"You're gonna get bored."
I shrugged. My life had been the opposite of boring for so long, I didn't know if my brother was right, or if it would be good to have a break. "Want a drink?"
Cormac nodded and I rose and went to the kitchen door at the far end of the porch, returning with a beer for each of us and juice boxes for the girls. We took seats in the big wooden chairs that overlooked the lawn.
"At least you've gotten out to go shopping."
"They deliver groceries now, Mac." I told him. "Welcome to the Internet age."
"Surprised that's legal in this county. This place has the craziest laws …" he shook his head and took a swig of his beer. "It's the smallest county in Maryland, and half the stores and restaurants here straddle county lines. Did you know there's a distillery here that's only legal because half of it is in the adjacent county?"
I frowned at my brother. Who cared? “And?"
"It's just nuts here. You'll see. You can only drink at the bar there if you stand on one side of it. The other side is in the wrong county."
"That's ridiculous."
He nodded. "It is." Cormac gave me a long look over the top of his bottle, and was about to speak again when Taylor stole his words. "You walk funny now, Uncle Callan. Does your foot hurt?"
There it was. I nodded and struggled to keep my expression neutral, pleasant. "Yep. That's why I can't play soccer anymore." I kept my tone light, and hoped it didn't betray any of the bitterness I’d been working so hard to contain.
"You're going to physical therapy?" It was more statement than question, and I heard the judgment in my brother's voice.
"Not sure what the point would be." I had tried physical therapy right after I’d gotten the cast off. It was painful and pointless.
Cormac barked out a laugh. "My six-year old notices your limp. Maybe you can't play anymore, but you can at least rehab so you might have a chance at walking normally again."
"Kids are more observant than other people," I said, knowing that even a baby would notice my limp. It wasn't going away, though. No amount of physical therapy could mend what was broken in there—or in my heart. I’d never been anything but an athlete, and that was over. I didn't care about the limp. If anything, the pain and my slow gait felt right—an outward expression of how twisted and broken I was on the inside.
"Gonna just stay in your big house and feel sorry for yourself, huh?" Cormac's tone was bitter, and even though his words cut and I felt my little-brother instinct kick into high gear, ready for a fight, I also guessed my brother might be talking about himself. He was broken too. I restrained myself and changed the subject, feeling mildly proud that I hadn't taken the bait.
"How's work, Mac?"
Cormac had moved to Singletree a few years back to start an accounting firm. Linda had been charmed by the little town, and they'd agreed it would be a good place to raise their family.
Cormac frowned and took a long drink of his beer. "Work is fine. Harder now without having help for the girls. A lot of late nights to keep up."
I nodded. My brother's sadness had fallen heavy over the back porch, coating everything in a blanket of grief. A glance at my older niece told me she could feel it too, and my heart twisted in my chest at the thought of these bright little girls being anything but light and full of fun. "You could bring the girls here," I said before I’d really had a chance to think about it.
"You want to babysit?" Cormac was already shaking his head.
I sat up straighter, suddenly feeling like it was the right thing, maybe the first right thing I’d found in a while. "When you need it. Maybe after school, give you some time to work?"
Taylor was following this conversation with clear interest, her book forgotten in her lap. "It'd be better than daycare," she said, a high note of hope in her voice. Her dark wide eyes met mine and my heart twisted again at the plea I saw there.
Cormac stared out at where Maddie rolled in the grass, pulling together little piles of leaves that had fallen from the ancient oaks bordering the yard. Her pink coat was covered with dry grass and dirt, but she was smiling to herself as she played. "I don't know," he said quietly.
"Give it a try?" I asked.
"They're already set up at daycare," Cormac said. "That's no small task, by the way. There's doctor's notes and immunizations and multiple changes of clothes and ziplocks full of everything you can think of, and you basically sign your life away just to get a spot at these places ..."
"So don't give up their spots. We'll keep paying for them, just in case."
