The Christmas Company Page 2

  Who would she be without the festival?

  The questions were more convicting than the answers, and the brain-piercing goodbyes of her chosen family were one big key turning the ignition of her fury. This was her family. No one was going to tear it apart, not as long as she had a say.

  “Stay here, Miss Carolyn.”

  “Kate…what are you doing?”

  Miss Carolyn’s question wasn’t going to stop her. Kate apparently no longer had a job to lose; she no longer had to listen. These people were her family, her community, and she wasn’t going to stand by while some stick-in-the-mud Dallas boy tried to tear them apart and make this world a little bit worse.

  With a spine as straight as a flagpole and chin held twice as high, she stormed out of the Miller’s Point Town Hall. Her hammering heart joined the steady rap of her shoes as she jogged down the front steps towards the shadowed figure in the black sport coat.

  “Hey!”

  He was the only one on the street, hence the only one she possibly could have been talking to, but he didn’t respond to her hail. The flames of frustration and anger licked at the back of her neck, threatening to consume her. She tried to keep them at bay and maintain some semblance of coolness—the last thing she wanted was to be accused of being an emotional or irrational woman by this stranger—but it was next to impossible. When she thought about all the lives this one tiny decision would touch, it burned up every sense of rational control she possessed.

  “Hey, Woodward!”

  Was it the use of his name, her razor-sharp tone or the whipping wind that caused him to tense up like that? Kate didn’t care as long as he paid attention to her. She closed the small space between them, catching up to him just in front of the Scrooge and Marley office. During the off-season, it served as a general store, but she called it the Money-House all year round. Not even the sight of it, which usually sent a thrill of sentimentality through her, could calm her now. When he didn’t turn to face her, she took the liberty of hopping down off of the curb so she stood directly in his eye line. This forced her to gaze up at him, but she didn’t think there was anything doe-eyed about her. If anything, she felt like an avenging Valkyrie, riding for justice. No one, not even this arrogant stranger, would make the mistake of underestimating her.

  “What do you think you’re doing?”

  His face remained as composed and disinterested as ever, but Kate spied the fingers of his right fist clenching and unclenching. She almost smiled. He had a tell; something was bothering him.

  “I’m looking for my car,” he announced.

  “Your car?”

  “Yeah, I parked my car here,” he pointed to an empty space in front of Town Hall, “earlier today and now it’s gone. It’s a rental.”

  “It got towed, then.”

  “Towed?”

  “We don’t allow cars in town during the festival. It ruins the illusion.”

  Kate almost laughed as she said it, but quelled the urge to do so by crossing her shivering arms over her chest. Everyone with half a brain knew no cars could come into town during the festival. It was on every brochure and article ever written about their little Christmas town; plus, the Martins made a tidy penny renting out their field as a parking lot during the winter. Yet another source of income they’d lose if this guy managed to go through with his plan.

  “You should be thanking me, then. I’m modernizing the place already.” His tone managed to be smug even as she wondered if the slight shrink of his shoulders meant he may not entirely believe that. “Who do I call about getting it back?”

  What arrogance! She’d come out here to give him a piece of her mind and he had the audacity to ask her about his car?

  “I don’t think you’re going anywhere until you give us some answers.”

  “With all due respect, I don’t owe you answers.”

  “Oh, really?”

  “For my years of service focusing on profitable divisions of his business, my uncle left me the company and I’m doing my best to protect his legacy.”

  “His legacy? Look around you! This is his legacy!”

  She said is when she supposed she should have said was. Though, in Kate’s estimation, a man’s legacy didn’t die with him; it was a living, growing thing that outlasted him and stretched as long as other people cultivated it. Mr. Woodward would only really die if they let this festival die with him. It was yet another reason Kate continued to fight even when this arrogant jerk couldn’t stop staring down the bridge of his nose at her like she was no more than a receipt stuck to the bottom of his shoes.

  “This festival isn’t profitable.”

  “Maybe not in money, but—”

  “What other kind of profit is there?”

  Kate opened her mouth and closed it twice, not because she didn’t know the answer to his question, but because she knew it wouldn’t move him. He was a numbers and cents guy. Telling him what the festival lost in funds it more than made up for in revival of the human spirit probably wasn’t going to do anything other than make her out to be some silly, sentimental woman.

  Which she was. But she just didn’t want him thinking it.

  “No?” he asked. If she were the fighting type, she might have punched that smug, condescending smirk of victory off of his face, but she refrained. “Yeah, that’s what I thought. Now, tell me who I call about the car.”

  “I could.” Rather than violence, Kate decided to deal in bitingly sweet sarcasm. “But I have to do what’s best for my town, just like you have to do what’s best for your company. And I don’t think it’s good for us to have a lunatic like you out on the road.”

  “If I hear you out, will you give me the number?”

  She’d meant her quip about him driving around town as a joke, but he responded as though they were finally speaking the same language: the language of transaction. In some ways, Kate had to admire him for that. He was as single-minded in his determination as she was; they shared a sincere faith in the rightness of their cause. Sure, he couldn’t have been more wrong, but at least he believed in something, even if it was just the power and importance of money. He shoved his hands in his pockets.

