Mountain Mistletoe Christmas

by Patricia Johns

  “Come on, Mom,” Drew coaxed. “It’s Christmas. And if you don’t get a tree I’m going to feel awful. It’s your Christmas, too, you know.”

  Jen pulled a hand through her blond waves. “I’ll get a tree, okay?” she said. “And I’ll leave it up so you can enjoy it when you arrive.”

  “You’d better!” Drew said. “And I got you something for Christmas yesterday when Tiffany took me shopping. You’re going to love it.”

  Tiffany had taken him shopping. Jen hated this. Her son, her life, were all getting covered in the fingerprints of this faceless Tiffany. And then as if on cue, a bouncing brunette popped onto the screen, her face pressed up next to Drew’s.

  “Is that your mom, Drew?” Tiffany flashed a glittering smile. She was beautiful—did she have to be so cute? “Hi, Jennifer! I’ve been taking good care of him. Everything organic!”

  “Great,” Jen replied, hoping her deep loathing didn’t bleed through.

  Tiffany ruffled Drew’s hair and disappeared from view again, but Jen could still hear her voice. “Come on, Drew. Time for breakfast. No screens at the table. I’m sure your mom understands.”

  Drew winced. “Sorry, Mom, I’ve gotta go.”

  He never jumped that quickly when she told him to get off his screens, but then Tiffany was a novelty, and maybe Drew was a little smitten with his dad’s girlfriend. Who knew?

  “I love you, sweetie,” Jen said.

  “Yeah, me, too. Bye.”

  Drew hung up before Jen did, and she stood there for a moment, her heart pounding in her chest. This Tiffany was everything that irritated Jen—pert, young, convinced of her own virtue because she was making nice with her professor’s son. Jen idly wondered if Sam was still Tiffany’s professor, or if he’d waited until she’d finished his class. Not that it mattered.

  Jen put her phone on the chipped and faded countertop. Well, if Tiffany stuck, she’d be on the Samuel train, because that was how Sam liked things. He wanted a woman who was young enough to mold, and who wanted to be a part of his ambitions. Dr. Samuel Taylor was nothing if not focused. He taught political science at the University of Denver, and he’d written five books on various political topics, all of which were required reading for graduate-level political science courses across the country. Sam had been the top mind in his area of study for about twenty years, but he’d started to slip. There were younger, brighter, more innovative thinkers out there now, and while he’d contributed an intellectual gold mine to the subject, he now had competition.

  Tiffany was a reboot for Sam. Jen could see that. She was young enough to idolize him and was probably perfectly willing to support his career trajectory. Once upon a time, it had been Jen typing his chicken scratch notes and staying up with him late into the night so he could bounce ideas off her. All that was required was to say, “Sam, I think you’ve got something...” and he’d take it from there.

  And yet, the one thing Jen couldn’t get off her mind was the image of that tree in Sam’s house. It was nothing the way she’d decorated it, a tree filled with unique ornaments, all with memories attached. Every year she had one treasured ornament that she carefully placed high enough that little fingers couldn’t reach it—a silver ball of mistletoe. It had been a gift from her grandmother when she was a child, and like the mansion that she’d stared at wistfully from the road when she was a little girl, that ornament had represented something to her—all of her hopes and dreams for love of her own. Those unique ornaments were with her now, and that little ball of silver mistletoe was waiting for a new tree.

  Jen looked around the old kitchen. One bank of cupboards had been painted white, but not professionally. The old 1920s wood-burning stove remained in one corner but a newer stove had been installed next to it, a wide range hood hovering over them, suggesting that both had been used once upon a time. Would she ever try her hand at cooking over a woodstove? Not likely.

  Jen could see how much work this would be to fix up. Had she been overzealous here?

  Probably. But she’d bought this place, and maybe fixing it up into something really beautiful could be a project that would capture Drew’s imagination, too. Maybe this could be something he looked back on fondly when he was a grown man—how he and his mom had fixed up the old mansion that became Mountain Springs’s first art gallery.

