by L. L. Muir
She knew it!
“Come, come.” The doorman waved her on. “I’m the ghost of Christmas past, ye see.”
Suddenly they were back at Ivy and Stone. It was the first Christmas Open House. She recognized the decorations, many of which they’d made themselves. They’d cut branches from a friend’s orchard —free, sprayed them with flocking —$24, added fifteen dollars’ worth of glitter, then wove them into an arched doorway. A few up-lights and the little old house looked like the mystical entrance to another world. The whole thing cost them less than fifty bucks and two women wanted their own porches decorated the same. It was a great year.
The doorman moved along with the crowd. Mal followed, eager to remember how they’d decorated, what they’d been selling. They walked beneath a tree that had been hung from the ceiling. Customers plucked the ornaments from the branches until there was nothing left. They’d sold out of just about everything that year. It was the start of a great tradition.
She found herself standing in the parking lot watching a younger version of herself lock the shop door and head home. She and Ferguson tagged along in a cluttered back seat. They followed the other Mallory into her sad little apartment. There was a two foot Christmas tree sitting in the middle of the dining table. A sparse strand of lights were draped around it along with the old-fashioned ornaments she’d found among her mom’s things. With no other decoration, the tree looked only slightly better than Charlie Brown’s.
She looked at the doorman. “I spent all my time decorating the shop. I didn’t have the energy to do it at home too.”
“Tisk, tisk,” he replied, then shook his head in pity when that other Mallory turned in a circle, taking in her own surroundings, then went crying to the bedroom.
“I was worn out. It had been a really long day.”
“Sure, sure.” The doorman opened a door in the wall that wasn’t supposed to be there. He beckoned her on. They emerged into the work room and it looked exactly like they’d left it early that morning.
“As ye can see, I’ll also be playin’ the part of yer Christmas Present, lass. We’re a bit short on staff, due to the causeway disaster and all.”
In her dreaming state, it made complete sense.
It was daytime. The sun blinked bright through smear-edged windows that were too high to clean perfectly. It was the workroom, after all.
The twelve by twelve room was scattered with odds and ends that hadn’t been needed up at Harmony Lodge. A pile of corsage scissors—she knew they would have forgotten something. A neat pile of stems and garbage on the floor—apparently, someone couldn’t find the dust pan. There was a low square vase full of blossoms that were too short to use in arrangements, but too beautiful to be thrown out.
She wandered down the little hallway and through the show room. The entire house was too beautiful to be thrown out, to be broken to bits by a wrecking ball.
A couple of women, wrapped up tight against the cold, hurried up to the front door. It was locked. One of them noticed the sign and read it. “Closed for a wedding set up. Come back Monday.” They turned away disappointed, but paused to look in the display window for a long cold moment. Then they were gone.
“Many a woman will miss this place, aye?” Ferguson watched out the window.
Mal nodded, her throat too full of tears to speak. She was going to miss it too. Those women could come back again on Monday, but there wouldn’t be many more Mondays left. Not if they didn’t re-locate.
Next year, there wouldn’t be an open house. No party to celebrate the fact that Ivy and Stone had survived another year of retail. No reward for their customers’ loyalty.
“Here we go.” Ferguson opened another strange door, this one placed where a window should be. He gestured for her to go first.
She ducked inside and found herself in her current apartment. The glass she’d used for milk that morning sat next to the sink. She hadn’t been alert enough to rinse it out.
The old man pointed to the kitchen table. There were no ornaments, no lights, and no tree to hold them up if there were. He tisked again, shaking his head as he wandered around the apartment. She saw her life as the old man must see it, lonely and sparsely furnished. It made her defensive.
“Hey,” she said. “If you’re looking for a Christmas tree, you’re not going to find one. No time. Did you get a good look at the wedding we just pulled off? You think that can be done in an eight-hour work day? I’ve been working on that since July, you know.”
The man puckered his lips, the bottom protruding, a chapped pink and white bulb with a quivering chin beneath.
