James had always loved it when they had a white Christmas. It meant snowball fights with the kids and hot chocolate afterward. Faith would lace his and hers with peppermint schnapps.
“No frowning allowed,” Brooke said as they got in.
“Who’s frowning? Santa doesn’t frown.”
“He never used to,” Brooke said softly.
“Well, Santa’s getting too grumpy for this job. It’s about time for the old boy to pack it in.”
His daughter shot a startled look in his direction. “Daddy, are you crazy?”
“No, I’m just...” Sick of this ho-ho-ho crap. It would never do to say such a cynical thing to his daughter. “Ready for a break,” he improvised.
“You can’t take a break,” she protested as she drove out of the parking lot. “You’re Santa.”
James studied the crowd of cars rushing around them, people busy running errands, going places, preparing for holiday gatherings with loved ones. Most of the men in Seattle would be out the following day, frantically finding gifts for their women. He wished he was going to be one of them.
He reminded himself that he still had his kids. He had a lot for which to be thankful, and if Brooke had plans for Christmas, well, he and Dylan could make turkey TV dinners and eat the last of the cookies she’d baked for them, then watch a movie, like Bad Santa. Heh, heh, heh.
Now they were on the southbound freeway. Where were they going? Knowing his daughter, it would be someplace special.
He smiled as he thought about the contrast between her and his son. Dylan would come up with something at the last minute, most likely a six-pack of beer and a bag of nachos, their favorite football food. Naturally, Dylan would help him consume it all.
James was wondering what downtown Seattle spot his daughter had picked for dinner and was hoping it was in the Pike Place Market, where anything went in the way of dress, when they exited I-5 onto I-90, heading east out of Seattle. “Dinner in Bellevue?”
“Maybe,” she said, determined to be mysterious.
They passed Bellevue. And then Issaquah, getting increasingly farther from the city. Where the heck was she taking him?
When they reached North Bend at the foot of the Cascades, he said, “So, we’re eating here?”
“Actually, dinner’s in the backseat,” she said, nodding over her shoulder to a red cooler. “I’ve got roast beef sandwiches and apples and a beer for you if you want it.”
If they weren’t going out to dinner, then where were they going? Now he began to feel uneasy. How long was he going to be stuck in this suit? “Okay,” he said, making his tone of voice serious so she’d realize he was done fooling around. “What’s going on?”
“We’re going to Icicle Falls,” she said brightly.
“What?”
“This is a kidnapping.”
That was not funny. “Brooke,” he said sternly. “I’m not going to Icicle Falls.”
“Daddy,” she said just as sternly. “We’re all going to Icicle Falls. For Christmas. I booked us rooms at the Icicle Creek Lodge.”
“You can’t spring this on me, baby girl,” he said. “I don’t even have a change of clothes.”
“Not to worry. Dylan’s bringing clothes when he comes up later.”
He should’ve known she’d think of that. She’d probably given her younger brother a detailed list. He tried another argument. “I can’t leave my car at the mall.”
“Dylan’s picking it up after work and driving it to Icicle Falls. See? Everything’s under control.”
No, it wasn’t. It wasn’t remotely under control. James was getting hauled off to some stupid Bavarian village that would be chock-full of Christmas lights and happy tourists when all he’d wanted was to spend Christmas at home with his kids. Being depressed because his wife wasn’t there with them. And making the kids feel bad. Ho, ho, ho.
“We thought we should do something different this year,” Brooke added gently.
Maybe she was right. They could’ve tried to celebrate the way they’d always done with a big dinner on Christmas Eve, followed by a candlelight service at church and then pancakes and presents in the morning and friends over in the afternoon to sing Christmas carols and eat cookies. But it would all have been hollow and empty.
Still, he’d planned on trying. He’d bought a bunch of Christmas movies for them to watch and stocked up on cocoa, put up the tree and stuck their gift cards in among the branches. “I figured we’d have Christmas at home,” he said. Now he sounded like an ingrate and he didn’t want to do that. Anyway, it was too late now. They were halfway to Icicle Falls. The Polar Express had left the station.
