This Holiday Magic

by Celeste O. Norfleet

  Adam and Sage stood awkwardly for a moment and then he impulsively pulled Sage into his arms for a hug. He expected her to stiffen, but instead she returned his hug. When they parted she looked up at him and said, “This is a surprise. If I’d known you were coming, I’d...”

  “You would’ve made an excuse not to be here,” he said, eyes twinkling with good humor.

  Sage laughed. “You’re probably right,” she said softly.

  He took her hand in his and they began walking toward the dining room. “It’s wonderful to see you again, Sage. It’s been way too long.”

  Sage looked up at him, a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. “You’re as charming as ever.”

  Adam laughed abruptly. “That’s not how you described me the last time we spoke.”

  “That day I broke the record for the number of cusswords spoken by me in one day. I haven’t matched that record since then.”

  Still smiling, Adam gazed down into her upturned face. “I deserved every word.”

  “Yes, you did,” Sage said. “Are you back for more?”

  In the formal dining room, Adam pulled Sage’s chair out for her. After she was seated, he sat next to her and turned to face her. The room was abuzz with the soft voices of the other guests, and a John Legend song was playing on the sound system.

  The waitstaff was currently serving the wine. The tinkling of crystal wineglasses and the hollow sound of the wine being poured added to the background noise.

  Adam’s focus was on Sage. He took in the golden-brown smoothness of her skin. How her heavy fall of curly black hair framed her heart-shaped face so beautifully. His gaze drifted downward to her mouth, which was full and sensual. They used to spend hours kissing, so he knew how utterly kissable her lips were.

  “Do you remember the promise we made to each other—that we’d always be honest with one another, no matter what?” he said after a minute of simply enjoying looking at her.

  “I do,” Sage said at once. “And you weren’t.”

  Adam winced. He couldn’t have guessed how she would react to him after all these years. But he’d hoped that most of the animosity she’d felt toward him would have dissipated by now. He saw that she was still hurt by his behavior.

  “No, I wasn’t honest with you,” he said. “I told you we should stop seeing one another because our long-distance relationship couldn’t last. The fact is I broke up with you because I was ready for intimacy and you weren’t. And since you weren’t ready, I wasn’t going to be that guy who manipulates his girl into something she’s not ready for.”

  “I knew that was the reason,” Sage muttered.

  “You were only nineteen.”

  “And you were twenty-one and unwilling to wait,” she whispered. Her eyes were momentarily fierce and then her gaze softened.

  She briefly looked around, wondering if anyone had noticed them arguing, but the other couples were engrossed in each other. “Adam, that’s water under the bridge.” She looked at him expectantly. “Mom thinks you came here tonight specifically to see me. Is that true?” She smiled as she waited for his reply.

  Adam couldn’t hide his astonishment at hearing this. “What is your mother, a psychic?”

  Sage laughed shortly. “I’ve often thought so. Was she right?”

  Adam reached for her hand and she placed it in his. “I’m going to assume our truth-only agreement still stands.”

  Sage nodded. He thought he read genuine affection mirrored in her eyes as she watched him.

  “For some reason I’ve been dreaming about you, Sage.”

  Her brows arched in curiosity. “What kind of dreams?” she cautiously inquired.

  Adam felt his face flush with embarrassment. “Innocent dreams, I assure you. But they’re persistent, several nights per week, every week for about three months now.”

  “I wonder why?” Sage said. “I was sure, until you showed up tonight, that I never crossed your mind.”

  “Why would you think that? You were my first love.”

  Sage sighed softly. “You’re Adam Benson, electronics wunderkind. You rub elbows with the president. You could have any woman on earth. Why waste your brain cells on me?”

  “Because you’re special, Sage,” Adam answered immediately. “You’re the only woman I’ve ever loved. And I’m here because I think there may be a reason I’m dreaming about you. Maybe we should give us another try.”

  He could tell Sage was truly shocked by his words. Her big brown eyes were startled. Her hand went to her chest as though doing so would quiet a rapidly beating heart.

  “Well, you wanted honesty,” Adam quipped.

  They were presently being served by the waitstaff. After the waiter moved away, Sage met Adam’s eyes. “You’re the only man I’ve ever loved. But, unfortunately, I don’t believe in fairy tales anymore.” She gestured to the snow falling outside the big picture window in front of them. “During the years we’ve been apart, my heart feels as though it has frozen over. That’s why I haven’t fallen in love with anyone else. I never let myself fall. I feel like a snow queen whose heart can’t be pierced by love. So don’t come here talking about trying again, Adam.”

  Adam felt as though his heart had been run through by a sharp knife. Seeing Sage again confirmed for him that he had indeed been dreaming of her because he still had feelings for her. But if she didn’t feel the same way about him, what good would it do for him to try?

  Then he remembered something; a gift he’d picked up for Sage at the last minute. He reached into his pocket and brought out a small package of peanut M&M’s. He handed it to Sage.

  “Merry Christmas, darling Sage,” he murmured.

  Sage took one look at the M&M’s and tears immediately appeared in her eyes. Adam knew she was remembering that when they were poor, he would give her peanut M&M’s in lieu of a more expensive box of candy. If she remembered that, Adam hoped, maybe she would recall other things about him that endeared him to her.