“Hey. Don’t cry for me, Argentina. I’m surrounded by Christmas decorations three months out of the year. Just because it’s not in my home… Forget it. Are we done here?”
Ferguson gave her a curt nod and led her to the front door. “And now, if ye don’t mind, I’ll be yer ghost of Christmas Future. Take me hand, lassie.”
They hadn’t even opened the door and they were already outside. Only this outside wasn’t anywhere near her house.
“England, lass.” The doorman pointed around them at the bare winter fields. Long dry grasses bowed to the ground beneath the weight of a heavy frost. “Is this yer first time to a foreign country, then?”
The very idea reminded her she was dreaming. One day she hoped to go to Scotland and visit all the haunted castles there. In spite of living alone, she was obsessed with ghost hunting. And if they were in England, she wasn’t far away... But they weren’t.
“I’ll play along.” She smiled at Ferguson and ignored the shiver she shouldn’t be feeling if she was asleep. “Why are we here?”
“Hush lass. Listen.”
She heard a plop. Then a splash, splash, splash, plop. Splash, splash, plop.
The doorman poked her shoulder, then waved her to his left. They followed the sounds, marching over clumps of grass until they found a man standing at the edge of a pond, tossing rocks across it. He didn’t notice them, and as they got closer, Mal realized it was Bennett St. John.
“Bennett!”
“Mallory,” he whispered. After a few seconds, he pulled his arm back and threw another rock.
“Bennett! I’m right here. In England!”
He closed his eyes. “Mallory.” It was a whisper. A prayer.
“He’s nay speaking to ye, lassie. He can nay see ye. And I very much doubt he can hear ye.”
“Bennett!” A woman’s voice interrupted from a distance. “Bennett, are you there?”
Eventually, young woman in flowing slacks and a wool coat picked her way down a narrow path and walked straight up to Bennett, then wrapped herself around his arm. He smiled patiently at her.
“I am surprised you’re out here this morning,” she said. “It’s so cold. Won’t you come back inside?”
Bennett nodded. “Ten more minutes, Elizabeth darling. If I cut my meditation short, it will affect the entire day. And I’ve five charities to visit before dinner.”
She stuck out a pouty lip. “Fine. I’ll leave you to it then. But remember, you’re not doing it correctly if it makes you melancholy.” This Elizabeth woman kissed him on the cheek, then pulled her coat tight and headed back the way she’d come.
“Who in the hell is that?” Mal turned to Ferguson, since Bennett wasn’t going to answer her.
“His wife. An Englishwoman, by the by. Good stock.”
Mal snorted. “I don’t think so.”
“Ye doubt she’s his wife, or that she’s good stock?”
Mal shook her head. “I doubt they’re right for each other. Are you kidding me? Elizabeth and Bennett? As in, Elizabeth Bennett? Who picked her out, his mother?”
Ferguson smirked. “His mother is dead, lassie. Remember? He picked her out himself.”
Mal fumed. That woman hadn’t looked anything like the three homely Englishwomen she’d imagined, the ones he was supposed to choose from. And she didn’t look anything like a sheep! Finding him pining away for
her made her ten shades of happy, but he was supposed to pine away alone!
Ten more minutes passed with Bennett alternately chucking rocks and watching the ripples settle, but he never whispered her name again. Not even when she called out to him. She finally accepted the fact that he couldn’t hear her.
Bennett turned and looked in the direction his pretty wife had taken.
“Don’t go.” Mal reached out and touched his arm. He shrugged her off as he tugged on his shirt cuffs. He took a deep breath and left. She tried to follow, but wasn’t able to move in that direction.
“Have ye noticed?” Ferguson nodded at Bennett’s fading form. “He tugs on those cuffs when he’s nervous. Only when he’s nervous.” He shook his head and turned back to the pond. “Come along. We’re finished here, aye?”
CHAPTER TWELVE
“Mal? Mallory!”
