“That would explain why I like Mr. Meddlesome—oh! Smedley better.”
“They might behave badly, unless they have a soft place to fall. A place they can lay their head where they don’t have to be strong, or fix everything. You want your brother-in-law to be the criminal, but maybe your sister wasn’t there for him, either.”
“Get out!” she said. How dare he delve into the dynamics of her family? How dare he strip her to her soul when she wasn’t ready? How much easier to yell at him than to consider what he had to say.
Unfortunately he didn’t even look offended. He looked as if he was happy to leave!
“I feel sorry for you,” he said, and then he turned and left, closed the door quietly.
That was so different from the declaration of love that she had hoped for when she opened her door to him tonight that she burst into tears. She felt stunned and angry and hurt and helpless. A man who had lost everything pitied her.
But through the storm of feelings, a truth shone, the light piercing. Michael had spoken the truth and only the truth. She was in much more pain than he was. Because she had lost her faith in love.
But in the emptiness where he had just stood, she felt a horrible chill. The chill of the loveless way she had chosen to be in the world. Safe, yes, but colorless, cold, empty. She was not really alive at all. Just breathing. Michael was demanding something of her. That she become more than she had ever been willing to be before, that she expose her heart even though there might be arrows aimed at it. To be worthy of him, she would have to live with the kind of courage he had demonstrated.
“I’m not ready,” she said out loud, huffily.
But a different voice, quiet, still, calm, deep within her, said yes, you are .
CHAPTER NINE
Nine days until Christmas…
MICHAEL pulled up in front of the building around the corner from the Secret Santa Society. The real-estate agent hadn’t arrived yet, and Michael waited in his car, mulled over his argument with Kirsten last night.
Fairly satisfactory as far as a first fight went, though he still felt regret that he hadn’t been able to get her riled up enough to throw a Little Love at him.
When his mother and father had fought, the air had crackled with their passion. A few days cooling off period, then his father begged forgiveness, bought roses, and then they were more in love than ever. People said not to fight in front of kids, but Michael wasn’t sure he agreed. His parents’ occasional yelling match had taught him love was not fragile. That relationships contained conflict. It was dealt with and then life went on.
He looked at his watch. He probably had time to pop in and see her before the real-estate agent showed up.
He left his car, dashed across the street, horns honking at him, and around the corner. Kirsten was in her office. She slammed her favorite Little catalog into her top desk drawer, laced her hands together on top of her desk and looked at him primly.
Her eyes were suspiciously red.
“Yes?” she said.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“Of course. Fine. Why wouldn’t I be?”
He felt as if now would be a good time to lean over that desk and kiss the living daylights out of her, but apparently he had to try to be a bit tamer with her. She was a book club kind of girl, not a woman who could hold her own on a crab boat.
“A job’s come up this morning. It’s important. That’s why I haven’t been around.”
“You haven’t?” she said, feigning surprise.
“It’s not because you ordered me out of your house. I’m not that easy to get rid of.”
“You’re not?” she whispered. And then said quickly, “All right. Thanks. For letting me know. Goodbye.”
“It’s not goodbye,” he said, trying to be patient with her.
“I’m not wounded,” she said with grave dignity. “I don’t need your pity.”
Oh, yeah. His parting words last night. He felt sorry for her. Her eyes shifted away from his. If he was not mistaken, she was looking longingly at the drawer her catalog was in.
He sighed. She was a difficult, complicated woman. Of all the women on the face of the earth, why had his heart picked her? Because she was a difficult, complicated woman. Because she was endlessly fascinating. Because even though she had been hurt, she was still trying so hard to make the world a better place.
She wasn’t ordinary. She wasn’t superficial. She was a spring coming from deep, deep in the ground, and once a man had tasted that kind of water, he lost his taste for anything else.
“Look, Kirsten—”
She looked at him, her eyes carefully blank, a horrible phony smile on her face. Here was the thing. She was a book club kind of woman. He, a rough-and-tumble guy who had made his living with his hands, not his head, was never going to be able to find the right words to talk her in or out of anything she had decided to believe. He wanted to tell her to trust him, but that was one of the things she had lost when her nephew got hit, when the world as she knew it had crumbled. She had lost her ability to trust. She chose which words she wanted to believe, and she had decided to believe he felt sorry for her.
“It’s really hard to feel sorry for somebody that you want to strangle,” he said, and moved across the floor toward her. She had no place to go. Her chair was already back against the wall of her tiny space.
He leaned over her desk, put his palms flat down on top of it. She protectively covered her throat, which only made him more annoyed. She really thought he was going to strangle her?