  Seeing her reaction gave Adam hope. He was determined to make her believe in fairy tales again. He wondered what it would take to melt a snow queen’s heart.

  Chapter 2

  A year later...

  Sage stood at her office window on a Friday morning in the first week of December, looking down on the street below. There he was, like clockwork. Adam on his daily run. She couldn’t resist a sigh filled with longing at the sight of his tall, well-built form. She turned away, a frown marring her pretty face. Did he jog past her office building every day just to vex her? If so, it was working.

  Logically she knew that New Haven, Connecticut, was equally as much Adam’s hometown as it was hers. He had a right to move back here after years of living in Seattle. But did he have to buy property in her neighborhood, build a huge house with a security gate and join her church?

  Benson Electronics provided much-needed jobs for several thousand grateful citizens, which made Adam Benson a local hero. That didn’t mean she had to jump on the bandwagon, too.

  She’d been two grades behind Adam in school, and they had been sweethearts, dating throughout high school and into college. Their friends and family had all thought Adam would eventually propose. But shortly after she began her second year of college, he told her he’d been offered a full scholarship to study applied mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and that he didn’t believe it would be fair to her for them to continue their relationship. He’d broken up with her. She’d been nineteen and thought she’d never recover from the heartbreak, but she had.

  Adam went on to make groundbreaking advances in electronics, and in the past few years he’d made strides that put him on par with giants such as Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. Today, at thirty-one, his inventions were earning him billions.

  Sage, now twenty-nine, had be
come an attorney and settled in New Haven, where she’d opened her own firm specializing in family law. Her family was here, as well as most of her friends. She dated fascinating men who treated her well, but whom she never found fascinating enough to marry, although she’d had a couple of offers.

  When Sage had heard Adam was moving back home to be near his elderly parents, she had felt warmth suffuse her heart because of the gesture. She tried not to think of the possibility that he’d moved back home to be close to her, as well. She believed she’d been firm enough with him last year at her parents’ annual Christmas Eve party when he’d hinted that he wanted another chance with her, and she hoped that he didn’t harbor any hopes of their getting back together.

  He’d been back in New Haven about a year and so far she had been able to avoid him. When she saw him in church, she made sure to put several pews between them, and after services she found an excuse to beat a hasty retreat. He’d even phoned and left messages, which she’d never returned. Was she being foolish?

  Their parents had been friends for decades. She would not be able to avoid him forever. She knew from experience that the emotional impact of seeing Adam jog by from a distance would be nothing compared to standing close to him, breathing in his essence, hearing his voice with its rich, warm timbre and possibly feeling the heat coming off his body. She needed more time to prepare herself for the full assault of having Adam within touching distance.

  She sat at her desk and opened the calendar on her computer. “Oh, no, is that today?” she said out loud when she saw she was supposed to have lunch with her mother at noon.

  She adored her mother, but lately all Patricia Andrews wanted to talk about was Adam and how lucky the city of New Haven was to have him back home.

  * * *

  Adam had glanced up and seen Sage looking down at him as he’d jogged past her office building. He’d smiled to himself and kept running. She’d always been stubborn. All his overtures at being friendly had met with failure. She wouldn’t return his phone calls. She hadn’t bothered acknowledging the flowers he’d sent on her birthday. Any other woman would have been happy that he’d remembered, but not Sage. She was going to make him work for it. What she didn’t know was that everything he’d ever gotten in life had been won by patience and hard work. He was undaunted by the impossible. The impossible just took longer. It didn’t matter to him how long it would take to win Sage over. He’d known upon seeing her again last year that he’d never stopped loving her. Breaking up with her was the biggest regret of his life.

  He’d confided in his mother how he felt about Sage. Millicent Benson had smiled knowingly and said, “It was only a matter of time before you came to your senses. That girl was made for you.”

  Adam couldn’t have agreed more. Now his goal was to get himself and Sage in the same room together. She was clever. Somehow she had managed to slip out of church every Sunday before he could corner her. It didn’t help that it seemed as though every unattached woman in New Haven had joined that particular church since he’d become a member and made it their business to get his attention before he could escape the walls of the sanctuary.

  He gave a huge sigh as he punched in the code at the gate leading to his house. Solving problems happened to be his forte. Getting Sage to fall in love with him again might seem like an insurmountable task, but he would make it happen either by using his intelligence or perhaps he’d be lucky and fate would step in and decide the matter. Either way, he would remain positive.

  The gate opened and closed behind him, and he walked up the drive. His surroundings were immaculate: the three-story redbrick house was trimmed in white, its columns stately and charming. The grounds were expertly manicured. In the driveway was a luxury car and in the garage, a couple more. Yes, he was living the American Dream. By all outward appearances, his life was perfect. He had more money than he would be able to spend in a lifetime. The only thing missing was true love. And even though some people believed he had a hard drive for a heart, he still thought true love was the most important thing in the world.

  * * *

  “Christmas is coming, and you know what that means,” Patricia Andrews crowed, smiling at her only child. They were sitting at a table in Pat’s favorite restaurant, a bistro downtown called Peaches’ Place, which served soul food with a healthy twist.