She woke to find a grinning blond staring down at her.
“Good morning, Sunshine.” London held two coffee cups. “I brought you some hot chocolate, unless you want my coffee.”
She sat up. “No, thanks. But Bennett might appreciate—”
“I gave him some.”
She looked around the ballroom filling up with her staff and a lot of other people she didn’t recognize. “Where is he?”
“Gone.”
Her heart jumped painfully. “Gone to the bathroom? Gone to the parking lot? What do you mean, gone? Why didn’t you wake me?”
“He met us at the door, told us not to wake you up. He said you hadn’t had much sleep…” London raised her eyebrows suggestively.
“Nothing happened. We slept on different couches, obviously.”
“Yeah.” London looked pretty disappointed. “Too bad it wasn’t me that got stuck on the island with him.”
Mal stomped on the image London and Bennett enjoying a quiet night in front of the fire.
“He gave us a list of where he wants the flowers taken. Assisted Living Centers, The Huntsman Center. And a few delivered to Jordan’s family. He wants the food taken to homeless shelters. Jeremy is going to handle the logistics.”
Mal nodded, trying not to make it obvious she waited to hear what message he’d left for her, if any.
“Is that it?” She looked around, wondering where to start. She panicked when Chandler walked by with a large sack of garbage. She ran over to where she’d last seen the napkin/marriage license. It was gone. There was no way she would start digging through the trash sacks, since she wasn’t about to confess everything that had gone on last night.
“Did you lose something?” London glanced around at the other tables even though she didn’t know what Mal had lost.
Did I lose something? Yeah. I lost something all right. But she didn’t think it would do any good for London and the others to dig through the trash for her heart. After all, they wouldn’t find it—Bennett St. John had taken it with him.
“No. It’s okay. I had been making a list…for something to do, you know? I was pretty bored.”
London frowned at her in mock surprise. “I don’t even know how you and I are friends. If I’d have been on this island with that man, I sure as hell wouldn’t have been bored. And I wouldn’t have been cold, either.” She laughed. “I’d have had my tongue so far down his throat I could tell you what he’d had for breakf—” Her jaw dropped. “Mallory Mayhue! You didn’t!”
Mal shook her head, not understanding what London could have guessed from the blank look on her face. Of course, she’d also bitten her lips together when London had mentioned tongues. That had to be it.
London grabbed her arm and dragged her to the north wall of windows away from other bodies. “You tell me right now. I want to hear all of it. Then later, I want you to fill in all the little details.”
“We kissed, okay?” She sighed. “A lot.”
“And?”
Mal scrunched up her face. “And I may have called him a playboy.”
London grimaced. “Is that bad? I don’t know, is it bad?”
“He thought so. It offended him. He was trying pretty hard to convince me he liked me, a lot, and I didn’t believe it.” Tears jumped out of her eyes and splashed on her cheeks. “And he made it clear he doesn’t believe in second chances.”
“Oh, sweetie.” London reached up and wrapped her arms around her. “I’m so sorry.” She patted Mal on the back a few times, then dropped her arms. “But listen. Maybe he’ll change his mind. You never know. Did you apologize?”
“Yeah. Kind of. I kissed him. But it didn’t change anything. It was never the same.”
Two men picked up one of the couches and started moving it back where it was supposed to go. It made Mal remember her dream. Elizabeth and Bennett. She felt like he was on his way to meet his pretty wife, at that very moment, and the tears started falling again. Only they weren’t tears of self-pity. They were tears of pissed-off.
“London, look. I need a favor, and I need you to not ask questions until I’m ready to explain.”
Her friend rubbed her hands together. She loved conspiracies, especially if she was in on one. “As long as you explain it to me eventually, I’m in.”
“Excellent.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Bennett fidgeted in the back seat of the Rolls on the way to his London office. He was in no mood to spend time in the city. Yet another week was needed to recover from his trip to the States back in December, and he was in a foul mood to boot. If he didn’t watch his tongue, his people might think he’d turned into some sort of ogre. A right honorable ass hat.
