For This Christmas Only

by Caro Carson

  “Because you’re used to better. You’ve probably had the very finest handcrafted chocolate, melted just so by a pastry chef at a Michelin-starred restaurant.”

  He looked irritated at that. She’d guessed right.

  “You must have thought I was such a naive little girl, championing the quality of the nuns’ hot chocolate, as if I’d ever traveled to France or Switzerland and knew how it compared to what the world has to offer.”

  “Is hot chocolate the issue you want to discuss?”

  “Why didn’t you tell me who you were? It seems cruel to string me along when you knew that I was your—your fan. A fan of your book.”

  “How could I have possibly known that? Be fair. It wasn’t as if you were wearing an official fan club T-shirt. That doesn’t exist, by the way.”

  “You’re not funny.”

  Something flashed across his expression, something like surprise or...or hurt. She couldn’t possibly hurt the great E.L. Taylor.

  “When did you figure out that I was your biggest fan? Because you most certainly knew when you ditched me.” The moment she asked, she knew the answer. “My wish. You saw my wish.”

  He nodded. “And up until that moment, I didn’t know your friend and hero was me.”

  “It wasn’t you. It was an image of you I had invented in my head.”

  “The timing is important. When you remember that night, remember that everything before you threw that wish happened before I knew you were a fan.”

  “No wonder you wouldn’t kiss me.”

  He came around the desk to stand in front of her. He didn’t touch, didn’t reach for her, but he stood quite close, with an intimate quiet to his voice. “I distinctly recall kissing you. It was the kiss of a lifetime.”

  She felt it all again, that hum of arousal, the way joy and hope had made everything feel like magic, but she was standing before a supremely confident E.L. Taylor in his natural environment, a businessman conducting an after-action review of a transaction. He was no rusty Tin Man. He didn’t need an oilcan. He needed nothing from her at all.

  “I meant that you wouldn’t kiss me goodbye after that wish. That earlier kiss wasn’t for you, Mr. Taylor. It was for Eli, a man who never existed. The joke’s on me.”

  “Fearless.” He said it more to himself than her.

  She turned away and walked to the door.

  “Mallory.”

  Her hand was on the doorknob, but this time she paused.

  “Your wish did come true, you know. I do like you.”

  She walked out of his office and stopped at the first place she could, the kitchenette. Her hands were still shaking. She fussed with the coffeepot, although it was empty and clean for the night.

  It was over. That had been it, the closure everyone touted. One big conversation to tie it all up with a bow. She’d tuck it away with the rest of her life that she couldn’t allow herself to look back upon.

  She needed to think ahead. She had bigger problems than a lying millionaire. This morning, dressed for work, she’d been stopped at the dorm building’s exit by a simple fluorescent green paper taped to the door, the notice that her dorm would be closed during the winter break.

  All the buildings on campus would be closed for sixteen days over the winter break, from the offices to the classrooms to the dining halls, a cost-saving routine on most college campuses across the country. No dorm supervisors, no janitorial staff, no electricity to heat a six-story building for over two weeks. When Mallory had made her budget two years ago, she’d forgotten all about the need to find alternate housing during the winter break. She’d flown home for Christmas, the cost of the ticket split by her separated parents, so she hadn’t paid any attention to the dorm closure as a freshman, sophomore, or junior.

  This year, it was an issue. She had no way to get back to Ohio, not after selling her car. Her grandpa needed every penny of his retirement funds to pay for the assisted-living facility. Her brother would make her grovel if she asked for plane ticket money, and then there was a fifty-fifty chance he’d say no, anyway. Mallory needed to find a local place to stay—a free place to stay, because free was the only thing in her price range.

  She heard a private office’s glass door opening. Who else was here after hours, besides Irene and Mr. Taylor? Her poise was razor thin. If Mr. Taylor came into the kitchenette, her ability to stay calm and confident would fail the test.

  She escaped to the ladies’ room, which was nicer than her dorm’s. Really, the office had almost everything except a bathtub and a bed. Too bad she couldn’t just move in here for the winter break, but the office buildings were closed during break, too. Besides, Irene would flip.

  Mallory poked her head out of the ladies’ room to be certain the coast was clear. She went back to her cubicle, put her pumps in the backpack that no longer held a man’s gloves, pulled out her old ballerina flats, and left to walk across campus to her lonely room in the dorm. Instead of looking back on those moments of closure with the man she’d known as Eli, she began to plan how she’d locate free living arrangements.

  What was one more obstacle? Her Taylor-built plan was made of little else.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Learning Objective: Given two alternatives, choose one and justify its benefit to the business.

  —Senior Year Project by Mallory Ames

  “There’s this woman...” Taylor tapered off.

  He shouldn’t have brought her up. Mallory had nothing to do with the plane crash. Nothing to do with nightmares. Nothing to do with the brother and sister he ignored or the fortune he paid attention to, nothing to do with the fame that came easily and the friendships that didn’t, nothing to do with teaching a book he no longer believed in. It had nothing to do with goddamned anything else in his goddamned world.

  But God, he wished it did.

