Hating Christmas (Holiday Series)

by Carol Rose

  “You should have asked me! You can’t spend money without asking me! You have to have my permission now!”

  Levi chuckled. His dad had always been an emotional kind of guy, easy to read and prone to getting upset when things didn’t go his way.

  “What?” Michael glared at him. “Why are you laughing? You think I’m kidding? You should have heard some of the things she said to me.”

  Shifting to find a more comfortable seat against the woodpile, Levi commented in a level voice, “I’d have had to be deaf not to hear you guys fighting.”

  His dad stared at him before returning to what he was saying. “She thinks she’s the boss now, that just because we’re married, she’s in charge!”

  “Well, Dad, I think you did rush into this marriage,” Levi shifted on the icy wood. “But—to be fair—I didn’t exactly hear Audrey say she’s in charge.”

  “Oh, yes, she did,” his father insisted. “She wants me to run every purchase past her first. I can’t even buy a stick of gum without asking her first!”

  Levi just looked at the older man, struggling to keep the grin off his face. Things had certainly blown up before he thought they would.

  “She does,” his dad insisted at his grin. “I mean, what woman can’t accept a gift at Christmas? She must have never let her first husband get her anything.”

  Levi’s fairness gene again prompted him to say, “This wasn’t exactly perfume or earrings, you know.”

  “How do you know what I gave her?” His father looked pugnacious as he asked the question.

  “Again, Dad. You were yelling at each other. It wasn’t hard to hear what you were saying.”

  His father looked away, a little sheepishly. “Well, maybe I did get loud—“

  “I’d say.” Levi’s butt cheeks were numb with the cold. He spared them a fleeting thought, wondering if Holly would mind helping him warm up. Even if she had totally crossed the line with going directly to Mac about her documentary, that girl could kiss.

  “I made a mistake, Levi. I thought Audrey loved me…that she enjoyed the cruise together.” His father swallowed. “I thought she’d like to do it again. We had a wonderful time.”

  Levi didn’t say anything for several long minutes. He put his arm around his father’s shoulders, giving him a squeeze. “You’re the greatest, Dad.”

  His father turned to look at him, his eyes damp. “I thought I’d found someone special. You know how long I’ve been dating. After that mess with Rebecca….” Michael dropped his head again. “I’ve been careful. I know you were concerned because Audrey and I hadn’t seen one another in very long, but we’ve talked a lot about how we feel about things. She seemed like the warm, loving person I remembered. I thought she loved me.”

  “She didn’t say she didn’t love you.” The words were out before Levi realized it.

  “But she can’t really care about me if she doesn’t want to spend time with me.” Michael shuffled his feet in the trampled snow.

  He knew he should agree with this, but Levi couldn’t bring himself to lie outright. “Unless I missed part of the very loud discussion you were having, she didn’t say she doesn’t want to spend time with you.”

  “But that’s what she meant,” Michael said glumly. “I mean, what woman turns down cruise tickets with a man she loves?”

  Levi chuckled. “I can think of several answers to that—women who get seasick, those who just like dry land vacations—“

  “You know what I mean.”

  It wasn’t his experience that women worried about out-spending a guy’s wallet, but Levi had taken note of what Audrey had said about the cost of the trip. To his surprise, he agreed whole-heartedly with what she’d said. Of course, she was probably starting out in the financially-conservative role to set his dad up not to question her later expenditures. Still, going to the lengths of having a big fight over it seemed odd.

  Levi again shifted on the frozen log pile. “Yes, but… Audrey didn’t say she didn’t want to be with you…she seemed to be more worried about the expense. Of course, that might not have been the truth, but it was what she said.”

  “How likely is it that she’s worried about my money?” his father asked in disbelief. “Another cruise isn’t going to dent my retirement. I’m okay, aren’t I? I worked hard all those years and saved my money. I can afford to splurge now.”

  He stared into space for a moment. “Of course, I’ve never known Audrey to lie.”

  “You were actually splurging when you went on the cruise where you met her,” Levi pointed out. “And, um, I kind of get her point—“

  What the hell was he saying? He was supposed to be encouraging his father to divorce this woman!

  “At least what I heard of her point with you both yelling” Levi amended, frustrated when he heard himself add, “And it is kind of soon to go on another cruise.”

  It was just that he agreed with Audrey’s point in this argument! His dad ought to have conferred with his wife, if they were really ready to be a couple.

  His dad wiggled the toe of his boot in the snow.

  “You think I over-reacted?” He glanced over at his son.

  “It wouldn’t be the first time,” Levi admitted reluctantly, straightening from the snowy pile. His butt was frozen stiff and he’d let his own innate sense of fairness keep him from stoking his father’s resentment. He tried to make up for his own stupidity. “Maybe you aren’t ready to be a couple….”

  Michael didn’t even seem to have heard the last part. “I guess I owe her an apology for that.”

  “Maybe.” Damn, damn, damn.

  Levi followed behind his father as the older man made for the house. Holly wasn’t going to understand even a little, how this thing had turned. He wasn’t sure he understood himself.

  * * * * * * * * *

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “What were you thinking?” Holly hissed as she passed Levi in the hall later that morning. “Talking your dad into giving this marriage another shot? Are you crazy?”

