“What brings you by?” Troy asked. “I thought you’d be somewhere signing autographs or something.”
Dante gritted his teeth. So it was going to be like that, was it? Troy was like a dog with a bone. He just couldn’t let it go. “I thought it was time we settled things between us,” Dante said, walking toward Troy until they were only mere inches apart from each other.
“I’ve got work to do,” his brother said in a clipped tone. “Some of us have to pay the bills.”
Dante sucked his teeth. “Don’t start that with me. It’s getting really old. I know what work is.”
Troy rolled his eyes. “Sure. I’ve seen the pictures of you in the tabloids sunbathing all over the globe with Victoria’s Secret models. Such a chore.”
He clenched his fists at his side. Troy loved to diminish Dante’s career and the hard work that had earned him a spot among Hollywood’s highest-paid actors. His little brother acted as if Dante hadn’t worked extremely hard to earn his success. It royally pissed him off. He’d suspected for a long time now that Troy was jealous, but it didn’t justify him acting like an idiot. Suddenly, all his plans to repair things with Troy went up in smoke. He wasn’t the one being nasty and sarcastic. As usual, Troy was throwing grenades in his direction.
He could fight fire with fire. If Troy wanted to go below the belt, he could go lower. This back and forth was what they’d done throughout their childhood. The familiar rhythms of their sibling dynamics were hard to resist.
He shrugged. “What can I say? I get to do what I love. You should try it sometime,” Dante drawled. “It takes courage to follow your dreams. But I guess you wouldn’t know about that, would you?”
Bam! Drop the mic. It was the crux of Troy’s issues with him. He resented Dante for daring to reach for the brass ring. Back in the day his brother had wanted to pursue a career as a writer, but he’d left it by the wayside in order to run the family store.
Troy glared at him. Steam was practically coming out of his ears.
“Look at you,” Troy sneered. “Coming back to town like a rooster, crowing about your success. You haven’t changed one bit. Still the same old showboat.”
“And you’re still stewing because you didn’t get to live the life you imagined. It’s not my fault that I made a success of myself.”
Troy jutted his chin in the direction of a newspaper.
“Take a copy on your way out. I know you love good press.” The look in Troy’s eyes hinted he had something up his sleeve.
Dante glanced at the paper. The Mistletoe Gazette. Even from this vantage point he could read the headline. “Dante West. Hero or Heartbreaker?” Dante read on. “Mistletoe’s hometown hero has left a swath of broken hearts in his wake in Hollywood. Should the women in town run for cover?” The words felt like sawdust in Dante’s mouth. Who would have written such trash? He wasn’t a man who went around trampling on hearts, and he certainly didn’t consider himself a hero. In his eyes, men like Luke Keegan who fought battles for America’s freedoms were heroic. He loved being an actor, but he wasn’t saving people from burning buildings or risking his life on foreign shores.
The headline rattled him. Mistletoe was the last place on earth Dante would have expected to print scandalous headlines like this one. He grabbed the newspaper from the table. Troy’s name was at the top as the writer of the article. Dante’s jaw dropped. Had Troy really written a hit piece on him? His own brother?
“This is garbage and you know it. When are you going to get over yourself and this resentment you’re harboring toward me? We’re family!”
Troy let out a brittle laugh. “Family? What a joke. We haven’t been that in a long time.”
Anger flared inside him. “Retract this crap or you’ll be hearing from my attorney.” Dante seethed. He’d had enough of this nonsense with the tabloids back in Los Angeles. He hadn’t expected to be raked over the coals in Mistletoe.
Troy stuck his chin out. “Hit me with your best shot. Go ahead and sue me.”
Dante walked over to Troy, crumpling up the newspaper as he advanced in his direction. He threw it down in front of him. Troy closed the distance between them so they were standing almost chest to chest. Dante’s hands bunched into fists at his side as anger surged inside of him. Troy was pushing it. And he was messing with the wrong one. Clearly he’d forgotten how many times Dante had kicked his butt when they were younger.
