Under The Kissing Bough: 15 Romantic Holiday Novellas

by Kathryn Le Veque

  “It hurts like a mo-fo. Can you get me an ice-pack, Mrs. Comeaux?”

  “Of course.” She reached into the medical supply bag, pulled out a cold pack, and squeezed it in her hands to activate it. Then she handed it to Camille.

  “Thanks, Mom. You’ve always been a good nurse.”

  “I had good training.” She smiled at her daughter and Camille felt a surge of love warm her chest. She and her mom had had a strained relationship for over a year now. She’d thought Camille should’ve fought for Ben’s love when Elli had arrived in Cane after inheriting Sugar Mill planation with him.

  That was only one of the things Camille and her family had disagreed on.

  “Take it easy,” Edward complained, as she placed a small bandage around the wound. “I will be a hell of lot more sympathetic with my patients who get stung from now on.”

  “Edward, I know it hurts, but you need to be brave. I’ll give you a nice little sticker when we’re done.”

  “Very funny,” he smiled at her with such tenderness that she saw, in sudden burst of clarity, that he was in love with her. Dear Lord, she hadn’t expected that and, she felt deep in her gut, she didn’t want it.

  Her dad walked into the kitchen, the screen door slamming shut behind him. He leaned over Edward’s shoulder and whistled. “I sure hope you don’t have to amputate dat hand, Stein,” he said, sounding serious. “That’s not da hand you wipe your ass wit is it?”

  “I’m glad I could be the source of entertainment for the Comeaux family,” Edward said, good-naturedly.

  “Geps and mosquitoes sure like youz Yankee blood.” Her papa looked at Camille. “Didn’t youz tell him not to wear dark clothes?”

  Forty-five minutes later, Camille spotted Edward inside her grand-papa’s screened porch where he’d been assigned to help at “the bank” that was located there for the celebration to hand out change and count money. He was wearing a white long-sleeve T-shirt with Santa’s face imprinted on it. Santa’s beard and the pom-pom on his red cone hat were embellished with puffs of cotton. If the medical team at Bellevue could see him like that, they wouldn’t believe it.

  “Ready?” her papa asked, extending his hand to Camille. “I’m sure happy youz riding shotgun wit me tonight.” She clasped her hand with his as she’d done when she was a little girl and thought he’d hung the moon and stars. She still thought he did, although no one had ever broken her heart the way he had. She shook that thought away. Tonight was not the time to think of it. It was the opening night of Fa La La Cajun Christmas on the Bayou Celebration.

  “We couldn’t have asked for better conditions,” she told her papa as they headed to the Cane boat launch with the other five vessels in the Christmas armada. “The humidity is low. The stars are starting to pop out even though the sun hasn’t yet set. And there’s a nice cool breeze.” She rested her head on her dad’s chest. “Perfection.”

  As was their tradition, the lead vessel, decided by drawing straws, would give a single long toot of his horn. The other boats would answer with two toots. Then, everyone, boat captains and the people of Fa La La, would turn the Christmas lights on at the same time.

  Pierre had won the honor of signaling the start of the celebration. His horn sounded from the boat in front of Camille and her papa. She and the other boats gave the answering call. Like magic, all of the lights went on and the Christmas music started playing. Everyone clapped and shouted with joy as another year of their holiday celebration began. Yes, it was commerce, but it was what kept their family together working for a common goal.

  “Yeah. This is perfection.”

  “Not quite, bebette.” He looked toward Cypress Island. It was dark and silent. There was only an amber light shining through the two small front windows of the dilapidated cabin. It looked so sad and lonely.

  ***

  The sound of the first horn drew Hunt outside his cabin, with camera in hand. He jumped off the front porch and headed down to the water’s edge in the shadows of the thick, weeping willows More horns blasted and then the boats and the Fa La La settlement were lit up simultaneously. He captured the boats and small community on stilts in the silhouette of the setting sun and fiery coral sky. An instant later, he caught the dotted colors of the Christmas lights coming to life on the bayou and on the modest homes of Fa La La. Even to a man like himself, it looked beautiful.

