The Christmas Company Read online

“I know.” He breathed a laugh. “Why do you think I’ve been avoiding it for so long?”

  His soft words coaxed some truth out of her, a stammering, hard-to-admit truth, but a truth nonetheless.

  “When I love someone, I can focus on them. I can make sure they’re safe and comfortable and happy. I’m very good at loving—”

  “But not so good at being loved.” The breath left her body. He soldiered on. “Because that means being vulnerable. Being taken care of. When was the last time someone took care of you, Kate? Or listened to you the way you listened to me today?”

  He stood in front of her now, his back to the cliff’s edge and framed by the light of the town below. Still, she stared at her shoes.

  “What?” She could almost hear his hand flex with nervous energy. “Do I need to go find some mistletoe for you to look at me now?”

  You can just run now. Run into the forest and call someone to come and find you. You could just jump off the cliff. A fall from this height probably wouldn’t kill you. A body of broken bones only marginally less appealing than facing her feelings, Kate looked up.

  “I see you,” he whispered.

  And I see everything about you, Clark Woodward. You have so much love and compassion bottled up, so much you’ve hidden and want to give now you know how. What if I disappoint you? What if I fail and don’t live up to the me who exists on December 24? What if the magic dissolves on the 26th and you go back to Dallas and I’m alone in a crowd again? She didn’t ask any of those questions. And he didn’t answer. What he gave her, as he closed the gap between them, was so much better.

  “I never knew I could feel this way. I thought I was trapped, but you opened my entire world up. And filled my house with so many pine needles I don’t think I’ll ever get them out.”

  “It’s easy, you just take a high-powered vacuum and—”

  “You’ve made this stupid holiday into one of the best days of my life. You made me feel something, Kate. Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve let myself feel anything?”

  “I’m happy I could help,” she said, ever the diplomat even as his nose almost brushed her with its closeness. Her heart—oh, her poor reckless heart—threw itself against her ribcage, banging to get out. A strong hand landed on her right cheek. His pulse was as fast as hers.

  “Why did you come to my house in the first place? And why did you stay?”

  “I just didn’t want you to be alone anymore.”

  “And I don’t want to be alone anymore. But I don’t want you to be alone anymore either,” he said.

  A pause. A lifetime of happiness hung in the balance of that pause. Kate said nothing. She didn’t know how.

  “May I kiss you?”

  “Only if you want me to fall in love with you.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Despite what his boarding school roommates or overly friendly colleagues in the office thought, Clark had kissed women before. They never set his soul on fire as they seemed to do in the movies, nor did they live up to the locker room banter thrown around by the men in his acquaintance, nor was it a gentlemanly thing to do, so he never bragged about his romantic encounters.

  Now, he thanked his past self for never inflating the memories or exaggerating the stories. They only would have cheapened the most perfect kiss in all the world.

  His lips brushed hers, featherlight at first, not wanting to push his luck. Everything about her was soft, the perfect contrast to his rough edges and tough exterior. His hands moved to gently cup her face and he drew her lips into his for real this time. The slightest pressure, and the kiss exploded into a final firework of connection. His heart caught fire and his eyes were blinded to everything but her as she responded in kind. The kiss spoke louder than any words they could have said or wishes they could have made.

  Given how much he despised it, he never expected the most important moment of his life to happen with Christmas songs being sung in the background. This morning, the moment would have been ruined by the inclusion of “O Come, All Ye Faithful.” But then again, this morning, he wouldn’t have fallen in love with Kate Buckner.

  He was so glad not to be the same man he was this morning.

  When the kiss broke—too soon, as far as he was concerned—the dark world brightened and he tipped his forehead against hers. Thoughts like stars hung around his head, too many to count or hold onto. He wanted to kiss her again and again and again and ask her everything about her life. Did she like gray or blue better? When did she last laugh so hard she snorted? What movie always made her cry? How did he start to make her as happy as she’d made him?

  “Wow.”

  Clark couldn’t count on one hand how many times before today he’d ever said wow. He added it to the list of things Kate inspired in him. He now understood how to let go of his need to seem above everything. He embraced wonder.

  “Yeah.” A disbelieving sigh came from her smiling lips. How many times had she been kissed? However many it was, he hoped she liked his kiss the best. He was a competitive type. “Wow.”

  Turning her so they looked out over the town again, Clark pulled Kate in close, throwing an arm over her shoulder again. He loved this pose. So protective. So close. In this position, she could listen to his heartbeat and know it was real, know she made it race every time she spoke. He swept his free arm across the glittering landscape of houses and businesses, all lit from the inside. Identifying with a building didn’t seem a particularly smart thing to do, but Clark did all the same. Each of those houses looked so dark on the outside. Night painted their exterior walls. But their windows revealed the truth. The light within spilled into the streets, promising warmth and comfort inside. He felt like that now, trapped in night but carrying a raging fire in his chest. A fire Kate started.

  “I think I see what you’re talking about with this Christmas stuff now.”

  “It’s amazing, isn’t it?”

