Kissed by Christmas

by Jamie Pope

  “You don’t believe that I was kissing a man in Costa’s?”

  “No.” He laughed. “I know you. You’re not that kind of girl.”

  Not that kind of girl.

  He had just said the exact worst thing to her. “What kind of girl is that, Brent?”

  “You wouldn’t make out with some man in public. It would be embarrassing.”

  This had been the problem with their relationship. She had tried so hard to fit in some impossible mold that he’d created. He was supposed to be a changed man. If they got back together, it would just be more of the same. “To whom would it be embarrassing? You?” She took in a deep, slow breath. “I was kissing a man yesterday and I spent the night with him. In fact I’ve spent every night I can with him.”

  “I heard it was Virginia Bradley’s brother. You’ve been hooking up with him since you’ve been home? Some sort of fling to get back at me.”

  “You still think everything is about you. Asa is not a fling. We met in New York.”

  Chapter 16

  Asa walked into the kitchen after Nanny sent him to see what was taking Hallie so long. He stood still for a moment after he walked through the door. Hallie was there, her arms crossed over her chest. Her jaw tight. There was fire in her eyes. He had never seen his sweet Hallie so upset.

  Across from her was the ex. It wasn’t who he expected her to have spent so many years of her life with. Asa didn’t have to know anything about him to see that he had money. Big, expensive watch on his wrist. Hair slicked back. Clothes that were just a little too sleek for an afternoon of baking. But more than that Asa saw the look in the man’s eyes. There was hurt there, mixed with anger, but there was mostly love.

  “You met in New York? Or did you really meet here? Were you hooking up before we broke up?”

  Hallie recoiled as if she had been slapped him in the face. “Get out.”

  Brent must have known he had gone a step too far. The anger cleared from his face, replaced by regret. “I’m sorry. I know you would never have been unfaithful.”

  Brent’s eyes went to Asa in the doorway and the man’s entire body stiffened. Asa knew he should have backed away as soon as he saw him there, but he couldn’t force himself to leave. He walked into the kitchen and stood by Hallie. He was torn between punching the guy and feeling sorry for him. He looked miserable. He probably was miserable. Asa had spent one week without Hallie and he missed her to the point of pain. And they had only been together for a month.

  Five years seemed like a lifetime.

  “Tell him how we met,” Asa said softly.

  “He doesn’t need to know. He broke up with me when I was in the middle of planning our wedding, our lives together. He blindsided me and he’s accusing me of cheating on him? He doesn’t deserve a thing from me.”

  Brent took a step forward but stopped when he saw Hallie’s hand go up. “I regret that. I didn’t mean it, but what am I supposed to think?”

  “Go!”

  “I messed this up.” He shook his head. “I just want to talk.”

  “It’s over. For good. I moved on.”

  “With this guy? A paramedic? He can’t provide you with the kind of life I can. He doesn’t know you like I do. He can’t love you like I can.”

  “You don’t know anything about him.” She shook her head. “This conversation isn’t going anywhere. If you won’t leave, I will.” She walked out, leaving Asa and Brent alone.

  “If you really love her, you have a shitty way of showing it,” Asa said. “I don’t know you, but it seems like you love yourself way more than you have ever loved her.”

  Brent sneered at him. “Why are you even speaking to me? You’re irrelevant.”

  He shrugged. “Maybe I am to you, but I’m the one she’s going home with tonight.”

  Brent took a step forward as if he was going to try something.

  “I wouldn’t disrespect these nice people by fighting in their home,” Asa said trying to keep his temper in check. “But if you try something I will take you down, and I’ll make sure you don’t get back up.”

  “It’s time for you to go, Brent,” Derek said from behind him. “Asa might be too good to knock you out in here, but I’m not. You’ve hurt her once. You don’t get to do it again.”

  “I’m leaving, but this is not the end of this. I need to hear her tell me that she’s not in love with me anymore.”

  “I’m telling you,” Derek said. “She’s not.”

  “If she isn’t, then why is she still so angry with me? There are feelings still there and I’m going to prove it to you all.”

  He stormed out then.

  “Sniveling little brat.” Derek practically spit out the words.

  “Do you think he has a point?”

  “What? Do I think she’s still in love with him?” Derek paused for a moment, growing thoughtful. “I don’t think she had been happy for a long time. But after her father died, she held on to the relationship because she didn’t want to go through another big loss so soon. If his business had stayed small and he’d committed to having a simple life on this island, they would still be together. But he changed and everything became about money and work. He wasn’t there when she needed him the most. She feels betrayed. It’s hard to get over that.”

  Her father had died and the man she thought she was going to marry had broken up with her in the same year. Two hard blows back-to-back. Maybe she was right to ask for space. She said she had wanted time, and he had tried to give it to her, but destiny or fate or something had brought them together on this island for Christmas and he couldn’t imagine going back to a life without her.

  * * *

  Hallie walked back into the living room to see her mother and grandmother standing there. The look of guilt on her mother’s face was undeniable.

