Together for Christmas

by Lisa Plumley

  Kristen couldn’t believe he didn’t understand why this situation bothered her. “What if I asked you to stay here?”

  What if I asked you to choose me? she added silently.

  But Casey only smiled. “You wouldn’t ask me to do that.”

  “Why not?”

  Now he looked certain. “Because you don’t need to.”

  His cryptic reply irked her. “Obviously I do,” Kristen said, “since you’ve got one foot out the door already.”

  “Very funny.” Smiling, Casey cradled her jaw in his hand. Then he kissed her. “Thanks for a great . . . everything,” he said.

  Then he tossed her a wink and headed off at a near run to answer Heather’s imperious beck and call, just the way everyone always did, leaving Kristen behind to be forgotten about . . . just the way everyone, inevitably, always did.

  Chapter 20

  South side of Kismet, Michigan

  14½ mixing, stirring, fudge-making, expertly garnished

  days until Christmas

  It wouldn’t have been Christmas in Kismet without holiday lights, a big snowy parade, and jingle bells. And it wouldn’t have been Christmas at the Galaxy Diner, Walden had learned, without marshmallow-filled, chocolate Bûche de Noël mini-cupcakes, chubby gingerbread cookies in the shape of teddy bears with buttercream details, and several batches of traditional mincemeat pies-in-a-jar with brown sugar hard sauce and candied cranberries for a garnish. Unfortunately, the plethora of specialized holiday goodies—and the sheer volume of demand for those goodies—meant that he and the rest of the diner’s pastry department were under constant pressure during the month of December. As the days piled up and Christmas Day loomed ever closer on the calendar, he felt increasingly frazzled.

  Maybe that’s why everything came to a head with Talia.

  It started off innocently enough. Walden was working in his apartment’s cramped kitchen, spending his day off deeply engrossed in testing different ways to sugarcoat fresh cranberries—because he was kind of a workaholic that way—when Talia arrived. Walden didn’t know that it was her at first. Because despite the fact that he’d given her a key shortly after their Heather-boy toy masquerade began, Talia never used it.

  Instead, she knocked on his front door. Elbow deep in sugar, surrounded by bowls of cranberries coated with vanilla-bean-infused simple syrup and a variety of test sugars, Walden decided not to traipse all the way across the room to answer it.

  “Come in,” he called. “It’s open.”

  “Walden? It’s me! Talia!”

  Then why was she bothering to knock? “Come in!”

  She did come in, but not before opening the door and peering around its edge in a very tentative, very un-Talia-like way. Holding a bunch of shopping bags by their handles, she stepped inside, wearing the leopard-print coat she used to impersonate Heather Miller.

  “I gave you your own key,” Walden groused, unaccountably bothered by the fact that she refused to use it. And possibly by the fact that Talia was still pretending to be Heather, when she was awesome as herself. “Just use it already, will you?”

  Talia looked startled. Then, defensive. Her gaze swept his messy work area. As usual, his kitchen counters stood littered with bowls of chocolate ganache, scraps of parchment paper, and other accoutrements of his ongoing baking experiments. For Walden, creating new baked goods wasn’t just work; it was an art and a hobby. This time of year, it was also insanely demanding.

  “Oh, am I bugging you, Mr. Grumpy Pants?” Talia asked archly. She dropped her shopping bags, then rummaged through one. “Hold on a sec. I can fix that. I can cheer you right up.”

  “No, you’re not ‘bugging’ me.” With a sigh, Walden watched as Talia huffily pulled out something hairy-looking, blond, and about two feet long. Another wig. “But if that’s a Heather wig, you can put it away right now. I’m not in the mood.”

  “But the Heather wig puts you ‘in the mood’!”

  “Not anymore, it doesn’t,” Walden grumbled.

  Talia’s eyes widened. “Yes, it does!” she insisted. “The Heather wig is the whole reason we’re together right now.”

  She couldn’t seriously still believe that. Could she?

  It was true that Talia had hinted a time or two that she thought he only wanted her as Heather. But that was too ridiculous to take seriously. He’d wanted her all along. He just hadn’t had the nerve to say so until the right opportunity—their Heather-and-her-bohemian-boy-toy charade—had come his way.

