on her master’s degree part-time and volunteers at the kids’ school a lot. I see the kids every chance I get. They live a few blocks away from me.”

  But it was time to get back to Celia, who’d been hovering in Fast and French like a spider dangling on a gossamer thread. “How do you and Celia know each other?”

  “She’s my aunt’s social consultant.”

  “Is that what Celia says she is now?” It was utter ridiculousness. Except it wasn’t. Celia had what it took: polish, flair, connections, and a last name that carried weight in Charleston.

  “She has a business card,” Deacon said, “and a book out.”

  “About being the hostess with the mostest.” Macy refrained from rolling her eyes. “It’s in all the tourist shops.”

  “She made a guest appearance on Bless Your Heart. She taught one of the female stars how to throw a dinner party. Aunt Fran looked her up after she saw that and fell in love with the way she folds napkins.”

  “Of course. That female star, by the way, is actually from Tennessee. She moved here last year. Except for one or two locals in the cast and the gorgeous scenery, there’s nothing particularly authentic about that show.”