Under the Christmas Star (Crossroads Collection)

by Amanda Tru

  “Well, I’ll touch you with my irritation—right across your face!”

  She jerked open the back door and peered down the alleyway as if willing his van to zip through puddles and arrive with a splash at her feet. It didn’t. Only the steady plop of raindrops in those puddles kept the picture from looking frozen in time.

  Her heels pounded across the workroom as she rushed to open the door before the clock slid a full minute past nine. But the computer chime stopped her. Another order.

  “That makes eleven already!” A face in the glass of the doorway sent her skittering across the floor with a lack of grace that would have earned her sharp reproof from their choreographer back in her flamenco days!

  Keys rattled and jingled as she fumbled to get the door unlocked. Neal Kirkpatrick—town semi-ex-grump stood there frowning. “Is something wrong, Mrs. Rojas? I thought I saw you slip. Better get whatever it is swept up…”

  What else he said, she didn’t hear—tuned out. Yes, Mr. Kirkpatrick. I know you know best for everyone. You will tell me exactly which broom to use and which way to hold it and yell at me if I do not do it perfect. Well, I don’t care!

  “Mrs. Rojas?”

  “Yes, yes. Come in. What can I get for you today? Roses for the wife? Another rosebud for your little rosebud? What will it be?”

  “Both? And I need to order our Thanksgiving centerpiece.”

  A glance at the sparkling but bare floral cases in the showroom as she passed only fueled the fire of her ire. “Will you be looking for something traditional like a cornucopia, or perhaps something with candles and—”

  “Where are your flowers?”

  Grateful to have her back to him, Lena set her jaw and steadied herself as she skirted the counter. “Wayne—”

  The back door banged open with a crash, and a burst of laughter followed. She flashed Neal her stage smile and prayed it didn’t look too forced. “They’ve just arrived. We tossed everything last night to make room for Wayne’s trip to the market this morning. They must have been busy.” With each word, her voice rose. “…because he’s very, very late.”

  “Excellent.”

  His eyes said the reverse—especially when she couldn’t prevent a wince at the sound of Jennie Bradford’s profuse thanks for a flower of some sort, or so she presumed. The, “It’s beautiful, Wayne. Thank you!” tore at her heart.

  And he saw it.

  “I’m sorry, Lena. Perhaps later?”

  “Please, no.” She reached for the iPad where Wayne’s new designs were featured in a slideshow. “This arrangement is made on a lovely three-tiered display piece that can be used to hold hors d’ oeuvres at a party or simple decor the rest of the year. He’s only making five so that the town isn’t overrun with the same idea.” She swiped her finger. “And this wooden crate has been stained to give it extra richness as a background against the—”

  “I’ll take the first one. I like the metal look. It’ll be great for Wendy’s craft supplies in her nook downstairs. Definitely.”

  “And roses? A dozen red? One pink rosebud for your baby girl?”

  He slid his card across the counter. “You know me well. A man must make his ladies feel what he can’t always express, right?”

  “You’re a good husband, Mr. Kirkpatrick. I know, not because you buy many flowers from us but because I see how your wife glows when she speaks of you. She’s a blessed woman.”

  He folded his arms over his chest and watched her before nodding. “Thank you.”

  Wayne thrust the curtain aside and entered. “We’re back. You wouldn’t believe the flow—oh! Hello there, Neal!”

  Despite the somewhat perverse pleasure in seeing Neal Kirkpatrick scowl at Wayne, Lena decided to head off the man’s likely outspoken remarks. “You don’t have time for the chit-chat.” She could have ripped out her tongue for that “the.” “You have many orders, and now we have two for Mr. Kirkpatrick, so—”

  The computer chimed, announcing another order.

  Before she could use it to drive him back, Wayne began his retreat. “Okay, I hear it. I’m going.” He grinned at Mr. Kirkpatrick. “She’s a slave driver, this one.”

  Just as Wayne turned, Mr. Kirkpatrick said, “I’ll be the last person to get worked up over semantics, but that’s one that always bugs me. I bet the majority of slaves today and throughout history would love a nice job of arranging flowers and listening to the suggestions of a woman like Mrs. Rojas.”

