Home for the Holidays: A Contemporary Romance Anthology

by Christine Bell

  “Here we are, Piglet!”

  Clarissa kept her expression neutral. Getting upset with Mother about her continued use of the nickname would do nothing to stop her—not now, especially when Eliza had an audience. Loads of therapy sessions had quieted Clarissa’s reaction from screaming at Mother to actually being able to plaster a half-smile to her face. “Ah, Mother,” she said and took another sip of her drink.

  “This is for you.”

  The candy-cane foil gift wrap perfectly matched the McGovern holiday décor, the wrapping job impeccable. Mother took great pride in her ability to wrap a gift. While Clarissa knew she had to say thank you, she realized that whatever lay inside this lovely looking present wasn’t going to be lovely at all. No, in fact, she’d bet her life that whatever lurked in this gift box was something she absolutely did not want, but that Mother required her to have.

  “Open it,” Mother said, a generous smile on her lips but a wicked gleam in her eye.

  Where was Daddy? Occasionally he actually saved her from Mother’s mean streak. What was it exactly that made Mother loathe everything about Clarissa?

  She set down her drink. Her heart grew heavy as she took the gift box. “Thank you,” she said automatically before opening the wrapping. Clarissa knew from experience, loads of experience, that most likely she wouldn’t be able to say thank you once she saw what Mother had given her.

  Clarissa grasped an end of the gift wrap and tore from one corner to the other. Horror flashed across Mother’s face. A lie to say that the look of shock on Mother’s face didn’t plant a seed of pleasure in Clarissa’s heart. Clarissa held back a smile. Oh yes, Mother was one of those careful gift-unwrappers, the kind that took minutes to carefully slide a nail under a tape seam and then unwrap the gift as though handling the most delicate of Fabergé eggs. Hmm . . . not Clarissa. No.

  But that sense of winning one of their skirmishes was soon replaced with Clarissa’s own look of horror as she saw the white rectangular box under the paper. Her heart pounded. Julia hadn’t been kidding. Clothes. She pulled off the lid and looked inside.

  Her throat tightened. No. No, no, no, no.

  “Isn’t it fabulous?” Mother asked, her smile widening across her face. “We all have them! I knew you’d come home looking like you were in mourning, so I got you some holiday sweaters! You’ll just have to wait to see what the other ones look like,” she added with a mischievous wink. “Go put it on.”

  Clarissa took a deep breath. The sweater was gold with sparkles, featuring a giant pink pig wearing a Christmas wreath around its neck. Christmas lights wove around the swine’s body, as though he’d knocked over a tree and wore the remnants of his escapade. The pièce de résistance was the real red blinking light at the end of his curlicue tail. She suddenly envied Kevin his ridiculous sweater. Rudolph’s flashing nose beat an illuminated piglet’s tail any day.

  She ground her teeth and narrowed her eyes at her mother. Julia had a Christmas swan on her sweater and Clarissa had a pig—with lights. Some things about coming home would never, ever, change.

  Norris peeked through the front window, stomping his feet to stay warm. What the hell was that horrid sweater Clarissa held up? A pig? Her mother had gotten her a sweater with a pig on the front? Was Mrs. McGovern insane? What kind of mother put one daughter on a pedestal while torturing the other? He almost felt sorry for Clarissa, except for the fact she was his ex and had completely wrecked his heart.

  “This is where you’re hiding.” Kevin ducked out the side doorway from the kitchen.

  “What’s that mess in there?” Norris asked, hitching his thumb over his shoulder toward the scene inside.

  Kevin shook his head and crossed his arms over his chest. “Who knows?” He peeked through the window. “Women . . . I mean, it’s like war without the actual bombs.”

  “Vicious. They can be a vicious bunch. Fighting without actually saying any angry words. I think that’s worse, almost.”

  “I hear you know Clarissa?”

  Norris paused. “Years ago. We knew each other when I lived in Los Angeles and worked in production.”

  “Oh right.” Kevin nodded. “I forgot that. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how the two of you would’ve met.”

  A fantastic affair that became what Norris thought would be the relationship of his life. They’d first met when Clarissa was an assistant at CTA, a talent agency, and Norris a production assistant trying to get his first script read.