  His therapist, whom he was supposed to address as Scott, like they were friends instead of doctor and patient, prompted him through the encrypted video connection on his phone. “There’s a woman who does what?”

  “She...she’s...interesting.” Taylor would not wince at his own wimpy reply. He shifted his position in his armchair, a ridiculously easy-to-spot bit of body language that made him wish this was an audio call, not video. He’d chosen to sit in the master bedroom’s bay window for this session. There’d been no need to go into the office on campus today. There never had been a need, other than checking on Mallory.

  “Is she new in your life, or is she one of the people in your past?” Scott asked.

  “New.”

  Mallory would have made that rolling gesture and whispered oilcan.

  The therapist accepted one word as a complete sentence. “I’m assuming this woman has the potential to be a romantic connection?”

  Taylor gave a grunt of agreement. That was one way to put it. The other was that he was crazy about her. She was special, unique, unequaled in his world. He wasn’t thinking about a polite dinner; he wanted her in his bed, to lose himself repeatedly and to discover her continuously, for that weekend he’d described as she’d leaned against an oak tree in the dark. For more than a weekend, more than a week. For as long as he lived.

  He was insane. He and Scott had already established this, although Scott chose other words.

  “Breaking out of the social isolation you built is the goal, of course. But this is a risky time to imagine yourself in love. Your social isolation has been long-standing. The traumatic event only revealed it. Choosing a new companion is one of those life decisions that should be avoided during a period of grieving and recovery after any trauma. You’ve done excellent work in identifying your emotions. Now is the time to rebuild the earlier, essential relationships you allowed to lapse, rather than creating new connections.”

  Apparently, the psych world didn’t approve of multitasking. Taylor did. His new connection to
Mallory had helped him recognize how far he’d distanced himself from his siblings, why he’d done so, and what the consequences had been. Being with her for one night had been as productive as ten therapy sessions.

  “Love can come later,” Scott said. “You need to focus on the issues you’ve already uncovered since September.”

  Taylor didn’t label anything love. That was his therapist’s word, along with the traumatic event, which sounded complicated. Taylor had to remind himself they were talking about a plane crash, horrific but simplistic. A machine had stopped working while he’d been in it, nothing more, nothing less.

  He challenged Scott’s theory. “Love should wait? And yet, you encourage me to get my brother and sister to love me again.” He immediately held up a hand to correct himself before the therapist could. “You’re encouraging me to be better at loving them.” After ten years of neglect. “If love and connections are what the traumatic event revealed I was lacking, what’s the difference? Being better at loving is being better at loving.”

  “The difference is that you already love your brother and sister. You’ve loved them their whole lives, even if you were burying that emotion for much of that time. This new woman would require you to create a new emotion. I recommend that you acknowledge to yourself that she is interesting, but now is not the time. A symbolic gesture of farewell can close that side road, and you can keep driving in the right direction. A note, flowers, whatever seems appropriate, based on how much you’ve already invested in the relationship.”

  It had been a fake relationship from the beginning. Taylor wanted to ask if he should send fake flowers, but he knew it would sound snide.

  Bitter. That was an emotion.

  As Scott congratulated him for attempting to contact his siblings yesterday, Taylor looked out the window. The entire lake was empty, not one boat for the half mile he could see. The water was flat, ideal for crew, but it was too cold to row. The only craft available to row were a cheap plastic kayak and a clunky fiberglass rowboat, anyway. He should buy himself a racing shell.

  “Your text messages to your siblings successfully opened a channel of communication. At our next session, I’d like to discuss your comfort level with trying to reach them live, either through a phone call or video chat. It’s unfortunate they’ll be in Monte Carlo with your parents for Christmas. If you want to attempt the plane flight, I’ll support you.”

  No way in hell was Taylor getting on an airplane.

  “That’s a low priority.” Taylor sounded so unconcerned. Mallory would say he was just faking it until he made it. She’d be right.

  Maybe one day he’d genuinely be unconcerned about flying. If not, he’d fly, anyway. Sooner or later, he would have to travel somewhere beyond the reach of his motorcycle.

  “Our next session will be in January,” Scott said. “If you feel isolated over Christmas, volunteering at a soup kitchen or other charitable activity can be rewarding in a different way than making a financial donation.”

  Taylor’s security team would love that. With great wealth came the greater risk of being taken hostage by those who wanted that wealth. His private security detail gave Taylor a wide berth at his direction, but he knew they were on the perimeter of his home. If he should obey a sudden impulse to pop into a soup kitchen on Christmas Day, they’d scramble and keep up, but it would be unfair of him to do that to them—and to the soup kitchen. Why should they let him take over someone’s job after walking in on a whim?

  Scott was in earnest. “Giving the gift of yourself is a gift to yourself.”

  Such flowery nonsense. Worse than Taylor’s own published platitudes.

  Scott recapped the issues. Taylor focused on the lake rather than on a brother who didn’t text back, a sister who did, and an interesting woman who no longer saw anything in him to admire. He wanted to be on the lake. He wanted to taste the cold water in the air. He craved the feel of a perfectly balanced oar in his hands, but a cheap plastic one would do. In the kayak, he would be the machine that created the speed—not a motorcycle’s engine, not a sports car, not a plane. He’d be a machine that would not break. He needed only his own two arms.

