The Christmas Dare

by Lori Wilde

  Chapter 27

  Afterward, they lay in each other’s arms. Every muscle in Kelsey’s body ached, but in a glorious way. She breathed in his scent, so grateful to be here. Marveling at the changes in both her body and her mind. Accepting Tasha’s crazy Christmas dares had turned out to be the very best thing she’d ever done.

  She had not one single regret and would eagerly do it all over again if given half a chance. Thanks to Tasha prodding and Noah egging her on, she had pushed herself beyond the limits of what she’d ever thought possible. She’d set boundaries with Filomena. She had faced her fears. She had made love to Noah in a glass-domed room.

  Things were changing.

  Good changes.

  Long-overdue changes.

  She thought about Tasha’s fifth dare to her. Please yourself. Yes. Long past time to please herself.

  And she was starting to believe that she and Noah had a real chance at a future together. He’d shown her he loved her in a dozen different ways. By the lovely gifts he’d given her. By the way he accepted her for who she was, fears and all. By the way he’d helped her safely step out of her comfort zone and embrace a new way of being. By the tender look in his eyes when he called her Firefly. How he’d saved her from being kidnapped.

  She loved him so much and if he wasn’t yet ready to say the words, she was.

  “Noah,” she whispered and turned in his arms so that they were facing each other.

  “Kelsey.” His entire face lit up when he smiled at her.

  “There’s something I want to tell you.”

  “There’s something I want to tell you first.”

  “Oh?” She sucked in her breath.

  He took her hands in his. Rubbed her palms that were healing from where she’d skinned them when she’d fallen getting away from Clifford Steel. He pressed his lips to her wounds, kissed them lightly.

  Her heart fluttered.

  “I love you, Kelsey James. With all my heart and soul. I love you unconditionally. No matter what.”

  “Noah.” She sucked in a second breath on top of the first one and her chest ached in a beautiful way. “I love you too. I have always, and I always will.”

  A cell phone played the specialized ringtone she’d given Tasha.

  His eyes widened. “Is that your phone or mine?”

  “Doesn’t matter.” She burrowed against him. “We’re in our cocoon, remember? That’s what voice mail is for.”

  The phone, wherever it was, rang three more times before it went to voice mail. Kelsey was busy planting kisses on Noah’s chest. The phone stopped than started again.

  Sighing, Kelsey kicked aside the covers, slid off the sectional, searched around in the heap of her clothes for her phone. Her friend sure had rotten timing.

  “Hello,” Kelsey answered, sounding none too friendly.

  “Are you near a television?” Tasha asked without so much as a hello.

  Kelsey eyed the flat screen TV still playing the repeating winter scene. “Yes. What’s up?”

  “Turn it on.”

  “Why.”

  “Just do it. Hurry. They’re coming back from commercial now. Switch on the local news to Channel 8.”

  Apparently, Noah could hear Tasha’s frantic voice over the phone, because he picked up the remote, switched off the snow scene and clicked over to the Channel 8 ten o’clock newscast.

  There on the seventy-two-inch screen was her mother’s face.

  “Filomena called a press conference,” Tasha said in Kelsey’s ear.

  “Oh dear God, what about?” But she didn’t need to ask, she could read it in the caption scrolling across the screen. Dallas Mayor-Elect Calls Press Conference. Announces No Campaign Staffers Will Follow Her to the Mayor’s Office.

  Stunned, Kelsey waved at Noah to turn up the volume.

  He complied.

  Filomena was at the podium speaking into the microphone. “I will be starting with fresh blood. None of my campaign staffers will be filling a position on my team. Nor will any of the previous mayor’s staff remain in their jobs.”

  But that was ludicrous! Filomena was firing everyone?

  “You aren’t there to talk sense into her,” Tasha said, sounding a little gleeful. “She’s burning down her own house and doesn’t even know it.”

  “Mayor-Elect James!” hollered a reporter. “What about your daughter, who’s been your loyal campaign manager for years? Surely, Kelsey will have a seat at the table.”

