by Lisa Plumley
“Maybe.” Reid kissed her, the gesture hasty but full of promise. Briefly, he framed her face with his hands. “Later?”
“Later,” Karina affirmed. She watched him move efficiently around the office, their near liaison temporarily on hold as he prepared to take charge of the B&B’s latest emergency. With one final backward glance, Reid opened the door. Then he disappeared into the darkness that shrouded The Christmas House.
The power must have gone on the fritz, Karina realized. That meant the lights were out, the heat was out, the Christmas music was nonfunctioning, and the guests were stuck in a cold, dark, totally nonfestive B&B. Reid couldn’t ignore any of that.
Argh. Was the entire northwestern Michigan power grid out to get her, or what? She and Reid had been close. So close.
“I’ll definitely see you later,” Karina agreed, even though Reid couldn’t hear her anymore. Her thoughts whirled, caught up in the potential importance of Reid’s I love you—and his so-called “threat” to keep that cute beard of his until she told him she loved him too.
What was she supposed to do about that? She’d never been faced with a dilemma like that before. Confused and thrilled and conflicted, Karina sighed. “But first…I’ve got work to do too.”
Then, reluctantly, she headed for the door to gather her things. Whatever this incident was, it was destined for her Edgware report. And Reid could not be around to see her working on it. The consequences of that could be really disastrous….
Chapter Sixteen
…From the desk of Betty Sullivan
DECEMBER 21ST
LOCATION: THE CHRISTMAS HOUSE
SCHEDULED EVENT: “COOKIE BAKING & DECORATING:
GINGERBREAD, SPRITZ, PFEFFERNÜSSE, AND MORE!”
—6:00 P.M. TO 8:00 P.M.
When Reid left the B&B’s management office and aimed his flashlight beam to illuminate his path, the first thing he saw was the long hallway table. Serendipitously, it was fully outfitted with neat rows of candles—candles that had been affixed to easy-to-use holders and arrayed next to reusable lighters, destined for candlelight snowshoe Christmas caroling later tonight.
Reid grabbed a lighter, along with an armful of candles. As he headed down the hallway with them, flashlight at the ready, he heard The Christmas House’s guests milling around, talking. It sounded as though they were speculating about the problem. Then he heard the staff, working hard to reassure everyone. Next he heard Vanessa, cracking a joke about Santa’s “naughty Christmas elves” keeping everyone in the dark so their boss could get his work done and knock off early this year.
Someone wandered by. Neil, using his cell phone screen as a miniature flashlight. A couple of guests mimicked him. Their cell phone screens peppered the darkness with blueish squares. They provided insufficient light to safely guide anyone’s path, though, and the whole B&B was starting to feel increasingly chilly, Reid realized. Clearly, the power had gone out, taking The Christmas House’s atmosphere of holiday cheer along with it.
“This sucks!” someone complained. “I’m not having fun.”
“Whoops!” A crunch was heard. “Sorry! I think I just stepped on someone’s gift.” A bunch of ornaments jangled. “And bumped into one of the Christmas trees too. Sorry, everyone!”
A collective groan went up. More people grumbled, their voices filled with growing discontent.
“This is ridiculous. How long before the power comes back on?”
“Are we going to have to find someplace else to stay tonight?”
“Doesn’t this place have emergency backup power?”
“Don’t worry, everyone,” Vanessa called out. “We’re working on the problem. We’ll get the power back on ASAP, I promise.”
“The lights are on across the street,” Suzanne pointed out, “so it’s not a citywide outage. What’s wrong with this place?”
“Yeah! First you wreck our gifts,” someone else said, “then you leave us in the dark. And now the cookie-baking session is going to be late, too! My kids were looking forward to that.”
“Mine too! And it’s getting cold in here. Brr.”
“I’m going online—on my phone!—right now to complain. Your triple-A rating is totally taking a nosedive after this!”
“Sorry for the inconvenience, everyone.” Reid reached the front room, then waved his key chain halogen light to get his guests’ attention. “There’ll still be time for gingerbread and spritz and pfeffernüsse later on, I promise. Just hang tight.”
