The Trouble with Christmas

by Amy Andrews

“I’m sorry,” she apologized, moving to the tree and standing in front of it so she was in profile to him, her arms wrapped around her waist. “I thought it’d be nice for them to have a look around and to have something to do.”

  Grady leaned his ass against the central island bench, watching as her gaze roved over every inch of the tree, a small smile lifting the corners of her mouth.

  The mouth that had been on his a minute ago.

  “I’d like to see it as well,” she said absently, still staring at the tree. “I’d like to know where you go and what you do when you leave here in the morning. But it’s fine,” she said as she dragged her eyes away and turned to face him. Her blond hair was backlit by the blaze of lights so that she seemed to glow with Christmas. “I can make an excuse.”

  I’d like to see it as well. Seven little words that reached deep inside him. Grady didn’t invite people to visit or look around. He was polite with his neighbors and loaned a hand if needed, but he never asked for one in return because he didn’t want anyone nosing through his business. His lack of privacy after his parents had died had been indelibly imprinted on his psyche, and privacy in the armed forces wasn’t exactly at a premium.

  So he hoarded his privacy now. He had his few trusted hands who had been with him the last three years, and he had his aunt and uncle. His circle was wide enough.

  It didn’t need to go any wider.

  Or so he’d thought anyway, but Suzanne taking an interest in the ranch, in what he did, wasn’t causing alarm. Wasn’t sending him in retreat or throwing up mental shutters. If she’d made that request the day she’d arrived, he’d have shut it down in the blink of an eye, but it didn’t raise any red flags now.

  “It’s fine,” he said, his voice deep as pitch. “I don’t mind.” And he didn’t.

  “What?” She quirked an eyebrow. “You’re not going to ask for a painting?”

  Grady chuckled at her amused sarcasm. “You shouldn’t go putting ideas in my head.” God knew he had plenty enough of them right now. She smiled back, and Grady’s lungs felt too big for his chest.

  “Too late.” She hugged her arms around her body again. “No returns.” Then she turned away, gazing once more at the fire hazard in the corner. But within seconds, she was facing him again, her expression screwed into a serious little frown. “I’m sorry. About your parents. I…didn’t know.”

  “It’s fine.” Grady shrugged. “You’re not from around here.”

  “Did it happen at Christmas? Is that what Burl meant when he said this was a hard time of year for you? Not the military?”

  Grady fought against the natural urge to retreat, to tell her to mind her own damn business. He’d hoped Suzanne wouldn’t pry any further and he really wished she hadn’t, but she looked so…earnest. So honest in her inquiry. Not fishing for the gory details, just genuinely trying to piece some things together.

  “Early December.”

  She shut her eyes briefly. “Oh, Joshua.” They fluttered open, two big blue pools of empathy and compassion.

  He could see all the pieces fall into place for her as his aversion to Christmas suddenly became clear. It wasn’t the whole truth, and he wasn’t about to tell her about Bethany even if it was the perfect time, because empathy he could deal with, but pity only made things worse.

  Pity amplified the tragedy.

  Thankfully she didn’t sling some kind of useless platitude his way or try and move closer, but her arms had visibly tightened around her middle like she was desperately trying to keep herself in check. “I am so sorry. I know it’s never a good time to lose people you love, but I’m sorry in your case that it also ruined a traditional family time. And I’m sorry that I’ve subsumed all your grief and loss with my own family crap.”

  “No.” He shook his head. “I liked it. I liked that you didn’t know. Too many people around here know.” That was another thing he hadn’t realized until now. Suzanne St. Michelle’s very presence might have annoyed the crap out of him, but she’d never treated him like he was damaged goods. Like he was fragile and needed to be handled with care.

  She’d always told him exactly what she thought. She’d called him on his shit and not worried about his feelings.

  “And that’s a bad thing?”