  “If this is awkward, I completely understand if you want me to find you a hotel room. I could even stay with you—”

  “Did Clarissa say that me being here was awkward?”

  “Well, no, but, I just . . . I didn’t want to put you in an uncomfortable position. You know, staying in the childhood home of a woman you slept with and then ditched.”

  “Ditched? Ditched? She said I ditched her?”

  “Well, not exactly. I mean, she mentioned that the two of you—”

  “That’s rich, isn’t it?” Norris looked through the front window toward the spot where Clarissa had stood, which was now empty.

  “I did not ditch her. I absolutely did not. Let’s get that clear.” Heat flushed Norris’s face, any chill now gone.

  “Okay . . . well, whoever ended it, does it really matter—?”

  “Oh it matters,” Norris continued, his tone growing loud. “If you want to know the truth, it was her, that sex goddess in there, who ditched me. Okay? Used me up and then spit me out. There, happy? Glad you got the facts? Would you care for more sordid details on the demise of what I thought was the relationship of my life?”

  Kevin’s eyes widened and he held up both hands. “No. No, that’s fine. I . . . this is why I wondered if maybe a hotel—”

  “I’m not going to a hotel.” Norris leaned forward and leered at his friend. It felt strange, as Norris had never leered at anyone before. “I’m staying right here. If that little strumpet is uncomfortable with our past, then she can most certainly speak to me about it. But I was invited, and unless you’re telling me I’ve been disinvited—”

  “No, no, no, absolutely not. Not disinvited. I’m not sure anybody else realizes you know each other. I simply . . . thought maybe . . .” Kevin’s words trailed off and a lost look entered his eyes. “Thought maybe you’d want a little time away from all the McGovern Christmas madness,” he finished softly, a longing tone in his voice.

  “Absolutely not,” Norris said. “I intend to stick this one out until the very end.”

  “Okay then. Dinner is in five.”

  “Dinner it is,” Norris said, not quite certain his heart would survive.

  “Sweaters required.”

  “What . . . oh?” His eyebrows creased. “Seriously?”

  Kevin nodded. “Tradition, you know. From now until Christmas, it’s a new sweater every day.”

  “Christmas torture.” Norris followed Kevin into the house.

  “Right. Well, if you think your first sweater is bad, wait until you see Piglet’s.” A bit of a wicked smile crossed Kevin’s face.

  “Don’t call her that,” Norris said. “She obviously hates it.” Anyone could see that Clarissa detested that nickname, and he wasn’t about pile on to something that, in his modest opinion, was downright mean-spirited, bordering on verbal abuse.

  “Oh, I thought—”

  “She may have broken my heart, but I’m not going to be an utter asshole in return.”

  Kevin nodded and dipped his chin. Norris walked toward the staircase and up to the guest room, preparing to don the ugliest Christmas sweater he’d ever been given.

  3

  Day two of Clarissa’s Christmas captivity was worse than day one. Bing Crosby began singing “White Christmas” at six a.m. Yes, no one within the McGovern home was immune from the Christmas Crazy embodied by Mother.

  “Today’s cookie day!” she chortled. Mother wore her very own Christmas sweater with a knit tableau of Frosty the Snowman holding can
dy canes. Strangely, her sweater wasn’t exactly ugly, it was simply Christmas gauche.

  “Clarissa, I left your sweater for today on your bed. You must have missed it.”

  Clarissa lifted her coffee mug as she sat at the dining room table and slurped a long sip. “Nope. I saw it.” Mother waited, eyes focused with the same piercing gaze that had caused Clarissa to break out in hives as a child.

  “Excellent,” Eliza said through her impervious smile. “See you wear it, once you’ve taken care of that hair.”

  “Mmhmm.” Clarissa swallowed more coffee. “Taking care of that hair” had meant Eliza shearing Clarissa’s locks with hair clippers when Clarissa was little. Eliza’s eyes bulged as Clarissa shook the wild curls in defiance.

  “Okay. Well, when you finally get around to joining your sister and me in the kitchen, wear your sweater. You know, Piglet, Julia and I are already on our second batch of sugar cookies.”

