Holiday Magic

by Fern Michaels

  “I can protect myself,” I said, but it was weak. So, okay. Maybe it was a teeny tiny bit romantic for a man to be protective, to want to rescue me from a situation. Was it anti-feminist to think that? “All right, tough guy, nice meeting you, stay out of my business and my life, don’t ever try to rescue me again, and a Merry Christmas to you.” I turned to go back into the bar, but he caught my arm.

  “All right, tough lady, it was nice meeting you, too. I won’t get in your business again until at least tomorrow, I won’t interfere with your life unless you invite me or I invite myself, and a Merry Christmas to you, I’d like to see you again.”

  No. Definite no. That would be a disaster. “Why do you want to see me again? I haven’t been pleasant, I yelled at you, called you a testosterone-driven cowboy oaf and told you not to treat me like a damsel in distress. That doesn’t usually lead people to want to see others again.”

  He was so close now that if it hadn’t been snowing, I was sure I could have felt his heat. My, I did love his cowboy hat. Cowboy hats are so earthly, Americanly sexy.

  “Here’s what I know already, Meredith,” he said, his voice soft. “I’ve never seen a woman in action like you before.” He chuckled and that chuckle ran down my spine in an earthly, Americanly, and sexy way. “You’re a tough lady, and smart. You stood up for yourself, fought for yourself, and stayed cool the whole time. You’re articulate, even when you’re knocking a man on his butt.”

  “I wanted…” I was getting all confused again. “Honesty is the best policy.” I cringed. Honesty is the best policy? What was I? A school teacher?

  “Sure is, and I’m being honest here. I like how you don’t filter what you’re thinking; I like the way you dress with all the different cowboy hats I’ve seen the last two weeks; I like the sound of your voice, and your smile. I wanted to introduce myself before this, but couldn’t quite catch up to you.” He winked.

  I inhaled sharply. Yikes. He knew I’d been avoiding him!

  “I like your independence, too.” He grinned again, his green eyes smiling at me, inviting, welcoming. “Are those good enough reasons? Can I take you to dinner?”

  I pinched myself as a haze of lust started swirling around me. This, I had to call a halt to. I needed to reject before I was rejected.

  “No, they’re not good enough reasons. Look here, testosterone cowboy. I don’t want to go out with you. What’s the point? I go to dinner with you a couple times, you want to swing me into bed, and then that’s that, you go back to your ‘work’ in whatever state that’s in now. You want a Montana sweetie, don’t you? You want a little hee-haw like those drunken fishermen in there, but you wrap it up prettier, isn’t that right? I don’t do that type of thing.”

  All vestiges of a smile were now gone, his face hardening. “I don’t either, and that’s not what I meant.” I did not miss the sharp anger lacing through those words.

  “Good. Because I’m not that kind of lady.”

  “I never thought you were, Meredith,” he bit out, shoulders back as if I’d hit him. “I was asking you to dinner because I thought we’d have great conversation if you could refrain from decking me. I thought maybe we’d laugh, and I could get behind that nail tough exterior you wear so mercilessly. I could get to know you, without the armor. Would I want to take you out to dinner a few times, throw you into bed, and then leave? No. That’s not in the plan. I’m not that kind of man. Do you always judge people so harshly?”

  “I judge what I see.”

  “You judge what you see?” His eyes narrowed, and he did not look so gentle anymore. “So, let me get this right. I come into the bar, step into a fight you’re having with one man, which is soon going to be four men, I lift the man off his toes, make them all apologize to you, and you’ve got me pegged as a man who will flip a woman into bed and then drop her when I move on? Have I got that about right?”

  I nodded. Gall. Wasn’t I right?

  “Well, guess what, Meredith, with the white streak in her hair and a dangerous right hook, you’re wrong. Entirely wrong.”

  We glared at each other in the silence of the snowflakes. This argument would not fit into one of those sappy Christmas shows.

  “Damn, but you are going to be difficult, aren’t you,” he muttered. “Not a moment’s peace will I have with you.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “I mean, Meredith Ghirlandaio, that I’m going home, to my ranch, outside of town, and I will see you soon so that you can begin torturing me with your difficultness.”