  Traditions. Camille’s declaration that this Christmas event was about traditions echoed in his head. He imagined Mr. Dudley captaining a boat with his family aboard fifty years ago, doing the same thing T-Dud now did with his family. Which one of these boats with multicolored lights along its tall booms was his, he wondered, trying to make out the names on the bows? He zoomed in with his camera and found it on the second boat in the parade-Miss June. It was named after his wife.

  Hunt wondered if Camille was on the boat with her father. He swallowed hard, guilt gnawing at his conscience. He didn’t have to be so harsh with her. He could’ve chosen kinder words and an easier tone. Yet telling her that he’d never agree to letting them hold the Christmas Celebration on Cypress Island felt like much more than a rejection of her demands. It felt like he was fighting for more than his privacy.

  “Help a guy out,” Luke said, dragging an ice chest with two tan canvas umbrella chairs on top of it. He stopped a few feet up on the slight rise that led to the bayou.

  Hunt unfolded the chairs and placed one on each side of the ice chest. He sat in the chair on the right. He opened the ice chest and took out two beers, handing one to Luke. “How’s your sister?”

  Luke sat and twisted the top off his beer bottle and tossed it inside the ice chest. Hunt did the same. “Nice. It’s always good to see Lucy, even for a quick trip in and out in the same day. We went out to one of the downtown hotels and ate there.” He waved his beer toward Fa La La. “I was hoping you’d bring leftovers back.”

  “My departure didn’t inspire anyone to give me a care-package.”

  “I’m not surprised.” Luke drained his beer and got another. “You know, it might cost you a few dollars, but we can put the construction on hold for the duration of the holidays.”

  “What? Are you kidding me?”

  “Hear me out,” he interrupted. “We’ve got a supply barge coming in Monday, with lumber, flooring, and maybe the windows. We can get the house blocked in, tarp it up, and put everything on hold until after the first of the year.”

  “And we would do that why?”

  “To live in harmony with mankind and the people who are just a football field away.” Luke’s chair creaked as he turned a little to look at Hunt. “It would be the right thing.”

  “Right thing? What I’m doing is the damn right thing. . .for me.” He extended his legs in front of him and looked up at the lavender and rose sky. “Luke. I know what I need. Maybe that makes me a selfish ass, but I’m trying to make a home here. Set down some kind of roots and continuity. It’s long overdue.”

  “I hear you.” Luke sighed. “Without us stopping construction and cleaning up and securing the site, it’s too dangerous to have people walking around out here. Especially at night.” Luke opened a bag of potato chips that Hunt hadn’t seen him bring out and shook the bag toward him. Hunt took a handful. “Alligators don’t like mesquite potato chips, do they?”

  Hunt laughed as he saw a six-foot gator swim past into the glow of the Christmas lights reflecting on the bayou. A fish, then another and another skipped out of the water, leaping at the brightest of the spots on the water created by the animated, lighted Santa in a pirogue being pulled by three gators. The first one had a red nose.

  “I’m going to get our fishing poles. We’ve just been given a nice perk with those lights – attracting fish.” Luke leaped from his chair. “We’ll eat fried fish instead of bologna sandwiches tonight.”

  Forty-five minutes later, the parade of boats was heading back to Fa La La. Hunt spotted their cheerful lights and heard the singing of “Jingle Bells.” Sound an
d light carried far on the water. He reeled in his line and picked up his camera.

  “Man, that’s pretty,” Luke said, placing the bragging-rights redfish he caught into a second ice chest that also held two speckled trout.

  Hunt didn’t answer Luke. He was moving, adjusting his angle and aperture to capture the bright, crescent moon, hanging low over the glittering oyster boats, shrimp boats, and smaller recreational fishing boats. The way the reflected lights on the water streaked across the surface and the brighter lights of the boats above connected it all like holiday garland, it reminded him of a favorite Christmas train his parents had taken him to ride at the zoo when he was a small boy. The last time he’d ridden that train was when he was eleven. The year he got his first camera.

  The year his parents died.

