by Lisa Plumley
Although he didn’t seem to be. And Casey was pretty good at reading people. Reluctantly, he nodded in thanks.
“Anyway,” Shane said, casting Casey an uncertain, determined look as he went on pacing, “I knew you’d be trapped in Kismet a while. I knew you’d be weakened and extra-susceptible, because Christmas is like your kryptonite—”
Casey scoffed, still reeling at the idea that Shane wanted to mend the rift between them. It had gone on for so long . . .
“—and I knew I could get to you,” Shane continued. “I knew that was my make-it-or-break-it chance. But then you hooked up with Kristen, and I couldn’t get through to you no matter what I did, and I was getting pretty pissed off and frustrated by your stonewalling me by then, so I tried to break up the two of you—”
“You what?” Casey felt his fists clench.
“—by telling you that Kristen wanted a baked-goods deal that included Heather, because anyone but a moron could tell there are some sibling-rivalry issues between them—which I could tell you a lot about, by the way—”
“Not interested,” Casey broke in, his frown deepening.
“—and a deal would be disastrous for them both, but even after that I couldn’t get through to you,” Shane went on, “and I was starting to lose faith in things working out until Heather encouraged me to follow you back here. She even lent me her chartered private jet. And then, well . . .” With mingled ferociousness and hope, Shane finished up with a disarming shrug. “Here I am.”
Unreasonably, Casey felt a little bit moved by Shane’s efforts to reach him. A little bit. Not a lot. It was a ballsy move for Shane to be so honest. Casey respected that. Still . . .
The truth was, he hadn’t dealt well with Kristen. Partly that had been because of his issues with Shane. So Casey stood there alone. He faced down his onetime friend. He dredged up all the patience and generosity he could, given the situation.
“Fine. You’re here, dumbass.” As he said it, Casey held tight to his Christmas tree for strength. He imagined, in a stupid and fanciful and un–Casey-like way, that its inherent Christmassy qualities brought him one step closer to Kristen—one step closer to being a man who deserved Kristen. “Now what?”
For a long moment, Shane only looked at him. Then he bowed his head. He looked at the courtyard, around which the luxury apartment building’s exclusive living units nestled like jewels.
“I came to say I’m sorry,” Shane finally said. In a blunt voice, he said, “I’m sorry I screwed you in that interview—”
Whoa. Casey didn’t want to hear any of this.
He held up his free hand to ward off Shane’s next words, but his former friend just kept talking. As though he’d stored up those sentences for years, he doggedly said his piece.
“I’m sorry I stole your big line,” Shane said. “It was a crusher, dude. I knew it would work. It would melt that family’s hearts like puppies on parade. So I just . . . did it. It only took a minute, but the effects of it . . .” Swerving his gaze to Casey at last, Shane shook his head. He swore. “They lasted a lifetime.”
“Yeah. It must be hell, getting lucky like that.”
“It was!” Pacing again now, Shane cast him a beleaguered look. “I didn’t deserve to get that family. I did get fucking lucky, and I knew it. I was never able to forget it, either.”
For a second, Shane seemed almost . . . haunted by that. Casey wondered if there was more he wasn’t telling him. But then...
“Good,” Casey said. “You shouldn’t forget it, you heartless bastard. You stole something from me. I can never get it back.”
At that, Shane looked straight at him. He didn’t so much as wince, not even as Casey’s pain and raw enmity radiated from him. “I didn’t steal it. You never had it,” Shane said, head-on. “Even if you hadn’t choked in that adoption interview—”
Casey went still. The bark of his first-ever Christmas tree felt suddenly cold and rough and sticky in his fist. He’d thought Shane hadn’t heard about that. He’d thought Shane had left the foster home they’d practically been brothers in and had never looked back. It couldn’t be possible that he’d thought wrong. Not about something as important as that. Could it?
“—you can never know what would have happened,” Shane persisted calmly. “You like thinking you can, because then it feels like you can control it. It feels like you’re less helpless. But the truth is, we were both two lost, unwanted little kids. We couldn’t have saved ourselves. Not even with the best freaking interview line in the world. We couldn’t do it.”
