The Trouble with Christmas

by Amy Andrews

  “Maybe. But everyone needs love, Grady.”

  He shook his head. “Not me.” He couldn’t go there again.

  “You love Burl. And Cora.”

  “Yeah.” He nodded. “I do.”

  And that only made his point. Thinking about how much he loved his aunt and uncle was gut-wrenching. Neither of them was getting any younger, and at some point, they were going to leave him, too.

  Damn it, he hadn’t asked to be taken in and loved by them. Why had the universe sent them in his direction? Why had it sent Suzy? Hadn’t it fucked with him enough?

  She took a step toward him. “What if I didn’t return to New York?”

  “What?” An instant leap of panic caused Grady to take a step back. “Why?” Clearly the universe hadn’t fucked with him enough.

  “I think I want to stay and paint here. Make Credence my home.”

  “You think?” No. Absolutely not. It was going to be hard enough shoring up his heart and turning his back knowing she was in New York. If she was here in Credence?

  No. Just no.

  “I know.” She nodded with conviction. “It’s the right thing creatively. I feel it.”

  A clash of questions roared around like a NASCAR rally inside Grady’s head, all battling to be heard—a lot of them too big and too scary. So he chose something easier. “Where would you stay?”

  A harsh half laugh slipped from her mouth. “Don’t worry, Grady, I won’t set up a tent in your front field. I think I’ll buy land out by the lake, near Winona.”

  Grady frowned. The lake was a forty-minute ride from the ranch. But still way too close for his liking. Hell, New York wasn’t far enough. Who was he kidding? Australia would be too close.

  “You don’t approve?”

  Taking a breath, reining in his pulse and the desperation that was riding him, Grady chose his words carefully. Time to be smart. Strategic. Be military. If he stomped around in his boots demanding she leave Colorado and never come back, it could backfire. He hadn’t forgotten how riled up Suzy could get. But if he was cool and reasoned, if he appealed to her intellectually rather than emotionally, maybe she’d see sense.

  “Look…I know it’s none of my business, and I can see it’s probably a good move for your painting. For your…muse. And it’s a free country. I can’t stop you from living here.”

  Her lips twisted. “But you don’t want me here.”

  Grady swallowed. He did want her here. But what he wanted didn’t matter. Having Suzy in Credence wasn’t what was best for him, and that’s what mattered. Clearing his voice and expression of any emotion, he said, “No. I don’t.”

  “Why?”

  Her earnest demand was like a knife to Grady’s heart as she wrapped her arms around her middle and searched his face.

  “If you don’t care about me, why do you care where I live?”

  “Because I think that I might be part of the reason you want to move here, even if you’re not prepared to admit it yet and, if that’s the case, I’m trying to save you a whole lot of time and effort. I’m a lost cause, Suzy.”

  That there was the truth. It didn’t matter if he loved her or not. He was paralyzed by the grief of his past. Powerless to move forward by the long reach of its pain. He may have healed from the intensity of loss, but he could never forget how devastating it was to lose someone.

  Too devastating to risk it again.

  “God, Grady…” She took a step toward him. “It doesn’t have to be that way.”

  “You don’t get it,” he said, raising his voice as a wave of emotion rose in his chest at her naiveté. He was fighting for his emotional life here, damn it. “I like it that way.” Why couldn’t she just leave it be? “Now, if you can put your hand on your heart and tell me that there’s no part of you holding out a chance for us, then welcome to Credence and have a great life. But if you can’t, then please, I’m begging you—” He laid his hand on his heart because he didn’t know what he’d do if she stayed, and he didn’t even want to go there. “Don’t bother. Go back to New York. Do your art. Sign your paintings. Find a New York guy. Have New York babies.”

  Fuck… The thought that she’d find a New York guy was like a knife to his guts, but just because he’d chosen to be alone didn’t mean she should. Hell, it would be a travesty.

  She, at least, should be happy.

  But that thought right now burned, and he had to leave, get out of her company before he undid all the hard yards he’d just walked. “Please,” he said, his gaze imploring her as his hand slid from his chest and he turned and walked out of the room.

  …

  Suzanne didn’t sleep a wink, tossing and turning, making excuses in her head, listing reasons to stay. For her art and her muse. And because she was a grown-ass woman and she could live wherever she wanted. But it was no use. She knew Grady was right.

  She could tell herself as much as she wanted that she was here for her art, but there would always be some blinking light of hope inside her that one day Joshua Grady would just wake up and decide he couldn’t live without her. And eventually, it would drive her crazy. So as much as she felt that staying was the best decision for her painting, Suzanne chose to protect her heart instead.

  And that meant leaving.

  She made that decision at 4:34 a.m. and lay awake counting down the minutes until Grady left. She heard footsteps in the hallway just before six and listened to the noises of Grady getting ready for his day for the last time, refusing to cry. Half an hour later, the door opened, then clicked shut, and Suzanne got out of bed.

  She spent the next two hours packing, getting everything ready to stow in the van, refusing to let herself think emotionally, forcing herself to be practical.

  Including leaving the portrait of Grady behind in her room.

