Not a ghost town.
“Huh,” he said aloud. Because something came together for him at that moment. A flash of an idea. Something for himself, to keep him occupied while he was here, since he couldn’t have Macy.
But the thing that excited him the most was that it was something for everyone else too.
Everyone else, his steps seemed to say as he walked. Everyone else. He felt free, slicing through the cold winter air with a brain, body, and heart designed to strive, to battle uphill, to fight until the end—
Because that was when one’s finest hours were to be had, not when you were resting on old laurels, or doing something you were merely good at. You had to love what you did.
But it was even simpler than that.
“You have to love,” he said, looking up at the stars.
And everything else would fall into place.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Macy couldn’t help wondering: How did you do Christmas while you were working hard to be at the top of your profession and while you were fighting intense attraction to the wrong man? Especially after you’d slept with him and he wanted to keep it going?
How could you drink that peppermint cocoa with extra whipped cream with a pure heart when you weren’t telling your colleagues and best friends the whole truth? How could you honestly stand with Miss Thing and dance the South’s favorite dance—the Shag—to “Jingle Bell Rock,” letting her lead, while you wondered if you were possibly sabotaging your own business because you couldn’t pull yourself together?
And how did you think about what Christmas really meant—peace and love—when you were making selfish choices?
In the big scheme of things, Macy’s problems were tiny, she knew. But they involved other people. She could hurt other people.
So those problems did matter.
To be honest, she didn’t think she’d really hurt Deacon. The guy propositioning her at her front door wasn’t exactly looking for a deep relationship. He had no idea—at least as far as she could tell—that she was his perfect match. His heart was nowhere on the line. So even though rejecting his sexual advances felt like deprivation and hardship, she knew she hadn’t scarred him.
She was glad when Anne called her and gave her an excuse to leave him on the sidewalk. Anne only wanted to tell her a funny story about the kids, but it was good to hear from her.
Macy told her what had happened between her and Deacon. Who better to confess your deep secrets—and your misgivings—to than a loving sister?
Bottom line, Anne didn’t judge her. She understood. She was even a little jealous and determined that she and Kyle get back to that level of physical passion. But she worried about Macy too. Anne wanted to know if she was emotionally involved, as in falling in love with the guy, which Macy assured her she was not. It wasn’t true, but if she said it often enough, she hoped it could be.
The next day was cookie-baking time at Two Love Lane. Macy had been mixing the dough up for three days straight at home after work. So all she and her colleagues had to do was roll the dough out, cut it into Christmas shapes, bake the pieces, cool them, and decorate them.
They would then put them in the freezer and take them out later for the party. They always wanted this part out of the way so during the last few days before the event, they could focus on the rest of the logistics, call people to make sure they were coming, and do a last-minute advertising blitz.
But today, Macy was worried. How would her friends take her news about sleeping with Deacon? She was obligated professionally to tell them she’d compromised the business by doing so. But she also wanted their personal advice.
She had other things to cover first. She stepped into Greer’s office.
Greer put down a pair of scissors.
“What are you doing?” Macy was curious.
“Cutting out magazine pictures, is all.”
“Of what?”
Greer shrugged. “Random stuff. Sometimes I create collages.”
“I had no idea.” Macy liked that she still didn’t know everything about Greer.
“I do have an artistic side,” her friend said, coloring a bit.
“I’m sure you do.” Macy smiled. “I’d love to see your work sometime.”
“Okay.” But Greer still seemed a little defensive. Or worried.
Maybe Macy was worrying her. She wouldn’t be surprised. She was about to slink out of her friend and business partner’s office feeling horribly guilty when Greer came around her desk and sat on its edge. “Is there anything on your mind?” She looked at Macy thoughtfully.
“There are things I need to address with y’all,” Macy said, her stomach in knots. “You, Ella, and Miss Thing.”
“Right now?”
“If that’s okay.”
“Let’s do it.”