  “I don’t like being pitied or talked about behind my back or have well-meaning people saying trite shit they don’t mean. I put up with it for three years before joining the military, and I don’t want to encourage any relapses from the good people of Credence.”

  “I’m sure they were just concerned.”

  “Maybe. It was just…too much. Too overwhelming.”

  “Yeah. I can see that.” She stared at him for a beat or two. “Well…like I said, I’m sorry.”

  Once upon a time, Grady had a bunch of standard responses to well-meaning people, many of them strangers, expressing their sorrow. Something that was soothing to the person it was aimed at, that made him sound grateful and slid off his tongue easy as Teflon.

  But there was nothing trite about Suzanne’s emotions, so he went with the simplest response. “Thank you.”

  They stared at each other for a beat or two longer before she said, “Think I’m going to sit by the fire and watch the tree for a while.”

  Grady glanced at the frightening tree, then back to her. “I’m going to work in the office for a bit, then hit the sack.” A barely there nod of her head was the only response. “Make sure you switch off the lights before you turn in for the night. I’m pretty sure we’re breaking a hundred different electrical safety rules with that thing.”

  She gave a half laugh and said, “Sure,” but sighed happily at the tree nonetheless.

  Grady rolled his eyes. “Good night, Suzy.” It was getting much easier to say.

  “Night, Josh.”

  And hell if that wasn’t getting much easier to hear.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  By three o’clock the next afternoon, the only place Suzanne hadn’t taken her parents was Jack’s, and given that she needed a drink pretty damn bad, she couldn’t get there soon enough. They’d met Winona at Annie’s for lunch, which had been pleasant enough. The food was amazing—cherry pie and ice cream to die for—and Winona was great at conversation. Plus, her parents loved Winona’s outrageous sense of humor and her lack of give-a-fuck about polite societal norms.

  Winona had taken them on a Highlights of Credence tour. It hadn’t taken very long. Then she’d driven them out to the lake. It was chilly by the water, a moderate breeze cutting through clothes and skin and bones, making Suzanne glad they’d stopped at Déjà Brew on the way for hot coffee to keep them warm. The murky-blue surface of the lake shivered beneath the ruffle of the wind, despite the mostly sunny day. Bare trees stood like frozen sentinels around the edges of the water, adding to the overall frigidity of the landscape.

  Excited to be moving in to her house in the New Year, Winona took them to see the land and the progress so far. She chatted about her friends back in Chicago who were also contemplating buying land and moving and her vision for a thriving artist community. Her mother became quite animated about that. Apparently, she knew a few people who could be interested in something similar. Her father also suggested a couple of artists he knew who might be attracted to such a place, and by the time they left the lake, all four of them were talking about enough local art production to support a gallery in Credence.

  It was a wonderful conversation—animated and stimulating and exciting. But therein lay the problem. Her parents were fine when there were distractions and third parties engaging them, but when it was just them, they barely said a word to each other. There wasn’t hostility. There was just…disconnection. After they’d dropped Winona back at the boardinghouse, the conversation had completely dried up.

  Which was what was driving Suzanne to drink.

  No way could she face the sile
nt trip back to the ranch without some kind of legal pick-me-up. She could have one and still drive and maybe it might loosen up her parents a little. They could do the ranch tour with Grady another day.

  It was cozy and welcoming inside Jack’s, like it had been last week when she and Winona had stopped in for a quick drink on their way home from Denver. And busy for a weekday afternoon. Several booths were full, and there was a line-dance class happening on the small area designated as the dance floor. Billy Ray Cyrus played on the jukebox.

  “I’ll have a shot of Wild Turkey, please, Tucker,” Suzanne said, sitting herself down on a barstool. She’d sworn she’d never drink bourbon after her boozy night with Grady, but she’d developed a bit of a taste for it, and the man was safely out of reach.

  Tucker quirked an eyebrow at her harried request but just said, “Coming right up.” By the time her parents sat down, one on either side, he’d placed her bourbon on the bar. As tempting as it was to throw it back, Suzanne picked it up and took a sip before she introduced her parents.