He sighed. He kept picturing Mallory scooping debris off the floor with a pair of over-sized dust pans, her charming derriere greeting him when he made his way to the back of the shop. That lovely, filthy hand offered up to him in a friendly, honest welcome. That lovely, charming face that gave him the sharp jolt of adrenaline, signaling the missing piece to the puzzle had just been found.
He’d been quite speechless. The woman was everything Pemberly had promised. And then she’d called him Ass Hat. From that moment on, he’d wanted nothing more than to provoke her again. By the time he left, he knew the buttons to push to set her off, to shut her up, and to curl her toes. The next two weeks he’d learned everything he could about her, which wasn’t much, truth be told. But in spite of that, by the time of Pemberly’s wedding he was ready for a proposal of his own. The only thing holding him back was his desire to see Pem happy first.
He’d been a giddy young boy visiting jewelry stores when he had yet to ask his little florist out for a date.
The state of the lodge had brought him up short and his tightly strung nerves had begun to unravel. But she’d swiftly taken him in hand, demanded his trust, and had him escorted back to Pem’s side. He might have missed that precious morning with his sister watching her and Jordan posing for photographs with all the love in the world shining in their eyes.
Mallory had given him something priceless. And on the way back up the canyon, he’d wished he could get her alone, to show her how much she already meant to him. He resisted the temptation to take a ring along—she would have truly thought him a nutter if he’d have pulled a diamond out of his pocket.
Of course he’d obsessed. Of course he’d moved too quickly. But he’d only been asking for a return of the trust he’d given her. But she hadn’t been able to give it, and he’d returned home feeling like a nutter anyway.
“Mallory,” he whispered at the window. “How shall I ever recover?”
He arrived at his offices and went inside for the emergency meeting called by his team. He wondered what might be wrong, then wondered if he even cared.
“Marjory.” He greeted his secretary.
“My lord.” She stood and took his coat and scarf. “They’re waiting in the board room.”
“Very well. I’m going to pop down to Thomas’ office and for a quick hello. Then I’ll join them.” He left his office again and walked down the hall and around the corner. Thomas wasn’t in.
Nor was his secretary, so he continued down that corridor to see if any of his other mates might be about. He was in no hurry to join the meeting that probably didn’t require his attendance, even though his man had assured him that it did.
He meandered down the far hall, intending to circle the twenty-first floor entirely before arriving back at his own offices. However, as he approached the west lobby, he caught sight of a familiar head of blond hair. It so shocked him, he stopped and retreated, fearing his heart might give out if he came face to face with Mallory’s business partner, London.
He took a deep breath or two, then inched forward, praying it was some other woman who had difficulty containing her hair in a simple black clip.
“Mal, you can do this,” the woman hissed.
Good heavens, it was her! And worse, she was speaking to Mallory! Mallory Mayhue was there, in London, in his office building! She had to have come to see him. Fate could not have conjured such a coincidence to torture him.
He strained to hear more of their conversation.
“Did you hear them? They called him My Lord! He’s a lord, London. We’re not dealing with a normal human being here. He’s probably required to marry a princess or something.”
He took offense to that. He was normal. He was human—which was the very source of his problem with Mallory. He’d handed his very human heart over to her and she’d handed it back, expecting him to place it back inside his chest and go on with his life as if nothing had ever happened. Damn her.
“You need to remember Elizabeth,” London said. “If you don’t go after him, he’ll be doomed to marry her. Forget he’s got some stupid title. He probably bought it on Lords-R-Us dot com. Now get back in there and fight for him. Or have you decided you don’t want him after all?”
“Of course I want him. I’m not leaving here until he forgives me and gives me a second chance. But what if he doesn’t want me? What if I’m wrong? What if I’m not the American girl he talked about? I mean, what if I’ve just convinced myself it was me he fell in love with? What if there really was someone else?”