Love Finds You on Christmas Morning

by Debby Mayne

Not one bit.

  Truly.

  They worked together and played together over the summer and well into the fall, whenever both of them were able to get free from their professional obligations. And every time she passed the house or stopped by, Drew had remodeling crews working there. They had almost finished the remodeling and were close to implementing the decorating ideas Nikki had given him. But she was already pleased to see he’d taken her suggestion about the half wall between the dining room and living room. She remembered that half wall from when Granny, Grandma, and Mom would lay out a big family meal on the dining room table, adding their collective six cents to whatever lively conversation was going on in the living room.

  Whenever the familiar disappointment crept up, she pulled a Second Corinthians and took captive those thoughts. She handed them over to God. Over and over.

  The fact that she sometimes struggled even a tiny bit with the circumstances irritated her to death. She just wanted to get over it already.

  On the crisp fall day that Drew went with Nikki to meet her parents, she walked out of Harvey’s home and embraced the excitement of merely seeing Drew’s handsome face. Just taking in that tall, gorgeous, kind man who had been nothing short of considerate, accommodating, and a mighty fine kisser over the past months.

  And he blended in with the family as if he had been a part of it all along. He accompanied Nikki’s dad out to the garage to let him show off the 1952 Buick he was restoring.

  Nikki’s mother watched the two men from the kitchen window while Nikki and Hannah set the dinner table.

  “Nikki, if he’s as sweet as he is good-looking, you be sure to hold onto him.”

  Hannah laughed as she folded the cloth napkins. “I get the picture that the holding is mutual. And often.”

  Nikki smacked at her playfully. “He’s lasted longer than poor Bradley did, anyway. You’re so mean.”

  Bradley had come along after Hannah split from David.

  Hannah sighed without a hint of true remorse. “Poor Bradley. I just couldn’t take his…blankness any longer.”

  Nikki would have asked for clarification, but she had seen Bradley’s empty stares. Nikki knew exactly what Hannah meant.

  But their mother turned from the window and carried dinner plates into the dining room. “Blankness?”

  Hannah shrugged and took the plates from her mother. “I just don’t think he has many original thoughts, you know? I mean not clever ones. He had thoughts like ‘I should cut down on how much corn I eat.’ But that’s about how stimulating conversation got with him.”

  “You see how mean she is, Mom?” Nikki went back to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator to get the iced tea. “Good grief. What’s with all this milk in here?”

  “Oh.” Her mother stood in the kitchen doorway and rested against the frame, her arms folded across her chest. “The weatherman’s calling for possible snow. Early for snow, but that’s what they’re saying. And the two percent was on sale this week. And I had a coupon.”

  “But you have three gallons in here, and it’s just you and Dad. You guys hardly even drink milk as it is.”

  Hannah walked in and stood next to Nikki at the open refrigerator door. “Wow. That there is what you call a boatload of milk.”

  Their mother laughed, clearly realizing she had overbought. “They said it could be a lot of snow. How do I know when my next chance to buy milk will come along?”

  Nikki looked at her, and they both laughed at the absurdity of her comment. The closest grocery store was actually within walking distance.

  Hannah reached in and pulled out one of the gallon jugs. “Well, I’ll do my part and have some with dinner. Does a body good. But they’re calling for a possible snowstorm, Mom, not a nuclear holocaust. I think there might still be a few dairy cows around after the great thaw.”

  Drew and Nikki’s father walked in from the garage to find all three Tronnier women laughing together.

  “Ben, honey, tell your girls to stop picking on me.”

  Nikki’s father scowled at his girls. “You leave your dear old mother alone.”

  “Old?” She planted her hands on both hips and feigned indignation. “Never mind helping me, mister.”

  Nikki watched Drew through this exchange and felt a flush all over. He wore a genuine smile as he watched the teasing. He fit this family perfectly.

  He suddenly turned his smiling eyes on her, and they had their own private moment of appreciation. Talk about a great thaw. She could have just melted.

