Three Nights Before Christmas: A Holiday Romance Collection

by Kati Wilde

  “Of course not,” Meredith protests softly, her eyes wide as she follows our every word.

  A muscle works in my father’s jaw. “I simply do not think this is the time or the place.”

  “And yet our hosts have explained that this was the purpose of being here—to air old grievances and make new apologies. So go on, Mother. I would like to hear how you were unprepared for such a cold child. Because as I recall, I constantly told you that I loved you.” Especially after I was old enough to understand how much she needed it. But it still wasn’t enough.

  “Simply saying it means nothing, Audrey. You must show it.” Her gaze darts to my father’s face as if hoping that her words will sink in with him, too, but he’s already locked down, staring straight ahead and waiting for this to be over. Bitterness creeps into her voice when she looks to me again. “You said you loved me, but you could not even bring yourself to hug me, or display any sort of affection that children typically show their mothers.”

  “I showed you affection,” I tell her. “Because I loved you more than anyone and I was desperate for your approval. But you never recognized what I was giving.”

  “Perhaps that is true—and perhaps, if you will give us the chance, I can learn to recognize it now.” Her gaze falls to my hand, still clasped in Caleb’s. “Or perhaps in these past years, you’ve learned to show more affection than before.”

  “No, I haven’t.” Easily touching anyone in the way she means will never be something I can learn. “But I have learned to give my affection to people who are more deserving.”

  Her gaze darts to Caleb and rare fury flares through my blood, because I know exactly what rushes through her mind during that brief look—wondering how a rough bastard like Caleb could possibly be more deserving of love than someone like the delicate, beautiful, well-bred creature that she is.

  Yet because she’s such a well-bred creature, she will only think it and never say it. Instead she continues, “I am encouraged by your acknowledging that you were a difficult and emotional child. Just as I acknowledge that I did…overreact. And you were perhaps right to be angry with us. With me. But now that you are beyond your youthful rage, you can look back with the wisdom of maturity and have compassion for a young mother who was simply overwhelmed—and see that I did my best. And considering all that you’ve achieved in recent years, it’s evident that no lasting harm was done. So perhaps you might put aside your anger now, and forgive me for being so young and unprepared, so that we might be a family again.”

  My anger? I was never angry. I was hurt and afraid.

  I wish that I’d been angry. Like Caleb is at the Wyndhams. I wish resentment burned so deep that I could take pleasure in spite and revenge. Instead I’ve simply been afraid that they’ll hurt me again.

  Not anymore, though. Because I realize they can’t hurt me more than they already have. They’ve done their worst—or at least, they’ve done the worst that I’ll allow them to do—and I survived. And I will never give them an opportunity to touch Caleb or show him any more of the disdain that my mother just did.

  So now I’m just…finished with them.

  “I have plenty of compassion for young, overwhelmed mothers who receive no support from their partners. Yet I also have very little sympathy for women who are cruel to their children, no matter the reason—or for weak and selfish men who leave their wives to it,” I tell them, before saying as plainly as I can, “I have no interest in renewing our relationship—ever. You are my parents but you are not my family. And after this evening, I hope to never see either of you again.”

  Outrage suffuses my father’s face. But he leaves this to my mother, too. Her features pinched with bitterness, she looks to Caleb. “I cannot congratulate you on your engagement to our daughter. Instead I offer my condolences for the cold life you’ll soon lead. You’ve secured yourself a rich, beautiful wife who will never be able to show you love and affection, and who will be impossible to love in return.” She casts a sour look at my father, who’s getting to his feet, before adding to Caleb, “But no doubt you’ll find warmth elsewhere, as men so often do.”

  “Nah, I won’t. And as far as I’m concerned, you can shove your condolences so far up your ass that they’ll pop out your mouth again. But they’ll probably still be covered in the same amount of shit.”

  Perhaps my mother meant her final remark as a parting shot, but Caleb’s response brings both my parents to a stunned halt. They stare at him, disbelieving.

  I squeeze his hand in gratitude for not letting her have the last word. But he’s not done.