Miss Thing was packaging peanut butter cups and a copy of Vogue to send to her clotheshorse friend in England when Macy asked her to go with them to Ella’s office.
“Sure.” Miss Thing wore a double-breasted light-blue jacket with gold frogs and a matching blue skirt. Macy recognized it as a knock-off of one of the queen’s outfits.
Once more, Ella’s door was closed, a DO NOT DISTURB sign dangling from the knob.
“It’s always closed these days,” Miss Thing whispered.
Macy leaned close to the wood panel. “I don’t hear it now, but last time there was a squeaking noise. And some thumps. And a sound like sticks being hit together. Do y’all have any idea what she’s up to?”
“No,” said Greer. “I asked her outright. And she told me with a straight face that she has no idea what I’m talking about.”
“Me too,” said Miss Thing. “It’s making me a little crazy. She says she has the ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign up for a little privacy, is all.”
“Let me knock and see what happens.” So Macy knocked. “Ella? Ella, are you in there?”
“I’m here.” Their friend’s voice had an edge to it. “What’s up? I have my sign on the door. It must be an emergency, right?”
“Well, no.” Macy did her best to sound blasé, but Ella was stressing her out. “Can we come in? We’re all here.”
“Not now.” Ella’s tone was firm.
“Will you come out then?” Greer sounded more demanding than Macy had. “We’re about to work on the Christmas cookies. And we really do need to get those done.”
“Right.” Ella’s voice sounded small. “Sorry, I forgot. Give me five minutes.”
“We’ll meet you in the kitchen, dear,” said Miss Thing.
“Okay.” And then there were knockings. And thumps. And that damned squeaking noise, like nails on a chalkboard.
In the kitchen, Macy asked the others, “What the heck is going on in there?” She had no idea.
Miss Thing shook her head. “I can’t check when she’s not here. She keeps the door locked. And she’s meeting all her clients in the Green Room.”
The Green Room was their upstairs drawing room.
“It’s got to be something for Christmas,” Greer suggested.
Miss Thing’s brow puckered. “Do you remember last summer when y’all went on that two-week vacation together without her?”
Greer and Macy looked at each other. They would never forget that trip.
“We can’t really call it a vacation,” Macy said.
“No,” Greer echoed weakly.
They’d gone to France to learn exotic flirting and lovemaking tips from a Parisian expert to share with their shyer clients. And then to Italy for Greer to pick up the latest matchmaking theories of compatibility from a premier Roman agency known for its uncannily high matchmaking rate. They’d had to invest a good bit of money to gain this access, and the only reason they got it was because Ella was second cousins with the CEO.
And, um, things happened. But they got out alive and smarter about matchmaking, so that was all that mattered.
“Whatever you want to call it,” Miss Thing said, “the whole t
ime you were gone, Ella did the same thing. Locked herself in her office, and made all those strange noises. In the summer. So I don’t think this has anything to do with Christmas.”
Greer made a face at Macy, and Macy made one back at her. It was their “What’s going on with our best friend?” face.
“I hope she tells us soon,” Macy said. “I’m going crazy wondering. She said she didn’t want to go on that trip last year, even though it was her own cousin we were going to see.”
“I know,” said Miss Thing. “And while you were gone, she seemed as happy as a clam. So I don’t think she resented your trip, but it does make me wonder why this secretive stuff started during that time.”
Greer’s right eyebrow arched high. “It’s like she needed us to be gone.”
“I know.” Macy almost shuddered.
They exchanged another look: the “Should we be scared of our best friend?” face.
And then they both laughed it off.
“We’re being stupid.” Greer grabbed four aprons off several hooks on the wall.
Macy pulled out four rolling pins from the kitchen drawer. “Poor Ella. It would hurt her feelings to know we’re thinking something odd’s happening in there.”
“But it is odd.” Greer opened a cupboard full of cookie sprinkles, sugar, flour, and icing bags. “She won’t tell us.”