  Filomena’s eyes darkened, narrowed, and her mouth turned mean. Kelsey had seen that expression more times than she could possibly count. “My former campaign manager has decided to move on. Next question.”

  “Oh shit,” Tasha whispered.

  “Somehow she must have heard about Berg’s job offer and this is her way of punishing me.”

  “I guess you shouldn’t have blocked her calls.”

  Kelsey felt strangely calm. “It’s not the end of the world.”

  “She just fired you in a very public way. She won’t backtrack on this. You’re out and you’ll have to crawl the Sahara naked to get back into her good graces.”

  “You know what?” Kelsey said, feeling like a canary who suddenly realized that the door to its cage had been open all along. For years she’d been blind to the fact that she could fly through the door to freedom. “I really don’t care.”

  “You say that now, but this is the tip of the iceberg. If she’s dead set on punishing you, the misery is just beginning. I’m scared for you. I should never have found Noah, never have given you that dare. Never have brought you to Twilight. It was wrong of me—”

  “It’s okay. I can handle whatever happens.” But could she? A snake of fear whipped through her. Had she grown enough to accept things as they were?

  Kelsey had always been the peacemaker. The one to calm her mother’s stormy waters. She’d been the golden child and Chelsea the rebel. Who would calm Filomena now that she’d turned Kelsey into a scapegoat?

  “I’m so sorry,” Tasha said.

  “I have to go now, Tash.”

  “I understand. I love you.”

  “I love you too.”

  Trembling, Kelsey switched off the phone. Found Noah standing beside her, a solicitous look on his face.

  “C’mere,” he said and opened his arms wide. “You look like you need a big hug.”

  She sidestepped his hug, too knocked down for comfort. “I have to go home. I have to face her.”

  “Kelsey.” Noah dropped his arms, looked worried. “That’s exactly what she wants. It’s why she held the press conference in the first place. She’s counting on your guilt and shame to bring you to heel. It’s all a ploy to lure you back.”

  Was it?

  She felt the old pull. The need to make things right. To ensure her mother’s happiness at all costs. She’d been doing it for twenty-seven years. How could she stop now? She picked up her clothes, started getting dressed.

  Noah did too. He pulled on his jeans, stabbed his fingers through his hair, and looked dazed.

  “Isn’t that what the spirit of Christmas is about?” Kelsey said to him. “Hope? Isn’t that what you’ve been trying to teach me?”

  “There’s realistic hope and then there’s false hope.” His voice was soft with tenderness, his eyes even softer with pity.

  Irritated, her eye twitched. “Isn’t the whole Santa nonsense a study in false hope?”

  “No,” Noah said. “Because Santa is only a symbol. He’s a fantasy and everyone knows it. But the myth of Santa, just like the myth of kismet cookies and coins thrown into the Sweetheart Fountain to reunite lost first loves, is based on the reality that human beings have the infinite capacity for love and generosity of spirit. You’ve been resisting the window dressing while ignoring the truth beneath it.”

  “Which is?”

  “Christmas is about faith and real hope.”

  “I’m not seeing the difference between your hope and mine. You hope things will tur
n out okay, I hope my mother will change.”

  “Real hope combines a positive outlook with a firm grip on reality. What you’ve been doing is vacillating from false hope that your mother will change to despair because she is incapable of loving you unconditionally.”

  “You don’t know that she’s incapable of loving me unconditionally.”

  “No,” he said. “But you do. Deep in your heart. You’ve been using false hope to deny the reality of your relationship with your mother.”

  “How can you say that?”

  “For one thing, the tic is back.” He touched the muscle twitching at her temple. “For another thing, she just fired you for taking some time away from her and setting boundaries. If she loved you unconditionally, would she do that?”

  Kelsey’s shoulders fell like anchors. She felt as if she’d been drop-kicked. Of all people, she thought that Noah would understand and support her in going home to smooth things over with Filomena. She stared at him, feeling blindsided and betrayed. He was supposed to be in her corner no matter what.

  And yet here he was, challenging her.