"Easy for you to say, super star. I'm not in the business of paying for a service I'm not using. Things are tight, Callan. Kids cost money."
"I'll cover it." I said, selling myself on the idea as I convinced my brother. "I could use the company." I was surprised to hear myself say those words. I’d spent the better part of a year trying to convince myself I didn’t need anyone.
"I'll think about it."
"He needs us, Dad," Taylor said, and I couldn't help the shock that flooded through me at her words. I turned to look at her. Was I so transparent a six-year old could see the wounds inside me? "Look at this place," she continued. "He doesn't have up a single Christmas decoration up and it's almost December."
Oh, thank god. We laughed—me with relief that my need for human company hadn’t been quite as obvious as I’d feared. I thought of the woman who'd dropped in the day before to talk about Christmas decorations. The woman with the silky dark hair and the wry smile. If she and Taylor got together, the house would be done up and featured on television before I even got a word in.
"Do you even have a tree, Uncle Callan?" Taylor asked. Maddie had wandered back up to the porch and now she stood next to her sister's chair.
"Yeah, where's your Christmas twee?" she asked, her eyes going even wider as she looked around her, hoping to spot a glowing pine somewhere nearby.
"If you guys help, maybe we can get one set up this week," I said, glancing sideways at my brother, hoping to see him going along with the plan.
"Fine," Cormac said in a near-whisper. "Just a couple hours when Taylor gets done with Kindergarten. You'll have to pick them up. I'll come get them by six."
The happy smile that lit up Taylor's face felt like a win—the first one I’d had in a long time—and I leaned back in my chair, feeling a little less directionless than I had before.
5
Underwear Ad of Dreams
April
Googling the Whitewood brothers had been only partially productive, and I spent over an hour on the phone with Lynn, crawling through our findings.
Cormac Whitewood was basically a unicorn. The guy had no digital footprint at all—no humiliating Facebook or Insta selfies, no Twitter rants I could find, and nothing written about him publicly besides a very nice piece in the local paper about the accounting firm he opened, and a very sad short piece about the death of his wife. Nothing I could really use, though I did write down the address of the firm's main office and its phone number.
Callan Whitewood, on the other hand—not a unicorn. Not even a donkey painted white with a toilet paper roll taped to his head. The guy was an open book—a very famous, very social, painfully handsome—open book.
His face was everywhere. He'd done sponsorships for water, beer, underwear, some kind of Japanese foot powder, and shower gel, his smoldering gaze (and his almost impossibly toned abs) staring out from photo after photo of him holding (or wearing) the products.
There were action shots of him playing for the South Bay Sharks, his shorts stretching to contain the powerful muscles of his thighs as he ran, kicked, and celebrated in the game shots. There were other photos too, along with tabloid stories about women and illegitimate children, marriage rumors and celebrity hookups. I knew most of that stuff probably wasn't true, and while it was interesting to see him on a red carpet in a tux (oh Lordie, he looked good in a tux), the photos I kept coming back to were the shots of Callan Whitewood in act
ion, because in the soccer shots he was actually smiling. Not a sexy little smirk designed to make girls like me clench my thighs together, and not a cultivated lift of one side of his mouth meant to show off his dimple as he stood next to Katy Perry at some event. The soccer shots caught him full-on grinning with glee like a ten-year old getting to do his favorite thing in the world. And while Callan Whitewood wearing a practiced smirk was sexy, Callan Whitewood actually smiling lit up parts of me I didn't think could be activated by a photo alone. The guy was gorgeous.
Ogling a sports star was not my usual MO, but I told myself this particular brand of online stalking served a specific purpose—saving my own ass. I needed to get this guy on my side, even if my side was the somewhat unfamiliar side where all things Christmassy grew and bloomed in glittery red-and-white striped craziness. So when I came across more than one photo with the same woman, a tall blonde I didn't think fell into the category of model or movie star, I stared a little longer. And when I found stories about Callan Whitewood's ongoing relationship with a San Diego nurse, I read every line. The relationship was real, it seemed, and had lasted for several years. I wondered what had happened to the nurse, or if maybe she was still in the picture, so to speak. She wasn't in any of the photos I had found of Callan since his injury, however. And those were hard to look at.