  Sage smiled back and braced herself. Every year her mother hit her up for a huge donation to the scholarship fund sponsored by her mother’s women’s club, the Silver Foxes. Last year the Silver Foxes had been able to award two deserving students ten-thousand-dollar college scholarships. Each year the ladies tried to up the ante, so Sage waited anxiously for her mother’s next words.

  Patricia Andrews, looking stylish and smart in her black Donna Karan slack suit and gold blouse, continued smiling. Her eyes were almost the same color as her blouse, a nice contrast to her rich, dark-chocolate skin. Sage had opted for a skirt suit in winter-white today with brown leather pumps. She shared her mother’s eye color, but her skin tone was a combination of Pat’s dark chocolate and her father Earl’s golden-brown skin.

  And while Pat wore her black hair relaxed and cut chin-length, Sage preferred to wear her long black hair natural. It fell in curls down her back.

  Sage took the opportunity to eat a mouthful of collard greens as her mother gathered her thoughts. She was feeling kind of relaxed today because her mother hadn’t brought up Adam once during their lunch date.

  Pat spoke at last. “Sweetie, fund-raising hasn’t gone well this year. The economy appears to be recovering, but not fast enough. Some businesses that donated to the fund last year are not donating this year. Or if they are, they’re not giving as generously.”

  “How much are you short?” Sage asked.

  Pat frowned. “We’ve raised a little over ten thousand.”

  “Then you need ten thousand more?” Sage said, looking into her mother’s eyes, which had taken on a pained expression. “You need more than ten thousand?” Sage was confused now.

  Pat started talking rapidly and excitedly. “Baby, we’d like to give five scholarships this year, so we actually need forty thousand more. Now, I know you usually make up the slack, what with your firm doing so well. But we thought it would be too much of a burden to ask you to do that—”

  Sage stopped her. “I don’t have forty thousand to give, Mom. I could handle ten, but forty’s out of the question.”

  “I’m not asking you to donate forty thousand, darling,” Pat said sweetly. “What we’d like you to do is go to Adam and ask him to contribute forty thousand.”

  Pat sat back expectantly in her chair, her eyes excited, her gaze riveted on her daughter’s face.

  Sage couldn’t believe her mother had asked her to do something like that. For a moment all she could do was stare at her mother. When she spoke, it was in measured tones. “I haven’t even said a word to Adam since he’s been back, and you expect my first meeting with him to be about a donation to a charity?” Not wanting to call attention to themselves, she purposefully kept her voice down and her gestures to a minimum.

  “We all agreed that you would be the perfect person to ask him,” Pat went on, as if nothing was out of the ordinary. She paused to take a sip of iced tea. Looking Sage in the eyes, she said after a soft sigh, “I know how this looks to you. You think I’m trying to get you and Adam together to talk. So what if I am? You’ve told me how he’s been trying to get in touch with you, and that you’ve ignored him. And maybe you think your nosy mother is trying her hand at matchmaking. But the truth is, Sage Elizabeth Andrews, you’re going to have to face him sooner or later, so you’d just as well get it over with. If a few deserving kids benefit from that meeting, then it’s all good!”

  “Oh, you want to kill two birds with one stone, is that it?” Sage asked her wily mother.

  “Yes, darling, something like that,
” Pat said, smiling warmly. “Come on. I know you don’t have the heart to let the kids down, so go ahead and agree to do it so we can enjoy the rest of our lunch. This shouldn’t be so hard for you to do. You’ve told me time and time again that you’re over Adam. You hold no grudges against him for breaking your eighteen-year-old heart.”

  “I was nineteen.”

  “I stand corrected,” Pat said, eyes twinkling mischievously.

  Sage eyed her mother suspiciously. “This isn’t something cooked up between you and Miss Millie?”

  “Millie and I were disappointed when things didn’t work out between you and Adam,” Pat admitted. “We were two peas in a pod, Millie and I. Both of us wanted big families and ended up with only one child each. And when you and Adam started dating in high school and seemed so beautifully matched, we started dreaming of future grandbabies.” She laughed. “But life has a way of bringing you back down to earth. We’ve come to terms with our disappointment, darling. Now we just want you and Adam to be able to be in the same room together without any acrimony. He’s reaching out to you. Please, meet him halfway.”

  Sage picked up her fork and held it poised over her plate. “I’ll think about it” was all she’d promise her mother at that point. She smiled to herself. This has plot written all over it, she thought.

  Pat sighed in resignation and continued eating. However, Sage could tell that her enthusiasm hadn’t waned in the least. The depths of her golden-brown eyes held just a little too much confidence. That look made Sage think her mother believed her mission had already been accomplished.

  “Anyway,” Sage added, “it’s been over a month since Adam phoned me. Maybe he’s given up and won’t even take my call. So don’t get your hopes up.”

  “He sent you flowers on your birthday last month,” her mother reminded her.

  Sage just tore into her salad without comment.

  Chapter 3

  Adam paced his office a few days later as he waited for Sage to arrive for their appointment. Meeting with heads of state didn’t produce this much anxiety in him.