The Trouble with Christmas

by Amy Andrews

  They were less detailed and half the size of the others and also he was dressed because this wasn’t an exercise in trying to embarrass him—it was a proclamation. Suzanne, wearing her heart on her sleeve and proclaiming her love for Joshua Grady to everyone in Credence.

  He’d wanted to keep their fake relationship a secret from the town because he hadn’t wanted to be the subject of gossip or pity when she’d gone back to New York and, three weeks ago, that had been fair enough. But things had changed. She’d fallen in love with him, and she didn’t want to keep that quiet. She wanted the whole damn world to know.

  And it started with these paintings.

  Every expression she’d seen flit across Grady’s face was there. His pain and his anguish. His steely concentration and his frustrating recalcitrance. His amusement. His desire. The gentleness in his eyes when he’d assured her about the portrait, the muted grief she’d seen when he’d talked about his parents, and his torment as he’d admitted his love for his aunt and uncle. The tilt of his mouth when he was relaxed in sleep and his intensity just before he kissed her.

  Her love was right there for all to see, just as it was in the nude portrait she’d painted during the blizzard except, this time, she was aware she was doing it and she laid it on thick.

  She also painted some landscapes as alive and vital as the portraits.

  The outside of Annie’s. The boardinghouse. The old red barn on Harkins Street. The park where they’d had a snowball fight on Christmas Day. Suzanne had caught the play of winter light on cold ground, a sunbeam shining in a bead of liquid hanging from a frozen cobweb and the glisten of frost on anemic grass. She’d captured the peel of paint, the well-worn furrows in a railing, the echo of children’s laughter in snowy footprints.

  And she signed all of them.

  Annie was throwing a New Year’s Eve event and Suzy was the special guest—her first informal gallery showing and the landscapes were going to be auctioned, the proceeds going to the old folks’ home.

  Burl had assured her Grady would come to the event, but she wasn’t so sure. He was probably immune by now to portraits of himself, and while he might cringe at being the center of attention, she didn’t think that trumped his desire to never see her again.

  Unless, of course, Winona’s plan worked and the idea of her painting more portraits of him made him mad as hell and he stormed in and ripped them all down. He would have done exactly that four weeks ago, and frankly, she’d prefer that to the way he’d shut her out a week ago.

  Spinning around the makeshift gallery, taking in all her paintings, Suzanne felt sick with doubt and worry. God…why had she let her mom and dad and Winona talk her into this?

  What if Grady didn’t come? Hell…what if he did?

  …

  At four o’clock in the afternoon on New Year’s Eve, Grady was sitting on an Adirondack chair on his front porch amid a mountain of tinsel, garland, and an absolute tangle of Christmas lights no one was ever going to be able to undo. He’d tossed the Christmas tree, complete with all the awful baubles, over the railing of the porch like a fucking great Scottish caber. It leaned drunkenly half on said railing, half across the bottom of the stairs.

  He’d been ignoring all Suzy’s Christmas shit in the cabin for days now, but he’d come home in an absolutely foul mood to an empty, screamingly quiet cabin. No terrible chipmunk carols playing, no cooking aromas, no welcoming smile. And the decorations had been like a red flag to a bull. Wasn’t it bad enough that she was in his every waking thought and all his sleeping ones? Did he have to be reminded of her everywhere he looked, too?

  He’d torn them all down in a frenzy an hour ago. He felt much better. The bourbon was helping with that, too.

  The sound of an engine drifted to him on the chilly afternoon air, and he flicked his gaze to the drive to see Burl’s vehicle approaching. Perfect. Just perfect. His uncle pulled up in front of the porch a minute later and climbed out of the car, his eyebrows raised as he stepped around the tree to mount the stairs, then skirted Mount Christmas to get to the other Adirondack chair.

  Picking up the mostly deflated giant Santa Claus slumped in the seat, he tossed it on top of the pile, where it promptly slid down and face-planted on the floorboards. “We have a tornado I don’t know about?”

