Small Town Christmas

by Jill Shalvis

  She snorted. “Nick sure could tell stories. But I can only remember one year when we got a dusting of snow. It was pitiful by snow standards. And it didn’t last very long.”

  “Well, I’m from Chicago, you know.”

  “So I reckon ya’ll have snow on the ground at Christmas all the time.”

  “Yeah. But in the city it doesn’t take very long for the snow to get dirty and gray. I always kind of imagined Last Chance covered in pristine white.”

  “Well, that’s a fantasy.” She reached her mother’s house on Oak Street. The old place needed a coat of paint, and a few of the porch balusters needed replacing. Annie ought to sell the place and move to Orangeburg or Columbia. A registered nurse could get a job just about anywhere these days. And her social life might improve if she moved to a bigger town.

  But she’d have to leave home. She’d have to leave friends. She’d have to leave the choir and the book club, not to mention Doc Cooper and the clinic.

  No wonder Miriam Randall had told her to get a cat. If she wanted to deal with her loneliness in Last Chance, a cat was probably her best bet.

  She pushed open the door and hit the switch for the hall and porch lights. Her Christmas lights—the same strand of large-bulbed lights that Mother had used for decades—blinked on.

  “Oh,” Matt said. It was less than a word and more than an exhalation.

  “I’m afraid it’s not much of a display. Nothing like the lights the Canadays put out every year.”

  She looked over her shoulder. Matt was smiling, the lights twinkling merrily in his eyes. A strange heat flowed through Annie that she recognized as attraction.

  Boy, she was really pathetic, wasn’t she?

  She shucked out of her coat and hung it on one of the pegs by the door.

  “It smells wonderful in here,” Matt said. He strolled past her into the front parlor. His presence filled up the space and made the large room seem smaller by half. He made a full three-sixty, inspecting everything, from the old upright piano to Grandmother’s ancient mohair furniture.

  Crap. Her house look like it belonged to a little old lady. Which, in fact, it had, until last spring, when Mother died. Suddenly the cabbage rose wallpaper and the threadbare carpet made Annie feel like a spinster. The cat would complete the picture.

  Matt stopped and cocked his head. “You have a tree.”

  “Of course I have a tree. Mother would—” She cut herself off. The last thing Matt wanted to hear about was what Mother expected out of Christmas. This year, Annie planned to make a few changes.

  But she’d still put out Mother’s old Christmas lights. And she had still bought a Douglas fir instead of a blue spruce.

  And she’d made the annual climb up to the attic for the ornaments. But when she’d gotten the boxes down to the front parlor, she’d lost the will to decorate. One look at her mother’s faded decorations, and she’d felt like her life was in a big rut.

  She’d done the unthinkable—she’d carried all those old boxes right back up to the attic. If she’d been a braver woman, she would have carried them to the curb for the trash man.

  Of course, she hadn’t done one thing about replacements. She had been putting all of that off. And suddenly, she realized that if she was going to take Matt up to Orangeburg tomorrow to visit Ruth, and still host a party for her friends from the book club, she was going to have to get her fanny in gear.

  Matt pulled in a deep breath, drinking in the Christmas tree aroma. He squeezed his eyes closed and could almost hear Nick’s voice, talking about how he’d helped his grandmother trim her tree.

  Annie’s tree was naked.

  He put the cat down on the carpet. She darted under the sofa, where she crouched, looking up at him as if he’d abandoned her.

  Stupid cat. She should realize that she had found a better home than he could provide. Annie’s house was like something out of a picture postcard. If Matt had had a grandmother, this is precisely the way he’d want her house to look.

  Matt had a feeling that Nick’s grandma’s house had been like this, too.

  He turned back toward Annie. She looked like a picture postcard too. Like Mom and apple pie. Like home.

  “So,” he said on a deep breath, “your tree needs help, Annie Roberts.”

  She gave him a bashful smile. “I guess it does.”

  “I’m willing to work for my room and board. Just point me in the direction of the lights.”

