“Still busy with that housecleaning project?”
“I finally made some real headway.” She’d constructed a tower of boxes in the hall closet that would put a New York skyscraper to shame, and she still hadn’t been able to fit everything inside. She’d finally resorted to stuffing the last few boxes into her bedroom closet. “The house looks civilized now.”
Mandy hoped she’d achieved the flavor of a mountain cabin, leaving out some of the pinecone ornaments and the swag of artificial evergreen underneath the fireplace mantel. The cardinal snow globe occupied a place of honor on the table in the entryway. In the kitchen, the Christmas village she’d painted over the years still decorated the tops of the cabinets.
A little bit of Christmas in every room. And she was exhausted.
Mrs. Swanson nodded. “It’s good to be prepared for company.”
Expecting any? might have been the unspoken question. Mandy decided not to hear it. She started toward the south wall with her duster, then belatedly changed direction, steering away from the space where the clippings had hung. She found a shelf of tiny blown-glass figurines and set to work.
But the missing clippings weren’t so easily avoided.
“Take a little extra time on your lunch break today,” Mrs. Swanson said. “That way you can pick up some new frames at the drugstore. Find a nice pair of matching ones.”
The feather duster froze in Mandy’s hand. Slowly, she turned to meet Mrs. Swanson’s watchful eyes.
“It’s still August,” Mandy said. “Do you think there’s any way we could give that display a little rest? Just until the Christmas season starts.”
“Mandy.” Her boss’s voice was gentler than she expected. “You know that’s a big part of what makes the store special.”
“Sales are good. Especially for summer.” Mrs. Swanson regarded her in silence. “I’ll keep a running total,” Mandy rushed on. “If we fall behind where we were last year, I’ll hang them back up. And I’ll put them up for good at the very beginning of November.”
She didn’t know whether Jake would be here until November, or if her secret could possibly hold till then. But she wanted as much time as she could buy.
Mrs. Swanson’s eyes held hers. Her boss might have stopped teaching school ten years ago, but she obviously had no problem putting two and two together.
“Is he worth it?” Mrs. Swanson asked.
“I think he could be,” Mandy said. “I just want a chance to find out.”
That evening, November seemed far away.
Mandy stood beside Jake at the railing overlooking Tall Pine’s tiny lake, holding a chocolate-dipped ice cream cone in one hand, Jake’s hand in the other. They’d reached the pond just before sunset.
“This was a nice idea,” Jake said.
Mandy didn’t answer. She was involved in a race against time with her ice cream cone, trying to catch the vanilla that was leaking where the thin chocolate shell joined the cone.
After dinner, they’d gotten the cones at Penny’s Ice Cream Shoppe on Evergreen Lane. From there, Mandy had brought Jake two blocks around the corner to the little park that encircled Prospect Lake, the town’s fishing spot. The timing had been perfect; by seven-thirty, the sky had just begun to turn golden, the color reflected in the water. The handful of fishers on the other side of the lake were gathering up their gear before it got dark.
“I didn’t even know you had a lake here,” Jake said.
Mandy successfully navigated the ring of escaping vanilla before it reached her right hand. Her left hand stayed entwined with Jake’s as their elbows rested on the railing—not very practical for eating ice cream, but his fingers laced through hers felt wonderful.
“It’s more of a glorified duck pond.” She looked down at the water a few feet below as some of the resident birds drifted closer. She ventured another bite out of the thin, creamy chocolate shell, releasing chaos as more vanilla escaped. She caught it with her tongue, trying to keep up. “They have to stock the lake with fish. It’s man-made. If all the tourists knew about it, it’d be empty in a day.”
“You do a lot of that up here, don’t you?” Jake had already eaten his way through his ice cream’s chocolate shell and was nearly down to the cone. “You like to keep things just small enough.”
“It’s nice.” She ventured a glance away from her unstable, trickling ice cream to look at Jake, surprised to find him watching her rather than the lake. “What about you? You do a lot of trying to make things bigger.”
“It’s my job.” He squeezed her fingers lightly. “And it’s an unfortunate fact of life. If things don’t grow, they have a tendency to die.”
“We’re not trying to turn into Mount Douglas.” Mandy chased another round of vanilla around her cone, now self-consciously aware of Jake’s brown eyes following her progress.
“You couldn’t. You don’t have a ski resort.”
“We don’t get enough snow. We’re not as high up.” A big section of chocolate slid precariously down its melting vanilla base; Mandy barely caught it in her mouth before it fell to the ground.
“Exactly. So you need to make the most of what you do have.”
“How can you advertise peace and quiet?” How could you successfully argue a point in the middle of eating a dipped cone? “If we get too busy, it won’t be peaceful and quiet anymore.”
“It’s a delicate balance,” he said. “But if you want your businesses to stay healthy . . .”
Jake trailed off, and she felt his gaze as she circled the melting vanilla before it reached her hand.
He said, “I’m going to have to help you with that in a minute, you know.”
She glanced at Jake. His expression hinted at an interest in something more than ice cream. And somehow, he’d managed to get safely all the way down to his cone.
Mandy’s face warmed. “You’re better at multitasking than I am.”