Casey refused to believe that. After all, Shane had done exactly that. He seemed all right. Stonily, Casey stared at his apartment building. The sun was beginning to set. In his neighbors’ windows, he expected to see Christmas decorations.
To his surprise, he didn’t. It threw him.
Had he lost his ability to see them again? Like the municipal decorations he’d been hating all week—but had honestly never noticed before—had his neighbors’ holiday stuff vanished?
Had his ability to see Christmas deserted him too?
“I could have done it,” Casey insisted. “I was good at talking to people, even then. I was good at making sure everyone got along.” It had been either that, he knew, or slug his way through even more fights and black eyes. “I was so good at it that I made it my goddamn career! So don’t tell me I couldn’t.”
“You couldn’t,” Shane said quietly. “It wasn’t your fault.”
But Casey had heard enough. “That’s it. We’re done here.”
“Ah.” Shane nodded. “Cutting your losses?”
“The way out is over there.” Casey pointed. “I suggest you take it. I could help you find the way, but that might hurt.”
Incredibly, Shane laughed. “Same old Casey. I’d heard the stories about you, but I thought they were exaggerated. You’re still an all-or-nothing guy. If you can’t win, you want out.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Then let’s stay here until I do,” Shane volunteered with an open gesture. “Go ahead. Make me understand.”
“You’re not worth it. Besides, that’s—” Not what I do, Casey was about to say, but then he stopped himself.
“That’s not what you do?” Shane guessed. “Yeah, I heard that about you, too. If you can’t ‘fix’ it, you abandon it. That’s the only way anyone ever gets an all-star, all-home-run record like yours, you know. By not keeping track of the strikeouts. How’s that working out for you, anyway?”
Casey glowered at him. “I already told you to leave.”
“And I told you I’m staying. Nobody ever solved anything by not talking. Silence has screwed us up for twenty years.” Seeming relieved to have everything off his chest, Shane offered Casey an overconfident grin. “Besides, I’m not scared of you.”
“You should be.”
Shane scoffed. “You’re holding a threadbare twig of a Christmas tree. Right now, you’re less than intimidating.”
“I just want you to leave!”
“And I want you to say we’re square,” Shane said patiently. “I’m willing to stay here until you do.”
Casey wished, just then, that Kristen had shown the same kind of stubbornness that Shane was. He wished that she’d insisted on sticking with him—on making him face the truth.
The truth that he loved her. Wanted her. Needed her.
But it wasn’t Kristen’s job to do that, Casey realized as he met Shane’s obstinate frown with a scowl of his own. It wasn’t up to Kristen to make him feel safe or whole or wanted.
It was his job to do that, whether he wanted to or not.
Casey inhaled a deep breath. “If you hadn’t stolen my line,” he began, but Shane cut him off with a gesture. Annoyed, Casey regrouped. “If I hadn’t choked during that interview—”
But again, his friend stopped him. He shook his head.
“You can’t know what would have happened,” Shane said. “Believe me,
I’ve given it a lot of thought. Maybe you could have done better. Maybe things would have worked out the way you wanted for Christmas that year.” Shane gave him a rueful look. “Face it. You were a lonely little kid with no leverage. You’ve fixed that problem—in spades, I’d say—with all your success.”
Damn right, he had, Casey thought belligerently. But he knew it wasn’t the truth. He was still cracking under pressure. He was still unable to say the words that would save him.
Even more, he was unable to say the words that would make the woman he loved happy. Because during that last fateful afternoon, all Kristen had really wanted—all she’d asked for—was for Casey to love her. For him to say it out loud.
“Now all you can do,” Shane went on, “is forgive that poor helpless kid you used to be for screwing up, and just go on.”
“Right.” Cynically, Casey looked at him. “I guess that’s what you’re doing? Just ‘going on’ after past mistakes?”
“I’m trying to,” Shane disarmed him by saying, seriously and directly. “But you’re making it pretty fucking hard to do.”
For the first time, Casey actually felt sorry for him.