  She laughed. “Everything is up in the attic. Wait a sec, and I’ll go get the boxes.”

  She scurried away up the stairs in the main hall, and he amused himself watching her shapely backside, clad in a pair of blue jeans, as she climbed to the second story.

  Oh yeah, Annie Roberts was more than pretty. She was built. He could understand why Nick had had trouble forgetting her.

  “No, cat!” Annie tried to pull the feline away from the string of lights that Matt was hanging on the tree.

  “Maybe we should call her Pouncy,” he said with a deep, rumbling laugh.

  He stood rock steady on the stepladder. He’d taken off his army jacket and wore only a tan-colored T-shirt that hugged his torso. He looked fit.

  Okay, she was understating the fact. Matt looked gorgeous, and ripped, and competent standing there hanging tree lights.

  The cat, on the other hand, looked like a menace on four feet. The kitten had gotten over her fear of the new environment and had decided that the Christmas tree and anything associated with it was her personal play toy.

  Matt was no good at discouraging her either. He kept tugging on the string of lights, making them move suddenly in a way that the cat found irresistible. The kitten pounced ferociously on them and then backed up and pounced again.

  The cat was growing on Annie.

  But not as much as the man.

  “So, you said you have a Christmas gift for Ruth?” she asked, purposefully raising the specter of Nick. She really needed to remember that Matt had come to do something that was going to make Ruth unspeakably sad. And then he would go away, just like Nick had done. Best to keep her distance.

  “Yeah. Nick bought it for her a year and a half ago.”

  “What is it?”

  “I have no idea. I don’t even know where he bought it. I just know that I found it with his stuff after he died. I took it before the CO could lay his hands on it. Not exactly regulation, I know, but I kept thinking about Ruth getting Nick’s effects and finding it there. I thought it would be really crummy to get a gift and not have Nick there, you know? I thought it would be better to bring it myself.”

  She studied him for a very long time. He was a pretty sensitive guy for a soldier. Her opinion of him rose a little more. “You waited a long time.”

  He finished putting the lights on the tree and stepped down from the stepladder. “I was in Afghanistan. It was a long deployment.”

  Annie unwrapped the angel that Mother always put on the top of the tree. The angel wore yellow velvet with gold trim, and her halo had been broken years and years ago. She handed the tree topper to Matt, and their fingers touched. Heat flooded through her, and the look of longing in Matt’s eyes told her that the reaction was mutual. Matt let go of a big breath, as if he’d been holding something inside. They stood there for the longest moment, their fingers touching across the angel. Eventually Annie let go, and Matt turned, stepped up the ladder, and put the angel in her place.

  For some reason, the angel, even with her bent wings and broken halo, looked beautiful up there. Once, a long time ago, Annie had thought the angel was the most beautiful Christmas ornament ever. How had she forgotten that?

  Matt turned back toward her, his eyes filled with joy. “I love doing this,” he said. “I haven’t had much experience trimming trees. My folks used to put a little fake tree on the kitchen table when I was a kid. We always lived in a pretty small apartment.”

  Annie turned away, suddenly overcome by emotions she couldn’t name. Who was this stranger
who had walked into her house with a cat and a heaping dose of holiday spirit?

  He was the man who’d come to give Ruth a present she didn’t need or want.

  But Annie could hardly explain that to Matt, could she? He’d come here first thing after the army let him go. Like delivering his gift was a kind of obligation.

  She held her tongue and picked up a cardboard box filled with slightly tarnished glass balls. “Here, make yourself busy.”

  He took the box and immediately set to work. She watched him for the longest moment before she said, “You know, Ruth isn’t in her right mind.”

  He stopped. Turned. “No?”

  Annie shook her head. “Hasn’t been since those army men came to her door with the news.”

  He pressed his lips together. “I’m sorry.”