  Only two arms—those were the limbs that the pilot still had use of. Taylor had reviewed the hospital bills for the month. The wheelchair costs were unchanged from the previous month. No new charges for crutches or a walker. No improvement, then, despite the cutting-edge methodology that the pilot was going through to regain the use of his legs.

  Crew required the full body to row, arms and legs, but a kayak was all about the arms. Taylor would send the pilot a kayak, so he could be the machine that flew over the water. Taylor would text his sister back and try his brother again. He would give Mallory real flowers to close an interesting chapter they’d stopped writing on the first page.

  He ended the call and tossed his phone onto the nightstand. It knocked a knitted blue mitten askew.

  He wouldn’t fall in love with his one-night-only fake girlfriend. He’d been through a traumatic event. Now was not the time.

  He straightened the mitten.

  Not yet.

  He’d send those flowers, but he wouldn’t say goodbye. Not yet meant it might happen, still.

  * * *

  It was time.

  “You can do this,” Mallory told herself. She swung her backpack over her left shoulder. Nothing new there. She always carried her backpack, just like every other student of every age. It wouldn’t arouse any suspicion.

  Then she picked up the bedroll she’d made, Girl Scout style. She’d laid her clean clothing out on her warmest blanket, then rolled it up and tied it in place with her belt. It might look odd on a security camera, but she knew the chances of anyone pulling security footage from the dean’s office were slim. She’d carry it low by her thigh, just in case.

  Lastly, she picked up the grocery bag of granola bars and all the other nonperishables she’d eat while she camped out in her cubicle, looking for a better place to stay. When she found it, she’d leave the administrative building through a fire-escape door. Those opened from the inside, even when locked on the outside. If she failed to find a place, then staying in a chilly building without electrical power was not going to kill her.

  All students had to be out of all of the dorm buildings by seven. Mallory had timed her departure so that she’d arrive at the office building just before five. With luck, everyone else would have already skipped out early for the holidays. If not, she’d hide in a toilet stall when security made their final sweep before locking up the office building. It was far from ideal, but desperate times called for desperate measures. Having her plans blow up at the last second qualified.

  Mallory had aced her last exam this morning, then she’d caught up with her new friend in her microeconomics class, Jacinda. She was a younger woman—wasn’t everyone?—who’d assured her that her parents would love to have her use their spare bedroom for the holidays. Jacinda had a car, too, so Mallory had a free way to get there. It had been a perfect solution for the winter break housing situation.

  “Hey, good news,” Jacinda had said, just hours ago. “My parents will refund the cleaning fee in January.”

  The cleaning fee? That was how Mallory had found out that the spare bedroom was listed on a room-share app. She’d misunderstood what Jacinda meant by Sure, my parents have a spare room, if you need one.

  Mallory was expected to pay $30 a day, plus the $50 cleaning fee.

  She didn’t have $530. If she did, she wouldn’t give it to anyone’s parents. She’d buy a plane ticket to Ohio and go see her grandpa. Everything that could go wrong in December had gone wrong, and she was tired of surmounting obstacles. She needed a friendly face. She needed to be with somebody who loved her.

  Mallory breathed through the tears that threatened as she stepped into the dorm’s elevator and pressed the button for the lobby. She would not cry,
because she’d returned to her no-crying-at-all-over-anything policy. The doors opened with a chime. Mallory walked confidently to the front desk, signed her name on the dotted line and officially checked out of her room until January.

  There was no turning back now.

  She crossed the almost deserted campus and walked into the office building like it was just another day at work. The cluster of cubicles was a ghost town. She headed down her row with her groceries and her bedroll, telling herself the emptiness wasn’t creepy at all.

  It was her first time in the office in over a week, because students were not allowed to work during final exams. She’d been grateful to spend a week without listening for the nerve-racking sound of a private office’s glass door opening. Final exams were less stressful than dodging E.L. Taylor.

  There were dead flowers on her desk.

  Mallory set her grocery bag on her chair, kicked her bedroll under her desk and dropped the heavy backpack on the floor without taking her eyes off the flowers. The arrangement must have been stunning when it was first delivered. Nothing ostentatious, but a variety of small, unusual blooms arranged in a petite crystal vase. The card was still tied to a ribbon around the vase. No plastic pitchfork, here. This was luxury that fit in a cubicle.

  She only knew one person who could afford luxury. Dead petals showered her desk as she lifted the vase to untie the ribbon. The vase was shaped like a pine cone. That seemed—that seemed romantic. Sentimental, at least. He remembered that she’d carried a pine cone in her pocket that whole night.

  She tore open the vellum envelope and read the single sentence: Because I had the time to buy you flowers.

  Every detail of that night was etched on a piece of her heart that she didn’t know how to erase. When he’d tossed her up to the top of the hay bales—to safety—she’d told him that wasn’t how he should act on a date. He’d said, “There wasn’t time to buy you flowers.” It had been her first hint that he had a heart and sense of humor trapped underneath that hard exterior.