  He didn’t respond, merely sending her a sardonic glance as he moved passed her and opened the door to his room.

  With a glance at her mother’s closed door, Holly didn’t move. “Levi. What were you thinking? They were so close to splitting up. My mother was so mad at your dad that she was crying. My mother never cries.”

  “Come in here, if you must talk about it.” He held his door open, lifting his brows as he glanced meaningfully toward her mother’s room.

  “Okay, but they’re too busy canoodling and promising each other they’ll never fight again to hear anything I say.” Holly knew her voice was waspish, but she couldn’t care less. To have gotten so close to the goal, only to have Levi mess things up was maddening.

  Holly resisted the urge to tap her foot impatiently as she looked around while he closed the door quietly behind her. She’d been in the guest room a hundred times—even helping her mother paint it Sonoma Taupe several years before. Having Levi’s unmistakable Brioni suit jacket hung on the back of the colonial desk chair, however, and a large pair of men’s running shoes in the corner by the white ruffled bed made the whole room look different. It even smelled of a subtle men’s cologne that she couldn’t quite identify.

  It suddenly seemed very personal, to be in his bedroom with him. Holly kept her focus on Levi, but the inviting white bed obtruded into her peripheral vision, as if it was calling to them. Dirty, fun options suddenly occurred to her and she squashed them immediately.

  Focus, Holly. Focus. She was mad at him, for heaven’s sake.

  “I didn’t encourage my dad to give it another shot,” Levi denied, leaning back against the closed door.

  “Well, you must have said something. When you followed him out of here, he was furious, but he came back all sweetness and light.”

  “I know.” Levi let out a gusty breath of air, looking down at his shoes.

  “And then when I’m in there, comforting my mother…talking to her about ge
tting an annulment, your dad comes bounding back in, begging for her forgiveness.” Hands resting on her hips, she glared and waited for him to defend himself. “Tell me that you couldn’t find him. That he drove off or locked himself in the downstairs bathroom or something.”

  A smile creased Levi’s tanned face. “Now, that would have been funny.”

  Her foot started tapping, despite her earlier decision. “Levi!”

  He shrugged, the smile disappearing from his face. “I found him by the wood pile.”

  “And?” She couldn’t help the impatience in her voice. “Did you talk to him about the fight?”

  “Yes, we talked about it.”

  “Didn’t you point out to him that this fight just shows they never should have married? Didn’t you say something about their different money philosophies? Anything?”

  “Look,” he said, pulling away from the door to walk over and sit at the end of the bed, “I want our parents to see the error of their ways just as much as you do—“

  “Well, it doesn’t seem like it,” she said, unable to keep the snide note out of her voice.

  “—but,” the glance he sliced her was irritated, “I don’t lie to my dad. I couldn’t agree that she was being unreasonable not to want to spend money on another cruise so quickly. He talked himself into forgiving your mother.”

  Holly sank down to sit next to him at the foot of the bed. If there was something she might have suggested when she and her mother were redoing this room, it was to point out the lack of seating options.

  “They might have different approaches to money management, but I happen to agree with your mother on this.”

  “Really? I thought you expect all women to try to bilk their husbands of their wealth?” The sarcastic remark left her lips before she even realized it.

  His glanced at her with loathing. “Why she said what she said is up for debate, but what she said made sense.”

  Shaking her head, Holly mused, “Now why would an older wife want to save her new husband’s money? I mean, what nefarious reason could she have had?”

  He didn’t answer this, looking even more saturnine.

  “So what did you say to your mother?” Levi’s question was sharp. “Did you tell her to divorce my dad? Or did you try to comfort her tears? Maybe you don’t actually want them to break up.”

  She gasped at this sudden assault.

  Levi got up from his seat next to her on the bed, pacing forward and then swinging back as if he were a litigator and she was on trial. “Maybe this whole thing is a set-up and you and your mom are working together to dig your claws into my dad.”

  “That’s ridiculous!”

  “What better way to work at that goal than to have them fight over money with your mother looking as if she’s trying to conserve his funds? I don’t see you doing anything to break up this foolish marriage.” He glared at her, a muscle working in his tight jaw.

  “That’s because you were down on the woodpile talking your father into giving it another chance!”

  “Just admit it,” he insisted. “You both would benefit from this marriage.”

  “Oh, now I’m supposed to be in this, too?” She bounced indignantly off the bed to face him. “I’m plotting with my mother to steal your father’s retirement money?”

  “Well, you’ve already shown–what with sneaking around me to get Mac Toledo to appear in your documentary—that you don’t mind taking the nefarious route.” His face was contemptuous.

  “The two things aren’t the same, no matter what you say, Levi Harper. Mac is his own person and I’m sure he’ll give your cut of his pay from my film—“

  “Probably buy my Starbuck’s for a month,” he scoffed.

  “—but this situation between my mother and your father has nothing to do with that! I think they were impulsive and foolish to get married so quickly. She had no need to do anything that silly! My mom’s not hurting financially.”

  He leaned back against the wall beside the door, “You’re right about them getting married. They should have just lived together and let this thing run its course.”

