Their Christmas to Remember

by Amalie Berlin

  “Don’t do that.” She tried to jerk free again, but he had strong hands, and wasn’t letting go. “You don’t get to holler that I’m entirely meaningless to you and then act like you give a damn.”

  “I never said that.”

  “Yes, you did.” The pointy shape of the toes of her boots seeped into her consciousness, and for a brief second she considered kicking him in the shins with those pointy toes. He’d probably let her go then.

  “I did not.” He dragged her back from the stairs and released her in the direction of the wall so she’d have to go past him to get to the stairs or the elevator.

  “Lyons was going on about how I was a conniver who was after your money, and you said back that I didn’t matter at all.”

  “I meant to the conversation we were having.” He shoved his hands through his hair. “We need to go back there and finish the tree.”

  “You finish it.”

  “I’m not going to finish it alone.”

  “Just going to go back and tell the kids I’m being irrational? I know, you could tell them I’m drunk. I drank wine before I came over, enough to give me a tiny bit of extra strength that I need to get through an evening with you, pretending like everything is okay. Well, guess what, it’s not okay. I’m not okay. And this was a huge mistake.”

  To his credit, he held his hands up in a way meant to calm her, to unwind the situation somehow, but it was too late for that.

  “It was only going to be temporary anyway.” She gestured with one hand. “Let me through. I’ve gotta go hail a cab.”

  When he rubbed his head, he looked almost distraught enough for her to buy this act. “I’ll take you home if that’s what you want, but we’re not done.”

  He didn’t offer to go end the video, just left it running as he gestured for her to walk down the stairs, as she’d been intending, and fell into step beside her.

  He was just there, grabbing her coat, grabbing his, and all she could think was that he’d ruined her day, the least he could do was drive her home. But then she remembered she’d have to be in a car with him for a good twenty minutes to get there.

  “I’ll just get a cab.”

  “No, you’ll shut it and let me drive you home. If you don’t, I’ll follow you home and bang on your door until the neighbors call the cops.”

  “You won’t. You hate scandal.”

  “I don’t give a damn what your neighbors think of me.”

  “You mean you don’t care if it’s someone else suffering the stares and whispers.” She pulled her coat on, buttoned up and stuffed her hands into much less fancy gloves than the ones he’d dragged out. “But whatever, drive me home. Say whatever it is you want to say in the car, because you’re not coming in.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  A COUPLE OF minutes later, Wolfe opened the passenger door of his car for Angel to get in, silently working on how to turn this happy parade around.

  Once they’d both settled, he started the engine, asked her address and got on with it.

  She’d demanded he tell her what was on his mind in the car, but he needed more time. Right now, the only thing he had room for was a desire to fix this so strong it blotted out everything else.

  She sat in silence, staring out of the window, as she might in a taxi. Cold rolled off her. The set of her jaw and her silence suggested anger, but the way she hugged herself with her arms said hurt. He’d hurt her. Inadvertently, but there it was. Something he’d never learned how to fix.

  They made the drive without speaking. By the time they’d arrived, all he had in the form of a plan was to apologize. Maybe pour out her wine.

  He parked in front of her building and got out to open her door, but she’d already sprung out and was hurrying to the building.

  Her slick, winter-unfriendly boots worked in his favor. He caught her arm as she slid and although she gave him a look for his trouble, she didn’t try to get free. Until they were inside. Then she disengaged her arm and resumed speed walking.

  Inside the building, the differences between what he saw and what he’d expected to see jarred.

  No doorman. It wasn’t a bad part of town, but she didn’t enjoy the kind of lifestyle of her peers.

  The elevator seemed rickety. It moved slowly and groaned as it passed each floor. Something else that failed to inspire confidence.

  Once off, she hurried again, with him on her heels.

  “Still determined to come inside?”

  “I told you we were going to talk,” he said. Not as if he could screw up talking to her any worse than talking to Lyons, not when this had already spiraled to the point of damage control.

  The lights inside were low, just bright enough to see the utter lack of decor in her little apartment.

  The silence extended. She turned on lights and took off her coat. Going through the motions, then walked into the little kitchen he could see from the hallway.

  She’d been so angry at his house, but now, she just seemed sad. And withdrawn. Almost as if she’d managed to ignore him being there altogether.

  And none of what he saw made him feel any better.

  He followed her into the kitchen for his own glass of wine, past the main focus of her furnishings: bookcases lined with books.

  A sofa. A desk. And the one oddity that made him feel a little better: a gorgeous sapphire gown wrapped in plastic, hanging from the top corner of the most accessible bookcase.

  She eyed him—specifically noting that he’d removed his coat—and returned with her wine to the tiny living room. “Just say whatever you wanna say.”

  “I want to say I’m sorry,” he said without preamble, because he had no preamble. He had no bloody idea what he was supposed to say.

  “Okay.” She wasn’t buying it.

  “Your dress is beautiful,” he tried again. “I’ll be happy to see you in it.”

  Her expression softened a little, but she still looked...lost.