  “What are you talking about? I’m not going to see you soon—”

  Logan Taylor wrapped one arm around me, drawing me close from chest to knee, put his hand on my cheek, tipped my head back and said, “I would really like to kiss you, but I won’t. You’re a classy lady, and first we’re going to date and I’m going to treat you like a lady should be treated. Then, when you’re ready, and you ask me to, I’m going to kiss you and that’ll be the start of us.”

  “Us?” I said weakly, breathlessly, and I cursed myself for it. Where was my tough cowgirl attitude?

  “Yes. Us. But it’s too much for tonight, my lady Meredith, so, good night.”

  He released me, and all his warmth was instantly gone. Poof. I leaned against the wall of the oldest bar in Telena with the bullet holes to prove it, and attempted to breathe.

  I was in trouble. No doubt about that.

  Chapter 3

  Two days after going weak in Logan’s arms, I sat next to Jacob at the piano.

  “Hi, Jacob.”

  Jacob took his hands off the keys and placed them in his lap. I dropped an arm around his shoulders. He was rigid and stiff at first, but then leaned into me.

  “Everyone talked about how beautiful your Christmas songs were this morning.” That was true. There was a reason that on Saturday and Sunday mornings we were packed for breakfast from 9:00 to 1:00. Jacob, a piano genius at age twelve, usually played about three and a half hours then. People called asking when he would play. My answer was always, “He’ll play when he feels like it.” I looked at his tip jar. “Looks like you made another haul of money.”

  Jacob had a mop of brown hair and huge brown eyes that showed every emotion he was feeling. Unfortunately, he hardly spoke. When I asked him why he loved piano, he said, “I like that I can make music with my fingers.”

  When I asked him why he liked to play for hours every day, he said, “Because then it’s just the piano and me, not me and my loneliness.”

  When I asked him how school was going, he said, “Not so good. The kids think I’m weird.” He had not made friends this last year here. “No one likes me. I’m always alone at school unless the kids are bugging me. I’m invisible.”

  Jacob and Sarah’s childhood had so far been lousy. Though their mother, Leia, and I were born and raised here, Leia had left and wandered from city to city after high school. She had two boyfriends who produced Jacob and Sarah and who had both taken off into the wild blue yonder.

  Our parents tried to visit with their grandkids as much as possible, when they could locate their daughter. I came and got them for three weeks every summer and took them to stay with me in New York, starting when Sarah was five and Jacob was three. They had been so happy to see me, so tearfully grateful, it was gut-wrenching. No child should be that pathetically relieved to be away from his or her mother.

  Leia had finally settled in a small town in Idaho for about six months, before she declared, “I cannot be a mother for one more minute. I have to live my life. My spirit is crushed, my inner soul is crying for freedom, and I know my destiny isn’t here. I’m sorry, kids.” She left the kids with a neighbor and called me. “Sorry, Meredith! They like you better anyhow.”

  She was sorry. Sorry. Well, good golly, apology not accepted, you selfish she-devil. I smashed down that well of anger that flowed against my sister for numerous, complicated reasons.

  My parents, both doctors, prepared to leave a new medical cli
nic for kids that they’d helped to open in Africa to take care of their grandchildren. I didn’t see that happening. Leave all those kids? No. So, after a long, long argument, and a gale of tears, I quit my chef’s job in New York City, packed up, and flew out to Leia’s.

  “I’m sorry, my sweet daughter,” my father wept. “I’m sorry for all that Leia has done to you. We could not control that girl. I know your teenage years were so hard with her moods, her rebellion, her tantrums, and then with the accident, honey. She was dropped on her head by the nurse when she was about a day old. Maybe that’s what caused all this.”

  “It’s my fault,” my mother groaned. “In every single generation in my family line in England, there is one girl who is so naughty, so very naughty, and your sister is it. It’s the royal curse, I know it. I have drunk so much tea over that girl.”

  When I arrived at Leia’s neighbor’s house, I couldn’t see how I could possibly make a living at anything in her town, so I thanked the woman profusely, packed up the kids’ possessions, bought this three-story brick house with almost every penny I had, and “set up shop,” as my mother would have said.