Maybe things hadn’t been as easy for Shane as he’d thought.
“But it’s been pretty awesome overall, right?” Casey asked Shane reluctantly, making an offhanded gesture with his non-tree-holding hand. “I mean, that family who adopted you—they were really loaded. And they really wanted you. So—”
“So you never know. Life’s funny like that.” Shane gave him a cryptic look. “Let’s just say I didn’t get as lucky as you thought I did, and leave it at that.”
“You’ve got to tell me more than that!” Casey burst out. “You’ve seen me smuggling in this tragic Christmas tree!” In demonstration, he thunked it on the courtyard. A shower of brown-tinged pine needles fell off. “After this traumatic experience, we’re practically brothers again.”
Shane laughed. Then, “Does that mean you forgive me?”
Casey thought about it. “It means I’ll let you buy me a beer sometime while I harass you about your favorite sports team.”
It wasn’t much, but it was a start. They both knew it.
“Fair enough.” Shane nodded. “Thanks, asshole, for making this twice as hard as it had to be. Man, you had me sweating.”
Nodding back at him, Casey couldn’t help wondering . . .
If it had been this difficult for a tough, experienced, hard-knock guy like Shane to face down Casey for their conversation—to make him have that conversation—how much harder must it have been for Kristen to stand by him that afternoon? How much harder must it have been for someone as softhearted as she was to see all his stony defenses and still hang in there?
Neither of them had managed it for long, Casey admitted to himself. But he hadn’t had to face down his own silence.
At least he could have reassured Kristen about some of those things they’d talked about, Casey realized. He could have told her—a lot more articulately—that he hadn’t been seeing her just to get close to Heather. That he hadn’t expected her to be like Heather. That he loved Kristen just the way she was and couldn’t imagine why anyone would ever compare Kristen to her sister when she was so unmistakably wonderful in her own right.
Maybe, if he left right this minute and drove to LAX, he could be on a plane back to Michigan within a few hours . . .
“You seem different,” Shane broke into his musings to say. He angled his head. “Maybe it’s the teensy Christmas tree.”
But Casey knew it was Kristen. She’d changed him. She’d made him see that the only one preventing Casey from getting what he wanted for Christmas—at least this year—was him.
“Yeah, you do, too,” Casey said. “Taller.”
“Better,” Shane corrected him. “But Heather gets all the credit for that. We spent some pretty intense time together while planning her live-stream Internet concert, and she really made me reconsider a few things.” Proudly, Shane nodded. “Reforming me was number seven on Heather’s to-do list.”
Now Casey knew he was losing it. “Heather has a to-do list?”
“Yep. And I’d better hurry up and get out of here, too,” Shane added, “because if Heather accomplished what she said she would, then Kristen ought to be here any minute now.”
At that, the whole world stopped. “Kristen? Kristen’s coming here? To L.A.? But why? How? When? For how long?”
Shane smiled. “Yes, Kristen. To L.A. To see you,” he said, ticking off items on his big, dumb fingers. “On an aero plane, I’d guess. Any second now. And as for how long . . .” Breaking off, Shane gave him a wiseass look. “I’d say that’s up to you.”
Filled with equal amounts of instant panic and white-hot joy, Casey gawked at him. Then he realized . . . “You’re screwing with me. Right? Because there’s no way in hell Heather could have reformed you, much less convinced Kristen to come here. She might be smarter than she seems, but that’s miracle territory.”
“Getting Kristen to come here for Christmas was item number one on Heather’s to-do list,” Shane informed him. “I’m serious. You have no idea what Heather Miller is really capable of, once she’s properly motivated. She’s a freaking dynamo.”
Casey considered all the ways that Kristen had turned him inside out, upside down, and head over heels for her. “I can believe it,” he said, “if she’s anything like her sister.”