  Dinner went smoothly, and Nikki thought she couldn’t have asked for a better time to have introduced her family to Drew.

  Afterward, as he helped her into her coat, her father said, “Now where do you live, Drew?”

  Hannah and her mother were talking to Nikki about the coming week, but from a distant point in her mind, she sensed a reason for tension.

  Drew said, “I’m at the Cambridge Garden Apartments right now, just renting while I have my house remodeled. We’re almost done, so it shouldn’t be much—”

  “Oh, that’s right,” Nikki’s father said. “You’re the one who bought my grandparents’ place. I almost forgot about—”

  Apparently her father had just noticed the sudden silence in the foyer.

  Drew was wrapping his scarf around his neck, but he stopped mid-wrap, tilted his head as if he doubted his own hearing, and said, “Did you say your grandparents’ place?”

  “Uhh…” Her father simply looked from Nikki to his wife and back to Nikki again.

  Drew’s confused expression slowly scanned across the mute Tronnier family members, one by one, and Nikki saw something more than confusion there by the time he finally stopped at her.

  “Drew, we need to talk.”

  He said nothing, so she took him by the arm and practically shoved him out the door. She followed right behind and glanced back at her family. They all looked concerned. Well, her mother looked concerned. Her father looked guilty, and Hannah’s thoughts couldn’t have been more clear had she held up a giant placard that read: “I Told You So.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Drew felt a rush of conflicting emotions, and he wasn’t sure which to express first. Nikki had been talking at an auctioneer’s pace, explaining herself, the entire time they had been driving. Now they were near Harvey’s mansion, and Drew breathed deeply to keep from sounding too angry when he talked.

  “Why in the world would you deliberately keep something like that from me, Nikki? Were you only dating me because I was the one who bought your grandparents’ home out from under you? And to what end? What did you think—?”

  “No!” She sat facing him as he drove. “I was dating you because I—I liked you. And I never planned to not tell you. I just didn’t, and then too much time went by and we kept dating and it would have been weird to tell you after we got so…involved.”

  His laugh was short on humor. “Oh, that was a good plan. This isn’t weird at all. I mean, I feel as if I’ve been the brunt of some bizarre joke the entire time we’ve been seeing each other.” He pulled up Harvey’s driveway and parked. “Your family—what did you do, tell them to wait until I left before openly discussing what a jerk I am for interfering with your plans for your family home?”

  “Obviously not! Couldn’t you tell my father completely forgot about it until you two were talking on our way out? I stopped fussing about losing the house quite awhile ago.”

  “I guess so, since I never heard about it.” And then it dawned on him. He pointed at her. “That’s what the funny looks were about. Oh, Nikki, there were so many times you thought about it, weren’t there? I even asked you about that, about the annoyed faces you kept making, back ages ago. I asked if there was something I had done that bothered you. You had plenty of chances to be honest with me.” He held the steering wheel and stared outside. “And I kept going on and on about ‘my house this’ and ‘my house that.’ I feel like such a selfish jerk.”

  “That’s not
how I see you.”

  Now the past several months streamed through his mind. He groaned and gripped his forehead. “What you must have thought when I asked you to decorate for me.” He looked at her again, still baffled. “What did you think? How could you do all of that without coming clean? You just let me be an idiot with my stupid little project.”

  “But you weren’t an idiot. And it wasn’t a stupid project. It was the same project I would have had if…”

  “If I hadn’t swooped in and trashed your big dream.”

  “Drew, look. I was upset at first, I’ll admit it. Maybe longer than just at first. You bought the house just as I had saved enough to make an offer. My Realtor had expressed an interest to the seller—”

  “That was you! You were the other person interested in the house! That’s why I offered them the full asking price.”

  “But we didn’t know each other yet, Drew. I’m sorry I ended up costing you money.”

  He heard a hint of anger—or maybe hurt—in that comment. He tried to soften his tone.