  Prior to last night, she’d have laughed at the suggestion of leaving without it. But now…

  The thought of taking it away from this place where it was created was inconceivable. Like the man himself, it belonged here, not in New York. It was her gift to him—given freely this time.

  Not traded, not used as a bargaining chip.

  Maybe he could stop her from staying, stop her from trying to reach him, but he couldn’t stop her from loving him and hopefully, one day, he’d be able to see that love right there in his portrait.

  Fixing a note to the corner, Suzanne took an unsteady breath and turned her back on it, forcing her legs out of the room.

  She had to go tell her parents they were leaving.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  They ended up at the boardinghouse because Suzanne hadn’t thought that far ahead—leaving had been her priority. Plus, she’d wanted to say goodbye to Winona. But with snow still being a problem in the eastern states, driving wasn’t that safe, particularly in her Scooby van, which was borderline roadworthy in the best of conditions. And flights out of Denver for her parents were impossible at the moment because of Christmas and the backlog of canceled flights the airlines were still dealing with due to the blizzard. The earliest they could book was for the twenty-ninth.

  Winona persuaded them to stay at the boardinghouse. She had a comfy sofa in her room where Suzanne could sleep, and Marley and Molly were happy to move into one room temporarily for Albie and Simone to have a bed. Suzanne went along with the plan because she was too mentally exhausted and heartsick to do anything other than stare into space a lot—and because there was a part of her that felt while she was still in Credence, there was still hope.

  Which made her the worst kind of fool.

  It took two days for Suzanne to talk to her parents. To confess all. They’d given her space, so had Winona, but she knew they wanted to help, wanted to understand, and she owed them the truth. About everything. So in front of the fire on the second night with a glass of red wine in hand and Winona there, too, she fesse
d up.

  About her muse returning. About the paintings she’d done of Grady and him discovering them. About how she’d lied about Grady because she hadn’t wanted to go home for Christmas.

  “I’m sorry,” she said to her parents as her dad frowned and her mom covered her mouth with her hand, obviously surprised at the information. “I just didn’t want to spend another Christmas with a coat hanger tree and one lonely blue bulb.”

  Her mother patted her knee, and Suzanne continued, but she still felt bad about the admission. And how the lie had gotten out of hand, apologizing to her parents for not being honest and walking it back. She told them all about bribing Grady, who hated Christmas, to help her. About the Hokiest Christmas Ever plan.

  “You just seemed so sad on the phone, Mom. About you and Dad. And your marriage. So I just came up with this ridiculous idea of pushing you together because I was sure you’d fall in love again if you spent time together.”

  “Well, you were right about that,” Albie said, smiling at Simone.

  Suzanne smiled, too, before continuing, telling her sorry story about the lines blurring and falling in love with Grady. About the blizzard. And the portrait she’d painted. And Bethany. And how she’d decided to move to Credence and become an artist in her own right, but she couldn’t bear to face Grady’s rejection every day, so she was going home.

  Everything. She left nothing out.

  Well…she didn’t go into any of the intimate details, but everything else, talking almost nonstop for an hour.

  “Oh, darling.” Simone put an arm around her daughter’s shoulders and pulled her in until Suzanne’s head was resting in the crook of her neck. “You did that for us?”

  “I didn’t mean for it to get so out of hand, but I wanted to help,” Suzanne admitted.

  “It’s our fault,” her mother said. “If you hadn’t felt like you needed to escape to eastern Colorado to get the kind of Christmas you wanted, this would never have happened.”

  Maybe. But it was pointless making a chicken-or-the-egg argument now. And it was no excuse for letting things get so out of hand. Suzanne wasn’t going to compound her stupidity by trying to excuse it or find a scapegoat. She was an adult who had dug this hole all by herself.

  “Have you told Grady how you feel?” Winona asked.

  Suzanne shook her head. “No.” She hadn’t been able to utter the words in the face of his determination to push her away. She’d held off from baring all, needing to keep something back, to protect the thing that was most precious to her heart. Telling him she wanted to stay and being rejected had been hard. Having her love similarly rejected would have been devastating.

  Having her hand dropped like a hot potato on Christmas Day had been bad enough.

  “I kind of wore my heart on my sleeve, though. I don’t think it would have been that difficult for him to read between the lines.”

  “Oh, babe. Men can be surprisingly dumb when it comes to reading between the lines.”

  There was silence for a beat or two as everyone contemplated the lick of flames in the fireplace. “Are you sure he’s not in love with you?” Simone asked out of the blue.

  Suzanne pulled out of her mother’s embrace and looked at her. “What?”

  “I honestly thought you shacking up in Colorado with a rancher was some kind of joke until that first day we met him and he kissed you hello. He seemed really into you.”

  “That was acting, Mom.”

  “Was it? Because there was a definite spark between the two of you. Even your father remarked about it later when we were alone.”

  Oh, there’d been sparks all right. From the beginning. But sexual attraction wasn’t love. She could find that in the arms of plenty of men. Love was rare.

  Albie nodded. “The man could barely keep his hands off you.”