He handed out the first candle. Helpfully, he lit it, too. He examined the crowded room, then charted a path to distribute the rest of the candles to his restless guests. Lacking another strategy—or simply drawn together in the dark—they appeared to have all gathered in the front room. He guessed misery really did love company…and the holidays really did bring out the worst in people sometimes—even though his mission at The Christmas House was to ease holiday stresses, not add to them.
Vanessa sidled up to him, wearing a sweater and an admonitory expression. “Hey, cuz,” she said in a low voice. “I’d watch those promises of yours. I called an electrician to come out, but he said it could be hours before he gets here. We might not have time for the cookie-baking and -decorating session.”
“It’s a tradition,” Reid said firmly. “We’ll do it.”
“But the ovens are out!” his cousin argued. “The cookie dough is all prepared, but by the time the power comes back on, all the chefs will be finished with their shifts. They’re already working really long hours for us. We can’t ask them to stay even later tonight.”
Another candle. “We’ll figure out a way.”
“I hope so.” Vanessa elbowed him, her face jolly in the semidarkness. “By the way, how did things go with Karina?”
I told her I loved her. “Fine. They went f—” He stopped. “No. Wait. What makes you think I was with Karina?”
“Oh, come on. Don’t play dumb with me! Why do you think I volunteered for management duty tonight? I thought you might be…indisposed.” Vanessa waggled her brows. “Just helping out!”
“M. Y. O. B.” Reid frowned, reverting to the lingo of their shared teenage years. “And I don’t need any help. I never do.”
At his elbow, someone tugged his sleeve. He glanced down.
Olivia stood there, her skinny arms filled with candles, another reusable lighter, and a few extra candleholders. She must have grabbed all those items, Reid realized, when she’d seen him handing out candles to the B&B’s guests.
Her face looked pensive in the gloomy light, but when she saw him looking, Olivia brightened. “Hi, Reid! Can I help you?”
“Oh, sweetie. That’s so nice of you!” Vanessa said. In a wiseass tone, she added, “But Reid doesn’t ever need any—”
Help. It didn’t take a genius to read her mind.
“Sure!” Reid smiled at Olivia. He shot his cousin a cease-and-desist look. “As a matter of fact, I was just thinking I could use some extra hands for this job. Come on, Olivia.” He pointed with a candle. “Let’s hit that corner over there.”
“The one in the opposite direction of Vanessa?”
“Yep.” He moved in that direction, handing out candles.
“What does she think is so funny, anyway?” Olivia cast a backward glance at Reid’s cousin, who was still watching them. “She looks like she’s about to crack up about something.”
“Vanessa has a weird sense of humor.” Reid motioned for another candle. “Hey, good job on finding those candles.”
Olivia shrugged, small and diligent by his side. “I checked the fire extinguishers too. They’re all fully charged.”
Hmmm. That was…oddly cautious, for a ten-year-old. “Good to know.” With a nod, Reid gave Olivia another candle to hand out. She watched as he lit it for a waiting B&B guest.
“Be sure to hold your candle upright,” Olivia advised the guest in a concerned tone. “And don’t let your candle get too close to anything flammable, like curtains o
r pillows or gift wrap! There’s always a danger of fire getting out of control.”
“It’s not that big a danger. We have working fire extinguishers.” Reid winked to reassure his budding worrywart helper. “Just use reasonable precautions,” he reminded his confused-looking guest, “and everything will be fine.”
They walked toward the next guest. “You can’t know everything will be fine!” Olivia disagreed. She shook her head, looking determined. “Things happen, you know. Bad things.”
“That’s right,” Reid agreed. “Absolutely. But most of the time, the things people worry about the most never happen. That means they’ve spent all that time worrying for nothing.”
“Nuh-uh. That’s not true,” Olivia told him. She issued the next guest a candle—and her standard warning notice—then looked up at him. “Worrying helps you get prepared for things.”
“Really?” Reid ducked closer to the guest, issued his standard reassuring rebuttal to Olivia’s warning notice, then kept moving alongside his helper. “Worrying is a good thing?”
