For This Christmas Only

by Caro Carson

  Never look back.

  Yeah, well, she was playing a role here. She pretended to spot her boyfriend in the crowd behind her. “I think I see him. Gotta go.”

  “Aw, don’t be that way.”

  She turned her back on them and walked fast, heading toward the light and the crowd. One guy called out, “Your mitten will be at the Kappa Lambda house. Come and get it, beautiful.”

  She didn’t look back until she’d skirted the sand courts and reached the stage. The children were filing off. The university’s string quartet members were climbing up, cellos and violins in hand. She’d lost the trio of athletes, but now she was surrounded by other people’s families, other people’s holiday happiness, so much noise and chaos when she’d craved some time alone.

  A line had formed in front of the Yule log. People stopped at a card table, scribbled their hopes for the coming year on little pieces of paper, then waited for their turn to throw the paper on the burning log. Their wishes for the new year were carried by the smoke up to the stars.

  The fire department had erected a waist-high fence to keep anyone from getting too close. Little pieces of evergreen were tied to the paper notes, so the paper could be tossed more easily into fire. Some people were throwing hard, trying to hit the actual Yule log, but most of the papers were falling short, landing in the bonfire.

  A little boy threw his note, but it barely cleared the fence. One of the firemen quickly used a fire iron as a golf club to chip-shot the little folded paper into the bonfire. “Close enough for a Christmas wish,” the fireman assured the little boy.

  Mallory would aim for the Yule log, just to be certain.

  A donation jar sat on the table amid the clutter of paper slips and stunted golf course pencils. Its handwritten sign indicated which charity the money would go toward. Donations requested but not required. Not required meant free.

  Free was right in Mallory’s price range—temporarily. She made a mental note of the charity. She would donate to them when she started making money. She merely had to stick with her plan. Never look back, never this, never that. There were a lot of nevers in a Taylor-style business plan, but if she could just follow them all, financial security would be hers.

  It was working. She was here; that was proof. Her very first step had been to reconnect with the Masterson University admissions office by signing up for their email newsletter. Because of that step, she’d seen an announcement that their esteemed alumnus, entrepreneur E.L. Taylor, was going to be the Executive-in-Residence the next academic year. He would spend the spring semester as a guest professor for the university’s College of Business. Her college.

  That had seemed like fate. It had ignited a fire under her, at any rate. She’d accelerated her timeline to free herself from the endless family obligations and win readmission to MU. Parts of that had been painful, but she’d started her senior year this September. She had just one more semester to go. When it began in January, E.L. Taylor himself was going to arrive on campus, and she was going to be here to meet him. Before her graduation in May, she would take the next-to-last step: she was going to ask him to look at her Taylor-inspired business plan.

  And then, Mallory Ames was going to execute her final step. She was going to ask E.L. Taylor to invest in her first business venture.

  He would, because he’d be impressed with her business plan. He just had to be, for she’d followed his book precisely. She would present it with the confidence he’d assured her she deserved...unless her nerves killed her first.

  Not nerves. Anticipation. The anticipation was killing her. What if he said no? What if he laughed at her plan?

  What if her hero didn’t even like her?

  Mallory picked up a pencil stub and a blank slip of paper, one with a tiny pine cone attached by a ribbon. She refused to blush as the woman to her left and the man to her right each dropped dollar bills into the jar and gave her pointed looks for not doing the same.

  Mallory knew her coat made her look more affluent than she was. She’d found it in her grandmother’s closet. Peacoats never went out of style, and although the color was a Paris Hilton pink from a previous decade, the hand-me-down was high quality. Let the locals judge her for being cheap tonight. Someday, her donation to that charity would dwarf theirs.

  She’d barely finished scribbling a single sentence when she heard Corduroy Boy’s unwelcome voice.

  “Well, well. Look who’s here.”

  She stuffed the paper and its mini pine cone into her pocket. She wasn’t going to wait in line, getting harassed the entire time by three meatheads who didn’t know the difference between flirting and pursuing someone relentlessly. She headed toward the opposite side of the park, where hundreds of square hay bales were stacked three high, far enough away from the Christmas festival that no spark from the Yule log would be carried on the wind to ignite them.

  As the crowds came nightly to enjoy the Christmas lights, the hay would be spread to keep the field from turning to mud. During Mallory’s first three years as a Masterson Musketeer, she’d watched the stacks of bales get shorter and shorter as the holiday break had gotten closer and closer. She’d associated the smell of fresh hay with Christmas and college, anticipation and excitement, every year that she’d been away.

  What would she answer if Mr. Taylor asked her about that huge time gap between her junior and senior years? I never look back, she’d say with confidence, and then she’d move on to her business plan. It would be the right answer. It was the only possible answer she could give him.

  E.L. Taylor would never invest in Mallory’s ideas if he knew the truth. She was practically thirty and definitely broke. What kind of person let herself be told what to do, where to live, with whom to live for so many years? A weak person. So weak that three young men had instinctively singled her out as their easy target tonight.

  They’d stolen her mitten, and her hand was cold—and all of a sudden, she was fighting back tears. She shouldn’t feel like crying over something as trivial as a stolen mitten, but it was the only pair she owned.