“I think this will be good,” Brooke said. “It’s our gift to you.”
“Your gift?” Staying in some lodge would be expensive. “Oh, no. I’ll take care of it.”
“Daddy,” she said firmly. “You’ve always taken care of us. And you’ve always been Santa,” she added, smiling at him. “Now it’s our turn. So don’t ruin the game.”
He sighed and looked out the window at the stands of evergreens they were rushing past. He guessed he could play along.
As long as nobody asked him to be Santa this year. Because Santa had lost his Christmas spirit and he didn’t care if he ever found it again.
Chapter Two
All I Want for Christmas Is...
“What are you doing?” screeched Mrs. Steele, startling Missy Monroe.
This was not good because Missy was in midcut. The scissors took a slide and an extra half inch of hair disappeared.
“Ack!” Mrs. Steele cried.
“Sorry,” Missy muttered.
“Stop!” Mrs. Steele commanded. “That’s too short!”
It sure was now. “I’m sorry,” Missy said earnestly. “I thought you said you wanted to go shorter so the cut would last.”
“Shorter, not bald,” snapped her unhappy customer, scowling at their reflections in the mirror.
Short of gluing the woman’s hair back on, there was nothing Missy could do now. “I think, once we’ve styled it, you’ll like it.”
“Style? You have no style. How did I get stuck with you, anyway?”
Missy had just been thinking the same thing about Mrs. Steele. But she’d been the next available stylist, and there’d been no way she could wiggle out of taking the woman. She strongly suspected all the other stylists had been dawdling over their haircuts in an effort to avoid getting the old witch. Dummy her. She should’ve dawdled, too.
Nobody liked Mrs. Steele. She was sixty-something and skinny and wore a frown right along with her expensive clothes. Maybe if she ate more chocolate she’d be happier. Or if she went to some couture hair salon. But Mrs. Steele was notoriously cheap, which was why she was at Style Savings Salon. She never tipped and she was never happy, no matter what you did.
“Well, it’s too late now,” Mrs. Steele said with an irritable flick of the hand. “You’ve already gotten the color wrong. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that you can’t cut hair, either.”
Mrs. Steele had picked that color, but now it was Missy’s fault. Sooo unfair. She loved doing hair and helping women look their best, but sometimes she hated this job.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “It’ll look nice.” Well, the cut would, anyway. If Mrs. Steele had listened to her advice, the color would have been perfect, too. After a certain age, raven’s-wing black didn’t do a woman any favors.
Fortunately for Mrs. Steele, Missy knew what she was doing. She’d find a way to blend in this little slip of the scissors. She snipped some more and then put in some of the salon’s hair root lifter. This really was going to look nice...if only Mrs. Steele would stop frowning.
But all the product in the world, all the careful styling, couldn’t redeem the fact that
Missy had failed to be psychic and know what Mrs. Steele had really wanted, which was probably to look like Jennifer Lawrence or some other movie star. (Good luck with that.)
Mrs. Steele glared at herself in the mirror, her thin lips pressed together in an angry line. Then she glared at Missy. “My God, but you’re incompetent.”
She was not! She did hair, not plastic surgery. If Mrs. Steele wanted a miracle, she should have gone to church. Missy bit her lip to keep in the angry words.
Now everyone in the salon was staring, all the other last-minute holiday customers no doubt thanking God that they hadn’t gotten stuck with the incompetent stylist, all the other stylists thankful that they hadn’t gotten stuck with Mrs. Steele. Missy could feel the heat of embarrassment over this undeserved criticism from her collarbone to the roots of her powder-blue dye job.
“I’m sorry you’re not happy,” she said.
“I’m certainly not. The color’s wrong and the cut is awful. I’m not paying for this.”
Oh, great. Mrs. Steele was going to walk, and that meant it would come out of Missy’s paycheck.