  “I didn’t know what to get. I just went to the shop, told them where I was goin’ and bought what they said. Some of what they said,” she amended. “They had a lot in mind. Jewelry. A real pretty, beaded clutch that looked like peacock feathers, but it was crazy expensive.”

  She still worried about money.

  As much as he wanted to know about her, and he did, seeing inside her worries sucked.

  She didn’t sit, but she did drink her glass of wine down, as if she needed it to be in his presence. Sex only made things awkward when there were expectations shattered, had been his experience. They’d had no expectations for one another last night, except that they’d enjoy the time together. Which he had, until it had gone wrong, and he suspected that was why she was reacting so poorly now to Lyons’s unfortunately pointed outburst earlier.

  “Look, I don’t know what the hell is going on. I get that it hurt to hear me and Lyons fighting about you, but it wasn’t really about you. He doesn’t trust anyone anymore. He really doesn’t trust women. And I told you I’m terrible at relationships, at knowing what to say. Ever.”

  “You said that.”

  “Tell me what you want me to say. You know I’m no’ a bad guy, you know I’m rubbish at talking about things. Throw me a line here...”

  “You hate scandal. You told me you hate drama at work. You don’t let things contaminate the work environment.” She drained her wine glass, set it carefully on a shelf on the closest bookcase.

  “Right.”

  “Right,” she repeated. “Then explain to me how you could have this discussion at work about me, where anyone could hear. Where I heard and stayed put to listen to, kind of so I could head off anyone else who come down the hall. People I work with every day and who already don’t care too much for me. Tell me that.”

  “Tell you how I got dragged into an argument?”

  “Why d
id you go talk to him? Why didn’t you leave once he made clear that was how the conversation was gonna go? Didn’t it bother you at all?”

  He drank down his own wine and sat on her sofa; standing up seemed like entirely too much effort when it took all his concentration to be in the conversation.

  “It bothered me, but once it began to go that direction—which was pretty much from the moment he walked in—I didn’t know how to stop it. Just like I don’t know how to stop this.”

  “I’m not being irrational.”

  “No. You’re not, but you are angry and hurt. I didn’t mean that to happen. And I don’t know how to fix it.”

  “Explain it.”

  He rubbed a hand over his face and leaned back. “I went to talk to him about you. I wanted to see what he was thinking when he said those things to you. But we never got to that.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he greeted me, kind of, and then launched into an attack about the shenanigans.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know.” Wolfe heard his voice rising and took a breath. “Before the shooting—hell, before he started griping at me today, I would’ve said he hated the spectacle as much as I do. But then he created a spectacle, which shows how well I know him.”

  “He said I was using you.”

  “If I knew what that was about, I’d tell you. I’ve had thirty-four years to get to know him and the only explanation I have is the history we both have with our parents.” How did the conversation get around to this? “Did you look them up?”

  She shook her head.

  “Not interested?”

  “Felt too much like gossip. People don’t go to tabloids for accuracy.” She spoke a little less carefully. The massive glass of wine had kicked in. She slouched on the arm of the sofa. “And it shouldn’t matter, what your people are like. Should only matter what you’re like.”

  “I agree.” But he was starting to see that it mattered in a way. It mattered when trying to understand Lyons’s behavior, and his. And hers.

  “You’re lookin’ mighty hard at the bookcases.”

  “I’m trying to figure out if you’ve started packing already.”

  She looked over the apartment, which—aside from the brilliant deep blue gown—was quite flat in color. Nothing like her, with her blues and pinks. It didn’t match.

  She took a moment to answer. She took such a moment that she actually walked away from him, to sit on the sofa properly where she could unzip the boots she’d worn and ease them off. Below, she had on outrageously colorful socks, which had never been seen with the lovely, delicate white dress with frosty blue flowers.

  Colorful. Unlike her apartment.

  “I haven’t started packing. This is it.” She tucked her boots around the corner of the sofa, out of the way. “He was right about somethin’. I’m not like you. I know you’re used to church mansions and sleeping beneath the glow of stained-glass windows. But for me, this is...”

  She paused, head tilting as if she was considering whether to continue that statement, or maybe even trying to figure out what the end was.

  He couldn’t tell. But he still prompted. “It’s what?”

  “It’s very nice by my system of measurement,” she said softly, shrugging. “The roof doesn’t leak. The heat is pretty great. I don’t have to put wood in the fire every four hours to keep the pipes from bursting, or never sleep a full night through the winter because I must wake and tend the fire. I don’t have to watch the woodpile shrink and wonder if it will be enough to hold out until more money comes in to buy more.”

  She’d had a wood budget? His entire life, he’d never considered anything remotely like that. It made the apartment quite different seeing it through her eyes and explained why she’d been so terrified of his home at first. And it became painfully clear that this was a landmine he wasn’t prepared for.

  “Lyons knows I grew up poor. That’s why he said I’m after your money.”