  She looked at him in dislike. “I think they should have just had a shipboard fling, like anyone in their right minds, and let it go at that.”

  “My dad’s old school.” Levi looked at her a long minute. “He’s got this honor thing that always spells his ruin.”

  “Well, my mother won’t be his ruin—and she isn’t after his money—but she’s old school, too.” Holly stood brooding, staring sightlessly at the off-white pile in front of her. “They should have just slept together and scratched the itch without calling a parson.”

  Levi came back and sat down on the bed, the steam seeming to have left him. “We still need to find a way to help them to realize this was just an itch thing.”

  “My mother,” she said, going over to sit again next to him on the bed, “doesn’t usually succumb to itches. She’s very level-headed normally. I don’t know what got into her.”

  “My dad’s a very sexy guy.” The glimmer of a smile touched Levi’s lips. “Or so I’m told.”

  She glanced at him with a quick answering smile. “I can’t imagine who would have told you a thing like that, even if they thought it.”

  “She probably couldn’t control herself.” Levi chuckled. “We Harper men have that effect on women.”

  Holly snorted.

  “You probably shouldn’t sit next to me,” he advised her with a grin. “Lust might overcome you like it did your mom.”

  Starting to chuckle at the image his words brought to her mind, she was soon giggling. “Stop. Eww. You’re making me picture them naked together.”

  Levi looked at her, dissolved with laughter, leaning back on the bed next to him. “Well, it’s either that or she was motivated by a desire to set herself up comfortably for the rest of her life.”

  “Now why’d you have to go there?” Holly’s desire to laugh disappeared. “You have issues, you know?”

  He shrugged. “That’s only true if I’m wrong. What if I’m not wrong?”

  “You don’t know my mother or anything about her,” Holly snapped, the man had the power to madden, amuse and frustrate her, all at once. How could she go so quickly from suffering a heat wave at his nearness, to dissolving into laughter at his words to wanting to strangle him?

  ***

  “Mom, you don’t have to get these out every year.” Kneeling beside the open ornament storage box, Holly carefully dislodged the decorated ball from its tissue paper.

  “I know,” her mom straightened from underneath the tree they’d bought for the den, “but these ornaments hold such wonderful memories from when you were younger. See? Remember when we got this one that Christmas before your father started getting really sick?”

  Grimly affixing an ornament hanger, Holly passed the ball to her mother. She remembered alright.

  Her mother sighed nostalgically. “Such a pretty blue. Your father loved this color.” Swinging around, she looked at her daughter. “You should wear this color more often.”

  “Because you have a Christmas ball that matches?”

  “No,” her mother said as if she were talking to a slow child, “because your dad loved it on you. Goes well with your coloring, all that wonderful red hair of yours and your ivory complexion.”

  “Keeping the sunscreen companies in business,” Holly muttered.

  “Your dad loved the holidays, too. He wouldn’t have wanted you to dislike Christmas the way you do.”

  She didn’t respond, digging another tissue-wrapped ornament out. Her own small apartment in LA was streamlined and uncluttered. No Christmas crap there which was just the way she liked it, despite her mother’s infatuation with the holiday.

  “I don’t understand you not loving these.” Her mom held up a pair of glass reindeer, depicted in frisky postures.

  “Mom,” Holly paused in digging through the box, “how come you still love all this stuff? I mean, the season hasn�
��t always been good to us.”

  Her mother swiveled around from the half-decorated fir. “What do you mean?”

  “You know,” she went back to digging through the tissue. “Dad…everything after that.”

  Her mom received the heavy mini-snow globe Holly handed her. “Honey, you know I’ve always loved this time of year. It’s magical and joyful. Your dad just happened to die in December. It would have been terrible any time of the year.”

  “I guess it’s just associated with loss for me.” Her voice was flat to her own ears.

  “I know.” Her mother’s smile was compassionate. “We had different ways of coping with your dad dying then. I felt it was a wonderful gift—to have him released from the cancer. To have it happen just before the Christmas season seemed like a new start for us. I know he wouldn’t have wanted us to grieve him forever.”

  Holly’s look was somber. “You stayed single a long time…grieving.”

  “That’s true.” Her mother’s voice was matter of fact. “Your dad and I had a good marriage and I missed him terribly…I still miss him sometimes. And now I’m married to Michael. I waited until the right man came along and now I’m ready to start a relationship again.”

  “If he is the right guy,” Holly muttered under her voice.

  “I know this all took you and Levi a little by surprise.” She hung up a tiny sled next to a red twinkling light. “And I know that neither of you has the same enjoyment of Christmas as Michael and I do, but I’m hoping you can wish us both happiness and spend this short time here with us.”

  Choking up suddenly, elbow-deep in tissue paper as she searched for the last of the ornaments, Holly swallowed and said, “I do wish you happy, Mom. Very happy. I just wish you and Michael had dated a little longer….”

  “Longer doesn’t mean better. We knew each other when we were kids,” her mother said placidly.

  Holly clenched her jaws to keep from pointing out that shorter was almost guaranteed to mean the opposite. She’d tried to dissuade her mother from taking this step when she’d gotten the original phone call in Zambia before the ceremony.