  “That’s not even an issue, Nikki. If you honestly didn’t know I was the buyer, you couldn’t have deliberately affected what I paid. And I had already made the offer by the time we met. That’s right, isn’t it?”

  She nodded. “I think so. It was all happening about the same time, I think. I didn’t realize you were the buyer until the first day we went out. Right before we went to Ashworth’s soda fountain—when I stopped at the house and you were in the kitchen with your general contractor. I guess I thought I’d tell you about my great-grandparents if we ended up liking each other enough to keep seeing each other. And then I just couldn’t find a comfortable time to tell you. But what I was going to say is that I no longer look at you and see the man who—how did you put it? Trashed my dreams?”

  “You no longer see me that way? Nikki, how could you? I mean, we’ve been—” How could he delicately ask how she could have let him kiss her and stroke her face and gaze into her eyes all these months when she resented him even a little? The thought embarrassed him all over again. “I mean, what’s wrong with you?”

  He saw her flinch, and then she looked down at her lap.

  The meanness of his question lingered there in the air after he said it. But he couldn’t bring himself to take it back.

  “I don’t know,” she said, her head still down. “I honestly don’t know what I was afraid of.” She looked up at him, and he saw that she was fighting tears. “I guess I was afraid of something like this.” She gestured back and forth between them. She opened the car door and stepped out.

  “Nikki.”

  “Mmm-hmm?” Her voice was falsely light, and she didn’t bend down to look at him through the window. He doubted she’d be able to say anything else without crying.

  He leaned toward the passenger seat so he could look up at her. “I’m sorry I’ve been so angry. I was just caught by surprise. I think I need to do some thinking. Can I call you later?”

  She gave him a polite smile and nodded. She lifted her hand in a negligible wave before turning and walking swiftly toward the mansion.

  He drove down the driveway and passed the spot where he and Freddie had first seen Nikki walking out of Harvey’s house with Riley. That had been the day he’d thrown the leash on Freddie and sought her out. He had tracked her down as if she were the sweetest prize. That seemed so long ago. A lot of time had gone by. Now he knew her so well. Or did he?

  This new facet of their relationship—new to him, anyway—was important enough for him to weigh seriously. How had it changed the way they would relate to each other? Did they need to fix something between them? Could they?

  He headed home. If he had any hope of making clear-headed decisions here, he was going to have to spend a little time in prayer.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Harvey happened to be walking through the front foyer of the mansion, accompanied by his valet, when Nikki walked in. She tried quickly to wipe her eyes dry before they could tell she had been crying. She noticed Harvey wince as he walked, and that was enough to distract her from her own problems.

  “Are you in pain, Harvey?”

  “Pardon?” He turned, placed his hand on Edward’s arm for support, and managed a smile for her. “Ah, welcome home, Nikki. No. I’m just stiff from sitting too long. Had an early-morning conference call with the Hong Kong office—”

  Without thinking, Nikki checked her watch as she fell into the slow stride next to them. It was well past dinnertime.

  “—Early morning for them, I mean,” Harvey said. “And they were all full of vim and vigor after a good night’s sleep.” He patted his chest. “This old fella has been working all day. Two hours of sitting still tends to make my body feel as if concrete has been poured into my veins.”

  Edward said, “We were just going to spend a little time in the gym. A little walk on the treadmill to loosen things up.”

  When she looked back at Harvey, he was studying her eyes.

  “Why don’t you come with us? I have a few things to run past you.”

  She nodded. It would be good to think about work right now, rather than going to her room and wondering if it was time to pack away the photo of Drew that adorned her nightstand. “Sure. Let me just hang up my jacket and put my purse away. I’ll catch up.”

  Harvey chuckled. “At the pace I’m moving, I imagine you will.”

  She ran up to her room, dropped her things on the bed, and checked her eyes in the mirror. If she truly let herself experience what was coursing through her heart, she could very easily break down in full-on sobbing. Instead, she took several deep breaths and ignored the picture frame on the stand near her pillow. She tugged her sweater straight as if she were wearing a suit and donned her pert, professional manner.