A loud whistle cut through all the noise roiling around in Dante’s head. “All right, boys. Enough! You’re acting like five-year-olds.” Lucy was standing in the doorway with a frown knitting her brows together. She moved in their direction, placing her body in the middle of them with her palms facing outward to push them away from each other.
“Lucy, I can handle this. You don’t need to get involved,” Dante said. She was the last person he wanted as a referee between him and his knucklehead of a brother.
“Dante. Why don’t you come outside with me and get some fresh air?” Lucy suggested as she placed her hands on his chest and backed him up a few steps. “I’ll come back later for my order, Troy.”
“Good riddance, big brother,” Troy muttered. “Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.”
Lucy grabbed ahold of Dante’s sleeve and led him to the door. Once he was outside, a cold, biting wind whipped against his face. It was just what he needed at the moment. He let out a strangled sound of frustration.
“Are you okay? What brought that on?” Lucy asked. He turned around to face her. Her big brown eyes radiated concern. It cut through his annoyance with Troy to know that on some level Lucy still cared about him. He didn’t want to examine why it meant so much to him.
“I’m fine,” he said. “Some things never change. He’s trying to trash me in an article he wrote for the town newspaper. I should have known better than to come over here.”
Lucy’s eyes widened. “You two really know how to push each other’s buttons.”
He frowned. “I forgot how annoying he can be,” he said. “I swung by to see if we could squash things. He was hostile from the moment I said hello.”
Lucy shook her head. “It’s such a shame. Back in the day you two were joined at the hip.”
“That was a long time ago. I don’t know why I even bothered trying to make things right between us.”
Lucy shrugged. “Maybe because he’s your brother. And you love him.”
“Not today I don’t.” Both of them knew it wasn’t true, but he was still aggravated and on edge from the confrontation. Lucy was right on the money regarding his past closeness with Troy. Once they had been practically inseparable. Like Dante, his brother had been a member of the football team. Troy had always been much better than him. There had even been talk of Troy heading to the pros after college, but he’d dropped out of school and ruined his prospects. That, along with his snuffed-out writing dreams, had left him bitter.
The division between them bugged Dante, but he was helpless to change things for the better. Maybe he needed to face facts. Some things weren’t fixable.
Lucy held out her arms and began moving them wildly around. She starting dancing as if she was attending a Zumba class. “You need to shake it off,” she urged him.
Dante cocked his head to the side and studied her. She resembled a flamingo doing a wild dance. The women he knew back in California would never do such a thing in public. Most of them were too concerned about their image to cut loose. “That’s what I’ve always liked about you, Luce. You really don’t care about making a fool of yourself,” he said with a low chuckle.
“Thanks a lot,” she grumbled, making a face at him. “Some gratitude I get for trying to ease the tension.”
He placed his hands over his heart. “I’m very grateful to you. I needed that laugh.”
A slight smile hovered around her lips. “Okay, good deed done for the day. I’m heading back inside to pick up my order.”
Dante wasn’t quite ready for Lucy to walk away from him, even
though she looked mighty good from the back. She had curves in all the right places. The years had been good to her. She’d filled out quite nicely. She’d always been stunning, but now she was downright spectacular. Lucy had blossomed like a radiant chrysanthemum. He wished he’d been around to see her transformation.
“Lucy!” he called out. “Are you busy?”
She turned around and eyed him with a great deal of suspicion. “That depends. Why are you asking?”
“I’m heading out to the Christmas tree farm on Butternut Ridge. I want to scope it out for a last-minute filming location.” He shifted from one foot to the other. Lucy’s steady gaze was making him nervous. “I added a scene to the script and I’m thinking that Sawyer’s would make for an amazing visual. Pine and balsam trees as far as the eye can see. A perfect snapshot of Maine.”
Lucy didn’t say a word. She simply gaped at him. Seconds ticked by without her saying anything. What was he thinking? Lucy didn’t want to hang out with him. Just because she’d been worried about the showdown between him and Troy didn’t mean she’d forgiven or forgotten. He was seriously wondering if he’d overstepped by even asking her.
“So, are you going to keep me hanging?” he asked, fully expecting her to turn him down.
The beginnings of a smile curved her lips upward. “You had me at Christmas tree farm.”