Instead he took advantage of the fact she was defending the wrong part of her anatomy, and took her lips with his own
He wanted to ravage her. To shock her out of her primness. But her lips were sweet, and after just a moment’s hesitation, they answered his, soft, giving, supple.
It was not the kiss he thought he craved, a kiss of heat and passion and primal need. Just a gentle kiss that told him, when you least expected it, you found the other half of your soul. His kiss told her, trust me, believe in me.
And her answer, whether she wanted it to or not, said that she would at least try.
He stepped back from her. “I’ve got to go.”
She nodded.
“By the way,” he said. “Did I tell you I’ve thought it over? I’m available now.”
“I’ll be sure and post that on the bulletin board,” she said.
The urge to strangle her came back. If he had time, he’d straighten her out, but straightening out Kirsten seemed like it was probably going to be a lifetime proposition.
Right now, he had a bigger mission, something much more urgent.
He was going to give Kirsten the thing she believed she could not have. He was going to convince her that good could come from bad, and that love could be the final victor.
He stomped back over to the empty building. His real-estate agent, an old friend from high school, was waiting for him.
“I hate it when you get that look on your face,” Ed said. “Mean. You always looked like that right before you creamed me on the football field. It’s gotta be a woman.”
“A difficult one,” Michael snarled.
“You don’t want the easy ones,” Ed said wisely.
“Now you sound like my mother.”
They entered the building with Ed’s key.
The space they entered was musty and a mess. There was rubble on cold, concrete floors, the inner walls were filthy, the ceiling lights were broken. Still, Michael was pleasantly surprised by how structurally sound the building was. It still had original brick on some of the interior walls, the roof had not leaked, the wiring and plumbing seemed good.
“This is going to be the Grant Baker Reading Center,” Michael said. Despite the mess, he could already see it. The bookshelves, bright walls, hardwood floors, refurbished brick, new lighting.
“The what?” Ed asked doubtfully.
“Kids are going to come here to read.”
“Th
at should be fun for them, as long as they don’t have to play tug-o-war with the rats.”
“Why am I surrounded by difficult people?” Michael muttered. “It’s going to be all fixed up. New flooring, paint, lighting. I’m going to put in a fireplace over there, a kitchen right here.”
He was asking for a Christmas miracle and he knew it. He wanted to find a way to give Kirsten back her heart.
“We’re opening on Christmas Day,” he told Ed, firmly.
For a single, astonishing moment Michael could see it as if it already was: a room filled with kids on pillows and looking through books and munching on apples. A room where hippos in tutus danced on the walls.
Michael knew that’s what real gifts did. They gave endlessly and to everyone.
There was only one real gift.
He supposed it could come in different forms: it could come as a building transformed. Or as wildly inappropriate emerald earrings. It could come as a sleigh on Christmas Eve giving gifts to children who had none. Maybe it could even come as Smedley in shining armor. But no matter how the gift was packaged, there was only one real gift.
Love.
That was the gift that Christmas was all about. It was the power the wise men had followed when they followed the star, it was the voice a young woman had obeyed that had led her fearlessly to an uncertain future, to a baby being born in a manger. It was the message that a man had come to bring, and that was still being heard thousands of years later.
Love. Love one another. That simple, and that hard.
Kirsten left work late. Lulu insisted on walking her out to her car, wouldn’t admit Michael had told her to.
Even hours later, Kirsten could feel his kiss on her, as if he had bruised her. Or branded her. Claimed her in some barbaric, primal—delicious—way. When he said he’d found a job, she was very sure he was just saying goodbyes, his excuse not to be here anymore, not to be around her anymore. But then the kiss: tender, forgiving, welcoming.
Or a goodbye kiss?
Exasperating, just like him!
She got in her car, and by pure chance, because it was not the way she always went home, she drove by the building she had once dreamed of buying.
A light shone from behind the windows. She could see a bright red Sold sticker had gone up over a For Sale sign that had been there so long it said “or ale” instead of for sale. When she slowed down, she could hear the sound of hammers.
She sped up, and felt sick.
That’s what happened when you hesitated. That’s what happened when you waited. Your dreams were stolen from you by someone who had the vision—and the fearlessness—to go forward. She had to quit waiting for life to come to her, waiting for every circumstance to be perfect before she was willing to make her move.
Michael had been right. Life wasn’t perfect, except for Harriet and Smedley, frozen in glass. She wasn’t even waiting for an elf anymore. So there weren’t any elves available? What was she going to do? Wait for him to find her one? Depend on him?