Olivia nodded. “It’s like a fire drill for your brain. It helps you think about what to do if stuff goes wrong.”
“That’s an interesting premise.”
“Which, by the way, you should have at this place,” she went on, knowledgably. “Fire drills, I mean. There hasn’t been a single fire drill since we’ve been here. Except the one I made my mom and brothers do on our own.” Olivia’s jaw tightened. “Saving people’s lives isn’t a joke! There’s probably a law or something that you’re breaking by not having fire drills.”
He peered at her stubborn, supercautious, skepticism-filled face. “Aha! So you’re the one. You’re the Edgware evaluator!” Reid shook his head in amazement. “Man. No wonder they had me fooled. Their evaluators are deep, deep undercover.”
Olivia giggled. “I’m not the Edgware evaluator!”
“Are you sure?”
Another nod. “I don’t even know what that is.” She gave him an anxious look. “Should I know what that is?”
“No!” Wanting to assuage her worries—not add to them—Reid hugged Olivia to his side. Together, they handed out more candles—and more warnings/reassurances. As they worked the room, Reid glanced down at the little girl. She reminded him of Karina. Generous. Smart. Sweet. But a little too apprehensive for her own good. “You know,” he told her, “I’m intrigued by that worrying theory of yours. Do you really think it’s true? Do you really think worrying is like a fire drill for your brain?”
Intently, Olivia glanced up at him. By now, the guests surrounding them were almost 100 percent in possession of lighted candles. That meant he could glimpse her troubled expression clearly. And it worried him. He wanted to help her.
“Yes,” she said. “I really think so. Worrying is a good idea. People just don’t get that. I’m extra good at it, too.”
Being “extra good” at worrying sounded awful. Casually, he asked, “Is that so?”
“Uh-huh.” Olivia gave a vigorous nod, seeming reassured to be talking about this with someone. “Whatever’s going on, I can usually think of about a million ways things could go wrong,” she explained. “Then I fix all of those problems in my head.”
“Wow.” Reid hoped Alexis and Nicole didn’t have heads stuffed full of emergency scenarios and virtual fire drills. Making a mental note to have a father-daughter talk with them after the cookie-baking session, he nodded at Olivia. “That’s really something. It does sound like you’re good at worrying.”
“I like to think of it as planning,” Olivia clarified, tossing her scarf over her shoulder. “And I have to be good at it. Because my mom is really bad at preventing disasters.”
Reid bet he knew exactly which “disaster” Olivia was referring to. If she’d reacted to her parents’ divorce the same way Josh had, she probably still wasn’t A-OK with the situation.
“I’d sure like to know more about that,” Reid said. “In my job, I do a lot of work with people who are worried.” Reasonably so, since we’re scaling mountains, exploring rain forests, and geotrekking in subzero temperatures. “If I could give them some new advice, they’d probably appreciate it.”
“Well…Just tell them to worry more! They’ll get better at it the more they practice. It’s just like playing soccer. I’m on a team back home, you know.”
“That’s…very encouraging of you.” Reid stifled a grin. At the same time, he felt an entirely unexpected urge to give Olivia another hug—and do whatever he could to protect her from everything. “But I’m looking for some practical tips. Do you think you could help me out with that?”
“Sure. If it can happen in a week. We’re leaving soon.”
Unhappily reminded of Karina’s imminent return to the land of sea and sunshine, Reid nodded. “Okay. Here’s what I want you to do. Every time you’re worried about something, write it down. Then write down all the fire-drill solutions you have. Okay?”
“That’s it?” Olivia shook her blond bangs from her eyes. She eyed the Christmas tree—probably examining it for potential choking hazards. “That doesn’t sound very helpful to me.”
“Trust me. I think it will be.”
“You think giving people a list of all my worries will help them somehow? I don’t know. Usually you’re pretty smart, but that doesn’t sound like a very good plan to me.”
“You’ll be giving them all your solutions, too,” Reid reminded her. “Think of it as a case study: learning by example.”