  “Your daughter loves what she does and pursues what makes her happy. The people around Audrey are happy to know her, too—and it doesn’t have a fucking thing to do with her money, and everything to do with who she is. That doesn’t sound like a cold life to me, and she doesn’t sound like a woman who has no love and affection to give.” His voice sharpens to a razor’s edge. “What it sounds like is that you need Audrey’s life to be all about you, to make you feel good about yourself. Luckily, the rest of us who know her aren’t as fucking needy as you are.”

  Gaping at him, my mother begins to shake her head, to say, “I have never in my life—”

  “That’s enough, Catherine.” My father grips her arm and steers her toward the door, with my mother still denying and gasping and gaping. “Sylvia, Christopher, Meredith—until next time.”

  He doesn’t acknowledge me as they leave, which is a relief, because my throat is a knot of overwhelming emotion after hearing Caleb’s speech. No one ever has understood me so perfectly.

  I pursue what makes me happy. And he makes me happy. If Caleb hadn’t proposed to me, I’d be pursuing him even now. He said that he wasn’t sorry for using the gimmick, because if he hadn’t we wouldn’t be here. But maybe we would have been. Because after our initial meeting, I’d have gone after him. Asked him out for dinner—and probably to my bed. Surely he wouldn’t have waited for a wedding night then, just as he didn’t wait with anyone else he wasn’t marrying. And perhaps we would have gotten to know each other in this same way.

  Aside from sex, however, skipping straight to a marriage engagement has proved a much more efficient way of getting to know him. And makes me even happier than merely dating him could have.

  “All right, then,” he says, facing the Wyndhams again. “Two apologies in the bag. So I guess that means it’s my turn.”

  “To…apologize?” Christopher’s brow furrows. “If you are sorry now for having us evicted from our home, surely that can be easily amended—”

  Caleb barks out a laugh. “Hell no. In her will, Eleanor said she wasn’t leaving anything to you all because you’re ‘lying, cheating, backstabbing, greedy vermin.’ I don’t know anything about that. But I’m pretty damn sure that Meredith is wearing the necklace you all accused my mother of stealing—the one that got her sent to prison for two fucking years.”

  Prison? I suck in a breath, my gaze flying to the diamonds around Meredith’s neck. She stares back at Caleb, absolutely frozen, before she looks to Christopher as if for help.

  Caleb doesn’t give her brother time to offer it. “Is wearing that necklace supposed to be a joke? Did you think I wouldn’t recognize it from pictures in the police reports? Or that I wouldn’t have looked up the court transcripts that could tell me why she missed out on the first years of my life? Or maybe you just forgot how you ruined a woman’s future with that necklace. An event so goddamn insignificant to you, but the moment that changed everything for her.”

  “Mr. Moore,” Sylvia says placatingly, “please understand how young Meredith was and how she didn’t fully understand the consequences of—”

  “She was eighteen, which means she knew damn well. So did you. The assistant district attorney who first looked at the case decided not to pursue prosecution because there were too many conflicting witness statements. None of the staff remembered seeing any of the same shit that you all said you saw. Then you asked your dis
trict attorney friend to take another look—and those conflicting accounts went away. So did my mother. For two years. Even though you all knew she was pregnant.”

  Oh my god. I had no idea about any of this. I thought he hated them for being snobs who blacklisted his mother. Which was enough of a reason. But this.

  “And when she gave birth to me—while in prison for a crime she sure as fuck didn’t commit—you all made sure that everyone thought she was a liar for putting Robert’s name on the birth certificate. And you”—the furious heat of his gaze lands on Christopher—“claimed to have seen her whoring herself out to every rich asshole she could find at your lakeside club. You give me this bullshit now about welcoming me into the family, but you all sure as fuck made certain that I went into state care as a baby. And even after she got out on parole, it took four more years before she got full custody of me again. Working her ass off every goddamn second. Then after she got me back, taking on two or three jobs at a time, because the kind of work a woman can get after a felony theft conviction doesn’t pay shit. Those jobs are also why she was on that fucking road so late. Why she was so damn exhausted. Why she had a shitty car and shitty tires. As far as I’m concerned, what you all did to my mother put her on that patch of ice—and you all killed her.”