  Assuming the question was rhetorical, Grady didn’t bother to answer.

  “What’s going on, son?”

  Grady took a mouthful of his drink, staring straight ahead out over the field. “Nuthin’.”

  “Sure is quiet out here without Suzanne flitting around.”

  Gripping his tumbler, Grady said, “Just the way I like it.”

  “Uh-huh.” Burl looked at the mess on the porch. “I can see that.” He stood. “Mind if I fix myself a drink?”

  Grady shrugged. “Be my guest.”

  Burl was gone for less than a minute. He returned with the bottle and a tumbler. And the portrait that had been propped against the kitchen bench after he’d removed it from her room, the note still attached. Grady groaned internally as Burl placed it against the balustrades and studied it for a while.

  “That’s you?”

  Grady didn’t look. “Uh-huh.”

  “She paint it?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “It’s a little…too much information for me.”

  “Me too,” Grady said. Having his uncle staring at his junk was not one of the more comfortable moments they’d shared.

  “Note says it’s a gift.”

  Grady knew exactly what the note said. He’d read it about a hundred times.

  Dear Grady,

  Please accept this as a gift.

  It belongs here with you. I hope one day you see what I see when I look at it.

  Suzy.

  The fact that she’d left early and while he was gone hadn’t been terribly surprising. He’d welcomed it. The fact that she hadn’t taken the portrait had been shocking. He knew how much it meant to her—or at least he’d thought he’d known. Her first original artwork.

  But she’d just…left it behind. So how much had it really meant?

  A part of him had reconciled when he’d come home to the empty cabin that at least she’d have something of him with her in New York. And then he’d found the portrait in her room, and it had felt like a kick to the nuts.

  “You want to talk about it?”

  Grady would rather redecorate the cabin for Easter than talk with Burl about this ache in his chest as wide and desolate as the field he was staring at. “Nope.”

  “Son, you know from old, bottling things up doesn’t work.”

  “Answer’s still no.”

  “Okay,” Burl said cheerfully, making his way to the top step and sitting down. “I’ll go first.”

  “Burl.”

  “I think you’re in love with Suzanne St. Michelle.”

  Grady shut his eyes as Burl dragged the giant fucking elephant in the room right into the light. No shit, Sherlock. But he didn’t want to love Suzy. He didn’t want to love anybody. And when she’d left, he told himself he was relieved. That he could get on with his life. That it was for the best.

  It was just that…everything was so fucking quiet.

  “You want me to go again?” Burl asked, breaking into Grady’s silence. “Okay. I think you’re running scared because you’re in love with her. Because in seventeen years you’ve not let a single person get too close to you—including Cora and me—and you don’t know what to do because despite your best efforts to keep her out, she’s snuck in anyway. How am I doin’?”

  “Bite me, Burl,” Grady growled.

  His uncle laughed, and Grady remembered how it had always been Burl, not Cora, who’d been able to distill Grady’s emotions. He was really fucking irritating like that.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Grady finally said,
his heart weighing a ton in his chest.

  “What doesn’t?”

  “Loving her.” Although this knot of feelings inside him didn’t feel like love. Like the fresh, first love he’d felt for Bethany. It was twisted and messy. And so fucking deep, he doubted he’d ever find the bottom of it.

  “Oh yeah. How you figure that?”

  “She’s not cut out for this kind of life. She’s a New Yorker. It was one of the first damn things she said to me. She’s used to art galleries and a pizza place on every corner. She doesn’t understand ranch life. She sleeps late and paints all night. She waits up for me and gets mad if I don’t answer a text. She doesn’t realize a ranch is twenty-four-seven, including Christmas. That it takes over your life.”

  “Well, sure.” Burl shrugged. “It’d be a learning curve. But that should be her decision, don’t you think? Cora worked in a lab in Denver when I first met her. You think she knew anything about ranching?”

  Grady blinked. “She did?” He knew his aunt was from near Denver, but he’d always assumed she’d come off the land.