Ha! She could be her own elf! She could wear a green suit and pass out presents. In fact, the idea filled her with such a rush of happiness she wondered how it was she had not thought of it before.
It was a message for her, though a hard way to learn it.
When she got home, she was phoning Michael. No more fear. If she wanted a knight in shining armor, she was going to have to make it very clear. She spoke English. She could not interpret this language of kisses and heated looks.
Well, yes she could, but she wanted his intentions—no, her intentions—confirmed in English.
He was available? Okay, then, so was she. She was going to take the biggest chance of her life. She was going to ignore the lessons she had learned from her mother and father, from James, from Becky and Kent, and do her best to believe that maybe happily-ever-after could still happen to her.
She was going to listen to the voice inside her that would not shut up: the one that said to her she could trust, could be courageous, could be open, could be vulnerable, could be worthy of a man like Michael.
If she was going to believe in miracles, why not hold out hope for Becky and Kent? How did she know that they might not get back together? What was a few thousand miles of separation if a miracle was meant to happen?
That’s what she hated about Michael, who was willing to tackle Impossible Dreams and just about anything else he perceived as an obstacle head-on.
It made her believe .
Kirsten didn’t even take off her jacket when she clomped across her floor in her boots. She didn’t even glance at her beloved Little in Love collection, usually the first thing she did when she walked in the door.
She couldn’t risk losing momentum.
Her fingers fumbled on the pages of the phone book. She found his number. What was she going to say?
But the new her was determined to be spontaneous! She was not going to plan perfect words, she was just going to let whatever she felt like saying spill out.
But his phone rang and rang.
He wasn’t home. That familiar sick feeling welled up in her stomach. Had she lost him as surely as she had lost that building? Lost him because she had not trusted him with one little piece of herself?
“Hey, you’ve reached Michael. Leave a message, and I’ll get back to you.”
His voice ran across her spine like a touch. She felt flustered. She didn’t know what to say after all, not even to a recording.
“Never mind the elf,” she said in a rush, “I found one.” And then she hung up and allowed herself to feel annoyed. That was her idea of a risk?
She called back, but felt the same moment of being para lyzed when the beep went off. “I forgot to leave my name.
Kirsten. Just in case you are looking for elves for other people.”
She slammed down the phone. What would the real risk be? To tell him the whole truth, that she loved him. Though after that garbled message, he could probably figure it out!
She sank down beside the phone, stared at it. Now there was the risk she was not ready to take. Oh, not the love part.
Somehow, without her permission, that part had already happened. That part was a done deal.
But to let him know?
Her face felt as if it was on fire. Her heart felt as if it was going to thud out of her chest. It didn’t feel anything at all like the Little in Love figurines depicted it as feeling.
No, it felt rich and big and real. It felt as if it could tear her heart out of her chest and the breath from her body. No figurine was ever going to do that. It felt terrifying. And exhilarating. It felt like jumping off a cliff not knowing what was below, or how far you had to fall.
It felt like being alive.
It felt exactly as if she had slept, and was now awake, shaking off sleep, delighting in this second chance at being alive. It felt just as if she was a princess in a fairy tale, just as if she had been kissed back to life.
She wondered, suddenly, what he would be doing out at this time of night. Flustered, it occurred to her he might be with someone else.
She felt the wind leaving her sails, and felt angry with herself. No, no more waiting . If she wanted him, she was going for him, fighting for him, doing whatever it took.
Trusting him, a voice inside her whispered, the biggest step of all. She was trusting him. No, that wasn’t quite it. She was trusting herself, to know a good man from a bad one.
She woke up the next morning to the sound of the phone ringing, leaped from bed, stubbed her toe in her hurry to answer, hoping it was him.
“Kirstie, it’s me!”
Her sister sounding, well, jubilant.
“We’re coming to spend Christmas with you. Grant and I.”
“Really?”
“And—” slight pause “—I’ve got some great news. But it will keep. Don’t worry about putting us up. I know how small your place is.” Unspoken: and not wheelchair accessible. “We’ve booked a hotel.”
Ki
rsten set down the phone and sank into a chair. Her sister was coming for Christmas. She didn’t know how it was even possible. Money was always such a problem.
But she suspected how it was possible. I’ve got some other great news. Her sister had met a new man.
The sound in her sister’s voice overshadowed the news that she was coming for Christmas.
It was over between Becky and Kent. They were never, ever getting back together.
As furious as she was at her brother-in-law, her ex-brother in-law, hadn’t she hoped that maybe this thing could be repaired? Hadn’t some secret part of her hoped it could all be the way it was before?
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