  “Pleased to meet you,” Tucker said to her father before turning to her mom.

  Simone St. Michelle smiled at Tucker in that way she did, super-sexy and über-confident, and he blinked. Her mom may be in her late fifties, but she liked to flirt. For as long as Suzanne could remember, men had been falling under her spell, and Tucker, a good-looking guy probably twenty-five years her junior, was no exception.

  Her mother’s work was highly sexual, highly eroticized, and she’d told Suzanne when she was fourteen that a good artist was always aware of sexual discourse between people because how art appealed to people sexually was what made it come to life. Suzanne wasn’t sure she believed the sentiment, which probably explained why her paintings were lifeless and her mother was a lauded sculptress. Also why her mom got along so well with Winona and why charming men was as natural to her as breathing.

  Even if that superpower seemed to have gone awry somehow with her husband.

  “Hi, Tucker.” She smiled. “What a great name—it really suits you. Can you point me to the restrooms, please?”

  Tucker blinked again and pointed to his left. “That way.” On the wall, a sign with an arrow indicated the direction.

  “Thank you,” she said and smiled again before heading off.

  Tucker seemed a little bewildered as he asked Albie, “Can I get you something to drink?”

  Her father ordered a beer, and Tucker delivered it promptly before pushing off to serve a couple of older guys and a young woman who had arrived at the bar. Suzanne seized the moment to talk to her dad one-on-one.

  “What’s going on with you and Mom?”

  She dived straight in—there was no time for subtleties right now. She half expected her father to deny anything was wrong. He was the everything’s-going-to-be-all-right parent. So it was quite shocking to hear him sigh heavily and say, “I don’t know, Suzanne.”

  “She said you two might be…breaking up.”

  Even more shockingly, her father nodded. “Yes. Maybe…”

  Suzanne threw back the rest of her bourbon, welcoming the burn. “But why? What happened?”

  He shrugged. “She doesn’t see me anymore but she’s perfectly happy to flirt with other men.” He lifted his chin in Tucker’s direction.

  “Dad…” This was ridiculous; her mother had always done that. “Mom has always been a flirt, you know that. Frankly, I thought you kinda liked it.”

  She’d watched her father watch her mother work a crowd, and even at a young age, she’d understood that he enjoyed her power over a room as much as she did.

  “Of course,” he said dismissively. “She is, and I do like it. But the problem is she used to also flirt with me like that, but now…we’re both traveling so much and we’re like ships passing in the night and everything feels like we’re on autopilot. We used to talk about art and music and books and life, and we used to make love for hours when she was creating because it fed the passion inside her. We might be in separate bedrooms, but she’d crawl into my bed in the wee small hours and climb on top and the sex was wild and frantic and incredible like… animals, you know?”

  Her father calmly sipped his beer while Suzanne wondered if it was too late to cut her ears off and if the feed shop sold brain bleach and what kind of dose it would take to permanently erase this conversation.

  Good god almighty, what was wrong with him?

  “And then she’d just…” He stared into his beer. “Climb off and go back to her work.”

  Oh good lord—make him stop. This was too much information.

  “And now it’s like we’re just…roommates. And she’s not been happy about me representing a more diverse range of art, either. That’s creating quite a bit of friction.”

  Albie had expanded his artist base the last few years to include digital artists working in a variety of different mediums. He’d even taken on a controversial graffiti artist.

  He sighed. “She has such a narrow definition of art and thinks real artists will stop wanting me to represent them, which hasn’t been the case.”

  Yes, her mother was a complete art snob and quite scathing of things she did not consider worthy of an artistic cannon. Suzanne cringed at the thought of her mom laying eyes on what she’d painted while she’d been here. “Does she know that’s how you feel?” Suzanne asked.

  “I have tried to have conversations with her, but she’s so busy at the moment, working all the time, traveling to different exhibitions and guest lecturing, and she’s working on several pieces for a major project.”