  “What do you have to be sorry about? It’s just the way it is. She’s been in a nursing home for more than a year. And according to what I heard from Doc Cooper, she’s not expected to live past New Year’s. She’s got congestive heart failure. It’s only a matter of time. But, you know, she’s alone now and almost ninety.”

  He startled. His hands reflexively squeezed the box of ornaments.

  Annie stood up. “Can I get you something? A cup of coffee? Some hot chocolate?”

  He stood there, looking a little confused, his eyebrows cocked at a funny angle. “Uh, yeah. Some hot chocolate would be great.”

  What was he doing here? He looked up at the little angel atop the tree. She didn’t seem to have an answer.

  Just then the cat attacked his bootlace. He bent down and picked Pouncy up.

  Annie was right. Pouncy was a stupid name. One day the kitten would grow up and quit pouncing on everything in sight.

  He cuddled her closer and sat in the big armchair facing the front window. The lights on the tree looked festive. The cat curled up in his lap.

  “Poor little stray, born out of season. Were you abandoned?” he asked the cat.

  The cat only purred in response.

  He let go of a long sigh. He wondered what was in that gaily wrapped package at the bottom of his knapsack. Maybe it would be better if he left town tomorrow and didn’t bother.

  “Here you go.” Annie came into the room bearing a tray and a bright smile. “Hot chocolate, made with real milk.”

  She bent over to put the tray down on the coffee table, giving Matt a great view of her backside. Unwanted desire tugged at him with a vengeance.

  He shouldn’t be getting the hots for Nick’s old high school flame. Even if she and Nick had broken up twenty years ago. It seemed forbidden somehow.

  And yet attraction was there as clear as a bell. Annie was everything Nick had said she was, and more. And her home was…

  Well, he didn’t want to delve too deeply into that. Especially since he felt like he’d walked right into one of Nick’s Christmas stories.

  Annie handed him a cup of chocolate, their fingers touched again, and the heat curled up in his chest.

  He took the mug from her and lifted it to his mouth. The chocolate was warm and rich and sweet. A lot like the woman who had made it.

  She turned away and put her hands on her hips. “We still have a lot of work to do.”

  She picked up another box of ornaments and began digging through tissue. “These are my mother’s birds,” she said.

  She pulled out a delicate red glass bird and clipped it to a branch.

  “I take it your mother is gone?” he asked.

  She nodded, her shoulders stiff. “Yeah, she died last spring. This is my first Christmas without her.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Well, she’s in a happier place. She was always sick, and she missed my father.” Annie stopped and turned and gave him a very serious stare. “Sort of like Ruth these last few years.”

  “You think I shouldn’t deliver my present?”

  “Depends on the reason you want to deliver it.”

  Before he could answer, the kitten got up and stretched, then bounded off Matt’s lap. It pranced over to a box laden with decorations and dived right into it. Pouncy stalked and jumped and pussyfooted while Matt and Annie watched her and laughed.

  Finally she lifted her “dirty” face over the lip of the cardboard as she ferociously batted at the red ribbon she’d managed to entangle herself in.

  “I think we should name you Holly,” Annie said on a laugh.

  “Holly’s a good name for a cat that was found two days before Christmas,” Matt agreed.

  Annie turned her head, and they gazed at each other for the longest moment. She finally blushed, and an answering heat rose like a column right through him. He stood up, drawn to her by some force he didn’t quite understand. “Annie Roberts,” he said, “I feel like I’ve known you all my life.”

  She blinked at him. “Uh. That’s not possible. It’s probably just because Nick talked about me.”

  “Maybe, but that’s not quite it. Do you believe in love at first sight?”

  She blanched. “No. No, I don’t.” She turned a suddenly nervous gaze on the kitten who had curled up under the coffee table.

  She stepped back toward the hallway. “Uh, I’m going to go check the guest bedroom—make sure the bed in there has clean sheets.”

  She turned and escaped.

  Matt stood by the tree watching her run.

  Boy, he was an idiot. He should have kept his feelings inside. He glanced around the room, filled with Christmas decorations that had been carefully handed down through the generations.