  Jen leaned against the counter, and when the center of it sagged, she immediately straightened.

  She fiddled with her phone again, and this time she dialed her sister’s number. It rang twice before it was picked up, but there was no hello.

  “Lisa?” Jen said into the phone.

  There was a toddler’s laugh and the rustling sound of clothing. A TV show could be heard in the background.

  “Lisa?” Jen said louder.

  There was another rustling sound and the phone hung up. Jen sighed and dialed again. It rang once, and this time Lisa picked up.

  “Hello?” She sounded tired.

  “Lisa, hi. It’s me.”

  “Hi, Jen.” Lisa sighed—not thrilled to hear from her, it would seem.

  “How are you doing?” Jen said, choosing to ignore her sister’s tone. “So how did you enjoy the wedding?”

  “It was great,” Lisa replied. “How come you sat on the opposite side of the dining room from the rest of us?”

  There was the old petulance in her sister’s tone.

  “Blame Aunt Gayle,” Jen replied. “She was the one who parked me in Siberia.”

  “But you stayed.”

  “Aunt Gayle was trying to help me out. It turns out I was at Angelina Cunningham’s table. She’s experienced in renovating old buildings.”

  “Great.”

  “You were the one who put me onto Angelina to begin with,” Jen reminded her sister with a short laugh. “Come on! It was great to talk to her. Do you know her personally?”

  “I see her around the lodge, but no, we’re not pals,” Lisa replied. “And I was also the one who wanted to buy that old mansion.”

  “But you said you couldn’t afford it,” Jen said, her pulse speeding up. “We talked about this—”

  “I still can’t afford it,” Lisa said curtly. “I don’t have a wealthy ex to pay for it.”

  “Hey—” Jen pressed her lips together. “I was a big part of my husband’s career growth—”

  “Of course.” But Jen could hear the skepticism in her sister’s tone. Lisa had never seen Jen’s contributions to her home with Sam. Her sister had told her repeatedly that she was stagnating. But she was tired of these old fights. She and Sam were divorced now—did she and Lisa need to keep arguing about it?

  “And I did end up going over to talk with family at the wedding,” Jen said, changing the subject. “You’d already left.”

  “I was paying a sitter by the hour,” her sister said.

  “I’m just saying...” She fell silent. She wasn’t going to be able to say anything right.

  “How’s Drew?” Lisa asked.

  Lisa might not be a big fan of Jen’s, but she did love her nephew.

  “He’s good. He’s...getting ready for Christmas. What can I say? I hate this part of divorce—sharing our son.”

  “It wouldn’t be easy. I can sympathize with that.”

  Except Jen didn’t want her sister’s sympathy. Jen had always been the competent older sister—the one with the answers. She didn’t like being the divorced one trying to figure things out with her son and her ex-husband.

  “So...” Jen cast about, trying to find something to say. “How’s the writing?”

  “Good. I’m getting another short story published—this one is in an anthology for a small press.”

  “That’s really great,” Jen said. “Are they paying you something decent?”

  “Just stop,” Lisa said irritably. “My writing isn’t about the money. This is a rea
lly respected anthology. It might not have a huge circulation, but it champions diverse authors. Getting published there is exciting, and it matters, and—” She sighed. “Never mind.”

  “No, it’s great! I’m not raining on your parade, it’s just...”

  Whatever. This was an old argument. Jen had wanted an education and degrees, and Lisa had gone the starving-artist route. But why she insisted on starving when she could have a decent day job was beyond Jen.

  “Bram!” Lisa’s voice grew shriller. “No! Give it to me. Bram... Give it...”

  “So how is my nephew?” Jen asked, changing the subject.

  “He’s rotten!” Lisa said with a laugh, and she heard Bram squeal, too. “Aren’t you? Are you rotten?”