  Wayne sputtered, agreed, and disappeared behind the curtain. Lena could have cheered. Instead, she whispered a quiet, “Thank you,” and swiped his card.

  “Wayne’s a good man, but he’s a fool.” And with that, Mr. Kirkpatrick scrawled a perfectly legible signature—how he did it, she never understood—accepted his card and receipt, and strode from the building.

  Lena took a moment to compose herself before she punched print on the computer and retrieved both printed orders. Head high, shoulders erect, poised for a stage entrance, she flung open the curtains and found Wayne lugging in more buckets of roses… alone. “Where is your assistant?”

  He stared, uncomprehending—obtuse, even. “Wha—oh. Jennie. She had to get to work. How many orders?”

  “A nice unlucky thirteen.”

  The computer chimed again. Wayne winked. “Make that a lucky fourteen. Neal’s first?”

  “Please. And then sunflowers for Kelsey at the Prayer House so I can have them when she gets off at the clinic. The rest have no deadline, but hurry. I have the feeling…”

  Wayne’s head snapped up, and he peered at her. “Are you okay?”

  Her phone rang—her private cell. It rarely rang unless Wayne called. “Yes, yes. Get the orders done. I must call Tabitha to deliver. You will be too busy. We need arrangements in the cases.”

  “Make a couple of generics in mason jars, will you?”

  The phone blipped again. “Yes. In a minute.”

  Just as she slipped through the curtains, Lena pulled her phone from her pocket and stared at the screen. “Ramon!”

  A string of Spanish greeted her as she answered. And a guarded place in her soul opened wide its doors. “Mijo…”

  In his months of dating Lena, Wayne had learned just enough Spanish to make eavesdropping an extreme sport. The name Ramon—familiar. Lena spoke of her ex-dance partner with great affection, but she’d spoken of him as if he were a little brother or a son. The repeated, “mi amors” became increasingly uncomfortable.

  She wouldn’t lie to me. But…

  “Tango!”

  The word echoed in the front of the shop and ricocheted back to Wayne’s domain. He strained to hear more—anything that would make her exclamation make sense. All he heard were a jumbled murmur of sounds.

  He inched toward the door, hesitated, snatched up the roses for Neal’s wife, and moved toward the curtain. It’ll look like I’m coming through if she comes this way.

  Guilt rang the bell of his conscience. Wayne pulled the wire and continued listening anyway.

  There it was again. Tango. She was a flamenco dancer! Tango is what, Argentina? That’s the opposite side of the Atlantic! Or some geographical thing I can’t think of right now.

  Yes. He heard that—and his name. Wayne. If she’s telling him how I can’t dance…

  Her voice drew closer. Wayne decided to preempt her. He burst through with the vase of flowers and shook it. “Box? I forgot.”

  Lena didn’t even turn in his direction. “I fold a dozen and put under your table. Some of us do our jobs.”

  Great. She talks in Spanish for five minutes and now “jobs” sounds like “chobs.”

  He’d be straining to hear that heavier accent all week.

  Without a word, Wayne turned and went to stuff the box with roses. And deliver them, too.

  Lena appeared just as he slipped the single wrapped pink rose into the box. “Is the apartment above still for rent?”

  His traitorous heart clenched. “Yeah… why?”

>   “Ramon is coming. He needs a place to stay—to practice where he will bother no one. Here is good. You get rent. He gets practice. Everybody has the win.”

  You’re bothered by it. Why?

  “Wayne? I can rent him the apartment—four hundred for two weeks?”

  A nod. “Sure. Whatever you think.” He grabbed up the box and bolted for the door. “I’ll run this and the sunflowers before I do any more.”

  As he stepped outside, she called him back. “Wayne?”

  Heart pounding, he paused but didn’t look back. “Yes?”

  “You forgot the sunflowers.”

  A burned out street lamp left the post office hidden behind tree-shaped shadows in a half-moonlit night. Wayne sat in front of it, a stack of mail on the seat beside him, and his phone in hand. “Siri, look up romantic ideas.”