Chapter Six
Lucy had no idea how she’d ended up driving with Dante to Sawyer’s Christmas tree farm. If anyone had told her a few days ago that she would be seated in his passenger seat as he drove them to one of her favorite destinations in all of Mistletoe, she would have laughed herself silly. But here she was, swaying to the rhythm of Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You” and belting out the words to the song. Dante was tapping his fingers on the steering wheel and humming to the beat. She had to stop herself from sneaking glances at him. After all this time it was odd to be in such close proximity to him. It made her feel a little bit breathless. But there was no way she could have turned down a visit to Sawyer’s. Not in a million years.
She was a sucker for the holidays and Christmas trees and anything remotely festive. Her family had been getting their trees at Sawyer’s for as long as she could remember. For Lucy it was a magical place where holiday dreams came true. Listening to Christmas music on the radio was a bonus. Unless he had amnesia, Dante knew all of these things about her.
It wasn’t as if she really wanted to spend time with him. But it wasn’t something she could avoid either, since he was starting filming in a few days at the library. Mayor Finch had already called to impress on Lucy the importance of ensuring everything ran smoothly. The town of Mistletoe would benefit tremendously by being affiliated with Dante West. It was clear to Lucy that she was being asked to roll out the red carpet for Dante and his crew.
The idea of spending time with him still wasn’t totally comfortable to her, so perhaps it was a good thing that they got reacquainted so it wasn’t awkward. Stepping in between Dante and Troy at the hardware store had been an impulsive act. She hadn’t wanted the two of them to come to blows, and from where she’d been standing it had looked pretty volatile.
Dante turned the volume on the radio down. He pointed at his ears. “Sorry, but I’m trying to save my hearing till I’m at least forty.”
“Oops. Sorry about that. I can’t resist the holiday music,” she confessed. “It’s such a short window of time if you really think about it. They start playing the songs in November and by December twenty-sixth they’ve moved on to something else.”
“You’re not trying to avoid talking to me, are you? Turning up the volume that high is pretty much a conversation killer.”
“I can’t think of a single reason why I would do something like that,” she replied in a syrupy-sweet voice. Surely Dante didn’t have the impression that they were back to being besties. What were they supposed to talk about? The strange turn of events that had them together scouting out a possible film location?
“So, tell me about your life. Something not related to your work at the library,” Dante said.
Lucy fidgeted in her seat. This was why she should have turned Dante’s invitation down flat. He was quizzing her. Why would he want to prod and poke into her business? Compared to his exciting life, hers was a virtual snoozefest.
“Well, after I finish my day at the library I head over the town line to Bourne. There’s a club there called the Limelight. That’s when I turn into my alter ego, Lucinda.” She couldn’t keep a straight face and began cracking up.
“Come on. I’m serious,” he said, his lips twitching. “Update me on what you’ve been doing for the last eight and a half years or so.”
Lucy glanced over at him. Even in profile he was disgustingly handsome. He had a strong jaw, great eyebrows, and a classic nose. Why did men always seem to get better with age? Even the ones who’d battled cystic acne and worn Coke-bottle glasses tended to glow up.
“I went to college at Bowdoin. Then I got my master’s in library science. I came back to work at the library and now I’m head librarian.” She shrugged. “It’s not rip-roaringly exciting, but I’m happy with it.”
“That’s great, Luce. You always dreamed of being head librarian.”
I had other dreams too, she wanted to say. Instead she bit her lip and kept quiet. What would be the point in reminding him of something they both already knew? If he’d wanted the life they’d once planned out, he wouldn’t have left her high and dry.
“Now you,” she said. Lucy already knew Dante’s Hollywood story, but she was desperate to fill up the silence. The quiet made her remember. Every word. Every touch. Lucy was a pro at stuffing down the memories. She couldn’t allow Dante’s return to turn things upside down. As it was, she could barely focus with him sitting mere inches away. A woodsy scent clung to him, appealing to her senses and distracting her from everything else but him.