  There was a thunderous peal of chimes and Jen startled. It would take a while to get used to this old place. She headed out of the kitchen and through the dining room. The old house had come with some of the furnishings included, such as the old dining room table that could seat twenty—there was no fitting that table anywhere else—some of the bigger couches and a few larger pieces of art. They weren’t worth much—if anything they were gaudy eyesores—but they filled up some of the wall space for the time being.

  As Jen made her way to the marble-tiled foyer and the front door, she could hear her sister playing with her son over the phone.

  “Can I come visit one of these days?” Jen asked her sister as she pulled open the front door.

  Nick stood there in an open winter coat, and he held a leather tool belt in one hand, heavy with tools. He looked different in the light of day—a little older, but not in a bad way. His beard was the full kind—dark, with a few strands of silver worked through. He had that competent look about him, and his dark gray eyes locked on to hers with professional reserve. Behind him the snow was coming down in lazy, pirouetting flakes—a few of which had landed on his hair. Jen covered the mouthpiece.

  “Hi,” she said. “Come in. I’ll just be a minute.”

  “Yeah, take your time,” Nick said, and he came inside, closing the door behind him. He scanned the room, his gaze moving from the marble-tiled floor up to the ceiling. He knocked on the wall a couple of times, then gave her an absent smile and moved on into the large sitting room.

  “You want to come over here?” Lisa asked skeptically, picking the conversation back up. “You’ve never liked my place.”

  “I’ve never liked your boyfriends,” Jen countered. “Very different.”

  “Hilarious,” Lisa said dryly. “I’m not exactly guest ready, Jen...”

  “I’m not a guest!” Jen retorted. “I’m your sister. You don’t need to clean for me.” Lisa’s answer was a short laugh, and Jen lowered her voice. “Lisa, I’d like to see you. Okay? I miss you.”

  “No, you’re lonely, and that’s something different,” Lisa replied.

  Nick looked over his shoulder at her, and she felt the heat hit her face. She hadn’t actually expected her sister to put up a fight at the prospect of a visit. How long had it been since they’d lived in the same town?

  Jen turned away and lowered her voice further. “Seriously?”

  “I’m home today, if you want to come by,” Lisa said. “But it won’t be clean, and I didn’t get groceries.”

  “That’s fine. I don’t care. I’ve got to do something here, and then I’ll come by.”

  “Okay. You have my address.”

  “Yeah, I’ll see you later. Bye.” Jen hung up before her sister could change her mind, and she gave Nick a tight smile. “My sister,” she said. “We have a complicated relationship.”

  Nick shrugged. “I’ve got a brother. I get it.”

  She was grateful for that, and she nodded toward the kitchen. “The counter is in rough shape, and the kitchen sink seems like it’s been leaking for a long time. There’s a bucket under there to catch drips, but I think the problem is bigger than that.”

  The problem hanging between her and Lisa was similarly complicated, and it would be even harder to fix than this dilapidated old mansion.

  “I’ll take a look,” Nick said, and he cast her a relaxed smile.

  There was something about his easy way of moving that took down her stress a couple of notches. And there was something in his smile that tugged at her in an old familiar way... She knew that feeling—the promise of rescue. That was dangerous. She’d done this before with Sam, but back then she was being rescued from something entirely different... Feelings brought about by handsome men with alluring smiles weren’t to be trusted. Maybe fixing something in this house would be enough to make her feel like she was in control again.

  * * *

  NICK SCANNED THE KITCHEN, noting the original cupboards and crown molding. He poked his head into the pantry—clean and empty—and noted the servants’ staircase. Old houses like this one could be a Russian doll kind of situation when it came to work that needed to be done. He ran his hand along the counter and he could feel the soft spots where the wood had rotted away beneath the Formica. It had obviously been updated in the sixties or seventies. He headed over to the sink. This was also original, but when he looked beneath, he saw that there had been some significant plumbing updates.

  He glanced up and found Jen watching him in tense silence. She had her arms crossed under her breasts and her blond waves tucked behind her ears. The difference between the almost makeup-free woman before him and the dressed-up version he’d met last night was large, but he liked her better like this. She was more accessible, maybe—not that he should even be noticing.