She lowered her eyes and concentrated on catching up with him. Jake seemed to be done with his discussion of controlled economic growth, at least for the moment.
As far as she could tell, he made sense. Maybe a little too much sense. It was hard to think of Tall Pine in terms of profit and loss. It was home, and while she knew tourists were good for business, she’d never thought very hard about what brought them here. Except for snow, and that was one thing no amount of planning could control.
As the sky deepened to a light orange, Mandy finished her ice cream, saving the last bit of cone for the ducks that still drifted lazily in the water. The birds had learned long ago that the presence of humans, sooner or later, added up to food. She tossed the piece into the lake and watched the ducks converge on the spot. The winner dipped its head into the water with a soft plunk. Others swam nearby, hoping there was more where that came from.
“Look what you started,” Jake said. “I should have saved some of mine.”
“Sometimes I come here with leftover bread.”
“We could do that next time,” he said.
Next time. The two simple words had a sweet ring to her ears. How quickly all this was starting to feel normal. Like something that was meant to be.
Two other, unwelcome words crowded into her brain: Tell him.
She shivered, and Jake put his arm around her shoulders, shutting out a chilly breeze that was just starting to creep past the barrier of Mandy’s sweater. But that wasn’t what had made her shiver.
She gazed out at the water, the ducks and geese on its surface beginning to darken into silhouettes. “How long will you be here, Jake?” Her voice sounded wobbly to her own ears, less casual than she’d intended.
“Well, your city council might decide that.”
“Town council,” she corrected him. “We call Tall Pine a town, not a city. Don’t forget that.”
“Thanks.” He rested his cheek on top of her head. “Well, if the council gives me the go-ahead, there’s a lot to do to see a project like this through. Usually six or seven months. If they s
ay no—”
The thought set off little flames in her stomach, tickling at the bottom of her ribs.
He sighed. “I don’t know. I’ve never had a project turned down before. But I don’t plan on giving up without a fight.”
She dreaded having Jake leave. But she was almost as afraid to have him stay long enough to find out her whole story. So far, things were perfect, and part of her wanted to leave them that way.
She shivered again, and Jake brought his other arm across her waist, encircling her. It shut out the cold air wonderfully. It even did a little for the chill she felt inside.
“It’s getting colder,” he said.
Mandy felt the beginnings of goose bumps on Jake’s bare arms. Belatedly, she realized that in his short-sleeved polo shirt, he must feel the chill in the air more than she did. “You need a jacket.”
“I brought a couple with me. Thing is, they’re all suit jackets. Someone told me this was Southern California, and this was summertime.”
“Someone should have told you it’s colder up here in the mountains.” Even with Jake’s arms around her, Mandy could feel the breeze from the lake starting to cut through the knit of her sweater. She huddled a little closer, this time trying to share some of her warmth with him. “And it probably doesn’t help that you’re full of ice cream.”
“Good point.” He kissed the top of her head. “You could talk me into watching the sunset from the truck.”
As they reached the parking lot on Evergreen Lane, they saw a pretty blond woman with two little girls, even blonder. The woman was sliding open the door to the backseat of a family van parked next to Jake’s truck.
The bigger girl, about four years old, turned toward Mandy. “It’s the Santa lady!”
“Santa lady?” their mother echoed.
Tongue-tied, Mandy took in the blond trio now staring at her. The older girl’s eyes were brown, like her mother’s. The younger sister’s eyes were a blend of blue and green. Such pretty variations on a theme. She remembered the similarities and the differences....
“You were at Christmas in July, weren’t you?” Mandy said.
The girls nodded, their eyes even bigger than before.
“I met them at our sidewalk sale,” Mandy told their mother. “I work at the Christmas store. They were there with their daddy.”
And, of course, she’d told them about Santa. Aware of Jake standing behind her, Mandy’s heart hammered.
“July,” the mother said. “It must have been when I was out of town at my sister’s.”
The older girl tugged at her mother’s blouse. “Mom, she told us one night she—”
“Your name is Bailey, right?” Mandy interrupted.
Bailey nodded, pleased to be remembered, and forgot to finish what she was going to say.
“And Rosie.” Mandy turned her eyes to the smaller girl, about two years old.
Their mother stepped forward. “We just moved here at the beginning of the summer. I’m Renee.”
She shook the woman’s hand. “I’m Mandy. This is Jake.”
Jake shook Renee’s hand. “Nice to meet you.” He looked down at the girls, who hovered shyly near their mother. “And Bailey and Rosie. Nice to meet you, too.”
And they left, before Bailey remembered what she’d been about to say.
Chapter 6
Mandy turned the key in the front door, letting Jake into her house for the first time.
They’d finished watching the sunset from the front seat of Jake’s rented pickup, followed by kisses that had made her heady. That headiness might have accounted for Mandy’s next idea: when they didn’t find a movie that appealed to them at the multiplex, she’d invited him to her house to watch a DVD from her collection.
She dropped her keys on the floor as they stepped into the entryway, nearly clunking her head into Jake’s as they both bent to pick them up.
“Here you go.” Jake’s fingers brushed hers as he handed her the keys.