  It was a good decision to leave Idaho. Leia, as usual, had not made a stellar reputation for herself. In fact, she had spent more than enough time in bars, and had had many boyfriends, most not married. Jacob and Sarah had been on the receiving end of kids’ merciless teasing because of it. Heartbreaking.

  “Come on in, Jacob, and I’ll make you some of my Excellent Eggs Benedict with Cranky Crab.”

  He glanced up at me, skinny, pale, sad, and I ached so bad for that kid, I thought the pain would reel me backwards.

  “And, I’ll throw in some Boo Boo Blueberry French Toast on the side and cut them into Christmas trees.”

  That got a small smile out of him. I gave him a hug. “I love you, Jacob. You are a talented, kind person. Never forget that, buddy. I am so proud of you.”

  He hunched his shoulders. “Aunt Meredith, has my mom called at all? Or e-mailed you?”

  Oh, how I had struggled when he and his sister, Sarah, had asked me these questions over the last months. Did I tell them the truth: No, she hadn’t contacted me.

  Or, did I lie to them to spare them hurt?

  I opted for the truth. These children needed no more lies, no more deception, no more blows to their sense of reality. It was disrespectful to them and would only lead to more pain.

  “No, honey, she has not.”

  I hugged him close when he wiped tears from his eyes with both hands, made a choking sound, then banged his fingers on the piano keys, before drifting into a well-known, depressing song.

  He liked the Christmas tree blueberry French toast, though.

  The police were at my door at 2:00 the next morning. They knew to ring the doorbell to my upstairs quarters only, so as not to awaken my guests. I hurried down the creaking steps and yanked open the front door in my pink robe.

  “Hello, Sato, hello, Juan,” I said to the officers, pushing my white streak off my face and searing Sarah with what I hoped reflected my truly tremendous anger at her.

  “Good evening,” Juan said. Juan is the size of a Mack truck. He secretly reads romance novels.

  Sato is slender and enters, and wins, weight lifting competitions. He has six children, and his wife is a firefighter. He was two years ahead of me in high school. “She wears the pants in the house,” Sato told me once, then stared up into the air with a smile on his face, “But, dang, she looks so good in them, so I let her.”

  “Hi, Meredith,” Sato said. “We found Sarah downtown again behind the Santa Claus display. Her male friend ran off. Sarah did, too. She’s fast if I do say so myself, but she made a wrong turn down the wrong alley, so we caught up with her.”

  I thought I was going to cry.

  I motioned for everyone to come into the parlor and shut the front door. When we were in the parlor, I shut that door, too, so my guests wouldn’t wake up.

  I do not feel up to this job of parenting. I am overwhelmed and outgunned. I am lost.

  Sarah scowled at me. She was wearing about eight layers of makeup, a mini skirt that barely covered her you know what, tights, and her snow boots. She had a jacket on but had not bothered to zip it, and as she had taken to wearing her shirts unbuttoned way too far down, I instinctively reached to yank her shirt up.

  “Aunt Meredith!” she said, appalled. She slapped my hand away.

  “Sarah, you pull that shirt up and cover yourself like a lady, or we will stand here and wait all night. You get your boobs back under your shirt right this minute.”

  “I can do what I want! I told you I’m not going to be constrained by the rules of a Puritanical society anymore, I’m not going to be locked up in a box and do what everyone else in suburbia does, I’m not going to become a cultural zombie—”

  “No one asked you to be a zombie,” I said, semi-shouting. “We asked that you not sneak out at night and run into alleys with the police behind you.”

  “I wasn’t sneaking. I was exercising my right to be an independent person, make my own decisions, and be who I want to be!”

  “Gee, Sarah. We all want to be who we want to be, but hopefully that does not involve the police!”

  It was at that moment that Sarah’s face, up until now defiant and furious, crumbled. “I’m sick of this! Sick of my life. Sick of it here. Sick of everything.”

  My initial reaction was to feel sorry for her, but I bucked up. Letting someone wallow in self-pity never helps anyone. “Sarah, you are to apologize to the officers for being out late.” I crossed my arms, stared meaningfully at Juan and Sato, and decided to get tough. This was one too many times to be brought home by police. “Is she staying here tonight or are you taking her to jail?”