  Annie was like Nick. She had traditions and a place where she fit. Matt wanted all that. He could tell himself he’d come to deliver a Christmas gift, but that would be a lie.

  He’d come to Last Chance in the hope that Ruth might invite him in and give him a taste of what Nick had known growing up. The truth was, Matt envied Nick’s childhood.

  But Matt was just a stray, like the cat. And Annie had made it clear that she wasn’t interested in taking in any strays.

  Christmas Eve day dawned gray. Annie awakened just before seven. She snuggled down under the covers and listened to the rain pinging against the tin roof.

  She didn’t realize she had company until Holly pranced across Grandmother’s quilt, her little claws pulling at the fabric. Annie started to scold and then held her tongue.

  The old quilt was nearly a rag anyway. She slept under it only as a matter of habit. For months now, she’d been telling herself that she’d make a run down to Target and buy herself something new.

  Why had she been putting that off? Why hadn’t she gone down to Target earlier in the week and purchased new ornaments for the tree?

  Why had she run away from Matt last night?

  The kitten wormed its body up against her chest, curled itself into a little ball, and started to purr.

  If she was going to keep it, she’d need to get a litter box.

  She stopped herself in midthought.

  She was not keeping this cat. No matter what. The cat was like an emblem for everything that was wrong in her life. If she took responsibility for a cat, like she’d taken responsibility for Mother all those years ago, how was she ever going to escape and find her own life?

  She was getting old. She wanted children. She wanted a family of her own—someone she could hand the old ornaments off to. But if she accepted that cat, she was accepting the end of that dream.

  No way. She pushed the cat aside. It didn’t get the message. It came right back at her, cute as a button and looking for love.

  Matt looked up from his cup of coffee as Annie stepped into the kitchen. She looked like something out of a Christmas movie in a red-and-white snowflake sweater, her hair in a ponytail with a red ribbon.

  “Thanks for all your help last night,” she said, as she leaned in the kitchen doorway. “I just checked in with the nursing home. They open for nonfamily visiting hours at ten am. I’ve got an early appointment at the beauty shop, and after that, I can run you up to
Orangeburg. I’ve got some last-minute shopping to do; then I have to get back here to cook before my friends arrive for Christmas Eve dinner.”

  “I’ve been an imposition, haven’t I?”

  “No, it’s all right.” She seemed so nervous with her arms crossed over her breasts, as if she were trying to shield herself from him.

  He came to the decision he’d been mulling over for most of the night. “Look, I’ve been thinking about what you said last night, about Ruth’s present.”

  “Oh? What did I say? I don’t remember saying anything in particular.”

  “You asked me why I wanted to deliver a present that’s probably going to make her very sad.”

  “I asked that? I mean, I think you should think about what you’re doing. After all, Ruth is ill and she’s not entirely with it, you know.”

  “Okay, maybe you didn’t. But it’s still a good question, isn’t it? I’ve been trying to decide why I wanted to come here and deliver that stupid gift. And well, the thing is, I’m not sure I came here for the right reasons.”

  “What do you think are the right reasons, Matt?” Her gaze seemed to focus on him, as if she really cared about his answer.

  He shrugged. “When I took that present from out of Nick’s effects, I told myself I was going to do his grandmother a favor. I thought it might be hard for her to get a Christmas present from a person who had died. I thought maybe I could come and say a couple of words to her, you know, about what a great buddy Nick had been.”

  “That seems like a good reason, Matt.”

  He nodded. “Yeah, but there was something else. I realized it last night while I was helping you with the tree.”

  “What?”

  “The thing is my Christmases as a kid were crummy. They sucked. But Nick used to talk about Christmas all the time. He used to tell stories about how his grandmother made a big roast with mashed potatoes. He used to talk about his parents kissing under the mistletoe, before they died.” Matt’s voice wavered, and he stopped and took a big breath.

  “So you thought you’d come and experience that?” Annie said.