Callan had broken all three bones in his ankle when another player had crashed into him, sending them both tumbling in a championship game. The other guy had gotten up, but Callan had stayed down, and his career had ended there on the pitch that day. The description of the injury turned my stomach, and the few photos I found of Callan afterwards showed none of the joy I’d seen on his face in the game shots. His eyes were hooded and his jaw was tight in all of them, a look of intense hostility and pain replacing the open grin that had drawn me in.
"Gah, poor guy," I said, shutting the laptop and turning my attention to the phone I’d been holding to my ear as I surfed for something I could use.
"Did you read the article about the breakup in People?" Lynn was an excellent partner when there was online stalking to be done.
"I saw it, but I'm starting to feel like I'm invading the guy's privacy," I said, standing to walk to the window in my suite. I had a view of the open square where the huge tree now stood decorated but unlit. The tree-lighting ceremony was scheduled for sometime at the end of the week, according to the flyer that had been placed under my door that morning, which I had immediately scrunched up and thrown away. "I feel a little bit bad for him."
"Well, he's feeling bad while rolling around on a bed made of money. The guy did well, Apes. But this girlfriend sounds like a B."
"Money isn't everything," I said, though I wouldn't really know. I’d never had enough of it to feel secure, and even offering standard platitudes about it made me feel like a phony. "He doesn't seem happy, you know?"
Lynn sighed. "Most people aren't happy. Speaking of which, how are you holding up in Sparkle Tree?"
"You know that's not the name of the town."
"It will be when you're done with it."
"I don't know. Uncle Rob is putting on the pressure, and the grumpy soccer star is making my life harder than it needs to be. It's a flipping decorating show, for crap's sake. It shouldn't be this hard."
"You've seen my apartment. Decorating is no small task." Lynn had moved into her apartment at least three years earlier, and still hadn't managed to decide where to hang any of her framed pictures, which all leaned against the wall in the bedroom gathering dust.
"This is true," I said.
"Well, what's your plan? How will you get the grump on your side?"
"Not sure. I mean, the guy signed a contract," I said. "But given that he has more money than most small countries, I think he's probably got a team of hot shot lawyers who can get him out of that, or at least tie it up long enough that I'll miss my deadline and lose my job."
"You'll have to win him with charm."
I blew out a harsh breath and slid onto the small couch, remembering too late that I’d ended up covered with glitter the last time I sat on it. And I was wearing black pants. I stood back up, moving to the mirror over the table to get a look at my backside, which was now subtly sparkly. "Perfect," I sighed. "Yeah, charm is not my strong suit these days. The closer we get to Christmas, the less charming I feel. And it's officially December tomorrow."
"So …?"
"I'm going to go talk to his brother tomorrow morning. He's an accountant. Contracts must mean something to him."
"Sure, because … are you getting accountants confused with lawyers?"
"Grasping at straws either way."
"Okay then. Good luck!"
"Thanks. Talk to you later."
When I’d ended the call, I punched the address of Cormac Whitewood's firm into my phone. It was across the square, down a little side street. I could walk.
After hotel-room coffee and a protein bar in my room the next morning, I shoved my phone into my bag and left, wiping furiously at the butt of my pants as I took the stairs to the first floor, hoping some of the glitter that seemed to coat every item I owned might let go, though everything I’d ever learned about glitter told me it was hopeless.
Cormac Whitewood was in, which was easy enough to discover when I arrived at the office—just one small room inside the storefront under the awning. There was a tiny reception area, but no one occupied it, and when the bell on the door chimed, Cormac called, "come on back."
"Hi," I said, poking my head into the small windowless room. Talk about a need for decorating, sheesh—the place looked like a cell.