  “I’m sorry, Hallie.”

  “Why did you invite him here?”

  “I thought you guys might reconnect. I didn’t know you were going to bring your boyfriend here.”

  “It doesn’t matter if you knew or not. You knew he hurt me. You knew he was never there for me and yet you continued to see him, to welcome him here like nothing happened. Like I didn’t have to go through the humiliation of canceling our wedding after all the invitations had gone out. I quit my job. I moved to New York. I’ve done everything to move on with my life and you’ve just invited him back in.”

  “He wants you back.”

  “Who cares? He wouldn’t be here unless you made him think we had some kind of shot. If moving a thousand miles away didn’t tell you something, I don’t know what will.”

  “I just wanted you back here, sweetheart. I wanted you to spend the rest of your life in a place I know you love.”

  “Unfortunately my life is not about what you want.” Hallie rubbed her head, her thoughts not coming clearly. She just knew that she felt suffocated, that she wanted to get out of here.

  “Take a walk with me.” Asa came out of nowhere and grabbed her hand.

  She nodded and soon they were on the sidewalk walking down the street away from the more populated side of the island. Asa didn’t say a thing to her as they went. He just held her hand, his quiet presence calming her. It was exactly what she needed at exactly the right time.

  He was always exactly what she needed at the exactly the right time.

  She hadn’t realized where they were headed until she stopped in front of the little boathouse at the end of a deserted harbor. Of course she’d come here. This was a place only she and her father had ever gone. Their little secret, he’d called it.

  “Where are we?” Asa finally asked as he looked at the nondescript house.

  “My very special thinking place.” She stepped forward and removed the key from the head of the wooden owl her fath
er had carved when she was thirteen, and let them inside. The house was tiny, directly on the water, nothing protecting it from Mother Nature if she decided to unleash her fury. Hallie was surprised it was still standing after all these years, but it was. Her tiny little piece of paradise.

  It was small on the inside, not meant for anyone to live there, merely built to store a boat below and entertain some guests before or after a day of sailing. But her father had built her a bed made from an old rowboat and a little couch that was suspended from the ceiling with two sturdy ropes. There were huge French doors that led out to the deck that overlooked the harbor and two huge, comfy armchairs that were perfect to curl up and read a book in.

  “My father used to bring me here on rainy days,” she said to Asa. “This was our special place. He used to sit at his desk.” She pointed to a desk that folded in the wall when it wasn’t in use. “I would read, or write in my journal while he worked. Sometimes I would just nap. The kitchen is small, but everything works. We would have chicken noodle soup. The kind from the can that is too salty, and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.”

  “That sounds good,” he said as he walked over and pulled her into a tight hug. “You want to have that for dinner tonight?”

  It was just the right thing to say. Her eyes filled with tears and she shut them as she held on to him. “Yes, that sounds perfect.”

  “Then that’s what we’ll have.”

  “I’ve never brought anyone here before.”

  He was quiet for a long moment. “Does it feel weird?”

  “No,” she said truthfully. “I stayed here for a little while after the breakup. It felt so empty. I kept looking up, expecting to hear the scratching of his pencil on his sketch pad, but there was just silence. It doesn’t feel empty right now.”

  “Tell me more about it.”

  “He left it to me. He wrote me a letter that his lawyer gave to me when the will was read. I can’t get through it without falling to pieces.”

  “What does it say?”

  “That he set aside provisions for my mother and grandmother to be taken care of for the rest of their lives, but that he left me everything else, because I was everything to him. He said he had never wanted children. His work had been enough, but when I was born I changed all that. He said I was his legacy. He told me that this place was mine to do what I wished with it. That I could bulldoze it or turn it into a burger joint, but he hoped that I kept it and that I only brought people here that were as special to me as I was to him.”

  Asa was that special to her, she realized. She had suspected that he was different than every other man she had known, but she hadn’t been sure if it was love or lust, or some kind of crazy magnetism that had her wanting him so much. But standing there she knew, and suddenly nothing else mattered. Not the hurt Brent had left her with. Not her mother taking his side. All that mattered was the new love that she shared with this man.

  “I wish I could have known him, Hallie. I think I would have liked him a lot.”

  She knew her father would have liked Asa, too. Maybe it was divine intervention. Maybe her father had sent this man to love her. She had been in this boathouse when she decided to move to New York. Here she had first come across the ad for her apartment on that website. She had moved to the Village, where her father had gotten his start, only to move into Asa’s building, and when that wasn’t enough she had fallen, and Asa had gotten the call to come pick her up. And now he was here on Hideaway Island, not letting her forget about him, making her fall in love with him more and more each day. Fate and destiny were too hard to fight.

  “You’re being so good to me.”

  “I’m not being good to you. I’m being the man I’m supposed to be.”

  “You are. You’re being better than I would be. You’re not going to ask me about Brent? You’re not going to make me swear to never see him again? You’re not going to act all macho and jealous?”