“Work occupies most of my time. I’ve been trying to make a name for myself in the acting world, so there hasn’t really been time for anything else. At last count I’ve been in more than twenty-five films.” He sent a quick glance in her direction. “I hope that doesn’t sound like I’m bragging, but I’m pretty proud of it.”
“As you should be,” she said. And she meant it. What he’d achieved was nothing short of miraculous. It wasn’t every day that a small-town boy from Maine catapulted himself into a household name. It was even rarer for a Black actor to make a big splash in the competitive world of Hollywood. He was like a comet blazing in the sky.
“So, are you single?” Dante asked. She could hear the curiosity in his voice.
“At the moment, yes,” she said. She didn’t bother telling him that she’d had a shocking lack of romance in her life since his departure. “What about you? I seem to recall reading about you in one of my favorite magazines. You’re quite the ladies’ man.”
Dante scowled. Clearly, she’d hit a nerve. “Don’t believe what you read in the scandal rags. Most of it is garbage.”
Lucy wasn’t brave enough to ask about a certain reality star he’d been photographed with on numerous occasions. She didn’t want to run the risk of Dante thinking she still held a torch for him or that she followed every move he made. Because she didn’t. Not even a little bit.
“I have to admit, it’s a little strange being back home,” he said.
“Strange how?” She smirked at him. “It must be nice to have everyone fangirling over you. I could rescue the library from financial ruin, a raging fire, and a flood, yet they still wouldn’t throw a parade for me. Or give me a key to the town.”
“You’ve always been beloved in this town. Me, on the other hand…” he said with a shake of his head. “I don’t think this town knew what to make of me. It’s wonderful to be here, but I feel like I’ve missed so much.” A tremor was visible along his jaw. “I had coffee with Nick this morning. It still bothers me that I was out of the country filming when Kara died.”
; Lucy heard the regret in his voice. There was no doubt in her mind that he’d truly cared about Kara. She knew he was Miles’s godfather, so it was obvious his friendship with Nick had been tight over the years.
She let out a huff of air. “That was a rough one on all of us. It happened so fast. One minute she was dropping off Miles at school and the next she was gone in a horrific accident.” A feeling of deep loss swept over Lucy. They’d all grown up together in Mistletoe. Kara had been a sweet and vivacious person. She and Nick had dated all through high school. Unlike her and Dante, they’d gone the distance by getting married and having a family. A drunk driver had stolen their happily ever after from them, and nothing had been the same since. Kara hadn’t even made it to her thirtieth birthday. The world had lost a bright light and Nick had lost his true north, the one who’d always kept him on track. Miles had been robbed of a loving mother. None of it had been fair.
Dante stopped at a bear crossing sign. She could feel the heat of his gaze on her. When she turned toward him, she felt her heart stop. Moisture pooled in his eyes.
“I didn’t mean to bring up something so traumatic. I’ve just been trying to figure out a way to help Nick and Miles. Clearly, I’m still struggling to find out how I can do it in a meaningful way.”
His words tugged at her heartstrings. It was evident how much he cared about the Keegan family. In the aftermath of Kara’s death, the town had rallied around the family. Nick’s brother, Luke, had even managed to come back from the Middle East to support them.
On pure instinct, she reached out and touched Dante’s hand. “I think having you here is the best medicine of all.”
Touching his skin hadn’t been the best idea. Right away she felt as if an electric current were running between them. Her fingertips were practically scorched. Lucy quickly pulled her hand back. Dante shot her a quizzical look. She wondered if he’d felt it too.
Thankfully, they’d just arrived at their destination and Dante was forced to focus on driving into the gated entrance. A large green-and-red sign decorated with holly welcomed them to Sawyer’s Christmas tree farm. Lucy let out a little yelp of excitement and clapped her hands together. Suddenly, she was transported back to childhood when it was just her, Stella, and their parents. Tess hadn’t even been a twinkle in her parents’ eyes at that point. Coming to Sawyer’s had been a yearly ritual filled with fun, frivolity, and the magic of the holidays. Picking out the perfect tree to place in front of their living room window had been a blast. Things had been so much simpler then. She still adored Christmas, but she no longer looked at it through a childlike lens.
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