“And I’m not coming back here,” she added as Missy removed the plastic cape.
“Good riddance,” muttered the stylist next to Missy as Mrs. Steele stormed out the door.
“I thought her haircut was pretty,” said the woman sitting in the chair.
It was, darn it all. Well, never mind. In another hour she’d be done and out of here and on her way to having the best Christmas ever. She got her broom and swept up the raven’s-wing black locks left behind by the old crow, all the while hoping that a big tipper would come in before they closed.
The door opened and in came—oh, no, not this guy. Again, all the other stylists started cutting in slow motion. Nobody wanted Larry the lech.
“Welcome to Style Savings,” sang out Shiloh, their manager. She went to where their cash register and appointment schedule sat to get old Larry checked in.
Larry was somewhere in his forties and, more than anything, he resembled the Pillsbury Doughboy. He was the king of the boob grazes, and there wasn’t a stylist in the salon he hadn’t hit on, including Missy. And she’d bet that today he was going to be all hers. Goody.
Sure enough, Shiloh was giving her The Look. She set aside her broom and came over to conduct Larry to her chair. She could practically feel his pervy stare burning her butt as they crossed the salon. Ugh.
She settled Larry in his chair and fastened a cape around his neck. “What would you like today, Larry?”
“You,” he said with a wink.
Gag. If she was married she could flash him her ring.
But marriage had never happened for her. Men had happened, two to be exact, one for each kid. Man Number One had been what some might have considered a youthful mistake, but she’d loved him like crazy. And when she got pregnant, they’d planned on getting married...until he tried to break up a bar fight and got killed for his trouble. Right before he’d been about to enlist in the army, too. Even though she’d had a child with him, his parents hadn’t bothered to make a connection with their grandchild. Hardly surprising considering that they’d pretty much written off their son.
That was sick and wrong if you asked Missy. People could change. She would never write off her kids. They were the best part of her life, even if things hadn’t worked out with their dads.
And boy, things really hadn’t worked out with Man Number Two, who was also out of the picture but for a completely different reason. She’d jumped into that relationship, driven by loneliness, anxious to find a father for Carlos. Man Number Two had been separated from his wife. They’d been ready to get a divorce...until wifey informed him she was pregnant. He told Missy just as she was about to break the news of her own pregnancy to him. (She’d read somewhere that condoms were 98 percent effective. Leave it to her to land in the 2-percent category!) His family was happy that he’d finally “come to his senses” and was reuniting with his wife. They’d never said anything to her face but she knew they’d never approved of her. She wasn’t about to stay around and be accused of screwing up the man’s life. So, figuring a pregnant wife trumped a pregnant ex-girlfriend, Missy had decided to let him go and stick with single parenthood. She was already raising a child on her own. What was one more? By Man Number Three, she was using more reliable birth control, but she wasn’t making smart choices. He hadn’t been good father material. He hadn’t even been good boyfriend material, the cheating rat.
After a couple more short-lived love attempts, she wised up and realized it was better to be alone than to settle. In fact, better to live up to her own potential as a woman than to worry about meeting a man who’d make everything fall into place.
Still, every once in a while she’d see a happy couple strolling the mall and sigh. Why were there so many Mr. Wrongs out there and so few Mr. Rights?
That wasn’t all she wondered. Sometimes she wondered how she was going to give Carlos and Lalla the kind of life they deserved.
But when those grim thoughts came along she pushed them firmly away. Yes, she’d made some mistakes and not everything had gone according to plan, but she had two great kids and she’d manage somehow. She was only twenty-six. She had time. Someday she was going to work at a fancy salon and be successful. And someday maybe her prince would come, ready to exchange his Corvette for a minivan, and carrying a wedding ring in his shirt pocket. Meanwhile she had...Larry.
“Larry, you know I’m not into guys,” she lied.
“I think lesbians are sexy,” he said.
“Let’s soak your head, er, wash your hair,” she said.
Larry always wanted his hair washed. That gave him a close-up view of the boobage.