  She was rocked to her core, confused and grief stricken. Feeling as if she’d been abandoned by both her mother and her lover in one fell swoop. She’d been relying on his optimism to bolster her hope that things could eventually change with her mother. But now, he was taking that away from her. Forcing her to look at a reality she just couldn’t face. Her mother was incapable of loving her the way a normal mother loved.

  You’ve known it all along, whispered a voice in her head that sound eerily like Chelsea’s.

  “Hope is not a strategy,” Noah said. “You can’t keep hoping for your mother to change. You’re the one who has to change. That’s where hope works. That’s where you have control. Until you can accept that, you’ll never be happy. And I’m sorry as hell, Firefly, but I can’t supply that for you. I wish I could, but I can’t.”

  Her bottom lip trembled. Her chest felt hollow as if her heart had been sucked out. “What are you saying, Noah?”

  “You’re letting Filomena come between us just as you did ten years ago.”

  “She’s my mother.”

  “And I’m the man who loves you.”

  “You’re saying I can’t have both?” Was he really giving her an ultimatum? Him or her mother?

  He shook his head. “I think maybe it’s best if you do go home.”

  Kelsey gasped and drew back as swiftly as if he’d actually struck her. “Are you breaking up with me?”

  “No. I’m setting firm boundaries. Until you’re able to make peace with your situation, and break free from your mother’s control, it’s better that we’re apart.”

  “But . . . but you said you loved me unconditionally. And here you are putting conditions on me.”

  “I do love you unconditionally. I accept you for who you are. I know you are kind and loving and want to help people. But loving someone unconditionally doesn’t mean standing by and watching them destroy themselves in order to please someone who can’t appreciate their sacrifice.”

  He was saying one thing but doing another. Telling her he loved her unconditionally but at the same time sending her on her way. Pain stabbed her.

  “Because I do love you unconditionally, I’m setting you free, Firefly. I’m not going to tell you what to do. Go. Figure things out for yourself. When you’re ready, I’ll be here waiting for you.”

  “You’re telling me to leave.”

  “Would you stay if I asked you to stay?”

  She stood there, one hand on the doorknob. Torn right in two. On the one side was the only life she’d ever known—strict obedience to Filomena in order to earn her mother’s love. On the other was the hope of a future that beckoned her to accept reality and let go of the past.

  Was it false hope?

  And how could she break the patterns of a lifetime without trying to see if she could get through to her mother? How could she let go without knowing for sure that there was nothing to hold on to in the first place?

  She sent someone to kidnap you.

  “Kelsey?” His voice was kind. “What are you going to do?”

  “Right now, Noah? To my way of thinking, you’re being just as manipulative as my mother. You’re no better than she is.”

  “You don’t really believe that.”

  Then something occurred to her. Something heartbreaking and earth-shattering. She didn’t want to believe it, just as she didn’t want to believe her mother had hired someone to kidnap her, but the evidence was stacked up like cordwood.

  “Noah,” she said. “Is this whole thing a ploy?”

  “What whole thing?”

  “You, me, this.” She flapped her hand at the room.

  “What ploy, Kelsey? What are you talking about?”

  “To get even with my mother. Did Tasha contact you about my coming here? Did you two set me up?”

  “I’m not even going to dignify that with a response.”

  “Tasha’s been trying for years to get me to cut my mother out of my life. Maybe she saw you as an instrument to get the job done.” Even as she was saying it, she could hear how irrational she sounded, but she could not stop the words from spilling out. Her greatest fears spewing from her lips. Terrified that she couldn’t trust anyone to love her without strings attached.

  “After all we just shared, you can stand there with a straight face and say that to me? Kelsey, you’ve got a lot of things to sort through. You’ve allowed your mother to warp your mind. Not everyone is manipulative and calculating and out for their own self-interests. Tasha loves you. I love you. What your mother did to me, to us, is in the past. I’m not holding on to that stuff, but clearly you are.”

  Heart reeled against her ribs, eye twitching furiously, Kelsey’s stomach quivered as adrenaline sped through her. “I don’t think this is going to work.”

  Noah flinched. “If that’s the way you feel, maybe you should go.”