  “Yup.” Burl nodded. “And you and I both know, son, you could put on more hands or hire a foreman to cut your workload significantly. The ranch taking over your life is your choice, Grady, and a dumb one at that.”

  Burl had been beating this drum for the last three years, but it really needled today. “I’ve known her for less than a month,” Grady said, irritation making him short.

  “I proposed to Cora after three days.”

  Grady rolled his eyes. “She said no.”

  “Yeah.” Burl chuckled. “She made me sweat it out for a few more months.”

  Having heard the Cora and Burl courting story more times than he cared to remember, another retelling was about more than he could stand right now.

  “She’s in love with you, you know.”

  Grady’s heart thumped hard in his chest. “Did she tell you that?” Because she’d left the portrait, and if she loved him, she wouldn’t have left the portrait. He knew that as surely as he knew all this Christmas crap around him was going to cause a helluva toxic cloud over Credence when he set it all on fire.

  Burl pointed two fingers at his head. “I have eyes.”

  There was so much certainty in his uncle’s voice, it gave Grady pause. But even if it was true, it didn’t change the facts. Loving someone left you vulnerable. “I can’t… I just…”

  “What, Grady?” Burl said, searching his nephew’s face in earnest. “What? Talk to me.”

  “Don’t you ever think about Aunt Cora dying? About how gutting”—Grady blinked back the hot burn of tears and cleared the tightness in his throat—“that’s going to be?”

  “Oh…Grady.” His uncle shook his head. “Of course. But if she’d been taken from me after just one day of loving her, it would have been worth every second.” Burl put his glass down on the step. “Look, son, the damage is already done. You’re already in love with her. It’s not going to stop or go away just because you don’t want to be. The decision now is whether you get to be happy for as long as it lasts or be miserable forever because you’re too scared to take a risk. And, son…surely it’s time to stop being miserable?”

  Grady knew his uncle was speaking sense. He did love Suzanne. It was there right alongside his love for Cora and Burl. And the ranch. Glowing and hopeful.

  But terrifying also.

  Burl pushed to his feet and tipped his chin at the painting. “You going to hang that?”

  “Nope.” It was too damn painful to look at.

  “Well, if you’re just going to shut it away somewhere, you might as well donate it for other people to appreciate.”

  Grady snorted. “Thanks. I think I’ll keep my junk to myself. Besides, where in the hell would I donate it around here?”

  “To Annie’s. She’s got quite the collection of you now. At least two on every wall. You’re clothed in all of them, so a nude might raise an eyebrow or two, but—”

  “Wait.” Grady frowned. “What do you mean she’s got quite the collection of me?”

  “Didn’t you know? Suzanne’s been painting up a storm. They’re not all of you; there’s some landscapes as well.”

  Grady’s brain felt like it had been switched to slow mo. Suzanne was still in town? “Why?” he asked, his head in a spin.

  “Annie wanted art for her walls, and they thought they could turn the diner into a gallery of sorts for a fund-raiser tonight for the old folks’ home. They’re going to auction off the landscapes. Reckon most of the town will be there. Annie’s even got one of those sparkly confetti canon thingies for midnight.”

  “No.” Grady shook his head. “I mean, why did she stay?” And why hadn’t his uncle said so earlier?

  Burl shrugged. “I don’t think she was ready to leave yet.” He looked at his nephew pointedly. “You should come tonight. Cora and I will be there.”

  “Ah…nope.” Go to Annie’s, where his face was on every wall? Where everyone would be staring at him in stereo? And talking about why? Only his worst nightmare.

  He may be in love with Suzanne, but he wasn’t going to put that on display in front of the whole damn town. Not when he wasn’t sure she loved him back. Burl might think she did, but the portrait against the balustrades—the one that meant so much to her and she’d left behind—said otherwise.

  “Well…” Burl walked down to the next step. “If you change your mind, you know where we’ll be.”

  Grady nodded. “Night, Burl.”