She got him all washed up, trying to keep her boobs out of range. (Larry often had to scratch his nose during the process and his hands usually got lost on the way there.) Then it was time for a cut. His hair was thinning so he kept it long and shaggy in an attempt to compensate. He always reminded the stylists that he only wanted a little trim. After the incident with Mrs. Steele, Missy was going to take off barely anything.
She began, oh, so carefully, snipping.
“Could you take a bit more off here,” he said, pretending to reach for his ear. Before she could dodge his pudgy paw he’d scored his first boob graze. “Oh, sorry,” he said.
Yeah, that was why he was leering.
Was it the final straw, or rather follicle? Had she inhaled too many fumes while giving Bessy Hart her perm a couple of hours ago? Was she going insane? Who knew? But something got into Missy. Maybe it was the spirit of the Grinch.
She gave Larry a wicked smile and cooed, “No problem.” Then she picked up a section of hair and made a radical cut. Oh, that felt good. Let’s do it again. Another section of hair disappeared.
“Whoa,” said Larry. “Just a trim. Remember?”
“Trust me. I know what I’m doing,” she said with a Grinchy grin, and more of Larry’s hair vacated his head. Then she got out the clippers.
“Whoa, stop,” Larry cried.
Too late. She was already running the clippers up the back of his head.
“Hey,” he protested, trying to move his head. That got him a nick in the ear. “Yow! What’s with you?”
“Just giving you a trim,” she told him sweetly. “Like you said.”
“That’s no trim! It’s a scalping.”
“Oh, Larry, I’m sorry,” she said. “I guess we’d better stop.” With half his head buzzed and the other half shaggy. Hee, hee.
“You can’t stop now! I look like a freak.”
Yeah, it would be a shame to look like the freak he was. “Well, Larry, if you promise to keep your hands to yourself we’ll finish this.”
“What do you mean?”
She didn’t say anything, merely
stood there, staring at him in the mirror until he actually made eye contact.
Then he scowled. “Okay, okay.”
She rewarded him with a smile. “You’re going to look totally buff.”
“Buff, huh?” He thought a moment. “Yeah, buff is good.”
When she was done, Larry’s hair was ready for the marines. Too bad the rest of his body wasn’t.
She handed him a mirror and turned the chair so he could see the back of his head.
He nodded approvingly. “Hey, it’s not bad. I kinda like it.” He smiled up at her. “Nice job.”
Oh, great. She’d earned the undying devotion of Larry the lech. “Um, thanks,” she said.
She took off the cape and Larry forgot his promise and decided to stretch. She was too fast for him this time and danced backward, away from his lecherous paws. He frowned.
But when he paid, he gave her a ten-dollar tip.
She watched him go out the door and sighed. “Why do I feel like a pole dancer?”
Shiloh was next to her now. “You should be so lucky. Pole dancers make a lot more than we do.”
Two more cuts, two more decent tips and then she left to collect the kids from the babysitter and hit the road for their Christmas adventure. So far their Christmases hadn’t exactly been something you’d put on a greeting card. Often there’d been a boyfriend involved and a fight, or a tipsy neighbor stopping in to share the yuletide cheer, drink in hand, always a scraggly bargain tree with cheap presents that broke by the end of the day or weren’t what the kids really wanted.
She wasn’t going to come through in the Santa department this year, any more than she had last year, since Carlos still wanted a dog. It was hard to produce a dog when her landlady didn’t allow pets. “All that barking, my nerves couldn’t take it,” Mrs. Entwhistle said whenever Missy broached the subject.
Mrs. Entwhistle lived in the other half of the duplex Missy rented and was hard of hearing. She probably wouldn’t hear a Saint Bernard barking in her ear. She sure never heard when the teenagers down the block were partying till all hours of the morning or racing their cars. Or when the couple across the street had too much to drink and started yelling loud enough to drag Missy out of a sound sleep.
The Lodge on Holly Road Page 2