Shane looked wary. “Don’t suggest that to Kristen!” he said. “I mentioned to her once that she might be able to follow in Heather’s footsteps, and Kristen practically shot flames from her eyeballs. Never compare two sisters to each other. Never—”
Shane went on, but Casey didn’t hear him. He was too busy realizing that he had a lot to do, if he was going to be ready for Kristen’s arrival in L.A. He had to plan something romantic. He had to reassess his communication style and practice a few I love yous. He had to plan a persuasive speech that would bring Kristen back to him, devise a heartfelt apology for hurting her, vacuum his apartment and buy her some flowers and get some wine . . .
Totally overwhelmed, Casey clutched his Christmas tree. That jolted him even further. He had to get more holiday stuff! Because Kristen loved holiday stuff. She’d already be weirded out by experiencing sunshine and green grass in December, Casey figured. If he could somehow get a hold of some fake snow . . .
No. Wait. Kristen hated fake snow. What was he going to do?
Whatever it was, he’d better hurry.
“Yeah. Thanks, Shane.” Distractedly, Casey gave him a semifriendly, one-handed slug to the shoulder, cutting him off in midspeech. “I’ll talk to you later. I have a lot to do.”
Beginning with the Christmas stuff, Casey decided. Because he could plan all the rest—all the words and the gestures and the romance—while he was stocking up on multicolored lights and ornaments and eggnog. This would be the biggest troubleshooting campaign of his entire life. He had to get it right. He had to.
Gearing up to get started, Casey looked decisively at his dejected-looking cast-off Christmas tree. He didn’t know what had possessed him to buy it. Except he’d felt that doing so was the kind of thing Kristen would have done. He’d felt it was the kind of gesture that would have made her proud of him.
But now, actually studying that wretched tree through semiobjective eyes, Casey wasn’t so sure. “Starting with . . . this.”
“You need a bigger tree,” Shane said with certainty. “Women are all about size and grandeur and making a big impression. But with that thing, you won’t even make a dent.”
Hell. Shane was probably right, Casey realized.
He stared at his friend through panicked eyes.
But then, from somewhere beyond him in the courtyard, Casey heard a familiar voice. “I wouldn’t say that,” Kristen said. Her footsteps came nearer. “That tree just needs a few decorations.”
Casey turned, and she was there, looking bedraggled and nervous and beautiful, wearing jeans and bo
ots and a god-awful spangled, eyeball-searing Christmas sweater and holding a carry-on bag and looking exactly like everything he’d ever wanted.
Just like that, a sense of calm certainty came over him.
Because all he really needed was Kristen, Casey realized in that moment—and she’d come there to be with him. She’d come there . . . for him. No one had ever done that before.
“I like your tree,” she said, striding nearer.
Through expert eyes, Kristen looked at its scraggly branches. Then she raised her gaze to Casey’s face. Even as he—dimly—registered Shane Maresca offering a salute to them both and then scampering away, Casey felt his heart fill almost to overflowing. He couldn’t believe Kristen was really there.
“I can’t believe you’re really here,” he said.
“I can’t believe you’re voluntarily holding a Christmas tree,” she countered, smiling at him. “You look good.”
“You look great.” Shaking, Casey stepped nearer. He thumped his tree along the courtyard beside him. What else could he do?
“I look ridiculous.” Kristen frowned down at her holiday-themed sweater. “I was looking for a little liquid courage on the plane, so I asked for a few drinks, but then I spilled them, and then I smelled like a holiday office party gone horribly wrong, and I couldn’t come here like that, so I ducked into a gift shop to find something else, and . . . Well, this was the best I could do.”
She spread her arms, showing him the appliqued ornaments, puffy paint, glitter, and actual jingle bells on her sweater.
“I was planning to turn it inside out, but all the stuff on the outside was too scratchy,” Kristen said. “So here I am, the archetypal non-glamorous, non-fabulous, everyday regular gal.”
“Here you are.” Feeling a goofy smile edge onto his face, Casey stepped even nearer. He thumped his Charlie-Brown tree those additional few feet. “Right where you belong. With me.”
“I didn’t know if you’d want to see me,” Kristen confessed, “given all the mean things I said to you.” She hauled in a deep breath. “I’m sorry, Casey. I’m so sorry. I didn’t know—”