  “Lyons says that kind of thing about a lot of people. You could’ve been middle-class for generations, and he’d still think that,” he muttered. “It wasn’t always like that, but since the shooting, he just seems to jump to the worst possible conclusion about everyone. Patients. Coworkers. Even me. Then rants about having to protect me.”

  “What was that about?”

  He could only shrug. “I don’t remember him protecting me in the last decade. What I remember is him resenting me trying to protect him after the shooting. That’s it.”

  “He needs to talk to someone.”

  “I keep saying that.” Wolfe looked down the sofa, then stood and moved closer to her. “Are you leaving New York to save money?”

  “No.”

  “Then why?”

  “Haven’t you ever felt like you didn’t belong somewhere?” She looked so stricken he wanted to say yes. But places weren’t his problem. His problem was belonging with someone specific. Anyone, actually. Even his brother, he’d been recently reminded.

  This line of questioning was foolish. The only thing he could say to comfort her would be the kind of thing he’d say to convince her to stay, and he couldn’t do that. “I came here to get out from under the weight of my family’s reputation, so in a way, I did. Here, no one knows them. I’m just some Scot who talks funny.”

  “And who lives in a fancy church house.”

  She was still intimidated by that.

  “You could start small...get a vase you don’t mind breaking.” He gestured to the table. “Or anything you like to make it homier. I know you can afford a little more luxury than you’re allowing yourself.”

  “I don’t like to spend money like that,” she admitted, then shrugged. “I don’t really have it to spend either.”

  “Why? Student loans?”

  “That,” she agreed, “and I send money to my grandmother. I don’t speak to my family, but she’s elderly and needs the money. So, I send it.”

  And kept her lifestyle small here to provide for people she didn’t speak to anymore. Whatever Lyons thought he knew about her, he was wrong. She was good. Anyone could see it. Even a fool like him.

  Asking why she didn’t speak to them seemed too much for this unsteady conversation.

  “I missed you after you left last night. And looked forward to seeing you tonight.” He casually took her hand where it had been sitting on the sofa between them and before he could think it through added, “Going to miss you when you’re gone, I think.”

  Her eyes went wide, but then she smiled, just a touch, just a little hope-filled lifting of the corners of her mouth.

  Then he realized how the statement sounded, and added, “You have to admit that the sex was astonishingly good.”

  The frank statement made her cheeks flash instantly red, and she shrugged, losing the smile and not saying anything in response, but it clearly shifted her attention from the unfortunate admission.

  “If you don’t agree, I’m going to go into vivid, mouth-watering detail.”

  A short sound, almost as if a laugh and a breath got confused, puffed from her, and she blushed. Really blushed. “Fine, it was good.”

  “Imagine how much incredibly hot sex we could have if I wasn’t half-robot, half-jester and you weren’t a bucket of insecurities.”

  Her frown was instantaneous. “I’m not a bucket of insecurities.”

  She didn’t pull her hand away, so he kept going.

  With a look. A very pointed, skeptical look that she mirrored for all of three seconds before rolling her eyes toward the ceiling.

  “Okay, I’m a little bucket. Like a beach pail.”

  “For the sake of class, I’ll say you’re a wine barrel of insecurities, and I’m what happens when you cross a court jester with a calculator.”

  She finally laughed for him.

 
Unwilling to miss his opportunity, he cupped a hand around her jaw and tugged her to meet him as he leaned in, and kissed her. Not the kind of kiss he wanted—the kind where the whole world went blurry and physics stopped being a thing that mattered—but something sweet. Affectionate. And needed.

  That warmth was there, but it was something more. Almost like relief. As if he’d been tense since last night when she’d left so abruptly, and the stiffness that had lingered in his whole body dissolved into her sofa.

  Pulling back enough to see her, he had to ask, because he wasn’t sure. He wasn’t sure about anything when it came to her. “Are we good?”

  She paused only for a second, then nodded.

  “Not angry with me anymore?”

  No pause then, just a shake of her head.

  “Good, because I didn’t like it.” He followed up his statement with a much gentler, sweeter kiss. “And I really didn’t like that you were hurt.”

  “Me either,” she whispered. “I’m usually so careful.”

  So careful she kept everyone away. There was much more here to figure out about Angel, and for the first time, he really wanted to know. This shortened time frame wasn’t without any risks, he knew now he could screw it up, but he wanted to take advantage of it while she was there. To try.

  “I didn’t sleep much, and the wine tonight... Would you be offended if I kicked you out now?”

  “Don’t want me to stay?” He wanted her to say yes. He wanted her to lock the door, show him her little bedroom and lie there with him until morning.

  “I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

  Either she didn’t want to hurt his feelings, or she really did want him to stay and also thought it was a bad idea. Maybe both.

  “All right.” He had made great headway tonight. Soon, she’d tell him the rest. She’d tell him whatever had ostracized her from her family, while compelling her to support them still. She’d tell him why she hid so hard from people, because she’d accomplished so much in her life already, people would judge her on that, not some silly accent or stereotype, and he’d figure out how to help.