  Suzanne nodded. She’d learned a long time ago that her mom disappeared inside her work when she was sculpting with no room for the trivialities of life. And Suzanne got it. Having spent days in the grip of an obsessive creative fever, she finally got it. But that didn’t mean it was without its casualties, that loved ones didn’t live on scraps of time and affection and counted down the days until the fever passed.

  “I still can’t believe she’s dropped everything to come here.”

  “She’s worried about you guys, too, Dad. She’s trying to get things back on track.”

  “I think it’s too late. I think we’ve forgotten how to talk to each other.”

  If Suzanne hadn’t been their daughter, if she’d been Winona, she’d have said, Don’t talk.

  Get naked. Do that wild animal stuff she could never now unknow they did. But she was not going to counsel her sixty-year-old father to get boinking. Not in so many words anyway.

  “So use this time,” Suzanne urged. Her mother reappeared near the arrow pointing to the restroom. “She’s not working on a project; you’re not pandering to clients. You both seem to want the same thing. Get to know each other again. Think of it as a second honeymoon.”

  He nodded just as her mother took her seat and Tucker said, “What can I get you to drink?”

  Simone smiled at him and asked, “What do you recommend?”

  Tucker looked dazzled again, and Suzanne glanced at her father. He was watching the exchange with zero malice or jealousy—in fact, she could see the same admiration in his eyes for her mother that had always been there. A lot of men might have been insecure seeing their wife so openly fascinated by other men, but her father understood Simone St. Michelle better than anyone. He knew she was an artist down to her marrow and everything was grist for the mill and that she studied and flirted with everyone she came across—men and women—and it was about art and artistic expression, not sex.

  It was all kinds of madness that the two of them would even contemplate breaking up.

  “Tucker has a great cocktail menu, Mom.”

  Tucker nodded. “I do a mean piña colada.”

  “Oh, hmm.” Simone sat on her barstool. Her mother liked martinis and Chardonnay from the Loire Valley in France, and she didn’t really believe in switching things u
p. For a creative, she was quite rigid in many ways. “I think I’ll just stick with a martini.”

  “Simone.”

  The note of exasperation in her father’s voice was surprising. He’d always said he loved how Simone stuck with certain absolutes because so much of her artistic temperament was unpredictable. But they’d clearly reached a point where all those things that had caused them to fall in love were now just bugging the crap out of each other.

  “Why not try something different?” he suggested.

  “Yeah, Mom,” Suzanne broke in. “Winona tells me piña coladas are Tucker’s specialty.”

  “They are; I can definitely vouch for that.”

  Suzanne glanced over at the young woman two stools down. She had some kind of insignia on her pocket and was sitting with two elderly men who were currently debating when it would snow.

  “Tonight, I tell you, Ray,” bar dude number one said. He was a spritely looking old white guy, with a twinkle in his eyes. “My hip never lies.”

  “That’s horseshit, Bob,” bar guy number two interjected. He was a tall African American man with snowy white hair. “Bureau says day after tomorrow.”

  There was an inelegant snort. “What do they know?”

  “They have weather satellites, you old fool. I’ll take that over your dang hip any day.”

  “Humph. Bureau should pay me to be their satellite.”

  The young woman glanced at Suzanne and crossed her eyes, and Suzanne laughed as Tucker said, “What do you want, Della?” in a surprisingly short kind of way.

  Not a hi or a hello or how are you. Not a what can I get you or how about those Broncos. His body language was different, too. He’d been all loose and laid-back with them, but with Della, his expression was more masked. Definitely more brooding.

  She called him on it, though. “I’m fine, Tuck, thank you for asking.” She didn’t pause for him to apologize, just put in her drink order. “I’ll get a piña colada.”

  Tucker glanced at the two old guys still bickering like they’d been doing it for decades. “Aren’t you supposed to be working?”