“Let’s wait until Christmas,” said Macy as she tore a big sheet of wax paper off a roll. Miss Thing took it from her and laid it flat on the table. And then they did it again. “I’m sure it will all be revealed on December twenty-fifth.”
Ella seemed perfectly fine when she met them in the kitchen. They rolled out some cookies, at least six pans’ worth, and put two at a time in the oven to bake. With their buttery scent wafting from the AGA stove, Macy sat down at the kitchen table.
“Miss Thing, you’re hearing this for the first time. I spoke to Ella and Greer last night while I was at the Yo-Yo Ma concert.”
“I’m all ears.” Miss Thing loved a good gossip.
“I have a huge crush on Deacon Banks.”
“And you slept with him,” said Miss Thing, “and now you’re having second thoughts.”
Macy felt the blood drain from her face. “How did you know?”
“Honey, it’s written all over you.”
Greer and Ella stared slack-jawed first at Miss Thing, then at Macy.
“You two had sex?” Ella asked Macy.
“Were you drinking?” Greer sounded like Macy’s mother.
“No.” Macy was blushing so hard, she felt almost dizzy. “We left the concert to find Louisa, and at her house—”
“You wild things,” Miss Thing said with relish. If she’d had her way, she’d put Barry White on the speaker system.
“But how could you tell?” Macy felt desperately exposed.
Miss Thing giggled. “Don’t think I was being psychic or anything.”
“Of course, you weren’t. What clues did you uncover?” Greer loved Benedict Cumberbatch, who played the logical Sherlock Holmes on the BBC.
“You have a hickey on your neck,” Miss Thing said proudly. “It’s the size of a golf ball. About three inches beneath your ear, so you must not have seen it in the mirror, sweetie.”
“No!” Macy slapped the side of her neck.
“Wrong side, sugar.” Miss Thing chuckled as Macy tried to cover the other side. “No one gets a hickey like that during a demure getting-to-know-you make-out session.”
“Oh my gosh.” Macy was stupefied. “I don’t remember getting a hickey at all … but things were so hot, I couldn’t even remember my name.”
“Lawsey me.” Miss Thing fanned herself.
“Move your hand, Macy.” Greer craned her neck to see Macy’s neck better. “People really get hickeys? I thought they were a myth. They just seem so useless.”
“I agree.” Ella stood up and took a gander too. Macy let them. She figured it was her punishment. “Once I had a boyfriend in high school who wanted to give me one, and I said no. I was like, why?”
“That’s because the art of the hickey is known only by expert lovers.” Miss Thing occasionally liked to show off her bedroom know-how. “Most people get ’em wrong, and those sorts of hickeys look tacky. Yours, Macy, looks good.”
“Give me a break,” she protested.
“No.” Miss Thing nodded firmly. “It does. I’m envious.”
Macy started laughing with Ella and Greer.
Miss Thing joined in. “Oh, sex is funny!”
Which made them laugh even more.
“Wait,” Macy said, wiping her eyes, “now that I think about it, I do sort of remember feeling like a vampire was seducing me, and I loved it, in a dark, erotic way, and—”
“That’s enough,” said Miss Thing. “I’m already a little faint just thinking of Deacon Banks in a suit and being proper in my office, speaking to me about the weather. I can hardly sit up straight thinking about him naked and practicing his lovemaking skills.”
Macy felt herself getting redder by the second. “I wonder if anyone else noticed? After the concert? Colonel Block, Celia, Deacon’s aunt Fran…”
“The colonel can’t see well,” Ella reminded her. “He once thought the mayor’s wife was an old military buddy. He saw her across the library floor and called her Sergeant Wilson. And when she wouldn’t come over, he got upset. I had to tell him.”
Everyone laughed again.
Greer shook some cookie sprinkles in her palm and licked them up. “Who knows about Fran Banks?”
“She would have said something to me,” Macy said. “She’s not the type to shy away. I think she had eyes only for the colonel last night.”
Ella checked the cookies in the oven. “That leaves Celia.”