  “No.”

  “What if I want you to do all that?”

  “If you want to speak to Brent, I wouldn’t try to stop you. I don’t own you. You have to decide what’s best for you.”

  What was best for her?

  Staying here with her family on the island that she so dearly loved or going back to New York to be with a man who took care of her in every way that she had ever dreamed.

  The indecision was making her dizzy. So she shut off her mind and decided to live in this moment for as long as she could.

  She looked up at Asa, deep into his eyes. “Will you take a nap in my boat bed with me?”

  He smiled down at her softly. “How did you know that that was exactly what I was hoping you would ask?”

  * * *

  “Are you ready to give up your spacious house for a small cottage?” Asa asked his father a few days later as they walked through the third house they had seen that day. His mother was in deep discussion with the Realtor and Asa and his father were left alone to go through the house once again.

  “I’m old. I hate shoveling snow and mowing the lawn. So yes, son. I am ready to live in a little beach cottage.”

  “I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around this. I liked the idea of knowing that you and Mom were just a couple of hours away in New Jersey. Now I’m going to have to fly to see you.”

  “We talked about this, you know.” His father walked ahead of him to look in the master bedroom closet. “Your mother and I.” His father had been retired from the military for many years and yet he had never lost his colonel-like bearing. But here on Hideaway Island, he turned into a much more relaxed man. “We debated leaving you behind in New York alone. And then we remembered that you’re a grown man and that you could take care of yourself better than anyone. Plus we know how much you love your job.”

  “Yeah,” he said. Only when he thought about his job lately, love wasn’t the feeling that came to mind. He had been off for five days now. There was no blood, no gunshots, no horrific accidents, no crying victims. It was nice to go days without seeing someone in extreme pain, without seeing someone at their worst.

  Carlos had offered him that job, but Asa was having a hard time entertaining the idea of him running a foundation. He’d become a rescue paramedic because he loved the action, the adrenaline he felt when the sirens went on and they were rushing toward a scene. He hated being bored. And he didn’t want to risk taking such a big job only to leave it when his dissatisfaction began to creep up.

  “What’s the matter, son? You thinking about that girlfriend of yours?”

  He wasn’t, but he smiled at the mention of her. “She was grilling me this morning about what to get you for Christmas.”

  “I haven’t even met the girl yet and she’s buying me a Christmas present.”

  He nodded. “She had already gotten Mom and Virginia theirs. She didn’t want you to feel left out.”

  “Your sister says she’s sweet.”

  “She is. I love her.”

  Colonel Andersen nodded. “Your sister also told me that. I’ve never heard you say that about a woman before.”

  The words slipped out of Asa’s mouth easily. He had told his sister and parents of his love but he had yet to say it to Hallie. He could have. There were a thousand times he could have told her, especially since she had stopped staying at her childhood home and had moved in with him. He felt a little guilty that he liked the fact that her days started and ended with him since she had gotten into that argument with her mother. She still saw them. They went over together and ate with them. There was an afternoon of card playing with all of Hallie’s aunts. They just did it as a couple. She left with him every evening, never allowing herself to be alone with her mother.

  He felt bad that she was upset with her mother during the holidays when she had looked so forward to coming home, but it was tough being h
ere, too. She was still grieving for her father. He didn’t realize how much until she took him to the boathouse. There was raw, naked pain in her eyes that day and it made him feel hollow. It made him realize how lucky he was to have two healthy, vibrant parents. He was going to miss them when they moved. He was starting to regret that his job prevented him from spending more time with them.

  “Now that you’re back from your little spontaneous road trip with your friends, you can meet Hallie tonight.”

  “I was sure I was going to meet her today on our house search. She knows this island well and her father designed some of the homes here.”

  “She didn’t want to intrude. She took her grandmother out for lunch.”

  “Do you have anything special planned for her for Christmas? Maybe a special piece of jewelry and an important question to ask?”

  Marriage.

  It would be a lie to say that he hadn’t thought about it a hundred times in the last few days.

  He could see her as the mother of his children. He could imagine waking up every day with her next to him. Especially since that afternoon they’d spent in the boathouse. They had lain huddled together in that little boat bed and just talked about everything, about nothing, for hours. He had never felt so close to another person in his life. But... “I’m not sure if it’s the right time.”

  “It’s soon. I know. But if you love her and she makes you happy, why wait?”

  It was a good question. But he just wasn’t sure Hallie was ready. She needed to close the last chapter of her life before they entered into a new one.

  Chapter 17

  Asa watched Hallie as she fussed with her dress, twisting this way and that as she studied herself in the mirror. It was Christmas Eve, the night of the party at Virginia and Carlos’s house. Hallie wore red, of course. A deep red one-shoulder gown that skimmed her body in just the right places. She looked like a goddess with a halo of curls. His damn heart beat faster. He wasn’t sure he would be able to make it the entire night without touching her.