  Christopher is shaking his head. “Surely you can’t hold us responsible for an accident—”

  “You killed her,” Caleb repeats flatly. “Don’t look for any forgiveness here, because any possibility of that died with my mother. If you’d shown her any mercy at all, I might have reconsidered. Instead I intend to take from you every goddamn thing that I can.”

  “Ah,” I say as it all clicks into place. That small sound draws their attention, so I continue, “Eleanor knew. Didn’t she? You told her all of this at your mother’s funeral—when you declined her invitation to lunch.”

  “Yeah, I did,” he says gruffly.

  I look to the Wyndhams, and direct the remainder to each of them. “Our lawyers wanted to affirm Eleanor’s statements that you were lying, backstabbing vermin, but they didn’t know what you’d done to Caleb’s mother. We knew about Meredith silencing the girl who was recently assaulted at the party her son threw for his lacrosse team by threatening a defamation suit against her family, and about the charities Sylvia uses as her personal piggy bank, and of the bribes that Christopher took from John Bennet in exchange for city council votes. But clearly Eleanor learned how you all framed and discredited the mother of Robert’s baby—probably so you wouldn’t have to share your inheritance with Robert’s son.” And I laugh, because that’s just too good. “Oh, but Eleanor made you all pay for that, didn’t she? Because after discovering the truth, she turned around and gave everything to Caleb—and nothing you all did in the past ten years changed her mind, because you’re all horrible people. Ah, that’s fun. And I think we’re done here. Shall we go, then?”

  Caleb rises to his feet, holding my hand. The Wyndhams regard us with a mixture of outrage and fear and worry, and Christopher opens his mouth, yet Caleb doesn’t give them another chance to plead their case.

  “You start packing up,” he tells them. “But keep in mind that Eleanor had the contents of this house and her jewelry collection inventoried less than a year ago. When all this shit passes to me, I’ll make certain everything is accounted for. And if one thing is missing, just one goddamn thing, I will have you hunted down like the thieves you accused my mother of being. So Merry fucking Christmas. You have two weeks to get the fuck out of my house.”

  Oh, that was lovely. By the gleam in Mr. Ferry’s eyes as he opens the drawing room door and ushers us into the corridor, he thinks so, too. Yet Christopher’s voice brings us to a halt a few steps outside of the drawing room.

  “Miss Clarke!” Faintly sweating, he catches up to us in the wide hallway, his jaw lifted pugnaciously. “Considering the upcoming city council vote regarding the rezoning of the Sandpipe property, you might reconsider the way that you and your fiancé—”

  “I’ll reconsider nothing,” I interrupt, absolutely disgusted. “And you should recuse yourself from the vote. You have a clear conflict of interest.”

  His smug smile appears. “You need my vote for the rezoning to pass.”

  “No, I don’t. I’ll flip Kaser or Andersen when I throw my weight behind the Green Spaces project.” Though he knows I’m right, his expression barely flickers. So I apply more pressure. “But since we are speaking of things that ought to be reconsidered, I advise you to think carefully about how you will soon have no access to the Wyndham fortune—which means that your wife’s fortune will be your sole means of support. So the pictures that my investigators took of you and a female companion on Wednesday afternoon might disrupt your access to her fortune, as well. Unless you intend to give your wife a Christmas speech about forgiveness and healing, too?”

  Now his expression flickers. His face becomes a mask of self-righteous anger. “Are you blackmailing me?”

  “No. I don’t want to sway your vote—I want you to recuse yourself. And if you don’t do it voluntarily, I will explain in detail to the city council how your impartiality is compromised, but only with respect to my fiancé’s relationship to you and our current legal battle. Your private business is your own. It might be to your benefit, however, to examine all the areas of your life that could damage you professionally and personally. Because if the court case drags on, with your side questioning Eleanor’s mental acuity and judgment, my lawyers might feel compelled to offer evidence that supports Eleanor’s assessment of you as ‘cheating vermin’…and you can be certain those photos will end up in a publicly accessible docket.”