  Since those guys could afford luxury extras like fraternity fees, they probably had parents supporting them. They were athletes, so they probably had sports scholarships covering the cost of their dormitory and dining hall. But Mallory? Familial caregiving paid nothing. She was poor enough to qualify for a work-study job that helped pay her tuition and gave her a dorm room at a reduced rate, but it hadn’t covered her textbooks or the mandatory meal plan for those who lived in dorms. This one year of room and board had eaten up her meager savings—her minimal assets, in business lingo—and her hand-me-down car as well. Those rich boys couldn’t imagine how valuable that mitten was to her.

  Did life have to always be so unfair?

  Never expect life to be fair. You must continue to play when the game isn’t fair, or you’ll never win.

  E.L. Taylor was right, but Mallory was losing the game tonight, sinking into despair as surely as she’d sunk into the quicksand—and all over a mitten.

  With her cold hand, she wiped hot tears from the corner of her eye before they had a chance to fall. In the future, when she wore a sharp suit and high heels and sat behind an executive desk that would be polished to a shine, that mitten would be insignificant. Therefore, it was insignificant now.

  Dry-eyed, she left the crowd behind her, determined to find a quiet spot to watch the Yule log’s flames in peace. That had been her plan, and she was sticking to it. Never abandon a solid plan.

  She squinted at the hay bales. There was someone out there. A man? He was standing so still, she wasn’t certain she was really seeing a person in the shadows.

  She didn’t take her eyes off him as she got close enough to see that he was real—and definitely a man, arms crossed over his chest, shoulders filling out his leather jacket. Alone in the night, he made a compelling figure. Had this been a movie, she would�
�ve assumed he was the brooding hero, reluctant to get involved but capable of saving the day if he must, Bruce Wayne on a dark sidewalk, a soldier off duty in a civilian dive bar.

  The golden light of the Yule log’s flames touched his profile. His features were strong, his expression fierce. He hadn’t shaved for a day or two. His hair was thick and a little too long, only a shade less dark than the night. He might make a better villain than a hero, a young Rickman in a bank vault, Tommy Lee Jones on a battleship, the kind of anti-heroes that had made her father’s favorite action movies pleasurable to watch with him.

  But this wasn’t the movies. This was real life, so Mallory didn’t know if this man was a good guy or bad guy. Only one thing was certain: this was no college boy.

  From behind her, three specific college boys sounded too close. “Don’t be like that. Wait up.”

  Leave me alone.

  The angry man ahead of her looked like he felt the same way toward the whole world. He glared at the fire, looking a little feral. Unapproachable.

  The trio behind her started to sound more irritated than amused. “We know you can hear us.”

  Never look back. Everything that mattered was ahead of her.

  “What’s the problem? Boyfriend didn’t show up, huh?”

  “Boyfriend,” the mitten-stealer said in a voice meant to carry. “As if someone would want a bitch like her.”

  So much for Smile, beautiful.

  Mallory kept pretending she didn’t hear them, but her bare hand was clenched into a fist of frustration. It was always the same, wasn’t it? If a woman didn’t act flattered by a random man’s attention, then he assumed she had a problem, not him. Mallory had turned twenty-nine today, twenty-frigging-nine. Was there an age where she wouldn’t have to deal with this kind of crap? She lengthened her strides as best she could in loose rain boots on poorly lit, uneven ground.

  Behind her, they laughed. “Is she trying to run away? From what? A party?”

  Mallory kept her eyes on the man ahead of her. There was arrogance in his stance. If Mallory’s anger made her look as forbidding as he looked, no college boy would mess with her.

  They wouldn’t mess with him, that was for certain, which would make him an excellent pretend boyfriend for the next ten minutes or so. She just had to stand next to him and make a little small talk, get him to smile politely in response.

  Actually, he didn’t look like he knew how to smile. A nod, then. A few polite words from her, a nod from him—that would be enough to convince those three jerks she wasn’t alone. They’d turn away, she’d tell the angry man to have a good night, and that would be that. She could return to the pecan tree and ruminate on her future in peace. It was an excellent plan.

  Her future boyfriend was winning his staring contest with the Yule log. Mallory wasn’t even two steps away from him now, so close she could see the flames dancing in his eyes, so close she could see—

  Her boots dragged to a stop as if she’d stepped into quicksand again. The fine lines in his face, the grim set of his mouth, those eyes—

  Nothing anyone said or did would faze this man. He wasn’t arrogant. He was...hardened.

  She chickened out.

  But as she took her first step past him, the book’s maxim roared inside her head: Never abandon a solid plan.

  She spun to face the flames, standing shoulder to shoulder with the man she’d chosen.

  Chapter Two

  Never show your doubts to the world.

  —How to Taylor Your Business Plan

  by E.L. Taylor

  The man was so damned intimidating, this close.

  That was precisely why Mallory had walked up to him, though. She took a few silent, calming breaths through her nose, the way every free online yoga class had taught her to do.

  He didn’t acknowledge her existence.