  “I’ll consider it.”

  “Then I’m listening, Miss…?”

  “Kate.”

  “Kate.”

  It must have been a strong, random winter wind sending chills through her body; it couldn’t have been the almost tender way he said her name. She coughed and tightened her arms across her chest, hoping the pressure would stop the sensation.

  “What should I call you? Scrooge McDuck, or…?”

  To her surprise, he laughed. It wasn’t an evil movie villain laugh or anything, just a nice chuckle with a warm ring to it. She dismissed how much she liked it as a fluke. Even cold, unfeeling statues sometimes look almost human in the right lighting.

  “You can call me Clark.”

  Kate didn’t repeat his name as he did hers. It somehow felt wrong to call him by his first name; she felt more comfortable calling her former high school teachers by their first names than she did calling him Clark. It was such a wholesome, all-American kind of name. Clark Kent. Clark Gable. Clark Woodward wasn’t the correct third for that trio.

  “Listen.” All of Kate’s strength went into fueling her empathy for this man. Focusing on her friends and family would just leave her angry and bitter; focusing on him would give her a much better shot. Most men liked an appeal to vanity. Maybe it would work on him. “I don’t know you. I don’t know anything about you. But your Uncle Christopher was a good man. He believed in this town. I mean, your family basically built this place. The library is named after you. The school auditorium. The football field. The gazebo in the park, for goodness’ sake. It’s all yours. You can do whatever you want with it—”

  “Great. You understand where I’m coming from.”
/>
  “No. I mean, yes, but you don’t understand where I’m coming from.” He raised an eyebrow, which she took as a sign to continue. “You have a town full of people who stare at your name every day with hope. And gratitude. Are you going to betray all of these people? Take away their livelihoods?”

  “I don’t know any of these people. I don’t care about any of these people.”

  Those two statements landed on Kate’s jaw like a string of one-two punches. What kind of man just…didn’t care?

  “If they want jobs, they can herd cattle like the rest of my employees, but I can’t waste money on this Christmas foolishness for another day.”

  “But your uncle—”

  “I am not my uncle!”

  It was a roar, a statement to the heavens; the force of it almost knocked Kate back a step. Somehow, she managed to hold her ground even as she couldn’t quite understand the nerve she’d struck. Everyone wanted to be Mr. Woodward; he was as kind as he was insanely rich. The perfect combination. What kind of man hated a man like that?

  “Clearly.”

  The sharp flash of emotion dissolved as quickly as it appeared. Clark straightened his jacket.

  “I think I’ve heard enough. You can go ahead and give me that phone number now.”

  “One last thing,” Kate said.

  “Yes?”

  “During your… During your little speech, you didn’t even wish us a Merry Christmas.”

  His refusal to do so left her with a nasty taste in her mouth. A small gesture it might have been, but its absence was so blatant she couldn’t let it go.

  “That’s because I don’t celebrate Christmas.”

  “Don’t celebrate Christmas?” Kate choked.

  “No. Now, give me the number.”

  Dumbstruck, Kate’s brain didn’t quite possess the processing power to say anything as she gave him the number. The cogs in her mind were too busy trying to puzzle out his declaration. But once he had the number, he was gone, leaving her with nothing but questions. There was no goodbye. No, “for what it’s worth, I’m sorry.” Just a curt “thanks,” as he walked away dialing. Kate stood alone on the sidewalk for only the briefest of seconds before a hand touched her shoulder. She didn’t turn around or tear her gaze from the spot where Clark stood just a moment ago; she knew who would be there.

  “How’d it go, dear?”

  The pity in Miss Carolyn’s question stung. Kate hadn’t even realized tears were forming in her eyes until they left cold tracks down her flushed cheeks. She failed. She tried to save her town, and she failed. With a weak shrug, she decided a little gallows humor was probably for the best.

  “Do you know if any places are hiring?”

  Chapter Two

  Christmas Eve

  Kate Buckner was on a roll, as far as rants went. Since arriving almost thirty minutes ago, she’d yammered nonstop, flooding her companion and the empty restaurant with her every stray thought. The faster she spoke, the faster they came, leaving her to race to catch up.

  “But you know what I really can’t stand?”

  It was 7:15 on the morning of Christmas Eve, and for the first time since she was seven years old, Kate wasn’t ironing a petticoat or setting up trays of mince pies. For once, she sat at the end of the bar at Mel’s Diner, drinking a steaming cup of coffee and relishing the hearty scents of bacon and maple syrup. On a regular morning in, say, March, the old diner was the greatest breakfast joint in the known universe.

  But this Christmastime? She hated it. Mel’s was a staple of the Miller’s Point diet and she came in here at least once a week, but that was part of the problem. Without the festival, this felt like just another Tuesday. Bing Crosby’s holiday standards on the old jukebox just weren’t enough to convince her this was actually Christmas Eve.

  “What can’t you stand?”