  HUNT FOR CHRISTMAS

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The sunny kitchen at the back of her parents’ small house smelled of freshly brewed coffee and the buttermilk biscuits rising in the oven. Camille loved this room. She was glad it remained exactly as it was when she was a little girl, except for the new stainless steel refrigerator. There were the same warm oak cabinets, white lace curtains, and marble-patterned Formica countertops that made the kitchen feel homey and comfortable.

  Camille took her Christmas coffee mug, filled with dark, strong coffee, to the stove to add boiled milk to it. “I don’t know why I don’t boil milk when I make my coffee before work,” she told her parents, who were reading the Cane Gazette at the old round oak table.

  Her momma placed the section of the newspaper she was reading on the table. Her papa kept right on reading. “If I know my daughter, and I do,” she said with a smile as bright as her candy-apple red sweat suit with its pistachio-green rickrack trim, “it’s because you’ve slept to the very last moment and you don’t have the time to do it.”

  “True.” She inhaled deeply, enjoying the creamy and sweet rich scent. “It smells like marshmallows do when they’re softened over an open flame.”

  “Not here for Christmas this year,” June said, sounding sad. “Last night, there were so many people who asked why we didn’t have the marshmallows roast, live reindeer, bonfire, and lover’s path to the mistletoe gazebo, like before.”

  “Yeah, I know.” She’d simply told them that they were working on it. . .and she intended to do just that, although she wasn’t sure how. She sat across from her momma, who was now fingering the corner of the newspaper in front of her.

  “Hunt has rejected every single attempt our family has made to get him to change his mind. We’re all hoping you could make him have a change of heart.” She smiled and stared into Camille’s eyes, indicating that what she said had more than one meaning. What was her mother trying to tell her? “The heart is a peculiar thing. You never know when it can flip or soften. . .”

  “Or harden,” her papa said from behind his paper. “Hunt not letting us on da island has nothing to do wit his heart.”

  “Oh, sure it does,” June said looking at her husband, daring him to disagree. He huffed and rattled his newspaper, but didn’t say anything more.

  “He’s stubborn,” Camille said. “Does that come from the heart?”

  “It could.”

  “Heart.” Her papa grumbled. “Youz make us losing half our revenue for da year sound romantic. Nothing romantic about us having to get a second and third job at our age. And that’s if anyone would want to hire sixty-three-year-olds.”

  June shook her head and lifted her paper. “Camille will save us. You’ll see.” She started reading again.

  Dear Lord. Momma and the people of Fa La La expect a miracle – and they expect me to be the miracle maker. Her stomach pinched. She wanted to do it for her family, friends, the visitors who came to the Christmas celebration. She had no idea how. Camille thought about the immovable Hunter James. If his actions hadn’t told her just how stubborn he was, the set of his strong jaw and knowing eyes would’ve. His smooth good looks would’ve told her how sexy he was too. He had to be one of the most strong-willed men she’d ever met, and the sexiest.

  Holy Cow. Why am I thinking of that?

  Edward walked into the kitchen, dark circles under his tired eyes. He greeted everyone, but went straight to the coffeemaker on the counter. He was dressed for the day in well-fitted black jeans and another long-sleeved Christmas shirt one of her cousins had lent him. This one was pea-green with an extremely big-eared elf hand-painted on the front. It made her chuckle seeing him in it and she snapped a photo of him with her phone.

  “Delete that,” he said, his voice devoid of humor. “If you don’t, I’ll take a picture of you wearing those silly white shrimp boots.” Her folks dropped their papers, looking at Camille with narrowed, disapproving eyes. She saw in their tight features that they couldn’t believe she’d brought an arrogant man like this home to them. She should defend him, she knew, but she didn’t want to. He might not be an arrogant man, just uninformed and unaccustomed to their ways. Had she been that way with their co-workers in New York?

  Camille liked to think she hadn’t been. She didn’t remember feeling or seeing negative reactions from those around her because she’d said things to insult others while she was there. She’d been away from Fa La La during college, residency and on a medical ship where she was exposed to a variety of lifestyles different then her own. It had been hard to adjust to and understand, but it was also fascinating to do so. Still, maybe she had inadvertently hurt others as Edward was doing now. She understood there was no malice in Edward’s words, but he’d insulted her family nonetheless. . .again and again. And that upset her too.