"Hi," Cormac said, standing up from the desk and running a hand through a thick mop of dark hair. He looked a little bit like his brother, same penetrating eyes and thick hair, but Cormac was taller and fairer, and the atmosphere around him didn't seem quite as intense as it did around Callan. Still, he didn't seem like a jovial guy. "Can I help you with something?"
I pasted on a bright smile and stuck out my hand, which Cormac shook. "I'm April Hall," I said. "I was hoping I could chat with you for a quick second about something I need a little help with. I wasn't sure where else to go."
"Have a seat," Cormac said. "My curiosity is piqued. I don't get the sense this is a bookkeeping issue."
I laughed, the sound false in my own ears. "No, it's not. It's actually about your brother …"
Cormac stood back up quickly, and pointed at the door. "If you're a reporter or a fan, you're going to have to get your information somewhere else. The poor guy came here for some peace and quiet, can't you just let him have it? He's been through enough." His face was dark, stormy.
"No, no, sorry. I'm not a fan. Or a reporter." I stood. "Could I just talk to you for a quick minute? And then I promise I'll go if you want me to."
Cormac lifted an eyebrow and sat back down, crossing his arms. "Go ahead."
"Okay, well. Here's the thing." I took a deep breath and tried to still my spinning mind. I wasn't a reporter, but I was pretty darned close if you looked at it from the perspective of someone who didn't want any publicity in their lives. "So I'm out here for work," I began. "I'm from California."
"Long way from home," Cormac said, something in his face softening slightly. "Me too," he said, but didn't offer anything else.
"This place is quaint, isn't it?" I said, leaning forward. When Cormac didn't say anything else, I sat up a bit, continuing. "So the thing is, I got sent out here to do preproduction for this show that's on DecorTV called Holiday Homes."
I had been worried that uttering the word TV would end this whole conversation in a matter of seconds, but Cormac's lips had parted just slightly and he'd uncrossed his arms. "I know that show, actually. My wife—" he cleared his throat and looked down before seeming to regain himself. "My wife used to love that show."
"Oh, yeah?" I grinned. Maybe I’d find an ally here after all. "I hope I'll do a good job this year for her, then." Maybe this was exactly what I needed.
<
br /> He cleared his throat again and his smile thinned. "She won't care. She died a while ago.”
Oh god. Oh shit, why had I forgotten about the article I’d read? "I'm so sorry." I swallowed hard, trying to get the foot I’d just swallowed out of my windpipe.
"Not on you," he said lightly, but the bitterness in his voice was toxic.
I didn't know exactly how to continue, but barreled ahead. "Well, so you know it's all about the houses, then. And I came into this whole thing late—all the contracts on the selected homes had been signed, and the participants all agreed to decorate their homes for Christmas by the first week in December so the camera team can get the shots they need to send back to the hosts in Los Angeles."
Cormac was nodding, watching me.
"And, well, whoever used to own Singletree Manor signed our contract. And then they sold the house, and the contract, to your brother. And he signed it."
Cormac's face cleared as understanding dawned. "And now he's refusing to participate."
I sighed, nodding. "I asked him nicely," I said, feeling a little bit lame.
"Yeah, that won't work with him."
Clearly. "What will work? If I can't get him to agree to feature Singletree Manor on the show, I'll lose my job. And my whole career, actually. This is kind of my last chance." There. Now I’d told all my dirty secrets to a complete stranger. I really couldn't sink much lower.
"You know you have some glitter in your hair?" Cormac said, taking me completely off guard. "Kind of caught in the front part there." He moved his hand above the left side of his face to show me where, and I batted at my bangs, wishing I’d never laid eyes on that enormous basket of glittery Christmas terror—or had just left it alone on the table.
"Thanks," I said, trying to pull my bangs down so I could see any clinging glitter. Finally, I gave up and pushed them back. The universe was determined to force me to be festive, even if it was completely against my will.
Shaking the Sleigh Page 4