  Michael Newman, her breakfast companion and best friend since they were cast as Fred and Fred’s wife in high school, couldn’t have been more different than Clark Woodward. Where the out-of-towner played perpetual poker, Michael slapped himself open and let you read every page of him. He was the all-American type, dark-skinned with a smile that could light up a football stadium on its own, the exact image of a small-town golden boy. She always assumed he’d be mayor one day, but now she wasn’t sure if the town would be around long enough for him to make the leap from ranch medic to political mastermind. For a long time, town gossip had it that the two of them, the town’s two favorite children, would end up married, but she could never imagine it. They were like two trees planted too close together. Their branches intertwined and they shared the same soil, but they’d never become one. She only thought of him as a friend.

  “What I really can’t stand is that he has the audacity to stand there and mansplain to me about economics. Of course the festival doesn’t make money for them, but it makes money for us, and that helps keep the town—the town where his business is, I’ll remind you—afloat. What’s he gonna do about workers when they all move to Fort Worth or something because there’s not enough money circulating here? Huh?”

  “I don’t know, Kate.”

  The diner was completely empty, perhaps because it wasn’t meant to be open. It closed on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, usually because Mel, a rotund, redheaded man with a missing front tooth, always played The Ghost of Christmas Present, but this morning Kate showed up at his front door with a determined knock and Michael in tow, ready to pay top dollar for black coffee and as many pancakes as it was humanly possible to consume in one sitting. She couldn’t fathom sitting alone in her tiny apartment above the town’s solitary bookstore for another minute, looking out onto the empty town square; the loneliness would have consumed her.

  Now, all that consumed her was the frustration she’d been venting to herself all night. Saying these things out loud helped slightly, but as usual, Michael wasn’t content to nod his head and agree with her. He just had to be difficult. The man never knew when to quit, an admirable quality he and Kate shared.

  “And who doesn’t celebrate Christmas? Christmas!” She exclaimed, waving her hands in her usual manner, the kind that almost always ended in her accidentally knocking over a salt shaker or a full glass of Diet Coke.

  “Off the top of my head? Jewish people, Muslims, Jehovah’s Witnesses, some other sects of Christianity, some atheists—”

  The sass earned him a withering look.

  “I don’t know, Kate. Maybe he just doesn’t like…” Michael picked at his biscuits and gravy, the first course of the six he’d ordered immediately upon sitting down at the bar. After half a lifetime of friendship, Kate had taught him these moods of hers meant he would need to be settled in for a long, long time. “I don’t know. Trees. Maybe he’s allergic to Christmas trees.”

  “He could get a fake one.”

  “Or he gets paper cuts from wrapping presents.”

  “He could use gift bags.”

  “What about eggnog? Maybe he’s vegan.”

  “Then he needs to move out of Texas.”

  On some level, Kate knew she was being useless. Sitting in this diner complaining about the impossibility and injustice of it all seemed like a perfect way to get absolutely nothing done. On another level, the impossibility and injustice almost gave her permission to whine. Nothing could be done. Why shouldn’t she just moan and groan and commiserate with her friend? She dropped her head into her hands.

  “I don’t want to be that guy,” Michael said through a mouth full of biscuit, “but you don’t look so good.”

  “I don’t know why. I got a solid four hours of sleep last night. That’s a full hour longer than usual.”

  Kate knew full well how she looked. Besides her daily uniform of jeans, a red flannel, her reliable pair of sturdy-heeled boots and her dirty blonde hair tied away from her face in a sensible braid, heavy bags dra
gged her hazel eyes down and her splotchy skin spoke of a restless night. Michael was more of a solid eight hours of sleep kind of guy, so his surprise was understandable.

  “What were you doing up that late?”

  Kate brightened up. Her ideas may have been half-baked, but at least she had them. And even if it would never happen, she liked feeling useful.

  “Brainstorming. I have tons of ideas to save the town.” And only two of them involved hiring Bono and Beyoncé for a telethon. Most of the others involved social media campaigns and petitioning the federal government for a grant of some kind once she figured out how to write grants, but some of the ideas were sensible and others not cooked up. “We’re gonna call the governor and petition to have the square designated a historical—”

  Her ranting came to an abrupt halt as Michael’s fork clattered to his plate and his jaw dropped halfway to the floor. He stared over her shoulder at something Kate couldn’t see. She tried to make it out in the reflection of a window behind his head, to no avail.

  “No way,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Don’t look now,” he muttered, casually reaching for his coffee cup, “but your boyfriend from yesterday’s meeting just walked in.”

  “My what?”

  Kate spun in her seat, but Michael caught her shoulder and pulled her back to face front.

  “I said don’t look now!”

  Thank goodness for the Bing Crosby Christmas hits. If he weren’t crooning so loud, Clark Woodward would’ve heard them. Mind racing, Kate tried to place the pieces of this puzzle together. This was their town and their diner. He must have thought himself as bulletproof as the real Clark Kent if he thought he could show his face in public after what he did yesterday.

  “Why is he here?” Kate hissed, leaning into Michael to prevent herself from giving in to the temptation to glance over her shoulder at the intruder.

  “I don’t know. He’s just sitting at a table, looking at a menu.”