  Was it too early for bourbon? Would her family notice if she put a shot in her java?

  Clarissa felt Norris’s breath in her ear as he leaned over her back and whispered, “I’ve already checked. The booze is in the living room.”

  Heat sizzled through Clarissa. Norris sat in the chair beside hers. The soapy scent of freshly showered man and that smell that was purely Norris wafted past her. How did she remember that scent so clearly after all this time apart?

  “Missed you at dinner last night.” Norris reached for the Santa platter that held a huge stack of pancakes.

  “Yeah, well, hunger is a small price to pay for not sitting through a meal being called ‘piglet’ and listening to my mother extol the virtues of my younger sister.”

  “Ah, sibling rivalry. Hmm, would’ve thought you’d outgrown that by now.”

  “Oh, that’s right, I remember, you’re an only child. The type that never had to share a parent. Feted as the prince of the family.”

  Norris smiled and poured maple syrup over his pancakes. “Guilty as charged. Was quite lovely, or so I’ve gathered, watching my friends endure the torture of both parental and self-comparison to their siblings.”

  Clarissa sighed. “One way to avoid those comparisons it is to move thousands of miles away, start a new life, and never come home.”

  “Seems you’ve been quite successful with that.” He offered the platter of pancakes to Clarissa. She shook her head. She’d be damned if she ate anything before Christmas Eve. At least not with her mother around. The words that came from Eliza’s mouth when Clarissa filled hers with food were most unkind.

  “I remember you mentioning your parents.”

  Clarissa cringed. She remembered mentioning her parents as well.

  “I can see the whole thing with your mother—what you said is accurate. Though I’m not certain she’s quite what I envisioned.”

  “Just wait,” Clarissa said. “It gets worse.”

  Hunger tore through her stomach. The rich buttery scent of pancakes and the bacon? Good God. When was the last time she’d eaten bacon? Probably the last time she’d come home to Candy Cane Lane, and that’d been three years ago.

  Norris held out the plate of crisp brown salty deliciousness. Clarissa glanced toward the kitchen and then back toward the plate. He leaned close to her ear.

  Heat whispered down Clarissa’s back and her nipples hardened beneath her flannel pajama top.

  “How about I put a piece right here for you?” he murmured, lifting a slice of the bacon and placing it on the edge of his plate. “No one will ever know.”

  Her salivary glands were nearly as excited as her nipples.

  Norris winked and set the dish of bacon back down in the center of the table. Then in a normal voice, he asked, “Where’s my buddy?”

  “Kevin is in the kitchen with the dynamic duo. So sad for him, but good for me. Looks like this Christmas he’s taking one for the team.”

  “Yes, well, seems like there’ll be many Christmases to come.”

  “So he is proposing.” Clarissa turned her back to the kitchen, looked directly at Norris, and took a bite of bacon. “Tell me if anyone’s coming,” she whispered.

  Norris looked toward the kitchen and shoveled a bite of pancake into his mouth. “This is how you’re going to eat until you leave?”

  “You have a car?” Clarissa asked as she nibbled at the slice of hot salty pork goodness.

  “Kevin’s car.”

  “Then no. I’ll be eating out the next two days, and then Christmas Eve and Christmas Day I’ll eat what I want. After that, whammo, I’m gone. Back to my life in the real world.” A final delightful savory bite. “She won’t say anything about me eating on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day.”

  “A bit of holiday kindness from your mother?”

  “No, she just gets too wrapped up in making everything perfect to notice what I’m eating or how I’m eating.”

  “How you’re eating?

  Clarissa’s face reddened.

  “I remember eating many, many meals with you. I never found anything remotely remarkable about how you eat.”

  Clarissa compressed her lips into a grim line, and her gaze went past him to the dining room window. “No, not now.” Her eyes shifted back to meet Norris’s. “But when I was little . . . I had this undiagnosed allergy. When I would try to eat, I couldn’t breathe sometimes . . .” Her chest tightened and heat prickled her eyes. For fuck’s sake, how could she possibly still be upset about this? “Sometimes I would lose my breath and I would choke, and when that happened a little snort would come out.”