  “It’s magic.”

  “No.” She gave him a little shoulder shove. The smile she no doubt wore echoed in her voice. “It’s love. Better than magic.”

  “I don’t like telling people they were right and I was wrong,” he admitted. Kate changed his life, sure. She opened up new worlds of possibilities in just a day… Still, old habits die hard. In business, he never said sorry or admitted fault. He barreled forward without regard for those beside or behind him. With Kate, he wanted to accept her love of him and this holiday, but he wasn’t sure if his lips knew how to form the words necessary to admit his fault.

  “You don’t have to tell me. I already know.” By now, he knew any time she sounded smug, she was really teasing. He groaned anyway.

  “That’s even worse.”

  “Then go ahead. Tell me I’m right and you love Christmas now and you’re a big fat softie,” she punctuated those last three words with pokes right into his gut. “Who believes in miracles and that you deserve good things.”

  You deserve good things. The pokes to his gut didn’t knock the wind out of him, but that sentence certainly did. A lifetime of neglect told him the exact opposite.

  “I wouldn’t go that far. I’m just not used to being given anything. Even though my uncle did try, I didn’t want to be given anything. When I was young, I was always battling a ghost, you know? I worked myself to the bone at school and college and then at work because I needed to make my parents proud. I needed to carry on their legacy, and I had to fight every step of the way to do it. You’re just giving me all of this, and it’s… I don’t know how to handle that.” He stumbled over the words. Rolled his eyes. Old habits die hard, and one of his oldest habits happened to be not letting anyone into the inner workings of his mind. He’d lost countless girlfriends, friends, mentors and roommates that way. His last relationship ended with her saying she didn’t want to be with him anymore because of his lack of emotional availability, to which he responded ye
s, that’s probably for the best. Kate’s presence threatened the fabric of his entire personality. “Look what you’ve done to me. I’m a sentimental mess now.”

  “You can be a sentimental mess. I won’t judge.”

  “It’s just that I care. My whole life, I just wanted to care about me and my own baggage and duty and responsibility. I didn’t know how to care about other people,” he declared, a little too loud but not afraid to let the entire world know his secret. “And now I understand what it means to. I care about you. And this stupid holiday. And your town.”

  “So,” Kate breathed on his skin. “Do you think you could give us back the festival?”

  “Come again?”

  He hadn’t quite heard her. Or, at least, he couldn’t have heard her right. Why on earth was she still talking about the festival? They were together. The town clearly didn’t mind functioning without the festival. They should have been walking on cloud nine, apart from every worry and care of the mortal, un-in-love world. She must have said something else.

  “If you get it now, don’t you think you could consider giving us the festival back?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You took it away because you didn’t understand what it means. Now that you get it, I thought maybe you could, y’know. Help us out.”

  “Help you out.”

  He separated the words. Help. You. Out. Each of the words, he understood individually. In that order, they no longer made sense.

  “Yeah.” She nodded.

  “I didn’t cancel the festival because I don’t get Christmas,” he explained. In one motion, he extricated himself from their sideways embrace so he could get a good look at her. He turned his back on the singing town. The skin just under his collar started burning. “I cancelled the festival because it’s a financial liability.”

  “Right, but it pays back in what it gives to the town. And the people who visit. Like you.”

  His stomach dropped.

  “Oh.”

  “What?”

  He saw her clearly for the first time, and he saw himself. The world—spinning with joy only a minute ago—screeched to a slamming halt. Vertigo overtook him. He blinked to steady his vision.

  Once, he’d gone on a field trip to a 3-D planetarium on a school field trip. The shock of taking off the glasses during the middle of an illusion had rocked him.

  He felt that same way now. All of his illusions and understandings about Kate Buckner turned out to be nothing more than blurry projections, useless colors splashed on a paper-thin screen. Fake. Incorrect. Pathetic of him to buy into it. God, it hurt.

  “I’m an idiot,” he declared, meaning it in every sense of the word even as it stabbed him to say so.

  “No, you’re not.”

  “Yeah. I am.” Swallow. Breathe. Don’t raise your voice. Just state the facts. Letting go of your tight control over yourself is what got you in this mess in the first place. “You’re a liar.”

  “Me?”

  She had the good sense to balk at the accusation, but Clark didn’t buy it, just like he shouldn’t have bought anything she sold him all day. The first thing he would do when he got back to Dallas was head straight for the optician’s office. Only a blind man couldn’t see the con played out so deliberately in the lithe body of this beautiful woman.

  “You’re good, don’t get me wrong. But how did I not see straight through you? You were using me.”

  “Using you?”

  “Don’t play dumb,” he snapped. His entire body ached with the pain and the weight of it; it consumed him too much to keep from barking at her. “I see it now. You wanted to wrap me around your finger, giving me all of this garbage about not wanting me to be alone because you thought you could manipulate me. You made me start to…feel for you so you could use me to get your festival back.”

  “I didn’t—”

  “Not even a little?”