  She came back with forty ideas for romance on the cheap. A swipe through them told him they wouldn’t do. Lena’s repeated accusations of his ignorance in the romance department told him he needed to kick his game up a notch, so he kept going.

  “Dry ice? Who wants to eat a meal full of ‘smoke?’” He eyed the next. “A giant card? Really?”

  Half of the suggestions had his face flaming. The other half of those suggestions, he stuffed in his back pocket for the day they wouldn’t be inappropriate. And Lena says I’m not romantic.

  Lena. His heart constricted, and in a rash moment of desperation, Wayne ordered Siri to call her instead. She picked up immediately. “Wayne?”

  “I just have to get this off my chest. I did not go to some smutty adult store. I never would. I did not do anything wrong unless trying to surprise you with—”

  “Wayne… My ph—”

  “—an engagement ring is somehow evil now. I get that you’ve been hurt. I do. But it hurts me that you would ever think I’d do something like that. What was I supposed to do? Let that poor woman fall off the ladder just so I didn’t hurt myself?”

  Silence.

  “Lena?”

  A glance at his screen told him she’d hung up.

  Shame, embarrassment, anger—they washed over him in ever-increasing waves. Rogue tears threatened, but he blinked them back into submission and tapped the browser button on his phone. Once again, he read. Roses—might not mean much from him. The memory of Lena giving up her one perfect rose for a last-minute centerpiece at Christmas the previous year—it haunted him. “I have it.” Her hand had clutched at her top over her heart. “It’s here. The blossom would die, but this can’t.”

  “Well, it died eventually, didn’t it.” Roses wouldn’t work, so Wayne kept reading. One suggestion caught his eye. “Read poetry together… Hmm… I can do that. I think. Okay. I’ll do that.”

  There was only one problem—no poetry books. With the library closed, Bookends remained his only option. If only Todd hadn’t closed early. Half a turn around the square showed the lights still glowing, and inside twenty minutes, he arrived at Jennie’s door with One Hundred and One Classic Love Poems in hand.

  She said I wasn’t romantic enough for Jen. We’ll see about that.

  Jennie’s blush proved his idea a success! They sat around her fire pit in the common backyard of her apartment, and with a blanket over their shoulders, he read by cellphone light. One by e.e. cummings. One by Byron. He had no skill for reading, but Wayne plunged onward. Still, after a couple of unfortunate ones—ones that mortified them both or hinted at heartbreak, he began skimming.

  Jennie insisted that it was “too sweet” of him to do it. That kept him going. Lena was right—about me needing to make an effort—but she was wrong. I’m obviously more romantic than she gave me credit for.

  One poem caught his eye as she suggested they go in for hot chocolate. “Love after Love” by Derek Walcott. He’d have to read that one later. With that thought, Wayne closed the book with a snap.

  The stomping of shoes overhead to the beat of “Hernando’s Hideaway” set Wayne’s teeth on edge. They’d been practicing for hours—for days… weeks. Seems like years.

  He finished off another arrangement of twiggy berries, chrysanthemums, ivory roses, and sunflowers. And if I never see another twig again, it’ll be too soon. How did I let Jen talk me into so many?

  Laughter drifted down from upstairs. Wayne clenched his teeth as he listened. What could they be talking about? Laughing about? Why did a dancer like Ramon need to learn the Tango? And why especially from Lena?

  Questions piled one after another. But when the next song began, Wayne closed his eyes and shook his head. No, no, no. Why did I ever look up the songs for the tango? The music swelled. As if mocking him, the strains of “Jealousy” grew louder and louder, and their footsteps followed.

  “He’s got to go…”

  Despite Wayne’s assertion, he knew he’d never do it. Sucker.

  His phone blipped, and distracted by another burst of laughter from upstairs, Wayne forgot to see who it was. First mistake. His mother’s voice blasted into his ear. “Why are you avoiding my calls?”

  “Maybe because I knew you’d destroy my hearing in one shrieked sentence?” He winced. Mistake number two.

  “Wayne?”

  “Sorry, Mom. Really. Pain kills a guy’s brain. I thought you knew that.”