  He goes absolutely silent.

  “See? Not blackmail. Just friendly advice. Legal battles involving inheritances are notoriously ugly. And this is only after a single week of investigation. Who knows what we might turn up by the end? Though I suppose you and your mother and sister know all the things you each have done and everything we might find. So you all should decide what really matters to you—your past, or your future.” I smile at him. “Goodnight, Christopher.”

  Though Caleb’s fingers tighten on mine as we walk toward the front door, he doesn’t say anything until we’re outside, where fat snowflakes have begun falling. I automatically tip my head back to catch one on my tongue.

  He grins at me. “That felt damn good.”

  Yes, it did. “Christopher did say that he brought us together in the hope of healing our old wounds.”

  His deep laugh rumbles out. “He’s probably not real happy with how that healing turned out.”

  Probably not. But I am. And I feel so much relief after that confrontation with my parents. As if the pain hadn’t been an open bleeding wound at all, but a festering boil that needed to be lanced and drained. It’s still sore but…it’s better. And Caleb has been carrying around pain even deeper than mine, because I’ve been able to address mine through therapy—and to control their access to me. Yet he’s never had the opportunity or the power to confront the Wyndhams before. So laying it all out before them and making them pay for what they did to his mother must have been incredibly satisfying.

  And he’s clearly not only driven by spite, though maybe there’s some of that, too. But I just witnessed something much more powerful—a man seeking justice for his mother and finally being able to deliver it.

  Though maybe he could do even more. I glance back at the house just before I slide into the car. When he settles into his own seat, I tell him, “I don’t think you should burn it down.”

  “No?”

  “I think you should turn it into a home for women who have been incarcerated and recently released, and who need help getting back on their feet or to regain custody of their children. You could call it the Phoenix House. Where they get their second chance. Or rise from the ashes—oh!”

  One moment I’m sitting. In the next I’m straddling his lap, with Caleb’s fingers buried in my hair and his mouth opening bene
ath mine as he draws me down into a hot, deep kiss. Lust immediately flares through my blood, and I can feel Caleb’s desire in the thick ridge between my legs. But despite his arousal, he breaks away after only a minute, his breathing rough and close in the darkened car.

  “Your parents are so fucking blind, Audrey,” he says in a low, urgent voice. “And I know you don’t like to talk about them, so I won’t bring it up again. But I need you to know that I’m not like your mother. I see you. I see how much you have to give. And how much you do give every day. You don’t have to go around hugging anyone to prove a damn thing.”

  Emotion swells inside my chest, so big. So frightening. Because if Caleb sees all that, then he must know that I love him. Must know that, even now, the way that I can sit here so close—not because we’re kissing or in a sexual embrace but an emotionally intimate one—is a wordless display of how much I trust him, and how safe I feel…and how I know that he’ll take care of my heart, even if I don’t hold his.

  My voice is thick as I tell him, “Then I want you to know that I’m not like her, either. I won’t ever ask for more than you want to give—or for something you can’t give.”

  Like his love—or more time with him.

  Softly he kisses me. “I know you won’t, baby.”

  That gentle response both eases and deepens the ache in my heart. He’s such a good man. How could I not love him? And how can I not yearn for his love in return? But I won’t be like my mother in that, either—always throwing my emotions and wishes into his face, so he feels obligated to reciprocate my feelings.

  So despite the love bursting inside me, I only tell him haltingly, “But…I do have to ask for something. Because I don’t want to ruin our wedding night. And I’m sorry, because I know it’s not what you wanted.”

  “What isn’t?”

  “We need to have sex after the party tomorrow.”

  His body reacts, stiffening beneath mine—but for the longest moment, he doesn’t respond. I hunch my shoulders, preparing for his rejection…yet when his reply comes, it’s only a simple, “Why?”