  She stammered. Staggered backward. That told him plenty, but not nearly enough to bring him the pain necessary to break away from her. He’d need to hear it from her lips, to hear the confession of the betrayal before he could trust himself not to fall into her arms again. The irrational, stupid part of him that got him into this mess in the first place wanted nothing more than for her to tell him it was all a misunderstanding and explain how none of his suspicions were correct. The smart, detached part of him knew he needed to cut this cancer out before it infected all of him. He’d been right all along. Love—if it existed at all, and that wasn’t even something he was sure of—was a tumor, not a cure.

  “I wanted to be close to you.”

  One of his assets as a businessman was his ability to see a situation clearly and choose a plan of action. Kate’s motives, cutting as they were, made perfect sense. They were logical. He saw the path through them clearly.

  “So you could use me to get what you wanted. You are a liar.” He repeated it and watched it slice straight through her. Now he questioned everything he knew. Were those tragic stories about her family even real, or did she make them up for sympathy? The ornaments, did she make up those stories about them on the spot? Did he know anything real about her, or had he been falling for a fiction this entire time?

  “I’m not a liar. I just needed to do what was best for my town!” She raised her voice. Clark didn’t give her the satisfaction of doing the same, no matter how much he wanted to, no matter how red his skin grew under his collar. Doing the best thing for her town was as good as a confession. Another one. She didn’t give a lick about him. He was a useful, lonely idiot willing to believe any affection tossed his way after a lifetime of being starved for it.

  “You admit it.”

  “But when I saw you at the diner, I realized you had never had what we had. I wanted to share it with you.”

  “Yeah. Because you wanted to use that to your advantage.” The next revelation hurt the most. No one in his life ever liked him. But he was stupid enough to believe she might be the first. He’d fallen, all right, but not for her. He’d fallen for her trap. Hook, line and sinker.

  “You convinced me you liked me.”

  “I do!”

  Any better and she’d win an Oscar. The woman even managed tears. They puddled in her eyes, refusing to overflow. Clark paid them no attention. They were just another tool in her deception.

  “You only stuck around because you had an endgame. Was all of this,” He pointed an accusing finger down to the town. They still sung, the lemmings. “part of it, too?”

  “No!”

  “Convincing.” Clark laughed derisively.

  “Honestly, Clark.” Her small hand flew to his chest, the pleading gesture of a woman broken by her own game. “This wasn’t me.”

  One look down the ridge of his crooked nose and he removed the desperate hand. He never wanted to be touched by her again. If Miller’s Point knew about her plan to con him out of his own company, they probably organized this entire thing to trick him. To give him a childish love of a stupid farce of a holiday so he would fall over himself to give them this expensive, two-month long game of Charles Dickens dress-up. Even if she didn’t call this sing-along, she was complicit in it. As the mastermind of this scheme and the pied piper of Miller’s Point and all her people, he felt no guilt in holding her responsible, not when his heart was the prize she’d incidentally managed to seize.

  “Maybe not, but it was them. They were in on your plan, weren’t they?”

  “It isn’t like that,” she ground out between gritted teeth.

  “What is it like then? Explain.”

  Her mouth opened and closed, invisible, soundless words came out, but nothing else. For the first time, Clark raised his voice.

  “Explain yourself!”

  Her shiver of fear would have made him feel like the biggest heel on earth if she hadn’t started it.
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  “I wanted to get the festival back, yes. But I wanted to help you, too.”

  “Two birds with one stone, huh?” He snorted, crossing his arms to keep himself from shaking with cold. A cold winter night to reflect the cold heart of this woman.

  “I’m not going to deny that Miller’s Point is always my first priority, but I never lied to you. I want to be with you.” Again, she reached for him. He backed away before she got the chance to touch him. “I’m falling for you. Please don’t let this get between us.”

  “You’re just saying that because I haven’t given you what you wanted,” he said, no uncertainty wavering his stern voice.

  “No. I’m saying it because it’s true.”

  True. She made countless spoken and unspoken promises today, and she’d broken every single one by lying to him. If she would go to these lengths to win back a stupid festival, what kind of person was she really, deep down in her heart? He thought of his parents. The stories he’d told her about them. He kept them so close to his heart no one ever saw or heard about them, yet he’d opened his mouth and blabbed his tightest held secrets. As much as he despised her in this moment, he hated himself the most. His lifestyle of cold calculation wasn’t a bug; it was a feature that protected him from heartbreaking blunders like this one.

  Why did this hurt so much? How had he given her so much power? He wanted to crawl under a rock and never re-emerge almost as much as he wanted to sell her beloved festival off piece by piece in front of her just to show her how spiteful and cruel he could be, in spite of her assertions to the contrary.

  “I don’t think you know what that word means. I opened up to you. I told you things I’ve never told anyone. For what? So you could use them against me?”

  This fight began with his decision to remain rational and unattached, to tell her how badly she hurt him without ever allowing him to show her how badly this betrayal pained him. But the more he spoke, the faster his avalanche of anger grew. She’d quivered in fear when he raised his voice earlier; he wanted her to do it again.