  After a few seconds, once Mallory was certain that she wouldn’t sound even the tiniest bit alarmed, she made a polite observation. “The Yule log is a real giant this year. That must have been some tree. I heard it was uprooted by a tornado this summer.”

  He didn’t respond with so much as a flicker of an eyelash.

  She leaned forward just far enough to peek past him. The three guys were still making their way toward her, hollering and fake-punching each other, practically buzzing with all the heady power of being young, financially secure, and free to raise hell on a Saturday night.

  Mallory tried a little harder, smiling her friendliest smile at the man—or rather, at his profile. “Chilly tonight, isn’t it?”

  The man might as well have been a statue.

  She was left smiling in his direction like an idiot, feeling as stupid as if she’d stuck her hand out to shake and he’d just left her hanging.

  She leaned back this time, just enough to look past his shoulders toward the frat boys. They’d slowed down, but now the ringleader was ducking and weaving around his friends, imitating the way Mallory was peeking around someone to see them.

  Mallory wasn’t playing peek-a-boo, damn it. She put her bare hand on the stranger’s sleeve, her cold palm on colder leather that had nothing but hardness underneath. Of course, a statue’s arm would be hard. “I’ve got sand in my boot. Can I just use you for balance for a second?”

  Without waiting for a reply that wouldn’t come, she stood on one foot, clinging to his sleeve as she started to push one boot off. Then she thought better of it. She’d keep her boots on in case she needed to take off again. Instead, she brushed the sand off the outside of her boot, an operation that got sand stuck in the knitted wool of her remaining mitten, but at this point, it hardly mattered since—

  “Who are we trying to make jealous?”

  She hopped in surprise. The statue speaks!

  “Is he sufficiently jealous yet?”

  She quit slapping her boot and stood on two feet once more. “Who?”

  “The man you’re looking for while you force yourself to talk to me.”

  How he’d seen her look anywhere was anybody’s guess, since he still hadn’t taken his eyes off the fire. The corner of his mouth had twisted into a sort of mocking smile to match the disdain in his voice, but Mallory didn’t let go of his arm. Not yet—not while she could see Corduroy Boy out of the corner of her eye, smacking her mitten against his palm, making her feel like she was twenty, not twenty-nine.

  Never expect life to be fair.

  “I’m not trying to make anyone jealous,” she said.

  He scoffed at that, a shocking amount of derision packed into a short snort. He thought this was a joke, just like the boys who were currently treating her mitten as their toy.

  They would treat her like a toy, she was sure, if she were stupid enough to go to their party to get her mitten back. They were the kind of young men who’d be utterly, genuinely surprised when a girl yelled no and pushed them away. They wouldn’t have had any idea she hadn’t been willing to accept the attention of popular athletes—why would a girl object to that?—and they’d act shocked that she hadn’t appreciated being pushed off the dance floor into a corner, so the one she’d been dancing with could grind his hips against hers, just a little fully dressed public foreplay, so his bros would know he was a stud who’d be getting laid later that night. In the movies, every girl understood Sandy pushing away Danny at the drive-in.

  But real life wasn’t the movies. When her no made him look bad, they’d all get mean. They’d call her a tease as she walked out of their keg party. They’d make fun of her every time they saw her on campus for the rest of the semester.

  Mallory had been through it all. She’d been labeled a bitch at a party on her twentieth birthday, then jeered at on Tuesdays and Thursdays the next semester, when she had to cross paths with one of the guys in her microeconomics class. She’d gone to the student services center to see if there was some school equ
ivalent of a restraining order, but the boys hadn’t been violent at the party. They hadn’t tried to stop her from leaving when she’d so boldly said no and walked off the dance floor, and they weren’t making threats when they saw her in class. They were just loud and rude.

  It hadn’t mattered in the end. Her father had fallen off a ladder and shattered his leg and pelvis, and Mallory had needed to leave campus, anyway.

  She’d let her hands freeze solid rather than put herself in that kind of situation again. She was worth more than a million mittens. She’d known it then, and she knew it now.

  She let go of the leather jacket. Her uncooperative fake boyfriend uncrossed his arms and straightened his sleeve with a tug on his cuff, as if she could wrinkle a bomber jacket made with leather so high quality, James Bond could have worn it. The man might have been like her grandparents, investing in one quality piece of clothing every decade or so, but his hands were leather-clad, too, in driving gloves that looked painted on. His dark jeans fit exactly right over boots that looked as perfectly made as his jacket. Even his hair was stylish despite being shaggy, evidence that it had been cut very, very well in the past, and no doubt would be again.

  Money.

  This wasn’t a movie, but in real life, there were people made of money. He was one of them.

  Mallory stuffed her hand into her coat pocket, wrinkling her paper wish, and wriggled out of the sandy mitten. It was better to look like she hadn’t bothered with gloves at all tonight than to look like a beggar who had only one.

  She wasn’t a beggar. She was this rich man’s equal. She just hadn’t built her own company yet. Every trait she needed to do so was already within her, as her book had so wisely pointed out. When Mallory Ames was the CEO of her own company, she’d be the same person she was right this minute.