  Juan and Sato understood what I was saying immediately. Juan turned to Sato. “I think this is it. We can’t have her continuing to break curfew.” He cleared his throat. “We came by, Meredith, uh, as a courtesy. She needs to change into something more conservative, like a sweatshirt. We don’t want her inviting problems in jail.”

  Sato nodded as Sarah’s face went white.

  “There’s a couple of tough gals in there we picked up earlier tonight,” Sato said, chest out. “One had the knife, remember? Sharp knife. And she’s covered in tattoos. She’s from Los Angeles. I think she’s still drunk as a skunk. Man, she’s got a temper. The other gal’s pretty calm, but she was in for murder a few years ago….”

  “Can’t we separate Sarah from them?” I asked, the solicitous aunt.

  Sato and Juan regretfully shook their heads. “Probably not. The gals in the other cell are even worse.”

  Sarah was having trouble breathing, her breath coming in hiccupping gasps.

  “We can’t bend the rules for anyone, Meredith. Even if she’s a minor,” Juan said. “She was out late again, she shouldn’t have been, now she has to pay the consequences.”

  “I understand. I’ll get her sweatshirt. I’m sorry, gentlemen.”

  “No problem, Meredith. It’s exhausting dealing with a difficult teenager,” Sato said. “We’ll take her on into the jail, let you rest. Come and get her tomorrow about two in the afternoon. Sarah, when we get to the jail, I’ll have Larinda teach you some self-defense moves. They’re not foolproof, but they’ll help if she gets busy at the desk and one of the other women comes after you—”

  “No! No!” Sarah cried. “Oh no! I don’t want to go to jail, oh, please, Aunt Meredith, I won’t sneak out at night again, I promise, please…”

  We let her blather on, petrified down to her toes, for some time, with talk thrown in of “You’ve broken the law…. Your aunt can’t control you, so we will…. No one’s died in the jails here; you won’t either…. Clench your fists up tight before you box your cellmate, it’ll be a better hit….” Then Sato glared at Sarah. Juan kept shaking his head back and forth. I tapped my foot and said, “She needs a lesson….”

  Sarah dissolved.

  Sato sig
hed. “Last time, young lady, then we’re taking you in. And if we pick you up on a Friday, you’re not out ’til Monday, especially since it’s the Christmas season and there’s all those Christmas parties. We won’t be able to get a judge to let you out.”

  A few minutes later I walked a teary, radically relieved ex-zombie up the stairs, her shoulders slumped, and insisted she take a shower.

  When she came into my bedroom, in her pink bunny pajamas, no caked-on black makeup, she looked like a kid again.

  When I saw the tears on her cheeks as she slept, I finally cried.

  I can’t handle my own life. It is truly bigger than me and my capabilities.

  “I am enormous,” Mary, my very pregnant employee, said cheerfully as she pushed open the swinging doors to our kitchen with used plates. “I am the size of a tank. I think I have five kids hiding in my stomach, and the gorgeous cowboy in the corner eating your Meredith’s Sock It To You Pancakes wants to talk to you. Hee haw!”

  My hand shook on the spatula. “No. He doesn’t. You’re kidding. And you are not the size of a tank.”

  “I’m not kidding.” Mary waddled over to the fridge for a pitcher of fresh-squeezed orange juice. She is twenty years old, married, studying to be a teacher, and seven and a half months pregnant but looks sixteen months pregnant. “He asked for you. Said he needed to talk to you about buying proper cowboy hats since you know so much about them. By the way I do like the one you’re wearing today. Green with jewels suits you. It’s very holiday-ish.”

  Logan Taylor was in my dining room next to the Christmas tree I’d decorated with pink and white angels and pink lights. I was so nervous I cut through a strawberry and almost cut off my finger. I poured whipping cream in a bowl and half of it dripped down the cabinets. I flipped a pancake and it dropped to the floor because my hands were trembling. “I can’t talk to him.”

  “Why not?” Martha asked. Martha is Mary’s sister, and she is always busy, busy, busy, whereas Mary will sit down and enjoy life now and then. Currently Martha was darting around the kitchen, refilling a bowl with powdered sugar, whipping up eggs, and arranging our Rockin’ and Rollin’ Chocolate Raspberry Stuffed Croissants.