  “Maybe I will.”

  “Stay, go. It’s your choice.”

  But it felt like no choice at all. Either way she went, she was going to displease someone. Confused, and hurting beyond measure, Kelsey turned her back on him and walked out the door.

  It was only then that Kelsey realized she utterly failed at completing her fifth dare.

  Because no matter what she did, there was no pleasing herself. The Christmas of Yes had turned into a big fat miserable Christmas of No.

  No relationship with her mother.

  No job.

  No boyfriend.

  And most of all, no self-respect.

  Chapter 28

  Not knowing where else to turn, Kelsey packed up and left Twilight. She went to see Theo. She knew her father was headed out on a Christmas cruise with his girlfriend, Leah, in a few days, but maybe he could spare a few minutes for her. She didn’t ask him for much.

  Standing at the door of her father’s condo in the choicest part of Plano, Kelsey took a deep breath. It was late, well after midnight. She’d driven straight here after her fight with Noah, her head all over the place.

  This was dumb. She shouldn’t have come here. Theo and Leah were probably in bed by now. She should go get a hotel room and sort this out in the morning when she’d had time to calm down.

  Just as she was about to leave, the elevator door opened, and Theo stepped out with Leah on his arm. Leah was in a formal gown and her father wore a tuxedo much like the one Noah had worn the night before. Thoughts of Noah tore through her heart like a tornado.

  She was so confused. Her life wrecked.

  “Kels!” her father exclaimed, letting go of Leah, and moving toward her. “What’s wrong?”

  “Oh Daddy, do I look that bad?”

  “You always were an ugly crier,” he said kindly and wrapped his arm around her shoulder.

  Leah handed her a tissue she pulled from her purse.

  Kelsey dabbed at her eyes and sank against Theo. Inhaled her father’s comfortin
g scent.

  Unlocking the front door to the condo, Leah stood aside to let them go in ahead of her. “I’ll get you both a stiff drink. Looks like you’re going to need it.”

  Theo ushered Kelsey into the living room. Leah kicked off her stilettoes and padded across the room to the wet bar where she poured two tumblers of scotch, neat. Kelsey and her father settled onto the couch.

  Leah handed them the glasses, pressed a kiss on Theo’s forehead. “I’ll leave you two alone. This looks like a private conversation.”

  “Thank you, sweetheart.” Theo touched Leah’s arm. He smiled at her the way Noah smiled at Kelsey.

  Kelsey’s heart thumped. She was happy for her father. Glad he’d gotten free from Filomena, and glad he’d found Leah. She loved Theo. That much was clear.

  Leah wriggled her fingers and disappeared down the hallway to their bedroom.

  Theo took Kelsey’s hand in his. “Did something go wrong with your getaway?”

  Kelsey nodded, terrified that if she spoke she’d start crying again. She’d bawled almost the whole way of the seventy-five-mile Uber ride from Twilight. She reached for the tumbler. Took a hit of scotch. Felt brave enough to whisper, “It’s more than that.”

  “Let me guess.” Theo sighed. “Filomena.”

  As succinctly as she could, Kelsey told him about the press conference, and her fight with Noah.

  Theo shook his head. “I probably made things worse by bringing Lionel into the picture. I was just trying to help you get out from under your mother’s thumb, but in retrospect I can see that was a misstep.”

  “It’s not your fault.”

  “It is. I shouldn’t have left you with her. I should have fought for full custody.”

  “It’s not a fight you would have won, we both know that.”

  “Kels, I’m so sorry for all my mistakes. But I can’t regret marrying your mother, because I got you out of the deal.”

  “Why is she like this?” Kelsey wailed. “What’s wrong with me that she can’t love me the way a mother is supposed to love her children?”

  “No.” Theo took hold of Kelsey’s chin in his palm, tilted her face up, and forced her to meet his gaze. “You stop that right now. You’ve done nothing wrong. You’re taking the blame for something that is not your fault. She’s trained you to think everything is your fault, but it’s not. Her behavior is abnormal and it’s part of her pathology.”