Mandy stepped away and switched on the lights. The living room was immediately to the right of the tiled entryway, and she tried to see it through his eyes. To her, it still felt sparse compared to the way it had looked a few days ago. Was the pine garland hanging from the mantelpiece too Christmasy for summer?
“It’s warm in here.” Jake sounded relieved.
In contrast to the mountain breeze outside, the house still held the warmth it had built up from the afternoon sun. As Mandy started to take off her sweater, Jake helped her, sliding the sleeves down over her arms in a gesture that, perversely, set off yet another kind of shiver.
That was what she hadn’t thought about when she invited him back to her house. The possible implications of being alone with him, at night, in her home, hadn’t hit her until they reached the front porch. Standing close to him now, completely alone, it was suddenly impossible to think of anything else.
As he slipped her sweater off, he kissed her lightly. And handed her the sweater.
She thought it might be his way of saying, You can trust me.
Mandy exhaled a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding and debated what to do with the sweater. She decided against opening the precariously loaded hall closet. She draped it over the back of the sofa instead.
Jake turned to survey the living room. “So, this is the house you grew up in.”
“This is it.”
“It feels like it.” She gave him a puzzled look. “I mean, it feels like you. I mean—” He grinned ruefully.
She tried to remember if she’d seen Jake this tongue-tied before. It hadn’t occurred to Mandy that nerves could work on both sides.
“‘Comfortable’ isn’t a very flattering word,” he said. “Would you settle for ‘homey’?”
“It’ll do. How about some coffee?”
“Sounds great.”
She started toward the kitchen, then stopped. “You can have a seat and make yourself comfortable,” she said. “Or if you want to take a look at the movie choices . . .” She crossed the living room to the cabinet beside the television set and pulled it open to expose four rows of wide shelves. There were shelves in the doors, too.
“Impressive.” Jake’s eyes took on a gleam, and he crouched on the floor for a better view. “Are they organized any special way?”
“Sort of.” Starting to feel more normal, Mandy crouched alongside him. “Classic dramas.” She pointed a finger along the rows of shelves as she talked. “Contemporary dramas. Thrillers. Romantic comedies. Musicals . . .” She passed her hand in front of the door on the right. “And the very top shelf—comfort food. My all-time favorites. Those aren’t broken up by category. And nothing’s alphabetized.”
“I’m surprised at you.”
“Okay, so how are yours organized at home?”
“Easy. They’re a mess.”
She laughed and stood up to go and make the coffee.
A movie collection, Jake decided, was a window to the soul.
He started with that top shelf. Casablanca, of course. He was pleased to find To Kill a Mockingbird there too. Breakfast at Tiffany’s and The Princess Bride were obvious, female-friendly favorites. But there were a few surprises.
“The Godfather is comfort food?” he called out to the kitchen.
“Only the first one. But the other two have to go with it, because I didn’t want to separate them.”
“You’re a regular Library of Congress.” He stood and joined Mandy in the kitchen.
It didn’t look like she’d made any progress on the coffee yet. As he entered, she was transferring glasses from the sink to the dishwasher. She closed the dishwasher quickly.
“Something’s fishy,” he said.
She turned with a start. “What?”
“I don’t see any Christmas movies.”
She grinned. “There wasn’t room. I’ve got a whole separate box for those. They’re put away with the Christmas decorations.”
Jake folded his arms. “How many?”
She inclined her head, considering. “About forty. But that’s because I’m selective. Did you pick anything out?”
“Help me narrow it down. I can’t handle the responsibility.”
“You saw the favorites shelf.”
“That’s a pretty broad selection. What are you in the mood for?”
“Well . . .” She opened a cabinet and brought out a can of coffee. “Ghost might be my all-time favorite, but I’m not sure if you’d care for it. I’ve been trying to get Mrs. Swanson to watch it for years. She can’t get past the basic idea. She thinks, if it couldn’t happen, what’s the point in watching it?”
“That rules out a lot of movies. Especially if you count Pretty Woman.”
She started judiciously measuring coffee into the filter basket of the coffeemaker. As she brought out another scoop of grounds, she eyed the size of the mound that crowned over the top of the scoop, then shook it to level it a little more before she dropped it into the filter.
So painstaking . . . and so irresistible.
Jake stepped behind her and spoke just above her ear. “Ghost is fine with me,” he said. “Believe it or not, I’ve never seen it. Something about Demi Moore being haunted by her husband?”
He smoothed her hair back, tucking it behind her ear. A delicate gold pine tree earring dangled from her earlobe. It shimmered when his fingers brushed it.
Mandy measured out another scoop of coffee, not so precisely this time. “I can’t concentrate if you do that.”
“That’s the idea.” He moved his lips downward and kissed her ear. She gave a little shudder that triggered a matching shudder of his own. She relaxed against him. He closed his eyes and buried his face against the side of her neck, drinking in the scent of whatever it was she wore, that delicious hint of spice. For several exquisite moments, he didn’t move, just standing there with her, hearing her breathe.
Then she stepped away and carried the coffee carafe to the sink to fill it with water.
Do You Believe in Santa? Page 6