  “Just put it away.” Walden gestured irritably at the wig. Fully fed up with pussyfooting around this issue—and feeling more than time-pressed at that particular moment—he decided to get down to brass tacks. “Whatever you think that wig is doing for you, it’s not.”

  “I . . . what?” Talia stared at him. “But I thought—”

  “I know. I should have told you sooner,” Walden interrupted regretfully, wiping off his sticky hands. “You, me, that wig . . . I can’t hack it anymore, Talia. I’m sorry if that sounds mean, but it’s the truth. I don’t like it. I’m done pretending I do.”

  Looking inexplicably stricken, Talia clutched her mangy wig. Her chin wobbled. Watching that uncharacteristic movement, Walden wasn’t sure what was happening. On another woman, he’d have thought some waterworks were imminent. But Talia was way too tough and too cool and too self-assured to cry. So why . . . ?

  “Well. You should have told me that before I bought a new wig!” she said. “I thought you’d gotten tired of the old one. I thought maybe a newer, longer, sexier wig was what you wanted.”

  Huh? Obviously, he’d have to be clearer about this.

  “No more goddamn wigs!” Walden yelled. “I’m done.”

  Talia flinched. She went on staring at him with those big, wounded-looking, indigo-colored eyes of hers. For the life of him, Walden couldn’t figure out why she looked so hurt.

  “I’m sorry I yelled about it,” he told her, because that part was true, at least, and he really wasn’t sure what else to do. All he knew was that he had to make Talia quit looking so sad. “I guess I’ve kept this bottled up for too long. I should have said something sooner, but I didn’t know how you’d react.”

  “How I’d ‘react’?” Her acerbic tone bit into him.

  Talia advanced toward him as she said it. Menacingly.

  Warily, Walden held up both hands. “Yeah. I know it sounds crazy, but I thought you might be upset or something.”

  His blundering attempt at humor didn’t fly.

  “‘Upset’? Of course I’m upset!” Talia waggled the wig at him. “Do you think I like putting gross fake hair on my head? Do you think I like prancing around in this skanky, ridiculous coat? Wearing sunglasses in wintertime? Making out in alleyways?”

  “Well, that last part was pretty nice,” Walden murmured, remembering it. He chanced a nostalgic glance at Talia, but she was obviously not on the same those-were-the-days kick he was.

  “I’m doing all this for you, you lunkhead!” she shouted. “And now you’re telling me you don’t like it?”

  “We’re both doing it for Kristen,” Walden clarified. “We’re doing it to keep the paparazzi away from the diner.”

  “We are.”

  It wasn’t quite a question. But it sounded too sarcastic to be a genuine statement of agreement. Fraught with the unwanted sensation that he was somehow making things worse, Walden frowned. “That’s what I just said.”

  “I heard you! I’m not an idiot.” Talia shook the wig. “This only makes me a temporary dumb blonde!”

  “If you heard me, then why—” Feeling frustrated, Walden broke off to give Talia a shake of his dreadlocks. Maybe if he started over from the beginning . . . “Look, all I’m saying is that I hate your wearing that wig,” he said in a gentler tone. “That’s it. I don’t know why you’re making a big deal out of it.”

  “‘Making a big deal out of it’?” Talia’s eyes overflowed with tears. Angrily, she hurled down her Heath
er wig. “It’s already a big deal! It’s a big, fat, hairy, stinking deal!”

  “Ew.” Tentatively, Walden made a funny face. Usually Talia liked when he did that. This time she didn’t so much as crack a smile. “That doesn’t sound very nice,” he joked anyway.

  But Talia only stared at him. Exasperated. And hurt.

  “You’re joking now.” Again, she gave him a supersize dose of sarcasm. Pacing, she added, “You’re making jokes. Now.”

  “And you’re asking questions that sound like statements!”

  “Because we’re having a fight! This is how I fight!”

  “I’m not fighting with you!” Walden yelled, waving his arms and feeling confused. “I don’t want to fight with you!”