  Was she being fair to a good friend by empathizing with her family more than him? What was going on here was more than just this, she realized.

  She got up and went to where he was struggling to lift the coffeepot with his swollen bee-stung hand. “Ix-nay on the shrimp boots.” She poured him a mug of the strong, dark coffee that he liked to drink black. “Let’s go outside to have our coffee.” She walked away without waiting for him to answer.

  Camille knew she was about to hurt him and that bothered her. She was a physician who healed, not wounded. She settled on the glider swing facing the bayou. The call of a blue heron, the croak of a frog, and the distant hammering on Hunt’s new house carried on the slight breeze. She ignored them as she cleared her head to focus on what she had to communicate to Edward.

  He sat next to her, his leg touching hers. “I’m glad to have this time alone,” he said, his voice soft, relaxed. “We haven’t had a moment to ourselves since we got here. I’m getting kind of lost with all the Christmas stuff and with your overwhelming family. . .As charming as they are, they’re always around.”

  “This is their home, Edward. Of course, they’re always around.” He looked at her, his eyes telling her that he was surprised by her reply. She knew it was because while they were in New York, she’d told him that her family was always in her personal space. Hearing him say it, made her feel defensive, though. “I understand that Fa La La is completely different from where you grew up and where you work today. It takes open-mindedness and humility to appreciate that. While I think you are trying to get along and be friendly with my family and friends, I think you really don’t understand them or want to.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” He tugged on the hem of his T-shirt. “Look at the butt-ugly shirt I’m wearing, Camille. I think that shows a hell of lot of humility and open-mindedness. It’s a Christmas shirt. I’m Jewish.”

  She smiled and patted his hand. “I never would’ve thought I’d see you in these kinds of t-shirts.” She sighed. “But, be honest. You’re wearing them to keep from getting eaten alive by the mosquitoes.” He exhaled hard and looked away. “Edward, I think you’ve been tolerant, not open-minded.” She put her mug on the ground. “I say that because of the unguarded comments you’ve made that have hurt my family. Just now, you threatened to take a photo of me in silly shrimp boots, as if it was a bad thing and some
thing that would embarrass me if our mutual friends saw it. And you said that in front of my parents, who work in those shrimp boots on a daily basis.”

  He looked at her. “What I. . .” He closed his mouth and didn’t finish what he was about to say. He stared at her, realizing instantly that it was indefensible.

  “There were other comments and facial expressions that weren’t intentionally cruel, but telling nonetheless.” She sighed, again. “Look. I get it. But I don’t like it.”

  “Give me time,” He reached for her hands. She didn’t pull away. “Don’t you know I’ll do anything for you. . .because I love you. We’re good together.”

  Part of Camille understood he was a good man and would come to appreciate and care about her family. Another part, the part that kept her heart sound and whole now, told her it didn’t matter that he was a good man because he wasn’t her man. He didn’t make her feel tingly when she held his hand or when she kissed him good night before they went to their separate bedrooms. Not that she was in love with Hunt by any stretch of the imagination, but the way he’d made her feel when he simply took her hand to cross a stream on his island, and when he kissed her so briefly, after they argued on Thanksgiving day—the sparks were undeniable. There was an instant and strong sexual chemistry between them that she didn’t have with Edward. While she wouldn’t act on the chemical and biological attraction with Hunt, she wondered why she didn’t have it with Edward, and why she hadn’t been pleased to know his feelings for her ran so deeply.

  She pulled her hands from him. “Edward, I’m not in love with you.” He closed his eyes, but didn’t move. “I’m sorry. I care about you. I think you’re capable of. . .”

  “Don’t give me that 'it’s not you, it’s me’ spiel. You’re better than that.” He opened his eyes and turned to face her. “How long have you known?”

  “That you loved me or that I didn’t love you?”

  He looked up at the bright, cloudless blue sky. “Both.”