  The muscle in Norris’s jaw twitched, and his eyes—my God, but she didn’t want to see that kind of pity in Norris’s eyes. She was a grown woman with her own successful company and an amazing career, and she didn’t need her ex-lover looking at her like she was a damaged piece of humanity.

  “That’s how Mother came up with the nickname—”

  “Piglet,” Norris said softly.

  Clarissa gave a sharp nod, confirming his guess, and looked back towards the front window again.

  “Once the allergy was gone so was the snort, but Mother seemed to like the nickname and how upset it made me. Well, I’m guessing she must enjoy how upset saying it makes me. Otherwise, why would she keep using it?”

  “Why would she?” Norris echoed. He put down his fork and laid his hand over the top of hers. “Clarissa, I—”

  “I better get dressed,” she cut him off. Her eyes were hot and a thickness clogged her throat. No. She wouldn’t cry here, not at Mother’s dining room table, not in front of Norris, a man she’d stopped seeing for very specific reasons.

  Clarissa popped up from her chair. She’d come home out of duty, and she supposed there were a few more necessary trips to be made. She would come back for the wedding. And of course Julia and Kevin would inevitably have children, so she’d come home at least once for each of those. Please God let them only procreate a couple of times.

  She cleared her throat. “I guess we’ll be seeing each other at all kinds of family-type events over the next couple of years. I mean, if you’re Kevin’s best friend, I assume you’ll be in the wedding. And Mother would be much too horrified at what people might say if I wasn’t in Julia’s, even though we never see each other anymore.” She ran her fingers through her tight curls. She forced the pain from her heart and put the smile she’d learned to fake in Hollywood onto her face. “I’ll be down by lunch, and then I’ll need a ride into town, if you don’t mind.”

  Norris nodded. Clarissa turned and bolted up the stairs.

  Norris stood in the guest bedroom he’d been assigned on the second floor with his phone pressed to his ear. The holiday decorations in this room were an homage to Kris Kringle. The young Santa decorated everything from the guest towels to the giant bedspread on the queen-sized bed. There were even candles shaped like a younger slimmer Santa with the beginning of a beard. Norris turned away from the bed and walked toward the window that looked out over a thickening blanket of snow.


  “I’m sorry, buddy,” Peter, his agent, said, “but the film isn’t going to go. At least, not until the second quarter. The producers still need the last piece of finance.”

  Norris scrubbed his hand through his hair. No start date meant no purchase money for the script he’d written, which meant his bank account was hovering dangerously close to zero. Even his super-secret-never-use emergency bank account was nearly tapped out. He’d been desperately hoping that Truly & Madly would go into production right after the holidays, which would mean an influx of dollars.

  “What about rewrites or punch-ups?”

  “Dude, everyone is in Tahiti or Hawaii for the next two weeks. You’re lucky you got me. I’m standing at LAX in flip flops.”

  Lucky, huh? How lucky was a production-assistant-turned-screenplay-writer who barely had two dimes to his name?

  “I . . . I’m going to need something.”

  Peter sighed. “Look, I get it. As soon as we get back from the holidays I’ll look for a rewrite or some punch-up work—”

  “Okay, okay.” Norris nodded. Not ideal, but it was hope. Hope that he could pay his February rent and not end up homeless in the middle of winter in New York.

  “Saw your old girlfriend packaged that giant film for Worldwide Studios.”

  Norris grimaced and turned toward his open doorway. Clarissa’s room was just across the hall.

  “Maybe she could come in for the final piece?”

  Norris frowned and stared at her closed door.

  “Do you still see her? Talk to her?”

  He hadn’t. Until yesterday. “A little, sometimes. I didn’t, but right now—”

  “Well, mention the project to her. If you want your purchase price for this script, then we have to lock in the final piece of finance. But if Clarissa-fucking-McGovern wants to produce? I mean, come on! You’ll have your check before Valentine’s Day.”

  “Ha! Right.”

  “Dude? I’m not kidding. Her production company is that hot right now. Okay? When she left agenting she took amazing relationships with her. There’s not a star she can’t get to. And they all fucking love her.”