  Edward and Harvey had picked up the pace, apparently, the longer they walked. Harvey must have been telling the truth. He was just stiff from sitting too long.

  That’s right. Harvey tended to be frank about what was going on. Unlike her.

  He was already on the treadmill, and he and Edward were pushing buttons to get it running. Usually Harvey had a trainer come work with him several days a week, so neither Harvey nor Edward ever paid much attention to how to program the treadmill. “Ah, Nikki. Come walk with me. Maybe you can figure out this contraption for us. It’s like programming a space launch. Oh! There, that got it, Edward.” The belt began moving before Nikki reached him.

  Harvey had several treadmills side by side in his gym, since he often conducted business while doing his simple exercises and wasn’t averse to having his employees walk beside him. Sometimes his grandson, Nathan, and great-grandson, Paul, joined him for a generational walkathon, which Nikki found especially endearing.

  For now it would be just Harvey and her.

  “Edward, would you mind coming back in a few minutes so Nikki and I can have a little privacy?”

  “Sure, Harvey. You two will be all right, then?” He tapped the face of Harvey’s treadmill. “Do me a favor and clip the emergency stop to your sleeve or something, will you?”

  Rather than giving Edward a hard time for his mother-hen attitude, Harvey simply winked at Nikki and clipped the cord to the hem of his shirt.

  “There you go, Edward. Give us fifteen minutes, and then I’ll be ready to head on to bed.”

  Once Edward closed the gym door behind himself, Harvey gave Nikki a grandfatherly smile.

  She smiled back. “Am I going to need to write anything down? Is this about the menus for this week? Are you craving something in particular?”

  He held the treadmill handles, looked off into the distance, and pushed his lips out, as if he were giving great consideration to her questions. Then he looked at her and said, “No, I thought we might talk about you.”

  She tripped over her own feet and had to grab the handles herself.

  Harvey said, “Do we need to attach the emergency cord to you too?”

  She laughed softly. “
No. You just caught me off guard. What do you mean, you want to talk about me? Did I mess up somewhere?”

  “You tell me. You came home looking pretty unhappy. I know it’s none of my business, but I’m sorry to say that seems to be the trend between us these days.”

  She gasped. “Harvey, what do you mean? What’s the trend?”

  “The widening gap. When you first started working here, it didn’t take long before you seemed very comfortable around me.”

  “That’s true. That’s because of you. You’re easy to be around.”

  “Thank you, dear. But over the past several months, I’ve noticed that you seem to keep more to yourself. Oh, I’m happy to see you going out with your young man. That’s a definite improvement. At least I think it is.”

  She looked away from him. She really didn’t want to be the crybaby on the treadmill.

  “Nikki, is there something about your relationship with…Drew, is it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes, well, I notice you’ve never had him over to meet anyone here. Edward tells me he’s chatted briefly with him out front a few times and he seems like a pleasant fellow. Is there something about Drew that you’re ashamed of?”

  She was perspiring now, even though they were walking as slowly as a New Orleans funeral procession. She wasn’t sure why she had kept Drew at a distance with regard to Harvey and her parents. And Drew had never complained, even though he had included her several times in social events with his local friends. He seemed to assume that she preferred to take everything very slowly.

  “No, not Drew. I’m ashamed of myself.”

  “It takes two to make some bad decisions, Nikki. And I want to be sure no one is treating you in an ungentlemanly way.”

  She had to walk for a while before she realized what he was saying. She gasped and felt a rush of heat in her face.

  “Harvey! Oh, no. Drew is a perfect gentleman with me. I’ve been the one to treat him unfairly. But that wasn’t my intention. Ever.”

  And she spilled out her circumstances. She told him about her discovery that Drew was the person who bought “her” house. She explained that she had tried all along to keep separate her feelings of loss and her growing affection for Drew.