Macy put her face in her hands. “She didn’t see much of me after the lights went up at the auditorium. She went home. And I barely saw Rena and her friend at the Grand Bohemian.” She sat up extra straight. “Wouldn’t Deacon have noticed too? And asked me to hide it somehow?”
“He was probably noticing your boobs.” Ella was such a tease. “They looked extra fantastic in that dress.”
“True,” said Greer. “And if he noticed your hickey, he was probably super proud of it and didn’t want you to cover it up.”
“Even in front of his aunt?” Macy couldn’t help her voice getting shrill.
“Men,” said Miss Thing, and looked at each one of them as if she’d just revealed the answer to all the world’s mysteries.
Yes, men.
“So let’s get back to the serious question,” said Greer. “Has sleeping together changed things between you two?”
“All I know is he walked me home last night and tried to come in,” Macy said. “He said he hoped we’d continue our sexual connection until he went back to New York. Twice a day.”
“Geez, Macy!” Ella stood back up and peeked at the cookies in the oven. “Do you have to torture us like this?”
They were all single.
Greer’s gaze was serious. “Does anyone else know you had this little tryst, apart from your sister?”
“No.” Macy was nervous. “I hope you don’t think I’ve compromised Two Love Lane’s mission. I mean, I did—”
Greer patted her hand. “You’re too hard on yourself is what you are, Macy Jane Frost.”
“I agree,” said Miss Thing. “You should rule your work and not the other way around.”
“That’s right.” Ella wore a little crown of flour because she’d tried to get the bag out of the cupboard and it had fallen out, right on top of her, and a poof of the white stuff had settled in her hair. “We created Two Love Lane together. We can never let ourselves forget that this company’s foundation is made of real people—the four of us and our clients. And we all have our own hopes and dreams. We’re not perfect, not any of us.”
“Two Love Lane is not composed of contracts and money,” Greer declared in that authoritative way she had that always reas
sured Macy when she needed a boost of confidence. “Those are strictly by-products.”
“Okay.” Macy felt a little hitch in her throat. “Thanks, guys.”
They worked and worked making cookies for three more hours, stopping only long enough to take a break to pet Oscar, who wouldn’t leave them alone, and to eat a quick lunch of Miss Thing’s homemade chicken salad wraps and strawberries.
By the time they finished for the day, they had two hundred beautifully decorated cookies.
“We rock, if I do say so myself.” Miss Thing’s lips were dyed green from eating too much icing.
“At this rate, we’ll be done by noon tomorrow.” Ella beamed. “That leaves a whole half day to Christmas shop.”
“You mean, you haven’t shopped yet?” Macy exchanged a lightning fast look with Miss Thing and Greer.
“No.” Ella laughed. “You know I don’t shop until fairly late.”
So she definitely wasn’t wrapping Christmas gifts in her office.
“Later today,” Macy said, “I’m hoping to get a report on Deacon’s museum date with Rena. They’re at a special exhibit at the RKW.”
“Which is so gorgeous since that remodel.” Miss Thing was a volunteer there.
Greer cocked her head. “You can handle getting the low-down on that date?”
“Of course,” said Macy. “Especially since we haven’t gotten past the hot sex phase of this relationship and probably never will. He’s said outright he’s not ready for love. And I’m not either.”
“Give him a break if he doesn’t fall for Rena,” Ella said. “I think he’s stuck on you.”
Macy nibbled on the edge of a cookie she’d messed up. “He won’t be the first client I’ve failed at connecting with someone. Although I have to admit, it’s frustrating.”
Her life would be so much easier if Deacon Banks fell in love!
CHAPTER TWENTY
Not a minute later in the cookie-covered kitchen at Two Love Lane, Macy got a text. “Oh, no,” she said. “Rena’s ears must be burning.”
“Don’t let it be more trouble,” said Miss Thing. “Aren’t they at the RKW as we speak?”
“They’re supposed to meet right about now.” Macy squinted at the text.
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