Dubiously, Olivia wrinkled her nose. “I guess I could do that. There’s a whole pad of paper in our room upstairs. I could use that. Although I might run out of paper.” She appeared newly uneasy. “I’d have to ask my mom for more. Or buy some in Kismet. Or borrow some from the front desk. Or get some from Josh.”
“See?” Reid said. “You’re ‘planning ahead’ already. Wow.”
Privately, he was dismayed at how easily worries crowded into poor little Olivia’s brain. How did she make it through fifth grade every day without totally freaking out? Just making a decision at lunchtime—fish sticks or veggie burgers?—could launch a quandary of epic proportions. Olivia would still be debating the pros/cons of eating and deciding what to have while her friends headed out to enjoy recess.
Reid hoped his plan would help her. From where he stood, it looked like a long shot. But he specialized in tough situations.
“Hey, there are Alexis and Nicole!” Happily, Olivia waved at her new friends, appearing—all of a sudden—as though her myriad worries were forgotten. She waved them over. “Where have you guys been?” she squealed. “It’s been crazy around here!”
Reid’s daughters threw him a pair of cursory greetings and a wave. Then, excitedly, they huddled with Olivia. The laughing threesome appeared utterly natural together…and utterly indifferent to the grown-ups in the room as they compared notes on what they’d been doing when the power outage had happened. Right on cue, Michael and Josh wandered upstairs from the kids’ Fun Zone. They joined the girls, Josh with a candle held in one hand and Michael with a copy of How The Grinch Stole Christmas.
“Well, that answers that question.” Karina appeared beside Reid. She nodded toward their united children. “My kids were here with you, and your kids were wandering the halls with me! I ran into Alexis and Nicole while I was looking for Michael, Olivia, and Josh,” she explained, “and convinced the girls to come along with me. I wanted to make sure everyone was okay.”
“They seem…amazingly fine.” Reid smiled at her. “Thanks for corralling Alexis and Nicole. That was nice of you.”
“Well…They insisted they were fine in the dark as long as their PSPs still had juice,” Karina confided. “But between you and me, I think they were relieved to have an adult take charge and bring them here safely with everyone else.”
“Maybe.” Reid doubted it. His daughters were much too independent to behave like normal preteens. They didn’t need Karina’s mother hen routine any more than he did. Thinking
better of saying so—and risking hurting her feelings—he jabbed his chin toward the group of chattering children. “Look. They really get along, don’t they?”
“I know. They really do.” Karina gazed at them, then smiled up at Reid. She squeezed his arm. “That’s cute, isn’t it?”
“It’s adorable.” Vanessa broke into their conversation with a know-it-all grin. “Just like I knew it would be. You guys are totally the new Brady Bunch! Minus one, of course—I guess you can’t have everything.” She aimed a practical glance at Reid. “The electrician is here, cuz. And things don’t look good.”
Left on her own in the midst of the (newly) candlelit B&B reception, Karina watched Reid leave with Vanessa to consult with the electrician. She’d used candlelight to finish making a few handwritten notes for her Edgware report. She’d made sure her children—and Reid’s—were safe and happy. She’d double-checked with the staff to see if there was anything else she could do to help. There hadn’t been. Now, at loose ends, she snuggled into her warm sweaters, debating what to do next.
If there’d been time—and a standin baby-sitter who wasn’t probably canoodling with Rodrigo someplace dimly lit and cozy right now—Karina might have gone upstairs and started getting ready for her “date” with Reid. His promise of later still rang in her head, making her feel doubly impatient for their next opportunity to be together. As it was, though, she had to hang around until things were settled here. She might as well—
Her cell phone tweeted out its incoming SMS tone.
Chelsea. A glance at her cell phone screen confirmed it.
Well, there was no time like the present to see what urgent issue had caused Chelsea to text her almost hourly for the past few days. Curious, Karina opened the latest message.
K! WHERE ARE U? she read. DID I DO SOMETHING WRONG?
Guiltily, Karina edged to a corner of the B&B’s front room, then thumbed out an answer. NO. JUST BUSY. SORRY. WHAT’S UP?