  “So walk me through what you want done before Christmas,” he said.

  “I need a functional kitchen,” she said, “and the shower upstairs is too old to even use, I think. It creaks and groans and the water comes out in a dribble.”

  “I’ve got an excellent plumber I work with,” Nick said. No need to mention that Bert was his best friend. He wasn’t working with him because of the friendship alone. “I don’t know how extensive the plumbing work would be, so I can’t speak for him, but replacing this counter would be easy enough, and we could install a new sink. The plumbing down here has been updated over the years, so that’s a start.” He turned on the water and then looked under the sink. He felt along the seals and pipes. “Yeah, it’s leaking up here at the tap. That’s soaked the counter wood and it rotted out. It’s going to affect the bottom cupboards, as well, but I don’t know how badly until I get the counter off. That said, it’s not as big of a problem as it could have been. I might even be able to find a comparable antique sink to fit this spot.”

  “That would be great.” She brightened slightly.

  “Should we go check out the bathroom?” he asked.

  “Yes. Let’s do that.” She headed for the pantry and he followed her up the narrow staircase. There wasn’t much space to move in, but Jen was a lot smaller than he was, and she jogged up the staircase, the soft scent of her soap meeting him as he came up behind her. When they got to the top, they emerged onto the second-floor hallway. It smelled mustier up here—the combination of dust and wood, and he glanced curiously at the doors, most of which were ajar, daylight flooding from the rooms into the dimmer hallway.

  “I think the third floor must have been the servants’ quarters back in the day, but it’s been redone since,” Jen said, leading the way up another narrow flight of stairs. “There are two large bedrooms and a bathroom up here—and that’s the bathroom that I’d like to be functional. I have a feeling the old lady who owned this place before me just used the one on the second floor.”

  The staircase opened up onto a sitting room on the third floor. There was some antique furniture arranged around a faded rug and a monstrous wood-framed TV set in one corner. A newer TV rested on top of it, using the old wood frame as a stand.

  “A lot of furniture came with the place?” he asked.

  “Yeah—the pie
ces that were too large to move or use in a modern home, I suppose,” she replied.

  “Can I take a look around?” Nick asked.

  “Be my guest.”

  He checked out the first bedroom. The windows were gabled, but the ceiling was high enough for comfort. A large wooden wardrobe sat on one side of the room and a bed had been set up—fresh linens and a gray, puffy duvet. There was a chest of drawers with some framed pictures on top—a little boy in one, and a couple in the other. Her son, perhaps? He was curious, but this was her bedroom, and not his business. He moved on.

  The second bedroom was smaller with a bank of gabled windows on one wall. There were a fair number of boxes—some still taped shut, and others hanging open in the process of unpacking, it seemed. Another bed was in pieces.

  A bathroom was set between the bedrooms, each having a door that opened onto it. The bathroom itself was spacious enough—two sinks, a large beveled mirror and a claw-foot tub with a large showerhead looming over the top of it. He headed over and turned on the water. As she’d said, the pipes moaned and rattled, then a dribble of water came out of the tap. That rusted and corroded showerhead would need replacing. Still...

  “This house is amazing,” he murmured.

  “I know, isn’t it?” A smile flickered over her face. “Can you imagine the history?”

  “The people who built this house owned a silver mine on the far side of the lake,” Nick said. “They had a disabled daughter they refused to send to a sanitarium. She inherited it all.”

  “I didn’t know that,” Jen replied.

  “Eventually, the daughter sold it,” Nick said. “I don’t know the rest of the house’s history, but I do know that much.”

  Jen met his gaze for a moment. “Did you grow up in Mountain Springs?”

  “I moved here for a job at the wood mill when I was twenty. A couple of years later I met my wife who came out here for a job, too, at a local law firm, and we got married and settled down,” he replied.

  “Your ex-wife’s a lawyer?” Jen said.

  “Her name’s Shari,” he said. “Anyway, I met my plumber, Bert, about the same time.”