  His uncle made a detour around the tree at the bottom of the steps and was in his pickup and gone in less than a minute, leaving Grady alone with dozens of clashing thoughts and his portrait staring back at him.

  …

  Grady managed to distract himself for a few hours with office work before heading to his bedroom to take a shower. Flicking the light on, it spotlighted the portrait he’d placed on his bed earlier. Despite himself, he wandered over to it, gazing down at it again. Reading the note for what felt like the hundredth time.

  I hope one day you see what I see when I look at it.

  What did she see that he didn’t? What?

  And then, suddenly, as if a portal had opened to another world—he saw it. Maybe it was the way the light was shining directly down, or maybe he was looking at it through a different lens now than when he’d first laid eyes on the portrait.

  But he saw it. All of it.

  She’d depicted so much that he’d missed. His pain. His suffering. His healing. Sure, he looked well laid, but that was just part of it. She’d captured his love for her, right there in his face. Love he hadn’t even been aware of at that point. And even more than that, there was her love for him, so obvious in every brushstroke, every nuance of his expression. She’d endowed the portrait with her feelings for him, and now that he could see it, the painting practically glowed with love.

  She loved him. Suzanne St. Michelle loved him. And that’s why she’d left the portrait. She was telling him through her art what she hadn’t been able to tell him to his face because he’d been so fucking implacable.

  Grady sat on the bed as a rush of emotion almost took his knees out from under him. Burl was right; loving Suzanne wasn’t going to stop or go away because it hurt him too much to contemplate. And ignoring it, choosing to have nothing to do with her, wasn’t going to shield him from the deep abyss of grief if, god forbid, something terrible did happen to her. He was in love with her, and it was going to hurt to lose her whether he was with her or not.

  So he had a choice to make. Be happy with her, make a life with her for however long they might have together. Or be alone and miserable.

  And fucking word it was time to stop being miserable.

  Grady stood, his lungs suddenly too big for his chest. He had to go to Annie’s and hope like hell he hadn’t ruined any chance he
had with Suzanne. Yes, even if that meant doing it in front of the whole damn town. In fact, it was probably better if he did. Public spectacles weren’t his thing, but the town was going to know soon enough, so they might as well hear it straight from the horse’s mouth.

  Although horse’s ass was probably a more apt description.

  Grady’s brain scrambled as he headed for his bedroom door and briskly walked through the cabin, grabbing the keys off the hook, his heart pumping in anticipation and terror. He stalled as he reached the back door, a sudden thought stopping him in his tracks.

  He’d screwed up big-time—pushing her away like that. So he had to make it up to her big-time. Prove that he meant what he said, and for that he needed the portrait. And a dumb Christmas sweater.

  …

  By nine o’clock, Suzanne had given up hope of Grady walking through the diner door. She’d gone through all the emotions, from nervous, to relieved, to really freaking pissed. And now she was just sad that he hadn’t even cared enough to come and see her first-ever exhibition. Burl was still optimistic, but Suzanne wasn’t. Grady was an early to bed, early to rise kinda guy.

  Even on New Year’s Eve.

  So she put her disappointment and her what the hell next planning aside to think about another time. She was wearing a dress and heels and the diner was packed—standing room only—and everybody wanted to talk to her. They loved her work. And not just the Grady paintings, although she did get a lot of questions about her choice of subject. They loved the landscapes, too, and so many people had asked her if she took commissions. Suzanne knew she could set up in Credence as an artist tomorrow and not starve.

  Sure, she wouldn’t be able to charge anywhere near the prices she could charge for her forgeries, but she could work on both, and the more she chatted and mingled with the locals, the more convinced she was to make the move Grady had talked her out of.

  And he could just deal with it.

  “What do you say about Ray and me here, posing for a portrait?” Bob Downey said as he and Ray sidled up to Suzanne. He put his arm around Ray’s shoulder, and they both adopted blank, distant expressions worthy of Mt. Rushmore.