  “What are you avoiding telling me?” He could hear her suck in air. “If you tell me you guys aren’t coming for Thanksgiving…”

  His plans to avoid it in plague-like fashion fizzled. “I’m coming… I just have a ton of stuff to get done so we’re covered while I’m gone. The fewer arrangements the temp has to do, the more money I save.”

  Giddy—the woman went from scolding to squealing inside three sentences. “Oh, yes! I told everyone that you’re bringing your girlfriend. They’re so excited to meet her. Thank you for staying for church on Sunday…”

  He winced. Forgot about that part. Telling her now would be miserable but less so than if he showed up alone. “About that…”

  “You’re not even open on Sundays!”

  “Not that part.” He swallowed lumps the size of Lena’s giant hoops and prayed for wisdom for him and mercy from her. “I’ve been trying to figure out how to tell you this, but…”

  The door burst open, and Mrs. Whyte, the town’s spiritual policewoman, descended on the shop. “Sorry, Mom. Gotta go. About to get Whyte-washed.”

  He pocketed the phone and smiled as the woman approached the counter. “Good morning, Mrs. Whyte. What can I do for you today?”

  “I need to order a funeral arrangement—white lilies. With a few red roses in the mix.” She spun the card rack, found the one she wanted, and began writing before he’d finished taking down the rather short order.

  “Um… and what size order would you like?”

  She eyed him. “I want the best you can give me for a hundred dollars. After all, overcharging on flowers for the pastor’s wife…”

  He choked. “What? I hadn’t heard—”

  “She’s still with us, Wayne. Deep breath. We’re just leaving until January first, and I want to be prepared. I’ll just pay now, and when the Lord takes her home, it’ll be all taken care of—whether that’s this week or in six months.” He would have protested, but then she added, “Although that would be a miracle at this point.”

  Wayne took the rest of the order in a daze. While Mrs. Whyte might not be the most sensitive of women, her penchant for blunt truths meant that if she believed Lily Allen to be near death, then the woman was. Tom…

  At the door, the woman turned. “Have a blessed Thanksgiving, Wayne. And I’ll be asking about the flowers when I get back.”

  He waited until she left before he growled, “I bet you will.”

  A voice from behind him murmured, “You bet she will what?”

  Eyes closed, heart still aching, Wayne didn’t even bother to turn around. “Check to see that I delivered a bouquet.” He dropped his voice low and added, “Did you know Lily was so close to going home?”

  “Home
? Where is her home? I thought she lives here.”

  Sometimes I think we invent colloquialisms and idioms to terrify and annoy ESL speakers. “She’s dying, Lena.”

  The slightest touch to his arm, her long slim fingers… “Señor Tom he came in and say she is stopping the treatment. I’m sorry.”

  Emotion overtook him. “I’d better get to work on orders.”

  “Wayne…?” she began.

  He didn’t look back.

  At thirty minutes to closing, Wayne called out, “Lena, I need to stop by the store for popcorn and sodas before I go to Jen’s. I’m going to leave—”

  Lena flung open the curtain separating the workroom from the shop and inhaled the spicy scents of evergreen and cinnamon. Christmas already. She slid one hand up the doorjamb and planted the other on her hip. “You will not! I need more to fill the cases. I need my lists of what to buy while you are gone.”

  Yyyooou. Not Chu—

  “I have a date, Lena!”

  “I am sure Jen knows all about the importance of this business. She can wait for her oh, so romantic popcorn and pop.”

  He glared at her—or he tried. She knew that look. She’d wounded him. Good. Maybe he’ll do better work. Maybe. Maybe.

  With a flourish leftover from her flamenco days, she flung her hand in the air and stormed back into the shop. The bell rang a moment later. Last minute purchases before Thanksgiving… He’d better have big ones in there. It’s the best time for that. People are the desperate.

  Something about that last thought didn’t feel quite right, but an awkward-looking man inched his way inside. “I need something—for a hostess gift. I was invited to dinner tomorrow—last minute.” He winced. “Sounds pathetic, huh? I just wasn’t supposed to be here, but our project went over, and the boss invited me to his house.”

  Her mind zipped a few calculations. He traveled… no wedding ring. Employer footing the bill. Restaurant food on a holiday, gas to the city to find that food…