  “And look what he did for you,” her mother added. “You tell us that Grady’s supposedly this closed-off kinda guy, yet he helped you. He tolerated his house being wrapped in tinsel and lights and all kinds of Christmas crap that should never see the light of day, and he lied for you and carried on with a charade he didn’t agree with and put up with your parents in his cottage. He didn’t do that for us—he did it for you.”

  Suzanne shook her head. “He did it for the paintings.”

  “I don’t know,” her father said. “He’s a big guy. Seems to me he could just have taken them from you if he wanted them that badly.”

  “It’s against the law to steal, Dad.”

  “Maybe. Or maybe he knew how much they meant to you.”

  Suzanne thought her parents were reading far too much into the situation. Which was very sweet, but ultimately it didn’t really matter because Grady had gotten them all off her one way or another anyway.

  “And then there’s other things as well,” Simone continued. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you as happy as you have been these past couple of weeks, darling. You can be a little on the serious side, but you’ve been laughing and smiling all the time and just…reveling in the Christmas madness you created all around you. And you’ve been painting again. Original work. Because of him. That’s marvelous. I can’t wait to see it.”

  Suzanne snorted, thinking about Grady’s head painted on a cherub. “I’m not sure you’d say that if you saw it.”

  “Well, as I’m coming to understand, art is in the eye of the beholder.” Simone reached her hand out to Albie, and he smiled. “I’m also coming to understand that if you love someone, you should tell them. You should tell them and show them every day. And you should definitely fight for it.”

  “Speaking as the resident luurve expert,” Winona said, “I concur. You should fight for love.”

  “Oh god.” Suzanne shook her head. Were none of them listening to her? “He doesn’t love me.” He loved Bethany.

  “Babe…” Winona squeezed Suzanne’s thigh. “Just because he can’t or won’t say the words doesn’t mean he doesn’t love you.”

  Suzanne looked into Winona’s earnest eyes. She wanted to believe that so much. But even if it was true, if Grady was determined not to act on his feelings because he was still clinging to his love for Bethany or he was just too broken, then wasn’t it all just moot?

  She’d never met a more stubborn man.

  “Maybe he just needs some time and space to realize what he’s turning his back on?” Winona suggested.

  “Winona’s right,” her father said. “Maybe you should stick around, give him some time to miss you, then turn up on his doorstep and tell him you love him. Going back to New York is like admitting defeat when you haven’t even pulled out your big guns yet.”

  The advice made good sense, but they didn’t know Joshua Grady’s resolve like she did. “He’s ex-military, Dad. He can outgun me any day. And the only ammunition I really had is gone. Probably on a bonfire as we speak.”

  “You mean the paintings?” Winona clarified.

  The thought of them being destroyed was an ache in her chest. “Yeah.”

  “Okay. Well…that’s perfect.” She put down her wineglass and sat forward, glancing sideways at Suzanne, a grin on her face. “Paint more.”

  “What?”

  “If that’s your ammunition, if that’s what it takes to make him take notice, then paint more.”

  Suzanne stared at her friend. “What? No.” She couldn’t go down that road again. Could she?

  “Yes. And put them up in public somewhere. Knowing how private Grady is, he’ll hate that. Make him come and get them. Make him come to you.”

  “Annie’s,” Suzanne said without even thinking. “I threatened to do that once.”

  Winona snapped her fingers. “Yes! That’s perfect. She wants paintings for the diner. And you’re looking for somewhere to hang yours.”

  Suzanne looked at all three of them. “I couldn’t.” She couldn’t
do that to him again—could she?

  “Why not?” her mother asked, also sitting forward now.

  “It might work,” her father agreed.

  “It might not,” Suzanne said.

  What if he didn’t even care enough to come and take a look? Although Winona was right. He did hate being the subject of public speculation so it might just work. And damn if the idea wasn’t starting to grow on her.

  It would be easy enough. She could paint Joshua Grady drunk, blindfolded, and with one hand tied behind her back. She knew every plane, dip, and freckle on his body.

  “I guess I could just…paint more.” It seemed so simple. Too simple. But maybe it would work. Maybe leaving Credence was admitting defeat, and why was she giving up so damn easily without putting everything on the table first?

  God knew her muse was already buzzing at the prospect.

  “Hell yeah you could,” Winona agreed.

  Suzanne stood, her heart rate picking up as the now-familiar flow of creative energy pulsed like a life force from the tips of her toes to the top of her head. “I could even start now.”

  Her mother also stood. “I can prep canvases.”

  Albie stood. “I’ll grab your stuff out of the van.”

  “And I’ll keep your glass and belly full and remind you to shower once a day,” Winona offered.

  Suzanne felt excited and jittery and like bursting into tears all at once. She had no idea if any of this was going to make a dent in Grady’s armor whatsoever, but she was fired up enough to give it one more try. “Thank you,” she whispered as she gathered her three coconspirators in for a group hug. “Thank you for the pep talk.”

  She just hoped it worked.

  …

  Reminiscent of her first days in Credence, Suzanne painted for three days solid. The sun shined and the snow melted outside and her parents canceled their flights and moved out to a hotel on the interstate they would never normally be caught dead in, so they could stay on and help. She produced nine portraits of Grady in all his many-splendored forms—the surly rancher, the reluctant nephew, the reclusive loner, the generous lover.