  In the crashing silence that followed his shouting (which sounded a lot like fighting, he supposed, if he were being brutally honest with himself), they both stared at one another.

  “Maybe I should just leave,” Talia said quietly.

  “Maybe you should,” Walden said, because she obviously didn’t want to be there with him. She’d probably been looking for an excuse to end their let’s-help-Kristen charade. Talia probably wanted to pretend it had never happened and maybe wash out her brain with amnesia shampoo so she could forget kissing him—so she could forget acting as though she loved him.

  Walden knew he ought to accept that. He did. The trouble was, he’d honestly believed things had gotten real between them.

  All those long, intimate nights that he and Talia had shared. All those funny, heartfelt conversations. All those kisses and hugs and . . . and, well, all that X-rated other stuff that would only live on in his dreams now. They were all over with.

  This was it, Walden realized miserably. This was the moment when Talia realized she’d been hanging around with him, on purpose, for days now. This was the moment when she realized that the weird new guy at work had become—at least temporarily and for all intents and purposes—her de facto boyfriend.

  “I never meant for this to happen, you know,” she said, accidentally confirming his innermost fears. “It was so easy at first. Putting on that wig, making out with you, pretending we were a couple . . . I didn’t realize how out of hand it would get.”

  “I know.” Manfully trying to behave like an adult about this, Walden squared his shoulders. “You didn’t even like me.”

  “I mean, Gareth and I kind of drafted you into this in the first place,” Talia was saying, distractedly talking over him, “even though it was obvious that subterfuge didn’t come naturally to you. I’m lucky it lasted as long as it did.”

  “Me too,” Walden had to admit. Because . . . why not?

  Then he realized exactly what Talia had said. “Did you just say you’re ‘lucky it lasted as long as it did’?” he asked.

  “Didn’t ‘like’ you?” she asked in a tone of equal (if belated) amazement. “You thought I didn’t like you?”

  They stared at one another. Again, silence fell between them. And that was when Walden realized this was a monumental moment, too. Because this was the moment when he had a chance to make it or break it with Talia. This was the moment when he could go for broke—or just go back to sugaring cranberries.

  “You didn’t like me,” he said bluntly, opting to go for it. After all, he had nothing left to lose. “We’ve worked together for months. All I ever heard from you were stories about this guy or that guy or some other loser you were going out with.”

  Talia gawked at him. “I was trying to seem in demand! I was trying to make you think I was a hot commodity! But you never even looked twice at me—not until I put on that stupid wig.”

  “Oh, I looked at you, all right,” Walden said, liberated by the fact that she was leaving anyway. At least he could finally play it straight with her. “I looked at you plenty!”

  “Well, I never saw you!”

  “I did it! Okay? I couldn’t help myself!”

  Seeming almost pleased by his admission of helplessness in the face of her incredible allure, Talia touched her close-cropped lavender hair. Then, “You’re still shouting at me!”

  “You’re shouting at me!”

  “That’s because you’re being an idiot!”

  “I am not! I’m being honest!” Realizing he was still yelling, Walden deliberately lowered his voice. “I don’t like that wig because I’d rather be with the real you.” Bravely, he stepped close enough to touch Talia’s face. Because she hadn’t left yet, and maybe that meant he still had a chance. “The real you is a million times more beautiful than that. Putting on anything that obscures who you really are ought to be a crime.”

  Talia gazed up at him. She sniffled. “Really?”

  Somberly, Walden nodded. “Every time I saw you wearing those ginormous sunglasses, I wanted to rip them off your face and stomp on them. Because they hid your beautiful eyes.”

  “Aw. That’s so Neanderthal of you. So sweet.”

  “And,” Walden added, high on honesty and bravado, “because they made it impossible for me to see what you were thinking.”

  “You can’t do that anyway,” Talia joked, “if you thought I didn’t like you. I thought you didn’t like me—not until I put on that Heather wig, at least.”

  “That’s crazy talk,” he blurted, because he couldn’t stop himself. “Nothing could be further from the truth.”

  “I thought you were mad because I came over without wearing the wig today,” Talia confided further. “You looked at me with such disappointment on your face. It kind of broke my heart.”

  Oh. That explained why she’d come into his apartment with such a tentative demeanor at first, Walden realized. Because for the first time, Talia had arrived at his place without wearing her Heather wig. He’d been too engrossed in sugaring cranberries—and feeling exasperated at the wig—to notice that at first, but obviously, Talia had been worried about his reaction to the real her. Which explained why she’d rushed to grab that damn wig when he’d groused at her, too.

  They were having their first colossal misunderstanding.

  He decided to consider it a landmark moment—and a positive development, too. After all, at least they were both still there talking. That was something to be glad about, wasn’t it?

  “I was grumpy because you didn’t use the key I gave you,” Walden explained, beginning to feel maybe things weren’t as dark as they seemed. “Again. You never use it! Why do you think I—”

  “I lost it,” Talia said sheepishly. “I didn’t want to say so. And anyway, I thought you only gave me that key so we could conspire to be Heather and her bohemian boy toy more easily.”

  Walden shook his head. Her face felt warm and familiar and beloved beneath his palm, and he never wanted to stop touching her. Talia meant everything to him. “All I ever wanted was to be you and me, together. That’s the whole reason I did all this crazy Heather-and-Heather’s-boyfriend impersonation stuff.”

  “Well, you wanted to help Kristen, too.”

  “A little.” Walden smiled. “Mostly, I wanted you.”

  “I wanted you.” Talia reached up to cover his hand with her palm. She squeezed his hand, giving him a look so adoring that it nearly stole away his breath. “I’m not as fearless as I seem, Walden. Not one hundred percent of the time. Not about things that really matter.” She inhaled a deep breath, then gazed into his eyes. “You really matter. You’re kind and funny and sexy and strong, and I really like you, and when it started looking like we might actually have a chance together, I got so freaked-out thinking I might blow it that I . . .” Talia shrugged. She offered him a sardonic grin. “Well, I guess I blew it. Ironic, right?”

  Her sarcastic tone was back. It was there, Walden realized in that moment, to cover up her vulnerability. Her sarcastic tone was there, if he paid attention, to alert him that Talia needed something from him.

  This time, he did a better job of rising to the occasion.

  “Nobody’s blown anything,” he said. “All that’s happened is we had a fi
ght. We cleared the air. Then we kept talking until we understood each other. That’s how it’s supposed to be.” He gave her a long look. “We just survived our first fight! That’s kind of great, right?”

  “No. I hated every minute of it.” Talia shuddered. “I hate fighting with you. I never want to do it ever again. Okay?”

  “Not okay.” Regretfully, Walden shook his head. “Because we’re going to have misunderstandings sometimes. We’re going to disagree about things once in a while.”

  “Oh no, we’re not,” Talia shot back.

  Her eyes sparkled at him. It took him a second to realize why. She was disagreeing with him about disagreeing with him.

  “Funny.” Walden smiled at her. “All I mean is, you don’t have to act like you’re bulletproof. Not with me. I’m not here because you’re cool and tough and amazing—”

  “You’re not? My illusions are shattered!”

  “Well, not just because you’re cool and tough and amazing,” Walden amended. “I’m also here because I love you. No matter how goofily I might express it. So let’s start over. Okay?”

  “Okay, but . . . wait.” She frowned. “You love me?”

  Talia’s awestruck tone—and her frown—nearly made him quaver. Because Walden had been too busy speaking from the heart to realize exactly how vulnerable he was making himself just then. Now it was too late to take it back—too late to be safe.

  “I love you more than bittersweet chocolate,” he told Talia ardently, going all-in now. “More than kouign amann or pâte feuilletée and brown butter tarte tatin or croquembouche with pâte à choux and fleur de sel caramel and crème pâtis-sière. More than all the best viennoiserie in the whole wide world—”

  “Um, translation for non-pastry chefs, please?”

  Walden smiled. “I love you with all my heart and soul, Talia. I love everything about you, from your purple hair to your tattooed left foot to your smile and your laugh and your obsession with drawing hearts on every frosty window you pass.”

  She blushed. “You noticed that?”